Children of the Comet

by Donald Moffitt

  He could catch a glimpse of the Tree about twice a minute, every time his spin put him in the right position. It was tiny at this distance, like any other Tree he had seen growing out of a passing comet. He could see that Claz had been right; his world was actually a round ball that was dwarfed by the God-Tree that clutched it in its roots, and he could see that someday it would be consumed by the Tree’s thirst. When that day arrived, the Tree would spread its reflective leaves and search out another comet to attach itself to, just as he had seen in his Dream when he himself had been the Tree. That thought frightened him too; the world was not as solid and immutable as he had believed. No wonder the tribe needed a priest to make sense of things.

  For the first time, he thought about what it would mean to cease to exist. The last of his air would run out in a few hours. The stovebeast, whose warmth he could feel at the small of his back, would outlast him for a while; they could do without air for longer than a man. Then it too would cease to exist, if it and other animals were at all aware of their own existence.

  That thought was more dizzying than the spin. He felt more alone in the void than he had ever felt in his life. The sudden disappearance of the new star had indeed been a sign that was meant for him.

  He got ready for another fleeting glimpse of the Tree, suddenly anxious to see it again. This time he could see an even tinier Tree beyond it that must be Ning’s home. The young bucks on the two Trees must be in a frenzy by now, preparing for their respective bride raids. It was strange to think of so much life going on without him.

  He must have dozed then. He was having strange dreams, almost like his Tree dream. Brank was in it, dead but somehow alive, and Ning, and his father, and Secondmother, holding out a bloodstained arrow and insisting that he take it. He woke, feeling muzzy. He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep, but his air tasted stale, and his chest was heaving painfully as he tried to breathe.

  He was still slowly spinning, the distant stars swinging around him. He could not see the Tree and its iceball anymore; they were lost in the depths of space. But the three familiar stars that had ruled his life were still there, undiminished, glinting off the clear resin of his faceplate as he turned.

  When he saw another glint in the sky, like something reflecting the light of the three stars, he thought he was hallucinating.

  A bonfire flared above him, the brightest fire he’d ever seen, and an impossibility in the airlessness of space. He cried out in terror, and in the span of a breath or two the fire disappeared, leaving him temporarily blinded.

  As his vision returned, another impossibility happened. A long, sleek shape, like the biggest creature that ever could be, glided to a stop beside him. He had no word for it. It was no kind of animal, except perhaps one like the little shell creatures that crept up the trunk of the Tree munching fungus and leaving a trail of slime behind them.

  As he watched, a square mouth opened in its side, an opening as big as a cave entrance. He tried vainly to stop his spin and face it and finally settled for slowing the spin down by stretching his arms upward as far as he could and extending his length. He increased the radius of the spin by holding his bow by one end and reaching upward with it. That slowed him enough so that he could keep an eye on the thing.

  Two men floated out of the square mouth, trailing tethers behind them. At least they looked something like men, except that they were smaller, maybe only about two-thirds of Torris’s length. They wore spacesuits that must have been made by a wondrous tailor; you couldn’t see any stitching, and the fabric had a smooth continuous surface without any sign of quilting. They had no proper helmets or Faces—transparent globes enclosed their heads instead.

  Torris reached reflexively for his quiver, then realized that he had no arrows, only his useless bow. But these peculiar little men had no bows or any other weapons that he could see.

  He watched helplessly as they floated toward him, propelled by small handheld objects that emitted puffs that looked like frozen breath. They halted themselves on either side of him, trailing their tethers. Torris prepared himself for a struggle. Perhaps he could tear off those transparent globes.

  Instead they reached out for him and, with the aid of the little propulsion devices, stopped his spin. One of them was trying to talk to him. Torris watched his lips closely but couldn’t make any sense out of it. It was just gibberish. The man—if he was some sort of man—didn’t seem to know how to speak no-air talk.

  Then the two of them seemed to be talking to each other but without touching helmets. Their lips were moving, but it was just more gibberish. And they weren’t particularly looking at each other’s lips, so it couldn’t be no-air talk anyway.

  Nevertheless, they came to some sort of decision, took him gingerly by the elbows, and nudged him gently toward the square opening in their shell creature’s side.

  Now! This was the time to attack if he was going to defend himself at all. But it seemed pointless. There was nothing he could use to grip those smooth transparent globes, no way to pull them off. He had nothing sharp to puncture their suits with. And there was no way to strike a blow when you were weightless and you had nothing immovable to brace yourself against. The reaction would only propel these strange dwarfs to the ends of their tethers and send him drifting back to eternity. His air was almost gone anyway. Better to die quickly.

  He said a prayer to the Tree as they carried him through the opening. Then he had a shock as the opening magically closed itself. He was in a small enclosed space that was somehow lit, though there was no torch, no fire, no opening that could let in light.

  He had another surprise as the back wall slid aside and disappeared. He could tell, even with his suit on, that a rush of air had filled the space. The little men urged him forward, and the wall slid back behind them, sealing off the enclosed space.

  He was in a larger space now, a place made of something that was neither wood nor stone nor animal hides. He understood that it was some sort of hut but one that was many times larger than the family lean-tos in his own tribe’s cave. It was warm here, though there was no fire, and well lit, without any obvious light source.

  In the middle of the floor was a sort of container, bigger than any bottle or jar he had ever seen, big enough, in fact, for several men to fit inside. Though these men were dwarfs, they had the utensils of giants.

  They were taking the transparent bowls off their heads and, with smiles and gestures, urging him to do the same. He didn’t hesitate; he could feel the warmth and air all around him, and his faceplate was starting to fog up.

  The air was like no air he had ever breathed before—thick and heavy and full of strange smells. There were no cooking odors or wood smoke, no sweat or smell of unwashed feet, or any of the other odors of human habitation.

  He looked more closely at his captors. One was a young man, about his own age, with black hair and the same blue eyes that were common in his own tribe, looking very human, in fact, despite his small stature. The other was an older man with thinning hair and dark humorous eyes whose shape was somewhat altered by a sort of fold in his eyelids.

  Then the older man did something peculiar. He started talking his gibberish to the empty air, as though there were someone else in the room. More peculiar still, he acted as though he were listening to this nonexistent person answering him, even nodding as if in agreement. Then he repeated his gibberish to the younger man, who nodded back at him in turn.

  The two of them then began talking earnestly to Torris with words and gestures, neither of which he understood. He began to understand when they pushed him toward the gigantic container. They wanted to show him something.

  Torris towered over them. They hardly reached his chest. But they seemed to be very strong, and they were politely insistent, so he didn’t resist.

  The long container was lying on its side, but even so, Torris was the only one who was tall enough to look dow
n on it. The first thing he saw was that it had a square opening covered by a transparent lid that looked like some huge faceplate. The next thing that struck him was that the container was filled with water—more water than Torris had ever seen in one place in his entire life. The lid slid back just as the wall in the airlock had done, and he could see something huge stirring in the water.

  Torris jumped back in alarm as a large animal heaved itself up out of the water and supported itself on the rim of the opening with a pair of stubby limbs the way a human might rest on his elbows.

  It was as big as a meatbeast but much more fearsome. It had a long tapering snout that was curved upward in the semblance of a smile and two dangerous-looking rows of serrated teeth. It looked as if it could easily bite off an arm or a leg and swallow it whole.

  Then it amazed him by speaking.

  It was more of the gibberish spoken by the men, but it was squeaky and high-pitched, like a child’s voice. As it continued, its voice rose higher and higher, full of pops and whistles, until it could no longer be heard by human ears. The younger of the two men held up a hand to stop it, and it responded by diving to the bottom of its container. It surfaced a moment later wearing a sort of necklace with a round medallion made out of some sort of hard material like bone. When it resumed talking, its mouth moved as before, but its voice came out of the round medallion. This time its voice was lower in pitch, sounding more like the humans, and the pops and whistles were gone, replaced by long intervals when the medallion seemed to be speaking on its own.

  The three of them were jabbering at him all at once, the men giving him little encouraging pushes. Then it dawned on Torris that they wanted him to get into the container with the beast. They wanted to feed him to the creature!

  Torris backed away hastily. The men caught him and held him in place easily with their immense strength. They exchanged jabber, in obvious consternation, and the creature in the tank joined in, its voice getting squeaky again. It seemed upset about the globules of water that had escaped and were floating in the air. It emitted a final burst of agitated high-speed squeaks and submerged itself. The square lid slid back into place, sealing the creature inside.

  The men looked at each other and exchanged shrugs. They let go of Torris and stood back, still within reach. Torris rubbed his arm where one of them had squeezed too hard and glared at them. The older dwarf disappeared through an opening into another part of the hut, but the younger one stayed by Torris’s side. Torris stared warily at him, ready for anything.

  A low rumbling sound filled the hut, and the floor began to vibrate. The dwarf who had stayed with Torris moved his feet apart and planted himself in a wide stance. After a moment Torris did the same.

  He became aware that his weight was slowly increasing. In moments he weighed as much as he had ever weighed in his life—the ounces had pressed him down at the surface of the comet.

  Incredibly his weight continued to increase. His legs began to ache, until at last they would no longer support him. He went tumbling helplessly, but the little man caught him before he hit the floor. In an easy movement, he picked Torris up as though he weighed nothing and started to carry him over to the water-filled vessel. Torris struggled but found that he had no strength because of the relentless increase of his weight. Even the dwarf was having trouble now. How he managed to stay upright, Torris could not understand.

  The floating globules of water splashed to the ground along with a few small objects that had been carelessly placed. His bow, which he had been holding onto stubbornly, slipped out of his grasp and rattled against the floor. He was helpless as a baby, and he didn’t care for the feeling.

  As the dwarf staggered the last few feet to the vessel, its lid slid open and the animal popped up above its rim to regard them. The creature’s long jaw was wide open, showing those frightening rows of sawteeth. The little man who was holding him reached up with one hand and deftly pulled Torris’s helmet over his neck ring, where it snapped into place.

  From some inexplicable reserve of strength, he heaved Torris over the rim of the opening and gave a final push that dumped him into the water. The lid, all by itself, slid closed and sealed him in with the creature.

  But the huge jaws did not close around his head or an arm as he expected. Instead they were delicately manipulating rows of small protrusions under the water, then somehow nudging a tube into place in Torris’s depleted air sack. All at once Torris was aware that he was breathing a fresh supply of air, air like he had never breathed before. There was no hint of staleness, no suggestion of all the scents that came from the air that gathered in the cave or that you tapped from the Tree’s air pockets, nothing that made you sneeze or have itchy eyes. And it was unusually rich, so that you could breathe more slowly and still have the sensation that it was enough.

  There was another effect of being submerged in water. It was almost like being weightless. He could move his limbs again, and though he was still aware of the unnatural mass he had gained, the terrible drag of the new gravity had been nullified.

  He looked at the animal that shared the container with him. It had its head above water and seemed to be breathing normally—though through a single nostril on the top of its head! It was a strange sight. He had never seen a large animal breathe before. They all got their air from the Tree, each in their own way, and then could stay out on the branches for as much as half a day to graze or hunt. Except some of the web beasts. Some of them could spin silk cocoons around themselves and stay in vacuum for days at a time.

  The animal was studying him too. There was almost a human intelligence in its eyes. It squeaked at him as though it were actually talking. It dawned on him that he could take off his helmet and breathe if he kept his head above water, then submerge himself again when the new gravity got to be too much for him.

  The older dwarf who had those queer folds in his eyelids came back from wherever he had been. He climbed several crossbars attached to the side of the water vessel and stared down at Torris through the transparent lid without saying anything. Then he climbed down and conferred briefly with the young dwarf.

  Torris could see him through a small round window that would have made a good faceplate for one of Parn’s customers. He was laughing.

  He turned his head toward the far wall and began talking to the air again.

  CHAPTER 20

  “I’ve got another message coming through from Chu,” Alten said. “He’s a couple of light-hours closer than he was the last time, and he’s accelerating at a steady one G.”

  Joorn looked up from his control board. “What did he say about their passenger?”

  “They got him inboard without much resistance. They had to put him in the dolphin tank with Jonah. He couldn’t even take the one G.”

  “That’ll be a problem. He’ll be okay while we’re coasting, but we’ve got a lot more deceleration to do before we get into the inner system. And then, of course, we’ll have to put the ship under spin. We can’t function for extended periods under null G.”

  “We’ll worry about that later. He’ll either have to live with the dolphins or we can fix him up with facilities at the axis. Damned inconvenient!”

  “If he lived on that comet, he’s adapted to null G, or close to it.”

  “Chu says he’s about twelve feet tall and probably wouldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds in Earth gravity. Elongated limbs and prehensile toes, from the look of his boots. He’s evolved after six billion years. But his equipment is primitive—bow and arrow, no metal of any kind, with fittings carved from some kind of animal bone, a hand-sewn spacesuit made out of some kind of animal gut. About what you’d expect of a Cro-Magnon, if they’d had to survive in space. How he heats the spacesuit is a mystery. We’ll have to get him out of it to find out.”

  “Irina and her team will have their work cut out for them.”

  Alten frowned. “Speaking of I
rina, I haven’t heard from her. Nina should have been with her by now.”

  “Hold on. I’ll put you through to her. There, you’ve got a private channel.”

  Joorn went back to his piloting. Alten spoke in subdued tones to his communicator. Finally he looked up, concern showing on his face.

  “She never showed up. She should have been there long before now. That’s not like Nina. She doesn’t get distracted. She wanted to be with her mother when our visitor arrived.”

  There was a sudden crackle of background noise from the speaker. The private channel had somehow been breached. Joorn froze as Miles Oliver’s supercilious voice filled the control room.

  “Worried about your precious daughter, Alten? She’s with me. You’ll get her back if you and your doting father do exactly as I say.”

  The background noise resolved itself into a muffled babble of men’s voices. Nina came through faintly. “Don’t listen to him, Father! He’s crazy!” Then she was cut off.

  Alten exploded in a sudden blind rage. “Oliver, what have you done? I promise you that if you—”

  “Shut up, bright boy! Or are you bright enough to realize what’s at stake?”

  Joorn cut in. “What do you want, Oliver?”

  “Ah, our eminent captain speaks. You know what we want, Captain. We want you to turn the ship over to us. We’ve reinforced our numbers with recruits from a new generation, and we haven’t forgotten our pursuit of man’s greatest adventure.”

  “Is Professor Karn in on this?”

  There was the briefest of pauses. “The professor will come around. You’re lucky to have him on your side. He’ll see that you and your followers get a habitat or two. They have reentry capability. We’re already on the fringes of the inner system, and our gamma is down to a point where the habitats can manage to deorbit on their own. You ought to be able to find someplace to light.”

  “My granddaughter is right, Oliver. You’re crazy. Sol’s already expanded past Earth’s orbit and might take another million years to shrink. We don’t know what’s left in the Sol system. You might be condemning a whole human population to death.”