Protector

A three-foot transparent disc puffed away on the last of the air, with a breath of white mist playing around it. Tina caught it and sent it gliding toward the Ox for later recovery.

Einar’s voice crackled. “Don’t try to enter yet!”

“I wasn’t.” She waited for the edges to cool. Fifteen minutes, while nothing happened. They must be getting restless aboard U Thant, she thought. Still no sign of motion inside. They had found nothing when they probed this module with the deep-radar; but the walls were thick, and something as tenuous as water, for instance, might not have shown up.

Time enough. She ducked through the hole.

“I’m in a small control cabin,” she said, and turned at the waist to give the camera a full view. Tendrils of icy fog drifted toward the hole in the porthole. “Very small. The control bank is almost primitively complex, so complex that I’m inclined to think the Outsider had no autopilot. No man could handle all these controls and adjustments. I see no more that one couch, and no aliens present but me.

“There’s a bin full of sweet potatoes, it looks like, right beside the control couch. It’s the only sign of kitchen facilities in this section. I think I’ll move on.” She tried to open the door in the back of the control room. Pressure forced it shut. She used her hot point. The door cut easily, must more so than the porthole material. She waited while the room filled with thick fog, then pushed her way in. More fog.

“This room is about as big as the control room. Sorry about the view. The place seems to be a free-fall gymnasium.” She swept her camera around the room, then crossed to one of the machines and tried to work it. It looked as though you were supposed to stand up inside it against the force of springs. Tina couldn’t budge it.

She dismounted the camera and fixed it to a wall, aimed at the exercise machine. She tried it again. “Either I’m doing this wrong,” she told her audience, “or the Outsider could pick his teeth with me. Let’s see what else there is.” She looked around. “That’s fu

There was nothing else. Only the door to the control room.

A two hour search by Tina and Nate La Pan only confirmed her find. The lifesystem consisted of:

One control room the size of a singleship control room.

One free-fall gymnasium, same size.

A bin of roots.

An enormous air tank. There were no safeties to stop the flow in case of puncture. The tank was empty. It must have been nearly empty when the ship reached the solar system.

Vastly complex air cleaning machinery, apparently designed to remove even the faintest, rarest trace of biochemical waste. It had all been many times repaired.

Equally complex equipment for conversion of fluid and solid waste.

It was incredible. The single Outsider had apparently spent his time in two small rooms, eating just one kind of food, with no ship’s library to keep him entertained, and no computer-autopilot to keep him pointed right and guard his fuel supply and steer him clear of meteors. Yet the trip had taken decades, at least. In view of the complexity of the cleaning and renewal plant, the huge air tank must have been included solely to replace air lost by osmosis through the walls!

“That’s it,” Einar said finally. “Come on back, you two. We’ll take a break, and I’ll ask U Thant for instructions. Nate, put some of those roots in a pressure bag. We can analyze them.”

“Search the ship again,” Nick told them. “You may find a simplified autopilot: not a computer, just a widget for keeping the ship on course. Could you have overlooked a bolthole of some kind, anyplace where an Outsider could have hidden? In particular, try to get into the air tank. It might make a very nice emergency bolthole.” He turned the volume down and faced Luke. “They won’t find anything, of course. Can you think of anything else?”

“I’d like to see them analyze the air. Have they got the facilities?”

“Yah.”

“And the porthole glass, and the chemistry of that root.”

“They’ll finish with the root by the time this reaches them.” He turned up the volume. “After you finish analyzing what you’ve got, you might start thinking about how to tow that ship home. Stay with the ship, and keep your drive warm. If an emergency comes up, use the fusion flame immediately. Sohl out.”

He looked at the screen for some time after it had gone dark. Presently he said, “A super-singleship. Finagle’s Eyes! I wouldn’t have believed it.”

“Flown by a kind of super-Belter,” said Luke. “Solitary. Doesn’t need entertainment. Doesn’t care what he eats. Strong as King Kong. Roughly humanoid.”

Nick smiled. “Wouldn’t that make him a superior species?”

“I wouldn’t deny it. And I’m deadly serious on that. We’ll have to wait and see.”

Bre

He hadn’t moved in hours. He lay on his back in the root bin, his eyes closed, his body folded into near-foetal position around his swollen belly, his fists clenched. But now he moved one arm, and Phssthpok came suddenly alert.

Bre

Bre

Phssthpok relaxed. Presently he dreamed.

Days ago he had stopped eating. He told himself it was too early, but his belly didn’t believe it. He would live just long enough. Meanwhile, he dreamed.

…He sat on the floor of the Library with a piece of root in his jaws and an ancient book balanced on one cantaloupe knee and a map spread before him on the floor. It was a map of the galaxy, but it was graded for time. The Core stars showed in positions three million years old, but the outer arms were half a million years younger. The Library staff had spent most of a year preparing it for him.

Assume they went a distance X, he told himself. Their average velocity must have been .06748 lightspeed, considering dust friction and the galaxy’s gravitational and electromagnetic fields. Their laser returned at lightspeed; figure for space curvature. Give them a century to build the laser; they’d use all the time they had for that. Then X = 33,210 light years.

Phssthpok set his compass and drew an arc, using the Pak sun as a center. Margin of error: .001, thirty light years. They’re on that arc!

Now assume they went straight outward from the galactic hub. It was a good assumption: there were stars in that direction, and the Pak sun was well off-center from the hub. Phssthpok drew a radial line. Greater margin of error here. Original error, course alterations… And the straight line would have curved by now, while the galaxy turned like curdled milk. They would have stayed flat in the galactic plane. And they’re near this point. I’ve found them…

Phssthpok’s minions pouring like army ants through the Library. Every protector in reach had joined his quest. It’s in the Astronautics section, Phwee. Find it! We need those ramscoop diagrams. Ttuss, I need to know what happens when a protector gets old, and when it happens, and any contributing factors. There’s probably a copy of that report in the Medical section. It may have been added to. Hratchp, we have to learn what could stop a tree-of-life from growing right in the galactic arm. You need agronomists, medical researchers, chemists, astrophysicists. Use the Valley of Pitchok for your experiments, and remember the environment was habitable. Try experimenting with the soil, reduced starlight, reduced radiation. You of the Physics and Engineering sections: I need a fusion drive for insystem maneuvers. I need launching vehicles for everything we build. Design them! Every childless protector on the planet was looking for a purpose in living, a Cause. And Phssthpok gave it to them…