Collected Short Fiction, page 657
The rogue pondered. “Where are you going?” it demanded again.
“I am flying to the inhabited planets of Almalik. On Kaymak they will deal with you—once I warn them.”
“Do you hate me, Molly Zaldivar?”
The girl frowned at its bright sensor and shook her head. “You can’t help what you are.”
The rogue scanned all her matter for the cold green blaze of fury; it was absent. Eagerly it asked: “Then do you love me now?”
Her face crinkled oddly about the eyes, the skin tawny gold beneath Almalik’s far suns. “How could I? I am human—you a monster!” And her violet eyes were damp as they peered at the rogue’s shining sensor.
“I love you—”
“Insane!” sobbed the girl. And then, “Perhaps I pity you, because you are so sadly deformed, because all your power is thrown away.” She shook her head vigorously, the colored lights of Almalik dancing in her hair. “I’m only sorry for you!”
She paused, and said: “If I am in love, I think it must be with little Andy Quam. Monster, I will go back to him. Once I get to the inhabited planets and give my warning—and you are destroyed—I will go to him through a transflex station. But I pity you, monster.”
“I will not be destroyed.”
“You will be destroyed—unless you kill me first, and keep me from warning the inhabited worlds.”
The rogue thought for microseconds. Then at last it shook the air again. “I will not destroy you,” the air shrieked. “But I will not be destroyed. Observe! I will kill Almalik before you can warn anyone!”
And it withdrew its plasma arm, as the girl stared wonderingly after.
The rogue flexed its energies, and prepared for the assault.
It tightened the transflection fields that held and moved its planetary mass. The agonized rock of its mantle screamed and grated as it flattened its bare black peaks, compressed its deserts of snow, squeezing itself into a denser projectile. It drove itself toward the blazing sun.
I will die, thought the rogue. So will Almalik.
Tardily, almost carelessly, the congeries of massed beings that made up the total of Almalik took note of the intruder and lifted a careless effector to defend itself.
It was not the white star ahead of the rogue that resisted. That sun lay steadily glowing, ignoring the threat. But from a mighty double sun above it, a golden giant and its immense blue companion, spinning close together, a bolt was launched.
The bolt sprang from the inner plasmas of the golden star, and its energies were huge. An enormous leaping snake, thicker than the rogue’s own snow-encrusted planetary body, blazed bright as the star itself. It flashed with transflection speed across the void, faster than the rogue could move to evade it.
But it bypassed the rogue, and struck toward Molly Zaldivar.
Even at the planetary distances that already separated them, the rogue could see the red flash of terror through her being as she saw that darting coil of golden fire. Help me, monster! she cried; the rogue could hear no words, but the message was clear, and it responded.
It hurled out an arm of its own ions and their linking transcience energies, coiling it into a plasma shield around the girl and the sleeth. But it was not strong enough. The golden arm of Almalik was stronger; it burst through the shielding plasma wall, coiled a net of golden fire around Molly and the sleeth and snatched them away toward that double sun.
The rogue could not help her. But an emotion that it could not identify as savage joy filled all its patterned mass. She called me. She asked my help. If I cannot help her, I still can destroy this near white star of Almalik!
The rogue paused, testing itself, preparing itself to dispose of energies greater than even it had yet employed. It was not strong enough, it calculated coldly. Not yet. It needed to be stronger.
The planet was cold, but at its core it was not yet dead; crushed gelid masses of iron and heavier metals still seethed, not yet congealed into solids, not yet exhausted of radioactivity and heat. From them the rogue devoured energy and strength. Controlled lightnings flashed along its plasma paths. The planetary mass of its body was now no more than a slinger’s pebble to it; a weapon, a missile, a way of killing Almalik.
The rogue intensified its driving field until its crushed mountain ranges smoked, and the deserts of snow thawed and bubbled into boiling seas. The deep core shuddered with earthquake shocks; arcs and auroras raged through its reborn air.
The rogue plunged on to shatter the enemy star.
But Almalik was not unprepared.
From the binary sun above, the golden spear of plasma stabbed at the rogue again. It pierced all the shielding fields, burned through its steaming seas, exploded its crust and jarred its heart with seismic waves. The rogue coldly calculated its damage. Much. Not too much. I still can kill Almalik!
The plasma snake recoiled to strike again, again, pocking all the rogue’s surface with enormous glowing craters, shattering its being with waves of destruction that the rogue felt as searing pain.
But the rogue would not let itself be destroyed.
It drew on its last immense reserves to increase the power of its transflection shields, holding all the atoms of its shattered planetary mass in a remorseless, destroying grip. Daring—and learning—it even reached out to suck new energies from the plasma snake itself.
Molly Zaldivar and the sleeth were gone now, lost even to the rogue’s far-ranging perceptions as the plasma coil drew them back toward some distant planet’s surface. Every bit of matter of more than molecular dimensions for many A.U.s around was gone, drawn into the rogue itself or volatilized by the seething energies employed.
But the rogue was not destroyed. It plunged on to strike the unresisting white sun.
XVII
“Monitor Quamodian,” said the flyer chattily, “you’re not going to hear much with your bare ears. They’re talking about you.” Quam glanced at Monitor Clothilde Kwai Kwich, who was inspecting the fittings of the flyer with distaste and apparently whispering to herself. “I don’t know if I want to hear,” he muttered.
The girl said aloud, without looking at him, “What you want makes little difference, Monitor Quamodian. There will no doubt be times when the other citizens will have inquiries to direct to you, or instructions. I do not wish to be distracted by relaying messages, therefore equip yourself with proper hearing facilities.”
Andy Quam grumbled, but accepted the tiny earpiece the flyer offered him on an effector. “—flimsy old wreck,” piped a shrill voice in his ear as he put it on. “We will follow, but kindly move as rapidly as you can.” The voice had an odd humming, almost echoing quality, as though a well trained chorus were speaking in almost perfect unison. Quamodian guessed it was the multiple citizen of green spirals.
He. disregarded them, quickly inspected his flyer. Its homeostatic devices had repaired the damage, restored the rack of flares. Not that they would be needed, he hoped. Or would be of any use if they were. But they were better than nothing.
“We’re all set,” he announced. “I guess.”
Monitor Kwai Kwich said, with offensive patience: “Then can we not begin?”
Quamodian hunched grimly over the controls and ordered the flyer into the air. The sun was in his eyes as they spun and rose. Nearly doubled in diameter, its red disk was now so dull that his naked eyes could watch it without discomfort. Dark splotches marred it. He thought of saying something to the girl, but decided against it—although she, coming from Kaymak, might not realize there was anything odd about its appearance. Let her find out, he thought. It didn’t matter anyway. All that mattered was that he now had help—a kind of help—against the rogue.
They arrowed south across the narrow lake and the first dark foothills, the multiple green citizen and the pinkly glowing cloud following effortlessly behind. The predator citizen with the enormous fangs lolled silently on the padded seats behind Andy Quam and the girl, while Rufe sat on the floor beneath it, looking apprehensively at its teeth. There was a continuing buzz of conversation on the transcience bands coming through his earpiece, but Quamodian disregarded it. He was not interested in their opinions of his flyer, himself or the planet that had spawned humanity. All he wanted from them was their help.
It was dark as they reached the hill that held the cave; the sun was still some distance above the horizon, but its dulled rays gave only a looming twilight in the sky, very little on the ground about the cavemouth. He circled the dark mouth of the cave, searching for the sleeth or any hostile thing. There was nothing. All the landscape held that ominous tinge of red, but nothing moved on it.
Flying warily he approached the rubble of the demolished door.
“Deserted,” sang the tiny chorus of the grass-green spirals. “We detect nothing. Another entrance exists lower down.”
Monitor Clothilde Kwai Kwich glanced hesitantly at Andy Quam. “There is a good deal of destruction here,” she admitted.
“I told you!”
“Yes. Perhaps there has been an error.”
“Lower down!” chanted the spirals. “Other indications! Worth investigating!” And the soft whisper of the cottony-pink cloud citizen sighed:
“Forces have been deployed in the lower area of considerable magnitude. Forces still exist in being of unusual characteristics.”
Monitor Kwai Kwich said, almost apologetically, “We should investigate.”
“Right,” rasped Quamodian, and sent the flyer spinning down around the mountain, searching for the lower entrance. The pink cloud citizen was there before him, hovering like a puff of steam at the spout of a kettle before the tunnel mouth.
“You lead,” it sighed. “Dispersed matter like myself may be vulnerable.”
But Quamodian had not waited for permission. He thrust the flyer into the tight throat of the tunnel, probing with its searchlights for the sleeth, for Molly Zaldivar, for any trace. All he found was the tightening spiral passage itself, lined with evidences of destruction. “Forces of great magnitude,” chanted the spirals, whirling about a burst wall, a ripped stanchion. “Evidence of transflection energies. Evidence of plasma activity.”
Rufe, forgetting his fear of the long-toothed citizen behind him, stood leaning over Quamodian’s shoulder. “Gee, preacher,” he whispered, thrilled. “Look at that! Something really racked this place up!”
There was no doubt about that. Staring about as the flyer slid smoothly forward on its transflection fields, Quamodian saw that what had happened in this tiny enclosed space had involved more than merely chemical energies. For the first time he really understood what was meant by a “rogue star”; tiny though the creature had been, less than a gram in weight at first, it had commanded forces capable of thrusting steel and rock out of its way like tissue.
The long-snouted predator citizen lifted its muzzle and howled a sentence; the translator in Quamodian’s ear rendered it as: “Be careful! Monitor Kwai Kwich, should not we report to Almalik before going on!”
The girl bit her lip, was about to speak; but Quamodian overrode her. “No!” he rasped. “You waited too long already. Molly Zaldivar may be dying—may even be—” He did not finish the sentence.
Then they were at the center of the spiral. Quamodian glanced down, swallowed, looked at the girl . . . then tipped the flyer down into the central shaft.
Cautiously they dropped down the shaft, Quamodian’s flyer first, the multiple grass-green citizen second, the pink cloud hovering timorously behind. Below them a misty, opalescent disk of pale light expanded slowly into a sphere, and they entered the great round chamber below the hill.
“Astonishing,” breathed Monitor Clothilde Kwai Kwich.
The tardy cloud-citizen sighed fearfully: “The energies are considerable! I am reluctant to come closer.”
“Stay, then,” grunted Quamodian, staring about. “I wonder—What is it? Do you have any information?”
The girl shook her head. “Some ancient military installation, I suppose. Perhaps from the days of the Plan of Man. The records no longer exist for much of that period . . . But that fusion fire!” She pointed at the cloud of opal mist that hung above the high steel platform, “What a source of energy! I almost believe that you are right, Monitor Quamodian. With power like that one might really attempt to create a star!” Andy Quam chuckled sourly, but did not answer. Hands sweating on the flare controls, he dived to a foot or less above the water-stained floor of the sphere. The ripped and flattened orange-painted cab, the dismembered motor and tracks of the handling machine gave him an unpleasant start; something had thrown them about in rage, it seemed. And there were other fragments there among the torn and broken metal bits. A primitive white-painted food refrigerator? Quam did not recognize it at first, did not understand its purpose even then—but finally shook with the realization of what it meant: Molly Zaldivar had been here. The food could have been for no one but her.
But it too had been dropped or flung; the door was twisted ajar, small packets of food were sprinkled across the wreckage. And beyond them, what was that crushed black shape that lay athwart the grating that attempted to carry seepage away?
Clothilde Kwai Kwich recognized it first: “A robot inspector!” she gasped. “Then—then it’s all true?” Rufe said complainingly, “True? Gosh, Miss Kwai Kwich, what’ve we been telling you all along? Of course it’s true!”
It was too late for Andy Quam to feel triumph. He hardly heard the exchange. Eyes narrowed, thoughtful, he was darting the flyer’s beams into every section of the vast sphere. There was nothing else to be seen. The wreckage on the floor, the spidery steel tower and its ominously glittering mist of fusion energy, the water-stained walls themselves. Nothing more.
Molly Zaldivar had been here, he was sure of that. But she was here no longer.
Where had she gone?
The nervous sigh of the cloud-citizen interrupted him. “These energies,” it whispered despairingly, “they are ionizing my gases, interfering with my particulate control. I must return to the surface.”
“Go ahead,” said Quam absently. “Perhaps we should do the same,” bayed the predator in the back seat. “This is dangerous!”
“In a minute,” said Andy Quam. He was observing, remembering, analyzing. Dispassionately he realize, with a small surface part of his brain, that from the moment Molly Zaldivar’s message had reached him, galaxies away, he had been allowing his love and his emotions to drive him. His carefully trained reasoning faculties, the trait of analysis and synthesis which was so basic a part of his indoctrination as a monitor, had been ignored.
But now he was using them again, and a picture was unfolding under his eyes. Cliff Hawk, rebel, adventurer, skilled transcience expert. The Reefer, callous misogynist. The two of them together in this place, given these energies, the months and even years of time when they had been left unsupervised.
It was all quite logical, he noted abstractly. Hawk’s scientific hunger; the Reefer’s loathing for humanity and, above all, the fusorian brotherhood; the people, the place, the facilities. They had used them to create a rogue, and in return the rogue had thrust them aside, or killed them, or ignored them.
But it had not ignored Molly Zaldivar.
The rogue was no longer present; its energies would have been detected by any of the citizens in the party. It had gone. And wherever it had gone, Quamodian felt certain, there would be Molly Zaldivar as well.
The girl monitor said hesitantly, “Andy. I mean, Monitor Quamodian—”
“Eh? What is it?”
“Perhaps the other citizens are right. I—I don’t like the look of this place.”
Quamodian frowned. Then a fearsome suspicion crossed his mind. “Clothilde! What was it the cloud said?”
“You mean the cit—”
“Yes! About the energies!”
“Why, it said they were ionizing gases. It has returned to the open air.”
“Flyer!” cried Andy Quam. “Analyze those radiations! Quickly!”
The flyer said sulkily, “Thought you’d never ask. Sustained lethality, eight times permissible levels. Safe period at this distance, one hour. We have now been exposed to them for nineteen minutes, and I was going to give an alert in sixty seconds.”
“Get us out of here!” ordered Andy Quam. “Fast!”
The flyer bucked, spun, drove upward toward the tunnel. Quamodian stared out the viewplate. The glowing deadly sphere of light flashed past his field of vision, then the tight spiral of the tunnel walls; but he did not see them.
Andy Quam was seeing something quite different, and far worse.
The radiation from that glittering mist of nuclear fire that had flamed for ages in the spherical cave was deadly.
The flyer’s instruments had measured its intensity. They were reliable. Quamodian had installed and checked them himself. If they said that the maximum safe dose was one hour, then there was no question, to a probable error of no more than a few minutes one way or another.
It was not Quamodian’s own safety that concerned him, nor Monitor Clothilde Kwai Kwich’s, nor the boy’s.
How long had Molly Zaldivar been held prisoner in that cave, soaking in those deadly rays?
Quamodian’s arithmetic could be little more than a guess. But it was eighteen hours or more since she had been stolen from the little bedroom of Rufe’s house. It was not sensible to suppose that less than half of that time had been spent in the cave.
And if it was in fact true that she had been there that long, or anything close to that long, Molly Zaldivar was already as good as dead.
XVIII
They burst out into the cold night air. And even in his fear and anguish Andy Quam stared incredulously at the sky.
Overhead lay a lacy net of blue and violet fire. Great pale slow lightnings of color writhed through the heavens, soundlessly and hugely; they were so bright that trees cast shadows on the rocky hillside, blurred shadows of color that moved with the supple shifting of the aurora.
