Tin Woodman

by David Bischoff

  Throughout the open space many objects drifted. Some were simpIe featureless geometric forms in bright colors; others resembled smaller versions of the wall structures. They moved freely about the station, their motion apparently random; yet no two collided as Mora watched.

  “I hope someone left blueprints lying around here,” said Kervatz.

  “I suppose you want them in English,” joked Freitag.

  “Preferably.”

  “Well, I’m no use to this mission,” Wellow announced. “This place has probably been deserted since before Earth’s last ice age. Even if the inhabitants had consumed food that we could use, I doubt there’s any chance we’ll find it intact.”

  “Look at that one building near the center of the sphere,” said Freitag. “It hasn’t moved. I don’t think so, anyway.”

  “How can you tell?” asked Kervaz.

  “No, he’s right,” said Mora, “I’ve noticed it, too.”

  “It could be a control center,” Sauk mused. “We might find what we’re looking for there.”

  “Do you realize how far away that is?” Kervatz objected. “Over fifty kilometers! Just getting there and back on these jets would take over an hour. And we could easily get lost.”

  “No,” Mora said. “If two people stay here at the opening, I think I could guide us back. There’s a limit to my Talent, but with so few of us here, I think I could sense my way toward someone pretty well.”

  “You think. What if you’re wrong?” Kervatz demanded. The sudden babble of four voices all arguing into his radio seemed to be worse than any other fate Kervatz could imagine, “What the hell,” he relented. “Wellow, Freitag—you stay here. If we’re not back in two hours—no, scratch that. I expect you two to wait nobly for us until you rot in your suits. No reason you should get off easy.”

  Mora, Kervatz, and Sauk set off for the central structure, steering themselves by visual judgment alone. This was not too difficult, since the lack of atmosphere caused even distant objects to stand clearly defined; but it did demand considerable concentration.

  Distance had deceived them, however. When finally they reached the “control center” it was far larger than they had assumed, comprised of many open chambers and extending for hundreds of meters in all directions.

  “We still need a map,” groaned Kervatz.

  “Head for the center,” said Sauk, “It seems logical, considering the design of the station.”

  “How?” asked Mora.

  “Well, all the other free units actually orbit this thing. Everything is built around a point. It may even be . . . it may be that the station was built around a pre-selected point in space because it was necessary for the rift’s functioning.”

  “May as well try.” Kervatz sighed.

  The three of them moved into the control center.

  “Captain, we have a problem,” Lieutenant Cushnam reported.

  Coffer walked from her command monitors toward the sensor station. “What is it?”

  “Since the exploration party entered the station’s core, radiation levels there have started to rise. It was minimal at first, but if it keeps increasing at its present rate . . .”

  “Kervatz is in charge,” Coffer interrupted. “He’ll—no, better inform them anyway. Who knows what’s happening in there.” She turned to Garyve at the communications console. “Send a message to the—”

  “Captain,” reported the communications officer. “I’m sorry, but our communication with them has just been jammed.”

  Coffer pondered. “We must have hit some sort of burglar alarm.” She felt responsible—and lonely—as only a commander of others can feel. Her every decision affected the crew—and she hadn’t been doing very well, from the mutiny onward.

  “Leana, why did they—Tin Woodman’s race—build the rift station?” Norlan asked Coffer.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “What difference does it make now?”

  “I—I was just wondering. You know, no living creature could survive constantly increasing radiation like that. What kind of station is so desperately important that it’s designed to kill its inhabitants to prevent take-over by an enemy?”

  Coffer had no answer.

  This room had to be the control chamber—Mora was certain of it.

  It seemed to be patterned after something familiar—something Div had shown her in their brief, last-moment contact: an ovoid of soft, resilient material, warm pastel in color. There were resting structures which vaguely resembled chairs scattered around the room. Ranged in front of the chairs were what appeared to be instrument panels without keyboards or any other visible means of operation.

  In the center of the room floated a dark, featureless globe only slightly larger than a human head. Mora rocketed toward it. She chinned her transmitter. “I’ve found the main control room, I think.” Kervatz and Sauk were close behind her, in the outer corridor. Not waiting for them to arrive, she reached out, instinctively, to touch the globe.

  At her touch the globe seemed to grow. Her vision reeled; she seemed to fall forward toward the center of the thing. The outer world fell away, and on all her sensory levels she received a communication.

  The history of Tin Woodman’s race passed before her like a filmed epic pageant.

  And she understood . . .

  . . . and then Mora found herself abruptly conscious, floating in the center of the rift station control system and clutching the dark globe. Kervatz’s voice crackled in her radio: “ . . . radiation in this place is rising. I should have noticed it earlier. We have to leave, now! For God’s sake—Sauk, see if you can pry her off that damned thing.”

  “No!” Mora shouted as hands locked on her wrists, pulling her away from the globe. She pushed the man away and moved back to the globe. She held it tightly in her hands. Nothing. The globe remained dark, silent.

  “Mora, please.” It was Kervatz again, his voice soothing now as he pleaded with her. “We don’t want to leave you here. We have to go or we’ll all die here.”

  “Yes,” Mora said at last, releasing the now played-out globe. “Let’s get out of here.”

  RIFT STATION EXPLORATORY REPORT

  REPORT SYNOPSIS

  EXCERPTS, RE: CONTROL ROOM, HISTORY STORAGE GLOBE

  MORA ELBRUN, SOLE SOURCE

  . . . here I shall attempt to place into words, for the benefit of the committee of researchers assigned to study the subject, a brief outline of the pertinent highlights perceived by me through the curious memory bank described above.

  Although the experiences were not in words—images and extrasensory information, rather—later thought on the matter has crystallized the information into these basic truths:

  Eons ago, in a distant galaxy now long extinct, there had existed a planet much like Earth, or Crysor. On this planet had evolved, in symbiotic fashion, not one but two sentient races: The Gom, huge elephantine creatures, and the Tuu, who resembled human beings in many ways. The symbiosis the two races evolved was necessary for survival. The alternative would have been constant warfare between creatures of unlike minds, decimating both populations. Having made this crucial twist in their development, the Gomtuu were able to avoid even such war as had been known on Earth, for when two linked but independent consciousnesses made every individual decision, the potential for excessive self-aggrandizement at the expense of others was severely limited.

  In the earliest stages of Gomtuu civilization, the Gom willingly served as the beasts of burden; in turn the Tuu possessed the physical flexibility the Gom lacked. Theirs were the hands which built the Gomtuu cities, laying upon one another the great stones which the Gom would carry from the quarries. Intellectually, the two races came to specialize, so that neither was whole without the other. The Gom were philosophers, the Tuu, scientists, in a sense. The Gom perceived things holistically, they saw creation as
a pattern. The Tuu were analytical, breaking all things down to their component parts for the sake of understanding.

  The rise of a world-spanning, peaceful Gomtuu civilization was accomplished within but a few millennia, When finally they had turned their thoughts to the exploration of space, they were technologically and emotionally prepared to weld their symbiosis more tightly than ever: The Gom were developed, by genetic engineering, into space-going vessels in which their Tuu partners could live. The Gom were outfitted at full growth with their stardrives and what other mechanical parts were necessary to their function. They became cybernetic organisms.

  The Gomtuu thus dispersed throughout their home galaxy, exploring and colonizing myriad worlds. The process wasn’t without accident, however. In one new star system which was colonized, a virulent disease was encountered. The disease was invariably fatal, but selective in its chosen hosts: it killed Gom. Within two generations the Tuu of this colony were alone.

  Without exception the Tuu of this colony went, by Gomtuu standards, mad.

  The rest of the Gomtuu were unaware that this had occurred. Inevitably their new freedom and closer meshings with one another had eroded their need for society. Each pairing of Com and Tuu so satisfied the emotional needs of its partners that the dispersal of the race became wider and sparser. Within a few thousand years the new colonies they had so boldly established became little more than hatchery worlds, where young Gom and Tuu were born, paired, and prepared for flight. No one noticed the disappearance of certain pairings.

  But on that lost colony world, the insane remnants of the Tuu began to build their own society. They learned quickly to grope after what they wanted. They learned to kill one another for what they needed. Their brilliant analytical minds allowed them after long centuries to develop a scientific technology based on the dissection of corpses and the tearing apart of atoms. They stripped their planet, leveling mountains and diverting rivers.

  The memory of the Gomtuu remained, as a belief in gods and demons. As the Tuu became more convinced that there was nothing their own ingenuity could not provide the answers to, the gods became to them only a particularly insidious form of demon.

  The longing to return to space hung on also, as an irrational impulse among the Tuu. In time they did so, in bulky mechanical parodies of their ancestors’ partners.

  Inevitably, when the Tuu encountered the Gomtuu, war raged between them. Gomtuu hatchery worlds were destroyed by the Tuu. In desperation the Gomtuu reconstructed what had happened, forced themselves to band together once more as a species, and made what for them was a near-unthinkable decision: they immolated the Tuu home world.

  But they took action too late, for the Tuu had established themselves on thousands of the Gomtuu hatchery worlds. The war went on.

  Finally, rather than continue a fight which they were not constitutionally capable of winning, the Gomtuu had constructed the rift station, with the intention of using it to disperse even more widely over the universe, and thus escape their enemies . . .

  Acting Captain Coffer put Mora’s full report down and looked at the woman. “I find this very hard to believe. And that was the end of the recording—the construction of the rift station? You didn’t get any information at all on whether it’s safe—or even possible—to reenter the rift. From the sounds of it, if we don’t do it properly, we might end up in some other galaxy.”

  “I’m afraid that was all,” said Mora, “I suppose we’ll just have to risk it, unless we want to try to find some inhabitable world around here—which doesn’t seem likely.” She met Coffer’s stare across the conference room table. Ranged about them were the other members of the mission, as well as the appropriate experts on the subjects under discussion. “And I should have added this to my report; I’ve been thinking about it all, over and over—the Tuu. I wonder if maybe Earth wasn’t one of their colonies—perhaps that would explain why there are human beings on Deva and Crysor.”

  “Are you suggesting,” said Kervatz, eyebrows raised, “that these so-called Tuu are the source of the human race—indeed were humans themselves?”

  “I’m not sure what I’m suggesting, Doctor. Perhaps humans are some special mutation or breed of Tuu, suited to our sort of worlds. At any rate, at this point of development, humans and the Tuu would be practically alien anyway. Certainly humans would be alien to the Gomtuu.

  “And I can’t help but wonder—Tin Woodman was found pretty close to the Triunion worlds, considering the distances involved. On its way to these Tuu colonies for some special mission . . . ”

  “. . . or on its way back?” finished Norlan. “Questions, Mora. Interesting, true, but a far cry from facts.”

  “I wonder what that mission was,” said Mora softly to herself.

  Or what it is.

  They were in the middle of feasibility investigations as to the re-penetration of the rift, when twenty objects jarred the sensors of the Pegasus into action. Twenty objects that at first were simply small lights in the visual screens.

  These glowing objects halted just beyond deflector range. The captain, elsewhere on the ship, was immediately notified. The first thing she did when she got a look at the readouts on the objects from the sensor banks was to call Mora Elbrun up to the bridge.

  As she stared in disbelief at the magnified images of the objects, Mora felt a tide of awe and wonder wash over her—and anticipation as well. She had not expected this. And yet she welcomed it as though she had been waiting for it all the while.

  There was no doubt in her mind. Tin Woodman was out there, with its fellows, notified of their presence by some signal transmitted when they’d entered the rift station.

  Div had returned.

  SEVENTEEN

  “Switch the deflectors down to small objects only,” commanded Coffer. Her eyes remained on the blobs of light glowing in the primary view screen.

  “Do you think that’s wise? How do you know they don’t intend us harm?” said Norlan. “After all, we’ve pursued Tin Woodman across the universe. It might not wish us to return with the news of the space rift.”

  “No,” countered Mora. “No. We have nothing to fear.” Something . . . something in her was reaching out to the new arrivals and something in her told her that they were reaching out to her as well. She strained to touch it, realizing it was too far. Like trying to touch a star. . .

  “I don’t know,” Norlan responded nervously. “Why the other ships, then?”

  Lowering her voice, Coffer said, “I don’t know. But their very presence indicates we’ll find out quite soon. If they intended violence, they’d not have approached us in this manner.”

  Even as the deflectors were adjusted, the alien ships drew closer. Soon their number filled the screen. All were similar to the form the crew of the Pegasus had discerned in the drifting vessel designated Tin Woodman. But the alien had been half-dead then, dormant. Now, if indeed it was among this fleet of its fellows, it fairly glowed with life, radiating an astonishing steady pulse of energy. The sensors were swamped with new information.

  Within half an hour, the fleet of aliens was less than twenty kilometers away. Here all of them stopped save one, which ventured another ten kilometers closer to the Pegasus. It halted finally, hanging in space before them. They could see every detail of its hull. All the while Norlan had been attempting to communicate with the creature on some frequency, without success. “It would appear that when it wishes to speak to us, it will,” he noted. “No way to raise it.”

  Activity all but ceased on the bridge. Every member of the crew could barely resist the impulse simply to stare at the wondrous luminescence the ship-being gave off.

  Mora felt herself falling into a trancelike state of mind. All time seemed to fall off her, like discarded clothing. All the pain of the past seemed to lose its constant resonance—she seemed to be turning away from it, away from her troubled present, its s
cabs flaking, fading away as she pointed her psyche toward an anticipated future. It was like a soothing balm, a sweet forgetfulness. She was only vaguely aware of the others about her.

  Sometime later, Div appeared.

  Or rather, Mora could see, a projection of what Div had been. It began as a faint tremble of blue light spotted with pinpricks of green and yellow that burst into existence at the very center of the bridge, some two meters above the floor. It dashed a milky sort of glow into every part of the room—all eyes were drawn to the hypnotic effulgence that was suspended in the air like a tiny, cold sun. The light grew, slowly, into a large globe. Quivering, this light began branching streamers of itself outward—like pseudopods growing from an amoeba. There were five of these streamers. The lower two descended to the floor, assuming the shape of legs. The middle two thinned out into arms. The topmost bulged into an ill-defined head. Slowly, the image resolved into the recognizable shape of, a human being, as though it were being focused into clarity inside a vu-tank. A soft glow still haloed the specter-like presence. The image resolved into a vague opacity. Mora could see through it with no difficulty. The slow dazzle that was the head slowly faded into features. Eyes, nose, mouth. Chin, ears, hair.

  Div’s mouth was set in a slight smile. His eyes glimmered welcome. The sheen he emanated carried with it a comforting tingle. Mora, peripherally, could feel that whatever fright the awe—struck crew had felt at this unannounced arrival was rapidly diminishing.

  Div motioned with his hands, and it was as though he were casting his thoughts to the crew.

  You have come, as I hoped you might. As I planned. It is well that you are here. This pleases us.

  “What?” Coffer immediately assumed the role of spokesman for the group. “You mean, you expected us? How did you know?” Of course she was not used to telepathic communication. The thoughts that Mora received were pregnant with so much more meaning than the surface word/symbols indicated. She understood.