The Rape of The Sun

by Ian Wallace

  Abruptly Sun came. Semi-surrendering, sliding out of his fixed galactic orbit, he made vengefully for the Dhorner ship. “Relax pull!” Dhurk shouted; the second officer disengaged the tractor plasma, withdrawing it into the hull compartments. Dhurk watched; Sun was coming directly at them from behind. “Three-g thrust ahead!” ordered the captain; and the ship lurched forward, away from Sun.

  Then Dhurk saw on instruments that Sun was faltering: Sun’s positional inertia was taking over, he was in danger of falling back into the old orbital hole. Dhurk snapped: “Re-engage and restrain star, stabilize ship.” During a long series of moments, the sun-tarpon was held in check with his center several meters displaced. ;..

  Soft reedy voice close to a Dhurk-ear: “Perhaps the captain would accept a suggestion. Sir, you need not answer aloud; merely think your reply.”

  Dhurk labored to restrain supernatural panic: never had his own mind spoken aloud to him. He stabilized himself: if that was how his mind was behaving, he’d better play along with it. He projected a concise thought: “I would be pleased to receive a good suggestion.”

  Promptly, the voice: “Next time you pull, attempt acceleration as low as five thousand nanometers per second per second. At that gentle pace, perhaps the star will be docile; and later, when he is moving perceptibly, you can gradually pick up the pull.”

  It made eminent sense; after thought, Dhurk would have come to it himself; probably it was his own mind; the nanometer units were coming through to him as Dhorner units. On the other hand. ...

  Dhurk thought: “Are you me?”

  “No, Captain.”

  “Whoever you are, did you have anything to do with the interlingual communication among me and the people of this ladiolis?”

  “They spoke their tongue; I thought it to you; in your mind, it came out in your tongue. And vice versa.”

  Dhurk was breathing heavily; Rind was watching him; noticing this, the captain forced himself to be calm. “I am fascinated that you are invisible.”

  “Not really invisible; I am only deflecting attention from myself. To establish myself, 1 am now going to let you feel my weight on your right shoulder. To you it is a slight weight, but—do you feel it?”

  “Just barely.”

  “You can reach up and touch me, if you like. Be careful, I am small.”

  “I won’t trouble to do that, it would draw attention to myself, and I might injure you. If you have a name, it would be convenient to know it.”

  “I have a number of situational names. Right now, you could call me Ariel. Somewhat later, you may prefer to call me Iago.”

  “Since neither name means anything to me, I will call you either. Are you a member of the crew in the little capsule?” “Yes.”

  “Are you the one who was—too abstracted to come with the others?”

  “I came with the others, but I was too abstracted to make myself visibly evident.”

  Rind interrupted: “Captain, we have the star stabilized two meters out of normal orbit at center.”

  Dhurk gave his head a sharp shake as though to rid himself of his uninvited muse. He told his first officer: “Pull subtly at the star, try to establish an acceleration of five thousand nanometers per second per second.”

  ‘That is a bit on the imperceptible side—”

  “In three thousand seconds, it will get the star moving at a velocity of fifteen millimeters per second, and we will have moved it another 22.5 meters off normal position. Then perhaps we can start picking up the pace.”

  “Yes sir. Acting, sir.” Rind began issuing orders.

  Dhurk thought-remarked: “Apparently you people have some remarkable powers which are not technologically visible. Perhaps I should not be permitting ship’s freedom to Jensen and Cavell.”

  Countered the voice: “Good sir, you need not fear them. I am one who swims dimensions which they cannot fathom. The others plod upon their finless feet, all too deliberate in their clogged actions: their minds run swift, but gravity’s their foe, and sluggish is the action-spawn of thought. Alone among us, I am body-swift, able to run or flit as thought may dictate; but me you have with you, so you control me. So what’s to fear? Pray let them have their freedom, and precious little can they do with it.”

  Listening, Dhurk concentrated also on sun image and instruments. After a bit, although no change in the sun was visible, he nodded at a dial and told Rind: “I think that is doing it. Stay with it.”

  Then he thought-spoke: “Good Ariel, are you with me?” “On your shoulder firmly.”

  “In you there is a faint hint of poetry.”

  “Since you recognize this, there is poetry also in you.”

  ‘Tell me, Ariel—if I go now to my cabin where we will be private, will you reveal yourself visually to me?”

  “Enough’s enough for now, good Captain Dhurk. I would not weary you with more of me until you’ve rested and reflected. When I feel that you are ready, I will come in private, and I’ll show myself to you. Be not concerned, I am not terrible, and you will laugh at me, but that’s all right, and both of us will relish the good talking.”

  Dhurk felt his departure. Peremptorily he thought-barked: “Ariel?” Nothing.

  “The communication goes well, Ariel—n'est-ce pas?" “Indeed it does, Prospero. Your dictation is coming through with clarity, and I hope I am relaying it faithfully. Some of your lines are not bad, not bad at all—”

  “Spare me that, Collins; we have to keep our heads, we are not playing idle games. Tell me harshly: is he reacting well to the pentameters, or are they turning him off?”

  “All that I felt was favorable, Doctor Carr. But I think they should not be invariable, they should be mixed with bouts of clipped prose.”

  “I’ll remember that for the next run. Collins, the sun-moving is proceeding entirely too well. Properly our business should go through a leisurely build-up of trust; but we have to bring this thing off within twenty-four hours, or the whole deed will be done despite us.”

  “You can run at him again right now, if you like.”

  “We need some rest, Collins, or we will go all fuzzy, and that we can’t afford. Suppose we sleep now. When Sven and Helen awaken, they will have their run at the sabotage bit; we’ll see how that goes; and then we will take over, now that we’ve laid the grounding. But now we should sleep.”

  “Sir, I am in full agreement. Do you go to sleep, now, and I will follow—as soon as I have seen to the welfare of Doctor Haley.”

  29

  Sven and I were out of the capsule by 0700, feeling mighty grim—a grimness that was accentuated by the stolidity of Kritiker’s face, if that was what it was. We had a scouting

  plan: when and if it would reach its critical phase, would Kritiker cream us? If she should, then Earthlife as people had known it would be all done, if it hadn’t already been finished off by earthquakes.

  Kritiker let us pass by her; but when I looked back a moment later, she was standing, towering above us, poised to follow when we would have moved far enough to justify her two-meter striding. We carried certain small weapons; but if she had noticed them, she had given no sign. Weapons? well, they weren’t designed as such—they were radio circuit tracers—but weapons they might become: Sven and I had discussed this.

  Our air-filled spacesuits gave us enough buoyancy to allow arduous swimming through the storeroom hatch; this semifluid blue atmosphere was thinner than water but heavier than air, we had to leap off the floor and flail arms and legs violently to bring it off. Now we were buoyantly-sluggishly walking forward along the bridge-deck corridor, whose ceiling arched twelve meters above us. In this preliminary to our scouting, we retraced the route along which we had previously been carried—moving forward side by side along an invisible line midway between distant walls, inspecting left and right as we went, looking for the hatchway which opened into a certain swim-tube behind the walls—a tube which, according to my electronic probing, would lead us upward to the ship’s master compu
ter plexus.

  I found it interesting that the interior of this bizarre extragalactic ship should be so ordinary, apart from its boundless space. When utility was the major factor, apparently spaceship interiors tended to converge on the economies of geometry.

  Kritiker was following us languidly, some ten meters behind us; should we do something sudden, she could easily make up the distance. I stopped myself from wondering whether she might have some secret instructions which could be lethal: that kind of thinking flawed the main kind of thinking that we were out to do.

  We were approaching the door to the robot habitat. A crew robot appeared; it stared at us, exchanged a few rumbling words with Kritiker, and went on its way. Good: if anybody was going to interfere with us, it was going to be Kritiker, or another robot that Kritiker would summon. We felt free to talk with each other as we went, having decided that the Pentecost of Tongues was unlikely to repeat itself; Collins had been in on that, we were sure—and when last seen, Collins had been back aboard Mazda.

  Forward of the robot habitat, well aft of the officers’ quarters and the recreation room, we spotted divergent passageway forks left and right. Discussing this, we remembered from my diagrams (which we hadn’t dared bring along) that there, were relatively narrow Y-fork passageways port and starboard off the main corridor; these were probably they. I thought that each of us might explore one passageway, then return to compare notes. Sven disagreed: we should stay together, partly for mutual protection, partly to avoid giving Kritiker a pretext for calling aid. Being at my right, Sven led me to the right-hand passageway and we penetrated, always with our robot shadow.

  The passage diverged forward from the main corridor at an angle so oblique, we eyeball-noted, that Mazda-mm-booster could negotiate the veering. As we traveled this continually outcurving corridor, we estimated it at ten meters wide—our vehicle of destruction could manage the slow curvature—and I saw that the right-hand wall was irregularly studded with instruments which meant nothing to me although few earth-instruments meant nothing to me. There were faint sounds ahead, probably sleepy recreation just before bedtime; otherwise, silence in solitary vastness, as though we trod the labyrinth of a geometrical Mammoth Cave.

  Sven pointed ahead and right: “Look there.” It was another fork bifurcation. From the left tine, about five meters wide, emanated the sleepy sounds out of the recreation area: in Mazda, we should have such cavernous fun-space! At right, bulkheading a short corridor segment maybe seven meters wide, we saw the closed circular cover of a great hatch. The immediate problem for us was that there were no handles or other evident way to open it; indeed, had there been handles, they would have been too large for us to manipulate.

  Without disguising our interest, we stood studying the hatch. Behind us, Kritiker watched, silent and motionless. I glanced at my circuit tracer: its delicately oscillating dial-needles told me that Kritiker was probably communicating. I guessed what she was saying to someone or something: “They have paused before the entrance to the swimtube that leads to the prime computer plexus”—doubtless they had abbreviations for these terms. Perhaps she was adding a question: “If they get it open, shall I allow them to enter?” My pointer needles paused, then oscillated otherwise; a reply was coming through to her. Sven was watching; I told him: “If they said stop us, she will; if they didn’t, she won’t; shall we work on this, Captain?” He nodded once, and we studied on.

  An absurd idea occurred to me, and I tried it: turning to Kritiker, I gestured at the hatch-cover. Instantly she came forward and opened it, apparently by some sort of electronic impulses from her brain; then she stood back. The tube opened before us. Perhaps a trap?

  Sven said dryly to me, “Party pooper.” And he entered. And I followed. And she followed. Good grief, were they spotting us points in our own game?

  I had a tapeline in my hand; Sven took the spool; I carried my end of the line to one concave side of the tubewall, while Sven took the spool to the opposite concavity. “Six meters on the nose,” he told me after shifting the spool up and down a bit to get the longest dimension. We tested the other way: I held the tape end to the floor while Sven, with a powerful leaping-swimming effort, rose to tube top with the spool: “Again, six meters,” he said as he descended. It confirmed my diagrammetrics, and was thus far satisfactory for what we had in mind.

  We advanced into the tube, Sven clinging to the wound-in spool. At first the tube was level, progressing outward-forward toward the hull; we fluid-bottom-walked with no new difficulty, although the tube was smooth without hand-holds or foot-treads, obviously meant to be swum. So far so good, for our five-meter-diameter weapon.

  After perhaps a hundred meters (no point in measuring this distance exactly), the tube entered into the expected double curving leftward and upward. Where the double curvature started, Sven floored the spool while I carried the tape tip ahead, flooring it at the point where the double curve ended.

  Sven said “Sixty-two meters”; and when he came up to me, he looked as disconsolate as I felt. How would you go about maneuvering a twenty-eight-meter rigid capsule-cum-booster around a double curve only sixty-two meters long, when even on a straightaway there was only a half a meter to spare all around the capsule before it would scrape the tubewalls?

  I proposed: “Let’s move on; we can think about it en route.”

  As I had negotiated the double curve, I had begun to experience a peculiar gravitational disorientation, the kind that embarrasses you in a Fun House where floors are arranged at diversified angles to horizontal so that you fall all over yourself not knowing which way is down. Sven reported the same experience when he followed me up. This we might have anticipated: the dominant down-gravity beneath the bridge deck had eased-off as we had moved outward toward the tube entrance, yielding dominance to the all-around shell gravity of the hull; and as the tube proceeded and changed its angle, while moving ever closer to a hull flank, the vectors of draw upon us were competing with each other. We thought we might solve this balance difficulty by sending Kritiker ahead of us and watching which way her belly would face as she swam; but Kritiker would have none of it, staying insistently behind us, perhaps amused at our floundering antics, perhaps incapable of amusement

  “Down” was now the hull-side of the tube, making “up” toward the ship’s lateral interior—so which way was the tube upwardness? We stood on the tube wall nearest the hull, convincing ourselves that what now seemed a levelly horizontal tube indeed sloped upward with respect to ship-shape; we developed a nomenclature, differentiating “true up” (the tube slope) from “apparent up” (toward the ship’s interior). Once that was settled, there was a question of determining whether “true up” was to our left or to our right as we stood facing the tube’s inner wall: we thought we’d come from what was now our right, but the disorientation was insidious. Fortunately Kritiker appeared, swimming out of the tube curve; she paused, where she was whence we had come, so we turned left and walked along the tube wall without difficulty as though it were a level catwalk—although we knew from my telemetric diagram that the upward slope was steep indeed.

  Presumably Kritiker was picking up our radio talking as we progressed; presumably also she was making nothing of it, unless her programing included a diabolical talent for deciphering alien languages. Kritiker had proved advantageous to me from one viewpoint: contrasting her to the space-mantas and likening her physically to the Dhorners and to the less mentally accomplished in-ship robots, I caught the theory of robotic form among the Dhomers. With robots which needed no hands and did need a maximum of navigability, such as the space-mantas and this very ship, the form was manta-primitive; but with those which needed to be handed, and with whom navigability was a minor demand, the model was not the manta, but the Dhomer. I was making some inferences: about Dhorner evolution, and perhaps also Dhorner religion. . . .

  While I meditated, we were moving ahead. It was an exceedingly long walk, and a fatiguing one, even though we were learning some t
ricks about using our semi-buoyancy by leaning forward and toe-thrusting our way toward the computer plexus, the ship’s vitality. Kritiker followed acquiescently, making no move to prevent us.

  I began to notice that our gaseous medium was warming; that would be expected, computers of the usual semi-conductor type give out an awful lot of heat. But did this mean that their prime computers were not superconductors, even though this to-us-experimental advance must be used for the hypercompact brains of their robots? Presently the warmth became uncomfortable, and the tube ahead was beginning to glow. I paused, swaying slightly: there were undulant movements in the tube fluid. Coming close behind me, Sven clasped one of my shoulders and peered beyond me. After a moment, I shrugged and pressed on; releasing my shoulder, Sven followed.

  And Kritiker followed.

  Minutes later, the heat was so oppressive that our spacesuit cooling kicked on. Not twenty paces ahead of us, the tube seemed to veer rightward; since we were moving upward along the outside tube wall, that was probably a leveling off. And there we faced a diffuse purple radiance, and the heat was hot.

  Sven and I stood side by side clasping each other’s waists. Sven queried: “What do you think?” I told him: “I can take it; are you up to it?” “We have to see,” he responded, and moved forward ahead of me, until he stood facing forward at the apparent drop-off point and incoherently yelled. I hurried after him, came up with him, and stood gazing and gasping and boiling.