“I don’t think you should go, Thomas,” the
Admiral said. “Let Mouse handle it. Suppose you had one of
your attacks?”
“I’ll be all right. Look. Ask Lieutenant Corley. She
says it’ll take a week to reach another crisis
point.”
“Mouse?”
“Somebody has to look over their shoulders, right?
Otherwise we won’t know if they’re getting anywhere.
That’s just the way those people are. They’re not going
to say anything till they’re sure nobody can shoot them down.
Scientists would rather be dragged through the streets naked than
be wrong. If Tommy goes, we’ll have twice as many
eyes.”
“All right. Thomas, you know the woman who heads the
Seiner team. Talk to her. Take a recorder. I want to hear what she
says.”
Twelve hours later McClennon and Storm, accompanied by a pair of
Marine sergeants, entered the cold metal halls of Stars’ End.
The dock ring of their landing bay was a good twenty kilometers
below the featureless planetary surface. The plunge down the long,
dark shaft had been harrowing. Mouse had lost his supper.
The Marines began horsing an electric truck off the shuttle.
Mouse walked along a steel passageway, away from the dock ring.
He peered into what had to have been Ground Control in an age gone
by. “Tommy, come take a look in here.”
McClennon had to stoop beneath the passageway ceiling. He joined
Storm. “What?” He saw nothing but a Marine sentry.
“By that console thing.”
“Oh. A skeleton.”
The reports said bones could be found throughout the fortress.
Thousands of skeletons had been encountered.
“We’re ready, sir,” one of the Marines
said.
McClennon snapped a picture of the bones. “All right.
Mouse, let’s hit Research Central first.”
“Right. We’ll probably get everything there
anyway.”
“Be charming. Consuela el-Sanga looks
vulnerable.”
“Am I ever anything else?”
The little truck streaked through the endless halls, down ramps,
around perilous turns, ever deeper into the metal world. The Marine
driver fled on as if being pursued by the shades of the builders.
He shuddered visibly each time they encountered one of the
skeletons. They passed through one chamber where a score of the
builder folk had died.
“The bones that have touched and shaped our lives,”
Thomas said. “From afar, like virgin princesses.”
“You getting poetic again?”
“I do when I’m depressed.” He glanced at the
Marines. They stared forward impassively. “And this place is
depressing.” The soldiers seemed to have come out of a robot
factory. They had shown no reaction to the Admiral’s
tapes.
The driver’s suicidal rush was the only evidence that
either man was disturbed.
The truck swooped into a level with ceilings vaulting a hundred
meters high. Brobdingnagian machines crowded it, rising like the
buildings of an alien city. There was life here, and light, but it
was all machine.
“I wonder what they are.”
“Accumulators for the energy weapons,” Mouse
guessed.
“Some of them. Some of them must be doing something with
the air.”
“Look!” Mouse squealed. “Sergeant, stop. Back
up. Back up. A little more. Look up there, Tommy. On the fourth
catwalk up.”
McClennon spotted the androgynous little machine. It was busy
working on the flank of one of the towering structures. “A
maintenance robot.”
“Yeah. All right, Sergeant. Go ahead.”
They descended more levels, some as high-ceilinged as that of
the robot. They saw more of the mobile machines, built in a dozen
different designs.
Obviously, only the builders had perished. Their fortress was
very much alive and healthy. Storm and McClennon saw no evidence
of breakdown.
“It’s like walking through a graveyard,” Mouse
said, after their driver had had to wend his way across a vast,
open floor where hundreds of skeletons lay in neat rows.
“Chilling.”
“Know what, Mouse? I think this is really a pyramid.
It’s not a fortress at all.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Why not? Think about it. Can you think of any strategic
reason for putting a world fort out here?”
“Sure.”
“Such as?”
“Right over there are the Magellanic Clouds. Sic somebody
on me willing to spend a few hundred millennia conquering the
galaxy and chasing me, and I’d build me an all-time fort
across my line of retreat before I jump off for a friendlier
star-swarm.”
“Now who’s getting romantic?”
“Romantic, hell.”
“They could just go around it, Mouse.”
“That centerward mob don’t go around anything.
They’d just stay here till they cracked it open.”
“Maybe you’re right, but I’m going to stick to
my theory.”
They reached the research center a few minutes later.
McClennon located Consuela el-Sanga almost immediately, and
found her completely free of animosity. He was surprised.
“Why?” she asked. “I’m no Seiner.
I’m just one of their captive scientists.”
“I didn’t know.” He introduced Mouse. He
wondered if Consuela had heard from Amy.
“Moyshe . . . That wouldn’t be
right, would it?”
“McClennon. Thomas. But call me whatever’s
comfortable.”
“Thomas, this is the most exciting time of my life. We can
finally compare notes with your
people . . . It’s like opening up a whole
new universe. Come on. Let me show you what we’re
doing.” Her walk had a youthful bounce despite the higher
than Seiner-normal gravity.
Mouse’s eyebrows rose questionably. McClennon shrugged.
“Come on. Before she changes her mind.”
A horde of people were at work in a nearby chamber, where
hundreds of folding tables had been arrayed in long rows. Most were
burdened with artifacts, papers, or the tools of the scientists and
their helpers. To one side technicians were busy with communicators
and a vast, waist-level computer interface.
Consuela explained, “The people at the tables are
examining and cataloging artifacts. We brought along several
thousand laymen to help explore. Whenever they make a find, they
notify comm center. We send an expert to examine the site. The
confab over there is an ongoing exchange with your Lunar dig
people. The people at the console are trying to reprogram
Stars’ End’s master brain so it can deal directly with
human input.”
“You found a key to the builder language?” Thomas
asked.
“No. That will come after we can talk to the
computer.”
“You just lost me. That sounds backwards.”
“It works like this: The starfish commune with the
machine. They relay to our mindtechs. The mindtechs relay to our
computer people. They build parallel test programs. Communications
send them down. Our computer people here try to feed it back to the
master brain. The starfish read the response and feed it to the
mindtechs again. And round the circle. The idea is to help the
computers develop a common language. So far we’ve only
managed a pidgin level of communication. We think we’re on
the brink of breakthrough, though.”
“Math ought to be a snap,” Mouse said.
“It’s got to be the same all over the universe. But I
can see how you’d have trouble working toward more abstract
concepts.”
“Unfortunately, we’re using a non-mathematical
interface,” Consuela replied. “The starfish
aren’t mathematically minded. Their conscious concept of
number is one-two-three-many.”
“Thought you said they were smart, Tommy.”
Consuela said, “They are. But theirs is an intuitive
rather than empirical intelligence. But we’re making headway.
When our computers can link . . . ”
“Be careful,” McClennon admonished. “Be very,
very careful.”
“Why?”
“This is the boss machine, right?”
“So the fish say.”
“Okay. That makes it big and powerful. It might be playing
games with you. It’s insane.”
“Come on,” Mouse protested. “How can a machine
go crazy?”
“I don’t know. I do know I was in Contact during the
first battle. I got a little direct touch. It was plain out of its
micro-electronic mind. I’d be afraid it could use its
capacity to seize control of my own command computers.”
“He’s right, Captain. Thomas, we know. It’s a
real problem. Most of the starfish are riding herd on its psyche.
Only a few are helping communicate. It seems to have several
psychological problems. Loneliness. A god complex. A deeply
programed xenophobia and bellicosity . . . It
is, after all, the directing intelligence of a weapons
system.”
“A defensive weapon,” McClennon suggested.
“Mouse laughed at this. But think about it. Is Stars’
End a pyramid?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m going to wander around,” Mouse said.
“Don’t run off without me, Tommy,”
“I won’t. By pyramid I mean it serves the same
function as Old Earth’s Egyptian pyramids.”
“A tomb? I don’t think so. The idea isn’t new,
but it’s been mostly a metaphor.”
“Assume the builders knew . . . You
don’t have all the data.” He explained about the
centerward race and his suspicion that the builder race had been
fleeing it. “Okay. They come to the end of the road.
There’s nowhere to run, unless they jump off for the
Magellanic Clouds. I think they gave up. I think they stopped,
built themselves a pyramid, put their treasures inside, and died
out.”
Miss el-Sangra smiled. “A romantic theory that fits the
known facts. And a few you’ve conjured up, I think.
Ingenious, Thomas. I suppose we’ll be able to answer you when
we complete contact with the master control.”
A boyhood incident came to mind. He had
discovered—independently, so far as he could discern
later—that A squared plus B squared equaled C squared. He had
been excited till he had explained it to a friend. The friend had
laughed and told him that Pythagoras had crossed the finish line
thirty-five hundred years ahead of him.
He felt the same deflation now.
“I hear you and Amy broke up.”
“Yes. I didn’t realize you knew.”
“She called yesterday. She was very depressed about
it.”
“She took something personal that wasn’t.”
“That was the feeling I got. Her story was one-sided, but
I got the impression you were trying to do what was right for
everybody.”
“I tried. I don’t know how successful I
was.”
“You two shouldn’t have gotten involved in the first
place. Landsmen and Seiners don’t speak the same language.
I’ve been with them thirty-six years and I still have
problems.”
“We were both looking for something. We were too eager to
grab it.”
“I’ve been through that, too.”
“Help her, will you? I never meant to hurt her.”
“I will. And don’t feel so guilty. She’s more
resilient than she pretends. She likes the attention.”
“I thought you were friends.”
“She was a lot more than a friend for a while, Captain.
Till she met Heinrich Cortez.”
“Oh.”
“Hey, Tommy!” Mouse bore down on them like a
mini-juggernaut. “Come here.” He about-turned and
steamed a reverse course.
“Excuse me, Consuela.” He chased Mouse down.
“What?”
Mouse stopped. “I just talked to a gal who’s doing
the same thing for the Fishers that we’re doing for Beckhart.
She was pissed. These clowns, some of them, have been here for ten
days. The Fishers have eight thousand people down already. And they
haven’t even started looking at weapons systems. They
don’t even care. All they want to do is collect broken
toothbrushes and sort old bones.”
“They’ll get to it, Mouse. You’ve got to give
them a chance to let the new wear off. And they’ve got to get
a dialogue going with the master control. If they manage that,
it’ll save time. In the long run. The machine can redesign
the weapons for us. That would save ripping the old ones out of
here, orbiting them, then building ships around them.”
Mouse calmed himself. “Okay. Maybe you’re right. But
I still don’t like to see everybody doing something
else when weapons are the reason we’re all here.”
“What if the weapons technology requires other preexisting
technologies?”
“What do you mean?”
“Go back a hundred years. Build me a pulse-graser with the
technology available then. You couldn’t do it. You’d
have to create the technology to create the technology to construct
the pulse accumulators. Right?”
“Sometimes I don’t like you a whole lot,
Tommy.” Mouse grinned. “I’ll tell the Seiner lady
to be patient.”
“If the Captains will excuse me?” The senior of
their Marine custodians approached them.
“Yes, Sergeant?” Thomas asked.
“The Admiral’s compliments, sirs, and he needs you
back aboard ship immediately.”
“What is it?”
“He didn’t say, sir. He said to tell you it’s
critical.”
Mouse looked puzzled. McClennon was very much so.
The news hit the busy chamber before they departed.
The starfish had had a brief skirmish with sharks. Hordes of the
predators had appeared. A continuous stream were still
arriving.
“Holy shit!” Thomas said. “I’d forgotten
about them.”
“They didn’t forget us,” Mouse grumbled.
“Damnation!”
People swirled this way and that. The mood approached panic.
Doctor Chancellor rushed over. “I heard you’re going
up. Take this to the Admiral, just in case.” He shoved a
folder into McClennon’s hands. “Thank you.” He
dashed toward the team working at the computer. They were trying to
prepare an instantaneous shutdown of the round-robin should the
sharks attack.
“They should tell the idiot box to scrub the problem for
them,” Mouse said as they pulled away. “What did he
give you?”
“His notes. They look like a cross between a journal and
regular scientific notation.”
“Give me some of those.”
Their driver flew around worse than he had coming the other
direction.
“Here’s an interesting one,” Mouse said.
“No furniture.”
“What?”
“The exploration teams haven’t found any furniture.
There goes your pyramid theory.”
“He’s right. I didn’t see anything but
machinery. The bodies are all laid out on the floor.”
“Maybe they’re invaders too?”
McClennon shrugged. “Here’s one that will grab you.
How big do you think Stars’ End is?”
“Uhm . . . Venus size?”
“Close. Earth minus two percent. But the planetary part is
smaller than Mars. The rest is edifice.”
“What?”
“His word. I’ll give you the question. Since most of
the structural volume would be hollow, how come the place has so
much gravity? It’s a couple points over Earth
normal.”
Mouse sneered. “Come on, Tommy. Maybe it’s the
machines.”
“Nope. You’re going to love it. According to this,
the builders, before they started building, took a little planet
and polished it smooth. Then they plated it with a layer of
neutronium. The fortress structure floats around on the neutronium,
which may be a cushion against tectonic activity.”
“Whoa!” Mouse clung to the truck as its driver made
a violent turn. “How did they stabilize the
neutronium?”
“Figure that out, and how they mined it in the first
place, and you and me will get rich.”
“What’s the kicker?”
“He doesn’t have one here. I think it’s
implied. I didn’t see anything at the Lunar digs or Three Sky
that would suggest that level of technology.”
“So the little people are interlopers. Just like
us.”
“Maybe.” McClennon had an image of Bronze Age
barbarians camped in the street of a space age city.
“Keep talking. I don’t want to think about the fly
up.”
A Navy Lieutenant awaited them at Marathon’s
ingress lock. “If you’ll follow me, sirs?”
The Admiral awaited them on the bridge. “Ah. Thomas. I was
beginning to wonder.”
“Is it critical, sir? We haven’t slept for
ages.”
“It’s critical. But the Seiners say it doesn’t
look like it’ll break right away. Rest up good before you go
over.”
“Over?”
“I’m sending you to Danion. I want you to go
into link and give Assyrian and Prussian a fire
control realtime.”
“You have got to be kidding.”
“Why? My calculations show them capable of cleaning up
that little mess out there. It’s a chance to show Gruber what
can happen if he gets tricky.”
“Point. Sir, you’re over-optimistic. Sharks are
super deadly. They throw anti-hydrogen when they get mad. Second
point. Why me? A Seiner mindtech could do the job, and probably
better. They’re better trained.”
“I want you. I don’t want some Seiner who’ll
adjust the data to make us look bad.”
“I have to go?”
“It’s an order.”
“Then make it another ship. I’m liable to get
lynched aboard Danion.”
“Danion is Gruber’s choice. That’s
the ship we know. He has secrets too.”
“Thanks a lot. Sir.”
Mouse stage-whispered, “The ship’s Legal Officer
would back you if you want to refuse. You don’t have to work
when you’re under arrest.”
“I got troubles enough without getting the Old Man mad at
me. Madder at me.”
Beckhart glared at Mouse. “You’re going with him,
son. Head bodyguard. Take your two Marines. Tommy, if it will make
you more comfortable, stay with the Psych people till time to
go.”
“I will.” Danion had not changed—except there were no
friendly faces aboard now. Amy met them at the ingress lock. A
squad of grim-faced Security people accompanied her. She installed
the party aboard a convoy of small vehicles.
People spat and cursed as they passed.
“Tell me something,” Mouse said. “How come
everybody knows we’re here?”
“This isn’t Navy,” Amy replied curtly.
“You keep on and I won’t make love to you
anymore.” Mouse laughed when she turned to glare at him.
“Easy, boy,” McClennon said. “We’ve got
to get out of here alive.”
Something thrown whipped over their heads.
“Did you see that?” Mouse croaked. “That was
Candy . . . She wanted to marry me.”
“Amy, have you shown people those tapes?”
“What tapes?”
“The centerward . . . ”
Mouse nudged him. “I smell a little political skulduggery,
old friend. A little crafty censorship. Old Gruber is afraid he
can’t keep people cranked up if they find out what’s
really going on.”
“You’re not to discuss that,” Amy said.
Mouse grinned. “Oh! The Saints forfend! Never, my dear.
What are you going to do about it if I do?”
“I saw Consuela yesterday,” McClennon said, heading
them off.
Amy softened. “How was she?”
“Twenty years younger. Happy as a kid loose in a candy
store. She’s hoping you’ll come down.”
“You went?”
“Yesterday. It’s interesting. But I don’t
think we’ll get as many answers as questions.”
The convoy entered Operations Sector. A huge door closed behind
them, isolating them from the rest of the ship. Mouse wondered
aloud why. No one answered him. McClennon’s former tech team,
Hans and Clara, awaited him. Their faces were not friendly, but
were less inimical than any he had seen outside Operations. Clara
even managed a smile.
“Welcome back, Moyshe. You even get your old
couch.”
“Clara, I want you to meet somebody before we start. You
never got the chance. This is Amy.”
Clara extended a hand. “Amy. I heard so much about you
when Moyshe was with us.”
McClennon removed his tunic, handed it to Mouse. The Marine
sergeants considered the couch and its technical stations, posted
themselves to either side, out of the way.
The Contact room had fallen silent. People stared. Obviously, no
one had been warned that Contact expected visitors.
Thomas settled onto the couch. “Clara, I’m not sure
I can do this anymore.”
“You don’t forget. Hans.”
Hans said, “You let your hair grow, Moyshe. I’ll
have to gum it up good.”
“Haven’t had time for a haircut since we hit The
Broken Wings.” He shuddered as Hans began rubbing greasy
matter into his scalp, and again when the youth slipped the hairnet
device into place. A moment later the helmet devoured his head.
“There’s a fish waiting, Moyshe,” Clara said.
“Just go on out. And good luck.”
TSD took him. Then he was in the starfish universe.
Stars’ End was a vast, milky globe surrounded by countless golden footballs
and needles. The three Empire Class warships became creeping
vortices of color. They were at full battle stations already, with
their heaviest screens up. Golden dragons slid across the distance,
orbiting well beyond the ships.
And beyond the dragons, against the
galaxy . . . “My God!” he
thought.
He saw great shoals and thunderheads of red obscuring the
jeweled kirtle of the galaxy. The sharks were so numerous and
excited that he could not discern individuals.
“Yes, Moyshe man-friend. Will attack soon,” a voice
said inside his mind.
“Chub!”
“Hello. Welcome home. I see by your mind many more
adventures lived, Moyshe man-friend. I see doors opened where once
shadows lay.”
“What in heaven . . . You’ve
changed, Chub. You’ve become poetic.”
Windchime laughter tinkled through his mind. “Have
been so lucky, Moyshe man-friend. First a spy linker who taught
jokes, then a she linker filled with poetry.”
McClennon felt the starfish reaching deep within him, ferreting
through the hidden places, examining all the secrets and fears it
had not been able to reach before. “You remember fast, Moyshe
man-friend.”
On cue, an outside voice said, “Linker, Communications. We
have an open channel to Assyrian and Prussian
Fire Control. Please inform us when you’re ready to
begin.”
Fear stalked through McClennon. The starfish reached in and
calmed him. “I’m ready now,” he replied.
He listened in as Danion’s communications people
closed their nets and linked with the dreadnoughts. He heard the
chatter as the Navy and Seiner fleets went on battle alert. From
his outside viewpoint he watched screens develop around the Navy
ships. The two giant warships began creeping toward the shark
storm.
The sharks sensed the attack before it arrived. Suddenly, they
were flashing everywhere, trying to reach their attackers and the
ships behind them.
McClennon felt the flow from Chub go through his mind into
Danion. He saw the response of Assyrian and
Prussian. Their weapons ripped the very fabric of space.
Sharks by the hundred died.
And by dozens and scores they slipped past and hurled themselves
at the massed ships around Stars’ End.
In ten minutes space was aglow from the energies being expended.
And ten minutes later still McClennon began to feel bleak, to
despair. When he recognized the mood’s source, he asked,
“Chub, what’s the matter?”
“Too many sharks, Moyshe man-friend. Attacking was
mistake. Even the great ships-that-kill of your people will not be
able to endure.”
McClennon studied the situation. Space was scarlet, yes, but he
saw no sure indicators of defeat.
Still, starfish could intuit developments before even the
swiftest human-created computer.
He began to see it fifteen minutes later. Whole packs of sharks
were suiciding in the warships’ screens, gradually
overloading them. They were doing it to every ship. Near
Stars’ End at least a dozen vessels were aflame with the fire
that could burn anywhere, as anti-matter gasses slowly annihilated
the metal of their hulls.
It got worse.
“Moyshe?” Clara’s voice seemed to come from
half a galaxy away. “You’ve been in a long time. Want
to come out?”
“No. I’m doing fine.”
“You’re thrashing around a lot.”
“It’s all right. It’s grim out
here.”
A driblet of fear was getting past Chub’s sentinel effort.
The starfish himself was in a state of agitation. His kind were
being slaughtered.
It got worse. Prussian was compelled to withdraw. The sharks
redoubled their assault upon Assyrian. Hapsburg picked up
the realtime link and replaced Prussian.
The Navy squadrons fared better than did the Starfisher
harvestfleets. Their fire patterns were virtually impenetrable.
From somewhere, a voice screamed, “Breakthrough!
Breakthrough!”
McClennon did not understand till much later. At the moment he
thought it meant the sharks had managed their victory. It was not
till Chub began exulting that he realized the tide had turned.
The sharks were turning on themselves, pairing off and fighting
to the death in ponderous, savage duels. Winners searched for new
victims. Here and there, a few began to flee.
Within half an hour the only red to be seen was that fading from
fragments of dead shark. Space was aboil with the activity of the
scavenger things that followed the sharks. Chub kept giggling like
a teenager at a dirty joke.
“We do it one more time, Moyshe man-friend. This time when
impossible. And in grand style. Grandest style possible. Will make
bet. Herd and harvestfleet will have no trouble from sharks again
for age of man. So many died
here . . . ”
“Moyshe?” Clara said. “Still okay? I think we
should bring you out. You’ve been under a long
time.”
A sadness came over McClennon. For an instant he could not
identify its cause. Then he knew. Chub was sorry to see him go. The
starfish knew that this time it would be forever.
“I don’t know what to say, Chub. I already said
goodbye once.”
Chub tried a feeble joke. McClennon forced a charity laugh.
“Not so good?”
“Not so good. Remember me, Chub.”
“Always. The spy man from the hard matter worlds will
remain immortal in the memory of the herd. Stay happy, Moyshe
man-friend. Remember, there is hope gainst the world-slayers too.
The Old Ones tell me to tell you so. They are remembered from other
galaxies. They have been stopped before.”
“Other galaxies?”
“They come to all galaxies eventually, Moyshe man-friend.
They are the tools of the First Race, the hard matter folk of the
beginning. They do not grow old and die. They are not born as you,
but in machine wombs from pieces of adults. They are created
things. They do not reason as you. They know only their
task.”
McClennon felt the starfish struggling with concepts alien to
the starfish mind. There was an aura of the extremely ancient in
what the creature was trying to tell him. Chub seemed to be
translating very old mood lore into the relative precision of
modern human thought.
“They scourge the worlds that they might be prepared for
the First Race, Moyshe man-friend. But the First Race is gone, and
not there to take the worlds, nor to end the work of their tools.
They were gone before the birth of your home star.”
“Who built Stars’ End? Do you know?”
“The little hard matter people, as you thought. Those
whose bones you found. They were enemies of the First Race. They
won that struggle, but still run from the tools of their
foes.”
“But . . . ”
Chub knew his questions before he thought them. “They are
old, too, Moyshe man-friend. They flee, and the killers-of-worlds
pursue. This is not the first time they have passed through our
galaxy. You do not know Stars’ End. It is old, Moyshe
man-friend. Older than the stones of Earth. The enemies of the
world-slayers are but a ghost of what once was. They perish in
flight, and decline, and always they leave their trail of traps for
their foes. The herd knew them of old, Moyshe man-friend, in other
ages, when the galaxies were young and closer together and our
fathers swam the streams arching between them.”
“You’re getting poetic.”
“The moods mesh, Moyshe man-friend. The moods
mesh.”
“Moyshe? You’d better not stay much longer.”
Clara’s voice was more remote than ever. He began to feel her
urgency.
“Linker? Communications. We’re breaking
lock.”
“Linker, aye. Chub,
I . . . ”
“Coming to you, Moyshe man-friend. You will
remember.”
The starfish’s message puzzled McClennon. He would
remember what?
Something hit his mind. It was an overpowering wave. Panicking,
he yanked upward on his escape switch.
“Chub . . . My
friend . . . ” were his last screaming
thoughts before the darkness took him.
Pain!
Overwhelming pain, worse than any migraine. His head was pulling
itself apart.
He screamed.
“Hold him!” someone yelled.
He writhed against restraining arms. Something pierced his
flesh. Warm relaxation radiated from that point: The pain began to
lessen. Soon he could open his eyes and endure the light.
“Get back!” Clara snapped at someone. “Moyshe,
how do you feel?”
“Like death warmed over. Over.”
Though she looked relieved, she growled, “I told you to
come out. Why didn’t you?”
“Chub was telling me about Stars’ End, End. About
who built it, and about the centerward race. Race. It was
important. Important.”
“You pushed it too far.”
“Give me another shot. Shot. I’ll be all right.
Right. How’s the battle coming? Coming? What happened,
anyway? Anyway?”
Hans held his arm while Clara gave him the second injection. The
pain receded. It became a slight irritation over his eyes, like a
sinus infection.
“They made the breakthrough with the Stars’ End
master control, Moyshe,” Hans said. There wasn’t the
slightest animosity in the youth now. “You held them long
enough. Once it found the key, it broke our language in seconds. It
saw our problem. It did whatever it did about the
sharks.”
“What did it do? Do?”
Mouse stepped around where he could look into McClennon’s
eyes. “We were hoping you could tell us. You were out
there.”
“I didn’t know what was happening. Happening. One
minute we had no hope. Hope. The next minute the sharks sharks had
been hit by a hurricane or something. Or something.”
“The Empires didn’t do so hot, eh?”
“They did magnificently. Better than all of Payne’s
Fleet Payne’s Fleet did during the first battle. Battle. I
think Gruber Gruber will be properly impressed. Impressed. There
was just more there there than anybody expected.
Expected.”
Mouse frowned at him. He asked Clara, “Why is he doing
that?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it
before.”
“Why am I doing what? What?”
“Echoing yourself.”
“What do you mean? Mean?”
“How soon can we move him?” Mouse asked.
“Any time,” Clara told him. “But he should
stay here. Our medical people know how to handle mindtech
problems.”
“No. The Admiral wants him right back. Come on, Thomas.
Feet on the floor. Let’s see if you can stand.”
“No problem. Problem.” He was weak, but he could get
around. Why were they all looking at him that way?
He began to remember.
“He told me I would remember. Remember.”
“Who told you?” Mouse asked as he guided McClennon
toward the door and conveyances waiting outside.
“Chub. The starfish. Fish. I’m beginning to. To.
Mouse, I’ve got to see the Admiral. Admiral. I’m
remembering everything the fish know about the centerward race and
their enemies. Enemies.” He turned. “Clara. It was good
to see you again. Again. Hans. Be a good fellow. Mind your
grandmother. Mother.” He reached with his right hand.
Surprised, Hans shook it.
“Of course, Moyshe. Good luck.” He glanced at
Clara.
The woman said, “Good luck, Moyshe. Maybe you’ll
surprise us again.”
McClennon smiled weakly. “I hope not. Not. No more
battles, anyway. Way. Mouse. Let’s go. Go.”
He was driven by anxiety. He wanted to report what he had
learned before the memories slipped away.
Mouse stopped to talk to Amy before he boarded the shuttle.
“Take care of yourself,” he told her. “And be
happy. What’s happened wasn’t your fault. You could say
it was fate.”
“I know, Mouse. But that doesn’t make it hurt any
less.” She smiled wanly. “Greater destinies? It’s
probably for the best. Sorry I was such a bitch.”
Mouse shrugged. “No problem. Take care.”
“Take care of Moyshe.” Mouse looked at her
strangely.
“He’s your friend, but he’s the husband
I’m going to remember.” She leaned close, whispered,
“Promise not to tell him till he’s past the worst part.
We’ve got a baby on the way.”
“It’s a promise. He doesn’t need that on his
mind too.” Storm backed through the hatchway, waved, turned,
found a seat. For a time he was too amazed to be disturbed by the
fly.
McClennon sat opposite him, beside one of the Marines, writing
furiously.
“I don’t think you should go, Thomas,” the
Admiral said. “Let Mouse handle it. Suppose you had one of
your attacks?”
“I’ll be all right. Look. Ask Lieutenant Corley. She
says it’ll take a week to reach another crisis
point.”
“Mouse?”
“Somebody has to look over their shoulders, right?
Otherwise we won’t know if they’re getting anywhere.
That’s just the way those people are. They’re not going
to say anything till they’re sure nobody can shoot them down.
Scientists would rather be dragged through the streets naked than
be wrong. If Tommy goes, we’ll have twice as many
eyes.”
“All right. Thomas, you know the woman who heads the
Seiner team. Talk to her. Take a recorder. I want to hear what she
says.”
Twelve hours later McClennon and Storm, accompanied by a pair of
Marine sergeants, entered the cold metal halls of Stars’ End.
The dock ring of their landing bay was a good twenty kilometers
below the featureless planetary surface. The plunge down the long,
dark shaft had been harrowing. Mouse had lost his supper.
The Marines began horsing an electric truck off the shuttle.
Mouse walked along a steel passageway, away from the dock ring.
He peered into what had to have been Ground Control in an age gone
by. “Tommy, come take a look in here.”
McClennon had to stoop beneath the passageway ceiling. He joined
Storm. “What?” He saw nothing but a Marine sentry.
“By that console thing.”
“Oh. A skeleton.”
The reports said bones could be found throughout the fortress.
Thousands of skeletons had been encountered.
“We’re ready, sir,” one of the Marines
said.
McClennon snapped a picture of the bones. “All right.
Mouse, let’s hit Research Central first.”
“Right. We’ll probably get everything there
anyway.”
“Be charming. Consuela el-Sanga looks
vulnerable.”
“Am I ever anything else?”
The little truck streaked through the endless halls, down ramps,
around perilous turns, ever deeper into the metal world. The Marine
driver fled on as if being pursued by the shades of the builders.
He shuddered visibly each time they encountered one of the
skeletons. They passed through one chamber where a score of the
builder folk had died.
“The bones that have touched and shaped our lives,”
Thomas said. “From afar, like virgin princesses.”
“You getting poetic again?”
“I do when I’m depressed.” He glanced at the
Marines. They stared forward impassively. “And this place is
depressing.” The soldiers seemed to have come out of a robot
factory. They had shown no reaction to the Admiral’s
tapes.
The driver’s suicidal rush was the only evidence that
either man was disturbed.
The truck swooped into a level with ceilings vaulting a hundred
meters high. Brobdingnagian machines crowded it, rising like the
buildings of an alien city. There was life here, and light, but it
was all machine.
“I wonder what they are.”
“Accumulators for the energy weapons,” Mouse
guessed.
“Some of them. Some of them must be doing something with
the air.”
“Look!” Mouse squealed. “Sergeant, stop. Back
up. Back up. A little more. Look up there, Tommy. On the fourth
catwalk up.”
McClennon spotted the androgynous little machine. It was busy
working on the flank of one of the towering structures. “A
maintenance robot.”
“Yeah. All right, Sergeant. Go ahead.”
They descended more levels, some as high-ceilinged as that of
the robot. They saw more of the mobile machines, built in a dozen
different designs.
Obviously, only the builders had perished. Their fortress was
very much alive and healthy. Storm and McClennon saw no evidence
of breakdown.
“It’s like walking through a graveyard,” Mouse
said, after their driver had had to wend his way across a vast,
open floor where hundreds of skeletons lay in neat rows.
“Chilling.”
“Know what, Mouse? I think this is really a pyramid.
It’s not a fortress at all.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Why not? Think about it. Can you think of any strategic
reason for putting a world fort out here?”
“Sure.”
“Such as?”
“Right over there are the Magellanic Clouds. Sic somebody
on me willing to spend a few hundred millennia conquering the
galaxy and chasing me, and I’d build me an all-time fort
across my line of retreat before I jump off for a friendlier
star-swarm.”
“Now who’s getting romantic?”
“Romantic, hell.”
“They could just go around it, Mouse.”
“That centerward mob don’t go around anything.
They’d just stay here till they cracked it open.”
“Maybe you’re right, but I’m going to stick to
my theory.”
They reached the research center a few minutes later.
McClennon located Consuela el-Sanga almost immediately, and
found her completely free of animosity. He was surprised.
“Why?” she asked. “I’m no Seiner.
I’m just one of their captive scientists.”
“I didn’t know.” He introduced Mouse. He
wondered if Consuela had heard from Amy.
“Moyshe . . . That wouldn’t be
right, would it?”
“McClennon. Thomas. But call me whatever’s
comfortable.”
“Thomas, this is the most exciting time of my life. We can
finally compare notes with your
people . . . It’s like opening up a whole
new universe. Come on. Let me show you what we’re
doing.” Her walk had a youthful bounce despite the higher
than Seiner-normal gravity.
Mouse’s eyebrows rose questionably. McClennon shrugged.
“Come on. Before she changes her mind.”
A horde of people were at work in a nearby chamber, where
hundreds of folding tables had been arrayed in long rows. Most were
burdened with artifacts, papers, or the tools of the scientists and
their helpers. To one side technicians were busy with communicators
and a vast, waist-level computer interface.
Consuela explained, “The people at the tables are
examining and cataloging artifacts. We brought along several
thousand laymen to help explore. Whenever they make a find, they
notify comm center. We send an expert to examine the site. The
confab over there is an ongoing exchange with your Lunar dig
people. The people at the console are trying to reprogram
Stars’ End’s master brain so it can deal directly with
human input.”
“You found a key to the builder language?” Thomas
asked.
“No. That will come after we can talk to the
computer.”
“You just lost me. That sounds backwards.”
“It works like this: The starfish commune with the
machine. They relay to our mindtechs. The mindtechs relay to our
computer people. They build parallel test programs. Communications
send them down. Our computer people here try to feed it back to the
master brain. The starfish read the response and feed it to the
mindtechs again. And round the circle. The idea is to help the
computers develop a common language. So far we’ve only
managed a pidgin level of communication. We think we’re on
the brink of breakthrough, though.”
“Math ought to be a snap,” Mouse said.
“It’s got to be the same all over the universe. But I
can see how you’d have trouble working toward more abstract
concepts.”
“Unfortunately, we’re using a non-mathematical
interface,” Consuela replied. “The starfish
aren’t mathematically minded. Their conscious concept of
number is one-two-three-many.”
“Thought you said they were smart, Tommy.”
Consuela said, “They are. But theirs is an intuitive
rather than empirical intelligence. But we’re making headway.
When our computers can link . . . ”
“Be careful,” McClennon admonished. “Be very,
very careful.”
“Why?”
“This is the boss machine, right?”
“So the fish say.”
“Okay. That makes it big and powerful. It might be playing
games with you. It’s insane.”
“Come on,” Mouse protested. “How can a machine
go crazy?”
“I don’t know. I do know I was in Contact during the
first battle. I got a little direct touch. It was plain out of its
micro-electronic mind. I’d be afraid it could use its
capacity to seize control of my own command computers.”
“He’s right, Captain. Thomas, we know. It’s a
real problem. Most of the starfish are riding herd on its psyche.
Only a few are helping communicate. It seems to have several
psychological problems. Loneliness. A god complex. A deeply
programed xenophobia and bellicosity . . . It
is, after all, the directing intelligence of a weapons
system.”
“A defensive weapon,” McClennon suggested.
“Mouse laughed at this. But think about it. Is Stars’
End a pyramid?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m going to wander around,” Mouse said.
“Don’t run off without me, Tommy,”
“I won’t. By pyramid I mean it serves the same
function as Old Earth’s Egyptian pyramids.”
“A tomb? I don’t think so. The idea isn’t new,
but it’s been mostly a metaphor.”
“Assume the builders knew . . . You
don’t have all the data.” He explained about the
centerward race and his suspicion that the builder race had been
fleeing it. “Okay. They come to the end of the road.
There’s nowhere to run, unless they jump off for the
Magellanic Clouds. I think they gave up. I think they stopped,
built themselves a pyramid, put their treasures inside, and died
out.”
Miss el-Sangra smiled. “A romantic theory that fits the
known facts. And a few you’ve conjured up, I think.
Ingenious, Thomas. I suppose we’ll be able to answer you when
we complete contact with the master control.”
A boyhood incident came to mind. He had
discovered—independently, so far as he could discern
later—that A squared plus B squared equaled C squared. He had
been excited till he had explained it to a friend. The friend had
laughed and told him that Pythagoras had crossed the finish line
thirty-five hundred years ahead of him.
He felt the same deflation now.
“I hear you and Amy broke up.”
“Yes. I didn’t realize you knew.”
“She called yesterday. She was very depressed about
it.”
“She took something personal that wasn’t.”
“That was the feeling I got. Her story was one-sided, but
I got the impression you were trying to do what was right for
everybody.”
“I tried. I don’t know how successful I
was.”
“You two shouldn’t have gotten involved in the first
place. Landsmen and Seiners don’t speak the same language.
I’ve been with them thirty-six years and I still have
problems.”
“We were both looking for something. We were too eager to
grab it.”
“I’ve been through that, too.”
“Help her, will you? I never meant to hurt her.”
“I will. And don’t feel so guilty. She’s more
resilient than she pretends. She likes the attention.”
“I thought you were friends.”
“She was a lot more than a friend for a while, Captain.
Till she met Heinrich Cortez.”
“Oh.”
“Hey, Tommy!” Mouse bore down on them like a
mini-juggernaut. “Come here.” He about-turned and
steamed a reverse course.
“Excuse me, Consuela.” He chased Mouse down.
“What?”
Mouse stopped. “I just talked to a gal who’s doing
the same thing for the Fishers that we’re doing for Beckhart.
She was pissed. These clowns, some of them, have been here for ten
days. The Fishers have eight thousand people down already. And they
haven’t even started looking at weapons systems. They
don’t even care. All they want to do is collect broken
toothbrushes and sort old bones.”
“They’ll get to it, Mouse. You’ve got to give
them a chance to let the new wear off. And they’ve got to get
a dialogue going with the master control. If they manage that,
it’ll save time. In the long run. The machine can redesign
the weapons for us. That would save ripping the old ones out of
here, orbiting them, then building ships around them.”
Mouse calmed himself. “Okay. Maybe you’re right. But
I still don’t like to see everybody doing something
else when weapons are the reason we’re all here.”
“What if the weapons technology requires other preexisting
technologies?”
“What do you mean?”
“Go back a hundred years. Build me a pulse-graser with the
technology available then. You couldn’t do it. You’d
have to create the technology to create the technology to construct
the pulse accumulators. Right?”
“Sometimes I don’t like you a whole lot,
Tommy.” Mouse grinned. “I’ll tell the Seiner lady
to be patient.”
“If the Captains will excuse me?” The senior of
their Marine custodians approached them.
“Yes, Sergeant?” Thomas asked.
“The Admiral’s compliments, sirs, and he needs you
back aboard ship immediately.”
“What is it?”
“He didn’t say, sir. He said to tell you it’s
critical.”
Mouse looked puzzled. McClennon was very much so.
The news hit the busy chamber before they departed.
The starfish had had a brief skirmish with sharks. Hordes of the
predators had appeared. A continuous stream were still
arriving.
“Holy shit!” Thomas said. “I’d forgotten
about them.”
“They didn’t forget us,” Mouse grumbled.
“Damnation!”
People swirled this way and that. The mood approached panic.
Doctor Chancellor rushed over. “I heard you’re going
up. Take this to the Admiral, just in case.” He shoved a
folder into McClennon’s hands. “Thank you.” He
dashed toward the team working at the computer. They were trying to
prepare an instantaneous shutdown of the round-robin should the
sharks attack.
“They should tell the idiot box to scrub the problem for
them,” Mouse said as they pulled away. “What did he
give you?”
“His notes. They look like a cross between a journal and
regular scientific notation.”
“Give me some of those.”
Their driver flew around worse than he had coming the other
direction.
“Here’s an interesting one,” Mouse said.
“No furniture.”
“What?”
“The exploration teams haven’t found any furniture.
There goes your pyramid theory.”
“He’s right. I didn’t see anything but
machinery. The bodies are all laid out on the floor.”
“Maybe they’re invaders too?”
McClennon shrugged. “Here’s one that will grab you.
How big do you think Stars’ End is?”
“Uhm . . . Venus size?”
“Close. Earth minus two percent. But the planetary part is
smaller than Mars. The rest is edifice.”
“What?”
“His word. I’ll give you the question. Since most of
the structural volume would be hollow, how come the place has so
much gravity? It’s a couple points over Earth
normal.”
Mouse sneered. “Come on, Tommy. Maybe it’s the
machines.”
“Nope. You’re going to love it. According to this,
the builders, before they started building, took a little planet
and polished it smooth. Then they plated it with a layer of
neutronium. The fortress structure floats around on the neutronium,
which may be a cushion against tectonic activity.”
“Whoa!” Mouse clung to the truck as its driver made
a violent turn. “How did they stabilize the
neutronium?”
“Figure that out, and how they mined it in the first
place, and you and me will get rich.”
“What’s the kicker?”
“He doesn’t have one here. I think it’s
implied. I didn’t see anything at the Lunar digs or Three Sky
that would suggest that level of technology.”
“So the little people are interlopers. Just like
us.”
“Maybe.” McClennon had an image of Bronze Age
barbarians camped in the street of a space age city.
“Keep talking. I don’t want to think about the fly
up.”
A Navy Lieutenant awaited them at Marathon’s
ingress lock. “If you’ll follow me, sirs?”
The Admiral awaited them on the bridge. “Ah. Thomas. I was
beginning to wonder.”
“Is it critical, sir? We haven’t slept for
ages.”
“It’s critical. But the Seiners say it doesn’t
look like it’ll break right away. Rest up good before you go
over.”
“Over?”
“I’m sending you to Danion. I want you to go
into link and give Assyrian and Prussian a fire
control realtime.”
“You have got to be kidding.”
“Why? My calculations show them capable of cleaning up
that little mess out there. It’s a chance to show Gruber what
can happen if he gets tricky.”
“Point. Sir, you’re over-optimistic. Sharks are
super deadly. They throw anti-hydrogen when they get mad. Second
point. Why me? A Seiner mindtech could do the job, and probably
better. They’re better trained.”
“I want you. I don’t want some Seiner who’ll
adjust the data to make us look bad.”
“I have to go?”
“It’s an order.”
“Then make it another ship. I’m liable to get
lynched aboard Danion.”
“Danion is Gruber’s choice. That’s
the ship we know. He has secrets too.”
“Thanks a lot. Sir.”
Mouse stage-whispered, “The ship’s Legal Officer
would back you if you want to refuse. You don’t have to work
when you’re under arrest.”
“I got troubles enough without getting the Old Man mad at
me. Madder at me.”
Beckhart glared at Mouse. “You’re going with him,
son. Head bodyguard. Take your two Marines. Tommy, if it will make
you more comfortable, stay with the Psych people till time to
go.”
“I will.” Danion had not changed—except there were no
friendly faces aboard now. Amy met them at the ingress lock. A
squad of grim-faced Security people accompanied her. She installed
the party aboard a convoy of small vehicles.
People spat and cursed as they passed.
“Tell me something,” Mouse said. “How come
everybody knows we’re here?”
“This isn’t Navy,” Amy replied curtly.
“You keep on and I won’t make love to you
anymore.” Mouse laughed when she turned to glare at him.
“Easy, boy,” McClennon said. “We’ve got
to get out of here alive.”
Something thrown whipped over their heads.
“Did you see that?” Mouse croaked. “That was
Candy . . . She wanted to marry me.”
“Amy, have you shown people those tapes?”
“What tapes?”
“The centerward . . . ”
Mouse nudged him. “I smell a little political skulduggery,
old friend. A little crafty censorship. Old Gruber is afraid he
can’t keep people cranked up if they find out what’s
really going on.”
“You’re not to discuss that,” Amy said.
Mouse grinned. “Oh! The Saints forfend! Never, my dear.
What are you going to do about it if I do?”
“I saw Consuela yesterday,” McClennon said, heading
them off.
Amy softened. “How was she?”
“Twenty years younger. Happy as a kid loose in a candy
store. She’s hoping you’ll come down.”
“You went?”
“Yesterday. It’s interesting. But I don’t
think we’ll get as many answers as questions.”
The convoy entered Operations Sector. A huge door closed behind
them, isolating them from the rest of the ship. Mouse wondered
aloud why. No one answered him. McClennon’s former tech team,
Hans and Clara, awaited him. Their faces were not friendly, but
were less inimical than any he had seen outside Operations. Clara
even managed a smile.
“Welcome back, Moyshe. You even get your old
couch.”
“Clara, I want you to meet somebody before we start. You
never got the chance. This is Amy.”
Clara extended a hand. “Amy. I heard so much about you
when Moyshe was with us.”
McClennon removed his tunic, handed it to Mouse. The Marine
sergeants considered the couch and its technical stations, posted
themselves to either side, out of the way.
The Contact room had fallen silent. People stared. Obviously, no
one had been warned that Contact expected visitors.
Thomas settled onto the couch. “Clara, I’m not sure
I can do this anymore.”
“You don’t forget. Hans.”
Hans said, “You let your hair grow, Moyshe. I’ll
have to gum it up good.”
“Haven’t had time for a haircut since we hit The
Broken Wings.” He shuddered as Hans began rubbing greasy
matter into his scalp, and again when the youth slipped the hairnet
device into place. A moment later the helmet devoured his head.
“There’s a fish waiting, Moyshe,” Clara said.
“Just go on out. And good luck.”
TSD took him. Then he was in the starfish universe.
Stars’ End was a vast, milky globe surrounded by countless golden footballs
and needles. The three Empire Class warships became creeping
vortices of color. They were at full battle stations already, with
their heaviest screens up. Golden dragons slid across the distance,
orbiting well beyond the ships.
And beyond the dragons, against the
galaxy . . . “My God!” he
thought.
He saw great shoals and thunderheads of red obscuring the
jeweled kirtle of the galaxy. The sharks were so numerous and
excited that he could not discern individuals.
“Yes, Moyshe man-friend. Will attack soon,” a voice
said inside his mind.
“Chub!”
“Hello. Welcome home. I see by your mind many more
adventures lived, Moyshe man-friend. I see doors opened where once
shadows lay.”
“What in heaven . . . You’ve
changed, Chub. You’ve become poetic.”
Windchime laughter tinkled through his mind. “Have
been so lucky, Moyshe man-friend. First a spy linker who taught
jokes, then a she linker filled with poetry.”
McClennon felt the starfish reaching deep within him, ferreting
through the hidden places, examining all the secrets and fears it
had not been able to reach before. “You remember fast, Moyshe
man-friend.”
On cue, an outside voice said, “Linker, Communications. We
have an open channel to Assyrian and Prussian
Fire Control. Please inform us when you’re ready to
begin.”
Fear stalked through McClennon. The starfish reached in and
calmed him. “I’m ready now,” he replied.
He listened in as Danion’s communications people
closed their nets and linked with the dreadnoughts. He heard the
chatter as the Navy and Seiner fleets went on battle alert. From
his outside viewpoint he watched screens develop around the Navy
ships. The two giant warships began creeping toward the shark
storm.
The sharks sensed the attack before it arrived. Suddenly, they
were flashing everywhere, trying to reach their attackers and the
ships behind them.
McClennon felt the flow from Chub go through his mind into
Danion. He saw the response of Assyrian and
Prussian. Their weapons ripped the very fabric of space.
Sharks by the hundred died.
And by dozens and scores they slipped past and hurled themselves
at the massed ships around Stars’ End.
In ten minutes space was aglow from the energies being expended.
And ten minutes later still McClennon began to feel bleak, to
despair. When he recognized the mood’s source, he asked,
“Chub, what’s the matter?”
“Too many sharks, Moyshe man-friend. Attacking was
mistake. Even the great ships-that-kill of your people will not be
able to endure.”
McClennon studied the situation. Space was scarlet, yes, but he
saw no sure indicators of defeat.
Still, starfish could intuit developments before even the
swiftest human-created computer.
He began to see it fifteen minutes later. Whole packs of sharks
were suiciding in the warships’ screens, gradually
overloading them. They were doing it to every ship. Near
Stars’ End at least a dozen vessels were aflame with the fire
that could burn anywhere, as anti-matter gasses slowly annihilated
the metal of their hulls.
It got worse.
“Moyshe?” Clara’s voice seemed to come from
half a galaxy away. “You’ve been in a long time. Want
to come out?”
“No. I’m doing fine.”
“You’re thrashing around a lot.”
“It’s all right. It’s grim out
here.”
A driblet of fear was getting past Chub’s sentinel effort.
The starfish himself was in a state of agitation. His kind were
being slaughtered.
It got worse. Prussian was compelled to withdraw. The sharks
redoubled their assault upon Assyrian. Hapsburg picked up
the realtime link and replaced Prussian.
The Navy squadrons fared better than did the Starfisher
harvestfleets. Their fire patterns were virtually impenetrable.
From somewhere, a voice screamed, “Breakthrough!
Breakthrough!”
McClennon did not understand till much later. At the moment he
thought it meant the sharks had managed their victory. It was not
till Chub began exulting that he realized the tide had turned.
The sharks were turning on themselves, pairing off and fighting
to the death in ponderous, savage duels. Winners searched for new
victims. Here and there, a few began to flee.
Within half an hour the only red to be seen was that fading from
fragments of dead shark. Space was aboil with the activity of the
scavenger things that followed the sharks. Chub kept giggling like
a teenager at a dirty joke.
“We do it one more time, Moyshe man-friend. This time when
impossible. And in grand style. Grandest style possible. Will make
bet. Herd and harvestfleet will have no trouble from sharks again
for age of man. So many died
here . . . ”
“Moyshe?” Clara said. “Still okay? I think we
should bring you out. You’ve been under a long
time.”
A sadness came over McClennon. For an instant he could not
identify its cause. Then he knew. Chub was sorry to see him go. The
starfish knew that this time it would be forever.
“I don’t know what to say, Chub. I already said
goodbye once.”
Chub tried a feeble joke. McClennon forced a charity laugh.
“Not so good?”
“Not so good. Remember me, Chub.”
“Always. The spy man from the hard matter worlds will
remain immortal in the memory of the herd. Stay happy, Moyshe
man-friend. Remember, there is hope gainst the world-slayers too.
The Old Ones tell me to tell you so. They are remembered from other
galaxies. They have been stopped before.”
“Other galaxies?”
“They come to all galaxies eventually, Moyshe man-friend.
They are the tools of the First Race, the hard matter folk of the
beginning. They do not grow old and die. They are not born as you,
but in machine wombs from pieces of adults. They are created
things. They do not reason as you. They know only their
task.”
McClennon felt the starfish struggling with concepts alien to
the starfish mind. There was an aura of the extremely ancient in
what the creature was trying to tell him. Chub seemed to be
translating very old mood lore into the relative precision of
modern human thought.
“They scourge the worlds that they might be prepared for
the First Race, Moyshe man-friend. But the First Race is gone, and
not there to take the worlds, nor to end the work of their tools.
They were gone before the birth of your home star.”
“Who built Stars’ End? Do you know?”
“The little hard matter people, as you thought. Those
whose bones you found. They were enemies of the First Race. They
won that struggle, but still run from the tools of their
foes.”
“But . . . ”
Chub knew his questions before he thought them. “They are
old, too, Moyshe man-friend. They flee, and the killers-of-worlds
pursue. This is not the first time they have passed through our
galaxy. You do not know Stars’ End. It is old, Moyshe
man-friend. Older than the stones of Earth. The enemies of the
world-slayers are but a ghost of what once was. They perish in
flight, and decline, and always they leave their trail of traps for
their foes. The herd knew them of old, Moyshe man-friend, in other
ages, when the galaxies were young and closer together and our
fathers swam the streams arching between them.”
“You’re getting poetic.”
“The moods mesh, Moyshe man-friend. The moods
mesh.”
“Moyshe? You’d better not stay much longer.”
Clara’s voice was more remote than ever. He began to feel her
urgency.
“Linker? Communications. We’re breaking
lock.”
“Linker, aye. Chub,
I . . . ”
“Coming to you, Moyshe man-friend. You will
remember.”
The starfish’s message puzzled McClennon. He would
remember what?
Something hit his mind. It was an overpowering wave. Panicking,
he yanked upward on his escape switch.
“Chub . . . My
friend . . . ” were his last screaming
thoughts before the darkness took him.
Pain!
Overwhelming pain, worse than any migraine. His head was pulling
itself apart.
He screamed.
“Hold him!” someone yelled.
He writhed against restraining arms. Something pierced his
flesh. Warm relaxation radiated from that point: The pain began to
lessen. Soon he could open his eyes and endure the light.
“Get back!” Clara snapped at someone. “Moyshe,
how do you feel?”
“Like death warmed over. Over.”
Though she looked relieved, she growled, “I told you to
come out. Why didn’t you?”
“Chub was telling me about Stars’ End, End. About
who built it, and about the centerward race. Race. It was
important. Important.”
“You pushed it too far.”
“Give me another shot. Shot. I’ll be all right.
Right. How’s the battle coming? Coming? What happened,
anyway? Anyway?”
Hans held his arm while Clara gave him the second injection. The
pain receded. It became a slight irritation over his eyes, like a
sinus infection.
“They made the breakthrough with the Stars’ End
master control, Moyshe,” Hans said. There wasn’t the
slightest animosity in the youth now. “You held them long
enough. Once it found the key, it broke our language in seconds. It
saw our problem. It did whatever it did about the
sharks.”
“What did it do? Do?”
Mouse stepped around where he could look into McClennon’s
eyes. “We were hoping you could tell us. You were out
there.”
“I didn’t know what was happening. Happening. One
minute we had no hope. Hope. The next minute the sharks sharks had
been hit by a hurricane or something. Or something.”
“The Empires didn’t do so hot, eh?”
“They did magnificently. Better than all of Payne’s
Fleet Payne’s Fleet did during the first battle. Battle. I
think Gruber Gruber will be properly impressed. Impressed. There
was just more there there than anybody expected.
Expected.”
Mouse frowned at him. He asked Clara, “Why is he doing
that?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it
before.”
“Why am I doing what? What?”
“Echoing yourself.”
“What do you mean? Mean?”
“How soon can we move him?” Mouse asked.
“Any time,” Clara told him. “But he should
stay here. Our medical people know how to handle mindtech
problems.”
“No. The Admiral wants him right back. Come on, Thomas.
Feet on the floor. Let’s see if you can stand.”
“No problem. Problem.” He was weak, but he could get
around. Why were they all looking at him that way?
He began to remember.
“He told me I would remember. Remember.”
“Who told you?” Mouse asked as he guided McClennon
toward the door and conveyances waiting outside.
“Chub. The starfish. Fish. I’m beginning to. To.
Mouse, I’ve got to see the Admiral. Admiral. I’m
remembering everything the fish know about the centerward race and
their enemies. Enemies.” He turned. “Clara. It was good
to see you again. Again. Hans. Be a good fellow. Mind your
grandmother. Mother.” He reached with his right hand.
Surprised, Hans shook it.
“Of course, Moyshe. Good luck.” He glanced at
Clara.
The woman said, “Good luck, Moyshe. Maybe you’ll
surprise us again.”
McClennon smiled weakly. “I hope not. Not. No more
battles, anyway. Way. Mouse. Let’s go. Go.”
He was driven by anxiety. He wanted to report what he had
learned before the memories slipped away.
Mouse stopped to talk to Amy before he boarded the shuttle.
“Take care of yourself,” he told her. “And be
happy. What’s happened wasn’t your fault. You could say
it was fate.”
“I know, Mouse. But that doesn’t make it hurt any
less.” She smiled wanly. “Greater destinies? It’s
probably for the best. Sorry I was such a bitch.”
Mouse shrugged. “No problem. Take care.”
“Take care of Moyshe.” Mouse looked at her
strangely.
“He’s your friend, but he’s the husband
I’m going to remember.” She leaned close, whispered,
“Promise not to tell him till he’s past the worst part.
We’ve got a baby on the way.”
“It’s a promise. He doesn’t need that on his
mind too.” Storm backed through the hatchway, waved, turned,
found a seat. For a time he was too amazed to be disturbed by the
fly.
McClennon sat opposite him, beside one of the Marines, writing
furiously.