The Reefs of Space

by Frederik Pohl

  "And, oh, Steven! How well it has worked! The Machine is only transistors and relays, you know; it knows nothing but what is fed into it. Fleemer has managed to corrupt its input circuits, and now the Machine is almost openly hostile to Father, and the whole crux of the matter right now is the jetless drive. The Machine has come to think that such a drive will destroy the Plan of Man. It has overruled Father's orders on it—oh, a thousand times —so that Father has to resort to subterfuge and tricks. He let me rescue you, as one of his moves. But I'm afraid it's too late."

  She moved away, peering worriedly at the viewports on the spaceship's panel. "They don't seem to be following. Not yet, anyhow."

  Ryeland noticed he was shivering. It was not cold in the ship, but he had only the ill-fitting coveralls to wear and they were soaked through. "Who?" he demanded.

  "The Plan Police," she said, surprised. "General Fleemer will be after Chiquita, even if they don't suspect you are with me. Though we can't count on that, of course; it wouldn't be unreasonable for the Machine to inform them that I had rescued you from Heaven. He was going to kill Chiquita, you see, so I stole her." She frowned as Ryeland shook his head.

  "Why shouldn't I steal her?" the girl flared. "She was mine! And the only safe place for Chiquita is out in space—out on the Reefs, if I can get her there. And, of course, that's the only safe place for you."

  Ryeland said angrily, "You're asking me to run away from the Machine! You want me to be an outlaw!"

  "Oh, Steven, what do you think you are? Have you forgotten Heaven already? I saved your life ... You're lucky you got here," she said seriously, stroking the space-ling. "I wasn't at all sure Chiquita could make the jump from atmosphere."

  "Neither was I."

  She smiled, and for a moment she was the impish, confident girl who had interviewed him in her bath. But quickly her face clouded again. "I wish Father would come," she said. "Chiquita can't live forever without getting back to the Reefs to replenish her fusorians. And., I— well, I sent my own rocket back to Earth and crashed it where they'll find it. Perhaps they'll think we were both killed. But," she said calmly, "they would have to be stupid to be deceived very long, and the Machine is never stupid. It's—I don't know—unbalanced, now. But it is thorough. Father and I discussed it thoroughly; he knows the Machine well. He thinks we have about twelve hours."

  "Then what?"

  "Why, then the Machine will trigger your collar."

  Involuntarily Ryeland's fingers came up to touch the dull metal that encircled his neck.

  The girl was right; that was what the Machine would do. Twelve hours? He didn't know; but probably the Planner did. All right. Then in twelve hours they had to be out of range.

  "Can we get away from the Machine's radar beam in twelve hours?" he demanded.

  "I don't know, Steven. I think so. The Machine may not realize that you are in space."

  The girl restlessly prowled toward the viewports. "But Father isn't here. I don't know how long we can afford to wait. Once we get out to the Reefs, of course, there's nothing to worry about. You won't have your collar any more."

  He looked startled. She smiled. "Don't you remember, Steven? Ron Donderevo, The man who got his iron collar off; he's out there. I'm sure he can do the same with yours."

  Restlessly Ryeland touched his collar. "Please," he begged. "Tell me what you know about Donderevo" ... about, he thought silently, the man this junk body of mine was built to replace.

  "You know everything there is to tell. Or almost," she said. "He was once a friend of my father—hi spite of all their differences over the future of the Plan of Man. It was Donderevo who first told my father something about the spacelings and the reefs, and convinced him that the Machine should try to develop a jetless drive.

  "Unfortunately, when the Plan took over his people, Donderevo engaged in disloyal activities. For that reason he was classified as a Risk and finally sent to the stockpile. The fact that Father communicated with him while he was in the stockpile, and finally connived at his escape, is one of the charges that Fleemer is using now in his effort to discredit Father with the Machine.

  "I think Donderevo might be able to help Father now, in this fight with Fleemer for control of the Machine and the future of the Plan. At least he could tell the Machine more about the reefs than it got from Lescure's reports-after Fleemer had finished doctoring them. And that's where we must go, Steve—to find Donderevo, out to the Reefs of Space!"

  Ryeland was suddenly afraid to tell Donna how desperately he wanted to see Ron Donderevo. Donderevo might help him remove the iron collar. Donderevo might help him clear up the fog of oblivion and contradiction in his past. But it was also possible that Donderevo would tell him that the collar could not be removed—not without the elaborate surgical facilities available only at the stockpile. It was even possible that Donderevo would affirm what Angela had told him—that he was a junk man, a meat machine patched together from a few, bits of waste tissue, not worth saving from the collar.

  If that were true, he thought, he couldn't stand for Donna Creery ever to find it out The Planner's daughter—and a few pounds of salvaged human garbage. The gulf between them would be too wide for any warm emotion to cross.

  Donna Creery looked again at the viewports and sighed. "I don't know why Father isn't here," she said, "but we dare not wait any longer. I'll send him a message and we'll go. Even the Machine's normal radar beam might reach out this far; we're got to get out of range." She smiled. "It isn't only for your sake, you know. If that collar were triggered in this little ship ..."

  She pursed her lips gravely and shook her head.

  Chapter 15

  Ryeland was deep in a dream of an armless, legless blonde with Oporto's grinning face coming at him with a sonic hacksaw. When the earth began to shake, his body vibrated like a harpstring ... and he awoke. Donna Creery was leaning over him.

  Uncomfortably he stretched and rubbed his tingling hands and ankles. It took him several seconds to wake up. Not unusual; the sleep that spans interplanetary distances is not lightly thrown off. They had put themselves under for what was to have been a voyage of a hundred and fifty days. Were they at the end of it already?

  But Donna's face was worried, and there was a loud excited mewing from the ship's cargo lock. Ryeland groaned and tried to shake the aches out of his bones. Thank heaven they were in space, he thought. The mild thrust of Hohmann-minima orbits kept the endless contact of body-to-bed from producing the bed sores and bruises that would have been inevitable on Earth. "Steven!" the girl cried frantically.

  "Sorry," he mumbled, shook himself and woke up at last. "What's the matter?"

  "Chiquita's gone crazy!" He grunted and climbed up, peering into the cargo hold. The spaceling was flashing about the lock like a torn on the trail of a skulking mouse. She was mewing frantically.

  "Are we here?"

  "No, Steven! But Chiquita got so excited that she triggered the alarms and woke me up. We should be traveling for days yet!"

  "All right. Let's see what's bothering her."

  "But there's nothing to see. We're in deep space now, Steven. Far out beyond Pluto—and yet surely not as far as the Reefs. There couldn't possibly be anything here that could bother her ..."

  She stopped, listening.

  Both of them heard it at the same moment. It was an irritated hammering sound.

  They stared at each other.

  It came again, a muffled banging on their ship's hull. "Let's take a look," Ryeland said grimly. The viewports showed nothing, but on the outer door of the airlock was a small window, shielded against chance radiation. Rye-land slipped the catch and slid open the shields.

  A man stared in, with an expression of impatient annoyance.

  A man!

  Ryeland and the girl looked at each other and then at the face that peered in on them. It was quite impossible. But it was undeniably true.

  The man did not even wear a spacesuit. He wore a ragged blanket, hammeri
ng on the valve of the airlock with the handle of a long knife. He was a lean little red-bearded man, not young.

  Donna cried out suddenly. "Steven! I know him. His name is Quiveras. Why, he brought Chiquita to Earth— to rescue Donderevo from the stockpile." She hesitated, then said abruptly: "Open the lock, Steven."

  "What?"

  "Open the lock, man!"

  "But the air—"

  "Oh, there's no worry about that," she said impatiently.

  "Look!" She pointed behind the man's head where a smooth-lined shape rippled. Another spaceling! No wonder Chiquita had been so upset; undoubtedly she had sensed its presence, a creature like herself though larger and darker. "He's got his own air. The spaceling carried it. How do you suppose he lives? Open the lock!"

  Ryeland hesitated. Reason told him the girl was right; there could be no other explanation. Reason was certain; but his emotional conditioning against opening a door to the great exploding suck of space was too powerful to give in to mere reason without combat; it took a great deal of self-discipline for Ryeland to turn the valve key. But he did it. A metallic whine; a hiss of equalizing pressure. And the lock was open, and they were still breathing air— queerly scented air, with a faint, hot, chemical bouquet, but not unpleasant.

  The little man hurried inside.

  He whistled sharply and his spaceling followed. It was a red-nosed, stub-winged seal, its nose pulsing with red light. Its huge eyes peered around the chamber; it was whining shrilly with pleasure and excitement.

  "Wait!" cried the little man. The spaceling was frantic, but obedient; it paused in the lock while the man spun the closing valve. Then Quiveras said, "All right, Adam. Go' meet your friend."

  The two spacelings flew at each other.

  Around and around the narrow cargo compartment they spun, mewing and purring in soprano-baritone counterpoint. Quiveras grinned. "Ah, the children! How happy to see each other they are!" He bowed and took off his rag of a hat. "And I, sir and madam. I am Quintano Quiveras, your humble servant."

  He looked again at Donna Creery and smiled with real pleasure. "Ah, the Planner's daughter! It is good to see you! And you, sir; it is good to see you as well, though I do not as yet know your name."

  "Steve Ryeland." He put out his hand, and gravely they shook.

  Donna managed to say: "We're pleased to see you too, Mr. Quiveras. But—"

  "But what is Quiveras doing here?" The man smiled and bowed again. "Ah, perhaps I may help. My Adam felt the presence of Chiquita here." He reached out and stroked the golden she-spaceling; the two of them hung poised, their flanks touching, just behind him. "So he wished to join you; and then, there is another reason.” The smile left his face. "My Adam and I, we have .been watching you for some time. Adam has excellent vision, apart from the way that spacelings have of knowing another spaceling is near even when vision is of no use. And Adam saw something. With his help, I saw it too."

  "What's that?"

  "Why," said Quiveras seriously, "perhaps you do not know it, but you are being followed by a heavy war rocket of the Plan of Man."

  Involuntarily Ryeland's fingers stole up to touch his collar. Donna Creery's face turned chalk-white. Their signal to the Planner must have been intercepted; Fleemer knew where they were.

  The equations of military affairs in open space admit of only one solution: The faster vessel-could always force battle on the slower. The logic of the radar-pulse that would trigger the collar on Ryeland's neck made it certain that the battle could be decided only one way. If they fled, the Plan cruiser would overtake them. If they stopped their jets, it would calculate course and position from the last recorded points with no chance whatsoever of error. The jets made a magnificent target, their light and heat a beacon for a million miles. Every effort at escape would plot another blip on the Plan cruiser's thermal screens.

  And then the radar pulse would detonate the collar.

  Ryeland said harshly: "Can we fight? Are there any arms on the ship?"

  Quiveras's gnarled face took on an expression of surprise. "Fight against the Plan? Oh, no, my young friend. We do not fight them; that is their way. We follow our way. We merely run away." He nodded. "We are some millions of miles from the Reefs, yes; it is a considerable journey. But at the end of the journey is freedom. Perhaps even—" he followed Ryeland's stroking fingers on the collar with his eyes—"freedom from that thing about your neck."

  "We have no lifeboat!"

  Quiveras pursed his lips. He pointed to the two space-lings, frolicking about.

  Ryeland said with quick comprehension: "The jetless drive! Of course. They can get us away from our rocket, and as they do not use thermal propulsion, the Plan ship won't be able to spot them. But—the female is injured, Quiveras, She almost killed me before, in just a few minutes in space. Look." He indicated the ridged scars Colonel Gottling had left on her golden fur.

  "But she's had time to heal, Steven!" cried Donna Creery. "Don't forget we've been aspace for over four months!"

  Quiveras looked suddenly worried. Ignoring the girl, he dropped to one knee and crooned to the spaceling. Chiquita frolicked over and hung before him, purring faintly as he stroked the scars. At last Quiveras looked up, his gnarled face concerned. "These were bad wounds, Miss Creery. I did not think you would treat her like that."

  "It wasn't I!"

  Quiveras shook his head. Obstinately, he said, "They are bad. I do not know if she will ever altogether heal."

  Ryeland said stonily, "Are you telling us that we can't get away by spaceling, then?"

  "Oh, no!" The little man was upset. "I did not mean to frighten you. My Adam can hold enough air for us all, I promise. We must go quickly."

  "No," said Ryeland.

  The girl and Quiveras paused, staring at him.

  "Not like that," he said. "This rocket was equipped for me, to work out some of the problems of the jetless drive. I need that equipment—for, if it is as important as you say, we must have it. The spacelings will have to tow it— No," he said, not letting Quiveras object, "I know it will be difficult. But I must have it. And one other thing."

  Quiveras looked at him coldly, then at last smiled. "Very well. If you are willing to go slowly, Adam and Chiquita can pull along whatever it is you want. What is the other thing?"

  Ryeland said: "I want to set a fuse on this ship's fuel compartment. I don't want them poking around in it after we go; I want to blow it up."

  In ten minutes they had locked out some tons of computers, electronic instruments, a power source and a hand-full of other gear; Ryeland took another five to wire contacts to a time-lock and set them to explode the ship's fuel, and then they were ready to leave the spaceship.

  It was like making up one's mind to leap off a building. They stood in the open airlock, and there outside was the universe of stars. Ryeland felt more helpless and small than ever before in his life; how could human flesh survive that great cold barrage of light?

  But Quiveras assured them that the spaceling's bubble of gas bad remained about the ship, held there by the spaceling even through the ship's hull. And in fact, they could see strange shapes and colors, hardly visible,- with their eyes still used to the bright ship's interior and dazzled by the distant display of multitudinous suns.

  Ryeland and the girl joined hands and leaped, and they floated into the world of the spaceling.

  They felt nothing, but they began to move away. The two spacelings swam among them, apparently unheeding, but the jetless drive their bodies produced was moving them all at a tangent to the rocket's line of flight, diverging from it slowly. As they drew off from the ship, the captive air the spaceling carried with it detached itself from its resting places along the hull of the ship. The bubble condensed. The air became denser. Scraps of solid material drifted into place.

  Behind them, in a long string pointing toward the rocket ship they had left, an occasional glint of starshine showed the trail of instruments Ryeland had demanded they take with them. But t
hey saw them only briefly, and then the spaceling's world was coalescing about them, and it was a fairyland.

  It was incredible! Donna and Ryeland stared about, unbelieving. As the bits and pieces sorted themselves into their accustomed relationships they became a cool green cloud, so bright that Ryeland could hardly see the stars outside. Strangeleafed vines twined through the cloud, laden with clusters of unfamiliar fruit. Small creatures that were half fish and half bird flitted through the vines.

  They were at the center, and as the air reached earth-normal density the invisible small creatures that gave it light and life were thickly packed about them. They could move. Ryeland roamed restlessly around the mad little bubble of life they inhabited, with naked space only yards away, staring, thinking, asking quick questions of Quiveras. The little man had apologetically few answers for him, but the facts spoke for themselves. "Incredible!" he muttered. "Fantastic!" He caught himself on a tendril of vine eighteen inches from the faint veil that marked the end of the bubble and stared out at the stars. He could recognize no constellations; great Orion and the mighty Southern Cross alike were out there, but buried in a swarm of thousands of lesser lights, invisible on earth but here a snow-sprinkling of radiance. One great blue-white needle lanced him, and he knew that he had found one star at least. That could only be Sirius, many magnitudes brighter than from Earth’s surface, painful to look at directly.

  Behind him Donna said hesitantly, "Steven, what is all this?"

  Ryeland turned at last to confront her. "It's remarkable! I think I understand it, though ... The drive field holds this little cloud of air. Moving through space, it picks up dust and hydrogen gas. These vines have fusorian cells, that fuse the hydrogen into oxygen, carbon and all the other elements—and also release light and heat enough for the spaceling's, metabolism, or for ours. I'd guess," he said thoughtfully, "that there's a fair proportion of heavy elements in those plants. Conservation of energy. Fusion liberates nuclear energy at the light end of the scale; if the fusorians made only light elements there would be too much release of energy, we'd all be dead in a moment, one way or another. But up past silver fusion takes energy... ." He shook his head. "Sorry. But I can't help running on about it. This is a complete little world, with its own complete economy."