by Larry Niven
The brain’s screen said, “Reestimate of the ship’s landing time: 1.72 days.”
Not good, he decided. He should have come out much closer to Thrintun. But luck, more than skill, decided when a hyperspace ship would make port. There was no need to be impatient. Besides, it would be several hours before the fusor recharged the battery.
Kzanol swung his chair around so he could see the star map on the rear wall. The sapphire pin seemed to twinkle and gleam across the length of the cabin. For a moment he basked in its radiance, the radiance of unlimited wealth. Then he jumped up and began typing on the brain board.
Sure there was reason to be impatient! Even now someone might be landing on the planet he had named Racarliwun. There were ships all through that region of space.
The wonder was that nobody had found the planet earlier. Even now, somebody with a map just like his, and a pin where Kzanol had inserted his sapphire marker, might be racing to put in a claim. The control of an entire slave world, for all of Kzanol’s lifetime, was his rightful property; but only if he reached Thrintun first.
He typed: “How long to recharge the battery?”
The brain board thudded almost at once. But Kzanol was never to know the answer.
Suddenly a blinding light shone through the back window. Kzanol’s chair flattened into a couch, a loud musical note rang, and there was pressure. Terrible pressure. The ship wasn’t supposed ever to use that high an acceleration. It lasted for about five seconds. Then—
There was a sound like two lead doors being slapped together, with the ship between them.
The pressure eased. Kzanol got to his feet and peered out the rear window at the incandescent cloud that had been his fusor. It had exploded.
The brain board thudded.
He read: “Time to recharge battery:”—followed by the spiral hieroglyph, the sign of infinity.
With his face pressed against the molded diamond pane, Kzanol watched the burning power plant fade among the stars. The brain must have dropped it the moment it became dangerous. That was why it had been trailed half a mile behind the ship: because fusors sometimes exploded. Just before he lost sight of it altogether, the light flared again into something brighter than a sun.
Thud, said the brain. Kzanol read: “Reestimate of trip time to Thrintun:”—followed by a spiral.
The light of the far explosion reached the ship. There was no sound, but it was like a distant door slamming.
There was no hurry now. For a long time Kzanol stood before his wall map, gazing at the sapphire pin.
The tiny star in the tiny jewel winked back at him, speaking of two billion slaves and a fully industrialized world waiting to serve him; speaking of more wealth and power than even his grandfather, the great Racarliw, had known. He was chain-sucking, and the eating tendrils at the corners of his mouth writhed without his knowledge, like embattled earthworms. Useless regrets filled his mind.
His grandfather should have sold the plantation when Plorn’s slaves produced antigravity. Plorn could and should have been assassinated in time. Kzanol should have stayed on Thrintun, even if he had to slave it for a living. He should have bought a spare fusor instead of that extra suit and the deluxe crash couch and the scent score on the air plant and, with his last commercial, the sapphire pin.
For a time he relived his life on the vast stage-tree plantation where he had become an adult. Kzathit Stage Logs, with its virtual monopoly on solid fuel takeoff logs, now gone forever. If only he were there now…
But Kzathit Stage Logs had been a spaceport landing field for almost ten years.
He went to the locker and put on his suit. There were two suits there, including the spare he’d bought in case one ceased to function. Stupid. If the suit had failed he’d have been dead anyway.
He ran a massive, stubby finger around the panic button on his chest. He’d have to use it soon; but not yet. There were things to do first. He wanted the best possible chance of survival.
At the brain board he typed: “Compute a course for any civilized planet, minimum trip time. Give trip time.”
The brain purred happily to itself. Sometimes Kzanol thought it was happy only when it was working hard. He often tried to guess at the emotions of the machine. It bothered him that he couldn’t read its mind. Sometimes he even worried about his inability to give it orders except through the brain board. Perhaps it was too alien, he thought; Thrintun had never made contact with other than protoplasmic life. While he waited for his answer he experimentally tried to reach the rescue switch on his back.
He hadn’t a chance; but that was the least of his worries. When he pushed the panic button the suit stasis field would go on, and time would cease to flow inside his suit. Only the rescue switch would protrude from the field. It had been placed so that Kzanol’s rescuer, not Kzanol, could reach it.
Thud! The screen said: “No solution.”
Nonsense! The battery had a tremendous potential. Even after a hyperspace jump it must still have enough energy to aim the ship at some civilized planet. Why would the brain…
Then he understood. The ship had power, probably, to reach several worlds, but not to slow him down to the speed of any known world. Well, that was all right. In his stasis field Kzanol wouldn’t care how hard he hit. He typed: “Do not consider decrease of velocity upon arrival. Plot course for any civilized planet. Minimize trip time.”
The answer took only a few seconds. “Trip time to Awtprun seventy-two thrintun years 100.41 days.” Awtprun. Well, it didn’t matter where he landed; he could hop a ship for Thrintun as soon as they turned off his field generator. Would some other prospector find Racarliwun in seventy-two years? Probably.
Spirit of the Power! Hurriedly he typed, “Cancel course to Awtprun.” Then he sagged back in his chair, appalled at his narrow escape.
If he had hit Awtprun at more than nine-tenths light, he could have killed upwards of a million people. That was assuming he hit an ocean! The shock wave would knock every flying thing out of the air for a thousand miles around, and scour the land clean; sink islands, tear down buildings half around the world.
For a blunder like that, he’d draw death after a year of torture. Torture in the hands of a highly scientific, telepathic society is a horrible thing. Biology students would watch, scribbling furiously, while members of the Penalty Board carefully traced his nervous system with stimulators…
Gradually his predicament became clear to him. He couldn’t land on a civilized planet. All right. But he couldn’t land on a slave planet either; he’d be certain to knock down a few overseer’s palaces, as well as killing billions of commercials worth of slaves.
Perhaps he could aim to go through a system, hoping that the enlarged mass of his ship would be noticed? But he dared not do that. To stay in space was literally unthinkable. Why, he might go right out of the galaxy! He saw himself lost forever between the island universes, the ship disintegrating around him, the rescue button being worn down to a small shiny spot by interstellar dust…No!
Gently he rubbed his closed eye with an eating tendril. Could he land on a moon? If he hit a moon hard enough the flash might be seen. But the brain wasn’t good enough to get him there, not at such a distance. A moon’s orbit is a twisty thing, and he’d have to hit the moon of a civilized planet. Awtprun’s was the closest, and even it was much too far.
And to top it off, he realized, he was sucking his last gnal. He sat there feeling sorry for himself until it was gone, then began to pace the floor.
Of course!
He stood stock still in the middle of the cabin, thinking out his inspiration, looking for the flaw. He couldn’t find one. Hurriedly he tapped at the brain board: “Compute course for a food planet minimizing trip time. Ship need not slow on arrival. Give details.”
His eating tendrils hung limp, relaxed. It’s going to be all right, he thought, and meant it.
For protoplasmic life forms, there are not many habitable planets in the galaxy. Nature
makes an unreasonable number of conditions. To insure the right composition of atmosphere, the planet must be exactly the right distance from a G type sun, must be exactly the right size, and must have a freakishly oversized moon in its sky. The purpose of the moon is to strip away most of the planet’s atmosphere, generally around ninety nine per cent of it. Without its moon a habitable world becomes shockingly uninhabitable; its air acquires crushing weight, and its temperature becomes that of a ‘hot’ oven.
Of the two hundred and nineteen habitable worlds found by Thrintun, sixty-four had life. Seventeen had intelligent life; eighteen if you were liberal-minded. The one hundred and fifty-five barren worlds would not be ready for Thrintun occupancy until after a long seeding process. Meanwhile, they had their uses.
They could be seeded with a tnuctipun-developed food yeast. After a few centuries the yeast generally mutated, but until then the world was a food planet, with all its oceans full of the cheapest food in the galaxy. Of course only a slave would eat it; but there were plenty of slaves.
All over the galaxy there were food planets to feed the slave planets. The caretaker’s palace was always on the moon. Who would want to live on a world with barren land and scummy seas? Not to mention the danger of contamination. So from the moons a careful watch was kept on the food planets.
After the yeast had mutated to the point where it was no longer edible, even to a slave, the world was seeded with yeast-eating whitefood herds. Whitefoods ate anything, and were a good source of meat. The watch was continued.
At his present speed Kzanol would hit such a planet hard enough to produce a blazing plume of incandescent gas. The exploded rock would rise flaming into space, vivid and startling and unmistakeable even to a watcher on the moon. The orange glow of the crater would last for days.
The chances were that Kzanol would end underground, but not far underground. The incandescent air and rock which moves ahead of a meteorite usually blows the meteorite itself back into the air, to rain down over a wide area. Kzanol, wrapped safely in his stasis field, would go right back out his own hole, and would not dig himself very deep on the second fall. The caretaker could find him instantly with any kind of rock-penetrating instrument. A stasis field is the only perfect reflector.
The brain interrupted his planning. “Nearest available food planet is F124. Estimated trip time 202 years 91.4 days.”
Kzanol typed: “Show me F124 and system.”
The screen showed specks of light. One by one, the major planets and their moon systems were enlarged. F124 was a typical food planet, even to the fact that its moon did not rotate. The moon seemed overlarge, but also over-distant. An outer planet made Kzanol gasp in admiration. It was ringed! Gorgeously ringed. Kzanol waited until all the major worlds had been shown. When the asteroids began to appear in order of size he typed: “Enough. Follow course to F124.”
He’d left the helmet off; other than that he was fully dressed for the long sleep. He felt the ship accelerating, a throb in the metal from the motors. The cabin’s acceleration field canceled the gees. He picked up the helmet and set it on his neck ring, changed his mind and took it off. He went to the wall and tore off his map, rolled it up and stuck it through the neck ring into the bosom of his shirt. He had the helmet ready to tog down when he started to wonder.
His rescuer could claim a large sum for the altruistic act of rescuing him. But suppose the reward didn’t satisfy him? If he were any kind of thrint he would take the map as soon as he saw it. After all, there was no law against it. Kzanol had better memorize the map.
But there was a better answer.
Yes! Kzanol hurried to the locker and pulled out the second suit. He stuffed the map into one arm. He was elated with his discovery. There was plenty of room left in the empty suit. Briskly he moved about the cabin collecting his treasures. The amplifier helmet, universal symbol of power and of royalty, which had once belonged to his grandfather. It was a light but bulky instrument which could amplify the thrint’s native ability to control twenty to thirty non-thrints into the ability to control an entire planet. His brother’s farewell present, a disintegrator with a tailor-carved handle. He had a thought which made him put it aside. His statues of Ptul and Myxylomat. May they never meet! But both females would be dead before he saw them again, unless some friend put them in stasis against his return. His diamond-geared, hullfab cased watch with the cryogenic gears, which always ran slow no matter how many times it was fixed. He couldn’t wear it to F124; it was for formal events only. He wrapped each valuable in one of his extra robes before inserting it into the suit.
There was some room left over.
In a what-the-hell mood he called the little racarliw slave over from the storage locker and made it get in. Then he screwed the helmet down and pushed the panic button.
The suit looked like a crazy-mirror. All the wrinkles remained, but the suit was suddenly more rigid than diamond or hullfab. He propped it in a corner, patted it fondly on the head, and left it.
“Cancel present course to F124,” he typed. “Compute and follow fastest course to FI24 using only half of remaining power, completing all necessary course corrections within the next day.”
A day later, Kzanol was suffering mild gnal withdrawal symptoms. He was doing everything he could think of to keep himself busy so that he wouldn’t have to think about how much he wanted a gnal.
He had, in fact, just finished an experiment. He had turned off the field on the second suit, placed the disintegrator in the grip of its glove, and turned on the field again. The field had followed its metal surface. The gun had gone into stasis along with the suit.
Then the power went off. Feeling considerable relief. Kzanol went to the board and typed, “Compute fastest course to eighth planet of FI24 system. Wait l/2 day, then follow course.” He put on his suit, picked up the disintegrator and some wire line, and went out the airlock. He used the line to stop his drift until he was motionless with respect to the ship.
Any last thoughts?
He’d done the best he could for himself. He was falling toward FI24. The ship would reach the unwatched, uninhabitable eighth planet before Kzanol hit the third. It should make a nice big crater, easy to find. Not that he’d need it.
There was a risk, he thought, that the rescue switch might be set off by reentry heat. If that happened he would wake up underground, for it took time for the field to die. But he could dig his way out with the disintegrator.
Kzanol poised a thick, clumsy finger over the panic button. Last thoughts?
Kzanol pushed the panic button.
II
Larry Greenberg climbed out of the contact field in the big dolphin tank room and stood up. There were no disorientation effects this time, no trouble with his breathing and no urge to wiggle his tail. Which was natural enough, since the ‘message’ had gone the other way.
The dolphin named Charley was lying on the bottom of the tank. Larry walked around to where Charley could see him through the glass, but Charley’s eyes weren’t looking at anything. The dolphin was twitching all over. Larry watched with concern, aware that the two marine biologists had come up beside him and were looking just as worried. Then Charley stopped twitching and surfaced.
“That wasss wild,” said Charley in his best Donald Duck accent.
“Are you all right?” one of the seadocs asked anxiously. “We had it at lowest power.”
“Sssure, Billl, I’m fine. But that was wild. I feel like I should have arms and legs and a long nose over-hanging my teeth instead of a hole in my head.” Whatever accent Charley had, there was nothing wrong with his vocabulary. “And I havvv this terrible urge to make love to Larry’s wife.”
“Me too,” said Bill Slater, but under his breath.
Larry laughed. “Don’t you dare, you lecherous fish! I’ll steal your cows!”
“We trade wives?” Charley buzzed like an MG taking off, then flipped wildly around the tank. Dolphin laughter. He ended the performance by jetting
straight out of the water and landing on his belly. “Has my accent improved?”
Larry decided there was no point in trying to brush off the water. It had already soaked through to his skin. “Come to think of it, yes, it has. It’s much better.”
“Good. When do we have our next session?”
Larry was busy squeezing water out of his hair. “I don’t know, exactly, Charley. Probably a few weeks. I’ve been asked to take on another assignment. You’ll have time to talk to your colleagues, pass on whatever you’ve learned about us walkers by reading my mind.”
“Butt—”
“Sorry, Charley. Duty calls. Dr. Jansky made it sound like the opportunity of the decade. Now roll over.”
“Tyrant!” hissed Charley, but he rolled over on his back. The three men spent a few minutes rubbing his belly. Then Larry had to leave. Momentarily he wondered if Charley would have any trouble assimilating his memories. But there was no danger; at the low contact power they had been using, Charley could choose to forget the whole experience if he had to.
That night he and Judy had dinner with Dr. and Mrs. Jansky. Dr. Dorcas Jansky was a huge West Berliner with a blond beard and the kind of flamboyant, extrovert personality that always made Larry slightly uncomfortable. Had he but known it, Larry had a very similar psyche; but it was housed in a much smaller body. It looked different that way. Mrs. Jansky was about Judy’s size and almost as pretty. She was the quiet type, at least when English was being spoken.
The conversation ranged explosively during dinner. They compared Los Angeles’ outward growth to West Berlin’s reaching skyscrapers.
“The urge to reach the stars,” said Jansky.
“No room to expand; you’re surrounded by East Germany,” Larry maintained. They spent useless time deciding which of the eleven forms of communism most closely resembled Marxism, and finally decided to wait and see which government withered away the fastest. They talked smog—where did it come from, now that there were neither industrial concerns nor hydrocarbon-powered vehicles in the Major Los Angeles Basin? Mainly cooking, thought Judy. Cigarettes, thought Jansky, and Larry suggested that electrostatic air conditioning concentrated the impurities in the outside air. They talked about dolphins. Jansky had the nerve to question dolphin intelligence, and Larry took it personally, stood up and gave the most stirring impromptu lecture of his life. It wasn’t until the coffee hour that business was mentioned.