by Larry Niven
“Forget it again,” I said magnanimously. “I owe you plenty. You’ve been putting me up as a houseguest on the most expensive world in known space, acting as my guide where the cost of labor is—”
“Okay okay okay. But you saved me a million stars, and don’t you forget it.” He whopped me on the shoulder and hurried into the control room to set up a million-star credit base for the next Outsider ship that came by.
“I won’t,” I called at his retreating back, and wondered what the hell I meant by that.
Much later I wondered about something else. Had Elephant planned to take me to “his” world? Or did he think to go it alone, to be the first to see it and not one of the first two? After the Outsider episode it was already too late. He couldn’t throw me off the ship then.
I wished I’d thought of it in time. I never wanted to be a batman. My stake in this was to gently, tactfully keep Elephant from killing himself if it became necessary. For all his vast self-confidence, vast riches, vast generosity, and vast bulk, he was still only a flatlander and thus a little bit helpless.
We were in the expansion bubble when it happened. The bubble had inflatable seats and an inflatable table and was there for exercising and killing time, but it also supplied a fine view; the surface was perfectly transparent.
Otherwise we would have missed it.
There was no pressure against the seat of the pants, no crawling sensation in the pit of the stomach, no feel of motion. But Elephant, who was talking about a Jinxian frail he’d picked up in a Chicago bar, stopped just as she was getting ready to tear the place apart because some suicidal idiot had insulted her.
Somebody heavy was sitting down on the universe.
He came down slowly, like a fat man cautiously letting his weight down on a beach ball. From inside the bubble it looked like all the stars and nebulas around us were squeezing themselves together. The Outsiders on the ribbons outside never moved, but Elephant said something profane, and I steeled myself to look up.
The stars overhead were blue-white and blazing. Around us, they were squashed together; below, they were turning red and winking out one by one. It had taken us a week to get out of the solar system, but the Outsider ship could have done it in five hours.
The radio spoke. “Sirs, our crewmen will remove your ship from ours, after which you will be on your own. It has been a pleasure to do business with you.”
A swarm of Outsider crewmen hauled us through the maze of basking ramps and left us. Presently the Outsider ship vanished like a pricked soap bubble, gone off on its own business.
In the strange starlight Elephant let out a long, shaky sigh. Some people can’t take aliens. They don’t find puppeteers graceful and beautiful; they find them horrifying, wrong. They see kzinti as slavering carnivores whose only love is fighting, which is the truth, but they don’t see the rigid code of honor or the self-control which allows a kzinti ambassador to ride a human-city pedwalk without slashing out with his claws at the impertinent stabbing knees and elbows. Elephant was one of those people.
He said, “Okay,” in amazed relief. They were actually gone. “I’ll take the first watch, Bey.”
He did not say, “Those bastards would take your heart as collateral on a tenth-star loan.” He didn’t see them as that close to human.
“Fine,” I said, and went into the control bubble. The Fast Protosun was a week away. I’d been in a suit for hours, and there was a shower in the extension bubble.
If Elephant’s weakness was aliens, mine was relativity.
The trip through hyperspace was routine. I could take the sight of the two small windows turning into blind spots, becoming areas of nothing, which seemed to draw together the objects around them. So could Elephant; he’d done some flying, though he preferred the comfort of a luxury liner. But even the best pilot occasionally has to drop back into the normal universe to get his bearings and to assure his subconscious that the stars are still there.
And each time it was changed, squashed flat. The crowded blue stars were all ahead; the sparse, dim red stars were all behind. Four hundred years ago men and women had lived for years with such a view of the universe, but it hadn’t happened since the invention of hyperdrive. I’d never seen the universe look like this. It bothered me.
“No, it doesn’t bug me,” said Elephant when I mentioned it. We were a day out from our destination. “To me, stars are stars. But I have been worried about something. Bey, you said the Outsiders are honorable.”
“They are. They’ve got to be. They have to be so far above suspicion that any species they deal with will remember their unimpeachable ethics a century later. You can see that, can’t you? Outsiders don’t show up more often than that.”
“Um. Okay. Why did they try to screw that extra two hundred kilostars out of me?”
“Uh—”
“See, the goddamn problem is, what if it was a fair price? What if we need to know what’s funny about the Fast Protosun?”
“You’re right. Knowing the Outsiders, it’s probably information we can use. All right, we’ll nose around a little before we land. We’d have done that anyway, but now we’ll do it better.”
What was peculiar about the Fast Protosun?
Around lunchtime on the seventh ship’s day a short green line in the sphere of the mass indicator began to extend itself. It was wide and fuzzy, just what you’d expect of a protosun. I let it reach almost to the surface of the sphere before I dropped us into normal space.
The squashed universe looked in the windows, but ahead of us was a circular darkening and blurring of the vivid blue-white stars. In the center of the circle was a dull red glow.
“Let’s go into the extension bubble,” said Elephant.
“Let’s not.”
“We’ll get a better view in there.” He turned the dial that would make the bubble transparent. Naturally we kept it opaque in hyperspace.
“Repeat, let’s not. Think about it, Elephant. What sense does it make to use an impermeable hull, then spend most of our time outside it? Until we know what’s here, we ought to retract the bubble.”
He nodded his shaggy head and touched the board again. Chugging noises announced that air and water were being pulled out of the bubble. Elephant moved to a window.
“Ever see a protosun?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think there are any in human space.”
“That could be the peculiarity.”
“It could. One thing it isn’t is the speed of the thing. Outsiders spend all their time moving faster than this.”
“But planets don’t. Neither do stars. Bey, maybe this thing came from outside the galaxy. That would make it unusual.”
It was time we made a list. I found a pad and solemnly noted speed of star, nature of star, and possible extragalactic origin of star.
“I’ve found our planet,” said Elephant.
“Whereabouts?”
“Almost on the other side of the protosun. We can get there faster in hyperspace.”
The planet was still invisibly small where Elephant brought us out. The protosun looked about the same.
A protosun is the fetus of a star: a thin mass of gas and dust, brought together by slow eddies in interstellar magnetic fields or by the presence of a Trojan point in some loose cluster of stars, which is collapsing and contracting due to gravity. I’d found material on protosuns in the ship’s library, but it was all astronomical data; nobody had ever been near one for a close look. In theory the Fast Protosun must be fairly well along in its evolution, since it was glowing at the center.
“There it is,” said Elephant “Two days away at one gee.”
“Good. We can do our instrument checks on the way. Strap down.”
With the fusion motor pushing us smoothly along, Elephant went back to the scope, and I started checking the other instruments. One thing stood out like a beacon.
“Elephant. Have you noticed in me a tendency to use profanity for emphasis?”
<
br /> “Not really. Why?”
“It’s goddamn radioactive out there.”
“Could you be a little more specific, sir?”
“Our suit shields would break down in three days. The extension bubble would go in twenty hours.”
“Okay, add it to your list. Any idea what’s causing it?”
“Not one.” I made a note on my list, then went back to work. We were in no danger; the GP hull would protect us from anything but impact with something big.
“No asteroid belts,” said Elephant. “Meteor density zero, as far as I can tell. No other planets.”
“The interstellar gas may clean away anything small at these speeds.”
“One thing’s for sure, Bey. I’ve got my money’s worth. This is a damn funny system.”
“Yah. Well, we missed lunch. Shall we get dinner?”
“Philistine.”
Elephant ate fast. He was back at the telescope before I was ready for coffee. Watching him move, I was again reminded of a juggernaut, but he’d never shown as much determination when I knew him on Earth. If a hungry kzinti had been standing between him and the telescope, he’d have left footprints in fur.
But the only thing that could get in his way out here was me.
“Can’t get a close look at the planet,” said Elephant, “but it looks polished.”
“Like a billiard ball?”
“Just that. I don’t see any sign of an atmosphere.”
“How about blast craters?”
“Nothing.”
“They should be there.”
“This system’s pretty clean of meteors.”
“But the space around us shouldn’t be. And at these speeds—”
“Uh huh. That better go on your list.”
I wrote it down.
We slept on the disaster couches. In front of me were the yellow lights of the control panel; the stars glowed red through one side window, blue through the other. I stayed awake for a long time, staring through the forward window into the red darkness of the protosun. The window was opaque, but I saw the dark red blur clearly in my imagination.
The radiation held steady all through the next day. I did some more thorough checking, using temperature readings and deep radar on both sun and planet. Everywhere I looked was a new anomaly.
“This star definitely shouldn’t be glowing yet. It’s too spread out; the gas should be too thin for fusion.”
“Is it hot enough to glow?”
“Sure. But it shouldn’t be.”
“Maybe the theories on protosuns are wrong.”
“Then they’re way wrong.”
“Put it on your list.”
And, an hour later:
“Elephant.”
“Another peculiarity?”
“Yah.”
From under shaggy brows Elephant’s eyes plainly told me he was getting sick of peculiarities.
“According to the deep-radar shadow, this planet doesn’t have any lithosphere. It’s worn right down to what ought to be the magma but isn’t because it’s so cold out here.”
“Write it down. How many entries have you got?”
“Nine.”
“Is any one of them worth paying two hundred kilostars to know about beforehand?”
“The radiation, maybe, if we didn’t have a GP hull.”
“But,” said Elephant, glaring out at the huge, dark disk, “they knew we had a GP hull. Bey, can anything get through a General Products hull?”
“Light, like a laser beam. Gravity, like tides crushing you into the nose of a ship when you get too close to a neutron star. Impact won’t harm the hull, but it’ll kill what’s inside.”
“Maybe the planet’s inhabited. The more I think about it, the more sure I am it came from outside. Nothing in the galaxy could have given it this velocity. It’s diving through the plane of the galaxy; it wouldn’t have to push in from the rim.”
“Okay. What do we do if someone shoots a laser at us?”
“We perish, I think. I had reflective paint spread around the cabin, except for the windows, but the rest of the hull is transparent.”
“We can still get into hyperspace from here. And for the next twenty hours. Afterward we’ll be too close to the planet.”
I went right to sleep that night, being pretty tired despite the lack of exercise. Hours later I slowly realized that I was being examined. I could see it through my closed eyelids; I could feel the heat of the vast red glare, the size of the angry eye, the awful power of the mind behind it. I tried to struggle away, smacked my hand on something, and woke with a shock.
I lay there in the red darkness. The edge of the protosun peeked through a window. I could feel its hostile glare.
I said, “Elephant.”
“Mngl?”
“Nothing.” Morning would be soon enough.
Morning.
“Elephant, would you do me a favor?”
“Sure. You want Dianna? My right arm? Shave off my beard?”
“I’ll keep Sharrol, thanks. Put on your suit, will you?”
“Sure, that makes sense. We aren’t nearly uncomfortable enough just because we closed off the bubble.”
“Right. And because I’m a dedicated masochist, I’m going to put my suit on this instant. Now, I hate to enjoy myself alone…”
“You got the wind up?”
“A little. Just enough.”
“Anything for a friend. You go first.”
There was just room to get our suits on one at a time. If the inner air lock door hadn’t been open, there wouldn’t have been that. We tried leaving our helmets thrown back, but they got in our way against the crash couches. So we taped them to the window in front of us.
I felt better that way, but Elephant clearly thought I’d flipped. “You sure you wouldn’t rather eat with your helmet on?”
“I hate suit food syrup. We can reach our helmets if we get a puncture.”
“What puncture? We’re in a General Products hull!”
“I keep remembering that the Outsiders knew that.”
“We’ve been through that.”
“Let’s go through it again. Assume they thought we might be killed anyway if we weren’t prepared. Then what?”
“Gronk.”
“Either they expected us to go out in suits and get killed, or they know of something that can reach through a General Products hull.”
“Or both. In which case the suits do us no good at all. Bey, do you know how long it’s been since a General Products hull failed?”
“I’ve never heard of it happening at all.”
“It never has. The puppeteers offer an enormous guarantee in case one does. Something in the tens of millions if someone dies as a result.”
“You’re dead right. I’ve been stupid. Go ahead and take off your suit.”
Elephant turned to look at me. “And you?”
“I’ll keep mine on. Do you believe in hunches?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. Except just this once.”
Elephant shrugged his shaggy eyebrows and went back to his telescope. By then we were six hours out from the nameless planet and decelerating.
“I think I’ve found an asteroid crater,” he said presently.
“Let’s see.” I had a look. “Yah, I think you’re right. But it’s damn near disappeared.”
He took the telescope back. “It’s round enough. Almost has to be a crater. Bey, why should it be so eroded?”
“It must be the interstellar dust. If it is, then that’s why there’s no atmosphere or lithosphere. But I can’t see the dust being that thick, even at these speeds.”
“Put it—”
“Yah.” I reached for my list.
“If we find one more anomaly, I’ll scream.”
Half an hour later we found life.
By then we were close enough to use the gravity drag to slow us. The beautiful thing about a gravity drag is that it uses very little power. It
converts a ship’s momentum relative to the nearest powerful mass into heat, and all you have to do is get rid of the heat. Since the ST∞’s hull would pass only various ranges of radiation corresponding to what the puppeteers’ varied customers considered visible light, the shipbuilders had run a great big radiator fin out from the gravity drag. It glowed dull red behind us. And the fusion drive was off. There was no white fusion flame to hurt visibility.
Elephant had the scope at highest magnification. At first, as I peered into the eyepiece, I couldn’t see what he was talking about. There was a dull white plain, all the same color except for a few blobs of blue. The blobs wouldn’t have stood out except for the uniformity of the surface around them.
Then one of them moved. Very slowly, but it was moving.
“Right,” I said. “Let me run a temperature check.”
The surface temperature in that region was about right for helium II. And on the rest of the planet as well; the protosun wasn’t putting out much energy, though it was very gung ho on radiation.
“I don’t think they match any species I know.”
“I can’t tell,” said Elephant. He had the telescope and the library screen going at the same time, with a Sirius VIII blob on the library screen. “There are twenty different species of helium life in this book, and they all look exactly alike.”
“Not quite. They must have a vacuumproof integument. And you’ll notice those granules in the—”
“I treasure my ignorance on this subject, Bey. Anyway, we aren’t going to find any species we know on this world. Even a stage-tree seed would explode the moment it hit.”
I let the subject die.
Once again Elephant ran the scope over “his” planet, this time looking for the blobby life-forms. They were fairly big for helium II life, but not abnormally so. Lots of cold worlds develop life using the peculiar properties of helium II, but because it hasn’t much use for complexity, it usually stays in the amoeba stage.
There was one peculiarity, which I duly noted. Every animal was on the back side of the planet with relation to the planet’s course through the galaxy. They weren’t afraid of protosun sunlight, but they seemed to fear interstellar dust.
“You promised to scream.”
“It’s not odd enough. I’ll wait.”