Rogue Star

by Frederik Pohl

  As he showed her Molly's transfac tape and told her about his encounter with Scott, the multipeds began chattering at the robots in some language of their own. Clothilde Kwai Kwich paused to listen as the three robots squealed back in unison.

  "We've seen a strange machine," she told Quamodian at last. "Half a dozen times. Flying fast and low, just off the beach, as if spying on us. The inspectors inform me that it appears to fit your description of Scott's damaged craft"

  "What do you make of that?"

  She waited for the robots to squeal and the multipeds to answer.

  "Scott was attempting to reach the vicinity of a rogue star," she translated for Quamodian. "The inspectors suggest that this was his rogue, that it somehow captured him when he arrived, that it sent him back to Exion Four as a sort of slave machine."

  "That might account for the change in him." Quamodian nodded. "But why did he try to kill me?"

  The robots squeaked and the multipeds stridulated.

  "They suggest that the rogue has a friendly interest in Cliff Hawk's experiments on Earth," said Clothilde Kwai Kwich. "They suggest that it does not intend to allow you to intervene."

  "Molly wants me there," Quamodian muttered stubbornly. "I don't intend to stop."

  "You have a nut to crack before you reach the Earth." The girl's hollow eyes held a faint sardonic glint. "Because our isolation here is complete. Nobody answers our signals. If this is really Cliff Hawk's rogue, we're somewhere out between the galactic clusters. Our register lists a good many thousand citizens who have been marooned here. Not one has ever got away."

  Chapter 6

  Quamodian frowned inquiringly at Clothilde Kwai Kwich and pointed at the wire web stretched between those four rough towers.

  "Somebody meant to get away," he said. "Somebody was setting up a transflection terminal..."

  "And there it stands." She shrugged disdainfully. "It was standing there when I arrived. The engineers who built it were already dead and forgotten then. Their names are not even on our register."

  "I studied transcience engineering once." Quamodian neglected to add that he had muffed his finals. 'That tesseract circuit looks like a good copy of the working model we put together in the lab." Eagerness took his breath. "Maybe—maybe I can finish it!"

  "It's finished now," she said. "Ready to test."

  "What's wrong?"

  "We can't try it till we know where we are." She listened briefly to the squealing robots. "The inspector believes this star is Cliff Hawk's rogue. If so, we could estimate the distance to the Exion terminal precisely enough. But a distance setting is no use without direction, and we have no points of reference."

  "I know—" Quamodian bit his tongue. "I used to know directions. I've got a sense of place. The trouble is, transflection flight disturbs it. Usually it conies back when I arrive. This time—" Unhappily, he shook his head. "This time it didn't."

  A breathless quiet had frozen them all. The robots twanged when he paused, and the multipeds bleated. They closed in around him. The girl's hungry face was white.

  "Monitor Quamodian, the inspector recalls a research report on your transcience sense. Some experimenters convinced themselves that you had an unexplained perception of hyperspatial congruities. Others apparently suspected you of fraud, conscious or not. If you do have such a sense, now's the time to use it."

  "I'll try," he muttered. "But I still feel lost."

  In a groping way, he tried. The effort sharpened his queasy giddiness. Cold sweat broke over him. The beach tipped until the black cliffs hung over his head. The furious sun ballooned and wheeled around him.

  "No use!" he gasped weakly. "Actually, I don't know how to try. It's nothing I know how to do. It's either thereor not."

  The creaking robots crowded closer.

  "Better try again" snapped Clothilde Kwai Kwich. "Or perhaps you like it here!"

  "Almalik!" Anger crackled in him. "Don't you think I want to reach Earth and Molly Zaldivar ..."

  Something happened as he spoke. The rocking beach leveled under foot. The red sun settled into place. And all his giddy confusion was gone. He knew precisely where he was.

  "There's Exion." He pointed into the sky. "To the right of the sun. Just extend the equator half a diameter out. The galaxies are lower, just above the sea,"

  "Monitor, are you sure?"

  Doubt began to gnaw at his new certainty.

  "I think—" he hesitated miserably, "I think I'm right."

  Clothilde Kwai Kwich and her robots withdrew into a huddle near the towers. The two multipeds stood alertly near, as if they expected him to run. The robots squeaked and the girl whispered and presently they all came back.

  "Monitor Quamodian, we have discussed this situation. It raises grave new issues. We can't be certain that your claimed transcience sense will enable us to orient the terminal controls. Even if the terminal works, we can't be sure the rogue will let us leave. Under these circumstances, the inspector suggests that we allow you to make the first test transit. Are you willing?"

  "Of course I'm willing." But it had not occurred to him that the rogue might intervene again. "What are the chances—?" Staring at that serpent-haired star, he failed to finish the question.

  "My subordinates won't risk a prediction." She frowned like Molly. "They can't place the rogue in any normal pattern, even for sentient stars. Its power is unlimited. But its motives are incomprehensible. Its sheer intelligence is just about absolute. But its ignorance of other beings—especially of human beings—is nearly total. Its resulting behavior can be appallingly naive, or stunningly clever, or simply insane." She shrugged. "Who knows what to expect?"

  Quamodian helped set the terminal controls, which were in a cargo barge buried in the black sand beneath the towers. Clothilde Kwai Kwich gave him a brisk handclasp. He walked back to his waiting flyer and waited for her signal.

  She waved her hand. The flyer swam between the entrance towers, into that web of shining wire. He glanced toward that ominous sun, but it had already flickered and dissolved. He was lost again.

  Gray spaces roared around him and probing cold sucked away his life. The flyer rocked and spun until he thought the mad rogue had flung them into some more dreadful trap...

  But then the careening flyer steadied under him. "Prepare to emerge, Mr. Quamodian," it sang in his ear, and the roaring storm of sound and sensation died away.

  The skeleton walls of the wire tesseract had turned real , around him. They were greenish-gray, and painted in bold black characters that identified the Wolf Creek Station on Earth. Ahead of him the exit gate expanded.

  He felt stunned. The contrast was nearly too much for him. There was no alien beach, no red sea, no snake-armed rogue. Neither was there a bitter oxy-helium wind whipping at a long line of impatient citizens bent on business, competing for priorities and snarling at delay. In this pastoral "quiet, Exion Four and the world of the rogue became twin nightmares that he didn't want to think about.

  Quamodian leaned forward eagerly as the flyer glided out of the cube, and looked for the first time in his adult life on the warm, broad acres that were lit by the single sun of Earth.

  Twenty minutes later most of his relief and all Earth's pastoral charm had evaporated. He was snapping furiously at his flyer. "What do you mean, you can't reach Miss Zaldivar? I've come all this way from Exion Four. Do you mean I can't get a message to her now?"

  "Your messages can't be delivered at this time,, Mr. Quamodian. Your communication circuits are blocked."

  "Nonsense! Try the local office of the Companions of the Star ..."

  "Also blocked, Mr. Quamodian. A local custom. I have been informed that in fourteen hours, local time, all the normal lines of communication will be open for service. But until that time ..."

  "I've no time for fools!" Quamodian shouted. "I've gone through a lot to get here, and I don't propose to twiddle my thumbs while these yokels divert themselves. Here, I'll go to that office myself!"

/>   "Certainly, Mr. Quamodian." The flyer began to settle toward a dusty plaza in front of the transflex tower. "Of course," it added apologetically, "you will have to go on foot. By local custom, flyers are not permitted to operate more than one hundred meters from the transflex center at this time."

  "Great Almalik! Oh, very well." Fussily Quamodian collected himself and stamped out of the opening door. "Which way?"

  A voice by his ear answered, as the flyer activated its external speakers. "Down this street, Mr. Quamodian. The gold building with the ensign of the Companions."

  He turned and stared. Behind him, the flyer quietly rose, drifted back to the tall, tapered, black transflex tower and settled to wait at its base. Quamodian was alone on the planet of his birth.

  He was, he realized, more alone than he had expected. He knew that parts of Earth were still scarcely populated— nothing like the teeming metropolises of the hub-worlds of the universe: nothing, even, like the relatively minor planets of his university training and recent practical experience.

  But he had not expected Earth, even this part of Earth, to be empty.

  Yet there was not a soul hi sight He peered back toward the transflex tower: his waiting flyer, motionless and peaceful; nothing else. He looked down a long artificial stone boulevard: a school building, a hospital, a few supply centers—and no one in sight. He saw a park with benches and a playground, but no one was near any of them; saw parked vehicles, seemingly abandoned, a library without readers, a fountain with no one to watch its play.

  "Ridiculous," he grumbled, and walked toward the building that glinted in the sun.

  Earth's single star was hot, and the full gravity of his home planet was more than Andreas Quamodian had been used to for a good many years. It was a tiring walk. But there was something pleasant about it, about the dusty smell of the hot pavement and the luminous young green leaves of the trees that overhung the walk. Peace lay over the village, like a benediction of Almalik.

  But Quamodian had not come to Earth in search of peace. He increased his stride, and chugged up the walkway, beside the flagpole that bore the standard of the Companions of the Star: the thirteen colored stars of Almalik in the dotted ellipses of their intricate orbits, against a black field of space.

  The door did not open for him. Quamodian nearly ran into it; he stopped only just in time.

  "What the devil's the matter here?" he demanded, more surprised than angry—at least at first. "I am Andreas Quamodian, a monitor of the Companions of the Star. Admit me at once!"

  But the bright crystal panel did not move. "Good morning, Citizen Quamodian," said a recorded robot voice. "The Wisdom Creek post of the Companions of the Star is closed today, in observance of local religious custom. It will be open as usual on Monday."

  "I'll report this!" Quamodian cried. "Mark my words! I’ll call the Regional Office of the Companions of the Star..."

  "A public communications instrument is just to your left, Citizen Quamodian," the robot voice said politely. "It is cleared for emergency use even on Starday."

  "Emergency, eh? You bet it's an emergency." But Quamodian had had enough of arguing with recorded voices. He stalked along the flank of the gold-colored ceramic building to the communications booth, angrily dialed the code for the Regional Office—and found himself talking to another recorded voice.

  "Companions of the Star, Third Octant Office," it said briskly.

  "Oh, confound—never mind. Listen. I am Monitor Quamodian. I am in Wisdom Creek to investigate a reported emergency, and I find the local office closed. This lax operation is highly irregular! I demand the office be opened and..."

  "Monitor Quamodian," reproved the robot voice, "that is impossible. Under our revised covenant with the Visitants, no local posts operate on Stardays so that local personnel may be free to engage in voluntary religious activities. Even Regional Offices are machine-operated during this..."

  "But this is an emergency! Can't you understand?"

  "Monitor Quamodian, my sensors detect no emergency situation in Wisdom Creek;"

  "That's what I'm here for! I—well, I don't know the exact nature of the emergency, but I require immediate assistance ..."

  "Our Wisdom Creek post will open promptly at midnight, local time," the voice informed him blandly. "Competent assistance will be available then."

  "Midnight will be too ..."

  But the line clicked, buzzed and settled to a steady hum.

  Muttering with anger, Quamodian tried Molly Zaldivar's code. But his flyer had been right; there was no answer.

  Puffing with irritation as much as fatigue, Quamodian lowered himself to the steps of the office of the Companions and scowled at the empty street. How many millions of light-years had he spanned to be here, on this day, in this backwash of Me? What tremendous forces had he enlisted to hurl him across the gulfs of space, to race against the dreadful fears that Molly Zaldivar's message had conjured up?

  He licked dry lips and wiped perspiration from his brow. He was a hero, ready to rescue maiden, townspeople, world itself. But none of them appeared to want to be rescued.

  Chapter 7

  Twenty-five miles southwest of Wisdom Creek, Molly Zaldivar did want to be rescued. At that moment she wanted it very badly.

  Her old blue electric car had whined up the rocky mountain road, three thousand feet above the plain; below her she saw the flat, dry valley with the little town of Wisdom Creek huddled around the twin spires of the Trans-flex tower and the church. But now the road went no farther. It dipped, circled a spur of the mountainside, and went tumbling into the other valley beyond. From here on she would have to walk ...

  But that she could not do.

  Above her she heard the restless, singing rustle of the creature Cliff Hawk called a sleeth. She could not see it. But she could imagine it there, tall as a horse but far more massive, black as space and sleek as her own hair. And she knew that at that moment she was closer to death than she had ever been before.

  She tiptoed silently back to the car, eyes on the rocks over her head. The singing sound of the creature faded away and returned, faded away and came back again. Perhaps it had not detected her. But it might at any moment, and then ...

  Molly entered the car and closed the door gently, not latching it. Breathing heavily—partly from nerves, partly from the thin, high air around her—she picked up her communicator and whispered, "Cliff? Will you answer me, Cliff, please?"

  There was no sound except for the faint rustle of the sleeth, and the even fainter whisper of wind around the mountaintop.

  Molly bit her lip and glanced over her shoulder. She dared not start the car's motor. It was not very loud, but the sleeth was far too close; it was a wonder it hadn't heard her coming up the trail. But the road sloped sharply away behind her. If she released the brakes the old car would roll on its out-of-date wheels; it would rattle and creak, but not at low speeds, not at first. And Cliff had told her that the sleeth would not wander more than a few hundred yards from the cave mouth. She was very close now, but the car would roll out of range in not much more than a minute...

  And then what? Cliff did not answer. She had to see him—had to stop whatever he was doing, teamed with the Hide, hard man who owned the sleeth. She would never be any closer than this, and what hope was there that the sleeth would be elsewhere if she tried again another time anyway?

  "Oh, please, Cliff," she whispered to the communicator, “it's Molly and I've got to talk to you... ."

  There was a rattle of pebbles and dust, and Molly craned her neck to look upward in sudden terror.

  There was the sleeth, eyes huge as a man's head, green as the light from a radium-dial watch. It was perched over her, the bright, broad eyes staring blindly across the valley. jt was graceful as a cat, but curiously awkward as it floated in its transflection field, clutching at the rubble with claws that were meant for killing.

  It did not seem to have seen her. Yet.

  Molly froze, her ears tune
d to the singing rustle of the sleeth. Its huge muscles worked supply under the fine-scaled skin, and the eyes slowly turned from horizon to horizon. Then it drifted idly back behind the rock, and Molly dared to breathe again. "Oh, Cliff," she whispered, but only to herself. She could not bring herself to speak even in an undertone to the communicator.

  But even terror fades; the monkey mind of a human being will not stay attuned even to the imminent threat of death. Molly became aware of her cramped position on the scarred plastic seat of the car, cautiously straightened her legs and sat up.

  If only Cliff Hawk would hear her message and come.

  If only the sleeth would drift over to the other side of the mountain, give her a chance to make a mad dash for the cave mouth and the men inside.

  If only—she was stretching for impossibles now, she knew—if only poor Andy Quam would respond to her plea for help, and come charging out of the transflex tower with weapons, and wisdom, and the strength to do whatever had to be done to stop Cliff from going through with this dreadful work...

  But they were all equally impossible. Cliff couldn't hear her, the sleeth wouldn't go away. And as for Andy Quam...

  Even in her fear she couldn't help smiling. Poor old Andy, sober and serious, loving and stuffy, full of small rages and great kindnesses ... of all the rescuing heroes a girl might imagine, surely he was the most unlikely.

  The singing sound of the sleeth grew louder again, and fearfully she looked upward. But it did not appear.

  Even the Reefer would be welcome now, she thought— that gaunt yellow-bearded giant who was Cliff Hawk's ally in his folly. She was afraid of the Reefer. He seemed like a throwback to a monstrous age of rage and rapine, a Vandal plundering a peaceful town, a Mau-Mau massacring sleeping children. He had always been polite enough to her, of course, but there was something about him that threatened devastation. Not that any additional threats were necessary. What Cliff was doing was bad enough in itself! Creating sentient life at the atomic level—trying to breed living, thinking tissue of the same stuff that was at the core of the sapient stars themselves. And worst of all, trying to duplicate in the laboratory the kind of life that made some stars rogues, pitted them against their fellows in a giant struggle of hurled energies and destroying bolts of matter.