Fugitive of the Stars

by Edmond Hamilton

  Fife said, “Strip him.” His face, at this moment, was not even remotely human.

  By the time they had his uniform off him the man had opened his eyes again and was staring with a kind of helpless horror at the two hairy nine-foot giants who were holding him and the other aliens that were around. Fife's eyes were brilliant. He held the gun Ewan had given him in his hand.

  "Stand away,” he said.

  Horne casually raised the gun that he had taken from the guard. He said in a mild voice, “Why do you want to do that? You could be throwing away a lot of important information."

  He thought for a minute that Fife was going to try killing him, but then Fife relaxed and let the gun fall to his side.

  "You may be right,” he said. “Very well, we'll see what we can find out from him. D'quar?"

  The purple gargoyle came and squatted down beside the guard. He held up one huge hand and ostentatiously extruded from his finger ends, one by one, claws that would have been useful to a tiger. Then he laid his hand gently on the guard's chest, just below the throat.

  "Ask him whatever you want,” Fife said to Horne. “D'quar will see that you get the answers."

  Before Horne could speak, Ewan had pushed forward and bent over the man. “What's behind those doors? What are the Vellae doing inside this mountain?"

  The guard looked up at him with bitter contempt. “I know you,” he said. “I've seen your picture often in the telecasts. You used to be Morivenn's errand boy.” He glanced around at the hostile alien faces bent over him. “So this is what you people are doing now that Moriverin is dead. Isn't this pretty low for a human, even a Federationist, to sink?"

  Ewan said, “That doesn't answer my question."

  "I'm not going to answer it.” The guard's face was set now in the desperate hardness of a man who knows he is going to die and is determined to give his killers no satisfaction. “The doors are there. If you want to know what's behind them, go and look for yourself."

  Horne pushed Ewan aside. “We can talk about that later. You men go back and forth to Rillah, don't you? You know most of what goes on?"

  "We do."

  "What do you know about Ardric?"

  "Ardric?” the man, surprised. “Why, he—” Then he broke off and his eyes became wary. “He's dead. I thought everyone knew that."

  Fife said softly. “D'quar—

  One of those sharp claws moved and hooked itself in the man's throat and began slowly to contract, tearing a little as it went. The guard cried out once — and then shut his teeth tight together.

  Horne said, “You're just wasting your time, D'quar. You won't get him to talk that way."

  "Shut up,” snarled Fife. “He'll talk or we'll tear him to pieces. Go on, D'quar, tear him!"

  Horne shook his head. “You're smart enough, Fife, but you don't know men. This one's all angry and nerved up to die and he isn't going to tell us anything. Why? Because he figures he'll die anyway and so the hell with us. On the other hand, if he had a choice—"

  "What kind of a choice?"

  "A choice of life or death. If he doesn't talk, he dies. If he does talk, he lives. Don't be stubborn, Fife. What's one Vellae against a chance for home and freedom?"

  Fife looked around at the others.

  Lurgh awkwardly shifted his giant bulk and said hesitantly, “I think the human is right."

  There were no dissenting voices.

  For the second time, Fife mastered himself. “We agree, then. If the man talks, he lives."

  D'quar sighed, as with regret, and removed his hand.

  Horne said to the guard, “Well?"

  He watched while the man's hard resolve crumbled away now that its foundation was removed. There was nothing, he thought, more weakening than hope.

  "I can start you off easy,” Horne said, “by telling you we know Ardric is alive. We were fighting him only a day or two ago."

  "Fighting?” the guard said. “They kept that secret enough. I knew Ardric was gone—"

  He took a deep breath and plunged.

  "Ardric has been working in the Project ever since he came back to Skereth."

  A savage thrill, almost of triumph, sprang up in Horne. He looked at the others and said in a thin harsh voice like a cutting blade, “We won't have to go to Rillah."

  "Right here in the Project?” said Fife. “Doing what?"

  "Well.” said the man, “he's primarily a spaceman and doesn't know a thing about the Project, but he is used to giving orders. So his father put him in charge of the whole Project guard. Now he tells us how to do the work we've been doing for years."

  Fife was figuring time. Finally he said grudingly, “We all escaped before that, so you may be telling the truth."

  "I think he is,” said Horne. “If a man wanted to hide for a while, a man who was supposed to be dead, where would he find a better place than this?"

  He bent down beside the guard. “I want Ardric. How can I get to him?"

  The man looked at him, startled by the cold intensity of his manner. “I don't think there is any way,” he said. “He lives and works in the Administration Center, the heart of the Project. Even if you wore my uniform you wouldn't have much chance to get near him, and even if you did they'd kill you before you could get away. These others—” He looked around at the aliens and shook his head. “No chance at all."

  "Are you sure of that?” Horne said. “Think hard. And remember what depends on it."

  Sweat came out on the man's face. He was more frightened now, when he had seen a glimmer of hope, than when he had been sure he was going to die.

  "I don't know,” he said desperately. “Please, I can't tell you a way if there isn't one!"

  "Try,” said Horne. “Take plenty of time."

  The man looked around, trapped and despairing. His eyes fell on Yso and his lips half parted as though he were going to make an appeal to her, but then he seemed to recognize her as Morivenn's daughter and the hope in his eyes died.

  Fife sauntered a step closer. The aliens began to edge in, and D'quar stood absently looking down at his own talons, and all the unhuman faces stared in a hungry way. Horne could guess what the guard was feeling, as he looked up at those unhuman faces and thought of how these slaves had been treated.

  The man's face became agonized with effort, and his voice came in a rattling rush.

  "If you go down through the access galleries you'll meet other guards, and you'll have to pass through many levels where work is still going on and there are even more guards to watch over the slaves. So that's impossible. You just couldn't get past without being seen and challenged. So the only possible way there might be would be if you went through the Project itself—"

  "Behind the doors?"

  "Yes, but listen, if you got all the way to a main-ganglion relay station and from there to the control center in Administration, there would still be only a handful of you against the Project guards, and any slave caught in Administration would be shot on sight. So there isn't any way I can see—"

  "Just a minute,” Horne said. “Main ganglion? What's that? What are the Vellae building in this mountain?"

  An expression of haunting fear crept into the man's face against his will but too strong to be denied.

  "A brain,” he said. “A huge, great brain."

  CHAPTER XIII

  For a minute there was complete silence in the gallery. Then Fife said, wonderingly, “A brain? A living, thinking brain?"

  "Not living, like that,” said the guard. “Its a giant electronic computer, one of those that can calculate so far beyond human powers that they're called ‘brains.’ This one is the biggest there ever was."

  Yso said slowly, “No wonder they killed my father. No wonder they'd kill anybody who tried to get Skereth into the Federation."

  She looked desperately from Horne to Ewan and then to the aliens and Fife's clever unhuman face.

  "We thought it was just their profits and power they were afraid of losing, but it's
more. My father thought so and he was right. If Skereth entered the Federation, the Vellae leaders couldn't hope to hide what they're doing here. They'd go to prison for it as a menace to the peace of the whole galactic community."

  Fife shook his head. “But why?"

  Ewan said grimly, “Federation law forbids any world or any government or any private interest to construct an electronic calculating machine of more than a certain capability. They can have as many brains as they need to conduct their business, but they must not be linked together, and they must not exceed the fixed limit. If they do, the Federation considers it an act of war. It will take punitive action against any world, in the Federation or out of it, that endangers the rest of the galaxy by building such a dangerous thing."

  The full significance of what the guard had said more or less escaped Horne, who was a spaceman and not much concerned with the complexities of galactic law outside his own sphere. But he was impressed by the reactions of Yso and Ewan, who were openly horror-struck. And he remembered talk about past trouble with such brains.

  Fe asked, “Why is it so dangerous? A weapon I could understand, but an electronic brain…"

  "It is a weapon,” Ewan said. “Potentially, the most dangerous of all.” He paused, as though searching for a way to explain. “Look, a spear is an extension of a man's hand and far more dangerous, isn't it? Well, an electronic brain is an extension of a man's mind — really the combined minds of many men."

  That was clear enough. Horne nodded, and Ewan went on. “Theoretically, it could be extended to such proportions that the men who controlled it would be practically invincible. They would have all weapons, all strategy, all propaganda, all psychology, ready for instant use. One whole section of the brain this large could, for instance, be put to working out new equations for advanced weapons systems, leaving the rest of it free to solve the problems of attack on all levels, figure the probability curve of the enemy's movements, everything. And all the time new data would be added, making the brain even more powerful. I don't say it could never be smashed, but it would be a tough proposition, and there wouldn't be much left of the planet after it was over."

  He clenched his hands and beat them gently together in a gesture of sheer desperation.

  "If we don't succeed here — if we don't manage somehow to get proof to the Federation government — Skereth and probably this whole part of the galaxy will be involved in such a war that—"

  "Sssh!” said Chell suddenly, bounding up. “Another cone. A bigger cone, I think."

  The guard stiffened in the grip of the hairy ones. “I didn't make the routine communications check. Now they're coming to see what happened to me. It'll be a two-man cone, and armed."

  "You treacherous human,” said Fife, and began to move swiftly in toward the guard.

  Horne pushed him aside. “We didn't give him much chance to make his check, did we? Anyway, we still need him. Alive and unhurt, you understand. Now get him out of sight around that bend."

  He handed Ewan — the gun he had taken from the guard. “See that nothing happens to him. Yso, I'll need you, and I'll need Chell."

  He began in great haste to pull on the guard's red uniform. Yso said, “What are you going to do?"

  "Put on a little play for them.” He paused briefly, frowning. “It'll be dangerous. We'll likely all get killed. If you and Chell don't want to risk—"

  Yso said, “Let's not waste time, Horne. What is it that you want us to do?"

  He told her while he was climbing into the cone. The idea had come to him quickly, very incomplete at first, but taking on a larger and fuller shape as he thought about it and considered what might be done afterward if it did what he hoped it would do.

  Chell added the finishing touch.

  "Use the arms of the cone,” he said. “See? They're both tools and weapons."

  Horne saw now what he had not noticed before — a pair of jointed, arm-like appendages ending in iron claws, folded in under the rim of the metal cone.

  "They can carry a current,” Chell said. “I know because I have seen slaves burned and shocked, even killed. So be careful. Pleassse?"

  He bobbled swiftly back to Yso. Horne shut the canopy and worked the grav-shields to right the cone. He started the tiny compressed-air propulsion unit and the cone moved sedately at the pace of a man walking, back along the gallery the way it had come.

  When the two-man cone rounded a curve, the guards in it saw Chell coming first of all, a huge furry green ball carrying Yso in three of his tentacles. Yso appeared to be unconscious, hanging limp with her yellow hair falling down like a banner and the scanty blue streamer fluttering from her waist.

  With his two spare tentacles, Chell made gestures of warding off Horne in his cone, who was apparently herding him along with his burden. The powerful claw-handed arms were extended now from the cone, threatening him, and one was close enough to his fur to make Chell's gesture of alarm authentic enough. Even so, he was careful to keep as much of his bulk as possible between Horne and the others, to hide him.

  Horne, keeping his face turned away, said over the speaker attachment, “I found this slave and the woman in the gallery. They attacked me and I was forced to subdue them. The woman may be badly hurt. I'm glad you came. Will you get out and see to her? It's vitally important that we take her alive to Ardric."

  The two guards in the cone were staring fascinated at the white-skinned girl in Chell's grasp.

  "Who is she?” one of them asked. “And how did she get into the gallery?"

  "I don't know how she got in,” Horne said, “but I'm pretty sure I know who she is. I've seen her picture. That's Morivenn's daughter."

  "Morivenn's daughter?” said the guard at the controls. His voice tightened and went up a notch. "Morivenn's daughter?"

  "There isn't any doubt of it,” Horne said.

  "Here in the Project?” the guard said. “You're right, this is vital!"

  He set the cone down with a thump. The propulsion unit died. The canopy opened and both men jumped down and ran toward Yso.

  Instantly Chell dropped her gently to the floor, let go of her, and flung his tentacles around the nearest guard, who bellowed in alarm. The other one reached for his gun and shouted for Horne to do something about Chell.

  Horne touched two controls in swift succession. The cone shot forward several feet and a great iron hand reached out and gripped the man's arm with its amazingly flexible fingers. The gun splashed a brief fury of flame, against the rocky ceiling and then dropped as the man was hauled off his feet and held dangling.

  Chell must have called to his friends, because they came swiftly and one took hold of the second man so that Horne could let go of him. Yso looked up excitedly at Horne and cried, “It worked! Now what?"

  Horne neutralized the cone and jumped down. He was feeling good, and fighting it, because he knew that it was far too early in the game to start congratulating himself. He said grimly, “Now we finish the questioning and make our plans, and they'd better be good ones because we won't have any chance to change them later on."

  "We had better hurry, too,” said Chell, “before yet another cone comes searching after these two."

  They joined Fife and the other slaves and Ewan. Horne bent over their first captive.

  "Now,” be said, “I want to know about those locked doors and the passages behind them."

  From there on the actual planning did not take long. It was a wildly improbable venture and, Horne thought, almost certainly foredoomed to failure, but it offered the only possibility he could see and no one disputed him, or suggested anything better.

  The locks of the iron doors were controlled by a frequency key in the guard's cone. The doors actually were access hatches for maintenance and repair in the labyrinthine corridors of the Project — the brain that already required most of a mountain to contain its cells and ganglia — vast memory banks, computing units, comparison centers, data analyzers, all the components of the human brain except
that indefinable part from which man derives his emotions, his personality and his humanness.

  With the feeling of one about to make an uncanny entrance into the very tissues of a quasi-living entity, Horne activated the frequency key and opened one of the doors into the brain.

  The door had been carefully selected from the guard's information. Now the three Project men, bound and gagged, were pulled into the chamber beyond the hatch, where they would not be discovered too soon. Horne turned the small cone over to Ewan, who would have use for it.

  Yso was already at the controls of the larger one, with Fife beside her. Chell and his two comrades would go with them. All the rest would come with Horne.

  There was not, Horne thought, much to choose between the two groups in the probability of survival.

  Horne and his group were to make their way secretly to the Administration Center and attack from within. Yso, Ewan and Fife, and the three from Chorann, were to make their way openly into the lower galleries where the slaves were working, rouse them to action, knock out the guards, and attack the Administration Center from without. They hoped to get, not only Ardric, but the brain itself. Then, if they died, they might at least wreck the brain while they were doing it.

  "Make it good,” Horne said to Ewan.

  "You, too,” said Ewan. His voice was determined, but it revealed no great note of hope.

  Horne glanced at Yso, dazzling in her garish finery. He smiled.

  "You're just what we need to lead a crusade,” he said. “Give it to them, Morivenn's daughter"

  She nodded, shaking back her yellow hair, and he knew he did not have to give her either urging or encouragement. He knew she was thinking of her father. Horne felt a brief but remarkably sharp stab of regret that he would probably never have the chance to know this girl any better than he did now.

  Fife smiled to himself and played hungrily with the weapon, keys on the board before him. Horne spoke to him and then held out his hand to Chell, who wrapped the tip of a tentacle around it.

  "Okay,” said Horne. “Let's go."

  He nodded to Lurgh and the purple gargoyle, and stepped in through the hatch door, and the whole weird crew padded after him into the secret corridors of the brain.