by Larry Niven
"On the other side. We who were on watch in the terminal stages of approach saw it from far. It was what decided us to stay well away until we know more. Now we commence the real investigation. The first observer capsule leaves in a few minutes."
Already, before most of the crew were properly roused. Kzin style.
Yiao-Captain's fingers crooked, his tail flicked. "I envy that Hero," he said. "The first, the first. But I must stay in command until … I am the first to set foot there."
In spite of everything, Nordbo was curiously touched, that the other should, consciously or not, reveal that much to a human. Well, doubtless Nordbo was the sole such human in existence.
A question came to him. "Have you measured the infrared emission?" "Not yet. Why?"
"Maybe whatever is inside that thing sends its out put through a single spot. If not, if it emits in all directions, then the remaining energy has to go somewhere. Presumably the shell reradiates it in the infrared. But given the size of the shell, that must be at a low temperature, so it's not readily distinguished from the galactic background."
"And the integrated emission over the entire surface will give us the total power. Good. Our scientists would have thought of it, but perhaps not at once. Yes-s-s, you will be useful."
"If the shell rotates—"
"It does, on three axes. Tumbles. Quite slowly, but it does. We established that upon arrival."
"Then the bright spot would only point at Alpha Centauri, or any given star, for a short span of time, a few years at most. No wonder it wasn't noticed before. Sheer chance that I did." And condemned myself.
A thump shivered through metal and Nordbo's anguish. "The capsule is on its way," Yiao-Captain said with glee.
Nordbo understood. He had heard about the arrangement before the expedition departed. The intensity of the hard radiation here was such that nothing else would serve for a close passage. The screen fields that had protected the ship from collision with interstellar gas at half the speed of light were insufficient; near this fire, enough stray particles and gamma ray photons would get through to wreck her electronics and give the crew a lethal dose. Her two boats were laughably more vulnerable.
Room and mass were at a premium in a Swift Hunter, but Sherrek carried a pair of thickly armored spheroids which contained generators for ultra-strong fields. Wunderlanders before the war had used them in flyby studies of their suns. The kzinti had quickly modified them to accommodate a single crew member; when dealing with the unknown, a live brain overseeing the instruments might well prove best. Besides an air and water recycler, life support included a gravity polarizer. It was necessarily small, its action confined to the interior, but at such close quarters it could counteract possible accelerations that would kill even a kzin, up to fifty or sixty Terran gravities.
The capsule whipped through the magnified part of the turret view. Its metal gleamed hazy-bright, a nucleus cocooned in shimmering forces. Nordbo imagined the rider voicing an exuberant screech. It vanished from his sight.
More sounds followed, quieter and longer-drawn. A boat was not thrown out by a machine; it launched itself. The lean form glided by on its way to a rendezvous point at the far side of the mystery. There it would seize the capsule in a grapnel field, haul it inboard, and bring it back.
Yiao-Captain stared yonder. "What might the thing be?" he mumbled. "Artificial, obviously," Nordbo answered, just as low.
"Yes, but for what? Who built it?"
"And when? It's extremely old, I'm sure. Just look at it."
Yiao-Captain's fur bristled. "Billions of years?"
"Not a bad guess."
"The Slavers—"
"The tnuctipun. They were engineers to the Slavers, the thrintun, you know, till they revolted." And the war that followed exterminated both races, back while the ancestors of man and kzin were microbes in primordial seas.
Yiao-Captain's ears lay flat. He shivered. "Haunted weapons. We have tales about things ancient and accursed—" Resolution surged. "Aowrrgh!" he shouted. "Whatever this be, we'll master it! It's ours now!"
Time crept. Nordbo realized he was hungry. Was that right? Why hadn't grief filled him to the brim? He had lost his loves, twenty-odd years of their lives at least, and he felt hungry and ragingly curious.
Well, but they wouldn't expect him to wallow in self-pity, would they? Despicable emotion. Let him take whatever anodyne that work offered. He could do nothing else about his situation.
Yet.
It was actually no long spell until the boat, at a safe distance, snared the capsule. Although its screen fields had degraded incoming data, a shipboard computer could restore much. Transmission commenced at once. In minutes numbers and images were appearing on screens.
Blue-white hell-flame streamed from a ragged hole in the shell, meters wide. The color was nothing but ghost-flicker, quanta given off by excited atoms. The real glow was the gamma light of annihilation, matter and antimatter created, meeting, perishing in cascade after curious cascade until the photons flew free in search of revenge.
"Yes," Nordbo whispered, "I think the source does emit in all directions. The output-fantastic. On the order of terawatts, no, I suspect magnitudes higher than that. The material enclosing it, though, that is what's truly incredible. It stops those hard rays, it's totally opaque to them, damps them down to infrared before it lets them go… But after billions of years, even it has worn thin and fragile. Something, a large meteoroid or something, finally punched through at one point, and there the radiation escapes unchecked. Elsewhere—"
"Can we make contact?" Yiao-Captain screamed. "Can we land and take possession?"
"I don't know. We'll have to study, probe, set up models and run them through the computer. My guess at the moment is that probably we can, if we choose the place well and are careful. No promises, understand, and not soon."
"Get to work on it! Immediately! Go!" Nordbo obeyed, before Yiao-Captain should lose his temper and give him the claws.
He'd been granted a comparatively free hand to carry on research, with access to a laboratory and the production shop, assistance if necessary, provided of course that he remained properly servile. On a ship like this, those facilities were improvised, tucked into odd corners, so cramped that as a rule only one individual at a time could use them. That suited Nordbo fine.
First he required nourishment. He made for the food synthesizer. What it dispensed was as loathsome to the kzinti as to him, albeit for different reasons. Irritable at the lack of fresh meat, a spacehand kicked the man aside. Nordbo crashed against a bulkhead. The bruises lasted for days. "Keep your place, monkey! You'll swill after the wakened Heroes have fed."
"Yes, my master. I am sorry, my master." Nordbo withdrew on hands and knees, as became an animal.
A thought that he had borne along from Wunderland crystallized. He'd be modifying apparatus, or making it from scratch, as occasion arose. Contemptuous, the kzinti, including the scientists, would pay scant heed. Yiao-Captain might be the exception, but he'd have plenty of other demands on his attention. With caution, patience, piecemeal labor, it should be possible to fashion some kind of weapon a knife, if nothing else-and keep it concealed under a jumble of stuff in a cabinet or box.
Chances were he'd never use it. What could he win? But the simple knowledge of its existence would help him get through the next months. If he could at last endure no longer, if nothing whatsoever remained to lose, maybe he could wreak a little harm, and die like a man.
Chapter IX
Having left Alpha Centauri far enough behind, Rover phased into hyperspace and commenced the long haul. "We'll go about four and a half light-years, emerge, and see what our instruments can tell us at that distance," Saxtorph had decided. "When we've got a proper fix on the whatchamacallit, we'll approach by short jumps, taking new observations after each one."
"Jamais I'audace," Dorcas had laughed.
"Huh? Oh. Oh, yah. Caution. Finagle knows what we're letting ourselves in f
or, but I'll bet my favorite meerschaum that Murphy will take a strong interest in the proceedings."
In the galley, on the second day under quantum drive, Ryan exclaimed, "Hey, you really are handy with the tools."
Tyra trimmed the last creamfruit and dropped it in a bowl. "One learns," she said. "I am not a bad cook, either. Maybe sometime you will let me make us a meal."
"M-m, you cook for yourself a lot?"
She nodded. "Eating out alone very much is depressing. Also, some of the places I have been, nobody but a local person or a berserker would go into a restaurant. Or else it is machines programmed for the same menus that bore me everywhere in known space."
"Adventurous sort. Well, sure, I'd be glad to take a chance on you, if you'd like to try being more than the bull cook." Ryan cocked his head and ran his glance up, down, and sideways across her. "For which job, strictly speaking, you lack certain qualifications anyway. Not that I object, mind you."
The blue eyes blinked. "What?" Now and then an English idiom eluded her.
"Never mind. For the moment. Uh, you are quite sweet, helping out like this. You aren't obliged to, you know, our paying passenger." "What should I do, sit yawning at a screen? I wish I could find more to keep me busy."
"I'd be delighted to see to that, after hours," he proposed.
She colored slightly, but her tone stayed calm and her smile amicable. "I suspect Pilot Fenger would complain. It could be safer to offend a keg of detonite."
"You've noticed, have you?" he replied, unembarrassed. "I guess in your line of work you develop a Sherlock Holmes kind of talent. Well, yes, Carita and I do have a thing going. Have had for years. But it's just friendly, no pledges, no claims. She's not possessive or jealous or anything." He edged closer. "This evening watch after dinner? Your cabin or mine, whichever you prefer. I'll bring a bottle of pineapple wine, which I's'pose you've never had. Good stuff, dry, trust me. We'll talk and get better acquainted. I'd love to hear about your travels."
"No, thank you," she said, still good-humored. "Entanglements, innocent or not, on an expedition like this, they are unwise, don't you agree? And I have… private things to think about when I am by myself." She clapped him on the shoulder. "Tomorrow, besides the galley, can I assist in other of your duties?"
Since his hopes had not been especially high, they were not dashed. He beamed " 'Auwe no ho'i e!" By all manner of means."
Tyra left him and went down a corridor. The ship throbbed around her, an underlying susurrus of ventilators, mechanisms, power. Dorcas came the opposite way. They halted. "How do you do," the mate greeted. Her expression was reserved.
"Hallo," Tyra responded. "Are you in a hurry?" Dorcas unbent to the extent of a lopsided grin. "In space we have time to burn, or else bare microseconds. What can I do for you?"
"You were so busy earlier, you and Robert, there was no opportunity to ask. A minute here, please. I want to be useful aboard. Kam lets me help him, but that takes two or three hours a daycycle at most. Can I do anything else?"
Dorcas frowned. "I can't think of anything. Most of our work is highly skilled."
"I could maybe learn a little, if somebody will teach me. I do have some space experience."
"That will be up to the somebody, subject to the captain's okay. We have an ample supply of books, music, shows, games."
"I brought my own. Finally, I thought, I shall read War and Peace. But-well, thank you. Don't worry, I will be all right."
"Feel free. But do not interfere." Dorcas stared un-blinkingly into Tyra's gaze. "You understand, I'm sure."
"Of course. I will try to annoy nobody. Thank you." They parted. Those on mass detector watch didn't count, unless something registered in the globe. Then anyone else got out of the chamber fast. Tyra found Carita seated there, smoking a cigar-the air was blue and acrid- while she played go with the computer. "Well, hi!" the Jinxian cried. Teeth flashed startling white in her midnight visage. "On free orbit, are you? C'mon in."
"I thought you might care to talk," said the Wunderlander, shyer than erstwhile. "But it is not needful."
"Oh, Lord, for me it's a breath of fresh beer. Dullest chore in the galaxy, this side of listening to an Ecotheist preacher. And the damn machine always beats me. Hey, don't look near that unshuttered port. We'd have to screw your eyeballs back in and hang your brain out to dry."
"I know about hyperspace." Tyra flowed into the second chair. "Yes, you have knocked around a fair amount, haven't you?" "Part of my work."
"I globbed a disc of yours before we left. Put it through the translator and read it yesterday. In English, Astrids Purple Submarine. " "That is for children."
"What of it? Fun. When I got to the part where the teddy bear has to sit on the safety valve of the steam telephone, I laughed my molars loose. I'll keep the book for whatever kids I may eventually have."
"Thank you." A silence fell.
Carita blew a smoke ring and said softly, "You're a cheerful one, aren't you? That takes grit, in a situation like yours. Because you've never put aside what happened to your parents, have you? I imagine you always dreamed of going out on your father's trail."
Tyra shrugged. "The tragedy is in the past. Whatever comes of it is in the future. Meanwhile, he would be the last person who wanted me to mope."
"And you've more life in you than most. Yank me down if I pry, but I can't help wondering why you've never married."
"Oh, I did. Twice." Carita waited.
Tyra glanced past her. "I may as well tell you. We shall be shipmates for a time that may grow long and a little dangerous. I married first soon after the liberation. It was a mistake. He was born in space, he had spent his life as a Resistance fighter. I was young and, and impulsive and worshipped him for a hero." She sighed. "He was, is not a bad man. But he was very much use to violence and to being obeyed."
"Yeah, you wouldn't take kindly to that."
"No. My second husband was several years later. An engineer, who had traveled and done great things in space before he settled on Wunderland. A good man, he, strong, gentle. But I found-we discovered together, time by time, that he no longer cared to explore things. He was content with what he had, with his routines. I grew restless until-there was someone else. That ended, but by then it had broken the marriage." Tyra sighed. "Poor Jonas. He deserved better. But he was not too sad. I was his third wife. He is now happy with his fourth."
"So you've had other fellows in between and afterward."
"Well, yes." Tyra flushed. "Not many. I do not hunt them."
"No, no, I never said you do. Besides, I'd look silly perched on a moralistic fence. Still," Carita murmured, "older men generally, eh?"
"Do you care for puppies?" Tyra snapped.
"I'm sorry. I mean well, but Kam says that for me 'tact' is a four-letter word. 'Fraid he's right. Uh, you here after anything in particular, or just to chat? You're welcome either way."
Tyra relaxed somewhat. "Both. I would like to know you folk better." Carita grinned. "To put us in a book?"
Tyra smiled back. "If you permit. This journey will become big news when we return. I think I can tell it in such a way that your privacy is protected but it gives you publicity that will help your business."
"Which could sure use help. Don't feel guilty about any risks. You're paying, and we went in with our eyes wide open, radiating the light of pure greed." Carita paused. "Yes, I guess you are the right writer for us."
"I want more to know you as, as human beings."
"And we to know you. Okay. We've got a couple weeks ahead of us before the trip gets interesting, except for whatever we can stir up amongst ourselves. What else is on your agenda today?"
"I would liefer have a part in this ship than be idle and passive. You know I help Kam. M-m, do you mind?"
"Finagle, no!" Carita chortled. "Why should I? No claims. I warn you, he'll try to get you in his bunk. Or is that a warning? He's pretty good."
"Thank you, but I shall… respect your territory."
Tyra hastened onward. "The thought came to me, another thing I might help with. This watch you are keeping. It demands very little, no?"
"If only it did demand. Hours and hours of nothing. And till we replace Juan Yoshii, the spells are longer than ever." Carita's cigar jabbed air. "You're volunteering? I wish you could. Unfortunately, it's not quite as easy as it appears."
"I know. I did research for a script, a while ago, and remember. In the unlikely event that the detector registers a significant mass, die person must know exactly what to do, and do it at once. But the list of actions that may be required is short and rather simple. Give me instructions and some simulator practice, and I believe I could pass any test." Tyra smiled again. "I would want you should be satisfied first I can handle the job. This ship carries something precious, namely me."
Thick hand tugged heavy chin. "It tempts, it tempts… But no. I learned how. That doesn't mean I'm qualified to teach how. Same for Kam. You see, the academies require that an instructor have experience of command. They're right. This is a psionic dingus. The trainee needs close exposure to a personality who knows how everything aboard a ship bleshes together." Carita brightened. "Ask Bob or Dorcas. Either of them could. And hoo-ha, do I want them to!"
"Thank you, I will." Tyra's voice vibrated.
"Fine. But let's get sociable, okay? For me right now, that's a big service. Care for a seegar? I thought not. Well, here's a box of Kam's excellent cookies."
Reminiscences wandered. Inevitably they led to the present enterprise, the wish that drove it. By then the women felt enough at ease that Carita could murmur, "Every girl's first sweetheart is her daddy, but you were only eight when you lost yours. And nevertheless- He must have been one hell of a man."
"He was," Tyra answered as low. "I dare to hope he is."
A while later, she left. Bound for the cubicle known as her stateroom, this time she encountered Saxtorph. He waved expansively at her. She stopped. He did too. "Anything you want, Tyra?" he inquired.
