Protector

by Larry Niven

  The stranger was an Outsider.

  How long had the Belt been waiting for him? Let any man spend sufficient time between the stars, even a flatland moonship pilot, and someday he would realize just how deep the universe really was. Billions of light-years deep, with room for anything at all. Beyond doubt the Outsider was out there somewhere: the first alien species to contact Man was going about its business beyond the reach of the Belt telescopes.

  Now the Outsider was here, matching courses with Jack Brennan.

  And Brennan wasn’t even surprised. Wary, yes, even frightened. But not surprised, not even that the Outsider had chosen him. That was an accident of fate, dependent on the Outsider’s origin and drive systems and on Brennan’s finding a lost relic of the early space age.

  Call the Belt? The Belt must know already. Brennan’s monopole detector was having cat fits. Even without that, the Belt telescope net tracked every ship in the system; the odds were that it would find any wrong-colored dot moving at the wrong speed. Brennan had expected them to find his own ship, had hoped they wouldn’t find it soon enough. Certainly they’d found the Outsider. Certainly they were watching it: and by virtue of that fact they must be watching Brennan too. In any case Brennan couldn’t laser Ceres. A flatland ship might pick up the fringes of the beam. Brennan didn’t know the Belt policy on letting Earth meet Outsiders. That policy had never been tested.

  The Belt must make its own decisions.

  Which left Brennan with two of his own.

  One was easy. The Belt must have found him now, through the intervention of the Outsider. That changed the odds. Brennan was no longer a smuggler. Therefore he must alter course to reach one of the major asteroids, and he must call the Belt the first chance he had to advise them of his course.

  But what of the Outsider?

  Evasion tactics? Easy enough. Axiomatically, it is impossible to stop a ship in space. A cop can match course with a smuggler, but he cannot make an arrest unless the smuggler cooperates—or runs out of fuel. He can blow a ship out of space, or even ram with a good autopilot; but how can he connect airlocks with a ship that keeps firing its drive in random blasts? Brennan could head anywhere, and all the Outsider could do was follow or destroy him.

  Running would be sensible. Brennan did have a family to protect. He and Charlotte had had two daughters. Brennan had paid the customary fee in trust each time; his daughters would be raised and educated. But he could do more for them. Or he could become a father again; probably with Charlotte. There was money strapped to his hull. Money was power. Like electrical or political or psychic power, its uses could take many forms. Charlotte, of course, could take care of herself; she was an adult Belter, hence a self-sufficient individual.

  If he contacted the alien he might never see her again. There was risk in being first to meet an alien species.

  And, of course, obvious honors.

  Could history ever forget the man who met the Outsider?

  That decided him; that and his natural optimism. Brennan held his course. Let the Outsider come to him.

  The Belt is a web of telescopes.

  Hundreds of thousands of them.

  It has to be that way. Every ship carries at least one telescope. Every asteroid has to be watched constantly, because a map of the solar system has to be up-to-date by seconds. The light of every fusion drive has to be watched. Because ships can run through each others’ exhausts if someone doesn’t warn them away; and the exhaust of a fusion motor is deadly.

  Nick Sohl kept glancing up at the screen, down at the stack of dossiers on his desk, up at the screen. The screen showed two blobs of violet light, one bigger than the other, and fuzzy. Already you could get them both on the same screen, because the asteroid taking the pictures was nearly in line with their course.

  He’d read the dossiers several times. Ten of them; and each represented a man who might be the man, the unknown Belter now approaching the Outsider. There had been a dozen dossiers. In the outer offices men were trying to locate and eliminate these ten as they had already found two, by phone calls and com lasers and dragnets.

  Since the guy wasn’t running, Nick privately eliminated six of the dossiers. Two had never been caught smuggling: the mark of an overcautious man, regardless of whether he’d never smuggled or never been caught. One was a xenophobe. Three were old-timers; you don’t get to be an old-timer in the Belt by taking foolish chances. In the Belt, the Finagle Laws and Murphy Constants are only half a joke.

  One of four miners was about to meet the Outsider.

  Which?

  IV

  A million miles short of Jupiter’s orbit, moving well above the plane of the solar system, Phssthpok matched velocities with the native ship and began to close in.

  Of the thousands of sentient species in the galaxy, Phssthpok and Phssthpok’s race had studied only their own. They had never been interested in anything but Pak. A protector’s intelligence was high; but intelligence is a tool to be used toward a goal, and goals are chosen from instinct.

  Phssthpok was working strictly from ignorance. All he could do was guess.

  At a guess, then, and assuming that the oval scratch in the native’s hull was really a door, the native would be not much taller and not much shorter than Phssthpok. Say, three to ten feet tall, depending on how much “elbow room” it needed. Of course the oval might not be designed for the native’s longest length, as for the biped Phssthpok. But the ship was small; it wouldn’t hold something too much larger than Phssthpok.

  He’d need just one look at the native. If it were not a Pak, he would need to ask it questions. If it were—

  There would still be questions, many of them. But his search would be over. A few ship’s days to reach GO Target #1 - 3, a short time to learn their language and explain how to use what he’d brought, and he could stop eating.

  It showed no awareness of Phssthpok’s ship. A few minutes and he would be alongside, yet the stranger made no move—cancel. The native had turned off its drive. Phssthpok was being invited to match courses.

  Phssthpok did. He wasted neither motion nor fuel; he might spend his whole life practicing for this. His lifesystem coasted alongside the native ship and stopped.

  His pressure suit was on, but he made no move. Phssthpok dared not risk his own person, not when he was so close to victory. If the native would only step out on the hull…

  Brennan watched the ship come alongside.

  It was like no ship he’d ever seen. There were three small capsules spaced eight miles apart. He saw no cable joining them; it must have been invisibly thin. Section one was the drive, a long, thick cylinder with three fusion plants jutting at angles. Big as it was, the cylinder must be too small to contain fuel for an interstellar joyride. Either the Outsider had dropped expendable tanks along the way, or he had developed a ramscoop magnetic field for picking up interstellar hydrogen. Probably the latter. Monopoles would be vital in a ramscoop, and the Outsider was loaded with monopoles.

  Section two was a sphere some sixty feet across, mounted on gymbals. When the ship finally stopped moving, this section was directly opposite Brennan. A large circular window stared out of that sphere, bulging a little, making the sphere look like a great eyeball. The eyeball turned to follow Brennan as it moved past. Brennan found it difficult to match that uncanny stare.

  He was beginning to have second thoughts. Surely the Belt could have planned a better meeting than this…

  The trailing pod—he’d gotten a good look at it as it went by. It was egg-shaped and smooth, perhaps sixty feet long by forty feet through. The big end, facing away from the drive section, was so uniformly pitted with dust grains that it looked sandblasted. The small end was pointed and smooth, almost shiny. Brennan nodded to himself. A ramscoop would have protected the small end during acceleration. During deceleration its trailing position would have done the same.

  There were no breaks in the egg.

  It was, thought Brennan, a peculiar wa
y to build a ship. The center pod must be the lifesystem, because it had a porthole and the trailing pod did not. And the drive was dangerously radioactive; otherwise, why string the ship out like this? But that meant that the lifesystem would protect the trailing pod from the drive radiation. Whatever was in that trailing pod must be more important than the pilot…in the opinion of the pilot.

  Unless the pilot and the designer had both been inept or insane.

  The Outsider ship was motionless, its drive growing cold, its lifesystem a few hundred feet away. Brennan waited.

  I’m being chauvinistic, he told himself. I can’t judge an alien’s sanity by Belt standards, can I?

  Sure I can. That ship is bad designing.

  The alien stepped out onto its hull.

  Every muscle in Brennan jerked as he saw it. The alien was a biped; it looked human enough from here. But it had stepped through the porthole. It stood on its own hull, motionless.

  It had two arms, two legs, one head. It used a pressure suit. It carried a weapon or a reaction pistol; there was no way to tell. But Brennan saw no rocket backpac. A reaction pistol takes a good deal more skill. Who’d use one in open space?

  Of course. For Brennan.

  For a wild moment he considered starting the drive now, get the hell away before it was too late! Cursing his fear, Brennan moved deliberately to the door. The men who built the singleships had built as cheaply as possible. His ship had no airlock; there was just the door and pumps to evacuate the lifesystem. Brennan’s suit was tight. All he had to do was open the door.

  He opened the door and stepped out on sandal magnets.

  The seconds stretched away as Brennan and the Outsider examined each other. It looks human enough, Brennan thought. Biped. Head on top. But if it’s human, and if it’s been in space long enough to build a starship, it can’t be as inept as this ship says it is.

  Have to ask it what it’s carrying. Maybe it’s right. Maybe its cargo is worth more than its lift.

  The Outsider jumped.

  It fell toward him like a falcon diving. Brennan stood his ground, frightened, but admiring the alien’s skill. The alien didn’t need its reaction pistol. Its jump had been perfect. It would land right next to Brennan.

  The Outsider hit the hull on springy limbs, absorbing its momentum like an experienced Belter. Brennan saw dimly through its faceplate. He recoiled, actually took a step backward. The thing was ugly, hideously ugly. Chauvinism be damned: the Outsider’s face would stop a computer.

  The one backward step didn’t save him.

  The Outsider was too close. It reached out, wrapped a pressurized mitten around Brennan’s wrist and jumped.

  Brennan gasped and, too late, tried to jerk away. The Outsider’s grip was like spring steel inside its glove. They were spinning away through space toward the eyeball-shaped lifesystem, and there was not a thing Brennan could do about it.

  “Nick.” said the intercom.

  “Here,” said Nick Sohl. He’d left it open.

  “The dossier you want is labeled ‘Jack Brennan.’”

  “How do you know?”

  “We called his woman. He has only one, and two kids. We had to convince her it was urgent, but she finally told us he’d gone off to search the Uranus trojans points.”

  “That ties in. Thanks, Cutter. Do something for me.”

  “Sure. Official?”

  “Yes. See to it that my ship is fueled and provisioned and kept ready until further notice. Fit it with solid strap-ons. Then get a com laser focused on the U.N. and keep it focused. You’ll need three, of course.” For relays as the Earth rotated.

  “Okay.”

  Nick reached for the dossiers. The situation was so damn fluid that it was well to be ready for anything, even the need for Earth’s help. If he needed the flatlanders, he’d need them badly and quickly. The surest way to convince them would be to go himself. The First Speaker had never touched Earth, had never expected to and didn’t now; but The Perversity of the Universe Tends Toward a Maximum.

  Too bad Brennan had children. Nick began to skim his dossier.

  Phssthpok’s first clear memories dated from the day he woke to the fact that he was a protector. He could conjure blurred memories from before: of pain, fighting, discovering new foods, experiences in sex and affection and hate and tree climbing in the Valley of Pitchok; watching curiously, half a dozen times, as various female breeders bore children he could smell were his. But his mind had been vague then. As a protector he thought sharply and clearly.

  At first it had been unpleasant. He had had to get used to it. There had been others to help him, teachers and such.

  There was a war, and he had graduated into it. Because he had to develop the habit of asking questions, it had been years before he understood just what had started it.

  Three centuries earlier several hundred major Pak families had allied to refertilize a wide desert area of the Pak world. The heartbreakingly difficult task had been completed a generation ago. Immediately and predictably the alliance had split into several smaller alliances, each determined to secure the land for its own descendants. By now most of the earlier alliances were gone. A number of families had been exterminated, and the surviving groups changed sides whenever expedient to protect their blood lines. Phssthpok’s blood line now held with South Coast.

  War, Phssthpok found, was immensely enjoyable. Not because of the fighting. As a breeder he’d had fights, and war was not as much a matter of fighting as of outwitting the enemy. At its start, the war had been fusion-bomb war. Many of the families had died during that phase, and part of the reclaimed desert became desert once again. Then South Coast had found a damper field to prevent fissionables from fissioning. Others had swiftly copied it. Since then the war had been artillery, poison gas, bacteria, psychology, even infantry. It was a war of wits. Could South Coast counteract propaganda designed to split off the Meteor Bay region? If Eastersea Alliance had an antidote to river poison Iota, would it be faster to steal it from them or invent our own? If Circle Mountains should find an inoculation for bacteria] strain Zeta-three, how likely was it they’d turn a mutated strain against us? Should we stick with South Coast, or could we do better with Eastersea? It was fun.

  Until, forty years after Phssthpok became a protector, Eastersea Alliance built a pinch field generator which could set off a fusion reaction without previous fission.

  The war ended in a week. Eastersea had the recultivated desert, the part that wasn’t bare and sterile from seventy years of war. And there had been a mighty flash over the Valley of Pitchok.

  The pups and breeders of Phssthpok’s line had lived in the Valley of Pitchok for unremembered generations. He’d seen that awful light on the horizon and known that all his descendants were dead or sterile, that he had no blood line left to protect, that all he could do was to stop eating until he was dead.

  He hadn’t felt that way since. Not until now.

  But even then, thirteen centuries ago in biological time, he hadn’t felt this awful confusion. What was this pressure-suited thing at the end of his arm? It looked like one of those he’d come to save, as far as he could tell from the shape of the suit. But those—they couldn’t have built ships or pressure suits.

  Phssthpok’s sense of mission had held steady for more than twelve centuries. Now it was drowning in pure confusion.

  But wait! He knew nothing of other intelligent species, besides the theoretical certainty that they existed. The biped form might not be unique to Pak. Why should it be? Phssthpok’s shape was good designing. If he could see this native without its suit…

  They landed next to the porthole. The Outsider’s aim was inhumanly accurate. Brennan didn’t try to fight as the Outsider reached through the surface of the porthole, grasped something and pulled them both inside. The transparent material resisted movement, like a layer of non-stick tar with air on both sides.

  In quick, jerky movements, the alien stripped off its pressure suit. The suit
was flexible fabric, including the transparent bubble; there were drawstrings at the joints. With its suit off, but still maintaining its iron grip on Brennan, the alien turned to look at him.

  Brennan wanted to scream.

  The thing was all knobs. Its arms were longer than human, with a single elbow joint in something like the right place; but the elbow was a ball seven inches across. The hands were like strings of walnuts. The shoulders and the knees and the hips bulged like cantaloupes. The head was a tilted melon on a nonexistent neck. Brennan could find no forehead, no chin. The alien’s mouth was a flat, black beak, hard but not shiny, which faded into wrinkled skin halfway between mouth and eyes. Two slits in the beak were the nose. Two human-looking eyes were protected by not at all human-looking masses of deeply convoluted skin and by a projecting bony shelf of brow. From the beak, the head sloped backward as if streamlined. A bony ridge rose from the swelling skull, adding to the impression of streamlining.

  The hands were adorned with five short fingers tipped with retractable claws. They felt like ball bearings pressing deep into the skin of Brennan’s arm.

  Thus, the Outsider. Not merely an obvious alien. Come to that, a dolphin was an obvious alien, but there was nothing horrible about a dolphin. The Outsider was horribly alien. It looked like a cross between human and…something else. Man’s monsters have always been that. Think of the mermaid, now considered funny, originally considered a horror: all lovely enticing woman above, all scaly monster beneath. And that fitted too, for the Outsider was apparently sexless, with nothing but folds of armorlike skin between its legs.

  The inset eyes, human as an octopus eye, looked deep into Brennan’s own.

  Abruptly, before Brennan could move to fight back, the Outsider took two handfuls of Brennan’s rubberized suit and pulled them apart. The suit held, stretched, then ripped from crotch to chin. Air puffed, and Brennan felt his ears pop.

  No point in holding his breath. Several hundred feet of vacuum separated him from his ship’s breathing air. Brennan sniffed cautiously.