The rogue paused, probing the dark space at the bottom of the pit. It found nothing hostile, nothing of organized organic matter. It was, in fact, a long-forgotten base of the scientific establishment of the Plan of Man; the rogue had no notion what that meant, and still less interest.
Careful with Molly, holding her cuddled against the great sleek belly of the sleeth, it dropped into the dark, drifting slowly downward past the vertical walls, until it dropped out of darkness into a cold, ghostly light. They were in a huge sphere hollowed in the rock at the base of the hill. Once multiplying neutrons had flashed through and saturated a few kilograms of fissionable metal, the nuclear explosion had blossomed and shrugged tens of thousands of tons of rock away, melting the inner shell and holding it suspended, like a balloon, long enough for the dome shape to form. As the pressure leaked away the plastic rock hardened, and what was left was this great ball-shaped cave.
The pale light came from all about it, especially from a pale cold sun of milky mist that hung at the center of the hollow. A spiral staircase, skeletal metal treads and a handrail, wound upward inside a spidery steel tower from the bottom of the globular cavity's floor to a railed platform half inside that high, pale cloud of opal light.
What was the hollow?
What was the light?
The rogue gave those questions no consideration. Tenderly it set Molly Zaldivar down on the bottom of the hollow and allowed her to waken.
To the extent that the nonhuman intelligence of the rogue was capable of satisfaction, it was now pleased with what it had done. It had removed the person of the oddly attractive organized bit of matter called Molly Zaldivar to a place where it would not be harmed by outside activities, and where its own attempts to establish communication could go on without interference. It was a place whose chemistry, pressure and temperature appeared to be compatible with life, as far as the rogue was able to judge.
Of course, the rogue was still comparatively young in time, lacking experience, and even with the absorbed patterns that were all that was left of Cliff Hawk embodied in its own systems, it had no very deep understanding of biological chemistry.
An attractive feature of the cave, for the rogue, was the presence of residual ionizing radiation, coming from the surrounding rock, the very atmosphere inside the bubble, above all from that queerly glowing misty cloud of light To the rogue this was a welcome source of energy to be tapped at need. It did not know that to Molly Zaldivar it was a death warrant.
When the girl woke up she cried out, peered wildly around the pit, saw the hovering form of the sleeth and tried to leap up and run away. There was nowhere to run. She slipped on the curving stone, black-stained and slick with seeping water, and lay there for a moment, sobbing.
The rogue attempted to form patterns of sound to communicate with her. It was difficult. Even using the transflection fields of the sleeth, modulating them as rapidly and precisely as it could, there was no handy substance for it to vibrate; all it could produce from the shaking of the metallic substance of the nearby tower and steps was a harsh metallic scream, incomprehensible to Molly, and frightening.
The rogue was, for some picoseconds, baffled. Its persona, the sleeth, had no vocal chords, no mechanisms at all for making signals in air. But the rogue was more than the sleeth.
It extended a quick plasma finger and probed the tower itself. There, rustless and fresh as the day it was installed, was a bank of instruments; the rogue hunted among them until it found one that possessed a flexible membrane. It spoke through it:
"Molly Zaldivar. You need not be afraid because I love you."
The girl's involuntary scream echoed strangely from the high rounded walls. The rogue floated patiently above her, waiting.
Trembling and unsteady on the slick slope, she climbed to her feet and stared up at it. With a great effort she whispered, "What are you?"
"Cliff Hawk is a part of me. Call me Cliff Hawk."
"I can't! What sort of monster are you?"
"Monster?" The rogue examined the term carefully, without comprehension. It activated the distant tinny speaker to say: "I am your lover, Molly Zaldivar."
The girl's face wrinkled strangely, but Molly had herself under control now. She smiled, a cold, white and terrible smile, ghastly in that shadowless light. "My lover!" she crooned. She paused in thought. “I am lucky," she said bravely. "What girl ever had so mighty a lover?"
The rogue could not recognize near-hysteria. It was puzzlingly aware that the radiance from the organized matter called Molly Zaldivar was not the gentle, warming glow of rose or pearl that it had wanted to evoke; but it knew far too little of human beings to comprehend what Molly was trying to do. In its sleeth body it dropped gently toward her, meeting her as she rose, and allowed her quivering fingers to stroke the fine, dense fur.
"If I love you," she whispered tremulously, "will you help me?"
Powerful floods of energy thundered through the rogue, mighty and irresistible; it was a species of joy, a sort of elation. The rogue allowed its sleeth body to drop to Molly's feet
"I'll give you everything," it swore through the distant tinny speaker.
The girl was trembling violently, but allowed the vast black talons to draw her quivering body against the fur. The rogue sensed her terror and tried to reassure her. "We are safe here, Molly Zaldivar. No enemy can reach us."
Her fear did not abate. "I fell in the water," she whispered. "I'm damp and cold ..."
The rogue made the sleeth's fur warm for her; but still she was afraid.
"I'm a human being," she whimpered. "I'll be hungry. Thirsty. I must have food or I'll die!"
From above them the tinny rattle of the overtaxed speaker shouted: "I'll bring food, Molly Zaldivar! I'll bring all the things you need. But we must stay here, where we are safe."
The rogue arranged the pit for her comfort, dried the rock with a searing beam from the sleeth's transflection fields, dragged down a cushion from the tower to make her a resting place. It put her shivering body on it, and reached into her mind to erase her haunting terror. Presently she slept.
The rogue went foraging in the body of the sleeth. It rose to the top of the pit, squeezed its way through the long passages, climbed into the night. It needed only moments to arrow the score of miles to the nearest human dwelling. It dropped out of the dark onto the little house, crushed a four-legged creature that barked and howled at it, ripped through a wall and seized a refrigerated box filled with human food.
The little box in its talons, it dropped again into the side of the mountain, and paused to consider.
Molly Zaldivar had been in an agony of terror; that much it realized. Why? The rogue, which shared with all intellects the homomorphic trait of considering itself the proper matrix on which all other creatures should be modeled, could not believe that it was its own self which frightened her; no doubt it was its proxy, the sleeth. From the dim stirrings of Cliff Hawk's mind it realized that those great blind eyes, those vengeful talons were likely to be frightening to smaller creatures. It determined to leave the sleeth and visit her in another form.
Under the lip of the cave, where the rogue had abandoned it, the hulk of the robot lay tossed aside. The rogue entered into it, flexed its transcience fields, lifted it into space and, bearing the refrigerated box of food, retraced the long winding route, sank down through 'the frozen light of that misty opal sun ...
Molly was awake.
The rogue wearing the egg-shaped body of the robot, brought itself up sharply and hung there just out of sight, the food box dangling from its effectors. Molly was no longer stretched out asleep on the cushions it had brought for her. She was in the spidery metal tower, crouched before the bright, ancient control panel, fumbling frantically with the radio. The rogue listened through the ears of the robot:
"Calling Monitor Quamodian!" the girl whimpered. "Oh, please! Andy! Anyone!"
The rogue knew that the radio was dead; it hung there, letting her speak, listeni
ng.
"Molly Zaldivar calling Monitor QuamodianI Andy, please listen. I'm trapped in a cave. That thing—the rogue star, whatever it is—has me trapped here, because it says— it says it loves me! And it won't let me go."
Her head fell forward, her hand still on the useless switch of the radio. She sobbed, "Oh, please help me. It's a hateful, horrible thing—a monster. I—I tried to deceive it, to make it let me go by pretending to—to like it. But it won't..."
The rogue, in the persona of the broken transcience robot, sank slowly toward her, burdened with the box of food that it had brought for her. It was struggling in its complex mind with concepts for which it had no names, and little understanding. Betrayal. Anger. Revenge.
Chapter 19
The Reefer's deep-set eyes glowed like a robot's plasma patch. "Make this thing move, Quamodian!" he roared. "I want that critter for my trophy room!"
Andy Quam hissed in annoyance, "Be still, Reefer! I'm not interested in your game collection. It's Molly Zaldivar's life that concerns me." He bent to the panel of his flyer. He was indeed making it move, as fast as he could, cutting out the automatic pilot circuits and racing the craft along on manual override. It was a flimsy enough bolt to hurl at a creature that ranked with stars for majesty and might— a simple atmosphere flyer, with a few puny transflection beams that could be used as weapons. But it was all he had.
They arrowed through the chill morning air, along the road toward the misty blue ridge. Over the Reefer's hill a smudge of smoke still lifted and wandered away with the wind. Quamodian's eyes were on it when his transceiver clicked into life. For a moment the speakers hummed and crackled, but there was no voice. Andy Quam scowled with annoyance and leaned to listen.
"What is it?" growled the Reefer, brows knotted under their blond tangle of hair.
"I don't know," said Andy Quam. "Nothing. Listen."
But there was no voice, only the questing carrier sounds.
For a moment Andy Quam thought it might have been Molly, and the thought lit his mind with a living Image of her red-glinting hair, her haunting oval face, her laughing eyes. But it was not her voice that came from the speaker.
Something was trying to talk to him. An uncanny voice —slow, toneless, laborious. It chilled him with alarm.
"What's that?" demanded the Reefer again. "Quamodian, what are you doing?"
"Be still!" Andy Quam touched the dial, trying to bring the sound in more clearly. It was not a robot's clipped and penetrating whine. It lacked the mechanical precision of an automatic translator. The scattered sounds he made out were not from the universal signal system of the inter-galactic society. They were Earth-English. Yet they were somehow alien, monstrously inhuman. It was not a message; it was more like some great, tortured soliloquy, a voice that rambled on and on, brokenly and angrily. The distorted and intermittent signal had no clear message, but it filled Andy Quam with fear.
Climbing slightly, he pushed the flyer to transsonic speed. The narrow black ribbon of road unreeled. Higher hills flashed beneath him. A building flickered. The leaning smudge of smoke was a momentary blur.
Something crept along the road below him.
The Reefer caught Andy Quam's shoulder. "It's that machine!" he bellowed. "An old Plan of Man earth-mover—the rogue's using it. Blast it, man! Drive him out into the open!"
Quamodian shrugged the great paw off his arm, and bent to stare down at the road. It was huge and clumsy, lumbering ponderously toward the crest of the ridge on grotesque old caterpillar tracks. It waved claw-ended handling forks around its angular, orange-painted cab.
"Flyer," ordered Andy Quam, "pot that thing for me."
There was a faint deep hiss of departing missiles as the flyer obediently flung out a burst of landing flares at the machine. They were not meant as weapons but would do a weapon's work; they missed, stitching a row of pits across the pavement in front of the machine.
"Sorry, Monitor Quamodian," the flyer apologized mournfully. "I'm not really designed for this sort of work."
"Get its tracks!" Quamodian ordered. "Use all the flares if you have to. Stop it!"
The machine plowed recklessly through the shower of flame. Quamodian spun the flyer around, returned it, passing low over the machine; a new spray of flame darted out toward it, struck it, and clung. The machine slid sidewise, seeming to float on that pool of fire, and Andy Quam saw a broken track flap wildly.
The machine stopped. At a word, the flyer took over automatic control and hovered; the two men looked down.
The machine lay, silent and broken, on the pitted road, while choking fumes rose from the remnants of the flares. Andy Quam turned to the Reefer and demanded, "I've shot it up for you. It doesn't seem to have accomplished a thing. Now what?"
"Now go on!" roared the Reefer. "You've just killed one of -the rogue's tools, we haven't touched the beast itself yet. Goon and dig it out!"
Quamodian shrugged, was about to order the flyer on...
The klaxon hooted. Red signals blossomed in holographic solidity on the panel. The bubble marker circled a flying object, coming low and fast from the woods behind. It shone with a pale but strange greenish radiation.
"It is the space creature called the sleeth, Monitor Quamodian," reported the flyer. "Indications are that it is under the control of the intellectic being you seek."
The Reefer was briefer and more furious. "That's my critter!" he howled. "Careful! It can eat up a dozen like us any day!"
"Careful!" growled Andreas Quamodian. "Let your animal be careful! Flyer, got any flares left?"
"Two racks, Monitor Quamodian," the machine reported.
"Smash that thing with them!"
The jet leaped away—but, curiously, the flares failed to detonate. Their tracer trails ended in faint red sparks near the oncoming object.
"The sleeth's blanketing them," snarled the Reefer. "You'll have to do better than that!"
"Fire what's left!" shouted Andy Quam, and slapped down the manual override, taking control of the little flyer's transflector beams. He spun them into high, reached out with their pale, deadly fingers toward the sleeth which was growing ever larger before him, the second flight of flares dimming to darkness just like the first.
A sudden lurch threw 'him against the control panel. "Mal-function, Monitor Quamodian," the flyer jerked out. "Pow-er fail-ure... "
The propulsion field was failing even as the reaching transflection beams were paling and dying. The greenish glow of the sleeth brightened suddenly; the flyer's Klaxon tried lo blare, succeeded in rattling a crash alert.
"Hold on!" bawled Quamodian. "We're going to hit..."
And they did; they hit hard, the emergency shields failing to function; hard enough to jolt both men like dolls knocked over in a coconut shy. The sleeth soared over them and halted. It was a terrifying sight, horse-sized, catlike, tapered muscles bulging under the sleek black fur. Blazing green, enormous and cold, its eyes bulged blindly out at them.
The Reefer pulled himself together and croaked, "They —they can kill us, Quamodian. Those eyes!"
Quamodian didn't need the warning. There was something in those eyes that was reaching into his mind, freezing his will, icing his spine and muscles. He struggled to make his limbs obey him, and readied for the little hand weapon he kept under the seat of the flyer; but the icy, penetrating numbness had gone too far. He touched the gun, almost caught it, dropped it and sent it skittering across the tipped floor of the flyer; and the sleeth hung there, staring blindly down through the faint shimmer of its transflection field, just touching a fallen tree with one horrendous claw ...
The great blind eyes seemed suddenly smaller. The frightful currents of cold that had drenched Andy Quam's body seemed somehow to recede. He could not move, he was not his own master any longer; but at least, he thought, he was not dying helplessly anymore; for some reason the creature had halted the poisonous flow of radiation that had drained the flyer's power banks and nearly drained their lives.
<
br /> The Reefer gasped hoarsely, "Knew it! Knew it couldn't kill its master." And incredibly, haltingly that big yellow-haired bear of a man was forcing himself to stand erect, lurching with agonizing slowness to the door, dropping to the ground and willing himself to stand erect again, next to the great sleek bulk of the creature from space.
And the forgotten radio speaker of the flyer abruptly rattled harshly and spoke: "Go away, Quamodian. I give you your life—but go!" It was the voice he had heard before, inhuman, unalive, terrifying. Andy Quam fell back, finally drained of the last of his strength. He saw the great talons of the sleeth curve protectingly around the Reefer, clasp him and hold him; saw the great creature surge into the air and away, carrying the Reefer as it disappeared with fantastic speed toward the gap in the hills where the faint smudge of smoke still hung.
And then he felt his flyer rock slightly, twitch, and then slowly and painfully lift itself into the sky. It was not at his order that it flew, but its destination was not in question, It rose to a few hundred feet, turned and headed back for the town.
The hunters had failed. One was now himself a captive, being borne at transsonic speeds toward the cave where the rogue flexed its new powers, practiced at its new repertory of emotions and grew. One was helplessly returning the way he had come. And the girl they had tried to rescue was farther from Andy Quam's help than the farthest star.
Of one thing he was sure: he had been defeated. His mere human strength had not even sufficed to get him past the rogue's puppet, the sleeth. He would have no chance against the might of the rogue itself.
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