by Larry Niven
ER’O SCUTTLED about his tiny observatory, tubacles groping systematically among the optical-telescope display, neutrino sensors, and readouts of antennae spanning the electromagnetic spectrum.
Sigmund had ruled out all active sensors except the occasional, very low power lidar pulses necessary anyway to maintain separation between ships. “What we can see is free,” he had lectured. “Any data we take, even by a radar scan, carries a price. Maybe we can’t afford it. The Outsiders are very private.”
Not that Er’o could release a radar pulse. His readouts were slaved to the bridge, where Kirsten held control. Maybe Sigmund’s explanation to him was really a reminder to her.
Subtle, that Sigmund.
In the habitat, meanwhile, Ol’t’ro monitored additional instruments. All were undisclosed. Sensors fabricated to investigate hyperspace phenomena might also reveal something useful about other technologies—for like the Outsiders, humans protected their secrets. The undisclosed sensors were passive, in another application of the principle that “what can be seen—and goes unmentioned—is free.”
Sigmund’s voice sounded over the Gw’oth public channel. “Er’o, you should be seeing the Outsider ship now.”
“Affirmative, Sigmund.” Er’o had an image to study, but only through Kirsten’s intervention. The Outsider ship was moving at almost light speed. Tracking and blue-shift correction took computer correction, and computing was another of those technologies the humans declined to share.
Starlight flickered through the Outsider ship. Was it transparent? Not solid? Er’o exchanged inconclusive speculations with Ol’t’ro.
“I’m in the air lock,” Sigmund called.
“They’re almost here,” Kirsten answered.
In the blink of an eye, they were here. Stationary in space, beside Don Quixote. Instantaneous deceleration! And yet the Outsiders and their ship were not squashed flat. Shedding all that the kinetic energy did not reduce the ship to a glowing cloud of plasma. And none of Don Quixote’s instruments showed where that energy had gone.
But Ol’t’ro’s instruments did. . ..
THSSTHFOK LAY ON THE BARE FLOOR of his cell, his eyes closed, one ear pressed against the pinhole he had made in the deck. He listened carefully.
Sigmund was about to leave the ship. The others would be in known locations.
Thssthfok remembered every glimpse he had had of the ship, every extrapolation of layout he had made from what he had seen. He reviewed every likely route from the relax room to the bridge. He estimated the speed with which humans, spread about the ship, might intercept him.
The conversation below concluded. Footsteps receded, the heavy clomps of Sigmund heading for an air lock, the softer treads those of Eric and Omar going to their assigned posts.
Working by touch and with extreme care, Thssthfok opened the structural modulator handle he hid beneath his body. The handle was slightly rough, pitted in spots by stomach acid, but those imperfections helped him orient himself. Flipping a few tiny switches put the device into its temporary softening mode. He reassembled the handle.
Thssthfok began to exercise, his fist wrapped around the modulator. Sit-ups. One-handed pushups. Laps around the cell. Pull-ups from the recessed handholds any spaceship must have for microgravity conditions. He sang as he exercised, recalling melodies of long-lost Rilchuk. Sometimes he sang proper lyrics. As often he made up nonsense sounds, pops and clicks and sibilant hisses that fit the tune.
From time to time a face appeared in the hatch window. Eventually Eric tired of watching Thssthfok or of checking on motion sensors.
As Thssthfok exercised, he rehearsed the route he would take.
He might never have a better opportunity to seize this ship.
40
Ship Twenty-three, except for the fierce spark of its artificial sun, manifested as an absence: a vaguely oblong expanse suddenly removed from the starry backdrop.
The Outsiders had mentioned a six-mile separation. Assuming that distance, the object now blocking Sigmund’s view of the stars was about three miles in length. As his eyes adjusted to the open air lock’s dim red glow, shimmers appeared within the darkness. He raised the magnification of his visor, and kept raising it, until details began to appear.
The Outsider vessel was an artificial star at one end and a sealed module, presumably its propulsion device, at the other, linked by an enormous metal spar. In the middle, along the spar, a forest of ribbons swooped and swirled, entangled and entwined. Any pattern to the ribbons was too alien for Sigmund to fathom.
Two figures emerged from the darkness, jetting with gas pistols toward Don Quixote. They reminded Sigmund, more than anything else, of giant cat-o’-nine tails. They wore protective suits, but that gear was nothing like Sigmund’s. Their equipment shielded not against the vacuum and utter cold—for they lived here in the depths of interstellar space, creatures of superfluid helium—but from Sigmund himself. They had come to tow him back to their ship. Unprotected, the bit of heat seeping from Sigmund’s suit would bring them to a boil. Absent the rigidity of their exoskeletons, the inertia of Sigmund’s massive body would tear them apart.
“Come with us,” one radioed. Each Outsider extended an armored, insulated root bundle toward Sigmund.
Sigmund offered his hands. “I’m leaving now,” he radioed to his crew. Wish me luck.
He had visited an Outsider ship once before, crossing the final miles in just this manner. That experience should have eased his fears, but as his escorts towed him into the darkness, his heart pounded. How could logic matter? He was afloat in interstellar space, with his life in the “hands” of the feeblest of creatures.
And yet, terror did not overcome him.
Most Earth natives had at least a touch of flatland phobia: the instinctive recognition of home—and the reflexive dread of anyplace else. Anything odd could trigger the phobia: alien skies, wrong gravity, unfamiliar scents. Sigmund had suffered his share of attacks. He could tell with the first sniff that a planet wasn’t Earth. He knew from the first glance when a pattern of stars was wrong. And he never knew how he knew.
Perhaps to bear the full brunt of flatland phobia, you had to remember what you missed, and Nessus had erased the definition of home from Sigmund’s mind.
With a shiver, Sigmund firmly fixed his gaze on the Outsider vessel. Home was no longer Earth. Home was New Terra—to hell with its extra suns and lack of a moon and the mélange of alien smells! The lives of millions, unknowing, might hinge on him vanquishing his fears. Better to concentrate on the meeting to come. . ..
Ship Twenty-three grew and grew until it ceased to seem a ship. Now it was a great metropolis, toward which he fell in slow motion. The city spread across the sky, and the swirls of ribbon grew crisply distinct. Short lines on the ribbons became blobs became individual Outsiders.
Propelled by gentle puffs of gas, Sigmund and his escorts sank deep into the tangle of the ribbons. Each strip was several yards wide, and most were lined with Outsiders. The handles basked in the artificial sunlight; the tails disappeared into shadows cast by other ribbons. Living thermocouples, recharging.
Sigmund and his guides landed, finally, on a stretch of unoccupied ribbon. Any gravity was too weak for Sigmund to feel. He engaged magnets and his boots clanked to the surface.
One of his escorts raised a root bundle to indicate a low metal structure. “Your meeting will be inside.”
Wall panels glowed, warm and bright, as Sigmund entered. Air gushed in when he closed the hatch. His sensors declared this a shirtsleeves environment—the Outsiders knew their customers—and he removed his helmet. The room was unfurnished except for a clear dome. An Outsider reclined on the floor beyond the dome.
The surroundings were just as Sigmund remembered from his previous encounter. Call it a standard meeting room. This visit, on his way inside, he had sufficiently studied the enclosure to answer a question that had nagged at him. The outer dimensions of the enclosure did not encompass the
apparent space beyond the dome. The other party in the discussion was a projection of some sort.
“You are Sigmund Ausfaller?” The voice came from unseen speakers.
“Yes,” Sigmund answered.
“Our colleague, Ship Fourteen, advises that you are a shrewd bargainer.”
A compliment, coming from the preeminent traders in the known galaxy. Also an unsubtle reminder. By remaining deep in interstellar space, Outsider ships avoided gravitational singularities. Outsider vessels across Known Space and beyond could, and obviously did, maintain real-time communications by hyperwave radio.
During Sigmund’s previous negotiations, the Outsider inside the dome had offered the ship’s number when asked for a name. He (?) had commented on providing a breathable atmosphere for his guests. Sigmund’s current host had not mentioned it.
So: Sigmund, too, was expected to know what had been discussed previously. “Thank you, Twenty-three. Shall we begin?”
THE OUTSIDERS WERE SCRUPULOUSLY HONEST. They honored every bargain. They paid promptly and in full. Every technology they sold worked dependably. On the occasions when they withheld the science underlying their designs (as they had with hyperspace technologies and planetary drives), they were up-front about that.
And when the value of information could not be ascertained in advance, the Outsiders could be trusted to pay fairly after disclosure. Sigmund’s news was like that.
The fair value was zero.
Other Outsider ships had already spotted the threat onrushing from the galactic core. Identifying the attackers as Pak, humanity’s cousins, might be news. It wasn’t the sort of news to predispose anyone favorably toward Sigmund’s kind.
Sigmund had crossed the light-years with one hope: That his news would buy help. Not direct military assistance, for the Outsider vessels were cities, not warships. Not aid in finding Earth. The Outsiders would surely honor their agreement with the Concordance never to disclose to any New Terrans the location of Known Space, nor to give any Known Space race even a clue to the existence of the New Terrans.
But new technology could make all the difference—if Sigmund had had a means to pay. He hadn’t. He said, hoping his desperation did not show, “Twenty-three, it’s in your own interest to help. These fleets are attacking every advanced civilization they pass. Your ships will be no different.”
“But they are different.” Twenty-three wriggled his root bundles a bit as he spoke. “Our ships are very mobile.”
And indeed, the few Outsider ships known to New Terra could easily evade the Pak. Ship Twenty-three could resume near light speed as quickly as it had shed that velocity. If it detected a weapon coming its way, it needed only an instant to stop. A Pak kinetic-kill weapon, captive to its deadly inertia, would whiz past harmlessly. The Outsiders were safe.
But tanj it! For planet dwellers, the Outsider ship drive offered the perfect solution to the Pak threat.
The scenario was crystal clear in Sigmund’s mind. Add an Outsider normal-space drive to a standard, hyperdrive-equipped starship. Then by the numbers: One, jump to near light speed. Two, use hyperspace to cross the light-years to the Pak fleets. Three, return to normal space with all that near light velocity. Four, using the Outsider drive, make any necessary course corrections in an instant. Five, unleash myriads of unstoppable kinetic weapons. With the ship moving so fast, throwing rocks would suffice.
His ship would be back in hyperspace, racing away, before the Pak ramscoops saw what was coming at them. Repeat as needed.
And then it struck Sigmund: Whatever he might have had to offer in trade, this negotiation had been doomed from the outset. The Outsiders would never sell the secret of the reactionless drives that moved their ships. Those ships would be almost as defenseless against Sigmund’s tactics as the Pak.
Which left what? Maybe he could further Baedeker’s work. “Can you help us improve the performance of our planetary drive? Show us how to run drives in tandem? Then we, too, could be more mobile.”
More squirming of roots. “Our regrets, Sigmund. We cannot comment.”
Sigmund felt a headache coming on. He rubbed his temples. “Why not, Twenty-three?”
“We are not at liberty to say.”
Because anything you said would be a hint. Sigmund pressed his temples and tried to think. Turning up the planetary drive or running them in tandem related, somehow, to things the Outsiders would not discuss. The secret science behind the planetary drive? Something about the reactionless ship drive? Sigmund knew the two were related—and also that he had only his paranoia to bring him to that conclusion.
Regardless, a clue for Baedeker.
“Is your business completed?” Twenty-three asked.
From Sigmund’s days as an accountant, two lives ago, an ancient aphorism asserted itself. Borrow a thousand dollars—whatever a dollar might have been—and the bank owns you. Borrow a million dollars, and you own the bank.
Sigmund said, “It’s in your interest to help my people defend ourselves and our friends. After the danger has passed and you return to this part of the galaxy, you’ll want trading partners. And how much do the Puppeteers already owe your people?”
It was a rhetorical question. Puppeteers had been in debt to the Outsiders for eons, since purchasing the planetary drive to save Hearth when its sun prepared to swell into a red giant. New Terra was too poor to get such credit.
Just maybe, the Concordance owned the bank.
Beyond the domes, roots wriggled at the fastest rate yet. Agitation or laughter, or merely sign language for the creature’s natural environment? There was no way to tell.
Twenty-three finally spoke. “You are correct, Sigmund. Loss of our trading partners would be disadvantageous.”
“Then help us help ourselves!”
“How?”
“Teach us to use our drives more efficiently. If our worlds escape, we’ll all come out ahead.” Sigmund promised himself he would reveal nothing until Nike swore to transfer a planetary drive to the Gw’oth. Loss of a farm world would be a small recompense for Ol’t’ro’s contributions.
“The drives are already as efficient as we can safely make them,” Twenty-three insisted.
Uh-huh. “Better eat into the safety margin than swallow a planet-killer weapon.” Even a Puppeteer would see the logic in that trade-off.
“A moment, Sigmund.”
Twenty-three’s roots writhed more frenetically than ever. Consultation, Sigmund decided. The moment became minutes.
“It can’t be done,” Twenty-three announced. “If more energy is applied, the drive becomes dangerously unstable.”
“Unstable how?”
“Vast destruction, Sigmund.”
Now what? Sigmund was running out even of crazy ideas. “Lend the Puppeteers and New Terra planetary drives. Teach us to use them in tandem.”
“We have no more drives.” Somehow, Twenty-three managed to sound plaintive. “Not that it would matter. We have never successfully used two drives to move a single mass.”
Was Baedeker experimenting somewhere expendable? He was a Puppeteer, so of course he was. But he had not heard the fear and doubt in Twenty-three’s “voice” . . .
Sigmund said, “Twenty-three, you’re not telling me something.”
More wriggling of roots, strikingly different. This time, Sigmund felt certain, it denoted ironic laughter. “There is much we do not tell you, Sigmund. We will share this. The planetary drive employs great energy. Great energy. It is very challenging to control. We start many such drives for each unit that completes production. The Concordance accepted its drives one at a time.”
Doubtless believing that they had managed their debt by staging the deliveries.
An audio recorder sat in a pocket of Sigmund’s pressure suit. In theory it was capturing this conversation. Almost certainly, the Outsiders were suppressing it. Sigmund hoped he could remember this exchange in detail. There were surely useful clues here for Baedeker.
Sigm
und said, “What about relocating a drive, perhaps from a farm world to Hearth?”
Writhing again of the agitated variety. “You must not try that. To operate two drives in proximity is to make both . . . unstable.”
Unstable and great energy—a bad combination. Sigmund guessed, “You don’t know how the drives work, do you?”
“We sell only the device, not the underlying science,” Twenty-three said. “The terms of sale were honest.”
And the drives had worked, without incident. So the Outsiders were no different than any other species—they, too, used technologies imperfectly understood.
Sigmund picked up his helmet. “I guess we are done. Wish us luck.”
“If your business is done,” Twenty-three said, “we have something you might find interesting.”
41
Thssthfok’s dashing about his cell occasionally brought him past the hatch. Eric was still visible through the window, not especially attentive. Breeders were like that, Thssthfok remembered: easily lulled by routine, easily fooled by their expectations.
While he did more one-handed push-ups, hiding a patch of floor with his body, Thssthfok stroked the area with the structural modulator clutched in his free hand. He continued singing as he worked, with lots of hisses and pops. Strip by strip he softened an area large enough to pull himself through.
To judge from the etched areas on the modulator, swallowing the device again would be a bad idea. Thssthfok thumbed off the modulator, jumped back to his feet, and did more pull-ups—during which he pushed the modulator through the permanently softened spot behind a handhold. If Eric was listening, the wall’s soft pop would surely go unnoticed amid Thssthfok’s pop-filled singing.
Taking another lap around the cell, Thssthfok glanced out the hatch window. Eric remained preoccupied or disinterested. Thssthfok dropped to the floor—
And plunged an arm through the altered spot in the floor. A recessed handhold in the relax-room ceiling below gave him the leverage to pull himself through.