The Best Of A. E. Van Vogt: Volume 2 Part 15

Suddenly, it was ten thousand miles in diameter and was still going away, still growing.

Cemp sent out a general alarm: "Get away--as fast as you can. Away!"

As he himself fled, using a reversal of the gravity of the monstrous body behind him, he saw that in those few minutes it had grown more than 100,000 miles in diameter.

It was quite pink at this point--strangely, beautifully pink.

The color altered even as he watched, turning faintly yellow. And the body that emitted the beautiful ocher light was now more than 1,000,000 miles in diameter.

As big as Earth's sun.

In minutes more, it grew to the size of a giant blue sun, ten times the diameter of Sol.

It began to turn pink again, and it grew one hundred times in ten minutes. Brighter than Mira the Wonderful, bigger than glorious Ras Algethi.

But pink, not red. A deeper pink than before; not red, so definitely not a variable.

All around was the starry universe, bright with unfamiliar objects that glowed near and far--hundreds of them, strung out like a long line of jack-o'-lanterns.

Below was Earth.

Cemp looked at that scene in the heavens and then at the near, familiar planet, and an awful excitement seized him.

He thought, Is it possible that everything had to grow, that the Glis's change altered this entire area of s.p.a.ce-time?

Old forms could not keep their suppressed state once the supercolossal pink giant completed the growth that had somehow been arrested from time's beginning.

And so the Glis was now a sun in its prime, but with eighteen hundred and twenty-three planets strung out like so many starry brilliants over the whole near sky.

Everywhere he looked were planets so close to him that they looked like moons. He made a quick, anxious calculation and realized with great relief that all those planets were still within the warming area of the monstrous sun that hung out there, half a light-year away.

As Cemp descended, at the top speed his Silkie body could withstand, into the huge atmosphere blanket that surrounded Earth, everything seemed the same--the land, the sea, the cities. ...

He swooped low over one highway and observed cars going along it.

He headed for the Silkie Authority in a haze of wonder and saw the shattered window from which he had leaped so dramatically--not yet repaired!

When, moments later, he landed among the same group of men who had been there at his departure, he realized there had been some kind of a time stasis, related to size.

For Earth and its people, that eighty days had been ... eighty seconds.

Afterwards, he would hear how people had experienced what seemed like an earthquake, tension in their bodies, momentary sensory blackout, a brief feeling that it was dark. ...

Now, as he entered, Cemp transformed to human form and said in a piercing voice, "Gentlemen, prepare for the most remarkable piece of information in the history of the universe. That pink sun out there is not the result of an atmospheric distortion.

"And, gentlemen, Earth now has eighteen hundred inhabited sister planets. Let's begin to organize for a fantastic future!"

Later, comfortably back in his Florida home, Cemp said to Joanne, "Now we can see why the Silkie problem didn't have a solution as things stood. For Earth, two thousand of us was saturation. But in this new sun system. ..."

It was no longer a question of what to do with the 6,000 members of the Silkie nation but of how they could get a hundred such groups to cope with the work to be done.

Quickly!

THE PROXY INTELLIGENCE.

1.

Take a sentient being-- Even Steve Hanardy could fit that description. He was a short, stocky man, with the look about him of someone who had lived too close to the animal stage. His eyes were perpetually narrowed, as if he were peering against a bright light. His face was broad and fleshy. But he was human. He could think and act, and he was a giver and not a taker.

--Put this sentient person in a solar system surrounded by a two billion light-year ocean of virtual nothingness beyond which, apparently, is more nothingness-- Hanardy, a product of the Earth's migration to the moon and to the planets of the solar system, was born on Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter, before the educational system caught up to the colonists. He grew up an incoherent roustabout and a s.p.a.cehand on the freighters and pa.s.senger liners that sped about among the immense amount of debris--from moons to habitable meteorites--that surrounded the ma.s.sive Jupiter. It was a rich and ever-growing trade area, and so presently even the stolid, unimaginative Hanardy had a freighter of his own. Almost from the beginning, his most fruitful journeys were occasional trips to the meteorite where a scientist, Professor Ungarn, lived with his daughter, Patricia. For years, it was a lucrative, routine voyage, without incident.

--Confront this sentient individual with this enigma of being-- The last voyage had been different.

To begin with, he accepted a pa.s.senger--a reporter named William Leigh, who ostensibly wanted to write up the lonely route for his news syndicate. But almost as soon as the freighter reached the Ungarn meteorite and entered the airlock, the meteorite was attacked by strange s.p.a.ce vessels, which were capable of far greater speeds than anything Hanardy had ever seen. And William Leigh was not who he seemed.

It was hard to know just who he was. What actually happened as far as Hanardy was concerned, was quite simple: One of the defensive energy screens had gone down before the attack of the strange s.h.i.+ps; and Professor Ungarn sent Hanardy to machine a new part for the screen's drive unit. While he was engaged in this, Leigh came upon him by surprise, attacked him, and tied him up.

Lying there on the floor, bound hand and foot, Hanardy thought in anguish: "If I ever get loose, I'm gonna hightail it out of here!"

He tested the rope that held him and groaned at its unyielding toughness. He lay, then, for a while, accepting the confinement of the bonds, but underneath was a great grief and a great fear.

He suspected that Professor Ungarn and the professor's daughter, Patricia, were equally helpless, or they would have tried during the past hour to find out what had happened to him.

He listened again, intently, holding himself still. But only the steady throbbing of the distant dynamos was audible. No footsteps approached; there was no other movement.

He was still listening when he felt an odd tugging inside his body.

s.h.i.+vering a little, Hanardy shook his head as if to clear it of mental fog--and climbed to his feet.

He didn't notice that the cords that had bound him fell away.

Out in the corridor, he paused tensely. The place looked deserted, empty. Except for the vague vibration from the dynamos, a great silence pressed in upon him. The place had the look and feel of being on a planet. The artificial gravity made him somewhat lighter than on Earth, but he was used to such changes. It was hard to grasp that he was inside a meteorite, hundreds of thousands of miles from the nearest moon or inhabited planet. Being here was like being inside a big building, on an upper floor.

Hanardy headed for the neatest elevator shaft. He thought: I'd better untie Miss Pat, then her pop, and then get.

It was an automatic decision, to go to the girl first. Despite her sharp tongue, he admired her. He had seen her use weapons to injure, but that didn't change his feeling. He guessed that she'd be very angry--very possibly she'd blame him for the whole mess.

Presently he was knocking hesitantly on the door to Patricia's apartment. Hesitantly, because he was certain that she was not in a position to answer.

When, after a reasonable pause, there was no reply, he pressed gently on the latch. The door swung open.

He entered pure enchantment.

The apartment was a physical delight. There were French-type windows that opened onto a sunlit window. The French doors were open, and the sound of birds singing wafted in through them. There were other doors leading to the inner world of the girl's home, and Hanardy, who had occasionally been in the other rooms to do minor repair work, knew that there also everything was as costly as it was here in this large room that he could see.

Then he saw the girl. She was lying on the floor, half-hidden behind her favorite chair, and she was bound hand and foot with wire.

Hanardy walked toward her unhappily. It was he who had brought William Leigh, and he wasn't quite sure just how he would argue himself out of any accusation she might make about that. His guilt showed in the way he held his thick-set body, in the shuffling of his legs, in the awkward way he knelt beside her. He began gingerly to deal with the thin wire that enlaced and interlaced her limbs.

The girl was patient. She waited till he had taken all the wire off her and then, without moving from the floor, began to rub the circulation back into her wrists and ankles.

She looked up at him and made her first comment: "How did you avoid being tied up?"

"I didn't. He got me, too," said Hanardy. He spoke eagerly, anxious to be one of the injured, along with her. He already felt better. She didn't seem to be angry.

"Then how did you get free?" Patricia Ungarn asked.

"Why, I just--" Hanardy began.

He stopped, thunderstruck. He thought back, then over what had happened. He had been lying there, tied. And then ... and then ...

What?

He stood blank, scarcely daring to think. Realizing that an answer was expected, he began apologetically, "I guess he didn't tie me up so good, and I was in a kind of a hurry, figuring you were here, and so I just--"

Even as he spoke, his whole being rocked with the remembrance of how tough those ropes had been a few minutes before he freed himself.

He stopped his mumbling explanation because the girl wasn't listening, wasn't even looking. She had climbed to her feet, and she was continuing to rub her hands. She was small of build and good-looking in a bitter way. Her lips were pressed too tightly together; her eyes were slightly narrowed with a kind of permanent anxiety. Except for that, she looked like a girl in her teens, but cleverer and more sophisticated than most girls her age.

Even as Hanardy, in his heavy way, was aware of the complexity of her, she faced him again. She said with an un-girl-like decisiveness, "Tell me everything that happened to you." Hanardy was glad to let go of the unsatisfactory recollection of his own escape. He said, "First thing I know, this guy comes in there while I'm working at the lathe. And is he strong, and is he fast! I never would've thought he had that kind of muscle and that fast way of moving. I'm pretty chunky, y'understand--"

"What then?" She was patient, but there was a pointedness about her question that channeled his attention back to the main line of events.

"Then he ties me up, and then he goes out, and then he takes those Dreeghs from the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p and disappears into s.p.a.ce." Hanardy shook his head, wonderingly. "That's what gets me. How did he do that?"

He paused, in a brown study; but he came from the distance of his thought back into the room, to realize guiltily that the girl had spoken to him twice.

"Sorry," he muttered. "I was thinking about how he did that, and it's kind of hard to get the idea." He finished, almost accusingly: "Do you know what he does?"

The girl looked at him, a startled expression on her face. Hanardy thought she was angry at his inattention and said hastily: "I didn't hear what you wanted me to do. Tell me again, huh!"

She seemed unaware that he had spoken. "What does he do, Steve?"

"Why, he just--"

At that point, Hanardy stopped short and glanced back mentally over the glib words he had been using. It was such a fantastic dialogue, that he could feel the blood draining from his cheeks.

"Huh!" he said.

"What does he do, Steve?" He saw that she was looking at him, as if she understood something that he didn't. It irritated him.

He said unhappily: "I'd better go and untie your father before that last bunch of Dreeghs shows up."

Having spoken, he stopped again, his mouth open in amazement. He thought: "I must be nuts. What am I saying?"

He turned and started for the door.

"Come back here!"

Her voice, sharp and commanding, cut into him. Defensively, he put up between himself and her the thick barrier of stolidity which had served him for so many years in his relations with other people. He swung awkwardly around to face her again. Before he could speak, she said with intensity: "How did he do it, Steve?"

The question ran up against a great stubbornness in him. He had no feeling of deliberately resisting her. But the mental fog seemed to settle down upon his being, and he said: "Do what, Miss?"

"Leave?"

"Who?" He felt stupid before her questions, but he felt even more stupid for having had meaningless thoughts and said meaningless things.

"Leigh--you fool! That's who."

"I thought he took that s.p.a.ceboat of yours that looks like an automobile."

There was a long pause. The girl clenched and unclenched her hands. Now she seemed very unchildlike indeed. Hanardy, who had seen her angry before, cringed and waited for the thunder and lightning of her rage to, lash out at him. Instead, the tenseness faded. She seemed suddenly thoughtful and said with unexpected gentleness: "After that, Steve? After he got out there!"

She swung her arm and pointed at the aviary, where the sunlight glinted beyond the French windows. Hanardy saw, birds fluttering among the trees. Their musical cries gave the scene a homey touch, as if it really were a garden. As he watched, the tree leaves stirred; and he knew that hidden fans were blowing an artificial breeze. It was like a summer, afternoon, except that just beyond the gla.s.slike wall was the blackness of s.p.a.ce.

It was a cosmic night outside, disturbed here and there by an atom of matter--a planet hidden from sight by its own relative smallness and distance from anything else, a sun, a point of light and energy, quickly lost in darkness so vast that presently its light would fade, and become one grain in a misty bright cloud that obscured the blackness for a moment of universe time and occupied an inch of s.p.a.ce, or so it seemed. ...

Hanardy contemplated that startling vista. He was only vaguely aware that his present intensity of interest was quite different from similar thoughts he had had in the past. On his long journeys, such ideas had slipped into and out of his mind. He recalled having had a thought about it just a few months before. He had been looking out of a porthole, and--just for an instant--the mystery of the empty immensity had touched him. And he'd thought: "What the heck "is behind all this? How does a guy like me rate being alive?"

Aloud, Hanardy muttered: "I'd better get your father free, Miss Pat." He finished under his breath: "And then beat it out of here--fast."

2.

He turned, and this time, though she called after him angrily, he stumbled out into the corridor and went down to the depths of the meteorite, where the dynamos hummed and throbbed; and where, presently, he had Professor Ungarn untied.

The older man was quite cheerful. "Well, Steve, we're not dead yet. I don't know why they didn't jump in on us, but the screens are still holding, I see."

He was a gaunt man with deep-set eyes and the unhappiest face Hanardy had ever seen. He stood, rubbing the circulation back into his arms. Strength of intellect shone from his face, along with the melancholy. He had defended the meteorite in such a calm, practical way from the attacking Dreeghs that it was suddenly easy to realize that this sad-faced man was actually the hitherto unsuspected observer of the solar system for a vast galactic culture, which included at its top echelon the Great Galactic--who had been William Leigh--and at the bottom, Professor Ungarn and his lovely daughter.

The thoughts about that seeped into Hanardy's fore-conscious. He realized that the scientist was primarily a protector. He and this station were here to prevent contact between Earth and the galaxy. Man and his earth-born civilization were still too low on the scale of development to be admitted to awareness that a gigantic galactic culture existed. Interstellar s.h.i.+ps of other low-echelon cultures which had been admitted to the galactic union were warned away, from the solar system whenever they came too close. Accidentally, the hunted, lawless Dreeghs had wandered into this forbidden sector of s.p.a.ce. In their l.u.s.t for blood and life energy they had avidly concentrated here in the hope of gaining such a quant.i.ty of blood, and so great a supply of life energy, that they would be freed for endless years from their terrible search.

It had been quite a trap, which had enabled the Great Galactic to capture so many of them. But now another s.h.i.+pload of Dreeghs was due; and this time there was no trap. Professor Ungarn was speaking: "Did you get that part machined before Leigh tied you up?" He broke off: "What's the matter, Steve?"

"Huh! Nothing." Hanardy came out of a depth of wonderment: "I'd better get onto that job. It'll take a half hour, maybe."

Professor Ungarn nodded and said matter-of-factly: "I'll feel better when we get that additional screen up. There's quite a gang out there."