by Hogan, James
dragon-servants existed as he stood staring without moving. For he was seeing
his world for the first time as it looked from beyond the sky.
It was a sphere.
And behind it, scattered across distances he had no way of estimating, were more
shining worlds than he knew even how to count.
17
DAVE CROOKES PRESSED A KEY ON A CONSOLE IN THE ORION'S Digital Systems and Image
Processing Laboratory, and sat back to watch as the sequence began replaying
again on the screen in front of him. It showed one of the Taloids in the view
recorded twenty-four hours previously watching a Terran figure make a series of
gestures, and then turning its head to look directly at another Taloid standing
a few feet behind. A moment later the second Taloid's head jerked round to look
quickly at the first Taloid and then at the Terran.
"There!" Leon Keyhoe, one of the mission's signals specialists, said from where
he was standing behind Crookes' chair. Crookes touched another key to freeze the
image. Keyhoe looked over his shoulder at two other engineers seated at
instrumentation panels to one side. "The one in the brown helmet has to be
saying something at that point right there. Check the scan one more time."
"Still no change," one of the engineers replied, nipping a series of switches
and taking in the data displays in front of him. "There's nothing from VLF and
LF, right through to EHF in the millimeter band ... No correlation on Fourier."
"Positive correlation reconfirmed on acoustic," the other engineer reported.
"Short duration ultrasonic pulse bursts, averaging around, ah . . . one hundred
ten thousand per second, duration twenty to forty-eight microseconds. Repetition
frequency is variable and consistent with modulation at up to thirty-seven
kilocycles. Sample profile being analyzed on screen three."
Keyhoe sighed and shook his head. "Well, it seems to be definite," he agreed.
"The Taloids communicate via exchanges of high-frequency sound pulses. There's
no indication of any use of radio at all. It's surprising—I was certain that
those transmission centers down on the surface would turn out to be long-range
relay stations or something like that." Readings obtained from the Orion had
confirmed the Dauphin orbiter's findings that several points on the surface of
Titan emitted radio signals intermittently and irregularly. Probes sent below
the aerosol layer had revealed the sources to lie near some of the heavily
built-up centers from which the surrounding industrialization and mechanization
appeared to have spread. The patterns of signal activity had correlated with
nothing observed on the surface so far.
Joe Fellburg, who was wedged on a stool between Dave Crookes' console and a
bulkhead member, rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a second or two. "Do you buy
this idea that Anna Voolink came up with about alien factories?" he asked,
looking up at Keyhoe.
"Well, we've got to agree it's a possibility, Joe," Keyhoe said. "Why?"
Anna Voolink was a Dutch NASO scientist who had been involved several years
before in a study of a proposal to set up a self-replicating manufacturing
facility on Mercury for supplying Earth with materials and industrial products.
She had speculated that Titan's machine biosphere might have originated from a
similar scheme set up by an alien civilization, possibly millions of years
previously, which had somehow mutated and started to evolve. What had caused the
system to mutate, why the aliens should have chosen Titan, and what had happened
to them since were questions that nobody had ventured to answer even
tentatively.
Fellburg leaned forward to prop an elbow against the side of the console and
gestured vaguely at the screens. "It occurred to me that if everything down
there did evolve from some superadvanced version of what NASO was talking about
setting up on Mercury, then maybe radio could have been the primary method of
communication in the early days. But if the aliens were any kind of engineers at
all, you'd expect them to have provided some kind of backup, right?" He looked
from Keyhoe to Crookes. Crookes pinched his nose, thought for a second, and
nodded.
"Makes sense, I guess," Keyhoe agreed.
Fellburg spread his hands. "So couldn't the answer be that the primary system
went out of use—maybe because of a mutation error or something like that—and the
secondary became the standard? What we're picking up from those centers could be
just a remnant of something that doesn't serve any purpose any more—coming from
a few places where it hasn't quite died out yet."
"Mmm . . . it's an interesting thought," Keyhoe said.
"I wonder if the Taloids would still be capable of receiving anything," Crookes
murmured after thinking the suggestion over for a second or two.
"I suppose that would depend on where their blueprint information comes from . .
. their 'genetics,' " Keyhoe said.
Fellburg rubbed his chin again. "Well, if it's not functionally relevant
anymore, and if their evolution is driven selectively the same as ours is, I
guess there wouldn't be any strong selection working either one way or the
other. So probably some of them can receive radio and some of them can't. Some
sensitive ones might still be produced."
Dave Crookes smiled to himself. "If that's true, I wonder what all our radio
traffic over the last few weeks might have been doing to them," he said.
"What's your background, Joe?" Crookes inquired casually an hour later in the
transit capsule that he and Fellburg were sharing on their way back to Globe II.
"How d'you mean?" Fellburg asked.
"Your technical background ... I mean, it's pretty obvious you know something
about electronics and pulse techniques."
"Why?"
"Oh . . . just curious, I guess."
"Well, Michigan Tech—master's. Six years in industry, mainly computer physics
with IBM. Ten years army, finishing up as a technical specialist with
intelligence. Good enough?"
The capsule passed a window section of the tube, giving a momentary view of the
outside of the Orion and of Titan hanging in the background, partly obscuring
the magnificent spectacle of Saturn and its rings. Crookes eyed Fellburg
uncertainly for a few seconds. "Can I ask you something personal?" he said at
last.
"Sure. If I think it's none of your goddam business, I'll say so, okay?"
Crookes hesitated, then said, "Why are you mixed up with this Zambendorf thing?"
"Why not?"
Crookes frowned uncomfortably. Obviously he'd come about as close to being
direct as he was prepared to. "Well, it's ... I mean, isn't it a kind of a
wasteful way to use that kind of talent?"
"Is it? Do you know what I'd be getting paid now if I'd gone back into industry
after I quit the army?"
"Is that all that matters?" Crookes asked.
Fellburg thrust out his chin. "No, but it's a good measure of how society values
its resources. I've already had enough Brownie badges to stitch on my shirt
instead of anything that's worth something."
Crookes shook his head. "But when the product is worthless . . ."
"Th
e market decides what a product is worth—through demand, which fixes the
price," Fellburg said. "If plastic imitations are selling high today because
people are too dumb to tell the difference, who's doing the wasting—me, who
accepts the going rate, or the guy who's out on the street in front of his
store, giving the real thing away?"
When Fellburg arrived back at the team's day cabin, Thelma and Drew West were as
he had left them, hunched in front of the display console, following
developments down on the surface; Clarissa Eidstadt was sitting at a comer
table, editing a wad of scripts. "What've you been up to?" Thelma asked as he
came in.
"Over in the electronics section with Dave Crookes and a few of the guys,
playing back the Taloid shots," Fellburg replied. "Things are getting
interesting. It doesn't look as if they use radio to talk after all. They use
high-frequency sound pulses. The engineers have started computer-processing the
patterns already. Oh, and did you know they're not so poker-faced after all?"
"The engineers?" West said, without looking away from the screen.
"The Taloids, turkey."
"How come?"
"They have facial expressions—surface heat patterns that change like crazy all
the time they're talking. Crookes' people have been taping a whole library of
them in IR."
"Say, how about that," Thelma said.
"And how long will it be before anyone manages to decode anything from
pulse-code patterns collected in the databank?" West asked. He waved an arm at
the screen. "Karl and Otto are doing a much better job their own way. They've
practically swapped life stories with the Taloids already." Fellburg followed
his gaze toward the screen.
Down on the surface a second lander had appeared in the pool of light alongside
the first, and the surrounding area was dotted with the lights of ground
vehicles and EV-suited figures exploring and poking around in the general
vicinity. The first lander's cargo bay had been depressurized and left unheated
with its loading doors open to Titan's atmosphere to serve as a shelter for the
Taloids. Zambendorf, having snatched a few hours rest inside the ship a short
while previously, was now back outside and talking to the Taloids again in his
self-appointed role as Earth's ambassador—which the Taloids seemed to have
endorsed by responding to him more readily and freely than to anybody else.
Scrawled in white on the hull of the surface lander in the background, and
extending back for yard after yard in what looked like a mess of graffiti toward
the ship's stern, was a jumble of shapes and symbols, arrows and lines, and
dozens of whimsical Taloids interspersed with bulbous, domeheaded
representations of spacesuited Terrans. The primary communications medium used
in the historic moment of first contact between civilizations from two different
worlds had turned out to be chalk and blackboard, and the ship had offered the
handiest writing surface available.
"I got Herman Thoring to okay a news flash to Earth to the effect that Karl
initiated communications with the aliens," Clarissa said without looking up.
Fellburg laughed and moved closer to take in the view on the screen. "So, what's
the latest down there?" he asked.
West turned a knob to lower the voice of the NASO officer who was listening in
on the local surface frequencies and keeping up a commentary from inside the
lander. "See the Taloid who's waving at Karl now —the one in the red
cloak—that's Galileo. He's curious about nearly everything. The one with him is
Sir Lancelot. He seems to be the head guy of the bunch."
"Okay," Fellburg said.
"The Taloids have some hand-drawn maps that our people managed to match up with
reconnaissance pictures—so now we know where the Taloids are heading," West
said. "It's a pretty big city in the mechanized area on the other side of the
desert. It looks as if they're on their way to the palace or whatever of the
king who runs that whole area. It seems that Lancelot and the others work for
the king, but we're not sure yet exactly how Galileo fits in."
"You don't get three guesses," Thelma said to Fellburg.
"Huh?"
"Karl's called the king Arthur."
Fellburg groaned.
"What else did you expect?" West asked. "Anyhow, the bunch that the army wiped
out was from some country over the mountains that's at war with Arthur for some
reason, or something like that. But if these Taloids we've ended up talking to
are Arthur's knights or whatever, then maybe we've gotten ourselves an
introduction."
"So what are our people aiming at—a landing somewhere near that city you
mentioned if Arthur agrees to it?" Fellburg asked.
West nodded. "You've got it."
"How long would we need to wait before Lancelot and his guys get there? Do we
know that?"
"Nobody's figured out how they reckon time yet." West nodded toward the screen.
"But if Karl gets his way, it won't matter too much anyway. He's trying to sell
the Taloids on the idea of letting us airlift them the rest of the way. And you
know something, Joe, I've got a feeling they just might buy the idea."
18
A LOW ROAR SOUNDED DISTANTLY FROM BEHIND JUST AS THE riders reached the crest of
the saddle at the valley head, beyond which the land dropped again toward the
river that marked the Carthogian border. They stopped and looked back to watch
as the sky-dragon that had carried them high over the world rose, slowly at
first, with violet heat-wind streaming from its underside, and then turned its
head upward as it gained speed and soared higher to shrink rapidly to a pinpoint
and eventually vanish. Dornvald had needed all of his powers of argument to talk
the rest of the outlaws into allowing themselves to be flown the remaining
distance to Carthogia in one of the Skybeings' dragons. Accepting a roof as
shelter out in the desert was one thing, but being enclosed on all sides as if
in a trap was another. And after watching the Skybeings entering and emerging
from their dragon furnaces unscathed, how could one be sure they appreciated the
limits that the mere steel and titanium casings of robeings could withstand?
"Those are strange dragon-tamers indeed, who reduce the King's soldiers to scrap
in a trice, and then request Kleippur's pleasure," Geynor said as the riders
resumed moving. "If they wish to meet with Kleippur, why do they not simply fly
to the city of Menassim and command him forth? It seems to me they hold a
considerable advantage in persuasiveness, which would assure a rapid reversal of
any inclination he might choose toward recalcitrance."
"It appears to be their desire to give opportunity for the citizens of Menassim
to be forewarned," Dornvald replied.
Geynor shook his head in amazement. "From such unassailable strength they speak,
yet they would invite our agreement? Is this not true nobility of spirit?
Horazzorgio could have spared himself his not inconsiderable inconvenience by
attending more to his manners and yielding less to his impetuousness, it seems."
"And yet, who knows what subtleties and unsuspected protocols might c
onstitute
the chivalry code of Skybeings?" Dornvald asked. "Did their request in fact
confer the freedom of answer that might be supposed, or was it no more than a
command couched in such form merely through rules of foreign custom which we
know not?"
Geynor pondered the question for a while, and eventually answered, "If the
latter, then our refusal might have been construed as no less ill-mannered than
the assault by the King's soldiers. As penalty for such error of judgment, we
could have found ourselves strewn across the desert in like fashion."
"Aha!" Dornvald exclaimed. "Now, at last, I think you see my reasoning, for your
words echo my own conclusion."
"Let us hope that Kleippur is compelled by the same logic," Geynor said.
"You need have no fear," Dornvald assured him.
Beside them, Thirg was unusually quiet. It was significant, he thought, that the
outlaws were referring to the mysterious domeheaded visitors as Skybeings now,
which seemed to indicate that they, like Thirg, no longer thought of them as
servants. The Domeheads didn't act like servants. They seemed to come and go,
and act freely. The two dragons, by contrast, had just sat docilely throughout
the negotiations in the desert, and after a while had given the impression of
serving no other function than of being bearers of the Domeheads and the strange
creatures that carried them around like living chariots and attended their every
need. Presumably, therefore, flying creatures existed in the world beyond the
sky that the Domeheads were from, and the Domeheads had learned to tame them
just as robeings had learned to tame steeds, power generators, load-lifters, and
foodmaking machines. But what form of being was it that was not a machine yet
was attended by machines, and at whose bidding magic creatures saw through
mountains, reported distant events, and destroyed without hesitation any who
aroused their masters' displeasure? Thirg brooded over the question and said
little as the band descended into the valleyhead beyond the saddle and crossed
the slopes below to pick up a track leading in the direction of the river.
Lower down, the slopes leveled out into flat banks covered by pipe-fronded
chemical processing towers, storage tanks, and picturesque groves of