Andy Quam swallowed twice. He wiped the palm of his hand on his tunic and extended it for shaking.
"I'm delighted that you got away," he bubbled breathlessly. "I've been trying to learn what happened, but nobody would tell me anything..."
"Never mind the small talk," she snapped. "Please speak briefly and responsively, when it is necessary for you to speak at all. Your idiotic meddling here has forced me to leave more interesting work at headquarters. I'm assigned to clean up the mess you've made. What the devil are you up to now?"
Quamodian stiffened resentfully. "I'm not meddling ... "
"The traffic safety inspectors say you are," she cut him sharply off. "If you want it explained in baby talk, the rogue star that Cliff Hawk contacted is trying to protect the infant rogue from your officious interference. That's why it sent Solomon Scott to keep you from coming to Earth. That's why it trapped you on its own planet. The inspectors predict that it will be forced to take additional action, unless you restrain yourself."
She gave him no time to inquire what that additional action might be.
"These other citizens and I have little time to waste. We wish to use it effectively. I suppose our best first move is to make an on-site investigation of the totally needless events that your stupidity have brought about."
"I had nothing to do with what has happened here." Flushing, Andy Quam dropped his unshaken hand. "Why, I couldn't even get out of town ..."
"Let's get moving." She ignored his feeble protest. "My associates can provide their own transport, but I require a vehicle."
"Of course." Helplessly, he shrugged. "Here's my flyer."
Without a word, Senior Monitor Clothilde Kwai Kwich brushed past him to enter the flyer. Dazed, Andy Quam turned to follow. The boy caught his arm.
"Say, preacher," he hissed furiously. "What the dickens is the matter with you?"
"I don't know." He shook his head unhappily. "I'm sure I don't know."
After a moment he followed the girl into the flyer.
Chapter 22
The rogue was much larger now, and wiser, and stronger. It sensed that far watcher's anxious observation, but it wanted no defense.
It did not seem much different to the despairing eyes of Molly Zaldivar, for at best it was only a cloud of stripped surging electrons, a controlled violence of particles that would have been her death if the rogue's own energies had not kept its components bound to its central mass. But it had fed and grown. It had assimilated neural reactions from Cliff Hawk, the robot, the sleeth, the hundred living creatures larger than microorganisms that it had absorbed into itself. It was by no means finished with either growing or learning. Perhaps it was almost mature in size and strength and intelligence. Far from mature however, in its understanding of itself.
Molly made no sound as the radiant whirl summoned the sleeth to it, and entered into the black terrifying shape of the predator from space. The sleeth dropped down upon her and caught her, coldly but harmlessly, in its razored talons, now sheathed in their armored cases. It rose with her through the center of the globe, flew through the cold core of that edgeless opal glow and on and out, tracing the endless passageways to the surface.
Molly did not stir. She was past fear or worry; she was not resigned, but she was passive.
She would not have struggled even if she had known how close to death that murderous opal glow had brought her. But she did not know.
She did not respond even hi the hues of emotion by which the rogue interpreted her mental state. No green blaze of hate, no blues or violets of fear. No spark of love; emotion had left her, leaving her dark, and empty, and merely waiting.
Bearing Molly Zaldivar in the bubble of atmosphere trapped in the sleeth's transflexion fields, the rogue left the round Earth.
Tardily they dawdled through the "thick" gases that were the solar atmosphere—so tenuous at one A.U. that human instruments could barely record them, and human bodies would have burst and foamed; but still too thick for the sort of speeds that the sleeth, commanded and driven by the starlike energies of the rogue, could develop. Even so, in minutes they were past gassy Jupiter and Saturn; the void was more nearly empty now, and the rogue drove the sleeth more fiercely.
So fiercely that time seemed to stop.
These were not physical energies that the rogue commanded now; they were the transflexion fields of the sleeth and itself. They leaped through empty spaces, through folded light and darkness, through bitter cold and twisting force and giddy deeps of vastness, leaped to the golden suns of Almalik ...
And were there.
A thin sighing shout whispered passionately hi the ears of Molly Zaldivar:
"Observe!" it shrieked, almost soundlessly. "I have begun to destroy Almalik!"
"You cannot," she said bleakly.
"Observe!" it shrieked again, and subsided. It was the molecules of atmosphere itself that the rogue was shaking now, to make sounds that the girl could hear. It could produce little volume, but in the girl's tiny bubble of air, gazing at the twelve bright but distant stars and one nearby the blinding sun that was Almalik, in the middle of the awful soundlessness of interstellar space, there was no other sound loud enough to drown it out, nothing but her own heart and breath and the fault mindless singing of the sleeth.
"I begin!" whispered the tiny scream, and like a hawk stooping to its prey the rogue drove them toward the nearest planet
It was a small world, less than Pluto and farther from its primary; the horizon was strangely rounded, the surface mottled with creeping blobs of liquid gas.
With a power summoned from its infinite reserves, the rogue seized it, entered it—became it. It grew once more. It fed quickly and avidly, seized new atoms, sucked electrons into the spreading patterns of its being, took new energies from frozen stone. It reached out to survey the space around itself, found ions, gas molecules, a hurtling moonlet—and farther off, a small metal mass inhabited by organic masses of organized matter. The rogue did not know it was a spaceship; did not care.
It drew the spaceship and the sleeth at once to itself. The ship crashed bruisingly on the surface of the tiny world. With the sleeth it was more gentle, but not gentle enough. The creature struck against a spire of frozen hydrates, screamed soundlessly and went limp. And as u lost control, with it went the bubble of air it carried in its transflexion fields, and Molly Zaldivar lay open to the murderous empty cold of space.
For many nanoseconds the rogue considered what it had done. As best it knew how to be so, it was alarmed.
At length it seized upon a buried shell of rock beneath the frozen gases and shook it to make words. "Molly Zaldivar!" rumbled the planet. '"What is happening to you?"
The girl did not answer. She lay cradled in a bed of the planet's—of the rogue's own, now—crystal snow, beside the crumpled black body of the sleeth. She did not breathe; there was no longer any air for her to breathe. Dark blood frothed and froze on her face.
"Molly Zaldivar!" groaned the rock of the planet's crust. "Answer!"
But there was no answer.
The rogue tested its powers, felt their new magnitude. Now it was a planet, its coat of frozen gas a skin, its cragged granite mountains the bones, its deep pools of cooling magma a heart of sorts. The rogue was not used to so large a body. It regretted (insofar as it understood regret) that its body was unkind to Molly Zaldivar, too airless, too cruelly cold.
From the wreckage of the spaceship organized masses of organic matter were exiting, clad in metallic artificial skins. The rogue did not recognize that they were citizens who might be of help to Molly Zaldivar; it reached out a thoughtless effector and slew them. And then it again practiced the sensation it experienced as regret; for it realized that they had owned supplies of water and air, warmth and pressure that could have been used for Molly Zaldivar.
No matter. The rogue was now the planet, and could dispose the planet's resources. It would not let her die.
It shielded her from cold, war
med the frozen gas around her and cupped it hi a sphere of transflexion forces. With bits of matter taken from the creatures it had destroyed it healed the damage to her lungs. It warmed her stiffened body, helped her breathe again, found the spark of life in her...
And the girl stirred and spoke.
"What are you doing, monster?" she moaned.
"I am saving your life, Molly Zaldivar," rumbled the rocks. "I'm destroying Almalik!"
"You cannot, monster," sobbed the girl.
"Observe!"
The rogue's transflection field was vaster now, spreading to hold all its continents of dark and ancient rock, its seas of snow, to contain all its great mass.
With all its might, the rogue prepared to strike at Almalik.
It halted the planet in its orbit and turned inward toward that white and splendid single sun, the brightest star of Almalik.
And in its hate for Almalik it drove inward, toward collision with the star.
The sleeth was cruelly hurt; but the creature that had evolved to kill pyropods in space was not easily killed. It stirred. The great empty eyes gazed into space, then beat to look into the eyes of Molly Zaldivar. Ripples of muscle pulsed under the dark, hard flesh. It's transflection fields grew again; it lifted lightly from the frozen gas on which it lay, and its high singing sound grew in volume. The sleeth was not an intelligent creature as man is intelligent, or the other citizens of the galaxies; but it had awareness. It recognized that something had owned it for a time; it felt that the something was gone, now that the rogue had retreated to explore its new planetary body. It remembered Molly Zaldivar ...
And when the rogue next turned its attention to the girl she was gone.
The rogue was quick to search for her, and find her. She was in flight.
Mounted on the sleek black shoulders of the sleeth, veiled in its transflection fields, she was climbing away from the rogue planet's frigid skin of snow, flying toward the inner planets of that great white star toward which the planet was plunging.
The rogue thrust out a darting arm of plasma, of its own electrons meshed in transcience forces. It reached to overtake her, pierced effortlessly the sleeth's transflection shield, shook her small sphere of air with an effector.
"Where are you going, Molly Zaldivar?" the air screamed shrilly in her ear.
She turned her head to look at the rogue's shining plasma finger, but she did not answer. The rogue paused, considering. There was strangeness here. Strange that to the rogue she seemed so very lovely. The redder suns of Almalik struck red fire from her hair; the blue suns burned violet in her eyes. But why should these things matter? the rogue asked itself, interested and curious. Why should the remembered and absorbed thought patterns of the organized matter called Cliff Hawk exert so powerful an influence on it still? The rogue made the air shriek in a piercing whisper again: "I love you, Molly Zaldivar. Once I was tinier than you, so small you could not see me; now I am so huge you are no more than a fleck of dust. We have never been akin, and I see no bridge for love between us—but I love you!"
"You're insane, monster," she said at last. But her eyes were gentle.
The rogue pondered. "Where are you going?" it demanded again.
"I am flying to the inhabited planets of Almalik. On Kaymak they will deal with you—once I warn them."
"Do you hate me, Molly Zaldivar?"
The girl frowned at its bright sensor and shook her head. "You can't help what you are."
The rogue scanned all her matter for the cold green blaze of fury; it was absent. Eagerly it asked, "Then do you love me now?"
Her face crinkled oddly about the eyes, the skin tawny gold beneath Almalik's far suns. "How could I? I am human—you a monster!" And her violet eyes were damp as they peered at the rogue's shining sensor.
"I love you ..."
"Insane!" sobbed the girl. And then, "Perhaps I pity you, because you are so sadly deformed, because all your power is thrown away." She shook her head vigorously, the colored lights of Almalik dancing in her hair. "I'm sorry for you!"
She paused, then said, "If I am in love, I think it must be with little Andy Quam. Monster, I will go back to him. Once I get to the inhabited planets and give my warning—and you are destroyed—I will go to him through a trans-flex station. But I pity you, monster."
"I will not be destroyed."
"You will be destroyed—unless you kill me first, and keep me from warning the inhabited worlds."
The rogue thought for microseconds. Then at last it shook the ah- again. "I will not destroy you," the air shrieked. "But I will not be destroyed. Observe! I will kill Almalik before you can warn anyone!"
And it withdrew its plasma arm, as the girl stared wonderingly after.
The rogue flexed its energies, and prepared for the assault.
It tightened the transflection fields that held and moved its planetary mass. The agonized rock of its mantle screamed and grated as it flattened its bare black peaks, compressed its deserts of snow, squeezing itself into a denser projectile. It drove itself toward the blazing sun.
I will die, thought the rogue. So will Almalik.
Tardily, almost carelessly, the congeries of massed beings that made up the total of Almalik took note of the intruder and lifted a careless effector to defend itself.
It was not the white star ahead of the rogue that resisted. That sun lay steadily glowing, ignoring the threat. But from a mighty double sun above it, a golden giant and its immense blue companion spinning close together, a bolt was launched.
The bolt sprang from the inner plasmas of the golden star, and its energies were immense. An enormous leaping snake, thicker than the rogue's own snow-encrusted planetary body, blazed bright as the star itself. It flashed with transflection speed across the void, faster than the rogue could move to evade it.
But it bypassed the rogue, and struck toward Molly Zaldivar.
Even at the planetary distances that already separated them, the rogue could see the red flash of terror dart through her being as she saw that darting coil of golden fire. Help me, monster! she cried; the rogue could hear no words, but the message was clear, and it responded.
It hurled out an arm of its own ions and their linking transcience energies, coiling it into a plasma shield around the girl and the sleeth. But it was not strong enough. The golden arm of Almalik was stronger; it burst through the shielding plasma wall, coiled a net of golden fire around Molly and the sleeth and snatched them away toward that double sun.
The rogue could not help her. But an emotion that it could not identify as savage joy filled all its patterned mass. She called me. She asked my help. If I cannot help her, I still can destroy this near white star of Almalik!
The rogue paused, testing itself, preparing itself to dispose of energies greater than even it had yet employed. It was not strong enough, it calculated coldly. Not yet. It needed to be stronger.
The planet was cold, but at its core it was not yet dead; crushed gelid masses of iron and heavier metals still seethed, not yet congealed into solids, not yet exhausted of radioactivity and heat. From them the rogue devoured energy and strength. Controlled lightnings flashed along its plasma paths. The planetary mass of its body was now no more than a slinger's pebble to it; a weapon, a missile, a way of killing Almalik.
The rogue intensified its driving field until its crushed mountain ranges smoked, and the deserts of snow thawed and bubbled into boiling seas. The deep core shuddered with earthquake shocks; arcs and auroras raged through its reborn air.
The rogue plunged on to shatter the enemy star.
But Almalik was not unprepared.
From the binary sun above, the golden spear of plasma stabbed at the rogue again. It pierced all the shielding fields, burned through its steaming seas, exploded its crust and jarred its heart with seismic waves. The rogue coldly calculated its damage. Much. Not too much. I still can kill Almalik!
The plasma snake recoiled to strike again, and yet again, pocking all the rog
ue's surface with enormous glowing craters, shattering its being with waves of destruction that the rogue felt as searing pain.
But the rogue would not let itself be destroyed.
It drew on its last immense reserves to increase the power of its transflection shields, holding all the atoms of its shattered planetary mass in a remorseless, destroying grip. Daring—and learning—it even reached out to suck new energies from the plasma snake itself.
Molly Zaldivar and the sleeth were gone now, lost even to the rogue's far-ranging perceptions as the plasma coil drew them back toward some distant planet's surface. Every bit of matter of more than molecular dimensions for many A.U.'s around was gone, drawn into the rogue itself or volatilized by the seething energies employed.
But the rogue was not destroyed. It plunged on to strike the unresisting white sun. It knew the watcher's pride in its wild rebel power, and they both rejoiced.
Chapter 23
"Monitor Quamodian," said the flyer chattily, "You're not going to hear much with your bare ears. They're talking about you."
Quam glanced at Monitor Clothilde Kwai Kwich, who was inspecting the fittings of the flyer with distaste, and apparently whispering to herself. "I don't know if I want to hear," he muttered.
The girl said aloud, without looking at him "What you want makes little difference, Monitor Quamodian. There will no doubt be times when the other citizens will have inquiries to direct to you, or instructions. I do not wish to be distracted by relaying messages, therefore equip yourself with proper hearing facilities."
Andy Quam grumbled, but accepted the tiny earpiece the flyer ottered him on an effector. "... flimsy old wreck," a shrill voice was piping in his ear as he put it on. "We will follow, but kindly move as rapidly as you can." The voice had an odd humming, almost echoing quality, as though a well-trained chorus were speaking in almost perfect unison. Quamodian guessed it was the multiple citizen of green spirals.
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