Protector

“I wonder why.”

“A Pak wouldn’t see the point of taking a machine to think for him. He thinks too well already… and likes it too much, for that matter.”

The inside of the teardrop-shaped cargo pod was nothing like that of the alien ship that had come plowing into the solar system two centuries ago. Its cargo was death. It could sprout heavy attitude jets and fight itself. Its long axis was an X-ray laser. A thick tube parallel to the laser would generate a directed magnetic field. “It should foul up the fields in a monopole-based Bussard ramjet. Of course that might not hurt him enough unless your timing was right.” When Roy had learned how to use it — and that took time; he knew little about field theory — Bre

That was the point at which Roy rebelled.

The past two months hadn’t been particularly pleasant. Roy was back in school, the only student of a full-time teacher who could not be snowed or evaded. He didn’t like being a child again. He missed the open spaces of Earth. He missed Alice. Hell, he missed women. And it was going to go on for five years!

Five years, and the rest of his life on Wunderland. He didn’t know that much about Wunderland, but he knew that its population was small and thinly spread, its technology just adequate. A pastoral paradise, perhaps; a nice place to spend one’s life… until Bre

“The Pak fleet is a hundred and seventy-three years away,” he pointed out now. “We’ll be at Wunderland in five years. What makes you think you need a gu

Bre

“What chances? We know where the Pak fleet is.”

“I didn’t want to worry you. It’s a long shot.”

“Worry me! I’m bored!”

“All right, let’s go back a bit,” said Bre

“How big?”

“Smaller. Order of a hundred and fifty ships, assuming they didn’t change the design, which they may have. I can’t tell.”

“Is there a third fleet?”

“If there is, I’ll never detect it. They had to go out for new resources to build the second fleet. They may have had to mine worlds in nearby systems and build the ships there. How long would it take them to build a third fleet? If it’s there, it’s too far away for me. But the point is that there had to be a last fleet.”

“So what?”

“I’m suggesting that when the last fleet left — the second or the third or the fourth, it doesn’t matter — some protectors stayed behind. We assume they were the ones without breeder descendants. They stayed behind partly to save room on the ships, and partly because they might do some good on Pak.”

“On an empty world? How?”

“They could build a scout fleet.”

It was not the first time Roy had worried about Bre

Gently Roy pointed out, “But your scout fleet would be at least five hundred years behind the rest.”

“Sounds silly, does it? But they’re free to experiment. They don’t have to use a proven design, because they’re only risking themselves. They don’t need a cargo pod. They could take three gravities forever, I think; I know I could. That cuts down on their supply weight, because the trip takes less time. With the breeders gone they can do all kinds of things… like making new metal mines by setting up eruptions in the crust of Pak.”

“You’ve got quite an imagination.”

“Thank you. What I’m getting at is that they could plan to pass the first wave of refugee ships about where the Pak telescopes aren’t good enough to scout the territory any further. From there on they lead the fleet. Still bored?”

“No. You’re daydreaming, though. They might never have built these hypothetical ships. Whatever sent them scurrying out of the galactic core might have caught the scouts.”

“Hell, it could have caught the third wave and brushed the second. Or the scout ships might have blown up. Or — lest you miss the point of all this — they could be arriving now.”

“You haven’t found them?”

“What, with a whole sky to search? They wouldn’t just come down our throats; they’d converge on Sol from random directions. I would, if I were doing it. Remember what they’re expecting to find: a world of Pak protectors ru

“Uh huh.”

“There is something I can do, but it’ll take a few days of work to make the tools. First I’m going to make sure you can fight this ship. Let’s go back to the lifesystem pod.”

A directed magnetic field would churn the interstellar plasma as it was guided into a Bussard ramjet. As a weapon it might be made to guide the plasma flow across the ship itself. The gu

“Hit him near a star, if you get the choice,” said Bre

The laser was surer death, if it hit a ship. But an enemy ship would be at least light-seconds away at the start of a battle. It would make a small, elusive target, its image delayed seconds or minutes. The thousand mile wings of a ram field would be easier to hit.

The guided bombs were many and varied. Some were simple fusion bombs. Others would throw bursts of hot plasma through a ram field, or carbon vapor to produce sudden surges in the burn rate, or half a ton of pressurized radon gas in a stasis field. Simple death or complicated. Some were mere decoys, silvered balloons.

Roy learned.

The wreck of Kobold was almost three months behind them, and Roy was at war. Lately he had come to enjoy these simulated battles, but he wasn’t enjoying this one. Bre

Three days he’d been in the lifesystem module, eating and drinking there and using pep pills instead of sleep. Playing Bre