by Ian Wallace
Bill offered: “What happens when they bring lunch and we’re asleep?”
“We’ll put somebody on sentry duty back here. He handles the lunch forward and pitches it into the disintegrator. When it’s our lunchtime and they’re asleep, either we raid the Mazda stores or we go without.”
Wel queried plaintively: fc‘I could kill myself for bringing this up—but do we declare a moratorium on drinking?” Three voices answered: “No!” Collins smiled small. Wel responded with an up-crinkle.
Then Wel went serious. “These plans are noble, Sven. Only—when the officers are asleep and we are awake—how do we get out of Mazda?"
Sven thought about that. He went to the airlock and opened the inner door: no problem. Closing the inner door, he buttoned the activator for the outer. Nothing. He tried again. Nothing. He came back frowning.
“Apart from the door problem,” Collins inserted, “your schedule isn’t going to work perfectly. While we sleep and they are awake, they will be rousting us out for various studies.”
“Okay, I see that,” Sven answered. “But won’t they quickly get tired of that and try to forget us?”
“No,” said Collins, “because I won’t let them. That’s how I am going to get you out. You do want to get out, don’t you?”
“Naturally,” Sven exploded, “but not while they are awake!”
“I’ll have to think about th^t,” Collins told him. “But just at first, anyhow, all of us had better plan on interrupted sleep. So snatch your shut-eye whenever you may.”
“Right now,” declared Sven, “there’s no chance of me go-( ing back to sleep, and I’ll bet that goes for all of you. So let’s handle this food forward and disintegrate it and settle down in the salon over some real ersatz coffee.”
After coffee-silence, Wel queried: “Good Captain Sven— just what are your thoughts about doing something against them?”
Sven bit: “Wel, I don’t know why I should tell you. It seems to me you’re pretty hostile about any sort of action against them.”
I mused: “Maybe I sympathize with Wel, a little. Dhurk seems like a nice guy.”
Sven shot: “So then, Hel, you would let him go ahead and kidnap our sun-system?”
He was shooting entirely too much, these days. I retorted: “Can’t I feel sorry for Dhurk while I am murdering him?”
Wel, quietly: “I love your humor, Hel, but we have got to stick to the point. They have already got our sun and planets five millennia down into what Collins calls fossilized past nows. Which means that it is already five minutes past midnight, and soon they will be towing our system away—I’d guess from the bulge that they have already began to budge the sun off its rock. I think we need to consider that the fate of us five is a minor question. As a final resort, of course, we use Hoolihan. But meanwhile, captured here, we have a potential opportunity, and I say we ought to be systematically thinking out ways to actualize that potential. And it won’t be done with clout—which we haven’t got, except for Hoolihan.”
“We have, however,” Collins suggested, “the start of communication. Captain, your interpretation of Dhurk’s gestures and words was exact. The first time, he did indeed say his version of ‘Men’; and of course, he omitted the robot crew-creature. By the way, don’t underestimate the brains of their robots; they are compact because they utilize superconducting circuitry involving a major advance beyond the Josephson junction. And the second time, Dhurk did indeed say ‘leader.* There is only one problem here, and it is common to both sides. None of us could auditorily grasp their words for ‘men’ and ‘leaders’; I caught them only by telepathy. And none of them could grasp our words for ‘men’ and ‘leaders’—and I don’t think they have telepathy. Their voices are too big and slow for us to identify their word-sounds, whereas our voices are too squeaky-quick for them to catch our word-sounds. Captain, if that crew-creature hadn’t been a humorless robot, he would have burst-out laughing when he heard your squeaky little voice—which to us, I assure you, is baritone-magnificent. Anyhow, clearly we have the beginnings of communication, but they are a long way from being promising.”
"All right,” Sven rejoined. “Doesn’t that reinforce my question to Wel, how in hell we could bring off diplomacy?”
I said with decision: “Let me cut through this knot. The first thing of all is for Us to get out."
“That’s axiomatic,” Sven said, “but I want to know your reason for insisting on this.”
“I’ve already hinted it to you. I understand the wiring principles of their space-mantas. This ship is a gigantic space-manta, and it may be wired on the same principles. If we were out, we might be able to do something about that.” Doggedly Wel asserted: “I am against trying anything like that, even if we find a way to get out.” ,
I jumped on him. “Why?”
“It’s a feeling that I have. And a complementary feeling is that I can figure a way which will be wilier and surer.”
“Now Wel, ” Sven remonstrated, “if you have found a better way, your skipper needs to know what it is.”
Something about Sven’s manner hit Wel as being patronizing. Wel quelled his irritation, warning himself that his inferiority feelings were showing. Coolly he told his friend: “I am aware that you are the captain. I am also aware that I am playing a gut-feeling here; and if I were to put it into words, I could blow it.” Before Sven could answer, Wel turned to Collins: “Read me, Ariel. How do you feel me?”
' Having studied him, Collins ventured: “The game you have in mind is promising. You are right not to express it. But it may not work, you know.”
Sven was frowning.’! wasn’t pulling rank, my friend, you know I wouldn’t do that. I only meant—”
“—That the skipper should understand and coordinate all crew action,” Wel rejoined. “Sven, I do understand that, and you are right. But in this case, I have to hold to my hunch. One: I do not dare tell you what is in my mind, for fear that I will blow it by saying it. Two: I do earnestly urge that you and Hel avoid playing sabotage games, because if you are caught doing it, that will blow what I will be doing.”
My irritation at the stubborn secretiveness of my husband was nearing flash-point. Reining in my anger, I said as persuasively as I could: “Look, darling. It is precisely to keep from lousing you up that Sven and I want to know what you will be doing.”
Bill intervened. “I really don’t see what the conflict is. We scientists play our own games all the time without necessarily informing each other. Sometimes we do louse each other up, but the damage is always reparable.”
Sven bludgeoned him. “Do your games include blocking an extragalactic alien who is in process of kidnapping our solar system?”
Bill meditated. He muttered lamely: “I guess not.”
“I hate this impasse,” Collins complained. “It jams my vibes. Look, I agree that Doctor Carr should not express his intentions in advance; any author or other artist can tell you that when your fetal idea emerges prematurely into the air, it is likely to abort itself. Or was that a mixed metaphor? Anyhow, if you others will stay passive and hang around here, I can arrange that you will know everything while it is happening.”
Sven pondered. He said then: “I will begin this by stating the premise that we five are not in the simple-selfish predicament of trying to get out as a fivesome unscathed. What we do here will affect all our world—forever.”
Wel said: “Proceed on that premise, which I soulfully embrace.
“Seriously, Wel?”
“I shouldn’t bother to answer that, Sven, but I will. God of all creation, yes!”
“All right,” said Sven; “I will strike a bargain. I will ignore what Wel and Collins are doing, if they will ignore what Hel and I are doing. Bill can declare himself either way.”
We meditated. I didn’t entirely like Sven’s way of handling this, it suggested a crew-split, and it suggested captain’s acquiescence in split. On the other hand, Wel was being ungodly stubborn; and in the hole
that we were in, Sven was in no position to steamroller anybody.
At length, Wel said, “Agreed, as a less-than-perfect compromise. I will only ask that if you think you are approaching success, you will let me know, and I will do the same for you.”
Said Sven: “Agreed.” Silently I registered approval of Sven and annoyance at Wel.
My husband added: “One more thing, pal Sven. Before you use Hoolihan, let me know and listen to my counter-arguments.”
“You will be notified in advance,” Sven asserted, “and I will listen for sixty seconds before pressing the button.”
Collins insisted: “If any of you are outside Mazda, there is no way I can keep you in touch with what Doctor Carr and I are doing.”
“We’ll have to chance that,” Sven snapped, “since right now we can’t get out anyhow. Bill, I see you gazing quizzically at us, wondering how you can get into this. It appears that you can’t help Wel and Collins; their inscrutable game is a private one. Just be patient, Bill; as soon as I see how to do it, I’ll cut you in on our action.”
“That was indeed part of my puzzlement,” Bill replied. “Another part of it was, how in hell do we get outside Mazda?"
“That,” Collins returned, “is part of our game plan. Doctor Carr, sir, can we retire to your fairly level cubicle and do a bit of private skullwork?”
26
The departure of Wel and Collins left Sven and Bill and me in the control room—which was fine with Sven, because he wanted to plan action with us alone.
“I think I can use Wel's satellite controller,” I told them, “to develop a hologram of this Dhorner ship. And I think I can use my own checkout-computer to develop a crude wiring diagram, using the analogies of the two space-mantas. Those activities might be a useful preliminary to physical ship-prowling—when and if we get out.”
“Agreed,” said Bill. “Incidentally, don’t be overpowered by the apparent size of this ship. In reality, its magnitude is only—”
“One-third of what we measured,” I finished. “Instead of a nineteen-kilometer wingspread, it is only a bit over six kilometers. Wonderful, Bill, that certainly cuts it down to size.” “Difficulty,” Sven injected. “Our electronic probing could be picked up by some of their robots. And that would queer our possibility of gaining free prowl of the ship.”
I shook him off. “I see the difficulty—but don’t we have to chance it, Sven? Even with Bill’s cut-down, the ship is the size of a small city—and relative to us, it is a most respectable city. .Even with absolute freedom of physical maneuver, it would take us many days to explore all of it, and more days to nail down their wiring and do some kind of sabotage that would free the sun from their grip.”
I paused: there was much more to my idea, but there comes a time when you’ve talked enough. My time, though, didn’t seem to have come; the two men were gazing at me, awaiting more. I gulped and went on:
“And I don’t know that we have even one day. Already we are down to the time-level across which they presumably drew their transit-chord, and their pull on the sun is already in process—that’s how we happened to get dragged in here. I say we’re in combat, imprisoned by the enemy; and we have to take all kinds of chances—including having our electronic probes detected.”
Sven mused: “I keep wondering about that mysterious Carr-Collins plan. If Helen were to start electronic probing and it should be detected, would it louse up Wel, do you think?”
Bill spluttered: “I don’t know why the hell he won’t tell us what he’s up to.”
I was thoughtful. In retrospect, it wasn’t like Wel to be stubborn—unless he was fairly sure that he knew what he was doing. And as for clamming up to avoid blowing his idea in utero, I’d heard him voice that notion before, as a matter of literary criticism.
Slowly Sven said, “I have a ghost of an idea what he may be up to. I have no idea whether it would work, but my pal Wel is deep.”
“So,” I declared, “is my pal Wel. But the time involved—”
Sven gazed at me. “How would Collins fit in?”
I told my fingers: “Wel has called him Ariel; he has called Wel Prospero.”
Hard thought by Sven and me; groping for orientation by Bill.
Sven raised his head. “But Wel won’t let us in. Tough tiddy. We have an Earth-crucial time problem. And maybe if we get into a jam, Wel and Collins can somehow get us out of it—maybe. Helen, go ahead and map the Dhomer ship; if we get caught at that, we can make an excuse and lie low; if we don’t, we can move to the next step.”
Captain Dhurk turned in two hours after supper. He was weary; and also, he was upset about the creatures whom he had captured, creatures advanced enough to have been orbiting their star and to have hit him with three nuclear weapons—a sort of weapon that he knew about from military ancient history. Any one of them could have annihilated his ship, except for the stem shielding by the forcefield which was a by-product of his tractor beams deployed upon the sun: all three warheads had been exploded by the field at a safe distance from his ship. However, they had another such weapon aboard their cylinder, and ancient history did not seem to have supplied Dhurk with information about how to disarm it. To add discomfort, the two creatures whom he had interviewed today had aroused both pity because of their tininess and respect because of their intelligent nerve. Dhurk tried to eradicate pity by remembering that normally these creatures would be two-thirds his own size; but pity kept crowding in, reinforced by subvert guilt, when he was self-reminded that it was he who had reduced them.
The ultrasuperior made a semi-successful effort to forget the creatures and quell his disturbance about them. He required hard rest against tomorrow when the force tugging at this star would be increased by ten percent over a period of hours—an increase which ought to start the star moving sluggishly, with hard-to-control irregularities inherent in the star’s orbit around its galactic center.
Because sleep did not come immediately as it usually did, Dhurk took an unusual sedative and lay back with his eyes closed. Those damned little people. Theirs was probably the third planet of this star, according to the earlier analysis by Hedrik. Part of tomorrow’s program, if anything could be spared from the star-budging, would be to analyze their capsule at captive range, giving special attention to the fourth nuclear weapon. And, as the return trip to Dhom would progress, he would seek some method of communicating with them, so that he could understand the minds of these people. . . .
Sleep came, but it was fitful, much of it in the REM phase during which he was alternately pleased, troubled, and puzzled by disconnected zany experiences with unknown people mingled with indescribable phantasmagoria. Suddenly it opened out into a definite impression of full wakefulness in a known environment, the balcony in Hréda’s museum. Hréda was performing delightfully below; and as her pirouetting complicated itself, she spoke to him without looking at him:
“Dear Dhurk, it is most mellowing to know that you have captured my ladiolis. I cannot wait until you bring it here; but more, I cannot wait till you are here. I’ve seen your little captured creatures, Dhurk; it seems I have the Sight for you, and I can peer across far palarids of space and watch you while you work. Dear love, I pray that you will deal most kindly with these creatures who soon will entertain me from on high. Pray do not hold them prisoners; instead, give freedom to their movements, for their kind dies without freedom—”
I would have preferred to wire Wel's computer to mine, but there weren’t enough hours for that. So Sven and I devised a team play; he manipulated Wel's console, took number and orientation readings, wrote them on paper, and passed them to me; I fed them into my own machine which I had programed for this special activity. Bill sat silently nearby, watching with fascination.
After some hours, diagrammatic printouts of the ship’s interior began to emerge: horizontal, lateral, and a sampling series of vertical cross sections at fifty-meter intervals. Examining first the horizontal and lateral diagrams as a pairing, I let
out a whistle, and Sven quit Wel's console to look over my shoulder. I said immediately: “Let’s resurrect the dining table and spread ’em.”
What had astonished me, and now amazed Sven and Bill, was that very little of the ship’s inhumanly large capacity was for people—or for humanoid robots, either. A single flat deck about two hundred meters long and averaging fifty wide sufficed for control room or bridge, ward room, recreation room, three individual sleeping rooms for the officers (the captain’s was appropriately large), and robot habitat; this deck chorded the lower quadrant of the ship’s girth where the artigrav pull would conveniently come from beneath. There Were also a number of subcontrol rooms at various strategic points high and low throughout the ship. We were located in a utility room at hull-belly, behind and beneath the crew deck. And that was it, for people and robots.
From just aft of our utility room all the way to the tail—a distance of eighteen kilometers by our measuring sticks—the ship’s body was constituted of a long series of tanklike compartments having total capacity of a staggering seventy-two billion cubic meters. These compartments were not perfectly simple: valved pipes connected the divider bulkheads; and subcontrol rooms were distributed about, with connecting pipes which might serve as swim-tunnels for robot crewpeople. Altogether, though, the compartments constituted a single subdivided mighty tank.
“On the analogy of our little manta-robots,” I argued, “this tank system contains the plasmic matter which must do the business of this mission, and that is to pull the sun. See, Sven, here at the tail is a pentagonal system of outlet tubes analogous to the dual anuses of the . manta-robots; and the purpose of those dual tubes was to discharge what they carried, namely, niedersinken.”