Cliff Hawk blinked and returned to reality. For a moment his gaze brushed Molly Zaldivar as though he had forgotten she was there and was astonished to find her. But then his whole thought was concentrated on the man at the cave mouth.
"Reefer! What's the word? How bad is the damage?"
The Reefer opened a soundless grin between dingy yellow mustache and grimed yellow beard. "Bad enough," he said. "But we're still in business. What happened?"
"I— I—" Hawk glanced again at Molly Zaldivar. "I was just checking in the cave when I heard Molly groaning, and I..."
"And you forgot everything else and went to her. Ah, that's to be understood. A pretty face is more than a star to you, of course."
Hawk shook his head. "I've been telling her to go away."
"Beyond doubt. That's why you're lecturing the girl like a child at Starday school, eh?” He patted the great bulk of the sleeth. "We understand, do we not?"
Hawk gazed at the Reefer with mingled anger and apology, then turned to Molly. "I'm sorry," he said. "But the Reefer's right. You've got to go back to Wisdom Creek."
"No! Not until you tell me what you're doing here!"
"Girl, he's been telling you," rumbled the Reefer. "What do you think all 'those words were that he was pouring out at you when J came in? More than you need to know. More than you should know, I think."
"But nothing that made sense to me," Molly persisted. "How are you trying to communicate with rogue stars?"
The massive head shook with laughter. "Communicate with them, girl? Then maybe he didn't tell you, after all. It's not just communication we're after. We're building one of our own!"
Cliff Hawk broke the shocked silence that followed the Reefer's words: "That's the truth of it, Molly. Or close enough. We can't really communicate with the rogue stars, not directly. We've tried that a thousand times, and it's past our abilities. Solomon Scott tried to reach one. He never came back. Bu we can—we think we can—build a sort of mathematical model of one. An analogue. A small imitation, you might call it. And through that, here on Earth, we may be able to reach them, find out what we want to know."
"But that's dangerous!" protested Molly. "Aren't rogue stars terribly dangerous?"
The Reefer boomed, "Not a bit, girl! Look at our cave here—you can see there's no danger at all." And his great laugh filled the cave, drowning out the distant whines and drones.
Cliff Hawk said uneasily, "In order to duplicate the structure of a rogue star we had to duplicate some of the environmental features. Not really. Not in degree. But we needed great pressure and temperature, and—well, as you can see, we had a little accident."
"Little enough," flashed Molly Zaldivar. "It nearly killed you—and me, for that matter!"
"That's why I want you to go back to Wisdom Creek, Molly. Right away, before ..."
"Now stop that!" shouted Molly Zaldivar. "I won't go! I was afraid what you were doing was dangerous; that's why I sent for And—well, never mind! But now that I know it, I won't stop until I make you give it up!"
"Impossible. I'll take you back."
"You won't!"
"Great Almalik, girl!" shouted Cliff Hawk, his face showing animation again for the first time. "What's got into you? Don't you understand, I don't want you here! Why won't you go?"
"Because I love you, you idiot!" cried the girl, and broke into tears.
There was silence then, even the Reefer saying nothing, though his eyes winked comically under the bushy yellow brows and his bearded face grinned hugely at the spectacle.
They stood staring at each other, Molly Zaldivar and the man she loved. The silence protracted itself.
And then Molly shivered. "Something's—wrong," she whispered. "I'm scared, Cliff."
Cliff Hawk's stern face lifted. He stood listening, to something that he could not quite hear.
In the opening of the cave mouth the sleeth moved restlessly, the shimmer of its transflection field rippling light across its night-black hide. The Reefer stared at it, then away.
"Girl," he rumbled, "you're right about that. The sleeth's spooked. You know what I think? I think we've got a visitor."
Chapter 10
Deep under the cave lay a tunnel, driven into the mountain by ancient prospectors a millennium earlier, beaded with galleries thrusting out from the main shaft to seek for gold or silver ores that were never found. For ten centuries they had lain empty, until Cliff Hawk and the Reefer came to fill them with their machines and instruments, to use them to hatch a new life that would serve as their contact with the rogue stars.
In one of these galleries, in a vault that the men had enlarged and bound about with steel and transflection energies, there was a region of great pressure and heat. All the energies of the screaming power tubes were funneled to keep that hot, dense plasma alive. It was an incubator, designed to produce a new life.
And it had succeeded.
Down there in the hot, crushing dark, Something stirred.
Its first knowledge was of pain. It had been born in a place where nothing like it had ever been before, a place that was innately hostile to all things like itself.
It stirred and reached out with an intangible probe of energy. The probe touched the energy-bound steel that kept its plasma environment intact, and recoiled.
I am caught, it told itself. I do not wish to be caught.
And then it fell to pondering the question of what it, meant by "I." This occupied it for many thousands of microseconds—a long time in its life, which had just begun, but only a moment by the human standards of the, as yet unknown to it, world outside its pen. Overhead, Cliff Hawk was studying his instruments, ranging into galaxies millions of light-years away. The Reefer was roughly checking the tools and power tubes in the higher cave above, while his sleeth slipped silently and sightlessly around the crest of the hill. And down its slope Molly Zaldivar had just abandoned her old blue electrocar and was stealing toward the entrance.
At that point the new Something in the plasma field concluded its first serious deliberations with a conclusion worthy of a Descartes: I do not know what I am, but I know that I am something capable of finding out what I am.
And it proceeded experimentally to seek a further solution. Gathering its energies, it thrust again at the metal energies that bound it; thrust hard, with neither thought of damage to itself (it had not yet learned the habit of self-preservation) nor interest in the consequences to its environment.
It thrust—and penetrated.
The dense, hot plasma burst free into the cave, shaking the entire hill, destroying its own gallery, melting down the steel bottle that had held it. As it broke free it died; the energies from the power tube that had replenished it were automatically cut off—which saved the hill, and half the countryside around, from destruction. Overhead, the tremor it caused shorted connections, started a fire, caused secondary explosions in a dozen places. It tossed Molly Zaldivar to the floor, rocketed a shard of metal across Cliff Hawk's brow, and threw the Reefer to his, knees, where he shouted hi anger and pain and called to his sleeth.
The thing that had been born in the plasma did not die. It registered this fact in its billion billion coded electrons without surprise. It had not been sure that it was alive, and had not feared to die. It hung in the corridor, while acrid chemical smoke aud bright radiant heat whirled around it, untouched by them, hanging now in its own transflection forces, independent of its environment.
And free.
Now its probes could reach farther. They crept out onto the face of the mountain and lightly touched the unconscious mind of Molly Zaldivar, who moaned in fear and tried to open her eyes. They touched and penetrated the stark, bare thoughts of the sleeth. They studied Cliff Hawk and the Reefer, dismissed the inanimate rock and metal of the mountain and its caves, reached out toward the human minds in Wisdom Creek and found them not worth inspection, scanned the myriad men, women, children, bees, turtles, dolphins, dogs, apes, elephants of Earth and filed them
for future examination, reached out to the moon and the planets, shaped themselves and stretched to touch the sun itself.
Briefly, lightly, its probes met another—the questing reach of another rogue mind, infinitely powerful, infinitely far away. Dimly, for half a nanosecond, it sensed the senses of that awed watcher ...
All in the first few seconds of freedom.
Then they recoiled, and the thing that had been born so few moments before contracted in upon itself to think again. For some of the things it had touched had caused it certain sensations. It did not recognize what these sensations were, but it felt they were important. Some of them
—those caused by the entity it had not learned to identify as Molly Zaldivar—were pleasant Others—those caused by that larger, more distant entity it could not yet recognize as the sun—brought about sensations which it could not yet identify as fear. It needed time to study the meaning of all these things.
It contracted into itself and thought, for many microseconds.
Presently a probe stretched out from it once more. There were certain other elements in its environment which it had passed over in its first examination, about which it wanted more information.
It touched the "mind" of the sleeth again, but lingered for a moment, studying it. In this simple construction of cells and patterns it recognized something that might serve it. Yet there were even simpler patterns nearby. The thing reached out and looked at Molly's abandoned electrocar, at the great tracked handling machine that Cliff Hawk and the Reefer used for moving earth and heavy machines, at the instruments and machines of the cave themselves. It sensed another being, somehow more like itself but dim in infinite distance.
Hesitantly the probes returned to the thing down in the blazing gallery below.
It needed more time for thought. It wished to consider what it was that stirred within itself in regard to these things.
It had not yet learned to call these stirrings "hunger."
Cliff Hawk lifted his head from the hooded viewtubes of his instruments' and shouted, "Reefer! You're right! There's something near us that wasn't here before!"
The Reefer nodded his great head slowly. "Thought so." His little dark eyes were hooded. "Question is, what?"
Molly Zaldivar struggled to her feet and caught at Cliff Hawk's arm. "Please stop, dearest! Don't go any farther. Let's call for help before it's too late."
Impatiently he shook her arm off, but she clung. "Cliff, please. I'm afraid. I felt something nearby before and it frightened me. Let me call Andy Quam and ..."
He jerked his head around to glare at her. "Quamodian? Is he on Earth?"
"I—I think so, Cliff. I sent for him, because I was so worried."
Cliff Hawk laughed sharply. "Little Andy Quam? You thought he could help in this?" He shook his head, dismissing little Andy Quam, and turned to the Reefer. "Could we have hatched something? Were you inside the lower galleries?"
The Reefer shook his shaggy head. "Just passed by the mouth. The power tubes were running free, no load, and I had to adjust them. But there was something 'burning down there."
"Idiot!" snapped Cliff Hawk, and bent to turn a switch. A bank of viewers lighted up before him on the wall, revealing the entrance to the lower cave, a jumble of machinery, a blank rock face where a gallery ended—and nothing. Five of the viewers showed only the shifting whiteness of their scanning traces; no picture came through.
(Down in that lower cavern, hovering in the smoky fire where the burned-out cameras stared eyelessly at it, the thing that had come from the plasma tank completed its consideration and stretched out another probe. It was reaching for the sun. It had concluded that the danger in the sun needed action. The thing in the lower cavern massed perhaps an ounce and a half of stripped electrons and plasma. The mass of the sun was some 2 x 1033 grams, a third of a million times the planet Earth. The thing did not regard these odds as important.)
Molly Zaldivar shivered and moved away. Her bruises were beginning to trouble her now, and CM Hawk seemed to have forgotten she was alive; he and that terrible Reefer, with his face burned black and seamed with scars, were shouting at each other, pointing at the banks of instruments, acting in general like lunatics. Molly Zaldivar did not attempt to follow what they were talking about, except that something big had happened. But it could not be anything good; of that she was certain.
Her eyes widened. "Cliff!" she cried. "Listen!"
(The thing had acquired a great deal more skill in handling its functions in the past few thousand microseconds. While one probe was reaching out, invisibly and intangibly, to touch the Sun, it found itself able to mount other probes. One extended itself to touch those simplest of patterned creatures that it had discovered on the upper part of the mountain.)
"What's the matter, Molly?" Cliff was irritated, she knew; but she could not stop.
"Listen—outside! That's my car, starting up!"
And now all three of them could hear it, the distant tiny whine of the electrocar. They leaped for the cave mouth, all three of them, while the sleeth bobbed silently out of their way and stared. Before their eyes the little car started to move up the mountain toward them.
There was no one at the wheel.
The sleeth darted abruptly toward it, recoiled, and returned to the cave mouth like a hurled arrow. "Easy, girl!" shouted the Reefer, and turned to cry to Cliff Hawk, "The animal's caught a whiff of something. Careful! I can't control it when it's like this ..."
But that danger dwindled into nothingness even before Molly Zaldivar realized what it was. For something more alarming happened and caught them all unawares.
Outside the reddening sunset brightened, flashed into an explosion of white-hot brilliance. Something shook them, threw them against each other and the walls. The light dwindled and returned; dwindled again, and returned again, and on this third time struck with such violence that, to the second time that day, Molly Zaldivar found herself hurled into unconsciousness. As she fell into blackness she heard the Reefer shouting, "The star! Great Almalik, Hawk, we're being hit by the star!"
Chapter 11
Quamodian shivered. Leaning past the boys clustered at the window of his flyer, he shaded his eyes to study that thin column of dark smoke which rose straight above the shallow notch in the blue-hazed hills. The three boys moved closer to him, breathless and pale.
"Preacher, what did it hit?" the dark boy whispered suddenly. "Did it hurt anybody?"
"I don't know," said Andreas Quamodian, He groaned and slammed his fist against the unbreakable glass. "But I've got to find out!"
'The sun did it," said Rufe breathlessly. "I saw it. It hit the Reefer's place."
Absently, staring at the thin beacon of smoke, Andy Quam said, "Who's the Reefer?"
"A man from the reefs of space. He lives up on Wolf Gap ridge—right where you see that smoke. Him and his sleeth."
Quam glanced blankly at the boy. "A sleeth?"
"It's a thing from space. It hunts. The Reefer trapped it when it was a cub. He raised it for a pet. My uncle says he rides it now, but I don't know. Cliff Hawk doesn't, I know that. Nobody would dare touch it but the Reefer."
'They were bred to hunt pyropods," said the smallest of the boys suddenly. "The sleeth can catch a pyropod and claw it to scrap metal,"
Quam said harshly, "I don't care about the sleeth. Or the Reefer. What does Cliff Hawk have to do with all this?"
Rufe shrugged. "The Reefer brought him up. Brought his sick Mom here from the reefs before he was born, then sent him off to the stars to learn to be a transflection engineer. That's what my dad says."
"What else does your dad say about Hawk?"
"Says Hawk's building something for the Reefer. Contraband. Don't know what kind, but they smuggle in machines that humans aren't supposed to have without permission from the Star."
The smallest boy whined, "I want to go back down, preacher. I want to go to Starschool."
"Jay! You know we all said we weren't going
to go ..."
"Shut up, Rufe! I want to ask my Starschool teacher about the thing that hit the ridge. I'm scared, and Mark knows nearly everything. I want to see him!"
The redheaded boy looked at Andy Quam and shrugged. "Mark's a robot," he said. "But Jay's maybe right. Mark might know something."
Without thought Andy Quam's fingers reached out to the controls, but the flyer, listening, had anticipated his thought. They were already dropping to the ground.
"I'll take you there, Jay," said Andy Quam eagerly. "Provided you let me come along. I want to know too!"
They hurried up the graveled walk, under the multiple suns of Almalik imaged in the space-black dome of the church. They boy Jay guided Quamodian through hushed passages to Mark's schoolroom.
It was nearly empty, only a score or so brightly dressed children clustered at the front and a smaller, shabbier group lounging skeptically at the back. The robot paused to greet them.
"Come in, students. We are telling the wonderful story of the Visitants and the precious gifts they brought to the old human savages, centuries ago. Please take your , seats."
The three boys slipped quietly into empty seats along a back bench, alongside the others who wore the worn and faded fiber clothing of the free people who have never accepted the Star. Quamodian walked past them, down the aisle to where the brighter garbed children of civilization sat on the front benches. He stopped and planted himself in front of the robot.
"Robot Inspector, I'm sorry to interrupt..."
The robot hung in the air before him, its tall black shining case reflecting the. lights of the room and of its own oval of flame-bright plasma. The plasma flickered, darted half a yard toward him, flicked a dark, whiplike eti.ec tor toward his face.
"Sir, you cannot interrupt," the robot intoned, its voice ringing like tossed pebbles against the low, blue dome.
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