He disregarded them, quickly inspected his flyer. Its homeostatic devices had repaired the damage, restored •the racks of flares. Not that they would be needed, he hoped. Or would be of any use if they were. But they were better than nothing.
"We're all set," be announced. "I guess."
Monitor Kwai Kwich said, with offensive patience, "Then can we not begin?"
Quamodian hunched grimly over the controls and ordered the flyer into the air. The sun was in his eyes as they spun and rose. Nearly doubled in diameter, its red disk was now so dull that his naked eyes could watch it without discomfort. Dark splotches marred it. He thought of saying something to the girl, but decided against it—although she, a stranger here, might not realize there was anything odd about its appearance. Let her find out, he thought. It didn't matter anyway. All that mattered was that he now ,had help—a kind of help—against the rogue. s They arrowed south across the narrow lake and the first dark foothills, the multiple green citizen and the pinkly glowing cloud following effortlessly behind. The predator citizen with the enormous fangs lolled silently on the padded seats behind Andy Quam and the girl, while Rufe sat on the floor beneath it, looking apprehensively at its teeth. There was a continuing buzz of conversation on the Iran-science bands coming through his earpiece, but Quamodian disregarded it. He was not interested in their opinions of his flyer, himself, or the planet that had spawned humanity. All he wanted from them was their help.
It was dark as they reached the hill that held the cave; the sun was still some distance above the horizon, but its dulled rays gave only a looming twilight in the sky, very little on the ground about the cave mouth. He circled the dark mouth of the cave, searching for the sleeth or any hostile thing. There was nothing. All the landscape held that ominous tinge of red, but nothing moved on it.
Flying warily, he approached the rubble of the demolished door.
"Deserted," sang the tiny chorus of the grass-green spirals. "We detect nothing. Another entrance exists lower down."
Senior Monitor Clothilde Kwai Kwich glanced hesitantly at Andy Quam. "There is a good deal of destruction here," she admitted.
"I told you!"
"Yes. Perhaps there has been an error."
"Lower down!" chanted the spirals. "Other indications! Worth investigating! ' And the soft whisper of the cottony pink cloud citizen sighed:
"Forces have been deployed in the lower area of considerable magnitude. Forces still exist in being ot unusual characteristics."
Senior Monitor Kwai Kwich said, almost apologetically, "We should investigate."
"Right," rasped Quamodian, and sent the flyer spinning down around the mountain, searching for the lower entrance. The pink cloud citizen was there before him, hovering like a puff of steam at the spout of a kettle before the tunnel mouth.
"You lead," it sighed. "Dispersed matter like myself maybe vulnerable."
But Quamodian had not waited for permission. He 'thrust the flyer into the tight throat of the tunnel, probing with its searchlights for the sleeth, for Molly Zaldivar, for any trace. All he found was the tightening spiral passage itself, lined with evidences of destruction. "Forces of great magnitude," chanted the spirals, whirling about a burst wall, a ripped stanchion. "Evidence of transflection energies. Evidence of plasma activity."
Rufe, forgetting his fear of the long-toothed citizen behind him, stood leaning over Quamodian's shoulder. "Gee, preacher," he whispered, thrilled. "Look at that! Something really racked this place up!"
There was no doubt about that. Staring about as the flyer slid smoothly forward on its transflection fields, Quamodian saw that what had happened in this tiny enclosed space had involved more than merely chemical energies. For the first tune he really understood what was meant by a "rogue star;" tiny though the creature had been, less than a gram in weight at first, it had commanded forces capable of thrusting steel and rock out of its way liketissue.
The long-snouted predator citizen hf ted its muzzle and howled 'a sentence; the translator in Quamodian's ear rendered it as: "Be careful! Monitor Kwai Kwich, should we not report to Almalik before going on?"
The girl bit her Up, was about to speak; but Quamodian overrode her. "No!" he rasped. "You have waited too long already. Molly Zaldivar may be dying—may even be—" he did not finish the sentence.
Then they were at the center of the spiral. Quamodian glanced down, swallowed, looked at the girl—then tipped the flyer down into the central shaft.
Cautiously they dropped down the shaft, Quamodian's flyer first, the multiple grass-green citizen second, the pink cloud hovering timorously behind. Below them a misty, opalescent disk of pale light expanded slowly into a sphere, and they entered the great round chamber below the hill.
"Astonishing," breathed Clothilde Kwai Kwich.
The tardy cloud citizen sighed fearfully: "The energies are considerable! I am reluctant to come closer."
"Stay, then," grunted Quamodian, staring about. "I wonder—what is it? Do you have any information?"
The girl shook her head. "Some ancient military installation, I suppose. Perhaps from the days of the Plan of Man. The records no longer exist for much of that period. But that fusion fire!" She pointed at the cloud of opal mist that hung above the high steel platform. "What a source of energy! I almost believe that you are right, Monitor Quamodian. With power like that, one might really attempt to create a star!"
Andy Quam chuckled sourly, but did not answer. Hands sweating on the flare controls, he dived to a foot or less above the water-stained floor of the sphere. The ripped and flattened orange-painted cab, the dismembered motor and tracks of the handling machine gave him an unpleasant start; something had thrown them about in rage, it seemed. And there were other fragments there among the torn and broken metal bits. A primitive white-painted food refrigerator? Quam did not recognize it at first, did not understand its purpose even then—but finally shook with the realization of what it meant: Molly Zaldivar had been here. The food could have been for no one but her.
But it too had been dropped or flung; the door was twisted ajar, small packets of food were sprinkled across the wreckage. And beyond them, what was that crushed black shape that lay athwart the grating that attempted to carry seepage away?
Clothilde Kwai Kwich recognized it first: "A robot inspector!" she gasped. "Then—then it's all true!"
Rufe said complainingly, 'True? Gosh, Miss Kwai Kwich, what've we been telling you all along? Of course it's true!"
It was too late for Andy Quam to feel triumph. He hardly heard the exchange. Eyes narrowed, thoughtful, he was darting the flyer's beams into every section of the vast sphere. There was nothing else to be seen. The wreckage on the floor, the spidery steel tower and its ominously glittering mist of fusion energy, the water-stained walls themselves. Nothing more.
Molly Zaldivar had been here, he was sure of that. But she was here no longer. Where had she gone?
The nervous sigh of the cloud citizen interrupted him. "These energies," it whispered despairingly, "they are ionizing my gases, interfering with my particulate control. I must return to the surface."
"Go ahead," said Quam absently.
"Perhaps we should do the same," bayed the predator in the back seat. "This is dangerous!"
"In a minute," said Andy Quam. He was observing, remembering, analyzing. Dispassionately he realized, with a small surface part of his brain, that from the moment Molly Zaldivar's message had reached him, galaxies away, he had been allowing his love and his emotions to drive him. His carefully trained reasoning faculties, the trait of analysis and synthesis which was so basic a part of his indoctrination as a monitor, had been ignored.
But now he was using them again, and a picture was unfolding under his eyes, Cliff Hawk, rebel, adventurer, skilled transcience expert. The Reefer, callous misogynist The two of them together in this place, given these energies, the months and even years of time when they had been left unsupervised.
It was all quite logical,
he noted abstractly. Hawk's scientific hunger; the Reefer's loathing for humanity and, above all, the fusorian brotherhood; the people, the place, the facilities. They had used them to create a rogue, and in return the rogue had thrust them aside, or killed them, Or ignored them.
But it had not ignored Molly Zaldivar.
The rogue was no longer present; its energies would have been detected by any of the citizens in the party. It had gone. And wherever it had gone, Quamodian felt certain, there would be Molly Zaldivar as well.
The girl monitor said hesitantly, "Andy. I mean, Monitor Quamodian ..."
"Eh? What is it?"
"Perhaps the other citizens are right. I—I don't like the look of this place."
Quamodian frowned. Then a fearsome suspicion crossed his mind. "Clothilde! What was it the cloud said?"
"You mean the cit..."
"Yes! About the energies!"
"Why, it said they were ionizing gases. It has returned to the open air."
"Flyer!" cried Andy Quam. "Analyze those radiations! Quickly!"
The flyer said sulkily. "Thought you'd never ask. Sustained lethality, eight times permissible levels. Safe period at this distance, one hour. We have now been exposed to them for nineteen minutes, and I was going to give a warning alert in sixty seconds."
"Get us out of here!" ordered Andy Quam. "Fast!"
The flyer bucked, spun, drove upward toward the tunnel. Quamodian stared out the viewplate. The glowing deadly sphere of light flashed past his field of vision, then the tight spiral of the tunnel walls; but he did not see them.
Andy Quam was seeing something quite different, and far worse.
The radiation from that glittering mist of nuclear fire that had flamed for ages in the spherical cave was deadly.
The flyer's instruments had measured its intensity. They were reliable. Quamodian had installed and checked them himself. If they said that the maximum safe dose was one hour, then there was no question, give or take a minute or so, allowing for possible error.
It was not Quamodian's own safety that concerned him, nor Monitor Clothilde Kwai Kwich's, nor the boy's.
How long had Molly Zaldivar been held prisoner in that cave, soaking in those deadly rays?
Quamodian's calculation could be little more than a guess. But it was eighteen hours or more since she had been stolen from the little bedroom of Rufe's house. It was not sensible to suppose that less than half of that time had been spent in the cave.
And if it was in fact true that she had been there that long, or anything close to that long, Molly Zaldivar was already as good as dead.
Chapter 24
They burst out into the cold night air. And even in his fear and anguish Andy Quam stared incredulously at the sky.
Overhead lay a lacy net of blue and violet fire. Great pale slow lightnings of color writhed through the heavens, soundlessly and immense; they were so bright that trees cast shadows on the rocky hillside, blurred shadows of color that moved with the supple shifting of the aurora.
The carnivorous citizen thrust its long muzzle forward, past Quamodian's cheek. He felt its hot, faintly fishy breath on his ear as it whined softly, "This spectacle does not appear usual. Can you explain it?"
Quamodian said simply, "I think our own sun has gone rogue. I don't know why."
"But that's impossible," cried the girl. "Sol is not an intellectic body! No trace of volition has ever been detected!"
Quamodian spread his hands, indicating the violence of the aurora. "Then you explain it," he said.
The distant chorus of the grass-green spirals chimed in, "We have recorded reflected intensity of stellar emissions. They have approximately doubled. Three conjectures: One, that this star is prenova; improbable. Two, that previous soundings to determine intellect in this star have been in error; improbable. Three, that it has acquired volition."
"You mean it's gone rogue?" the girl demanded. "What probability do you give that?"
"No assessment," chanted the spirals. "No known data for comparison."
"Report to Almalik!" ordered the girl "You, citizen! You have transcience facilities!"
But the spirals replied, "Our signals from Almalik are disordered. We cannot comprehend their meaning. Nor can we receive acknowledgment of our own reports."
Quamodian had had enough. "Forget Almalik!" he ordered. "And never mind about the sun, either; we can worry about that later. Right now I'm worried about a girl. A human girl named Molly Zaldivar. Perhaps sheis somewhere nearby, with or without the rogue intellect. Can any of you detect her?"
Silence.
"Try!" roared Andy Quam. Then, sulkily, the predator citizen lifted its muzzle.
"For some time now," it bayed softly, the transcience receptor in Quamodian's ears converting it into words he could understand, "I have registered the presence of quarry on that far hill."
"Quarry?"
"An ancestral trait," the citizen explained. "It is a particular refinement of chemosampling in ambient air. What you call the sense of smell. But—is not Senior Monitor Kwai Kwich 'human girl' and are not you 'human male,' Monitor Quamodian?"
"Certainly! What about it?"
"Then this quarry cannot be what you seek. It is male. And it is severely injured."
They' skimmed over the pitted road, dropped toward the hillside where the carnivore citizen had scented a man. Its sense of smell had not been hi error.
The man was the Reefer, huddled against the trunk of a bent evergreen tree. He looked gray and ill in the flickering colored lights of the aurora. One arm, badly swollen, was in a sling. He gazed up at the flyer apathetically as Quamodian jumped out.
"I want a word with you," Andy Quam shouted.
The Reefer growled hoarsely, "Make it short I'm a sick man."
"Where is the rogue? Where is Molly Zaldivar?"
The Reefer shifted his weight awkwardly, flinching from the movement of his arm. "Gone. I don't know where."
"When?"
The Reefer shook his head wearily. Pale with pain, he pulled a short black stick from his pocket, gnawed the end off it and began chewing grimly. "A root that grows on the reefs," he said, his voice almost inaudible. "Filthy to chew, I guess, but it eases pain. It has always been my personal substitute for Almalik. When did the rogue go? I don't know. It dumped me here this afternoon. Couple hours ago something went on over there—" he gestured weakly at the hill that lay over the cave, "and I saw something bright in the sky."
"The aurora?" Quamodian demanded.
"No! That's been going on since dark. This was something else. I think—" his voice trailed off; he shook himself and finished, "I think the rogue is out in space. Maybe took the girl with him."
Monitor Clothilde Kwai Kwich interrupted. "Andy! This man is dying. I suggest we get him to a hospital."
The Reefer grinned painfully, working his lips for a second, then jetted a stream of black liquid at a rock. "Good idea, miss," he said. "Only it's too late for the hospital. I'm going to the church."
"Gosh, preacher!" breathed Rufe, wide-eyed behind Andy Quam in the shifting aurora lights. "Never thought he'd say that!"
"Never would," rumbled the Reefer, "if I had the choice. Knew it was coming. Your robot inspector told me weeks ago, 'Malignant fusorian virus,' he said, and acted like he was enjoying it—much as a robot can enjoy anything. And he said the Visitants could clear it up, but no doctor could. Expect he's right."
"So you're joining Almalik," said Andy Quam.
The Reefer shrugged bitterly, and winced from his slung arm. "I've tamed my last sleeth. My free life's ended." A spasm of pain whitened his face beneath the scars and the dirty beard. "Don't think I like it, Quamodian! But half my body's on fire."
"Good!" cried Andy Quam. "That's fine! Now, if you want a ride to Wisdom Creek, you can start paying thefare!"
The boy gasped, and even Clothilde Kwai Kwich darted a sudden incredulous look at Quamodian, The Reefer licked his lips, staring at Quamodian. "What're you ta
lking about? I'm too sick for jokes!"
"That's good, because I'm not joking. I'm going to leave you here to rot—unless you make it worth my while to take you in."
"How?"
"Easiest thing in the world," Quamodian said tightly. "Let's just start by telling me the truth about what you and Cliff Hawk were doing."
Under the many-hued gleam of the auroras the Reefer's eyes glowed whitely, furiously. If he had had the transcience powers of the sleeth, Andreas Quamodian would have been stunned or dead in that moment; there was madness in his look, and a rage that could destroy planets.
But it passed. The Reefer looked away. His jaws worked; he gulped, spat a thin black stream of the juice of his root and said, "Why not? Makes no difference any more, does it? After all, the Visitants will soon be burrowing in my brain and exposing all my secrets for Almalik to know. Might as well tell you now as have you find out that way —but let me sit down in your flyer, Quamodian. I'm telling the truth about being sick."
Andy Quam opened the bubble for him, and painfully the huge man sank into the cushions. The autonomic circuits of the flyer compensated for his weight and he sat bobbing slightly, looking down on them.
"Truth is," he said, "Cliff Hawk was only working for me. Insolent pup! I knew he thought he was pretty high and mighty, chasing after pure knowledge and all that stuff. But all I wanted was a cure for this virus. Ever since I picked it up on the reefs, more'n twenty years ago, it's been sleeping there inside me. I didn't mean for it to kill me, Quamodian. But I didn't mean to take on the Visitants, either."
He soothed his splinted arm with rough, blunt fingers, staring up at the many-hued sky. "I did like some of the things the Visitants had to offer, of course. Physical immortality, just about. A cure for this fusorian poison. Power—the rogues were my way of getting those things, without letting those parasites into my body. Hawk was just my engineer."
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