by Ian Wallace
Two hours later came another banging. I remarked: “So they want their platter back.” Collins countered: “More likely they want to interview us, as I anticipated.” I said, ‘This time, I*m going too.” Collins objected, “Let me check first that free-floating piece of rib.” I started to unzip but he shook his head no, seized my shoulders, and pressed his forehead against my chest, shoving a breast aside. A moment later, he straightened: “Satisfactory knitting has begun, but it could easily tear loose; go along, but be careful.”
Four of us suited up, Collins having first seen to the comfort and security of semi-comatose Bill. What interested me was that Wel and Collins hurried ahead of us to the entry hatch and took a kind of formation there. Some sort of anticipation?
Sven opened the inner door, and the four of us crowded into the lock—crowded indeed, because I stood holding the empty platter with spoons; the platter was a meter wide, but light; digging the tight lock-fit, I lofted the platter above my head. Inner door shut; outer door open, flooding our lock with blue fluidity. We were faced by a horned officer backed by three robot crewpersons; disregarding the proffered platter, peremptorily he beckoned to us.
I swear I will never know what it was that Collins did then. For some reason, at the beckoning I looked at Collins: he was here—and then he was gone. I scrutinized the gigantic officer. Its expression had not changed; evidently he had not noticed.
We filed out of Mazda at the insistent beckoning, Sven first, of course, then I, then Wel. Again we stood on the expansive table, faintly undulating in the atmosphere because our air-filled suits were semi-buoyant. Another officer was there; and he and the first officer were talking in some agitation while the first kept pointing within, meaning probably that he could not persuade one of us to come out. I tried a charade: getting the first officer’s attention, I pointed to the ship, then pointed to my head, then rotated a finger near my temple, then dramatically drooped. Apparently they got it: Bill Haley was nuts. To guard him, they stationed a robot at the door, giving it rather detailed verbal instructions—which said to me, again, that their robots were uncommonly complex.
No Collins. Nowhere any Collins. I was remembering his promise to get us out. And here we were, out. And no Collins.
Then the first officer gathered up Sven in his arms, the second scooped me up, and the remaining robot took Wel. I evinced anguish and pointed to my twice-broken rib; my officer nodded, he seemed to understand, he took pains to be gentle in his clasping. Carrying us, they willow-strode along the deck—a smooth ride indeed. They launched into swimming; we passed through the hatch and, lo, we were in the central corridor of the bridge-deck, still moving forward.
It was a quite ordinary ship-corridor, apart from its twelve-meter height and width. By tacit agreement, Sven and I scanned the passing walls, looking for possible tube-accesses; I spotted a promising side-corridor, but it would be a while before he and I could compare notes. If we would ever compare notes; I had a dismal feeling that these Dhorners might be carrying us to a disposal unit; inside me there was a primal urge to cry out to Wel, “I love you—”
And why not? I hollered: “Hey, Wel, I love you!” His sainted reply came: “And I love you, Hel!” Sven had to hear, our helmet radios were all on the same frequency; well, hell, so I loved Sven too, but let’s not louse up the moment.
. . . Especially since, on second thought, they were obviously not going to kill us. My carrier was gentling me; also, two of our carriers were officers, and killing would be for robots; besides, they were charitably leaving Bill comfortable in catatonia.
They brought us to the bridge—and there was Captain Dhurk in the command chair, watching us being brought. My eyes were diverted from Dhurk by the view in the ship’s broad forewindows, the view which the captain must have been watching: our sun close up, glowering and flaring in his net. Of course it could not be a direct view, it had to be a TV picture from the ship’s rear; presumably the captain could clear it at will so that he could gaze directly through transparent substance at forward space.
Kneeling, the officers and robot placed us carefully on the floor at the captain’s five-foot feet, bare and toe-webbed and finned, whence we distance-peered upward at his high-aloft forward-thrust snout and his horns. I had a flash-memory of standing just so at the mammoth feet of Abraham Lincoln brooding in his Washington memorial. One of the officers took the copilot seat beside Dhurk but behind little us, while the other officer and the robot went off to duty somewhere.
Dhurk looked down upon us. We looked upward at Dhurk.
Parting his lips, the captain emitted a reverberating roar which trembled us in the vibrating blue-fluid atmosphere but was probably a quiet courteous greeting. Our Captain Sven responded: “Sir, we have much to talk about.” Dhurk remained grave, although Sven’s voice coming out of the helmet output-speaker must have reached Dhurk as a monkey-chittering.
After studying us à distance for a bit, Dhurk bent down to encircle Sven’s waist with one webbed hand and mine with the other; raising us, he positioned us standing on his knees, leaving Wel gaping upward below. Seeing that we would have a balance problem on the ten-inch width of his top knee surface, he maneuvered us into sitting positions; and we straddled his knees, spreading our legs wide because at the rounds the knees were more like twenty-one inches. Dhurk looked at Sven. Dhurk looked at me. And at Sven. And at me. Grasping the differentiation that he was trying to make through our figure-shrouding spacesuits, f elevated my chest a little, wandering if Sven could manage a demonstration erection that would be visible through his own protective fabric.
Unexpectedly, Dhurk said to us in perfect English modulated for our ears: “Presumably you are a male and a female of your species. It is a shame that we cannot communicate.”
Sven stared up at Dhurk, and then Sven grinned. “Sir, I do not know how you learned our tongue—but believe me, you are communicating.”
The face of Dhurk went into a series of contortions which had to mean total upset. He leaned down to Sven: “How in cosmos did you learn to speak Dhorner?”
Sven countered: “How in cosmos did you learn to speak English?”
Dhurk turned to me. “Do you understand me?”
“Perfectly,” I said with an affectation of cool, having a strong suspicion that Collins had to be in this communication picture.
Dhurk leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes, trying to assimilate this absurdity. I glanced at the copilot; he seemed undisturbed, although he was paying us all the attention that he could spare from his duties. It must be that he was not receiving the Collins thought-vibes, which clearly were reserved for Dhurk and for Sven and for me.
And also, perhaps, for Wel? I called down to him: “Sweet, are you too experiencing this remarkable communication?” He called back: “What communication?” This I meditated distrustfully; Wel could be devious.
Opening his eyes, Dhurk addressed Sven. “I am the captain of this fleet. I take it that you are captain of your capsule?”
“Correct, sir,” answered Sven with aplomb.
“My name is Dhurk.”
“Mine is Jensen. This lady is Cavell. The man below is Carr. Perhaps you would be good enough to lift Carr up alongside us, he is our comrade.”
Instantly Dhurk leaned down to collect Wel, creating hang-on problems for Sven and me. “Cavell, be good enough to move forward a bit,” Dhurk requested. I hunched up toward his thigh, and Wel was positioned behind me—leaving Sven alone on the other knee, which may have indicated some rank-judgment.
Then Dhurk said to Sven, quite steadily: “Captain Jensen, for now I am not going to question this miraculous language interplay, I shall take it for granted while we establish a working order. I judge that you are beings from the third planet of this star. Right?”
“Right.”
“We have pulled you here inadvertently, but since you are here, I need to know what you were up to, orbiting your star.”
“Captain Dhurk, we are here in
search of stellar energy for our planet. In return, pray explain what you are up to, netting our star.” Sven I could have kissed.
“It is perhaps regrettable for all of us,” Dhurk remarked, “that you and we happened to arrive here at about the same time. What you did not know would not have hurt you.”
“When you do tell us what you are doing here, will it hurt us?”
Wel interposed: “Excuse me, captains. Captain Jensen, do you really think it important for Captain Dhurk to reveal his mission? Captain Dhurk, my point with my captain is that on our planet we are great gamesters. It crosses my mind that it would be an interesting game for us to try to discover your mission, while you try to prevent us from doing so.”
I thought Dhurk’s expression registered faint amusement. “We top like games,“ he said, “as long as they don’t interfere with serious business. I’m afraid that the game you propose might prove too diverting for us. We might not like the pieces you play with. Already you have shot three of your pieces at us, and you have a fourth atop your capsule.”
A-ha! How would my men meet that one? Sven played it: “We are ravenous to know why they didn’t damage your ship. No, don’t tell us, that can be part of the game, to see if wc can solve that mystery while discovering what your mission may be.”
Now Dhurk truly smiled. “Certainly you are excellent gamesters, you have tricked me into allowing you to tempt me. Especially since we have neutralized your fourth nuclear missile. But I have to be concerned about what further weapons you may have. Tell me, Cavell—how are you planning to use your diagrammatic scansions of my ship?**
I managed to take it without batting an eye. “Sir, we will use them in the course of playing the game proposed by Carr and Jensen.”
By now the first officer was so entranced that he could hardly attend to duty. Dhurk turned to him: “They are proposing a game.”
“They are?” Collins was allowing us to understand that officer, too.
“They would try to discover our mission and why their nuclear missiles did not harm us. We would amuse ourselves by watching them try.”
“But, sir, they could not discover these things without ship’s freedom—”
“Precisely. What do you think about it, Rind?”
“I distrust it, sir. I respect their capabilities.”
I interposed: “And we respect yours. I am sure that you are able to maintain scansion of any among us who remain inside our capsule, in addition to the robot which you station outside to guard the door. Could you perhaps spare another
robot to follow us while we are exploring your ship? Then the game could go on.”
Dhurk demanded: “You know what a robot is?”
“I do know, sir; our planet has them, but ours run pretty stupid. Do you know what stupid is?”
Wel chuckled, Sven’s mouth twitched, Dhurk stared and then grinned. The quizzical crinkle on Wel's face interested me: he must know something, but who’d know what it could be? Now Wel reinforced me: “Guarding our explorers should not be too difficult, sir. There will only be two of them: Jensen and Cavell. For my part, I am a scholar with much to do inside our capsule, I will be staying there and helping Jensen and Cavell analyze their findings.”
“What about your other two companions?”
“Neither would they be playing that game, in any active way.”
“By the way—where are they now?”
“One is too ill to come here with us, the other is—too abstracted.” Now Sven was frowning at Wel across the four-foot interknee space.
Dhurk meditated, perhaps remembering his dreams. Game-playing is the best possible medium for psychostudy. He said presently: “Yes, I think the game might be played. When do you want to begin it?”
Sven came in again. “About that, sir, there is an awkwardness: our diurnal rhythm is the opposite of yours, we should be sleeping right now. Can your robot arrange to supervise us if we wander during what you call your night?”
“So much the better, Captain: by night, you wouldn’t be bothering our operations; and you wouldn’t be witnessing them, either. And our scansion-monitoring of your capsule interior is robotically supervised; one of us officers will be awakened if anything untoward goes on in there. Yes, that arrangement will give me an edge in our game—which I welcome, being bored when I am not scared to death of what I am doing.
“It is agreed, then. I am sending for a particularly acute robot; its name is Kritiker, its traits are such that we think of it as a she.”
Dhurk addressed a few words to his copilot, First Officer Rind, who then spoke into an intercom. Kritiker appeared almost instantaneously: a rather small robot, only some three
meters tall by our diminished measure; it did seem that Sven and I between us could physically handle her, maybe. Although she was naked like the other robots, her gender (if it was that) was indistinguishable: but something about the way she stood at attention considering us did suggest a certain sheness.
“Kritiker,” said Dhurk, “this is Captain Jensen, and this is Cavell. They are to have ship’s freedom: but you must be with them at all times to prevent them from interfering with our operations or ship mechanisms. Understood?”
“Yes, captain.” Her voice was lighter than Dhurk’s; it was rather silky.
“These people are expected to sleep in their capsule during our day, and to explore during our night. When they arc in the capsule, remain on guard, but do not confine them. If they cal! for your service inside, give it, since you are small enough to enter their hatch; otherwise, remain outside. Report whenever you think it desirable. Understood?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“And now—Captain Jensen, Cavell, Carr—I do regret that I must terminate this remarkable conversation for now. In your capsule, are you experiencing any special inconvenience?”
“Only one,” Sven told him. “In space, we maintain artificial gravity by centrifugal force, spinning our ship. Here we cannot do that. In consequence, our sleeping quarters are tilted or upside down.”
“Your technology is indeed a charming combination of the advanced and the primitive. I am sure that long before my time, ours was much Like yours. Tell me, is our ship’s gravity comfortable?”
“Very.”
“Good. Kritiker, be kind enough to arrange that our normal ship’s gravity is maintained equally all around the cylinder of their capsule, beginning within the hour. Now return them to their cylinder. You’d better carry Cavell gently, since her injury is the most dangerous; it is a twice-fractured rib, and you know what that could mean. But let Carr and Captain Jensen swim ahead of you, to get the hang of it; they will be slow and awkward, but let them alone unless they deviate. And when they explore, let them walk or swim on their own.”
Back in Mazda, we three inhaled stiff triple-pill brandies, after which we became aware that Kritiker had activated all-around gravity; it seemed to be about five-tenths g. Haley stayed motionless in his pneumatic chair, sleep-breathing; Collins was nowhere. Sven and I agreed that sleep now was the right thing for what we had in mind; Wel silently listened. I wanted powerfully to ask my husband about the interview-in-English with the Dhomer captain who had never heard of Earth, much less of England; but I restrained myself because Wel was being exceptionally ingoing. Brandy done, the three of us gingerly handled inert Bill to his own cubicle and composed him on his bunk; then gratefully we hit our own cubicles and I for one died immediately.
Some sort of grinding awakened me within the hour. I lay experiencing it, trying to analyze it. Presently it came into me that this grinding semi-resembled what we had felt d distance via the Collins vision of takeoff from Dhom... .
A strident buzzer sounded through the ship. Profoundly from her bowels resounded a humming of powerful engines which wavulated faint vibration through the hull.
Then the ship shuddered, and my head hit a Mazda bulkhead with semi-stunning force as the great ship lurched into acceleration which felt like two or three g’s. While I
was collecting myself, thrust stopped and the ship was in freefall. Very soon afterward, I slid to bunkfoot under one-g reverse acceleration, which continued for several minutes and then stopped, presumably leaving the great ship motionless in space.
If that hadn’t awakened Sven and Wel, it might have killed them; and I did have good reason for anxiety about Bill. Punching buttons on my intercom, I called, “Wel! Sven! You guys awake?”
Wel's voice came in: “After all that, what else? Hold on, I’m going to check Bill.” Then Sven: “Hi, Hel—where were you when our cabin slid off the cliff?”
I demanded: “Any theories?”
“I imagine,” said Sven, “problems with the sun."
Wel again: “I’m with Bill, luckily we strapped him in, he’s okay and aware of nothing. I can tell you precisely what happened. They were tugging at Sun, and evidently he came loose. They feared he might roll over them, so they jumped
the ship forward; but then Sun sort of stabilized, so they braked and have gone back to steady tugging. I think now Dhurk realizes that they overdid, a bit, and he is trying to urge Sun into gentle acceleration at about one millimeter per second per second.”
“My God.” Sven groaned. “Earth must be demolished!*’
I snapped: “And how, friend husband, do you know all that?”
Almost I could see his wry grin. “Call is surmise, friend wife. And both of you go back to sleep.”
28
Taut in his chair. Captain Dhurk studied alternately the sun image and his instruments. Beside him. First Officer Rind, tight on instalments, manipulated the controls which activated ship-thnist in order to stabilize the ship while the second officer, at a nearby console, controlled the elastic flow-and-draw of the tractor plasma that was tugging at the solar net. The feeling on the bridge was like the nerve-and-muscle agony of playing a two-octillion ton tarpon: Sun kept yielding a little, then subsiding back into position. The second officer had to handle a delicate rocking action in which the range of oscillation was no more than a few centimeters; while Rind, responding to him, had to hold the ship at a fixed spatial position regardless of whether Sun at the instant was coming or going.