A Sense of Infinity

by Howard L. Myers

  It could do these things by duplicating motions Olivine put it through a few times, with warmth as a reward. It did not understand spoken language, or any code of tappings the man could devise, but it did understand shapes, motions, positions, and objects.

  It could bend itself into the outline of a pair of spectacles—a joined O.O. for "Omar Olivine." It could follow an obstacle course, after having been dragged through the appropriate motions, to reach a container of hot water. It could climb up Olivine's body and out one of his extended arms for a similar reward held in his hand.

  Also, it could creep under Olivine's blanket to huddle curled against his warm stomach, as it did one night after straying outside the tent while he slept. This Olivine had not encouraged, because the creature had returned several degrees colder than ice, and its touch had scared him witless for a minute, in addition to being painful. But now, aboard the Barnaby, the question was how could he make use of the doodle's abilities?

  There were possibilities . . . one of which was the opening of the bulkhead door in the back of his cage, which would give the prisoner the run of the ship for the very few seconds it would take Barnaby to tangline him. Another, perhaps impossibly complicated, would be the shorting by the doodle's body of a couple of Barnaby's key circuits. The obstacle course the doodle would have to run to reach those circuits was long and involved. Olivine was not sure his own memory of utility tanker construction was accurate enough for him to train the doodle properly, or if the doodle could retain that much instruction, or that the path to be followed would not pass close enough to a heat source to end the doodle's mission prematurely.

  But there was a problem that came before any of those. Training the doodle for anything at all required actions on his part that could hardly be disguised. If he started putting that tube of polywater through a series of senseless motions, how would he explain his actions to Barnaby and the Patrolmen? That he was practicing an obscure Plaxadalican snake dance? That he had suddenly gone batty?

  Olivine knew all too well that no such explanations would be bought. Not by a guy like Coralon, who had been around enough to be surprised at nothing and suspicious of everything.

  The prisoner flopped on his bunk face down, his head resting on his forearms, to conceal the snarl of angry frustration that was twisting his handsome features.

  Five ship-mornings later young Brantee entered the lounge alone, distractedly asked the prisoner how he was faring, and ordered a mug of coffee from the ship. His mind seemed a thousand parsecs away as he sat sipping and gazing at nothing.

  Olivine studied him. This was a departure from the norm. Coralon sometimes came into the lounge alone, but not Brantee. And at this time of day they usually came in together. Neither of them spent much time there—just enough to satisfy the letter of the no-solitary edict.

  "What's up?" Olivine asked.

  Brantee gave him a resentful glance. "Nothing's up. Have some coffee, Olivine."

  "Don't try to kid a kidder, punk," snapped the prisoner. "I know buck fever when I see it, and you've got it, boy! Now, what's going on?"

  "What's buck fever?" the Patrol trainee asked.

  "Nervousness before a fight. It comes from knowing the chips will be down, pretty damn quick, and from not knowing how much yellow you're going to show. It's worst in squirts like you who haven't been in many fights. Now, let's have the news, kid."

  Brantee stirred restlessly. "There's nothing to tell."

  "Where's Coralon?"

  "Busy. He said to tell you he'll drop by a little later." Olivine grimaced. The kid was plainly under orders to keep his mouth shut. But a kid can be tricked . . .

  "O.K., I see I'm not going to get anything out of you," the prisoner said. "But let's get something straight, boy. I value my skin a lot more than I do your company. So with the ship as witness, I hereby excuse you from babysitting me if there's some kind of emergency that needs your attention."

  Brantee put down his mug and leaped to his feet.

  "Thanks, Olivine!" he snapped over his shoulder as he hurried toward the door. Then he halted suddenly, turned and walked slowly back. "There's no . . . " he began, then shut up when he saw the grin of triumph on Olivine's face.

  The Patrol trainee whirled and stomped out of the lounge cursing.

  "Tell Coralon I got a right to know what's up!" Olivine squalled after him.

  Alone, he paced his cage, his mind working furiously. What was happening? The kid hadn't been faking; no kid could put on that convincing an act. The Barnaby was heading for trouble . . . no question about it.

  But what kind of trouble?

  Five days out from Flandna . . . Mentally, Olivine constructed a globe of space, with Flandna at its center and with a radius roughly equivalent to the distance five days of normal drive would cover.

  The globe intersected . . . well, it intersected plenty of places where a starfuzz ship might not be completely welcome, but only one really dangerous zone: the edge of the Dusty Roost pirate enclave!

  And come to think about it, where else but in the Patrol's thin cordon around the Roost would a new vizad—field-promoted from proxad—be waiting for an unmastered command cruiser to be shipped out from HQ?

  It all fitted together. The Barnaby was supposed to deliver the cruiser before taking Olivine on to the Sarfyne Four prison world. But right now, approaching its first destination, it was on the verge of encountering more Roosters than Patrol ships!

  But it could be highly deadly. A Patrol ship had never yet been allowed to fall into Rooster hands. If the Barnaby could fight its way through whatever assault the pirates might be mounting, or if reinforcements rallied in time, all would be well. But if the utility tanker were about to fall into enemy hands, Barnaby would selfdestruct with a violence that would leave nothing but a rapidly dispersing smell of metal in space.

  Olivine cursed and grabbed at the bars of his cage.

  "Coralon!" he bellowed. "Ship, tell Coralon to tell me what's going on out there!"

  "Your message will be delivered, sir," Barnaby replied.

  "Right now!" he snarled.

  Half a minute passed before the proxad's voice came over the speaker. "What's happening is none of your business, Ollie!" he snapped hurriedly. "Now shut up and don't pester me, or the ship. Order anything you want immediately, because I'm instructing the ship to ignore you starting in one minute. Out!"

  "W-wait a second!" Olivine yapped in terror. "You can't leave me trapped here like a rat . . . "

  But the proxad was obviously no longer listening.

  "If you require food, drink . . . " began Barnaby.

  "Oh . . . oh, yeah! Gimme a bourbon on the rocks, Ship!" Olivine directed, getting a grip on himself. "Make that three bourbons on the rocks so I'll not need to ask for more!"

  "Very well, sir."

  The serving pedestal rose, carrying the three ice-filled glasses. As Olivine had learned earlier, the ship served him no booze, but tried to be accommodating. Thus, an order for bourbon on the rocks brought ice and nothing more. He removed the glasses from the pedestal and placed them on the floor.

  Then he waited, counting seconds and wondering just how literally Barnaby would take Coralon's instructions to ignore him. Or if the proxad would realize how sweeping that instruction was, and would modify it. Because if the ship ignored him completely . . .

  He judged a minute had passed. "Damn it, Barnaby, at a time like this you could've given me some booze," he complained. "Barnaby? . . . Answer me, you misconnected idiot!"

  No response.

  It was now or never.

  He grabbed the tube-encased doodle, coiled it into a tight spiral on the floor, and hurriedly dumped the ice from the three glasses over it, spreading the lumps out to cool the creature into wakefulness as rapidly as possible. He tried not to let himself get in a stew as he watched for the doodle to begin moving. The Barnaby was well-armed and strongly shielded, he reminded himself. It would be no quick and easy pushover for a whol
e squad of Rooster raiders. And so far as he could tell, the battle hadn't even been joined yet.

  At that instant the ship lurched and a dull Thunk! jarred through it.

  Olivine jittered. A near miss! The attack was beginning!

  The doodle finally stirred. The man felt of it, judged it to be chilled enough to remain awake for the job at hand, laid it out in a straight line on the floor, and hurriedly began putting it through its training program.

  He shoved a tip of the tube under his left shoe, in the space between the arch and the floor, and wriggled it through.

  "You'll have to flatten to get through that crack," he muttered at it, "but the door's not sealed, so you can make it. Then, as you come through, thicken out again, and climb straight up, like this . . . " He guided the doodle up the side of his shoe and then his trouser leg, standing up gradually as he did so. "Then when you get this high, start feeling around for a hole . . . " He swung the tip of the tube back and forth in a search pattern, ending at a corner of his pocket which he was pinching to a small hole with his other hand. "When you find it, just crawl in, like this . . . and your conductivity will do the rest, and your old pal will come put you back in your tube and find a warm place for you."

  With that he wadded the tube and cupped it in his hands for a moment, long enough for the doodle to feel warmth without gaining much increase in temperature. Then he went through the whole routine again.

  For so critical a job he would have liked to have spent half an hour putting the doodle through its paces, but there wasn't time. The Barnaby was lurching and thunking continually now, and the battle would have to end, one way or another, within a very short while.

  He went to the bulkhead door, unsealed the end of the doodle's tube, and ran the tube between his thumb and forefinger from the other end to squeeze the creature out onto the floor. Being careful not to tear its colloidal substance apart, and have to take time to let the doodle pull together again, he pushed its tip against the thin crack at the bottom of the door. "Slurp through, damn you!" he hissed.

  Slowly, the doodle began disappearing. Olivine sighed with satisfaction. So far, so good. He wished the doodle could hurry it up, but it had to go membrane-thin to get under that door, and a membrane made a low-volume flow. He would have to be patient.

  He muttered, half-sentimentally: "If I didn't have you to count on, little trickle, I'd be out of my skull by now!" At least the doodle was giving him something to do other than pace helplessly while waiting for the air to whoosh away, or for the ship to self-destruct, or for the pirates to be defeated so that he could be carted on to prison. The doodle was, however, as unmindful of Olivine's words as it was of his hard-pressed mental stability. Its one concern was to regain a desired state of warmth, and it had received inputs to guide it to that goal. It continued to flatten its substance and ooze through the crack . . . between the warm floor and the warm door. Membranethin during the passage, it soaked in the heat from the surrounding metal. When all of it was beyond the door, it felt quite comfortable, except for its lack of a containing husk and that was no urgent need. As it had achieved its goal, it promptly forgot the remainder of the input and relaxed on the floor.

  "Good work!" whispered Olivine as the last of the doodle vanished under the door. "Now hurry up and foul that lock circuit."

  Wham!

  "Ugg!" he grunted in dismay. The ship had been hit! He held his breath against an impulse to whimper, but wherever the hit had been the ship was handling the emergency O.K. The air pressure had remained steady.

  "Hurry, doodle! Please hurry!" he begged. KerWHANG!

  This time the lounge lights flared brilliantly for a split second, then dimmed, and Olivine could hear the faint click-click-click of power adjustors going into action. The door, against which he had been pressing his hand, suddenly gave way, and he half fell into the passageway beyond the bulkhead.

  Free! But with no time to waste.

  Quickly he slurped the doodle into its tube and stuffed it in a pocket, not stopping to wonder how the creature had got to the floor so promptly after fouling the lock. He dashed for the aft-tube, slid down to the main hold, swung nimbly out onto the deck, and skidded to a quick halt.

  For an instant he gazed in awed delight at the sturdy, forty-meter tapered cylinder of gleaming silver held erect in the Barnaby's belly cradle.

  It was indeed a vizad's command cruiser!

  He scampered up the ramp to its main lock. The seal, he saw, was still in place, evidencing the cruiser was unmastered and untampered with in transit. With a quick jerk he ripped off the seal and spoke:

  "Ship, I'm your vizad! Open up!"

  The lock opened and he jumped inside. "Close the lock and instruct the Barnaby to unload you immediately! The Barnaby is under attack! Use whatever emergency procedures are necessary to get us into action without delay!"

  "Yes, Vizad. Welcome aboard," replied the cruiser.

  Olivine could hear clangings dimly through the hull as he scurried up to the command deck. He hoped the Barnaby wasn't giving the cruiser an argument about the unloading. The Patrol's ships, as well as its men, had orders of rank, and a command cruiser was several steps above a utility tanker.

  Indeed, the cruiser was out in space by the time he reached the battle console and studied the situation revealed by the viewscreens.

  The attacking Rooster squadron was composed of three giant warships—slugburgs—served by at least two dozen twelve-meter minimans—tiny one-man ships which were, at the moment, carrying the brunt of the assault while the slugburgs held position outside effective range of the Barnaby's weaponry.

  It was a typical gauntlet pattern of attack, used by the pirates when a victim's best hope was to run for her protective destination with minimal evasive maneuvering. The pirates were strung out in front of the Barnaby, with the three slugburg biggies holding their distance while the minimans drifted back, singly and in clusters, to take passing slaps at the utility tanker.

  Even six or eight at a time, the little attackers could not blast the Barnaby out of action. That wasn't their job. They could wear the Patrol ship down, however, by inflicting small but incremental damage, without risking heavy pirate personnel and tonnage losses in the process. When they had the victim weak and groggy enough, then the biggies would move in for the kill.

  Olivine knew what he had to do, and he didn't particularly mind doing it. Loyalty among thieves, he had always thought, was a highly nonsensical concept, anyway. In any event, until his mastery of the command cruiser was accepted beyond question, he had to act like a Patrolman, and act it to the hilt.

  "Parallel the Barnaby at two hundred kilometers," he snapped, "and slash-lase the attacking minimans! Gimme manual on your hardest forward lase and I'll keep the biggies busy!"

  The cruiser's laser offensive flared into action, and the beams, guided by the most brilliant compucortex mountable in a ship, did not miss. One after another the minimans were gashed—often sliced completely through—and simply vanished from the scene of battle as they lost warpage and teetered into normspace, to be instantly left far behind.

  But the three biggies were too distant, and their screens too effective, for Olivine to do them real harm with the beam.

  The cruiser reported: "Seven minimans destroyed, sir, and the others attempting to disengage."

  "Stay after them!" ordered Olivine. "The biggies are pulling back, too. Let's bark at their heels! Cut into any of them you can reach!"

  "Yes, sir. Reinforcements will arrive in eighteen minutes, and the Barnaby is calling, sir."

  "O.K. I'll brief you fully when we have a moment, Ship, but you'd better know now that I'm operating under a cover the Barnaby crew doesn't know about. So act on no instruction Proxad Coralon may try to give you. Put him on."

  The proxad's enraged face flashed on the viewscreen.

  "Olivine!" he bellowed. "Get back here with that cruiser or I'll blast you to nebulosity!"

  "With the popguns that old s
cow carries?" leered Olivine. "Don't fantasize, old pal."

  Coralon glared. "Command cruiser 749JN-10, you have been seized by an enemy of the Patrol, an escaped prisoner. Restrict him immediately and return to the hold of the Barnaby."

  "My regrets, Proxad Coralon," responded the cruiser, "but your instructions cannot be accepted."

  Coralon's look of utter dismay brought a roar of laughter from Olivine. "You've had it, pal!" he gloated. "I'd love to watch you explain at HQ how the hottest ship in space was swiped from the Patrol. I see you in civvies in less than a month, pal. Or they may throw the book at you and give you my cell on Sarfyne Four."

  "You heard him, Cruiser!" the proxad yelped. "You heard him admit stealing you. Now return to the Barnaby!"

  "I cannot comply, Proxad Coralon," said the cruiser.

  "Wise up, pal," snickered Olivine. "You know mastery can't be overridden like that. And I'm master of this beautiful boat."

  Coralon's shoulders drooped. He knew well enough that, for a Patrol ship of the line, mastery was a total, instant, unquestionable bond.

  It had to be that way. A Patrolman's ship had to be loyal beyond all doubt, and nothing short of death, disavowal, or thorough reconditioning could break that loyally.

  "Your time will come, Ollie," the proxad promised grimly.

  "Don't hold your breath in the meantime," Olivine chuckled. "Break comm, Ship."

  Coralon's face vanished to be replaced with a view of the battle situation. The battle, however, was over.

  "Where did the biggies get to?" Olivine demanded.

  "Their retreat carried them into concealment in the Veil, sir. Shall we continue pursuit?"

  "Yeah. We need concealment, too, from the Barnaby and those Patrol reinforcements. Move into the Veil, cut down to a safe speed, and keep going. Don't chase any biggies, though, if you happen to detect them in that soup. Let 'em be."

  "Very well, sir."

  The Veil, the starlit rind of the vast cloud of gas and dust that lay like a barrier between Dusty Roost and the rest of the galaxy, glowed dimly ahead. Suddenly they were in it. Olivine watched as the green dot representing the Barnaby slowly faded from the rear screen as the Veil substance blanked out detection. More slowly, the stars of the galaxy faded from sight.