Thousandstar (#4 of the Cluster series)

by Piers Anthony

  "We need to grasp the purpose of this installation," Heem sprayed. "Then we might know the correct direction."

  'Yes. But what is that purpose?' They were at the third globe now, close to the top of the tower, almost directly above the base of the ramp. They had spiraled twice around the cylindrical structure, and were a fair height above the ground. So near to victory, yet so distant!

  Heem thought of rolling rapidly, gaming momentum, so as to achieve the top of the tower regardless of the friction of the surface, but was sure that would not work. The ascent was too steep and curved, and the Ancients surely had designed their site to prevent so simplistic a solution to the challenge. The low retaining wall outside the ramp might dissolve, sending him hurtling fatally to the ground. Well, no, the Ancients weren't generally vicious in that manner. But they had their ways to enforce their alien directives.

  "Can't take time; the others must have their turns, before more contestants arrive." Indeed, from this elevation Heem perceived the faint flavors of one, perhaps two more Squams, and another Erb. Two creatures could not protect the ramp for long; the savage fighting would break out again. Because the only way any contestant could be quite sure of his chance was to eliminate all competition.

  'Maybe straight down,' Jessica suggested. 'Star—Hole— Planet.'

  Heem set the pointer accordingly. He essayed the ramp beyond—and was sent sliding around and around to the bottom. 'I'd enjoy the ride, if it weren't so serious,' Jessica exclaimed.

  He rolled back to the lowest dial and set it to point down: his failed guess.

  Windflower ascended again. 'Come on, we have to figure this out while we're waiting, not while we're actually on the ramp,' Jessica said. 'What was this site used for? It can't have been a mere camp, or a city, or even a spaceport; the tower is set in the center of an island—'

  "There might not have been water here originally," Heem pointed out. "That must have filled in the depression later, as drainage from the surrounding hills."

  'The depression—yes, of course! It's all part of the site, as we thought before. With the barracks further out. This could have been a major research station, with a monstrous reflecting telescope—'

  "Telescope?"

  'A visual device, like a huge—a huge eye. It gathers light or other radiation in a big sort of cup and focuses it at a central point—' She paused as the meaning burst upon them both. 'Like the apex of this tower. Heem, this is an observatory!'

  Heem grasped her picture. "Our experts have used such devices to gather the radiation-taste of the wider universe. But our collectors are mobile, so as to orient on distant phenomena despite the eccentricities of local planetary motions. This is fixed."

  'Well, some big reflectors are fixed—but yes, I see your point. This is more suited to maybe sending a signal out, though why so big a disk—'

  The two new Squams were approaching. Heem felt a roll of tension: one of them was his nemesis Slitherfear! He wanted to fight that monster, yet he was also afraid, uncertain his needles were accurate enough. The Squam knew of Heem's prowess, and might be on guard against it.

  Windflower slid down. Quickly she reset the dial, and quickly Sickh and Heem checked it. They all knew time was shortening. She had oriented this time on the planet of Impasse. That had been wrong.

  Heem and Windflower stood at the base, orienting outward, while Sickh slithered quickly up. 'Not the other habitable planet of this system,' Jessica said. 'What would an observatory orient on?'

  "Or a beacon," Heem amended.

  'A beacon! That's it! Like a lighthouse, shining a huge beam to warn ships clear, so they won't founder. To warn spaceships away from the Hole! The rotation of the planet would make that huge bright beam flash around the sky, a quite obvious signal! Maybe it wasn't light, but some special type of radiation—or, there are infinite possibilities. The pattern would spell danger, and it might have operated for centuries, millennia—'

  Heem considered. It did make a certain alien sense. "Yet this does not tell us where the third dial should point."

  The two Squams, becoming cognizant of the situation, slithered in toward Heem. But Windflower formed her drill, catching one Squam on the armored body. One scale was ripped out; the creature retreated, leaking ichor.

  Slitherfear encountered Heem. The Squam seemed less formidable without his machine-weapon, and Heem felt a spray of confidence. 'No—don't let him know what you can do,' Jessica cried. 'He may think your prior victory over a Squam was a fluke, and not be properly prepared. Wait till you can wipe him out with one shot, when he's not on guard.'

  Heem heeded her advice. Surprise was important, and betrayal of his power—assuming he really had it—could cause him trouble at this stage. He must seem to be a typical HydrO, so the Squam would hold him in contempt. For the moment. Objectively, Slitherfear knew Heem was dangerous, but subjectively he might not.

  He needled ineffectively at the Squam's armored torso. But the needle struck precisely where he had aimed it. Thanks to Jessica's image, he was ready; he could meet Slitherfear on an even or more than even basis. When it was time.

  Windflower oriented on Slitherfear now, and the Squam retreated. But Swoon of Sweetswamp rolled swiftly in from the side and needled the Erb through the stem. It was a devastatingly accurate shot, at close range. Windflower whipped back, hurt.

  Then Sickh slid down the ramp. She slithered with such force it was a virtual leap, her pincers reaching for the HydrO. Swoon rolled hastily away.

  Heem moved to Windflower, wanting to help but unable. She had been punctured, and there was the flavor of her sap on her stem. It did not seem to be a fatal wound, but she was already wilting, unable to fight. Probably she had not fully recovered from the light-deprivation of the tunnels, so was more vulnerable now to such injury. She would have to withdraw from the competition, retreating to the lake, where she might endure in sun and water until the Competition Authority came to help. "Damn Swoon!" Heem sprayed angrily, borrowing from Jessica's vernacular. The concept "damn" as he understood it meant consignment to an unpleasant region.

  Windflower half fell across him. Heem remained still, not knowing what to do. It was his turn to mount the ramp, but he could not simply dump his friend and leave her in this hostile group. Yet neither could he help her; he lacked the resources.

  One of Windflower's leaves moved along his skin. It withdrew and moved again, slowly. Then a third time, the same line. 'She's telling us something,' Jessica exclaimed. 'Those are not random lines. I think I understand! This is more than a lighthouse—it is a marker, a surveyed-in point, for general navigation. So ships traveling the Galaxy can use it as a reference, knowing exactly where they are. There must be other survey markers, and we must point to one of them, to show that we know what we're doing, before this one lets us in. Windflower must know where such a site is, because she's studied the Ancients. She may have tried Planet Impasse just in case, but now she knows it's another site somewhere else, and she's showing us where.'

  "This is farfetched, even for your female-alien light-leaping mind! So many unverified assumptions—"

  A fourth time the Erb made the line on Heem's surface. Then she collapsed.

  'Got any better notion?' Jessica demanded, her mental voice chill.

  "No, but still—"

  'We've got to use it, Heem. She gave it to us!'

  That he could grasp, almost as if he had her hands. The Erb's guess might be wrong, but it was her final gift, and had to be honored. Heem rolled carefully from under Windflower's body, letting her slide gently to the ground, and rolled to the globe and set it. Sickh blocked Slitherfear. Another Erb was coming near; that would mean trouble for Sickh. He had to hurry, to win or return to help his friend. 'Right,' Jessica agreed.

  He paused, one spiral up, to set the second dial and taste the situation below. Slitherfear was trying to get at the globe, but Sickh balked him. Then, as Heem moved up the second spiral, the new Erb lunged his drill at Sickh, chipping off
a scale—and Slitherfear caught one of her flailing limbs in his pincers and cut off her pincer. Even Heem was able to feel the vibration of her agony as more of her life-fluid welled out. Sickh, too, had not fully recovered from the ordeal of the tunnels, and could not defend herself adequately.

  'That bastard!' Jessica exclaimed, furious. Her image was of a member of her species generated without proper cultural sanction; this seemed to be a gross insult. 'He attacked his own kind!'

  "This is fair, in this competition," Heem reminded her. But he was angry too. His worst enemy had unfairly wounded one of his friends.

  Slitherfear mounted the ramp. 'We could dump him,' Jessica said. 'But we'd dump ourselves too.'

  They came to the third dial. Heem set it in the direction Windflower had indicated. He knew of no significant system or stellar object in that region of space, but if the Erb did—

  The upper ramp held. They had found the final key!

  But Slitherfear was gaining on them. He could really move on this firm surface, pressing against the small retaining wall for additional leverage. Heem, jetting hard to roll up the steep incline, was slow.

  He was tempted to wait and fight the creature here, but yielded to Jessica's imperative and rolled on up. He tasted the stranger-Erb pursuing the Squam, and Swoon was following the Erb. How he wished it could have been Sickh and Windflower on the ramp instead of these enemies! But of course it made no real difference; only the first could be the winner.

  He reached the top—victory!—and halted. He had won the Ancient site for Star HydrO—and for Jessica's survival. But where was the Competition Authority representative that was supposed to be here to verify the identity of the winner? The top of the tower was a level platform surrounded by a low ridge, with a metallic dome raised above it. That was all.

  Slitherfear charged up. 'Heem—with no entity here to keep score—no competition monitor—suppose the Squam doesn't stop?'

  Suppose? Obviously Slitherfear would be governed by no law other than force. The Squam intended to throw Heem off the tower and claim the site for his own Star—which Heem was sure was Star Squam itself.

  'Why, the utter freak!' Jessica exclaimed indignantly. 'He's going to cheat!'

  "We have resources," Heem assured her. "I can hold him off with my accurate needles, and there's an Erb behind him."

  'The thing to do is change the dial setting,' she said.

  'Dump them all at the bottom, while we stay up here.'

  "He is already beside the top dial; we cannot reach it."

  Heem braced himself. Slitherfear came forging to the top, limbs folded.

  Heem needled the most convenient extremity, but it was not extended and the overlapping scales protected every part of the Squam in this position. From the side Heem might have been effective, but endwise there was no purchase for a needle.

  'He has to breathe, doesn't he?' Jessica asked even as Heem needled.

  Good notion! Heem jetted voluminously at the creature's air intake, which was a small tube projecting from the top of the central hump. The Squam choked. He halted at the edge of the platform, unfolding all three arms.

  Heem jetted him again, not with needle force, because the angle was still wrong. But the Squam deflected the water with one pincer. 'We can't stop him on the ramp,' Jessica said. 'His armor is too strong. But if we let him up here, where we have more room to maneuver for position—'

  "He's got his own problem. That Erb is on his tail." Slitherfear realized this. He pulled in his limbs and slithered rapidly forward. Heem could do nothing to stop him. The Squam nosed into the open chamber that was the apex of the tower, under the dome.

  The Erb was right behind. As it arrived at the top of the ramp, its drill formed. Now the Squam had to unfold his limbs again, lest the plant catch him and destroy him. For a moment the three of them paused, dispersed in a triangle about the enclosure.

  'And it is a triangle, or a vicious circle, with each entity capable of destroying another,' Jessica said.

  "I think we have an advantage," Heem sprayed. "We know how to fight the Squam."

  'Still, Slitherfear is treacherous, unscrupulous, and dangerous,' she said darkly. 'And there's something funny about that Erb. Isn't his stem sort of thick?'

  Heem checked. The taste of the stem was strange. "He's wearing a protective shield, so he can't be needled there!" Heem jetted. "That means he will not be easy to eliminate."

  'It is not surprising that some pretty tough characters are in this competition. I wonder how he smuggled that jacket in? Maybe tossed it over the line, then picked it up.'

  "In addition to that—what use to clear off the others, if more keep coming up the ramp. We need to reverse the ramp, while we wait for the Competition Authority to arrive and verify. But now the Erb stands near the dial, blocking us off."

  'I'm not sure we can reach that dial anyway, without getting on the ramp—and then we would get dumped.' Jessica raised a mental pair of hands to tug at mental hair. 'Why, oh why isn't a representative of the Competition Authority here to verify the winner? This whole thing is amazingly sloppy.'

  Heem could only agree. Had the competition been properly organized, the present predicament would never have arisen.

  The three creatures remained poised, no one taking the initiative. It was clear why: anyone who eliminated another would be vulnerable to the third, since the circle would then be broken. The Erb held the Squam in check; if the HydrO needled the Erb, the Squam might then be the winner. Except for Heem's special talent: the ability to fight a Squam. And the Erb's evident protection against a HydrO. That complicated the issue.

  'You're right, Heem; first we'd better secure the top of this tower against further intrusions; then we can worry about the other two up here. We don't want to weaken ourselves fighting these two, only to get wiped out by the next one up the ramp. Maybe if it remains a standoff long enough, the Competition Authority representative will get off his lunch break and report back for duty.'

  Heem made an involuntary spray of mirth. What an insult she had dealt the errant representative, implying that he was a food-eater!

  And—the next competitor was already coming up the ramp. Swoon of Sweetswamp, who had evidently paused along the way to note and memorize the dial settings. How would her presence further complicate this situation?

  The Erb, feeling most immediately threatened despite his shield, was first to act. He lunged his drill at Swoon. The attack caught her by surprise; Erbs hardly ever initiated hostilities against HydrOs, since the result was almost certainly disastrous for the Erbs. She didn't realize that this one was no ordinary Erb. She paused at the top of the ramp.

  The Erb lunged again. Swoon retreated. The globe was immediately behind her. Suddenly Heem recognized the Erb's strategy: to force Swoon into the globe, by her contact changing the setting—and dumping her at the base of the tower. That would eliminate one competitor for a time—perhaps a long time, if she had trouble remounting because of competition below.

  Heem could have warned her, but held his jet. He did not want her competition either. He wanted as few creatures up here as possible. In this he was in agreement with the Erb. With only three here, he could act against the Erb, then turn his full attention to the Squam. Swoon banged against the globe.

  The bottom dropped out of the platform they stood on. HydrO, Squam and Erb were in free-fall, dropping down inside the tower.

  'From above, it reverses!' Jessica exclaimed. 'Instead of down outside, down inside!' She had a mental picture of her Solarian body, blue hair floating upward with the force of the fall, legs kicking beneath the cone of material that surrounded them. Her dress, skirt, slip, clothing, apparel female Solarians wore was supposed to conceal the upper sections of her lower legs, lest observing males of her species become unduly intrigued. Alien it was, but now Heem found the image peculiarly attractive. She was probably a creature of considerable physical appeal to her own kind.

  'I would be, if I ever had a cha
nce to be myself, instead of a fake man. But I guess it was out of the frying pan and into the fire.' Now her image was of the falling Solarian female descending from a large rimmed disk into the leaping flames of some nether conflagration. 'From male apparel to a male host.'

  The flames were consuming her dress, exposing more of her upper legs. Heem found those legs quite interesting. Now the upper section of her garment was also disintegrating, exposing—

  "Heem!" she cried, and he broke off his mental gaze. "Heem—we're still falling!"

  So they were. But they were falling slowly. "This is not free-fall—it's counter-gravity!" Heem sprayed.

  'There is no such thing as anti-gravity!' But her protest lacked force, as they floated down. Ancient science seemed to mock the limitations of the moderns.

  They came to rest in a cylindrical chamber beneath the base of the tower. Its walls were of a material similar to that of the dial-globes outside: they were clearly perceptible to all senses. Five passages led out from the central plaza. There was no dust, and the air was pleasant.

  Here it was—an entire, functional Ancient complex to be explored. A treasure of a magnitude found only once in a millennium in any given galaxy. But they could not explore it; they had to settle which Star had the right to exploit this site. For that Star would shortly be the dominant one of this Segment. The vicious triangle remained.

  Not quite. There was another creature present. Its torso was vaguely like a stem, but thicker; at the base were several little feet, not roots; at the center were several manipulative appendages, not Squam-limbs; and the apex terminated in a complex spiral wire.

  "An Ancient?" Heem sprayed, startled.

  ¿Hardly!¿ the creature jetted back at him. ¿I am the Competition Authority Representative, a native of Segment Fa¿, selected as an objective arbiter for your Segment's activity. I was examining a decorative globe near the access ramp, when I was precipitated here, and was unable to return.¿

  Heem relaxed. 'So that's what happened to the Representative!' Jessica exclaimed. 'He must have been brought by floatercraft, and not realized the significance of the dials.'