John Maddox Roberts - Space Angel

by John Maddox Roberts

  "Analysis?" said the skipper.

  "You can breathe it!" Michelle said. "Pressure's a little lower than we're used to, but everything we need is in it, and nothing that'll do us any harm."

  "All right, everybody, unhelm," said the skipper, "but be ready to rehelm at a second's notice."

  They took off their helmets and felt their ears pop in the lighter air pressure. The air seemed quite fresh and carried no odor. They hardly had a chance to comment on their good luck when the door before them slid open noiselessly.

  Once again, they marveled. The first ship had been so spare and functional that much of its strangeness was cushioned by simplicity. This craft was completely different. The first room was entirely upholstered in a sheer fabric dusted with stylized embroidered stars and flowers. Vases and pitchers, cushions, and odd spindly furniture vied in ornateness with sculpture and hanging mobiles. Everything was so highly embellished that it was difficult to tell the functional from the decorative, if, indeed, the owners had even made such a distinction. Some slight disarray was apparent, but not the utter devastation they had been expecting.

  "They had something a lot more powerful than any grav field," the skipper commented. "The impact of the spindle plowing into this should have destroyed the whole interior."

  The next room was covered with murals depicting slender humanoids engaged in various activities, mostly incomprehensible. Everywhere were the sculptures, of metal, of crystal, of stone, some mobile and some stationary, some projecting strange fights and colors, some singing to themselves in an unfamiliar musical scale. In another cabin they located large bowls and tiers of shell-like basins, which began to fill with colored liquids as they crossed the threshold.

  Lights played through the liquid and struck reflections from glittery hanging sculptures. Sergei used his instruments to make a chemical analysis of one of the liquids.

  "It's mostly water," he reported, "but heavily tinged with acids, sugars, and carbohydrates. At a guess, I'd say these fountains are running wine."

  "Do you realize what we have here?" Torwald exclaimed. "This is a spacer's dream, a hedonist's paradise, floating adrift in space. It's cloud-cuckoo land. We used to talk about discovering something like this on long watches in the Navy."

  "Did the aliens live like this all the time, I wonder, or was this a luxury liner?" Finn mused.

  They jerked around in surprise when apertures opened in the wall behind them and small wheeled machines rolled out. The machines ignored them and rolled to the fountains. Some extruded trays bearing crystal goblets and began filling them with a siphon.

  "They were an indolent bunch." Michelle stared about her, mouth agape. "They couldn't even be bothered with filling their own glasses."

  "They built to last, though," the skipper said. "Come on, let's look for the control center. That's where the records and memory banks will be." She led the way out, taking a bearing on her directional indicator. They managed to cross three rooms before coming to an abrupt halt. The fourth was a banquet hall, with rows of low tables flanked by cushions. The tables were set, with small robots scurrying about, bringing out new dishes, pouring flagons of beverages. They all sniffed.

  "Smells good," Kelly said tentatively. The crew had been eating freezedrys for a long time now.

  "Hold it!" the skipper yelled. "Nobody touches that stuff until Michelle makes an analysis. Just because they breathe the same mixture we do doesn't mean their food won't poison us."

  "It won't poison us," K'Stin noted caustically.

  "You two could probably eat the sculpture. Go ahead." The Vivers sat and started shoveling in the fare on the table. Vivers were conditioned to be abstemious with food when it was in short supply, but they could consume incredible amounts when it was unlimited, storing the excess as fat within their thoracic and abdominal cavities.

  "The metals and plastics I can understand," Finn mused, "but, how can those food items have lasted this long? From the accumulation of space dust outside, I'd guess this ship has been abandoned for millennia."

  "They must be synthesized from chemical tanks, Finn," said Nancy. "We've been trying to solve that problem for years. Just keep supplies of the right molecules on hand, feed the proper formula into the control computer, and instant lobster Newburg."

  "If we could get the secret of that and take it back home," said the skipper, "it would be worth millions of times the value of all that diamond crystal in the hold."

  "These dishes are all right, except for that green jelly," Michelle said. She proceeded to the next setting. "The jelly won't kill you, but it will act as a violent laxative."

  "While we're waiting for the verdict on the rest," the skipper said, "we might as well get a little exploring done. Torwald, you and Kelly look in that room there." She pointed to her right. "Finn and Nancy, look into that one." She pointed left. "Achmed, you and Bert take those stairs and check out the room up there. Bring back anything intriguing and portable. Sergei, help Michelle with her chemical analyses."

  The room Kelly and Torwald explored seemed empty, its floor bearing only some cushions like those around the banquet tables. The walls were free of murals, and there were none of the by now inevitable sculptures.

  "Now, what could—" Torwald's question was cut off abruptly when, without warning, a figure appeared before them. The alien was about seven feet high, clad in a close-fitting garment of silvery blue. Its skin was pale yellow, and its eyes were translucent green, without white, iris, or pupil. It made a gesture resembling a bow, its mouth moving in speech, but making no sound. Kelly and Torwald reached for their pistols, then stopped as the figure made no threatening move.

  "It isn't possible, Tor! The ship and furnishings, yes. The food, maybe, but not a living alien!"

  "Not living, I don't think," Torwald commented tersely. He reached out and placed his fingers against the being's chest. They encountered no resistance, just disappeared into the chest. The figure continued its pantomime of speech without taking notice. "It's some kind of holographic projection. We must have activated it when we entered the room." The figure disappeared and the fights went out.

  Suddenly, the walls came to life with light and color. Streaks and balls and particles of multicolored light darted through the air, seeming to pass through their bodies. Alien music wafted through the chamber, and they sat down to enjoy the show. Some of the flying bits of fight merged and coalesced into the likenesses of weird creatures. The creatures danced and darted to the alien music, then burst into thousands of particles once more. Enthralled, Kelly lost track of time, until he felt a tap on the back of his head. It was Torwald, beckoning him to leave. Reluctantly, he did so.

  Back in the banqueting hall, they found the others sitting on the cushions.

  "We were about to come looking for you."

  "You missed the best show in town, Skipper. Kelly and I just found a theater of some kind, complete with a hologram alien emcee."

  "We're about to start in on this, Tor. Michelle's cleared all the stuff on this table. The inedible stuff is over there." The skipper gestured at a stack of dishes on another table.

  Torwald and Kelly seated themselves and looked at their companions, waiting for somebody else to take the first bite. The others were doing the same.

  "Oh, come on, it's safe," the skipper said. "Kelly, you first."

  With some trepidation, Kelly picked up an object resembling an egg roll and bit into it. It tasted like a meat and vegetable combination, rather spicy. He swallowed and waited for aftereffects. Nothing happened.

  "Pretty good," Kelly announced. The rest dug in.

  "This sauce tastes like glue," Nancy said with a sour look.

  "The fruit salad's not bad," pronounced Torwald. They picked about at various dishes and found some delicious, some objectionable, a few revolting. Few of the flavors were comparable to anything they had tasted on Earth or on any of the inhabited planets. The strangeness of the situation was apparent to them all: they were sitting d
own to a feast laid out for aliens who had departed millennia before.

  When they could hold no more, they resumed the search for the control center, passing through more rooms of artistic wonder until they came to a huge room that looked to be part control room, part library. At its center was a cluster of instrument panels with screens and gauges. The walls were covered with shelves of books, scrolls, and other objects that might have been data storage devices. The books were written in a multitude of scripts, some using embossed marks like braille rather than writing.

  "We might have known that people as aesthetic as these would be book collectors, too. Now, what's that?" The skipper's question was about yet another strange creature which appeared to be walking toward them. If it resembled anything in their experience, it was a crab—its shell was about a meter across, and between its upper and lower halves, various limbs protruded, some tipped with lobsterlike nippers, some with graspers like those of a praying mantis. Tiny eyes on stems seemed to regard them without fear or threat.

  "I wonder how they made these projections so realistic?" Kelly mused, leaning over to pass his fingers through the image as Torwald had done with the one in the theater. To his alarm, his fingers rapped on solid shell, whereupon the others scrambled backward and reached for their weapons. They stood there indecisively, their guns trained on the thing, when they were shaken by the sound of hooting laughter. It was Ham, his voice coming over the ship-to-suit.

  "All right, Ham, what's so funny?"

  "If you people aren't a sight, Gertie!" He was still gurgling with laughter. "Eleven people, including two big Vivers, standing around and pointing guns at an overgrown crab! If you could see your faces!" He trailed off into another laughing fit.

  "The humor of the situation is not apparent," the skipper growled. "We'll discuss that later." Despite her words, there was a general relaxing of tensions, and most of the standard humans holstered their weapons. The Vivers kept theirs trained steadily upon the crustacean.

  "It doesn't seem threatening," said Michelle, tentatively.

  This one is intelligent. More so than you. It means no harm to you. Set me on one of those instrument consoles.

  That was the first communication from Sphere since they had boarded the second ship. Sphere had been increasingly uncommunicative of late. They wanted to know more about the strange creature, but Sphere seemed uninterested in enlightening them further.

  When Achmed and the skipper returned to the ship to relieve Ham and Lafayette, the crab-thing followed them. The rest looked through the books in the library cum control room. They had ceased trying to figure out the peculiar phenomena they were encountering.

  Ham and Lafayette arrived some hours later, wearing expressions of contentment.

  "Hey, thanks for screening that food for us," Lafayette said. "Ham and I stuck to the stuff you passed as the best eating."

  "Yeah. It takes a lot of the anxiety out of a meal when you've had someone else taste it first." The rest regarded them without favor.

  "You're just getting back at us for being the first on this ship while you two stayed on the Angel," said Michelle.

  "What happened to the crab, Ham?" Finn asked.

  "You know, that little critter followed the skipper back to the ship. Walked right across the open spaces without any life-support apparatus. Either it can hold its breath for a long time, or it can breathe vacuum."

  "The little being rises in my estimation, thus placing it somewhat above you weak things. It is of a seemly adaptability." K'Stin was unable to mask the admiration that had crept into his voice.

  "What's the crab doing now, Ham?" Torwald asked.

  "When I left, it was playing with the computer. The skipper put all the crucial functions on manual override, for whatever that's worth with Sphere on board, but the little crab didn't seem interested in any mechanical capabilities. It looked over a single readout and then punched out a code for language instruction. I think it'll be able to understand us pretty soon. It didn't bother with human-speed learning. It took the information at computer-to-computer data transfer rates."

  "The little being has excellent mechanical-mathematical aptitude as well as extreme capabilities of passive survival. If only it were aggressive and pugnacious, it would be a most admirable creature."

  "It's possible that not everybody finds those qualities as indispensible as you do, K'Stin." Indignation marred Nancy's normally expressionless face.

  "Possibly not, weak creature. Just as well. That gives us an edge."

  We will return to the ship. Nothing remains in these instruments that is of use to me. We must go farther toward the Center.

  "But, we've just begun to make records of this ship!" Ham protested.

  That is of no concern to me. I need other information.

  They could not fight the thing's will, so they reluctantly returned to the ship, carrying as many books as they could handle and several of the smaller sculptures. Once aboard the Angel, they found the crablike thing squatting on a seat in the mess. It extruded a few eyes to regard them and wiggled some antennae toward them for some purpose.

  They were joined by the skipper, who had been on the bridge. "Sphere's taken us into hyper again. Too bad. I could've spent the rest of my life on those ships. Oh, well—"

  "If there is something you wish to know about that craft or the people who built it, you need only ask." The crab had spoken.

  "That was quick," the skipper yelped.

  "I have an aptitude for languages."

  "Who are you, and what were you doing aboard that derelict?" asked Ham.

  "My name would be difficult to translate into your tongue, but it means something like 'He Sings the Praises of Great Beings and Their Deeds in Elegant Verse Forms.' That is a somewhat abbreviated version, of course, lacking the rhythm and resonance of the original."

  "It'll do," said the skipper.

  "As for why I was aboard that ship, I was collecting material."

  "Material for what?"

  "For my poems."

  "How did you get there?"

  "I was visiting a world of a nearby system when this wreckage was detected by instruments. I requested passage to the vessels so that I could examine them. That was some time ago, and they have not returned for me. I suppose they have forgotten me, or perhaps a war has intervened." The voice seemed to emanate from within the shell.

  "How long ago was that?" the skipper asked.

  "By your time, six or seven hundred years."

  "What's that amount to by your time?"

  "A rather brief span. I spent it quite enjoyably, going over the vast literature contained in that ship. The Hubri were a great race, perhaps the most aesthetic people who ever lived. As patrons of the arts, they were beyond compare. They cruised the center systems for many centuries, then disappeared perhaps a thousand years ago, searching for new artistic experiences. Naturally, I jumped at the chance to study aboard one of their splendid pleasure craft."

  "Jumped too soon, it seems," the skipper commented.

  "All turned out well." The crab seemed to shrug its shell.

  "Well," said Torwald, "it seems that you're going to be traveling with us for a while. That being the case, we'd better give you a name that's more convenient to us. Any suggestions?"

  "An early Terran poet of note was one named Homer. In a crude way, his verses were of great power, although Beowulf had far more moral force than his works. You may call me Homer, if you like."

  "Homer it is, then," Ham said. Then he introduced Michelle, who'd been tugging at the left sleeve of his coverall.

  "I'm in charge of diet and health. First of all, what do you eat?"

  "Anything composed primarily of organic molecules; all animal or vegetable matter or by-products. I wen petroleum will do—"

  Unable to restrain himself, K'Stin suddenly interrupted the crab. "You were able to survive in the vacuum without breathing apparatus. How did you do that?"

  "Oh, my race can last fo
r lengthy periods without breathing. When necessary, by keeping perfectly still wc can last for many centuries without drawing a breath. This becomes tedious, of course. Also, I can breathe chlorine, methane, helium, and a number of other gases besides oxygen."

  K'Stin nodded. Torwald thought he detected approval in the Viver's manner.

  "Michelle, you needn't worry about my health. I ilon't suffer from illness, and all injuries are repaired within a few days without treatment or medication."

  "Little creature, it is extremely unlikely that any single planet would have an atmosphere suitable for evolving creatures able to breathe such a profusion of gases. You did not evolve, did you? You were designed, like us Vivers."

  "But, of course. Originally, my race were soft-bodied mollusks, rather like the creatures you found on the spindle ship. We found that something more durable would be better suited for exploring diverse worlds. You see before you one of the results. Many other, more specialized forms were developed, but we traveling poets and scholars prefer this form."

  "It seems well-suited to survival," K'Stin admitted grudgingly, "but not as good for fighting as ours."

  "Probably so, but then, belligerent species tend to have brief histories. The records of my race go back two million years." The Viver lapsed into sulky silence, much to the amusement of the others.

  What do you know of the Core Star?

  They started slightly. They had almost forgotten Sphere.

  "Who is addressing me?" asked Homer.

  "That ball in the middle of the table." The skipper replied, pointing at Sphere. "It's controlling things on the Angel these days. It's taken us on a quest for the Core Star, which it claims resides in the center of the galaxy."

  "I am quite familiar with the phenomenon. What, specifically, did you wish to know about it? I must warn you, I am not a physicist."

  I want to know about a nonastronomical phenomenon that 1 believe might be residing near the Core Star.

  "Oh," said Homer, "do you refer to the Guardian?"

  The humans looked at one another. Yet another mystery had been introduced.

  "The Guardian?" Ham's voice was wary.