"Then it's time to hit the beacon and see what bounces," said Keaflyn. "Go ahead."
There was a soft hum as the ship's power plant ran at capacity for several seconds, creating and storing energy. Then the hum gave way to an abrupt click as a high-load switch closed, letting the pent-up energy flow in one swift surge through the flash-filaments exposed by the open flare bay. For a split second an intense flood of light lashed the Whorl's surface before the power was spent and the filaments vaporized.
As far as Keaflyn could tell from watching the viewscreen, nothing had happened.
"What results, Kelly?" he asked eagerly. "Coming right up, Mark," the ship replied, and the blankness of the screen gave way to a lined graph. Trailing across it was a jagged path that, about midway, suddenly dropped to the bottom and stayed there.
"This is a summary of the intensity readings of the reflection receptors, with time plotted from left to right," the ship explained needlessly. "You will note that while the burst of light was passing through the space between us and the Whorl, there was some backflash, partially from drifting atoms but more from turbulent interactions between the photons themselves—a phenomenon to be expected in beams of the intensity we used. Then, when the burst of light reached the Whorl, all reflection ended, as the abrupt fall of the line indicates."
"Aw, hell," Keaflyn grunted drably. "Another great big zero."
"Yes. If the Whorl is reflective, it is so to a degree immeasurably small," said the ship.
"In a universe where there are more than two sides to every question," griped Keaflyn, "where nothing is all black or all white, this Whorl keeps insisting it's totally black! It bugs me, Kelly."
The ship said nothing and Keaflyn went on, "That's the way all the stabilities seem to behave. Lumon's Star is an absolutely unfailing light, and I suppose we have to take the word of the inhabitants of Avalon that they and their world are absolutely eternal. The Locuses are absolutely motionless, the Whorl is absolutely black, and the Resistant Globe is . . . well . . . thought made a dint in it, but just the same from the physical standpoint I imagine it will prove absolutely resistant.
"Kelly, I might as well face it. My whole investigative approach—trying to find trace instabilities in the stabilities in order to get them on a gradient scale and thus refute the concept of absolutism—it'sa flop. I'm barking up the wrong tree."
"We have obtained data, Mark, though not of the type you were seeking," the ship conceded.
"Right, and you know, Kelly, the thought just occurred to me that I was looking for trace instabilities because that's what I wanted to find. I wanted to make the stabilities philosophically acceptable to myself." He giggled.
"That wasn't especially scientific of me. This idea of taking an ultra-quick poke at the Whorl with a stick would just be more of the same, wouldn't it?"
"Basically, it would be," said the ship.
Keaflyn laughed. "What the hell, we may as well try it, anyway. But while we're improvising the gear for it, Kelly, let's move a couple of light-hours away from the Whorl. It's not a comfortable thing to be this near."
"Very well, Mark."
The ship went into a brief warp that reduced the Whorl to an undisturbingly small black disc against the starry background.
"Now let's—" Keaflyn began, but halted when he felt the ship go into warp again. "What's up, Kelly?"
"A fleet of eighteen ships just came into detection, Mark. One of them is of worldship mass."
"Okay, let's scram," Keaflyn grunted, then chuckled.
"I wasn't too enthused about that experiment, anyway. The big ship in that bunch must be the Arlan Siblings' Calcutta. I don't know of anything else of worldship mass still in use."
"I presume you're right, Mark."
"Too bad the Arlans couldn't stay my pals," Keaflyn murmured. "I'd enjoy visiting with the Senior Sibling Berina again . . . You've run out of detection range by now, I suppose."
"No, Mark. They are keeping pace with us," came the surprising answer. "The worldship seems to have slightly more speed than the others. It is in the lead, pursuing us at a distance of 2.1 light-months."
"Then it must be closing on us!" yelped Keaflyn in astonishment.
"Yes. At current velocities, the worldship will overtake us in forty-six minutes, fourteen seconds."
"But how could they . . . ?" Keaflyn began, then fell silent.
How could they, indeed! As he had realized while talking to Clav Didorik back on Danolae, he had disclosed all the theoretical information necessary to the development of his faster warpdrive.
The Arlans were fast workers, with plentiful resources. No doubt they had not waited for his report on Lumon's Star to go through all the prepublication routine at Science Reporting Service. Probably a copy of his findings had been in their hands within a week after he turned it over to John Donflannis. Shortly after when Keaflyn's ship had shown a sudden capacity for outrunning anything else in space, the Arlans would have wasted no time getting a team of top-quality engineers to work, going over that report of his.
Not surprisingly, they had been able not only to duplicate his own application, but to refine it to the point where it was somewhat better than his own drive. They were, after all, engineers, which he was not. And they had the assistance of computers larger and brainier than Kelkontar.
Keaflyn suddenly bellowed with laughter. "Where's my hat, Kelly?"
"Your hat, Mark?"
"Hat. Check your dictionary. It's an obsolete term for headwear."
"Except for your helmet, Mark, I know of no headwear aboard."
"Too bad. I need my hat to pull a rabbit out of."
But the only change in Keaflyn's situation during the next forty-five minutes was entrance of the Neg into his mind. The twisty bitterness came through to him distinctly at the instant it ended what was presumably a rest period and returned to duty. He sat tensely for a couple of minutes, waiting to see what its line of attack would be this time. However, it seemed content to observe. Its presence was actually helpful in a way, Keaflyn noted. It tempered his laughing jag, enabling him to regard his position with less hysteria. Not that it mattered, because serious thinking wasn't going to open any escape hatch for him this time. He sighed. This was the end, and all he could do was to separate body and egofield with the ego-field in as clean a condition as he could keep it. That meant he could not allow himself to be captured.
"Kelly, I hate to do this to a good ship like you," he said, "but I'll have to force those Sect Dualers to blast us. You can understand my reason for that, can't you?"
"Yes, Mark."
"Can you find a way out of this situation that doesn't require either the destruction of both you and my body or my capture and degradation preceding the loss of my body?"
"Assuming the intentions of our pursuers are such as recent data indicates, I can propose no third alternative, Mark," the ship replied.
"You're not really alive, are you?" Keaflyn asked urgently.
"No, Mark."
He tittered. "Thanks, Kelly. I needed that. I knew it, of course, but you seem alive to me much of the time. Okay, then, we go out fighting. And the only way I know to use you for a weapon, is to attempt to ram."
"Assuming the pursuers are armed, ramming will not succeed," said the ship. "Long before we could maneuver into proper position they would have aligned their blastbeams and—"
"I know," interrupted Keaflyn, "but that's okay. I don't want to kill anybody, anyway. Just make them kill me promptly."
"Then an attempt to ram should prove effective, Mark."
"Good. That's what well do. Not the worldship, though. Its hull's too tough for them to take a ramming seriously. One of the smaller ships."
The worldship was now close enough for definite identification as the Calcutta. It was not directly behind Keaflyn's ship, but off to starboard. When it pulled abreast, its distance was a little over a light-minute. It made no effort to close this gap; instead, it continued on course, grad
ually gaining a lead on the Kelkontar.
"Where do they think they're going?" Keaflyn muttered. "Unless they think I've cooked up a weapon and prefer for me to try it on the smaller ships . . . " He chortled at the idea.
"The Calcutta's on the comm, Mark," his ship said.
"Okay. Put it through."
Once more he heard the slightly over-mellow male voice of the Arlan Siblings' f lagship:
"The Senior Sibling's compliments, Mr. Keaflyn, and the following message: You have doubtless considered the alternatives now available to you. These are limited to suicide, which is intended to include suicidal attack, or capture. Suicide would be the less disturbing choice for everyone concerned. However, if your decision is for capture, you should choose your captors thoughtfully. The Senior Sibling makes the point that, aboard the Calcutta, your condition is understood."
Keaflyn did not reply immediately. He did not know what to say. Instead, he cut transmission and spoke to his ship.
"What the hell was that supposed to mean, Kelly? First she tells me to go ahead and get myself killed, and make everybody happy. And then that business about understanding me. Could the whole thing be a disguised offer of asylum aboard the Calcutta?"
His ship replied, "The possible implications of the message defy my analytical abilities, Mark. If the Arlan Siblings do wish to offer you asylum, they could not do so openly without displeasing their presumably Sect Dualer allies in the other pursuing ships. Conversely, the message could be a verbal trap, intended to lure you into captivity with minimal risk of violent resistance.
"Since the message defies clear interpretation, Mark," the ship continued, "the best course may be to base your decision on such nonverbal evidence as you have."
"Well, I was treated hospitably the other time I was aboard the Calcutta," Keaflyn murmured. "That's about the only solid piece of nonverbal evidence I have." He stared at the situation graphic, which showed the Calcutta holding position off his starboard, no longer pulling ahead, while the remaining pursuers were rapidly closing in from behind.
He made up his mind. "Oh, what the hell! Where there's life there's hope. Tell the Calcutta I'll come aboard."
The worldship responded by swerving toward the Kelkontar. As the ships came together Keaflyn saw the Calcutta had opened a large hangar bay, and when grapple fields suddenly clamped on the Kelkontar, it was into this bay the smaller ship was drawn.
In his earlier visit, his ship hadn't been taken inboard this way. The suggestion was that this time he had come to stay for a while. But so what? He had expected that.
"Air pressure is up outside, Mark," said Kelkontar.
"Okay." Keaflyn went to the lock. "See you later, Kelly, I hope."
"Okay, Mark."
Out in the bay, he was met by the same guide, dressed in an old-time naval officer's uniform, who had greeted him on his earlier visit to the worldship.
"Please follow me, Mr. Keaflyn," the man said.
The interior of the Calcutta struck Keaflyn as even more spacious and luxurious than it had before . . . probably, he guessed, because he had spent so long in the close and rather Spartan confines of his own ship. He hadn't been on an Earth-type planet since . . . well, since Danolae, and that shouldn't count because he had stayed aboard the whole time he was there. So the last time he was really on a living planet had been Bensor just a few weeks back, but it seemed a long time.
The Calcutta could give one the sensation of being on a planet. Its widely spaced decks, frequently bright with growing trees and shrubs, and with high, sky-like overheads, made the ship feel like a world—although that was not the reason it was called a worldship. Such giant vessels had originally been built and used for colonization purposes, and had been designed so that enough colonists could be packed into the hive-like interior of one such ship to man a new-world colony; hence the coinage "worldship."
Of those giants, only the vastly remodeled Calcutta had survived. Colonization on the massive scale for which they were built required an overpopulated home planet, mused Keaflyn as a chute tube carried him and his guide up past several quickly-glimpsed deck-levels. With no overpopulated planets, worldships were outmoded. Only individuals with the extreme wealth and special needs of the Arlan Siblings could put one to practical use. Keaflyn giggled. He shared the special needs of the Arlans but lacked their extreme wealth.
His guide led him from the chute tube onto what he guessed must be one of the ship's highest decks. Here the planetary verisimilitude was carried to the extent of having a building—complete with roof, walls, and even windows—standing among the shrubs and fronted by a neatly trimmed lawn. Giggling, he followed the guide up the walk and through the front door.
The hallway was short. One doorway stood open. The guide pointed to it. "The Senior Sibling is waiting for you in there, Mr. Keaflyn."
Keaflyn nodded, and advanced through the door, which closed behind him. He found himself in a large, rather bare, office. The Senior Sibling was seated behind an uncluttered desk.
"Hello, Mark," she said.
"Hi, Berina," he returned, unmindful until an instant later of the cold danger in her tone of voice. He stiffened, and that physical tension probably told the Neg something, because it pounced hard and viciously. He grimaced with the sudden pain blasting his head and body.
"If you had spoken to me on comm yourself," he snickered, "I would have declined your invitation."
"Sit down, Mark," she said.
He flopped in the armchair, suddenly too tired to stand. Realizing the Neg had induced the tiredness that led to his quick obedience, he tried to stand up again. He could not. Shackles had clamped across his wrists, anchoring them tightly to the chairarms. And when he stopped struggling, a duraplas belt snaked across his stomach to complete his confinement.
He stared at the lovely woman across the desk. She returned his gaze somberly. A slight frown wrinkled her forehead, suggesting that her Neg was on the job, too.
"Berina," he chuckled inanely, "your hospitality has simply gone to hell since my last visit."
She winced. "Lay off, Mark, for heaven's sake!" she snapped in irritation. "You won't gain anything by making this more difficult for me. I'm going to do what has to be done, regardless of how I detest the job!"
"Sorry," Keaflyn laughed. "I was just trying to bring a touch of lightness into what is shaping up as a melodramatically grim situation."
"Well, don't!" she lashed at him. "Those ignorant Sect Dualers! Your touches of lightness, as you call them, are the result of that pleasure-impress Arnod Smath inflicted. That's been your ruination, Mark! I warned you, a Neg is an enemy, to be kept under control at all times, which requires constant mental discipline.
"Without the pleasure-impress," she went on moodily, "perhaps you would have heeded my warning. But you did not. Instead, you gave the Neg an opening to attack the Resistant Globe—pure scatterminded thoughtlessness on your part! If you had been thinking halfway seriously, with the caution a Neg carrier must never lose, you would have realized that null-the-Globe game was not for you.
"And your experience with the Globe taught you nothing! You've continued to flit blithely about from one stability to another, very carefree and all too willing to give a trial to any idea that pops into your head. The fact that you've done no more damage I'll chalk up to pure good fortune. In any event, you can't be allowed to continue your careless antics. They're done with, as of now!" Smiling with amusement at her angry tirade, Keaflyn shrugged. "Okay, I'll go along with you. Fact is, I had just come to the conclusion, after running my experiment on the Whorl, that my whole research approach was off target, anyway. The things I've discovered—the warpicles and the additional Locuses—were by chance, not my brilliant design. And I seem to have run out of serendipity. So I'm willing to quit and let the citizenry recover their peace of mind."
His face twisted with pain. "Look, Berina, now that we've got that settled. how about telling your pet chair to let go? My Neg is acting up, a
nd I guess from your frown yours is, too. Let's go take the cure in your lake."
She continued to gaze silently at him after he finished. Finally she shifted uncomfortably and said, "Mark, what has to be done has to be done. Putting it off won't change its necessity or make it any easier when the putting-off has to end. Instead, it would make it much harder for me to do, because I could become attached to you awfully quickly if I allowed myself to do so."
Keaflyn was not sure the feeling was completely mutual, but Berina had an attractive way of wearing a body, to say the least.
"I wonder if we've ever been mates," he murmured.
"Stop that!" she yelped.
He chuckled. "Sorry, again . . . and what can I say, dear, after I say I'm sorry?"
Berina touched a button on her desk and the walls on either side of the office began folding into the ceiling.
"I can't delay any longer," she said with studied briskness. "As the Calcutta told you, in suggesting that you surrender to me, your condition is understood here. And understanding brings knowledge of what must be done. Shortly, the Neg will find you are no longer useful to it." A twisted smile on his face, Keaflyn looked at the equipment being exposed by the lifting walls. There were about a half-dozen major complexes in the enlarged room. And although he had not seen their like for several hundred thousand years—such equipment never having been used on Earth—his backtrack memories enabled him to recognize them immediately.
Electronic torture devices: instrumentation that bypassed the body to hammer and slash the ego-field itself!
He couldn't quit laughing as his chair suddenly went into motion, carrying him toward one of the complexes. It was all very funny, after all, his mind gibbered at him. He had grown more or less accustomed to the idea that the pleasure-impress would degrade his ego-field to a point where, in his next life, he couldn't expect to be human. He had been thinking in terms of coming back as one of Alo Felston's cows.
But after Berina and her torture machines got through with him and permitted him to escape his body—hell, he'd be lucky to wind up as a fly, swatted at by the tails of Felston's cows!
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