Of Man And Manta - Ox Part 36

"That, too, is intriguing."

Veg got up and stomped away. But he did not go far, for the walls were waiting.

Tamme threw her mind into a healing state, concentrating on the tissues of her face and eyes. She, like all agents, had conscious control over many ordinarily unconscious processes and could accelerate healing phenomenally by focusing the larger resources of her body on the affected area. The external lenses of the eyes were small but hard to act on directly; this would take several hours of concentration.

When the projector was recharged, Veg took them through.

Tamme continued the effort in the forest, and in four hours her vision began to clear.

"You mean you can see again?" Veg demanded.

"Not well. I estimate I will have three-quarters capacity in another two hours. Since we should have two familiar frames coming up, that will suffice. Once I desist from the specific effort, the rate will slow; it will take several days to get beyond ninety per cent. Not worth the delay."

"You're tough, all right!"

"A liability, by your definition."

"Not exactly. You can be tough and still need someone. But we've been over that before."

In due course they moved on to --

-- the mist frame --

-- and the alien orchestra, following the hexaflexagon pattern. Their strategy of plowing straight ahead seemed to be paying off; they were stuck in no subloops. Probably they had not been stuck before; they just had not understood the pattern.

"Now we strike a new one," Tamme said.

"You ready?"

"My vision is eighty per cent and mending. The rest of my faculties are par. I am ready."

"Okay." And they went through.

Tamme lurched forward and caught hold before she fell. Veg dropped but snagged a hold before going far. It was an infinite construction of metal bars. They intersected to form open cubes about six feet on a side, and there was no visible termination.

"A Jungle gym!" Veg cried. "I had one of these at my school when I was a kid!" He climbed and swung happily.

"Let's find a projector," Tamme said. "Got to be on one of these struts."

"We need to establish a three-dimensional search pattern. There is no variety here as there was in the colored planes. We don't want to double back on checked sections."

"Right. Maybe we'd better mark where we started and work out from that. Take time, but it's sure."

They tied his s.h.i.+rt to a crossbar and began checking. Sighting along the bars was not much good; the endless crosspieces served to interrupt the line of sight so that the presence of the projector could not be verified. It was necessary to take a direct look into each cube. In the distance the effect of the ma.s.sed bars was strange: From some views, they became a seemingly solid wall. From the center of a cube, there seemed to be six square-sectioned tunnels leading up, down, and in four horizontal directions.

When sighting routinely down one of these tunnels, Tamme saw a shape. It looked like a man.

She said nothing. Instead, she sidled across several cubes, breaking the line of sight in all three dimensions, and searched out Veg.

She was able to orient on him by the sound. "You're out of position," she said.

"No -- I'm on the pattern. You're off yours."

"I left mine. We have company."

"Oh-oh. Alien?"

"Human."

"Is that good or bad?"

"I'm not sure. We'd better observe him if we have the chance."

"Here's the chance!" Veg whispered. Sure enough, a figure hove into view along a horizontal axis. "That's you!" Tamme whispered. "Another Veg!" She knew what he was going to say: Your eyes must be seeing only forty per cent! I'm HERE! But she was wrong. "Well, we figured this could happen. Another couple, just like us, from a near alternate. We've just got to find that projector first."

Tamme made a mental note: The episode with the acid thrower must have thrown off her perceptions. Not only had she misread Veg's response, he sounded different, less concerned than he should be. She would have to reorient at the first opportunity to avoid making some serious mistake.

Meanwhile, she concentrated. "We have the advantage because we saw them first. We can enhance our chances by conducting our search pattern ahead of them. That way they'll be checking a volume of s.p.a.ce that we have already covered -- where we know there's no projector."

"Smart!" he agreed.

Tamme calculated the probable origin of the compet.i.tive party, based on her two sightings of the strange Veg and the a.s.sumption that the other couple had landed not far from their own landing. They worked out from that. There was some risk the projector would happen to be on the wrong side of the other couple, but all they could do now was improve their chances, not make them perfect.

And suddenly it was there, nestled in a hangar below an intersection. Tamme approached it cautiously, but it was genuine. And it was charged.

Now she had a dilemma. She had control of the projector -- but her larger mission was to eliminate Earth's compet.i.tion, even that of a very near alternate. Should she tackle her opposite number now?

No. If the other couple had taken the same route around the hexaflexagon, it had to have been earlier, for the two-hour recharging time of the projectors required at least that amount of s.p.a.cing out. But it was also possible that the others were flexing the other way -- backwards, as it were. In which case they could not yet have encountered the walking plants and the acid-spraying keeper. So that other agent, male or female, would be in top form and would have a material advantage. That was no good.

Better to proceed on around the next subloop and tackle the compet.i.tion when they crossed again in this frame. Then she would be ready. With luck, the other agent would not even know the encounter was incipient, and that would more than make up for the eye deficiency.

She activated the projector.

And they stood amidst sparkles.

"Well, look at that!" Veg said, impressed.

"A home-frame of the pattern-ent.i.ties," Tamme said. "Another major discovery."

"Yeah. They told us at the bazaar, but I didn't expect it so soon."

Tamme did not stiffen or give any other indication of her reaction; her agent-control served her in good stead. Instead, she continued as if he had said nothing unusual, drawing him out. "They said a lot at the bazaar."