In the Centre of the Galaxy

by Clark Darlton

  "When it was all happening, though, no one could know that we’d ever show up here. I think the film was genuine."

  "Assuming it was—what should we do now?"

  Pucky had no chance to answer. It had also become superfluous since the robots now set the pace for any further action. The mechmen displayed a set of double standards towards the two intruders. It remained a mystery for the time being why the two of them were treated so differently.

  The robot had stood up. He bowed to Homunk and then went to the door. Homunk had understood the invitation, stood up and followed him. Pucky, who was slowly beginning to burn over being ignored, wanted to stand up, too, but the robot stopped and made a preventive gesture with his hand. At the same time, he opened the door. Outside, two other robots were waiting. They came into the room and approached Pucky. Their movements were determined and purposeful. Their assignment seemed to concern only the mousebeaver, for they ignored Homunk altogether.

  "Get your paws off me," Pucky screamed as both robots grabbed for him. "If you touch me, I’ll scare the hell out of you."

  Homunk had stopped. "Looks like they sure are differentiating between us—racial prejudice after all!" he said. "I don’t think I have anything to fear, and you can certainly handle them alone all right. So go on, and I’ll follow the commander. If necessary, teleport yourself and look for me. We must find out what they’re planning, why they’re separating us, and how they think. Maybe it can’t be called a mentality, but they do seem to have some kind of self-concept. And it looks like you don’t make the grade here.

  "They’ll soon get over that," Pucky threatened and remained standing uncertainly. "But I should find out what they’re planning to do with me."

  "That would be useful. We have to know where we stand with them. Haven’t you noticed the respect they pay me? There must be a reason for it."

  "Do you think they’ve decided you’re not a human being after all but an android?"

  "Seems more likely it’s the reverse: they think I’m human."

  Pucky sighed.

  "Well, OK, I’ll behave. But if they treat me too badly, they’ll get the surprise of their lives. Just wait, Homunk, and see who it is around here who’s prejudiced. If only you were a telepath!"

  "We still have our communications set. Don’t let them take it."

  Pucky grimaced as if to say: have you ever seen anyone take anything away from me? Then he let the two robots take him between them and actually march him off. It was just possible that they wanted to show him something.

  Pucky had no idea how right he was in that assumption.

  While Homunk and the commander disappeared in the direction of central control, the mousebeaver was gently urged the opposite way. Both robots seemed very sure of what they were doing and apparently had no idea with whom they were dealing. At this moment, it would have been more than easy for Pucky to teleport himself outside into space with his two attendants, to leave them there and jump back into the ship. But he saw that Homunk was right. First of all, they had to find out what was with these curious beings—artificial or not. I’m a fool, Pucky scolded himself as he reached a point in his reflections when he began to consider the robots as live creatures. They had been built and put on ships in which they made a wide area of the galaxy dangerous. But someone must have designed and produced them. To find these creators was the whole sense and purpose of their expedition.

  But that was no reason to let himself be treated like a bothersome pest!

  Pucky firmly planted his feet on the metal floor and stopped. The two robots grabbed him the harder—no trace any more of restraint or courtesy—and pulled him along against his will. It took all of Pucky’s will power not to hurl them against the wall telekinetically. That satisfaction he wanted to save for later. The first order of business was to find out what they wanted from him.

  Certainly nothing good.

  They passed the inner hatchway of the airlock. Farther on toward the stern, the hallway ended in a rectangular door. The robots steered him towards it.

  "Do they want to explain their method of propulsion to me?" Pucky brightened and stopped fighting against the rough way they were handling him. "But that’s very friendly of you. For a long time I’ve tortured my head over which system you favoured." He shook his head. "Your creators must have been real idiots, though. They gave you a mouth—not to talk but to lubricate you!"

  Speech was useless. There was no reply.

  But when he finally got it, it was a real shock.

  The two robots had pulled him through the rectangular door that closed behind them automatically. They were in a square room that took up the entire width of the ship. Directly behind it must be the propulsion machinery in which Pucky was so interested. The separating wall was crammed with instruments and switchboards. Robot technicians attended them, gliding silently back and forth without paying any attention to the new arrivals.

  Pucky was dragged all the way to this wall of control panels.

  The grip the two robots had on him was so hard that without his parapsychological abilities he would have had no chance of escaping them. The metal fists held him so that he could hardly stir but he didn’t try to get free. He had to find out what they intended to do with him. This wouldn’t take very long.

  A third robot came up to them. The two must have transmitted an order to him, silently and without any gestures. Maybe they had some kind of broadcasting and receiving equipment in their positronic brains whose emissions could not be registered by Terranian instruments.

  The third robot opened a round hatch about half a meter in diameter in the middle of the wall. Behind it there was a small dark compartment. Enough was visible, though, to tell Pucky what it was.

  It was the antechamber to the atomic converter.

  At least now the question of the Silver Arrow’s source of energy was clarified. They had an installation by which they could get energy from any material through atomic conversion. Whatever material was on hand could be put into the antechamber where it would be scanned by a tracing apparatus and then forwarded for further processing. Whatever couldn’t be used would be shoved out the refuse lock. The rest would be advanced to the converter where the conversion would take place automatically.

  Conversion of any material was possible.

  Even organic material.

  Pucky understood immediately that the robots had decided he should die. They did not take him for a fully developed living being and wanted to get rid of him. That was the reason for their contemptuous behaviour. Homunk had been accepted but he, Pucky, had not.

  This realization filled him with such fury that for a few seconds he forgot all good resolutions. With one jerk he freed himself from the hands of the robots, who meanwhile had loosened their iron grip. In a single leap he sprang back two meters but the closed door prevented complete retreat. Stopping, he saw that his antagonists had drawn their side arms—small pistols that looked deadly. Probably rayguns. In this small room, absolutely deadly.

  To Pucky’s understandable fury were added instincts of self-preservation.

  Lightning-fast he activated the telekinetic sector of his mutant brain. The robots’ hands froze in mid-motion. And then the bodies of metal were lifted high by an invisible force and floated weightlessly in the air before they disappeared through the antechamber of the converter like so many pancakes. Pucky sent the third robot after them for good measure. It wasn’t hard for Pucky to close the hatchway without coming near it. For safety’s sake he let the door mechanism click shut. With the energy obtained from the conversion of three robots, the Silver Arrow should be able to cross the centre of the Milky Way three times easily.

  The other robots had put their work aside. Pucky saw that they were unarmed. There were four of them, all technicians. Though they had seen what was happening certainly they did not understand. One thing they must, however, have understood: the little mousebeaver was their enemy.

  They advanced.

>   Like the other robots before them, they acted in unison, as if according to a silent arrangement. They came at Pucky from all sides while he was calmly considering whether to avoid any further battles by teleporting himself to another part of the ship. But then the thought that four enemies more or less might play an important role at a later stage of the game won the upper hand. Besides, it was time to unveil his own personality so that the robot commander would see what a mistake he had made by underestimating a mousebeaver. Such an underestimation had never yet done anyone any good.

  The 4 assailants suddenly ran against an invisible obstruction in the middle of the room; they stood around perplexed. Then, before they could adopt other tactics, they were taken hold of by an irresistible force that picked them right off the floor. The same force flung them against each other, after they had a good running start in midair. The length of the room must have been 15 meters and the acceleration that Pucky imparted to them was enormous.

  There was a frightful din as metal clanged against metal. The crash landing of a small aircraft could not have sounded worse.

  With battered and partly damaged bodies, the 4 robots were hurled onto the floor as Pucky released them. They stayed where they had fallen and did not stir.

  They had not exactly been turned into scrap iron but extensive repairs would have to be made to get them functioning again. For the time being Pucky had reached his goal. His fury had evaporated and he was no longer in danger.

  This part of the ship now belonged to him.

  He thought of Homunk and set the communications equipment on short-wave. "Homunk! Can you hear me? Where are you?"

  There was no reply.

  That did not mean much. Very likely Homunk had not turned on his receiver, since he would see no occasion for it. Him at least they were treating with all due respect.

  "I’ll worry about him later," murmured Pucky, put on his space helmet and locked it. Then he teleported himself to the outer shell of the ship where he could decide in perfect peace what he was to do next. It wasn’t going to be simple. The robots would not give him recognition, and he had now dealt them a grievous blow. He was an enemy, while they had taken in Homunk with special courtesy. Really only because he was humanoid? Or perhaps they recognized his android construction?

  Around him Pucky saw the bright spherical shell formed by millions of suns. They were now so concentrated that there could be no talk of constellations. Races evolving in this part of the galaxy must have quite a different idea about the creation of the universe than human beings. What did their gods look like, what was their religion? On Earth, the clear night sky was dark, for the few thousand stars visible even to acute eyes threw but little light there. But from here the universe must seem like a collection of stars crowding in upon each other and mutually influencing their orbits.

  Somewhere out there in the swarm of uncountable stars must be the EX-238, alone and lost. Iltu would be trying to reestablish contact with Pucky without letup. Even Ooch might be helping her. If only they knew the direction, they would succeed; but without directional beaming their thought impulses would simply be lost somewhere in infinity.

  Radio waves!

  Pucky turned the sender onto maximum range and called the EX-238 several times running. Then he asked for verification and turned the set to ‘receiving’.

  At this precise moment he realized that the radio equipment was useless in this part of the galaxy. The interference of the many suns and radio stars was such that all sensible oral communications were rendered impossible. In the loudspeaker there was nothing but an unending crackling and ringing. No radio transmission could ever penetrate all this.

  Pucky turned off the set. Helpless, lost and small, he stood on the hull of the alien ship, surrounded by the splendour of the million suns and the cold loneliness of the universe. He was alone, for the first time. in his long life, really alone. Only eternity stood by him but gave him no comfort. On the contrary, it mocked at him. In the middle of uncountable sun systems, perhaps even inhabited systems, he stood abandoned and waited in vain for help.

  The robots! Only they could be of help now. If they wouldn’t help of their own free will, they would have to be forced.

  Pucky shook his head. To resort to force was senseless. The purpose of the entire expedition would be thwarted by it. Besides, there was Homunk. They had treated him better, and if the android was smart enough, perhaps he could manage to…

  Pucky broke off his train of thought. It was clear that the initiative was taken out of his hands. There was nothing else for him to do but keep quiet and await developments. He should hide in the ship until Homunk had the chance to come to an agreement with the robots. So long as that was not the case, every attempt to get them to do something would fail.

  The Silver Arrow’s course pointed directly to a yellow sun that could not be more than one or two light-years away. It occurred to Pucky that they were in an area of relatively sparse suns, an area that stretched outward like a sphere. The nearest stars were almost all at an equal distance. Without any special flights of fancy, it could easily be determined that the yellow sun occupied an unusual position.

  It had the effect of a focal point of the concentration of stars in the centre of the Milky Way.

  If that was so, then it was the centre of the Milky Way.

  And the Silver Arrow was flying directly towards it.

  Then Pucky grasped that the trip into uncertainty would soon be at an end.

  But not the uncertainty itself.

  2/ PUCKY IN PERIL

  As the Silver Arrow disappeared from the screen, Maj. Lan Koster had the EX-238 hurtle into space at an unheard-of speed. His thoughts alarmed Iltu who appeared immediately in central control along with Ooch.

  It had always been difficult for Koster to differentiate between one mousebeaver and another. They all looked alike as far as he was concerned. But Iltu was a bit smaller than Pucky and built more gracefully; besides which, her incisor wasn’t white but a soft rose. At first glance, though, these differences did not matter. Ooch however could well have been Pucky’s twin brother. He had the same crafty expression, the same broad beaver tail and the same red-brown fur. Only he could not teleport himself.

  Iltu brought him along. "We’ve lost contact," she piped up excitedly.

  Koster pointed to the empty screen.

  "I’m not surprised—the alien ship accelerated fast enough to make me suspect a jump through hyperspace—that they can fly at greater speeds than light. They have simply taken a gigantic leap and disappeared."

  "Why have we lost contact?"

  "Because the Silver Arrow radically changed not only its speed but its direction. Telepathic thought impulses are effective over great distances but only if they are beamed in a definite direction. Our radio contact is also off but that does not surprise me. There are too many radio suns in the neighbourhood. The interference is so bad that we can’t even get through to Terra. It was ill-advised to let Pucky and Homunk go…"

  "We must find them!"

  Iltu’s voice was still ringing in Koster’s ears. He knew how much the little mousebeaver loved Pucky but there was no trace of despair and hopelessness to be heard. The little voice sounded worried, all right, but not really despondent and defeated. For a moment Koster was ashamed of having even thought of giving up in the face of a seemingly impossible assignment. Iltu read his thoughts. She came closer and took hold of his hand.

  "Right," she said, "we must find them…?"

  "Of course we’ll find them," he nodded. "Even if we have to land on every planet in this sector of space. Even if it takes years, we’ll find Pucky and Homunk. Maybe we’ll meet another Silver Arrow and can follow that."

  "Och!" said Ooch. It was his favourite expression in all possible situations and the real reason for his name. "If we do find another such ship, we’ll try the telekinetic experiment Pucky was planning." He grew suddenly silent and listened inwardly. Then he continued, quite excitedly
: "I have to go to the others! Wullewull has taken advantage of all this and…"

  He ran to the door and was out in the hall before anyone could say anything.

  "What’s the matter with him?" Koster asked, puzzled.

  "Biggy!" Iltu, explained, then pointed to the screen. "Which sun are we going to start with?"

  From the very first it had been a hopeless enterprise. The EX-238 was somewhere among a million suns and just one could be the right one. And hitting on the right one was the only way to rescue Pucky and Homunk.

  The first three they came to had no planets. They were recorded to prevent a repeat flight.

  The fourth sun had seven planets; the second one was inhabited. Koster circled it several times before he landed near a recently built city. The analysts reported that the inhabitants were a distant humanoid race, apparently colonists of the Arkonides. They had planetary space transportation and a robot technology.

  Lan Koster assigned FR-7 to contact the natives, let him out through the locks and then threw a protective energy screen around the EX-238. He did not want to risk a surprise attack.

  The robot marched directly toward the city. The landing of the alien spaceship had been noted and appropriate preparations had been made. On a small spacefield stood 7 ships, all spherical. Not one of them a Silver Arrow.

  Even before FR-7 could reach the city, several motor vehicles met him. They kept a respectful distance and soldiers deployed into a protective chain. They did not come closer. Three beings in uniform set themselves in motion and came toward FR-7.

  FR-7 had a positronic brain with a memory bank that put to shame any human memory. His training had crammed him with knowledge he could use instantly without having to ponder it. His insides began to work and before the three beings reached him he knew almost everything about them.

  More than 5,000 years ago the Arkonides had forged ahead to this part of the galaxy. Altogether 10 different expeditions vanished in the concentration of stars at the Centre. They were never heard of again and were simply recorded as lost. This much FR-7 knew. The rest was the result of logical deductions.