Originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, Oct. 1951.
Engineer Oscar Kleweski watched the technicians preparing to blast the world beyond recognition. The shining globe in the pit spun serenely on its axis, causing the white shroud of clouds to split into bands with differing rotational speeds.
“Look, you guys,” repeated Lane from beside his camera battery, “are you sure you quoted me the maximum speed?”
“Don’t worry,” answered Schultz. “There won’t be any pieces shooting back at you. Kleweski wouldn’t let us.”
“You want it all on film, don’t you?”
“It’ll be all right,” said Kleweski, and turned to the tech handling the satellite. “Orbit double-checked?”
Plump Turino lifted dark eyes briefly, curled an assenting lip, and re-examined the controls of his force beams.
“Then let’s tear it down!”
Kleweski retired with his clipboard to a platform at the rear of the observation balcony. The technicians were ranged along a row of control panels before him. Over their heads, he had a good view of the twenty-foot sphere hanging in the center of the experimental pit, which was three hundred feet across and the heart of the orbital space station built around it. The balcony was shielded from the central vacuum by a field of force easier, like gravity, to manipulate out here in space.
Turino laid aside a half-eaten chocolate bar and hunched over his instrument panel. From the right, lit like the planet by artificial sun lamps, glided a four-foot globe. It fell into an orbit about the larger one, circled it three times for Lane’s recording lenses, then edged gradually closer.
“Another one shot,” predicted Schultz. “Took me three days to build up the pseudocontinents on that model.”
“It may not need complete dismantling,” said Kleweski.
“Hope they don’t take apart the core of the big one,” Schultz muttered gloomily. “Working those iron wedges back into place is a job.”
“So is calculating their velocities from the film.”
“There’s the 2.58 the real moon has,” announced Turino.
The smaller globe had moved delicately inward and speeded up in its orbit. Tides in its seas and in the cloudy atmosphere of the planet were now marked. At regular intervals, Turino called off the distance in terms of planet radius. Kleweski took down data without shifting his eyes from the scene.
“Due pretty soon, ain’t she?” asked Schultz, as the moon circled within the 2.44 radii of Roche’s limit. “Oh-oh! Here comes The John!”
Kleweski glanced over his shoulder. Through the extra door at the end of the balcony came Charley Johnson, the office politician of the engineering department.
“What’s that with him?” gasped Schultz.
“Something from around Arcturus,” answered Kleweski. “He came to make Doc Lawton an offer for the lab.”
“No kiddin’?” Schultz thought that over. “You have a piece of it like the other engineers. You gonna sell?”
“Got my doubts. Let’s get on with this, and talk later.”
Johnson nodded to Kleweski, and led his squat, squarely built guest to a position of vantage at the end of the balcony. The Arcturan was a head shorter than Kleweski’s six feet, but better than a yard wide. He looked as if put together to stand anything. Four stumpy legs supported a body sheathed in rubbery, walnut-brown skin and sporting four less muscular tentacles about waist-high―if the Arcturan had had a waist. Most of the features on the broad head, save for two wide-set eyes, were concealed by a breathing mask. Kleweski thought he saw a vocal filter slung from the stranger’s harness, indicating that the Arcturan’s range of speaking sounds was unearthly.
“Showing signs,” warned Turino.
“A liquid satellite would be gone before now,” Kleweski told Schultz. He called, “Let’s squeeze out the last millimeter!”
“Out of my hands,” Turino reported after another moment.
The satellite had achieved an improbable proximity to the larger sphere. Lane’s cameras recorded the surface disturbances. A chorus of exclamations arose as the moon began to break up. Most of the pieces curved “down” to the major globe. The white clouds became roiled by tiny flames, and shot out wisps of vapor as larger bits struck the surface.
In the end, three small, irregular moons circled the ruined planet. The clouds had been dispersed or condensed, revealing Schultz’s surface details to be a complete mess.
“And no rings, even!” he complained. “Oughta be rings.”
“Look closer,” said Kleweski. “I think there’s an irregular one forming now. If we keep the setup long enough, it’ll smooth out. It’s just hard to see because most of the stuff fell to the surface this time.”
“Some mess,” remarked Charley Johnson. “The Altair job?”
Kleweski nodded, gathering his papers from a data desk.
“Altair VII, after a planetoid displaced their satellite. When we analyze the film, we can tell them the symptoms of critical approach―atmosphere tides ought to be easiest to spot. I don’t think they’ll have to move yet; but it won’t hurt them to start hunting a place to colonize.”
“Well, if you’re finished, the showdown’s going to get underway in Lawton’s office.”
“I’ll be there,” said Kleweski.
He watched the crew begin to let air into the pit as Johnson left the chamber with the Arcturan.
“Showdown, huh?” commented Schultz. “You guys don’t all want to sell, I guess. But Lawton does?”
“Not much we can do,” admitted Kleweski. “He practically built this place from the pit out, and he owns most of it.”
“What’s he wanna sell for?”
“He wants to build a bigger station. With two or three pits and extra observatories to lease to astronomers.”
He tapped his clipboard moodily against his thigh, and stared at the “planet” Turino was maneuvering with his force beams to the side of the pit.
“It’ll cost plenty,” the engineer added.
“Bet he’s been making plenty,” said Schultz. “Done everythin’ from proving ring formation or predictin’ planet formation for other stars to estimating positions of lost spaceships.”
“True, but he still needs a big chunk of cash. Only―I’m not sure I want to turn my part of this lab over to some promoter from space without knowing it’ll be used for the public good.”
Leaving Schultz to supervise the salvage of materials, he dropped his notes at the cubby called his office and took an elevator to the conference room. Most of the others were already present, waiting for Dr. Lawton, Johnson, and the Arcturan. Kleweski slumped lankily into a chair and stared at a schematic diagram of the station framed on the bulkhead.
Seen from top or bottom, the station resembled a sphere. In effect, it was one, although an equatorial view revealed it to be actually a squat cylinder, with bulging observatory domes above and below. The experimental pit was at the center, shielded, and surrounded by levels of compartments for living, working, and housing the mechanisms used to manipulate the material in the pit. Besides these levels, which were laid out in octagonal bands about the pit with safety doors at the angles, supply levels extended to the skin of the station. Most of these, except for the air-conditioning chambers and elevator shafts, were kept airless. They included two sally-ports, each housing a pair of light rockets, which were reached through air locks from the working levels.
Then the door at the end of the room opened and Dr. Lawton ushered in the prospective purchaser.
* * * *
…And so that’s the way it went,” Kleweski told Schultz some hours later. “His name is Ouayo, from Arcturus V, and he has enough in one of Terra’s main banks to swing the deal.”
“But you didn’t go along?”
They were sitting on a table in Schultz’s workshop, amid scattered heaps and boxes of materials the technician used to simulate the outer crusts of planet models.
“No,” said Kleweski, “I said I’d rather keep an active interest, since there would be no chance for similar research until Lawton gets the new station built.”
“So?”
“So Lawton finally smoothed things over and got Ouayo to include me in the contract. They decided my services would be vital, anyway, because I know the place inside out and the Arcturan will need somebody to drop down to Luna for supplies and gadgets from time to time.”
“That’s right,” agreed Schultz. “Running the station is no one-man job, for all it’s loaded with automatic gadgets. Well, guess I might as well start packing my stuff, huh?”
“Take your time,” said Kleweski. “You have a whole week.”
Schutz’s eyebrows rose at that. He uttered a low whistle.
“What’s his hurry?”
“I don’t know; he’s a closemouthed lump. But he must have something queer on the fire. Schultz―”
“Yeah?” encouraged the other as the silence lengthened.
Kleweski, who had been staring into emptiness as if at some unpleasant vision, shook himself slightly.
“I was going to say that I’d like to hear from you once in a while, when you have time to send a light-gram.”
“Sure.”
“I mean…well―”
“Sure,” repeated Schultz, looking at him keenly. “I’ll expect you to answer them, too.”
“That’s right,” said Kleweski.
The task of moving the personnel from the station took most of the week, but went smoothly enough except for a rush job on models Ouayo insisted on having built.
Kleweski, detailed by Lawton for a trip to Luna to arrange storage for laboratory records of completed and projected experiments, missed most of the furor.
Upon his return at the end of the week, the first person he encountered after reporting to Lawton was photographer Lane.
“Say, you ought to see the pit now!” Lane greeted him.
“What’s the matter?” asked Kleweski.
“They’ve been driving the shop men night an’ day to fill it up with models. How many you think they crammed in there?”
“How many?” demanded Kleweski.
“Sixteen!”
“Huh?”
“That’s right! Four planet-size with three moons apiece.”
“They’re crazy!” exclaimed Kleweski. “They’ll have them rattling around like dice!”
“It was runnin’ pretty good when I saw it. Look up Schultz; I think maybe he has a key to the balcony.”
“Why? Have they got it locked?”
“Orders, from the Arcturan Lump,” Lane nodded. “He must be inventing something secret. Did you see that stuff in an orbit around the station when you came in?”
“Six or eight big drums? They his?”
“Yep,” said Lane. “Won’t load them into the station till we’re gone. I’d almost like to stay to find out what they are, but that Ouayo gives me the creeps.”
Kleweski left him thoughtfully and sought out Schultz. He found him snoring on a bench in his workshop.
“Oh, you’re back?” mumbled the technician, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “What’s new?”
“I hear tell there’s something new in the pit.”
“Oh, that…yeah. What a job to do in a week! We worked three shifts on those models. Everything had to be just so, even to using a special solution for the oceans. Ouayo brought that in from his baggage outside.”
“Lane says they have the place locked.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t sealed all the emergency hatches yet. Want to take a look?”
Kleweski nodded. Schultz, yawning, led him out of the model shop into the corridor, past two angles in the octagonal floor plan, and down to the machinery level.
This belt of mechanisms, used to operate the pit and to generate power for the rest of the station, was about thirty feet high. A similar level was immediately below, but deck to deck, with the artificial gravity opposite in direction.
“Here’s the hatch across from the control balcony,” said Schultz. “That is, it’s down this ladder.”
He dropped headfirst down the ladderway, like a good swimmer nonchalantly diving from a low float. Halfway through the thickened deck, he grabbed a rung of the ladder and began to climb “down” as he passed the plane of the space station’s equator. Kleweski followed, and found Schultz swinging open a small, thick hatch.
Having removed this like a cork from the neck of a bottle, Schultz led the way through a short tunnel in the pit shielding. He opened a similar cylindrical portal at the other end, and they gazed out into the pit from a niche that was recessed to be outside the held of force that maintained the pit vacuum.
Kleweski exclaimed. “What a scramble! How did you get them all in?”
Four twenty-foot spheres hung in the artificially lighted void. Around each revolved two smaller ones, proportioned as rather large moons. Several others glided toward each other near the center of the pit.
Kleweski thrust his head forward, studying the glowing models in their orbits. Affer a moment of silent analysis, the pattern suddenly burst upon him.
The four “planets” were spaced equally around the pit, midway between center and the outer limits. Two moons of each followed orbits in the same general plane. The third satellite in each case moved in an elongated ellipse perpendicular to this plane, each cutting down between its two mates at one end of the journey and at the opposite extreme coming almost to a junction with the other odd moons at the center of the pit.
“What’s he trying to do?” grunted Kleweski. “There never was such a system. At least, the odds against it are fantastic!”
“Designing one of his own,” suggested Schultz sarcastically. “Easy to get around in as a subway. Each planet has two locals, plus one express to all points past the center.”
Kleweski did not laugh. His eyes widened.
“Maybe you’re not kidding,” he muttered. “It’s made to order from a viewpoint of economizing on spaceship fuel.”
He eyed the setup for a few minutes, then thanked Schultz and thoughtfully made his way to his own compartment.
He had still not made up his mind a few days later as he stood shivering in the poorly heated observation dome atop the station’s north pole. He had just turned away from peering through a small telescope at the last receding rocket trail of the ships carrying away members of the laboratory staff.
Which is now reduced to two, he reflected. Ouayo and me!
He left the dome by the little car that ran through a bulging “great circle” tube on the station’s exterior, and dropped down to the working level and a narrow passage through the supply compartments.
“I suppose Ouayo’s busy getting in his secret equipment,” he muttered. “Stuff like those language records he gave me.”
He wondered why the Arcturan had not yet changed the air of the station to whatever he breathed. Still, he told himself, it was none of his business and Ouayo’s preoccupation with other matters was saving Kleweski the trouble of wearing a breathing mask. He decided to have a look into the pit before making another inspection round of the space station.
He found the entrance to the balcony, and looked in upon a mystifying sight. Ouayo stood blockily before a small television screen, the center of a strange new assembly on one of the data desks. Kleweski’s first feeling was chagrin at having been left out of whatever experiment was underway. Then he noticed one of the mysterious tanks Ouayo had been keeping in an orbit about the station.
The Arcturan was speaking. To whom, Kleweski could not imagine, but it gave him a moment to examine the tank.
The end, of which he had an oblique view, was open. Out of it, tiny sparks were being projected toward the nearest model planet. The engineer stared.
After a few minutes of feeling like a spy, he coughed deliberately. Ouayo looked around. Catching sight of Kleweski at the top of the short flight of steps, he beckoned with one arm and returned his attention to the screen.
Kleweski joined him, feeling unwanted. Then he saw what was on the screen.
The scene was obviously the control room of a spaceship. A being more weird in appearance than even Ouayo was speaking to the latter. He completed an announcement or report and was replaced by a view of a group of vessels in space. The speaker came back on, said something to which Ouayo made a brief reply, and again the view changed.
It showed the surface of Terra, from about four or five thousand miles. There were islands, many of them―
Kleweski’s jaw dropped.
“No, it’s not Terra!” he murmured.
It definitely was not his home planet but something else. However he sought to disbelieve his eyes, the views matched perfectly―one an image in the screen, the other a model in the pit before him with island patterns arranged by Schultz’s loving care.
He turned to examine the open-ended tank more closely. Those little sparks―they were rocket trails!
Ouayo spoke again. He made a note of the answer, gave instructions too fast for Kleweski’s artificial memory of the language, and waddled away from the screen.
“I did not expect you,” he said, choosing to speak Kleweski’s language despite the sessions the engineer had put in to learn Arcturan by means of hypno-records.
Kleweski wondered if the Arcturan were angry, or amused, or contemplating the extinction of a prying Terran.
“Perhaps I can explain,” said Ouayo slowly. “Like me, you have inquiring mind…no? Is silent knowledge more attractive than…to…make oneself large with…with half a story?”
“I’m curious, yes,” admitted Kleweski. “You mean you’ll explain if I promise not to repeat it?”
“Slower, please!” requested Ouayo.
Kleweski said it again.
“Yes,” answered the other with sample directness.
Kleweski tried to match him with a quiet, “Go ahead!”
“Then,” said Ouayo, “these are my…clients.”
Kleweski looked speculatively at the tiny flame trails.
“How did they get so small?” he asked.
“The Maker of All may answer you that,” the Arcturan told him dryly. “They were miniature planetary system in my volume of space. Their sun size your Luna, but dying.”
“How did you find them?” asked Kleweski.
“Who shall determine at first hear the magnification or distance of a signal? I, also, astonished when reached their system in the body. However―was plain something needed.”
“So they became your…clients?”
“Exactly, and more. Engaged me to discover suitable new habitation.
They will repay with…scientific information…formulas, designs, inventions for many purposes. Also they undertake at my…request…to occupy ten percent population with my research calculations.”
Kleweski stared at him in awe. Just like an electronic brain, he thought.
The Arcturan had, to all intents, acquired a super-computer, a thinking machine that could direct itself by its own intelligence and build mechanical sub-computers to carry on fantastic amounts of detail work.
“In spite of price I paid Dr. Lawton,” said Ouayo, “I expect make a shameful profit…that is…is ‘shameful’ right?”
Kleweski was about to say it was all in how you looked at it, but it occurred to him that there might be another view.
“What about these…people?” he asked. “Are they quite willing?”
Ouayo made a little gesture with his tentacle tips.
“Are they to choose?” he asked blandly. “They are in position to be willing. Should they not―!”
He flipped a tentacle at the assembly of model planets in a gesture that left little doubt as to his intentions.
Kleweski eyed the spinning models. There would already be a sort of life on them; he now suspected the nature of the special sprays Schultz had been given to use. There would be what a Terran might mistake for molds or bacteria or some yet unknown form of microscopic life. The tiny beings doubtless had animals aboard their ships. Worlds made to order!
And all under the ruthless control of Ouayo, a mere machine to be worked―for his purposes!
How did I ever get myself into this? he asked himself.
Bewildered at the revelation, he presently excused himself on a plea of needing sleep, and retired to his own quarters.
There, he stretched out on his bunk and tried to view the situation dispassionately.
“It’s beautiful, in a way,” he murmured. “A limited population, to fit into the ships and on the models, but enough to do Ouayo’s calculations. Why, it’s as if you had everybody on Terra supporting a huge effort aimed at doing one scientist’s incidental arithmetic! Or sorting out possible answers to any question. Organic cybernetics, you might say―a setup that can not only solve problems at a staggering rate but also use judgment and initiative doing it!”
Yet he knew that was only part of the situation. What of the inhabitants of the artificial system in the pit? Was there any name for them but ‘slaves’?
“Of course,” he reflected, “it’s only fair that Ouayo be repaid for what he’s done for them; and the only likely medium of exchange is knowledge. That isn’t curtailed by differences in size or location.”
Behind this rationalizing, however, was the memory of Ouayo’s gesture at the mere suggestion of disobedience.
Kleweski began to squirm out of his clothes for bed.
“Not my problem,” he decided. “They made the bargain with Ouayo. I don’t enter into it at all. I’m just a sort of janitor here now. As long as i keep the station air-tight, warm, and lighted, it’s none of my business.”
Having lowered his thermostat, he blew up the inflatable pillow issued in the station, pulled up the covers, and turned out the lights. The next thing he did was spend several hours wondering why he could not get to sleep.
In the end, he sat bolt upright with a curse.
“I wonder if he’s still in the pit chamber?” he muttered.
He pulled on pants, shirt, and moccasins, and padded softly down the corridor. When he reached the main door to the pit balcony, on the next level, he hesitated. Somehow, he could think of no good excuse for intruding. Shrugging, he opened the door to peek in.
The control balcony was deserted and dark, save for a few discreetly gleaming lights on the instrument panels.
Kleweski entered quickly, not pausing to admire the rotating spheres in the pit, which looked the more brilliant for the dark foreground. He glanced about to make sure Ouayo had not retired to a seat to rest. He was alone.
He walked slowly down the few steps to the controls. The Arcturan’s telescreen was dark, but indicated by its dials to be in operation. To it was connected an attachment reminding Kleweski vaguely of a relay device.
“I see,” he mused, considering the arrangement. “He has another receiver in his quarters in case of a call. Could I disconnect him a few minutes I wonder?”
Working gingerly lest he give an alarm, he succeeded in doing so. As an extra precaution, he padded back up the steps to lock both doors before attempting to use the set.
Satisfied that he would not be burst in upon without warning, he considered the mechanism. His knowledge of written Arcturan was nonexistent, but there seemed to be an automatic calling key. He depressed it and waited.
In a moment, the screen glowed, and a burly little monster came slowly into focus.
Where his flesh showed between parts of his simple clothing, it was covered by salmon-pink, iridescent scales varying in size. Kleweski noted a fishy mouth and four multi-jointed arms, but no noticeable shoulders or neck. As if to offset the inflexible position of the head, there were four mobile, wide-spaced eyes. These immediately focused upon Kleweski.
Somehow, the effect was so very like an expression of astonishment that Kleweski nearly laughed. He controlled himself to speak in the simple Arcturan he had learned from Ouayo’s records.
“Who are you?”
The four glittering black eyes flickered to Kleweski’s lips as he spoke. The creature then pivoted to beckon an unseen companion, revealing dorsal scales thickened into armor.
“Are you of Ouayo?” came the counter question when the first individual had been joined at the screen by two others.
“Not exactly,” said Kleweski, unable to discover a memorized expression to define the relationship precisely. “I am from a near planet. I am hired to work for Ouayo.”
The three examined him with an intensity that suggested anger or dislike. The speaker inquired what was wanted “now,” using a term for Ouayo that was unknown to Kleweski. Some linguistic instinct told him it was synonymous with “master.”
“Nothing,” he said. “I was curious. Who are you?”
“We are the Skrenthi. We are those rescued by―”
Again, Kleweski failed to understand the title.
“You mean Ouayo, the Arcturan?” he asked.
“Ouayo, yes.”
“He tells me,” said Kleweski, “that you have agreed to help him in his researches.”
“What did he tell you?”
Kleweski repated Ouayo’s story. The Skrenthi eyed him.
“He is kind to put it that way,” said their spokesman.
The statement seemed subtly “wrong” to Kleweski, like an out-of-place note in a half-remembered tune. He analyzed it in view of his limited artificial knowledge of the language.
Oh, I see! he thought sheepishly. He’s being sarcastic.
“Are you not willing?” he asked bluntly.
The eyes stared at him again.
“What will you tell him?” he was asked.
Kleweski reiterated his denial of any close connection with Ouayo except for employment. Requested to describe the surroundings, he labored to deliver a word-picture of the space station and Terra, about which it circled. The Skrenthi exchanged significant looks, then offered him some pithy advice.
“Return to your world, you of Terra, before you, too, are in the power of Ouayo!”
Kleweski was startled.
“What do you mean?” he demanded.
“If you do not know his treacherous greed, take warning! If you do know, you will deserve whatever results from continuing your association with him.”
I don’t blame them, thought Kleweski. He has them in the bag and there’s nothing they can do.
He opened his mouth to reply, but hesitated. Was that a sound in the corridor?
With silent haste, he flicked out a hand for the connection he had loosened. He replaced it, then bounded up the short flight of stairs to unlock the main door at the head of them.
He pressed an ear against the panel. Yes, there was the padding sound of the Arcturan’s short strides approaching.
Kleweski slipped along the curving balcony toward the far door. The Skrenthi, he saw from the corner of his eye, had taken the hint and were fading from the screen.
If I get out before he gets all the way in, he thought, it’s only a few steps to an angle in the corridor.
He made sure the end door was unlocked, and waited by it until he saw the handle of the other entrance begin to move. He stepped into the passage, easing the door shut behind him.
Kleweski started back to his quarters by another route through the office level, but stopped halfway there as a thought struck him. Ouayo would probably be occupied for some time. The engineer decided it might he prudent to listen in on any conversation between the Arcturan and his “clients.”
He did not enter Ouayo’s cabin when he reached it, however, for he discovered that the other had begun converting it to suit his natural habits of life.
“Air-tight!” muttered Kleweski, scanning the gauges beside the entrance. “I’d better not go in there without a spacesuit.”
He walked slowly to his own compartment, wondering how foolish it would be to confront Ouayo with the story he had just heard and demand an explanation.
And what if there is none? he asked himself. Do I quit―give up a good job for a chuckle-headed conscience?
Just as he reached his door, beside a turn in the passage, he thought he heard a noise. He looked over his shoulder―and ducked frantically aside! Ouayo had rounded a far angle of the corridor and was aiming some sort of weapon at him.
“Hey!” yelled Kleweski. “What’s the―?”
His voice was drowned out by a report that reverberated along the passage like a roll of thunder. A bolt of flaring energy seared a man-sized blotch on the bulkhead beside Kleweski’s door. Even where he landed, around the angle in the corridor, he felt the heat.
No use arguing with him now, decided the engineer, sprinting away. That’s a hot jet he carries, whatever it is!
He wondered what to say if Ouayo called after him, but the Arcturan wasted no time in such overtures. Kleweski heard the clumping of four thick feet in pursuit.
Either he knows I spoke to them, he thought, or else he’d already decided to get rid of me as soon as I saw the Skrenthi.
He skidded to a halt beside an elevator shaft. The dial showed the car one level below. He jabbed the button.
Before Ouayo rounded the corner, the door slid open. Kleweski was inside in a flash, pushing a floor button at random. As the car descended, he tried to catch his breath.
He slipped out at the first machinery level. Immediately, the car started upward in response to Ouayo’s persistent signal.
“I’ll be better off in the other hemisphere,” muttered Kleweski, making for a hatch. “Then I want a word with them.”
Twenty minutes later, after a brisk run through some of the lesser used byways of the station, he climbed up a ladder near the observation balcony. To his cautious stare from deck level, the passage looked clear.
“Still out looking for me,” he murmured, climbing out.
As silently as possible, he crept to the balcony door. Far from being locked according to Ouayo’s habit, it was ajar. He peered in, prepared to duck at the slightest sound, but the place was unoccupied. Kleweski locked the door behind him and checked the other exit. Then he went to the telescreen.
The three Skrentlii appeared as soon as he pressed the key.
“We have waited for you,” said their spokesman.
“Sure it was me you were waiting for?” asked Kleweski.
“Yes, we are sure. The Other One departed in a vengeful manner, aware, we think, that you communicated with us.”
“Yes, I saw him,” replied Kleweski.
“What did he say to you?”
“Bang―more or less. What I want to know is what you said to him!”
The Skrenthi glanced at each other with their mobile eyes.
“It was necessary that we admit hearing a call,” said their spokesman. “We are not quite able to resist him.”
“That’s fine!” growled Kleweski, wondering in passing if the Arcturan translation would still be sarcastic. “I was hoping you could tell me how to handle him.”
The Skrenthi considered that.
“We might possibly offer advice,” Kleweski was told, “unless Ouayo can hear.”
Automatically, Kleweski looked to see if the Arcturan had left the relay device connected. He had; but he had also left something on top of it―a small, ruggedly built radio. Kleweski held it up by the carrying strap for the Skrenthi to see.
“Is this what he uses?” he asked.
“That is our design, yes. He has a relay mechanism connected to the communicator you see, with an auxiliary unit hooked up somewhere beyond the limits of this new cosmos―”
“Ssssh!” Kleweski interrupted.
He was sure he heard a noise outside the door. He picked up the little radio and tiptoed up the steps.
Even through the metal, the report of Ouayo’s weapon was startlingly loud. A spot around the handle of the door glowed red before Kleweski’s eyes. The door sagged an inch.
No time to get out the other way! thought Kleweski.
A frantic leap carried him to the control panels. He flipped a switch at one of them with taut fingers, and twisted a dial slightly. When he reached over beyond the railing, the insulating field had retreated about a yard.
Kleweski vaulted over the rail, as the door clanged open.
He’s through! he thought. Now if only he doesn’t look at the pit until I reach that hatch across the way―
After dropping several feet on the momentum of his jump, the engineer felt himself sliding to a stop against the curving metal. Artificial gravity forces were practically nonexistent where he was. He began to squirm and claw at the surface.
If he looks over the edge, he reflected, all he has to do is shift the force field back to normal. He could flatten me thin enough to make rings for one of the planets!
Changing his tactics, he set his back against the field and pushed at the bulkhead with hands and feet, bracing like a mountain climber making his way by friction. He was congratulating himself on making good time when he heard voices relayed on his radio. He paused to listen.
Though the speech was too rapid for him, he gathered that the Skrenthi were denying having seen the Terran.
Kleweski grinned and kept going. After an effort that left him panting and damp with sweat, he located the niche from which Schultz had shown him the pit arrangement. He pulled himself into it, feeling weight again as he moved outside the potential limits of the pit.
“Terran!”
He started at the sound, then realized that the Skrenthi were calling-through the relay. He hitched the radio around, squinting past the nightmarish, glowing spheres at the balcony.
“Has he gone?” he asked.
“Yes. Have you escaped? He is searching, we think.”
“I found a better hole,” said Kleweski. “Now, what were you about to tell me?”
“You requested advice. We have long spent much effort on analyzing Ouayo for faults and weaknesses. What weapon have you?”
“That’s a good one!” muttered Kleweski mirthlessly.
“We did not hear you.”
“My two hands,” said the engineer more plainly.
It created a pause. Then the Skrenthi checked back.
“You are being ironic?”
“Exactly,” said Kleweski.
“We…understand. Ouayo has been…difficult for us also. Perhaps our estimate of his mentality would interest you.”
“Perhaps,” said Kleweski.
“We think it will be quite hard to fool him. However, any intelligent entity has some limit to the number of actions he can consider or carry on simultaneously. After long study, we conclude that Ouayo would probably be confused by more than four simultaneous alternatives.”
“If I had five or six places to shoot him from, and he saw them all at once, he might forget to duck?”
“That is one example,” agreed the Skrenthi.
If I had something to shoot him with, thought Kleweski.
“We advise you to set a trap for him.”
“Thanks a lot,” retorted Kleweski.
I’d better get out of here, he told himself.
Cautiously, he pushed open the hatch and traversed the short tunnel. Emerging from the other end, he started for a ladder to the upper levels but changed his mind.
“Come to think of it,” he muttered, “aren’t the main gravity controls in one of these machine compartments?”
He walked along watchfully, and presently spotted the control room in question. It took him only a moment to step inside and cut the artificial gravity by half.
Now I can make some time, he congratulated himself, bounding along at a previously impossible speed. Wonder what Ouayo thinks of that? Maybe I ought to do as they said. Some place like the hangar air lock might do.
He saw no sign of Ouayo as he sneaked “down” through the thick central deck and then “up” a ladder to the section near the air lock.
After a few moments of thought, during which he was annoyed to catch himself peering frequently up and down the corridor, Kleweski went to work. He chose a spot where two supply compartments opened on the corridor near the air lock.
For safety, this section was bounded by an extra air-tight emergency door besides the one at the nearby angle in the passage, making a twenty-foot supplemental air lock. Next to one of the compartment exits was a ladder up the bulkhead to a high hatch. Kleweski climbed up, swung open the hatch, and stepped into the air lock beyond which the rocket was berthed.
He moved certain controls. Sections of bulkhead opposite him began to slide open. Air rushed out, and the hatch started immediately to close. Kleweski hastily dropped through and let it snap shut above his head. As it did so, the two big emergency doors ceased their closing motion and slid back into the bulkheads.
Kleweski nodded in satisfaction.
Now to fix it so he’ll stick that ugly head of his into the airless chamber, he thought.
He opened the door beside the ladder and bolted the one on the opposite side of the corridor. There was no purpose in having it bolted, and he hoped that Ouayo might wonder momentarily why it was. He decided that a loud noise of some kind should help, and rummaged around a workshop down the line till he had hooked up an electric bell. This he planted some way beyond the standard safety door but led a loop of wire with the switch hack around the angle. Several pipe lines ran overhead, and Kleweski tied the wire to one of these.
He picked up the radio he still carried with him, to ask the Skrenthi their opinion of his setup. When his call went unanswered, however, he remembered the shielding around the pit. Ouayo’s relay auxiliary would be on the other side of it.
There’s just one more thing, he decided. If he doesn’t get sucked into the air lock and pop a few blood vessels in the vacuum, I’ll need a way out of here fast! Maybe I’d better shut off that safety door.
He found the switch in the bulkhead at the corridor angle, and immobilized the door.
“Now,” murmured Kleweski, “all I need is to find a good, big monkey wrench and go looking for Ouayo!”
As it turned out, he never had time to choose a weapon. Returning to the shop to search for one, he heard the hum of a nearby elevator. About thirty feet away, the door slid open. Kleweski ducked into the shop.
Too late! he thought. He saw me!
He heard a rapidly approaching pad-pad-pad and ran for a connecting door to the next compartment. It was a half-empty storeroom. He scrambled over light plastic bags of various colors toward the corridor exit. Something in the shop hit the deck with a jingling crash. Small objects, sounding like nails or bolts, continued to bounce lingeringly in the light gravity.
“Stop where you are!” called Ouayo.
Kleweski tore open the door and set sail for the angle in the corridor. Behind him, he heard a commotion as the Arcturan drove after him through the storeroom.
Panting, he bounced to a halt at the intersection he had prepared for the showdown. He leaped for the handle of the hatch to the air lock without bothering with the ladder.
The sound of Ouayo’s approach became louder, then was drowned out by the gush of air escaping into the lock and through it to the rocket cradles and space. Kleweski opened the hatch as far as he could and dropped back to the deck.
The supply compartment doors faced each other, one ajar and one bolted. Electric motors hummed as the extra emergency door and the overhead hatch began to close in response to the decreasing air pressure: The gush of air was approaching a moan.
The Terran, with the strap of the radio clamped between his teeth, had just pulled himself up among the pipe lines along the upper pit-side corner of the corridor when Ouayo bounded through the inoperative doorway. Kleweski pressed his button, sending the bell back down the passage into strident life.
The Arcturan spread his four stumpy legs as brakes. One tentacle grabbed at the ladder. The bulky blaster came up viciously to cover the moving safety door ahead.
Ouayo dismissed that immediately. He side-stepped, slapped the left-hand door wide open. He drove a blast of heat across at the other door. Kleweski saw the bolt area flare white. The thunderclap deafened him. Ouayo leaped for the overhead hatch. Spatters of hot metal from the blasted bolt pattered on the deck. Ouayo shoved the half-closed hatch back, bracing one tentacle on the ladder. Then he recoiled to drop back to the deck.
I lose! despaired Kleweski. He didn’t make the mistake.
Something deep inside him flinched in sheer terror as he released his grip and kicked off from the bulkhead to gain power for whipping the radio straight at Ouayo’s broad head and the eye that had just discovered him. The Arcturan, twisting awkwardly in midair, swung his weapon around.
In the reduced gravity, the radio snapped across the corridor like a cannon shot. Just before Ouayo’s thick feet slapped on the deck, while Kleweski was still falling, it struck.
Ouayo spun off-balance and thumped against the bulkhead, catching between it and his own bulky body the blast already triggered for Kleweski.
The report was soggily muffled.
Kleweski found himself on hands and knees, staring wide-eyed at the queerly collapsed brown hulk that had been knocked away from the bulkhead to sprawl across the deck.
A two-foot length of tentacle with a seared end marking the amputation lay a yard in front of Kleweski, but it did not bother him―it just did not look real.
The overhead hatch chunked shut. Kleweski realized he could hear.
He never had time to even scream, he thought, still dazed.
Smells began to reach him, now that the air was no longer rushing up through the hatchway. Ozone, a pungent gas from Ouayo’s breathing apparatus, scorched paint fumes from the two glowing spots on the bulkheads.
Mixed with all these, the smell of Ouayo.
Not much different from…well, if it had been…me, Kleweski thought as he fumbled for the switch to reactivate the door behind him.
He staggered through and along the corridor, listening for the door to close. With the thump, there returned a memory he had not been aware of―the sound of that tentacle plopping on the deck in front of him. He paused, leaned over to brace both hands against the bulkhead, and was sick.
By the time he reached the pit balcony, the shock was wearing off. He could even face the idea of going back to clean up, but his first intention was to contact the Skrenthi.
He stopped short at the thought.
“Now they have nobody to run the place but me,” he murmured.
There was no denying that Ouayo had arranged the perfect setup. Millions to work his calculations and tests for him―plus whatever electronic devices they built to make the task speedier. And their whole existence was dependent upon whoever controlled the station, the medium of their survival.
“Nuts!” he growled, shaking his head. “You’re still dizzy from the shooting. That’s just what you were against!”
He opened the door and strode down the short flight of steps to the screen. The Skrenthi were already on, waiting.
“What happened? We heard no radio message.”
Kleweski explained, and described what had occurred.
“I was lucky,” he concluded, “even though he didn’t slip.”
The Skrenthi looked at each other. Kleweski decided that they were considering the altered situation, wondering how to deal with him. He could see their problem. What he ought to do, he realized, was to reassure them that he would not expect too much―
Get that idea out of your head! he told himself.
But he could not help thinking of the staggering amount of research that would be possible. He visualized millions of Skrenthi hustling about, feeding problems into thousands of mechanical brains.
Well, that much seemed perfectly legitimate, he decided. His manner of controlling it was what bothered him.
“It was not mere luck,” said the Skrenthi spokesman.
“What?”
“Not at all. Did we not tell you Ouayo would make a mistake if given too many alternatives to handle in a brief instant?”
“Yes, but he handled them all,” objected Kleweski. “I thought he’d get caught in the empty air lock as the hatch closed and never get out again, but he pulled back. And he’d already checked or blasted every other way I could have gone.”
“But you had not gone.”
“No…but he found that out quick enough!”
“Please!” said the other. “He was not quick enough. Perhaps, had he chosen to check the possibilities confronting him in a slightly different order―who shall say? But the actual result bears out our careful estimate of Ouayo―and of you!”
Kleweski started to answer, but puffed out his cheeks as he caught up to the last statement. He chose to listen further.
“We are well satisfied,” he was told. “We have succeeded in the very first of our planned attempts to escape from a sort of tyranny that was intolerable to us; and we have every expectation that you will aid us in the future, since our advice has proved accurate in helping you to save your own life.”
Kleweski discovered that he was relieved more than he would have expected, both at finding himself in the good graces of the Skrenthi and at having been distracted from making a very possibly fatal decision.
They can be quite dangerous in their own little way, he realized, deciding that they would certainly have found another tool with which to deal with Ouayo had Kleweski not been handy.
“You still want to make a business of computation and research?” he asked.
“It seems a likely way to earn our…living.”
“Then I think,” said Kleweski, “that I will just leave the terms to you. I am sure we can trust each other.”
After the screen had darkened while the Skrenthi went to inform their people, he remained to stare speculatively at the gleaming spheres hanging serenely in the pit.
“It’s the most marvelous research tool I ever heard of,” he told himself at last. “I just wish I could be sure of who’s the tool!”