The Tar-aiym Krang

by Alan Dean Foster

  They passed several vessels in parking orbit around the planet, including one of the great fueling stations for the shuttles. Some of the giant craft were in the process of loading or unloading, and men in suits floated about them sparkling like diamond dust. The boy’s eves drank in everything and hungered for more. Once, when the shuttle turned ninety degrees on its side and moved to line up for conjunction with their starship, the planet itself rolled majestically into view beneath them.

  From this angle the famous ring-wings were clearly visible. The radiant butter-gold layers of rock and gas combined with the lakes which glistened sapphirelike through breaks in the cloud cover to make the planet more than ever resemble the Terran insect for which it had been named.

  He got only the slightest glimpse of their ship, the Gloryhole. That was enough. Sandwiched in among bloated freighters and pudgy transports she looked like a thoroughbred in a barnyard. She still had the inevitable shape of a doublekay drive ship, a balloon stuck onto the end of a plumber’s helper, but the lines were different from most. The balloon at one end was the passenger and cargo space, and the plunger at the other the generating fan for the posigravity field. Instead of being wide and shallow, like a plate, the Gloryhole’s generating fan was narrower and deep, chalicelike. The passenger-cargo area was still balloon-shaped, but it was a streamlined, tapered balloon. Simply on looks alone one could tell that the Gloryhole was faster than any regular freighter or liner aspace. It was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.

  He felt a slight jolt through his harness as the shuttle clicked into the transfer lock of the big ship. Following the steward’s instructions he released himself from the restraining straps and drifted after the others into the umbilical tube, pulling himself hand over hand along the portable pullway. The luxury of the Gloryhole in comparison to the freighters he’d had described to him made itself quickly apparent. The starship’s airlock was furlined.

  The steward and Malaika exchanged brief orders and the uniformed young man drifted out of the tube, pulling in the line behind him. After a bit the door whirred shut, and they were effectively separated from the shuttle.

  “Je? If you’ll all follow me—use the handholds— we’ll adjourn to the salon.” Malaika started off through the lock exit. “Atha, you and Wolf get up to Control and start up the drive. Let’s have some decent gravity around here. A buibui I’m not, to spin my own web! The two of you know where your cabins are.” Atha and the skull-face moved off through a side passage. Malaika swiveled to face them. “The rest of you I’ll show to your rooms myself.”

  The salon was a fairyland of glass, wood, and plastics. Bubbles of crystal containing brilliantly colored forms of aquatic life were suspended throughout the big room by a thin but unbreakable network of plastic webbing. Real trees grew through the green-fur floor, each representing a different species native to Moth. Metal sculptures layered with gem dust hung cloudlike from the ceiling, which was a tri-dee soloid depicting an open sky complete to clouds and sun. It began to darken, effectively simulating the sunset taking place on the planet’s side below. It was an odd simile to come to mind, but for some reason Flinx could best liken the sensation to walking through an especially fine beer.

  The ship shuddered once, twice, ever so imperceptibly, and he could feel the weight beginning to return to his body. He started to float toward a side door and then began flailing frantically so that he would land on his feet and not his head. A glance showed that none of the other passengers were experiencing similar difficulties. Sissiph was being steadied by Malaika, and Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex hadn’t even bothered to pause in their argument. Angrily he got his errant legs under him. No one commented on his obvious difficulty, for which he was grateful. Full gravity returned after a very short interval.

  Malaika walked over to what looked like a cactus but was actually a bar. “We’ll remain at point nine five gravity for the duration of the trip. Possibly most of you aren’t used to keeping up muscle tone in space” (Flinx took a quick sensing of the two scientist’s compositions and doubted the accuracy of Malaika’s remark) “and so I’d hesitate to set it lower than that. The slight difference should be just enough to be exhilarating, and it approximates what we’ll encounter on our objective planetfall.”

  “This will serve as a regular gathering place. Meals will be served here by the autochef, unless you prefer to eat in your cabin. Njoo, I will show you your own. . . .”

  Flinx spent three days just examining his “own.” It was packed with fantastic devices that sprang at you out of floor, ceiling, and walls. You had to watch your step. Press the wrong switch and you were liable to be doused with warm water . . . irrespective of your attire of the moment. That had been a disheartening experience, especially as he had been trying for a haircut. Fortunately no one but Pip had been around to witness it.

  He had been concerned to see how his pet would take to the confinements of shipboard life. Everyone else, excepting possibly Sissiph, had adjusted to the reptile’s presence. So that didn’t give him cause for worry. As it happened, there were no others. The minidrag would go swooping in and out among the pylons and plastic tapestries of the salon as if he owned them, frightening the devil out of the inhabitants of the glass bubbles. Occasionally it would hang batlike from a particularly inviting artificial branch or real one. When it was discovered that the food selector in their cabin could deliver fresh bits of raw Wiodor meat, the snake’s contentment was assured.

  They had been moving out of Moth’s system at a slow but continually building speed for several days now. Malaika was in an expansive mood, and so when Flinx requested permission to stand by in Control during changeover, the merchant acceded gracefully. Once they made the initial jump past lightspeed at changeover their rate of acceleration would go up tremendously.

  Apparently no one else shared his curiosity. Malaika remained secluded in his cabin with his Lynx. Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex spent most of their time in the salon, playing personality chess and conversing in languages and on subjects Flinx could grasp only an occasional bit of. Once more he reflected on their complete ease and familiarity with starship travel.

  Malaika had half-promised to come up to Control for changeover to explain the workings to Flinx. But when the time came, Sissiph was pouting over some incomprehensible slighting and the merchant was compelled to remain in the cabin with her. In his place he instructed Atha to answer any questions Flinx might have regarding the workings of the ship or drive. She had acknowledged the order with obvious distaste.

  Flinx had come to the conclusion that he was going to have to be the one to break the silence that their unceremonious first meeting had produced. Otherwise they might not exchange a word the entire trip, and even a large spaceship is too small an area in which to retain animosities.

  He entered Control and strolled up behind her seat. Wolf was off on the opposite side of the room. She said nothing, but he knew she had noticed his entrance.

  He read directness and decided to counter with same.

  “Look, I didn’t mean to kick you back there in the tower, that time.” She swiveled to eye him questioningly. “That is, I didn’t mean to kick you, I meant to kick . . . oh, hell!” The explanation hadn’t seemed this complicated when he’d rehearsed it in his mind. Of course, then, he hadn’t had to contend with the rich red-brown in those eyes. “I thought you were a spy . . . or an assassin, or something. You certainly didn’t look as though you belonged where you were, so I took the least bloody route I could think of at the time of forcing you into the open. It worked, you turned out to be not what I expected, and I apologize. There! Truce?”

  She hesitated, and then her face softened into an abashed grin. She put out a hand. “Truce!” He kissed it instead of shaking it, and she turned, pleased, back to her instruments. “You know, you were right, actually. I had no business at all being where I was. Nor doing what I was doing. Do I look that much like an assassin from the back?”

&nb
sp; “The contrary, the contrary.” Then, abruptly, “You’re quite attracted to your boss, aren’t you?”

  Her face jerked up, surprised. One would have thought he’d just revealed one of the great secrets of the universe. He had to work to keep from grinning. Tree, was she that naive?

  “Why . . . why, what a thing to say! What a perfectly absurd thought! Maxim Malaika is my employer, and a good one. Nothing more. What makes . . .? Uh, do you have any questions about the ship? If not, I am bus. . . .”

  Hastily, he said, “Why is it that while this ship is infinitely more complicated than the shuttle, both require the same crew of two?” He knew the answer, but wanted to keep her talking.

  “That’s the reason, right there.” She indicated the panoply of ranked lights and instruments around them. “Because it is so complex, it requires a lot more automation just to operate. Actually, the Gloryhole pretty well runs herself most of the time. Except for providing instructions and handling decisions, we’re here just in case of the unforeseen situation. Interstellar navigation, for example, is much too complex for human or thranx minds to manage on any really practical level. Starships have to be run by machines or they’d be impossible altogether.”

  “I see. By minor situations and unforeseen things, do you mean like at changeover?”

  “Oh, there’s no real danger from changeover. The companies like to make a big thing of it to give their passengers a slight thrill. Sure, once in a while you’ll hear about something happening. A meteor will make a millions-to-one infringement on the gravity well of a ship at the moment of shift and the ship will turn inside out, or something equally weird. Those are real exceptions. The tri-dee and faxcax blow those incidents all out of proportion for their ratings value. Usually it’s no more trouble than stepping from land onto a floating boat.”

  “Glad to hear it. I don’t think I’d enjoy being turned inside out. That was the old Curryon, wasn’t it?”

  “Why, yes. It was twenty-four thirty-three, old calendar. Actually, we have to worry only about keeping the center of the field positioned constant with respect to the fan and generator. The computers take care of most of that. Once it falls too far ahead or drops too close, you have to stop the ship, then start up all over again. That takes a lot of time, for deceleration and acceleration, and it’s expensive as well as tricky. If the field should start to oscillate, the ship could be shaken to pieces. But as I said, the computers handle all that worry for us. Barring those unforeseen circumstances, of course.”

  “I’ve never been on a doublekay drive ship before. I’m no physicist, but could you maybe give me a quickee explanation of how the thing works? One that even my simple mind could understand?”

  She sighed. “Okay. What the Caplis generator does . . . that’s what we hold in the ‘fan’ up ahead . . . is in effect produce a powerful but concentrated gravitational field at the nose of the ship. As soon as the field exceeds the natural one of the ship, the ship moves toward it, naturally attracted by a ‘body’ of greater ‘mass’ than itself. Being part of the ship, the doublekay drive unit naturally goes along with it. But the unit, having moved forward, is set to keep the field at a constant distance from the hull of the craft. Therefore the field is moved forward also. The ship will try to catch up to it again, and so on, ad infinitum. The field is in effect pulling the ship instead of pushing it, as the shuttle rockets do. Doublekay vessels actually move in a series of continuous jerks, so rapid and close together that they seem to be one smooth, unbroken pull. The increase or decrease in the size of the field determines the speed of the ship.

  “Being a wave and not a particle form of energy, gravity isn’t affected in the same way that mass is on approaching the speed of light. The doublekay field creates a cone-shaped zone of stress behind it, in which mass acts differently than it does under normal circumstances. That’s why when we exceed the speed of light I don’t see through you, or something. Once we’ve made that initial breakthrough, or ‘changeover,’ our rate of travel goes up enormously. It’s something like riding the back of a very tame SCCAM shell.

  “Our initial power comes from a small hydrogen ‘sparkplug’ . . . I wonder sometimes where that word came from . . . up near the generator housing in the tube section of the ship. Once started up, the field can be ‘channeled’ to a certain extent. That’s where we get our gravity for the ship and power to run the lights and autobar and things.”

  “In the event of a drive failure there are provisions for converting the fan to an old ion-type drive, powered by the hydrogen plug. It would take twelve years at its best speed to get from Moth to Powerline, the nearest inhabited planet. Farther out where the stars are more scattered it’s even worse. But twelve years on so is better than never. Stranded ships have been saved that way . . . those that managed to overcome problems like lack of food and insanity. But the rate of failure for doublekay drives is miniscule. Only rarely can a mere human manage to screw one up.”

  “Thanks,” said Flinx. “That helps . . . sort of.” He glanced over at Wolf and saw that the man was totally immersed in his work. He lowered his voice. “Incidentally, I think maybe you’ve got the wrong idea of what a Lynx is.”

  “A prostitute,” she replied automatically.

  “Uh-uh. The Lynx are a group of very beautiful and ambitious women who don’t regard lifemating as the end-all of civilization. They prefer to move from one fascinating man to another.”

  “So I’ve been told. And seen. That’s still a matter of opinion.” She sniffed calculatingly.

  He started for the exit. “So I don’t think you need worry about Sissiph or any of the others settling down with your merchant, permanent-like.”

  “Listen!” she shouted, “For the last time, I . . .!” She dropped her voice as Wolf looked over curiously. “I am not in love with Maxim Malaika!”

  “Sure, sure,” said Flinx from the doorway. “I can see that.”

  It was only a short while later, while watching a viewtape in his cabin, that he realized he’d missed changeover.

  Chapter Eight

  Teleen auz Rudenuaman was resting easily in her rooms on the great estate complex of her aunt. She was scantily clad. That is, she wore at least as little as the huge male form which stood admiring the play of its muscles in the wall-length mirror across from the bed-desk.

  “Rory,” she said to the ceiling, “you do love me, don’t you?”

  “Um-hmm,” said the figure, bending on one knee and flexing a forearm.

  “And you’d do anything for me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Um-hmm.”

  “Then why,” she said, sitting up abruptly and shouting, “the hell didn’t you do anything when the old witch started in on me this morning?”

  The figure sighed and turned regretfully from the mirror to face her. Its body was hard, but the face was curiously soft, almost childlike. Beautiful and soft. The expression it wore was amiable and best described as intensely vacuous.

  “I could have said something, Teleen, dear, but what would it have accomplished? Besides making her even more suspicious of us. She had it in for you anyway, and nothing I could have said would likely have turned her off. Besides, she was right, you know. You did foul up that. . . .”

  “I’m not interested. I had enough of that from her this morning. Surely she can’t reasonably expect me to be responsible for the ineptitude of men her people hired in the first place?”

  Rory Mallap van Cleef sighed again and began pulling on a gold dressing gown. “I suppose not, dear. But then when has she ever been reasonable about anything? I really don’t understand the intricacies of such dealings. She was awfully bitchy, wasn’t she?”

  Teleen slid out of the bed and moved to sit next to him. She put her arms possessively around the massive shoulders, resting her head against one bulging dorsal.

  “Look, Rory, I’ve told you before. The only way we’re ever going to have any happiness is to eliminate the old bag once and for all.”

&
nbsp; Rory grinned. He was not without a sense of humor, even if it did tend more than a bit to the primitive.

  “Now is that any way to talk about your beloved aunt?”

  “No. It’s the only way to talk about her! And at that I’m flattering her. Every time we discuss her elimination my charitable instincts get the better of me. But to be specific. . . .”

  “Please, darling, I’m not in the mood now.”

  “Rory,” she said, sitting back, “are you in love with me . . . or with her?”

  “Don’t be obscene, dear! You have no idea, no idea, what a task it is constantly to have to feign interest in that sack of surgical miracles. Especially,” and he drew her onto his lap and kissed her, “after you.”

  “Mmmmm. That’s the way I like to hear you talk!” He had her purring again. “You’ll go along with me, then?”

  “As I’ve said before, if you come up with a reasonably sensible plan. Love or not, I’m not going to take a chance on spending the rest of my life on some prison moon because some scheme is only half worked out. I’m no genius, but I’m smart enough to know it. So you manage the brains for both of us. I’ll supply any needed muscle. Of which,” he added, flexing a tricep lovingly, “I have more than sufficient.”

  She slipped out of his grasp and stamped angrily on the deep fur floor. It did interesting things to the rest of her body. “Stop admiring yourself for a minute and try to be serious. Murder is not a funny business!”

  “It is when it involves your aunt.”

  “Oh, you’re impossible! All right; look, you know how fond she is of bathing in that pool, the little one with all those lovely fish and snails and things?” Her eyes were slitted. “How she never misses a daily swim?”