The Reefs of Space

by Frederik Pohl

  They lived like primitive islanders, catching the tiny flying things with nets made of vines, feasting on the shining fruits. Ryeland's mind was queasy at the thought of the radiation they were absorbing with every luscious bite, but his stomach was delighted. And, he thought, they were not the first to eat them and live. Perhaps the radiation was purely photonic; perhaps a sort of biolumines-cence, like the green glow of a firefly.

  Ryeland asked the girl again how Fleemer and his allies had got the better of her father, and got the same answer he had been given before. It was no answer. "I don't know, Steve. Except that it is all about the jetless drive. Father told me that he approved the search for an interstellar drive as part of the original Plan, built into the Machine. When he first learned about the spacelings, from Donderevo, he knew that a reactionless drive was possible. He began to organize an effort to learn how to build it. Immediately, he ran into fanatical opposition from men like Fleemer. I don't know the reason for their opposition. It must have been something more than just the desire to grab Father's place. Somehow, they were able to manipulate the Machine. They have got it under their own control. But I still believe that we could rescue the Machine and Father and the Plan of Man—if we knew the secret of the spacelings."

  That, of course, drove Ryeland to begin assembling and testing the computers he had brought from the rocket But the crawling fog was thicker in his mind. He sat staring at the banked computers, but he could think of no approach more promising than those he had tried when he was still on Fleemer's team. He couldn't be sure that the failure of the team attack was altogether due to Fleemer's sabotage.

  Anyhow, he reflected, there wasn't much that he could do in his cave on this reeflet. Even if he had been given the blueprints for a perfected reactionless drive, he had no shop equipment.

  Hopelessly, he gave up the effort.

  Days passed. Weeks passed. The spaceling roamed sadly around their little world, still worried. They could not read its ways as Quiveras had, but its worry was plain. Was it the Plan cruiser, still skulking about? Or a nearer menace? They simply could not tell. Donna grew sulky and unhappy, until they had a brief, brittle quarrel of words one day and it exploded into weeping. She clung to him. "I'm sorry. It's just that I always had so much. Servants, clean clothes, cooked food. Power, too. And now—"

  She smiled up at him. Queerly, Ryeland thrust her away then. He was churned up inside with feelings he could neither analyze nor handle. It was his turn to be sulky and irritable, because, though he did not know it, his inner self was becoming a battle ground—the site of a struggle between his common sense, on one hand, and on the other a growing potent love for the Planner’s daughter...

  Even his dreams were haunted.

  He slept restlessly, and felt that he was choking ... He was in his office, miles under the surface of the Earth in the hidden complex of air-conditioned tunnels that held the Machine and its attendants. He heard the knocking on the locked door, and got up to open it for Angela. But it wasn't Angela.

  It was Donna Creery, white-smocked like the nurses at the stock-pile. She had brought the coffee and sandwiches on a plastic tray, but she screamed and threw them on the floor when she saw his face.

  "It's Donderevo!" she was screaming. "It was Ron Donderevo—"

  He wanted to tell her who he was, but suddenly he was strapped to the therapy couch in the recreation center, with shocks of paralyzing agony stabbing from the electrodes on his body. She was coming toward him again, in the white smock with a stitched red heart on her perfect breast, reaching for him with a long hooked scalpel.

  "You might.as well tell us now." She was wheezing at him with Dr. Thrale's apologetic, asthmatic voice. 'Tell us how to build a jetless drive."

  He wanted to tell her. The specifications were clear in his mind, amazingly simple; he couldn't understand why there had to be so much fuss about such a simple thing. But his voice was paralyzed with the shocks that made waves of dazing pain from the collar around his neck. And Donna wouldn't let him talk.

  Now she wore a horned radar helmet. She was taunting him, with Fleemer's ugly voice. One touch, Ryeland. Only one little touch on the detonation button, and your precious secret will die with you!

  Now she had Angela's face.

  But she still had hands, like Donna. He saw her touch the deadly little button. The collar about his neck blossomed and swelled—

  He awoke strangling.

  "I was dreaming!" He tugged frantically at the collar. No! It was no dream. The collar was there, and surely it was about to explode. His exacerbated imagination felt it pulsing against his rasped throat. He thought he heard a sound from it, a tick, a whine, a purring of faint unstoppable engines. "No!" he shouted and leaped up out of the little nest of leaves where he slept. It was exploding! Not in a year, not in a minute—now. He flung himself wildly about in the no-gravity, shouting.

  Donna Creery came swiftly to him, and the terror in her face woke him, drowning his imaginary terrors.

  "What's the matter?" he demanded harshly.

  "Steven! It's Chiquita. She—she was wandering about the lower passages, where we've never been, and—" She stopped, unable to speak on. Behind her the spaceling came, slowly, painfully, mewing tragically.

  Chiquita's flank was a horror, raw flesh and golden ichor, with the mark of a great sharp claw.

  Chapter 17

  There were four cartridges in the clip. Ryeland checked them, blessed Quiveras for having left the gun and started down the passages. He didn't say anything to Donna Creery; he didn't know what to say.

  Then there was a pyropod on their Reef ...

  Ryeland's throat was raw and dry. Pyropods. "Flame-feet." Outer-space animals which, Ryeland thought, sounded vaguely like Earthly squids. Ryeland tried to picture one, and failed; but Quiveras had said there was a possibility that the caverns in their Reef might house one. And Chiquita's terrible wounds had converted that possibility into something far stronger.

  Ryeland paused at the end of the passages they had explored, and picked up the discarded crystal sword Quiveras had left there. It was still bright; it was all the light he had. Then he dove into the first of the great convoluted burrows.

  In five minutes he was at an end; the tunnel narrowed sharply, so that he could hardly move, and poised bits of rubble showed that nothing of any size had passed that way in finite time.

  He went back again. Another tunnel, a much longer one this time, but again a dead end. It was difficult to maneuver; in no-gravity, he could not walk, and the shape and constriction of the tunnel made it hard to leap.

  He came to another branch and stopped.

  There were two tunnels, both, enormous, both dark and soundless. The air was the air the spaceling had brought, but it had a sharp strange odor, like burning gunpowder.

  And one of the tunnels was scarred with the enormous claws that had left their sign near the surface.

  Ryeland plunged in without giving himself time to think.

  He came almost at once to a chamber. He paused and hung in its entrance, peering about in the faint light his crystal sword gave. It was roughly spherical, so vast that its farther walls were dim; and in a niche at one side of it was a clutter of tangled objects.

  Warily he approached.

  It seemed to be a sort of midden, and the blood began to pulse in his ears. It contained odd-shaped objects that might have resembled the bones and fangs and carapaces of animals like no animals that had ever lived on earth. He stood staring at it, every sense poised. Then, with infinite pain, he approached. There was no sound. There was no motion. Gently he poked the crystalline light into a gap in the tangle. But nothing moved and there was nothing revealed.

  Ryeland moved back and considered.

  Space had its own scale of time. The discarded bones and the claw-marks in the rock might look just as fresh after another hundred million years. Undoubtedly the cave had been abandoned.

  He turned.

  Something scr
eamed behind him. He had only time to halt his turn, to start to move his head back.

  And the heap of bones exploded.

  What kept Ryeland from dying at once was the tiny scope of the cavern, compared to the scale of interplanetary distances. The pyropod, rocket driven, enormously strong, hadn't the room to maneuver or even to build up speed. But it blasted up at him with frightening speed. It was huge—as Earth animals go—larger than a horse, and armored with mirror-bright scales. It had a solitary eye, a wide mirror on a stalked central organ. It had a single, enormous claw at the end of a writhing, flexible trunk. It roared like a rocket at takeoff—which it was— and the great heavy-metal claw snapped violently.

  But the trash in its way screened Ryeland for a moment; he was thrust back and out of the way, and the pyropod flew past to gouge great chips out of the wall of the cavern.

  Ryeland took quick aim and fired.

  Even in the roar of the pyropod's drive, he could hear his bullet scream away, and knew that it had hit that armor and ricocheted off. The pyropod did not turn to strike toward him again; it turned away, in fact, and its thin bright tail whipped toward him. White fire jetted out furiously. The tail! The tail was a more fearsome weapon than the claw—the mighty drive that could hurl it through space could char him in a second. But Ryeland was already moving, and the blast missed him entirely, though a backwash of flame from the wall caught his leg and (he discovered later) raised great angry blisters on his skin. Ryeland crashed into the wall, spun like a racing swimmer in a pool, raised the gun again and fired—rapidly—one, two, three!

  And then his cartridges were gone ...

  But one of those bullets had struck a target The stalk that held its eye was hit. The bulb exploded; the creature was blinded. It blundered about the chamber like a rocket gone mad, colliding with the walls, recoiling, plunging wildly again. The blazing jet licked perilously close—

  And then the jet was screaming away, bouncing and roaring through the tunnel, out, out and away ...

  Ryeland was hurt badly, burned, bleeding, aching in every muscle; and he had no breath left at all after that quick violent encounter. But he did not pause. He leaped to follow the pyropod. Donna was up there!

  He sailed through dark space, his crystal torch long since lost, tried to see through the utter dark, tried to shield his head from striking against the wall. It was good, now, that the tunnel was so narrow; there was really only one way to go.

  And after interminable moments there was light.

  He drove toward it, rounded a bend, and saw Donna Creery hurrying toward him—alive! She bore a coiled branch of the vine with its moons of luminous fusorians.

  "Steven! Thank God!"

  She tossed a loop of the vine to him: he caught it, and they drew themselves together. Ryeland caught her roughly. "The pyropod! What became of it?"

  "Gone," said Donna Creery. "It went right by, out into space. Not having a nucleonic harpoon, I let it go. I think we've seen the last of it."

  "It was hiding in a pile of bones," said Ryeland, suddenly drained. "I—I think I hit its eye."

  "Yes. At least, it acted blind. And—oh, Steven!"

  He looked at her, not comprehending. Reaction? He tried to reassure her. "It won't be back, Donna. You said yourself—"

  "No, no. It's Chiquita, Steven. I think she's dying."

  He nodded, hardly hearing. "Poor thing. Well, we've avenged her, I guess."

  "And what about avenging ourselves? Have you forgotten, Steve—if Chiquita dies, there's nothing to hold our air!"

  The spaceling lay motionless in a little cave lined with vines.

  Now and then she struggled restlessly—not to move, but to bring fresh air about her. She seemed both bloated and gaunt. And the great wounds along her side were now crusted with dirty ocher scabs.

  "Poor Chiquita," the girl whispered, stroking the soft fur. Donna crooned at the creature, and its great dull eyes fastened on her.

  Ryeland looked the spaceling over. Her belly was swollen angrily, but the flesh had shrunk from the rest of her body. Her fur was lusterless and unkempt. The flame-red brilliance was gone from her nose; it was cold, black, dry. He touched her: hot. Did she have a fever? Ryeland could not know, but surely she was hotter than when he had clung to her neck, fleeing the Body Bank. The space-ling seemed to know that he was trying to help. She licked her black tongue out at him feebly; it was all the effort she could make.

  Ryeland said reluctantly, "I—don't think there's anything we can do for her."

  "The light seems to bother her."

  "All right. That much we can do." But it wasn't easy, in this little world of luminous crystal and vine. They found some growths that glowed only faintly and tugged them into place, thicker and thicker, until the little nook where Chiquita lay became a dim green hiding-hole. Chiquita looked faintly grateful, but mostly she looked sick.

  They left her and went out to the surface to look at the stars. It was maddening, it was utterly maddening, to be so helpless! Ryeland clung to the edge of the tunnel, staring out toward emptiness. Somewhere out there, invisible but sure, lay the other Reefs. The great outer Reefs where fugitive humans managed lives that were free of the Plan—where, above all, lived Ron Donderevo, the native spaceman who had been a student of the science of the Plan, a guest and a prisoner of the Planner. He had worn the iron collar of a Risk—the selfsame collar that choked Ryeland now, if Angela had told the truth. He had talked to the Planner about a jetless drive, had been consigned to the stockpile, had ridden Chiquita back to the Reefs.

  But—was he superhuman?

  Could he remove Ryeland's collar—here in the reefs, without all the elaborate surgical facilities that had been available at the stockpile? Could he fill the gap in Rye-land's tormented memory—or was there really any gap to fill, except the time before the dissected scraps of a hundred salvaged enemies of the Plan had been assembled to make a thinking thing without a past?

  By now Quiveras might have reached him. By now they might be on their way! Perhaps in a few days Quiveras and the stranger would come to the little Reef and look for Ryeland and the girl.

  And what would they find?

  Ryeland knew that the most probable answer was ... death.

  Time passed, and the spaceling stayed alive. But she was weaker and worse every day.

  The Reef became a dream to Ryeland. He lost all sense of time. He had no watch and there were no celestial objects to mark days or years very conveniently. He thought of a calendar, and tried to construct one. The sun was bright enough to be visible, but the trouble was that their little Reef had no perceptible rotation. No force from another object had ever set it spinning, perhaps; the same stars hung always over the tunnel mouth. It could tell them nothing of time. Painfully Ryeland located winking Algol and began a star-watch; its period would be his clock.

  Donna said gently: "It won't help. You don't know when the collar will go off."

  And he realized that she had seen farther into his mind than he himself. It was the ticking year that he was trying to measure, the year which was in any event his maximum hope of life as long as that collar sat sullenly about his . neck. Chiquita might not die, the Plan cruiser might not return, but his assassin was with him at every moment At one of those moments it would strike. That was the ultimate deadly promise of the iron collar. You could flee the radar guns of the Plan Police and even outrun their cruisers. You could in the Reefs of Space perhaps even avoid the wash of pulsed radar which the Machine would flood through the system. But the timing element would not be stopped and would not be merciful. In less than a year it would go off...

  And Ryeland's guess, based on Algol's cycle and a careful recollection of how they had slept and eaten, was that no less than six months had already passed.

  Chiquita was now terribly sick.

  The great claw-gashes had begun to heal, but her fever was high. She seemed thirsty, but she would not drink; she seemed in pain, but she hardly moved. Only
a low whimpering mew came from the little bower they had made for her.

  Ryeland made a decision and went out onto the shell of their Reef to put it into practice. It was only a matter of moments before Donna followed. "What are you doing?" she demanded sharply. He stopped, caught working over the .equipment the spacelings had transported from the ship for him—the equipment that he had not used and now was proposing to put to a use completely unconnected with his original intention.

  He said, "How's Chiquita?" But she would not be diverted.

  "What are you doing?"

  Ryeland said, "Rigging up a radio. I've got all the parts. I—I thought I might be able to reach Quiveras and ask him to hurry—"

  "Or maybe you thought you might reach that Plan cruiser?"

  Ryeland said strongly: "All right. Why not? Maybe we pushed our luck too far! Things weren't so bad back in the B—back on Earth, I mean. The Plan of Man is reasonable. They'll take us back if I surrender, and even at worst, it can't be worse than waiting here to die."

  "Steven!" She reached up to stare into his eyes. "I won't have you going back!"

  "Who the devil," he yelled in a cold counterfeit of rage, "do you think you're ordering—" But she stopped his lips.

  "Don't say it," she whispered. "I won't let you. And anyway, I'm afraid it's too late."

  It took him a second to react, "Chiquita!"

  He raced far ahead of her down to the dying spaceling. Chiquita had sunk into a sort of coma, motionless, barely breathing. Her belly was more and more misshapen, as with terminal malnutrition—or whatever might correspond to it in the structure of a creature from space—and the rest of her body as wasted as the gaunt, starved babies of Oriental famines of old times.