Rogue Star

by Frederik Pohl

  Cliff Hawk's body quivered, then sat slowly up. "Cliff!" cried Molly, "you're all right!" But he was not conscious. His head lolled on a shoulder, his eyes were closed.

  She stared wide-eyed at the sleeth. It was lifting Cliff, but why? What was it going to do?

  She did not have to wait for an answer. The transflection fields flickered again, and the great beam that had pinned him came up oli his lap. It lifted at one end, like the boom of a crane, raised itself to the height of his head, rotated majestically, and dropped into a pile of rubble.

  Gently Hawk's torso was allowed to sink back, until he was lying outstretched and unencumbered. He had not regained consciousness.

  "Thank you," whispered Molly to the sleeth—knowing it could not understand; not caring whether it could or not Then she flew to Hawk.

  He was badly hunt, but he was alive. There was not much blood. His legs, though, were badly injured; though they lay straight enough, when she moved one he groaned sharply in his sleep and his face twisted in pain.

  He needed medical attention. "Oh, Cliff!" she sobbed, "If only you hadn't..."

  From the cave mouth the voice of the Reefer muttered, "Leave him be. You're as bad hurt as he is."

  "Oh, Reefer!" cried the girl. "Help me! Cliffs been badly hurt, and we've got to get him to Wisdom Creek." Then what he had said penetrated to her and she realized, surprised, that she was herself on the verge of unconsciousness. The smoky air made her lightheaded; she was coughing without knowing she was coughing; her bruised, racked body was beginning to hurt in earnest

  "How?" growled the Reefer.

  "I don't know!" She swayed dizzily, and wailed, "At least let's get him out in the open. He'll suffocate in here."

  The Reefer moved cautiously forward. Even in her misery, Molly could see that he had been hurt himself. His little eyes were sunk in pain; his yellow beard and mustache clotted with blood. He stood over Cliff Hawk, studying him Without touching him.

  "Can't," he said.

  "You've got to!"

  "Can't move him. If the sleeth was acting right—but he's not. Spooked fair. Not that I blame him," the Reefer rumbled. "We've chewed up pyropods out in the reefs, but we never tangled with a star before."

  "Star? What star?"

  "The sun, girl. That triple sunbolt. I think we've got ourselves in trouble."

  The sleeth, which had been hanging humming nearby, surged suddenly toward them. The Reefer flinched away, and the sleeth passed him by and darted out into the open ah- again. "You see, girl? Won't mind me a bit Don't know what's got into him."

  "Then you and I must lift him out!"

  The Reefer spat into the rubble. "You? Couldn't lift yourself, I'd say; you're worn out. And I can't manage him by myself. Kill him if I tried."

  "Then what can we do? Please, Reefer."

  The Reefer looked past her, into the denser smoke that was rolling toward them down the tunnel. "Only one thing I know," he growled. "Shoot him for you, if you like. Better than letting him burn."

  The rogue tired of the sleeth, thought for a moment of destroying it, then merely abandoned it to its own devices. It amused itself briefly by examining the state of those nonradiant assemblages of matter which had been so brutally tossed about by the sunbolts. It did not recognize them as instruments, machines, bits of human inventiveness; but it did see that they had been made functionless by the damage they had suffered, and that the chemical reactions now taking place in and among them were damaging them still further.

  It understood, after a meditation of some nanoseconds, that the course of the fire was carrying it toward those radiant masses which it had not yet learned to think of as living. It did, however, realize that the same sort of damage that had blasted the machines would harm them as well; and that one of the radiances was visibly fading in any case.

  It would be interesting, thought the infant rogue, to do something new. It had already removed the radiationless lump of matter from the radiant mass that was Cliff Hawk, using the sleeth as its proxy; that had been disappointing, nothing had happened.

  But, it wondered, what if it were to soak up some of that radiation?

  It was a notion that attracted the rogue. It did not know why. It had not yet learned to recognize hunger.

  Chapter 14

  First the robot required them to wait while it completed its minute of silent adoration, bobbing in its transflection field under the star-embossed dome of the church, its plasma rippling with the colors of devotion. Then it insisted on shepherding each of the children out of the building, locking the doors behind them, searching each empty room and corridor to make sure none had been forgotten. The church was homeostatic, of course; its receptors and proprioceptors could have taken care of all of that without attention. Then the robot proposed another delay while it transmitted an apparently endless message to Deneb; and all the while the boy, Rufe, was chattering with questions and eagerness, and Andy Quam's patience had long gone up in wrath. "Robot Inspector," he shouted, "if we're going, let's go! Molly Zaldivar may be in great danger, even dying!"

  The robot swung toward him. "Monitor Quamodian," it sang, "patience! I assure you she is alive."

  "How do you know?" he demanded.

  The robot was silent

  "Preacher," the boy whispered, "leave him alone. That's the way he is. Does things at his own pace. Say! Are you going to ride his back?"

  "Almalik! How do I know?" groaned Andy Quam. He glanced at his wrist timepiece, converted rapidly to Terrestrial equivalents, and hissed with exasperation. "In three hours Starday will be over. I won't need him then! But," he added painfully, tapping his foot on the tiled floor, "Molly needs me now."

  The robot sang, "Monitor Quamodian, please be silent I am having a most interesting discussion with three living companions on a planet of Deneb, eight robots and the star 61 Cygni."

  "No!" roared Quamodian in astonishment "You're not chattering away at a time like this! But you promised ..."

  The robot paused. Then, petulantly, "Oh, very well. Perhaps we may as Well go, since your noise is disturbing me. Please follow..."

  But it was too late for following; Andy Quam was already out the door, leaping toward the place where he had left his flyer, and the boy was trailing after him like a comet tail.

  "I'll lead the way," sang the robot, raising the amplification of its external vocalizers until the church facade echoed. "I have instructed your guiding apparatus that the hundred-meter limit may be waived, as part of my voluntary Starday activity, permitted under the compact ..."

  Even at ninety decibels Andy Quam didn't hear the end of the sentence; he was already in the flyer, the boy close behind. He slammed the door and shouted, "Let's go! Follow that robot!"

  "All right, Mr. Quamodian," cheerfully agreed the voice of his flyer. "I have my clearance now. Say! Wasn't it nice of the robot inspector to let you ..."

  "Shut up," snarled Andy Quam, "Just fly! I'm in a hurry."

  Sulkily the flyer lifted itself off the ground, spun round like a top and aimed itself toward the waiting ovoid that was the robot, hanging in its transflection fields a few meters over the Starchurch. Quamodian muttered a curse as he picked himself up from where the sudden gyration had thrown him, the boy in his lap; but he said nothing to the flyer. "You sit there," he ordered Rufe. "Strap yourself in. Almalik knows what this stupid flyer will do next."

  Aggrieved, the flyer began, "That's not fair. Mr. Qua ...”

  "I told you to shut up!"

  The flyer shut up, with an audible, and intentional click and rasp of static, and Andy Quam and the boy peered away. It was full night, with bright stars hanging over the hills, though to the west the angry red glare of the swollen, surly sun was still faintly visible, bloodying the sky over the horizon. Suddenly the boy grabbed Quamodian's arm.

  "There, preacher! See it? That's where the sunbolts struck."

  "I see," Andy Quam ground out. "Flyer, can't we goany faster?"

  Resentfully th
e voice clicked itself on. "No," it said, and clicked off again.

  "Now, stop that!" shouted Quamodian. "Why not?"

  The flyer relented. "The robot inspector has issued orders for us to follow it," it pointed out. "If I go any faster, it will be following us." Its voice mellowed as it settled down for a nice chat. "You see, Mr. Quamodian," it said, "it is still Starday, and the Robot Inspector does not wish to offend the peace of Starday with a sonic boom. This planet has a rather dense atmosphere, composed principally of oxygen (twenty per cent), nitrogen (eighty per cent), water vapor, carbon dioxide ..."

  "Skip that part! I know Earth's atmosphere!"

  "Of course. The point is, Mr. Quamodian, that at these parameters of altitude, temperature and barometric pressure, the sonic barrier occurs at just a bit over our present speed. So you see, no, Mr. Quamodian, we cannotgo any faster—and in any event," it added chattily, "we are there."

  The flyer deposited them on the side of the mountain; the robot inspector would not allow it any closer to the cave mouth. Andy Quam and the boy piled out, stared upward at the wreck. "Stars, preacher! They really got it!" whispered the boy. "I—I'm afraid Miss Zaldivar was hit."

  "We have no such information," sang the robot, humming overhead. "Please wait. I am scanning the area."

  But Andy Quam was past the point of caring what the robot inspector wanted. He thrust the boy aside and scrambled up the side of the hill, over uneven ground. He dodged around the wreck of a vehicle—then realized it must be Molly Zaldivar's and stopped, his heart in his mouth, until a frantic search convinced him she was not in it, nor anywhere around. Then up that hill again, his legs pumping, his heart pounding, his breath rasping.

  Although in truth, reason was saying in his ear, it was past the time for haste. Whatever destruction had been accomplished here, and it was vast, was long over. Coarse brown smoke oozed from the cave mouth above, and there was a stink of charred plastic and smoldering trash of a thousand kinds. But the fire had burned itself out. No one was in sight.

  He paused, his lungs seared with the violence of his breathing, and forced himself to shout, "Molly? Are you here?"

  The robot voice sang startlingly from just behind him, "She is fifty meters to your right, Monitor Quamodian, and just above us. But do not approach."

  Andy Quam was already on his way, scrambling around the lip of the little ledge before the cave mouth.

  "No wait! There are unpredictable entities about, Monitor Quamodian. A beast from space. And—" the singing whine of the robot faltered, "the rogue star. Allow me to study them!"

  Andy Quam snorted, but made no other answer. He slid on loose gravel, caught himself and ran on. It was a forty-foot drop, he had just escaped death, but he had not even noticed it in his haste to find Molly Zaldivar. But where was she?

  And then he stopped, sliding and waving his arms to keep from falling.

  Something like a giant black squid was leaping toward him, up over the rubble and the smoke, shimmering in a pale transflection field. In the dim starlight he caught a glimpse of great blind eyes staring at him, claws that could rip the guts out of a pyropod. "Monitor Quamodian!" sang the robot peremptorily from behind. "That creature is a sleeth. Do not, I caution you, approach it!"

  There was suddenly a sour, coppery taste of fear in Quamodian's mouth. A sleeth—now he recalled the stories about those space beasts, evolved for killing, powerful beyond human competition. If it took a mind to attack him there would be no hope.

  But it seemed to have no such intention. It hung there studying him, almost as though it had intelligence, even empathy, even understanding of his haste. Then, as though it were giving permission, it lifted up and away on its transflection fields and hung waiting, a hundred meters up, no longer between him and the little hummock where he could see shadowy forms.

  He spared the sleeth no more thought, but scrambled, slid and trotted the remaining distance and dropped to his knees beside the girl who had summoned him across half the known universe. "Molly!" he cried. "What's happened? What have they done to you?"

  He crooked an arm under her head, raised her tenderl'y.

  And her eyes opened.

  She looked at him wonderingly, like a child awakened from sleep. Her face was bloody, scratched, smudged with soot and filth. Her hair was flying loose as chaff on a breeze, and her clothes were shredded into rags. But suddenly and gloriously she smiled at him. "Why, it's little Andy Quam," she whispered. "I should have known you'd come."

  The smile lingered, briefly only. Then, without warning, her face twisted, the smile fled, she turned her head away. And Molly Zaldivar wept as though her heart would break.

  "Robot Inspector!" shouted Andy Quam. "Where is that fool machine?"

  From the side of a boulder, ten feet away, a small voice said querulously, "He's gone, preacher. Just zipped away. Almalik knows where. Didn't say a word."

  "What are you doing here, Rufe?" Andy Quam demanded, "You should stay in the flyer. Well, as long as you're here, give me a hand. Miss Zaldivar's been hurt. We've got to get her to help ..."

  A figure disengaged itself from the gloom and stepped closer. "No hurry about that, friend," it rumbled. "She lived through this much, she'll live a while yet."

  Quamodian jumped to his feet, ready for anything. He peered into the darkness, caught a glimpse of dulled yellow mustache, dingy yellow beard, a face that looked as though planets had rolled over it in their orbits. "Who the devil are you?" he barked.

  "Talk big for a little fellow, don't you?" rasped the voice. "No harm. No hard feelings." He stepped closer and Quamodian got the measure of the size of him, a giant of a man, but oddly subdued. "No one around here wants trouble," he added hi a mild bass growl. "Not any more. But the girl's all right, I got her out of the tunnel before she got hurt."

  Quam said suspiciously, "I heard something about a Reefer up here with Cliff Hawk, doing Almalik knows what foul work. Are you him?"

  "I am."

  "Then that's your sleeth watching us up there."

  The Reefer's mustache and beard parted company. In the gloom it looked almost as though he were preparing to bite Andy Quam, but it was only a soundless, humorless laugh. "Not mine any more," he declared. "His own by now, I expect Or—something's. But he won't take orders from me, not since the sun hit us." He turned aside from Andy Quam, bent for a moment over the girl. "She's all right," he said, straightening, but his voice didn't sound very sure. "You might be right about getting her out of here, though. Me too, if you don't mind."

  "Why is Molly Zaldivar crying like that?" Quamodian demanded. "If you've hurt her ..."

  The great head shook from side to side. "Nothing I did," he said. "I expect it's Cliff Hawk she's crying about."

  Quamodian pulled himself together; he had completely forgotten that Hawk was here! It was his fault, no doubt, that Molly Zaldivar had been hurt, endangered, terrified; yet there was still enough friendship left between Quamodian and Cliff Hawk for Andy Quam's voice to show real concern as he asked, "What about Hawk? Is he hurt?"

  "Not anymore."

  "What? You mean—dead?"

  The great voice tolled leadenly. "Not that either. Worse, I'd say. A lot worse. And if you want my opinion, we ought to get away from here before something worse happens to us, too."

  The Something that had been a random mass of stripped electrons, then an infant rogue star, then a seeking, learning, experimenting entity—and was now something else— "watched" the Reefer and Andy Quam gently lift the weeping girl, carry her down the slope to the flyer, hastily enter, slam the door and race away.

  With one part of itself, the rogue caused the sleeth to soar after them on its transflection fields, keeping the flyer effortlessly in view. It was not necessary to do that, of course. The rogue could easily have kept the flyer under observation with its probes, anywhere on the face of this planet and indeed almost anywhere in this solar system. (It had not yet had occasion to try to perceive anything farther away than th
e planets.)

  But it was no longer the simple creature it had been.

  When it had perceived that one of the organized radiant masses was in danger of extinction it had occurred to its still simple mind that it might be worth acquiring, and so it had acquired it. It turned out to be easy—a "stretch," a "grasp," a "hold." If it had been matter doing these things, one might have said that it was like the flow of an amoeba, englobing and digesting a tasty bit of food. Matter was not involved, and the forces that the rogue deployed did not lend themselves to description in three-space geometry.

  But the effect was the same.

  What had once been the persona of Cliff Hawk no longer inhabited its biological body. That body, in fact, was not merely dead but by now an unrecognizable lump of contorted charcoal, mixed with the other charred and destroyed litter in the burned-out tunnel that had once been Hawk's workshop.

  But something of him remained. It no longer had identity of its own, as an individual. But it was at least a perceptible fraction of that seething, restless entity that surged through the interstices of the mountain, that followed Andy Quam's flyer in the person of the sleeth, that had brought the wrath of the sun striking down on the summit of the hill, that was a new born rogue star loosed in the universe.

  It no longer thought" in simple urges and observations.

  Through the trained intelligence of its human component it now could observe, analyze, record—and act. It sensed the wonder of that far-off watcher.

  Chapter 15

  Technically it was still Starday; at the boy's suggestion Andy Quam ordered the flyer to take them to the Starchurch. "There'll be a crowd for late-night services," he said, "and likely enough nobody's going to be where you expect them, otherwise. I mean, even the hospital might not have a crew on duty."

  "Shocking," hissed Andy Quam. 'To make the Companionship of the Star a pagan ritual!"