There must have been hundreds of gravities in the cabin. I could even feel the pressure change. The air was thin at this height, one hundred fifty feet above the control room.
And now, almost suddenly, the red dot was more than a dot. My time was up. A red disk leapt up at me; the ship swung around me; I gasped and shut my eyes tight. Giants’ hands gripped my arms and legs and head, gently but with great firmness, and tried to pull me in two. In that moment it came to me that Peter Laskin had died like this. He’d made the same guesses I had, and he’d tried to hide in the access tube. But he’d slipped…as I was slipping…From the control room came a multiple shriek of tearing metal. I tried to dig my feet into the hard tube walls. Somehow they held.
When I got my eyes open, the red dot was shrinking into nothing.
The puppeteer president insisted that I be put in a hospital for observation. I didn’t fight the idea. My face and hands were flaming red, with blisters rising, and I ached as though I’d been beaten. Rest and tender loving care; that was what I wanted.
I was floating between a pair of sleeping plates, hideously uncomfortable, when the nurse came to announce a visitor. I knew who it was from her peculiar expression.
“What can get through a General Products bull?” I asked it.
“I hoped you would tell me.” The president rested on its single back leg, holding a stick that gave off green incense-smelling smoke.
“And so I will. Gravity.”
“Do not play with me, Beowulf Shaeffer. This matter is vital.”
“I’m not playing. Does your world have a moon?”
“That information is classified.” The puppeteers are cowards. Nobody knows where they come from, and nobody is likely to find out.
“Do you know what happens when a moon gets too close to its primary?”
“It falls apart.”
“Why?”
“I do not know.”
“Tides.”
“What is a tide?”
Oho, said I to myself, said I. “I’m going to try to tell you. The Earth’s moon is almost two thousand miles in diameter and does not rotate with respect to Earth. I want you to pick two rocks on the moon, one at the point nearest the Earth, one at the point farthest away.”
“Very well.”
“Now, isn’t it obvious that if those rocks were left to themselves, they’d fall away from each other? They’re in two different orbits, mind you, concentric orbits, one almost two thousand miles outside the other. Yet those rocks are forced to move at the same orbital speed.”
“The one outside is moving faster.”
“Good point. So there is a force trying to pull the moon apart. Gravity holds it together. Bring the moon close enough to Earth, and those two rocks would simply float away.”
“I see. Then this ‘tide’ tried to pull your ship apart. It was powerful enough in the lifesystem of the Institute ship to pull the acceleration chairs out of their mounts.”
“And to crush a human being. Picture it. The ship’s nose was just seven miles from the center of BVS-1. The tail was three hundred feet farther out. Left to themselves, they’d have gone in completely different orbits. My head and feet tried to do the same thing when I got close enough.”
“I see. Are you molting?”
“What?”
“I notice you are losing your outer integument in spots.”
“Oh, that. I got a bad sunburn from exposure to starlight. It’s not important.”
Two heads stared at each other for an eyeblink. A shrug? The puppeteer said, “We have deposited the residue of your pay with the Bank of We Made It. One Sigmund Ausfaller, human, has frozen the account until your taxes are computed.”
“Figures.”
“If you will talk to reporters now, explaining what happened to the Institute ship, we will pay you ten thousand stars. We will pay cash so that you may use it immediately. It is urgent. There have been rumors.”
“Bring ’em in.” As an afterthought I added, “I can also tell them that your world is moonless. That should be good for a footnote somewhere.”
“I do not understand.” But two long necks had drawn back, and the puppeteer was watching me like a pair of pythons.
“You’d know what a tide was if you had a moon. You couldn’t avoid it.”
“Would you be interested in—”
“A million stars? I’d be fascinated. I’ll even sign a contract if it states what we’re hiding. How do you like being blackmailed for a change?”
A RELIC OF THE EMPIRE
WHEN THE SHIP arrived, Dr. Richard Schultz-Mann was out among the plants, flying over and around them on a lift belt. He hovered over one, inspecting with proprietary interest an anomalous patch in its yellow foliage. This one would soon be ripe.
The nature-lover was a breadstick of a man, very tall and very thin, with an aristocratic head sporting a close cropped growth of coppery hair and an asymmetric beard. A white streak ran above his right ear, and there was a patch of white on each side of the chin, one coinciding with the waxed spike. As his head moved in the double sunlight, the patches changed color instantly.
He took a tissue sample from the grayish patch, stored it, and started to move on…
The ship came down like a daylight meteor, streaking blue-white across the vague red glare of Big Mira. It slowed and circled high overhead, weaving drunkenly across the sky, then settled toward the plain near Mann’s Explorer. Mann watched it land, then gave up his bumblebee activities and went to welcome the newcomers. He was amazed at the coincidence. As far as he knew, his had been the first ship ever to land here. The company would be good…but what could anyone possibly want here?
Little Mira set while he was skimming back. A flash of white at the far edge of the sea, and the tiny blue-white dwarf was gone. The shadows changed abruptly, turning the world red. Mann took off his pink-tinged goggles. Big Mira was still high, sixty degrees above the horizon and two hours from second sunset.
The newcomer was huge, a thick blunt-nosed cylinder twenty times the size of the Explorer. It looked old: not damaged, not even weathered, but indefinably old. Its nose was still closed tight, the living bubble retracted, if indeed it had a living bubble. Nothing moved nearby. They must be waiting for his welcome before they debarked.
Mann dropped toward the newcomer.
The stunner took him a few hundred feet up. Without pain and without sound, suddenly all Mann’s muscles turned to loose jelly. Fully conscious and completely helpless, he continued to dive toward the ground.
Three figures swarmed up at him from the newcomer’s oversized airlock. They caught him before he hit. Tossing humorous remarks at each other in a language Mann did not know, they towed him down to the plain.
The man behind the desk wore a captain’s hat and a cheerful smile. “Our supply of Verinol is limited,” he said in the trade language. “If I have to use it, I will, but I’d rather save it. You may have heard that it has unpleasant side effects.”
“I understand perfectly,” said Mann. “You’ll use it the moment you think you’ve caught me in a lie.” Since he had not yet been injected with the stuff, he decided it was a bluff. The man had no Verinol, if indeed there was such an animal as Verinol.
But he was still in a bad hole. The ancient, renovated ship held more than a dozen men, whereas Mann seriously doubted if he could have stood up. The sonic had not entirely worn off.
His captor nodded approvingly. He was huge and square, almost a cartoon of a heavy-planet man, with muscularity as smooth and solid as an elephant’s. A Jinxian, for anyone’s money. His size made the tiny shipboard office seem little more than a coffin. Among the crew his captain’s hat would not be needed to enforce orders. He looked like he could kick holes in hullmetal, or teach tact to an armed Kzin.
“You’re quick,” he said. “That’s good. I’ll be asking questions about you and about this planet. You’ll give truthful, complete answers. If some of my questions get too personal, sa
y so; but remember, I’ll use the Verinol if I’m not satisfied. How old are you?”
“One hundred and fifty-four.”
“You look much older.”
“I was off boosterspice for a couple of decades.”
“Tough luck. Planet of origin?”
“Wunderland.”
“Thought so, with that stick-figure build. Name?”
“Doctor Richard Harvey Schultz-Mann.”
“Rich Mann, hah? Are you?”
Trust a Jinxian to spot a pun. “No. After I make my reputation, I’ll write a book on the Slaver Empire. Then I’ll be rich.”
“If you say so. Married?”
“Several times. Not at the moment.”
“Rich Mann, I can’t give you my real name, but you can call me Captain Kidd. What kind of beard is that?”
“You’ve never seen an asymmetric beard?”
“No, thank the Mist Demons. It looks like you’ve shaved off all your hair below the part, and everything on your face left of what looks like a one-tuft goatee. Is that the way it’s supposed to go?”
“Exactly so.”
“You did it on purpose then.”
“Don’t mock me, Captain Kidd.”
“Point taken. Are they popular on Wunderland?”
Dr. Mann unconsciously sat a little straighter. “Only among those willing to take the time and trouble to keep it neat.” He twisted the single waxed spike of beard at the right of his chin with unconscious complacence. This was the only straight hair on his face—the rest of the beard being close-cropped and curly—and it sprouted from one of the white patches. Mann was proud of his beard.
“Hardly seems worth it,” said the Jinxian. “I assume it’s to show you’re one of the leisure classes. What are you doing on Mira Ceti-T?”
“I’m investigating one aspect of the Slaver Empire.”
“You’re a geologist, then?”
“No, a xenobiologist.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What do you know about the Slavers?”
“A little. They used to live all through this part of the galaxy. One day the slave races decided they’d had enough, and there was a war. When it was over, everyone was dead.”
“You know quite a bit. Well, Captain, a billion and a half years is a long time. The Slavers left only two kinds of evidence of their existence. There are the stasis boxes and their contents, mostly weaponry, but records have been found too. And there are the plants and animals developed for the Slavers’ convenience by their tnuctip slaves, who were biological engineers.”
“I know about those. We have bandersnatchi on Jinx, on both sides of the ocean.”
“The bandersnatchi food animals are a special case. They can’t mutate; their chromosomes are as thick as your finger, too large to be influenced by radiation. All other relics of tnuctipun engineering have mutated almost beyond recognition. Almost. For the past twelve years I’ve been searching out and identifying the surviving species.”
“It doesn’t sound like a fun way to spend a life, Rich Mann. Are there Slaver animals on this planet?”
“Not animals, but plants. Have you been outside yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Then come out. I’ll show you.”
The ship was very large. It did not seem to be furnished with a living bubble, hence the entire lifesystem must be enclosed within the metal walls. Mann walked ahead of the Jinxian down a long unpainted corridor to the airlock, waited inside while the pressure dropped slightly, then rode the escalator to the ground. He would not try to escape yet, though the sonic had worn off. The Jinxian was affable but alert, he carried a flashlight-laser dangling from his belt, his men were all around them, and Mann’s lift belt had been removed. Richard Mann was not quixotic.
It was a red, red world. They stood on a dusty plain sparsely scattered with strange yellow-headed bushes. A breeze blew things like tumbleweeds across the plain, things which on second glance were the dried heads of former bushes. No other life-forms were visible. Big Mira sat on the horizon, a vague, fiery semicircular cloud, just dim enough to look at without squinting. Outlined in sharp black silhouette against the, red giant’s bloody disk were three slender, improbably tall spires, unnaturally straight and regular, each with a vivid patch of yellow vegetation surrounding its base. Members of the Jinxian’s crew ran, walked, or floated outside, some playing an improvised variant of baseball, others at work, still others merely enjoying themselves. None were Jinxian, and none had Mann’s light-planet build. Mann noticed that a few were using the thin wire blades of variable-knives to cut down some of the straight bushes.
“Those,” he said.
“The bushes?”
“Yes. They used to be tnuctip stage trees. We don’t know what they looked like originally, but the old records say the Slavers stopped using them some decades before the rebellion. May I ask what those men are doing in my ship?”
Expanded from its clamshell nose, the Explorer’s living bubble was bigger than the Explorer. Held taut by air pressure, isolated from the surrounding environment, proof against any atmospheric chemistry found in nature, the clear fabric hemisphere was a standard feature of all camper-model spacecraft. Mann could see biped shadows moving purposefully about inside and going between the clamshell doors into the ship proper.
“They’re not stealing anything, Rich Mann. I sent them in to remove a few components from the drives and the comm systems.”
“One hopes they won’t damage what they remove.”
“They won’t. They have their orders.”
“I assume you don’t want me to call someone,” said Mann. He noticed that the men were preparing a bonfire, using stage bushes. The bushes were like miniature trees, four to six feet tall, slender and straight, and the brilliant yellow foliage at the top was flattened like the head of a dandelion. From the low, rounded eastern mountains to the western sea, the red land was sprinkled with the yellow dots of their heads. Men were cutting off the heads and roots, then dragging the logs away to pile them in conical formation over a stack of death-dry tumbleweed heads.
“We don’t want you to call the Wunderland police, who happen to be somewhere out there looking for us.”
“I hate to pry—”
“No, no, you’re entitled to your curiosity. We’re pirates.”
“Surely you jest. Captain Kidd, if you’ve figured out a way to make piracy pay off, you must be bright enough to make ten times the money on the stock market.”
“Why?”
By the tone of his voice, by his gleeful smile, the Jinxian was baiting him. Fine; it would keep his mind off stage trees. Mann said, “Because you can’t catch a ship in hyperspace. The only way you can match courses with a ship is to wait until it’s in an inhabited system. Then the police come calling.”
“I know an inhabited system where there aren’t any police.”
“The hell you do.”
They had walked more or less aimlessly to the Explorer’s airlock. Now the Jinxian turned and gazed out over the red plain, toward the dwindling crescent of Big Mira, which now looked like a bad forest fire. “I’m curious about those spires.”
“Fine, keep your little secret. I’ve wondered about them myself, but I haven’t had a chance to look at them yet.”
“I’d think they’d interest you. They look definitely artificial to me.”
“But they’re a billion years too young to be Slaver artifacts.”
“Rich Mann, are those bushes the only life on this planet?”
“I haven’t seen anything else,” Mann lied.
“Then it couldn’t have been a native race that put those spires up. I never heard of a space-traveling race that builds such big things for mere monuments.”
“Neither did I. Shall we look at them tomorrow?”
“Yes.” Captain Kidd stepped into the Explorer’s airlock, wrapped a vast hand gently around Mann’s thin wrist and pulled his captive in beside him. The airlock
cycled and Mann followed the Jinxian into the living bubble with an impression that the Jinxian did not quite trust him.
Fine.
It was dark inside the bubble. Mann hesitated before turning on the light. Outside he could see the last red sliver of Big Mira shrinking with visible haste. He saw more. A man was kneeling before the conical bonfire, and a flickering light was growing in the dried bush-head kindling.
Mann turned on, the lights, obliterating the outside view. “Go on about piracy,” he said.
“Oh, yes.” The Jinxian dropped into a chair, frowning “Piracy was only the end product. It started a year ago, when I found the puppeteer system.”
“The—”
“Yes. The puppeteers’ home system.”
Richard Mann’s ears went straight up. He was from Wunderland, remember?
Puppeteers are highly intelligent, herbivorous, and very old as a species. Their corner on interstellar business is as old as the human Bronze Age. And they are cowards.
A courageous puppeteer is not regarded as insane only by other puppeteers. It is insane, and usually shows disastrous secondary symptoms: depression, homicidal tendencies, and the like. These poor, warped minds are easy to spot. No sane puppeteer will cross a vehicular roadway or travel in any but the safest available fashion or resist a thief, even an unarmed thief. No sane puppeteer will leave his home system, wherever that may be, without his painless method of suicide, nor will it walk an alien world without guards—nonpuppeteer guards.
The location of the puppeteer system is one of the puppeteer’s most closely guarded secrets. Another is the painless suicide gimmick. It may be a mere trick of preconditioning. Whatever it is, it works. Puppeteers cannot be tortured into revealing anything about their home world, though they hate pain. It must be a world with reasonably earthlike atmosphere and temperature, but beyond that nothing is known… or was known.
Suddenly Mann wished that they hadn’t lit the bonfire so soon. He didn’t know how long it would burn before the logs caught, and he wanted to hear more about this.
“I found it just a year ago,” the Jinxian repeated. “It’s best I don’t tell you what I was doing up to then. The less you know about who I am, the better. But when I’d got safely out of the system, I came straight home. I wanted time to think.”