Starswarm

by Jerry Pournelle

They ran across the tundra. There were bright flowers among the blue-green grasses. Roots of flappergrapes poked up through the soil. In three blues they would have elephantine leaves to gather as much sun as they could, but for now they looked dead.

  The lake was ahead and they ran for it. Kip automatically avoided the paths the others had taken. The tundra was easy to tear up in the spring, and the mud flats took a long time to grow over. Then he stopped. Lara stopped beside him, panting slightly. "That's fun," she said. "Why can't we run?"

  " 'Cause you don't know where to step," Kip said. "See the holes? Maybe firebrighters in them. They can't hurt you much this time of year, but if one comes out, it'll stink something awful. Really awful. You'll really hate it. And see the purple patch over there? Not cabbage at all, it's a bird, and he wouldn't like you to step on him."

  "Oh." She eyed the motionless purple. It looked like a cabbage weed. "Is it dangerous?"

  "Naw. Nothing much can hurt us this time of year. The centaurs are too skinny. They'll be in their caves in the archtree groves, eating up all the stored-up roots to get fat again so they can go hunting for caribou."

  "Caribou?"

  "Don't you know anything? The Great Western people brought caribou, and lots of other things that live on Earth, and turned 'em loose out here. Balanced ecological group, they called it. The scientists at the station didn't like it, but they couldn't stop them, because Great Western owns all the land on the planet except for this area around the station. So they turned them loose and now they're all over."

  "Do you remember that?"

  "Naw, it was before I came. Before your father came, back when Dr. Budonnic was in charge. They brought all kinds of animals. Lots of the animals died off, but some of them did right well. Uncle Mike hunts caribou for dog food, the caribou herds are big enough now. Some say too big. Centaurs hunt them too."

  "Oh. How can centaurs eat things that come from Earth? Why wouldn't they poison them?"

  Kip looked at her with new respect. "Good question." He looked thoughtful for a moment.

  "If caribou are from Earth how can centaurs eat them?"

  "ALL EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE SO FAR DISCOVERED IS BASED ON THE SAME NUCLEIC ACIDS AND IS THUS RELATED. ALTHOUGH THERE ARE VARIANTS, NEARLY ALL EARTH LIFE IS BASED ON CLOSELY RELATED GLUCOSE CHEMISTRIES AND EMPLOYS SIMILAR PROTEINS. THIS HAS PROVED TO BE TRUE FOR LIFE DISCOVERED ON WORLDS OTHER THAN EARTH. THEREFORE IT WOULD BE SURPRISING IF THE CENTAURS WERE NOT ABLE TO EAT AT LEAST SOME EARTH PROTEINS. THE THEORY—"

  "Enough!" Kip didn't really understand all that, but he could ask Gwen later if he wanted to. "Maybe life is the same all over the universe," he told Lara.

  They walked on toward the lake. "If that bird can't hurt us, why were you worried about stepping on it?" Lara asked.

  " 'Cause you'd hurt it," Kip said. "Uncle Mike says never hurt things unless you have to, but if you have to do it, shoot straight and don't miss. I shoot meat for the dogs sometimes," he bragged. "And even for us."

  Lara looked slightly ill, but she didn't say anything. She'd been told people ate natural foods on frontier worlds, so she'd been ready when they moved to Pearly Gates City. After their months in town, she thought she could eat anything, although the first time she was faced with real meat it took real effort to get it down. Now she liked hamburgers.

  But it was so lonely out here! She looked at the empty horizon. A vast field of brush-covered rolling hills and small lakes, dotted with clumps of forest, and the only sign that humans had ever been here was the fenced enclosure behind them. She shivered. It made her afraid.

  Silver whimpered and growled.

  "What's that?" Kip asked.

  The dog growled again and moved closer to Lara.

  "What are you afraid of now?" Kip asked.

  "I'm not afraid!"

  "Yeah you are. Silver says you are. You make him nervous. They can smell it, you know. They don't like it when people are afraid."

  "Oh." She reached down to scratch Silver's ears. "It's all right." Silver made a different sound, and Lara laughed. "Daddy says he'll get me a puppy when I learn more about the dogs here."

  They had reached the lake, a bowl of fresh water six kilometers across and two hundred meters deep sitting atop the tundra. There was a hill at the far end of the lake, a rounded mound that someone had named Strumbleberry. Thornbush and blazewood, mixed with something resembling Earth's oleanders, grew all around the lake. Most of the lake edge was blocked by thickets, but where Kip and Lara stood all the vegetation had been cleared away.

  Tiny jewels sparkled at the lake surface. Lara stared in fascination. Kip watched her for a while.

  "Mukky and Silver'll have pups about the time you are ready," Kip said. "I'll ask Uncle Mike if you can have one."

  "Why—thank you, Kip." She smiled shyly, then wondered what to say. "What are the little colored things on the water?"

  "Look close and you'll see they're all connected by threads. Like a big spiderweb. And there's more threads lead down to the main plant at the bottom. That's the reason for Starswarm Station being here. It's what your father studies all his life."

  "Oh! That's a Starswarm?"

  "Medium-sized. Big ones grow in bigger lakes, and really big ones in the saltwater bays. Your dad says this is one of the oldest, maybe thousands of years old. Watch." Kip found a small stone and tossed it into the center of the lake. As it sank the water glowed with thousands of tiny fireflies winking in the depths.

  "Kip, that's beautiful! What was it?"

  "Your daddy says nobody really knows." Dr. Henderson was right too, Kip thought. Not even Gwen knew for sure about Starswarms. "I heard him telling one of the technicians he thought the plant parts were talking to each other and used those light flashes instead of a nervous system. See, there's a big thing coming up from the bottom? It's part of the Starswarm. The big Starswarms, the ones out in the ocean, they say they have tentacles that could catch a man if he'd stay still long enough and not cut himself loose. They eat anything. Watch."

  Kip got down on his knees and examined plants until he found what he was looking for. He plucked a leaf and showed it to Lara. "Little bugs on the underside," he said. "Now watch."

  He threw the leaf out into the water. As it touched the surface, a black snakelike tentacle came from nowhere to seize it. Leaf and tentacle vanished amid a shower of lights. "I think it likes those bugs," Kip said. "It takes all of them I can throw in." He knelt and found another leaf and threw it.

  "Wow, it almost caught that one in the air," Lara said. "Can I throw it one?"

  "Sure. Look, you find the bugs on this kind of plant." He indicated a bunch of leaves that spread out from a central stem and lay along the ground. "Look for a leaf with little holes in it. That's where the bugs will be, on the underside of the leaf."

  She found a leaf and examined it. "Here are some." She picked the leaf and threw it in. This time it floated for a moment before the tentacle grabbed it.

  "You sure know a lot," Lara said.

  "Yeah, a little." Kip took a spool from one pocket and a telescoping rod from another and began to assemble his fishing outfit.

  Lara watched appreciatively. She was used to other children knowing less than she did, usually a lot less, and here Kip wasn't much older than she was and knew more. She was a little irritated, but Daddy had told her to be nice to Kip. He certainly was about the smartest boy she'd ever met.

  "You know a lot about Starswarms. Do you know as much as Daddy?"

  "Naw, only what he tells me." Which was true, and it puzzled Kip. Most things Dr. Henderson knew were known to Gwen as well, just as she knew most of what everyone else knew. But data on the Starswarms and the work of the station were strangely lacking. Once in a great while, Gwen would suddenly learn a lot about Starswarms and Starswarm Station as if Dr. Henderson had been talking to her; then she wouldn't know any more for a long time again.

  Kip was beginning to suspect that Gwen was a computer, although he hadn't dared
ask her yet because she might get mad. She never had got mad at him, but everybody else did. Even Uncle Mike could lose his temper and yell at him or swat him a couple, especially if Kip asked too many questions at the wrong time.

  But if Gwen were a computer, then she had to be the big computer in Dr. Henderson's laboratory. There weren't any others around that were smart like Gwen. There were the little boxes that people carried to do their math—Kip had one and knew how to use it, but he didn't unless somebody was watching because it was easier to ask Gwen—and there were the larger computers on the sleds and at the gate, but none of them were very smart. They couldn't really talk to you.

  And that was the problem, because if Gwen were Dr. Henderson's computer she ought to know everything Dr. Henderson did, and she didn't. And if that wasn't who she was, she couldn't be a computer at all. Besides, how could a computer put a voice in your head?

  The lab computer could talk. So could the gate computer, but the lab computer was much smarter than the gate. Sometimes it reminded him of Gwen, but it wasn't really as smart as Gwen even if it was the smartest computer at the station. When you talked to the lab computer, no matter how smart it was, you never thought you were talking to anything but a computer. Gwen was different. Gwen was like a real person except you could never see her.

  Kip got the rod and reel assembled and tied on a lure. His cast wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good. The lure arched out into the lake and dropped into one of the fissures of the Starswarm. It was no good dropping it into the matrix of threads, because they were tougher than Kip's line and his lure would probably be lost. Kip reeled in slowly. He wasn't expecting to catch anything much in the lake this close to the station, and he watched Lara shyly as he reeled.

  She was a little taller than he was, with golden hair hanging below her shoulders and bright blue eyes that were a match for Purgatory's perfectly clear skies. Her face was tanned but not what it would be after a few months of summer. She was slim like a boy and wore a coverall just like Kip's, and boots like his of course.

  Sometimes Uncle Mike whistled at girls on TRI-V, and at live ones when they went to Pearly Gates. Once Uncle Mike had left him with the dogs in a hotel room while he went back to find a waitress they'd met. Uncle Mike hadn't come back until nearly dawn, and Kip knew he'd taken another room in the hotel. That waitress had looked a little like Lara. Kip wondered if Lara wanted to be whistled at, and if she would expect him to do anything else.

  In fact, Kip's intellectual knowledge of sex would have shocked Mrs. Henderson silly, and probably would have astonished his Uncle Mike. Gwen didn't think sex was a restricted subject. Kip hadn't understood all the terms she used, but he was quite aware that little humans were made the same way that puppies were, and that men thought going to bed with girls was a lot of fun. Kip wondered why, and if Lara liked that sort of thing. He was vaguely aware that she might not know anything about it, since young people on TRI-V seldom did.

  "Will Lara want me to have sex with her?" Kip thought.

  "THE PROBABILITY OF A FERTILE UNION AT YOUR RESPECTIVE AGES IS EXTREMELY LOW."

  "That's not what I asked."

  "IT IS NOT CUSTOMARY FOR HUMANS TO HAVE SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS AT YOUR AGE. ADDITION. SEARCH OF RECORDS REVEALS THAT IT IS A CRIME IN FEDERATION LAW AS WELL AS UNDER THE GREAT WESTERN ENTERPRISES REGULATIONS FOR HUMAN FEMALES OF HER AGE TO HAVE SEXUAL RELATIONS OF ANY KIND WITH ANY PERSON. QUERY: IS THE SITUATION ONE THAT REQUIRES URGENT DECISION?"

  "Gosh, no. "

  "THEN I SUGGEST THAT YOU ASK YOUR UNCLE MIKE, I STATE

  A GENERAL INSTRUCTION: YOU ARE TO REFER PROBLEMS OF AN ETHICAL OR MORAL NATURE TO YOUR UNCLE MIKE. YOU MUST ALWAYS DO WHAT YOUR UNCLE MIKE SAYS."

  "All right, all right." Kip was getting tired of that instruction. Gwen, why do men want to go to bed with girls? I can't see that it would be any fun at all."

  "IT IS LIKELY THAT YOU WILL HAVE MORE UNDERSTANDING OF THIS QUESTION WHEN YOU ARE OLDER."

  That was the trouble with the world, Kip thought. You'd always understand when you were older, but you never seemed to get older after all. But then he caught a nice snapper, and that was so much fun he forgot all about his problem. He caught another, a little one with only eight developed legs, and threw it back. Then he showed Lara how to use the reel, and she caught a ten-legger. They were very proud of themselves when they took their prizes back to the station, and Mrs. Henderson cooked them for supper.

  Chapter Four

  Marty

  KIP was eleven when the other scientists brought their families to Starswarm. That was in the summer after Lara arrived, just before the heat got too bad. Later in the year the dogs would lie in the shade all day and everyone would move very slowly when they moved at all, but when the others first came, it wasn't hot at all; it was the most pleasant time of year.

  During spring and summer's early days, even those who lived there might call the planet by its official name: Paradise. The rest of the year it was Purgatory It wasn't easy to get scientists and technicians to live on the planet at all, and even harder to attract them to an obscure research station far away from the major settlements. Many research people left after a few months; but finally Dr. Henderson had built his team and brought their dependents, and he could relax.

  Most of the children were younger than Kip and Lara, but there were three older boys. Two of them, Benny and Hank, were eleven, and Marry was twelve. Benny and Hank would have been all right if it hadn't been for Marty.

  The three boys had known each other during the Earth-months they'd lived in Pearly Gates, and they stayed together when they reached Starswarm. After a few attempts, the others gave up trying to make friends with them.

  That was all right with Kip. He'd never had a friend except for Lara, and it didn't bother him that the three older boys would hardly talk to him. Then they found out they couldn't go outside the gates without Kip.

  He hadn't asked for the job, but Dr. Henderson put the instruction into the gate anyway. None of the children could leave Starswarm unless Kip or an adult went along. Dr. Henderson said it was just for a little while, until they learned how to take care of themselves.

  Kip watched Marty throw rocks over the fence at a fire-brighter hole and thought that might be a long time. He didn't mind when Lara went outside with him. At first he'd resented her, but now they were friends. They'd had a few fights, and then each one realized there was nobody to talk to when they were mad, and it really was more fun to be friends than to watch TRI-V or fish alone, so they stopped fighting, and when she couldn't come he missed her.

  Kip had stopped thinking about Lara as a girl. She obviously didn't want to be kissed or whistled at or any of the other things Kip thought he might have to do with her. She wasn't like the girls on TRI-V. She liked to fish, and go with Kip to look into the centaur village with binoculars—even in spring it wasn't safe to get too close to their groves—and track the caribou herds, and do all the other things Kip liked. She was getting pretty good with a pistol too. Her mother still wouldn't let Lara carry one, and that was silly because she could get herself killed quicker without a gun than with one, and Uncle Mike and Dr. Henderson had told Mrs. Henderson that. Lara thought her mother was going to give up pretty soon.

  But all that changed when the newcomers arrived. The little ones were no trouble. The very small ones couldn't come outside at all, and the ones seven and eight always did what Kip and Lara said. They were even fun to have, sometimes, because there were lots of games you couldn't play without six or eight people.

  Benny and Hank and Marty were different, though. They didn't like to go out with the other children. They didn't want Kip along either, but there wasn't much choice about that: the gates wouldn't open unless he came with them.

  A week after they came, they talked Kip into taking them outside without Lara and the others. Kip didn't want to, but they begged and pleaded until he did. Outside they tramped down the tundra and kicked holes in it, and chased the birds, and
threw big rocks at the Starswarm until the poor thing blinked its lights madly and its tentacles were thrust up toward the surface and it squeezed out ink. The ink killed some of the snappers. Then the Starswarm began to collapse into itself, and Kip knew it would take a lot of rest and sunshine before it could recover and start growing again.

  They didn't seem to care. When Kip tried to tell them, Marty grabbed Kip's cap.

  That was more serious. The receiver to Kip's communications was built into the cap. Besides, it was the middle of the blue-time, and the bright blue-tinted sun burned down through the clear sky and reflected from the lake and the tundra. It was so bright that without his eyeshade and the sunglasses built into the visor Kip wouldn't be able to see well enough to shoot if something big came after them. The big transplanted Earthbears and the centaurs didn't usually come too close to Starswarm Station, and the centaurs avoided the path to the station most of the time, but they might come, and there were other things out in midsummer that you ought to watch out for.