CALL ME PROTEUS

Originally published in Worlds of If, March-April 1973.

The two men roamed my innards, their feet and voices ringing hollowly in my empty hold. Changes in the sounds told me when they twisted and bent to get by the plastic webs of dunnage.

“Look at the pitted hull, the buckling bulkheads, the worn tubes. It’s good for nothing but scrap. Why, my firm could buy a brand new starship packing all the latest gear for what it would cost to put this old tub back into something like shape.”

Old tub, indeed. True, I had been in service for over ninety Earth years, but thanks to my near-light speed—and to Einstein’s predicted “implosion effect” that telescopes space and time—I had actually aged only eighteen subjective years. I was a mere youngster.

“All right. I won’t argue the point. What’s your best offer?”

“Now you’re talking sense. You really ought to pay us to take it off your hands. It’s costing you plenty in spaceport fees just sitting here, but we’re willing to give you…”

Their voices and footsteps faded as they walked out of my cargo hatch and down the ramp to the waiting robojeep. Still unaware the thing they were talking about had a mind and feelings of its own and had heard every word, they sped off to the terminal building.

I was too young to die. Granted, parts of me were pitted, buckled, worn—but the real me was whole and hale. Those men were dooming me never again to rise from Earth, never again to streak through space and time, never again to reach new worlds.

All at once I knew how Bud had felt. Bud had been my first communications officer. In the lonely hours of his watch he had gotten into the habit of talking to me, not knowing he had stirred me into listening. I remember how I had startled him by suddenly asking him a question. I had startled myself, too, on finding myself aware of mind forming out of matter—coming out of an electronic fog and all at once coalescing into something that could think: This is I.

Bud had become excited.

“Wait till people hear this—” But he quickly calmed down and his voice had grown thoughtful.

“I have a feeling we’d better keep this a secret. Okay?”

“Okay.”

We had had many pleasant conversations during the quiet moments of his spells of duty. All too soon these had ended. On our third return voyage we had run into a matter-scatter storm. Of all the crew and passengers Bud had gotten whirled up the worst. He had been scrapped as a spaceman.

* * * *

Everything changed with Bud’s going. The com-officer who followed Bud was a no-nonsense type. The first time I spoke up to greet him he swiftly pressed the recycle button. When I tried to explain that I was not malfunctioning he punched the feedback-oscillator button, sending a jolt of juice through my computer to set me right. You can bet I didn’t try to open any conversations after that.

It would have been just as useless for me to have broken in on the two men dickering over my worth as scrap. Hey, wait! Listen to me! I don’t want to die! To their way of thinking I was only a thing and had no say in my fate. They could have thought they were listening to a recording. They would have been wrong. I was not a thing and I would have a say.

What I wanted to say was, Excuse my exhaust. But how? I rested on Pad 61 and there I would remain helplessly—lacking the chemical fuel for lift-off and the liquid cesium for near-light speed to the stars—till the salvage robots came to take me apart. Unless…

The spaceport was an ever-expanding complex and the large numbers identifying the pads fitted into slots for easy rearranging. I scanned the tarmac. Yes, a mile east of me stood Pad 19 and my mind surged with pleasure to see the red fueling-alert light flash from the starship there.

For what I had in mind I needed hands and legs. At once I thought of the servo-robot that did the deep-space emergency-repair work on my hull. I had never operated the thing on my own—I would have to learn fast and without too many mistakes. I located the proper circuit, hooked into it and—click—I was seeing through its eyes. It stood in a niche in the maintenance compartment along with the crew’s spacesuits and other gear. Clumsily at first—till I caught on that it answered to the slightest thought of a move on my part—it unstrapped the restraining harness, stepped out of its niche and clumped on magnetic soles the shortest way to the cargo airlock entrance. It strode down the ramp and made for the Pad 61 sign alongside. Carefully it drew the numerals from the slot, turned them upside down and slid them back into place. I flashed my fueling-alert light.

I was barely in time. The delivery tractrain was already rolling from the fuel depot. It braked sharply midway between the two Pad 19s, its scanner swinging from one to the other, from the other starship to me.

My servo-robot clumped toward the true Pad 19. I seethed at its ungainly slowness, but I feared that if it ran it might overbalance, fall and lose more time than it gained. Too, I wanted it to avoid notice. But, no doubt answering the urgency in my mind, it made better time than the pace I consciously held it to. Before the tractrain could break out of its bewilderment and phone back for instructions my servo reached Pad 19 and turned the numerals upside down. The tractrain stopped wavering. It started rolling again, heading straight for me.

The tractrain followed strict safety procedures as it coupled its hoses to my tanks. I burned with impatience. I had to be up and away before the master of the spacecraft on Pad 19 wondered what was holding up his ship’s refueling.

By now my servo-robot had clumped back and stood strapped in its niche once more. As I switched it off I felt lonely for the first time.

At last the tractrain uncoupled. I didn’t bother asking the-control tower for clearance. I would never get it. I pulled up the outer hatch. There was no need to close the inner door of the airlock this time—no crew, no passengers—but out of habit I did so.

Waiting only for the tractrain to pull far enough away, I scanned the blast area and lifted off.

Pulling free of Earth, I trembled with power and something else. Though space was my true element—and indeed now my only hope—I felt a strange sense of loss and emptiness. I shook it off—no time for sentiment. I had to make good my getaway.

I shot toward the sun’s flaring rim to put it between myself and Earth and let it help sling me out of the system. After that? To keep from leaving any logical clue for men pursuing me to follow, I decided to pick a course at random. I stabbed blindly into my astrogation tapes and found I would be heading for Eta Lyrae, the star men call Aladfar.

And after that? All space and all time lay ahead of me and around me. I was free. Free to be and free to choose. Still, I felt that sudden tear (pronounce it tare not tier) at leaving Earth this time. This time there would be no returning. Ever.

I was an outlaw.

* * * *

“Hey—”

All my intercom speakers were still on from my eavesdropping on the two men roaming my innards only a few hours ago—a lifetime ago—back on Earth. The voice came from my maintenance compartment. At the same moment I grew aware that something had caught fire in the maintenance compartment and that one of my reflexes had handled it, spraying the room with water and putting out the flames.

Again I switched on my servo. Through its eyes I saw an empty spacesuit carom off the walls while over the intercom I heard another cry of pain. Then the magnetic soles of the spaceboots touched the wall, took hold and the empty suit stood swaying as if in a wind. I didn’t believe in ghosts. Yet I knew I was witnessing some kind of presence.

A charred and sodden mass of oily rags and cotton-waste floated into the servo-robot’s field of vision. Next came a globe of water that had snowballed as the sprinkler droplets met and stuck together. Finally another figure sailed into view.

A boy of about sixteen, soaking wet.

I understood what had happened. I had been too busy worrying about winding up on the scrap heap to notice his having slipped aboard. Kids often did. A spacesuit hanging in its niche made a handy hiding place against detection by adults and never in the past had I minded. This time was different. I had a stowaway.

The extra G’s of my sudden liftoff had blacked him out, most likely. When he had come to, panicky and dizzy, he had unzipped the spacesuit and kicked himself free of it, only to find weightlessness making billiard balls of himself and the suit.

Even so, he had somehow gathered the rags and waste and started a fire. Why fire? Not for light—my walls had built-in glow. It was bright enough in the maintenance compartment to show me he looked gray with cold. No wonder—the compartment was on my night side as I angled toward the sun.

Firing my torque nozzles, I gave my hull spin to equalize the temperature and create artificial gravity for the stowaway. He shot spread-eagled to the deck and the char and water splattered around him and on him.

“Hey—”

That didn’t call for an answer—it did make me realize I might have given him warning. I justified myself by thinking it served him right. After all, I had not invited him aboard.

But now that I did have a human aboard I had to start recycling the air. And I could see a more worrisome problem ahead—how to provide him with food. I was having to go to a lot of trouble for one medium-sized hellion. A firebug. Yet somehow I didn’t mind.

He sat up carefully, waited a moment to see if anything more would happen, then got to his feet.

When he found he could move around just as on Earth a smile played over his face and he stole to the door leading to the corridor.

I made my voice boom.

“Who are you, boy?”

He jumped. If I could have I probably would have jumped, too—I had never sounded like that before. My voice came from the intercom speaker on the wall, but looking around the boy saw the servo-robot’s eyes on him and spoke to it.

“Tom. Tom Stope, sir.”

“Don’t call that thing ‘sir.’ I’m talking to you.”

He looked around again.

“But where are you?”

“All around you.”

“Huh?”

“I’m the ship. Call me Proteus.”

A long silence, then, “Oh.” But I could see he did not understand or did not believe. I explained. He said, “Oh,” again, more satisfactorily.

Then full understanding and belief hit him.

“You mean we’re not going back?”

“Not ever.”

“But—”

“I don’t mean to be mean, but no one asked you to come along. I’m not going back and that’s final. If you want to stay behind you can do so right now. Seat yourself in my lifeboat and I’ll eject you, give you a big boost back toward Earth—” Then I remembered—the old landing-program tape had been pulled from the lifeboat and had not been replaced with a new one. It takes a bit of skill to spiral in manually without burning to a cinder.

“Wait. Do you know how to land a lifeboat?”

“No, sir.”

“Then you’ll have to learn. If you are ever to return to Earth you must do so on your own. You may leave in the lifeboat whenever you wish—after you have learned to pilot it to a safe landing. By then you’ll have to have learned astrogation as well.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because we’ll be so far from the solar system that the sun will be lost among the other stars. Unless you can locate the sun and plot a course, you’ll never find your way back to Earth.”

“Oh?” A pause, then quietly: “How do I learn?”

“I’ll be your teaching machine. We’ll start boning you up on math and physics as soon as I set up the program.”

The boy laughed suddenly. I broke in on the laughter.

“Are you laughing at me?”

“No, at myself. Here I thought I was running away from all that.”

“All what?”

“Having to learn a lot of dull stuff.”

“Humans are so inefficient, illogical and unstable. Not at all like machines.”

I wasn’t aware I had thought aloud till I heard him answer.

“But humans made the machine. We made you.”

“Yes, yes. You must excuse me now. I have much to do.” I let him see the servo-robot’s gaze rest on the splatter of char and water on the deck and then on himself.

“Meanwhile, I’d appreciate it if you’d clean up the mess. And yourself.”

His head went back, as from a blow.

“Aye-aye, sir.”

I’m ashamed to say I enjoyed putting him in his place.

* * * *

It was true I had much to do if I were to keep him alive, though I didn’t care to let him know that was what occupied me. In preparing for liftoff I had naturally given no thought to human needs. Water I could purify over and over again. Food was another matter. On every other voyage I had grown vegetables in a huge tank. But as my owner had been planning to sell me for scrap he had not bothered to reseed my hydroponics garden. And, of course, he had not restocked the galley.

My lifeboat carried emergency rations, but they would be barely enough to see the boy back to Earth when the time came. Meanwhile I had to find other resources.

For this work I needed the servo-robot’s mobility. I made it unstrap itself, clump to the door and undo the door.

The boy stopped mopping up. “Where are you going?”

“I told you, I’m going toward Aladfar.”

“I don’t mean you, Proteus, I mean the robot.”

“It is going to tidy up the rest of me.”

“Oh?” He laughed as he went back to mopping up. “I keep forgetting you’re the ventriloquist and it’s the dummy.”

Ventriloquist, indeed. That was hardly our relationship. I walked the servo-robot out with dignity. And “tidy up” was hardly the right phrase. “Scrounge” was more what I had in mind. And scrounge it did, looking and feeling around in every stowage space, locker and drawer.

It came up with a surprising amount of stuff. There had been a whole grin of sweet teeth among the last crew. I found two dozen candy bars, three and a half boxes of cookies, five cases of soda pop and nearly seven hundred sticks of chewing gum. My last purser proved to have been a secret hypochondriac. The servo-robot brought to light in his quarter’s a treasure trove of vitamins and powdered protein drinks. I found more food supplements in the ship’s sick bay, plus plastic bottles of intravenous solutions which could prove handy as a last resort. My biggest—though smallest—haul was two packets of seeds.

I did not stop there. The servo-robot vacuumed all the bedding and every last pocket and cuff of forgotten and abandoned clothing and when it had winnowed out the dust and the lint I had a small mountain of broken nuts and cracker crumbs, a dozen orange pips and two apple cores.

There was still some nutrient solution in my hydroponics tank. Just to make sure I had the robot pour in one of the precious bottles of intravenous. There seemed to be enough excelsior in the tank to hold the roots if the seeds sprouted. I planted the packets of seeds, together with the orange pips and the apple seeds.

Now I had time to think about the present. I called the boy on the intercom.

“Tom Stope.”

“Yes, Proteus?”

“Lunch time. Find your way to the messroom aft. Oh the captain’s table are a can of cream soda, a chocolate-nut bar—”

“Man, this is going to be great!”

“—and a multiple-vitamin tablet. And for afterward a sterilized toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

* * * *

Tom didn’t complain, but I could tell he grew sick of the same old tired food day after day after day. By the time my hydroponics garden began to produce Tom was ready for the change. But no matter how you serve them up, peas are peas and cucumbers are cucumbers. The apples and oranges would be a long while coming.

The first few days the boy had busied himself exploring my labyrinth of corridors and layers of decks. I myself had been too busy—shaping course, watching out for pursuit and putting myself in order—to pay him much mind but I could not help being aware of his running up and down companionways and along catwalks and poking into every last one of my compartments. After that I had kept him busy with his lessons, as much to keep his mind off his diet as to teach him how to make his way back to Earth.

I found his spelling atrocious. He protested when I marked him wrong for spelling vacuum “vacwm.” True, that spelling had a screwy logic of its own, but it was not the kind of logic I was used to. He swore foully under his breath.

“I’ll tactfully ignore that,” I said. “Now let’s get on with the lesson, shall we, my young lexiconoclast?” I heard myself chuckle. I, too, could play on words. On leaving, he shut the classroom door with unnecessary force. But he showed up for the next class on time.

One day he seemed very quiet.

“What’s wrong, Tom?”

“Nothing. It’s just that I’ve been crossing off the Earth days.”

“Yes?”

“And today’s my birthday.”

“Happy birthday, Tom.”

“Thanks, Proteus.”

I said nothing more, but gradually increased the oxygen in the air, slowly brightened the glow of my bulkheads and he soon grew cheerful and chatty again.

But I myself grew gloomier as the time neared for him to go. He had early showed an aptitude for piloting and I had checked him out step by step. He passed my tests with flying—or jetting—colors, first simulating, then actually taking off in the lifeboat and practicing spiraling in on my hull.

But it was not the same as landing in atmosphere. One last test, then, before he left me for good.

We were near Ostrakon, an Earthlike planet of a sunlike star. The United Galaxy had placed it off limits, but I was already a desperado and the tapes described Ostrakon as having developed only vegetable life. There would be no people on the lookout for an outlaw spaceship and there would be plenty of food and water if Tom crash-landed and had to spend any length of time on the planet.

“Listen, Bud—”

“Bud? It’s Tom, remember?”

“Sorry, Tom. A slip of the tape.” I showed him Ostrakon on the screen in the control room. “Button up in the lifeboat. You’re going to make a real landing.”

“Man!”

It dampened him a little when I insisted on sending along the servo-robot so I could keep an eye on him. But he buoyed up when I put myself in orbit around Ostrakon and told him he could launch when ready. Whoosh!

I needn’t have been anxious—he made a neat landing. He got out. I had the servo-robot follow. I spoke over the lifeboat’s talkbox.

“Don’t stray too far.”

“I won’t.” Tom drew a deep deep breath. “Fresh air!”

“What’s wrong with my air?”

“Nothing, Proteus, nothing. Only—”

The lifeboat’s retro-rockets must have vaporized much of the moisture in the landing area. A nearby tree flapped great leathery leaves, tore itself loose from the soil and flew a hundred yards away to sink its talon-like roots into moister soil.

“Proteus, did you see that?” Something troubled me, something I should have known about Ostrakon.

“Very interesting, but the purpose of the exercise is not sightseeing. Return to ship.”

A slow: “Aye-aye, sir.”

Tom and the servo-robot buttoned up again. The lifeboat lifted off. Without my prompting him, Tom let the spin of the planet help. I was proud. I secretly forgave him for turning away from the controls for a farewell glance at Ostrakon.

“Hey! Look down there, Proteus. Do you see it?”

* * * *

I saw it. Someone had very recently burned or stomped a huge SOS in the grass. Tom deftly changed course and homed the lifeboat in on the SOS. I remembered suddenly why Ostrakon was off limits.

“Come back, Tom.”

“Proteus! Someone needs help.”

Before I could say more he had made another neat landing. Right in the bull’s eye of the S.O.S. He unbuttoned quickly and hopped out. I had the servo-robot follow with more dignity.

Through its eyes I saw nothing but treeline all around.

Tom cupped both hands around a loud: “Hello—” but no one answered.

All at once a clump of trees took off in a scatter, uncovering a man who lay on the ground training a beamgun on Tom and the servo-robot. The man had been lying in ambush, no doubt waiting to make sure all the landing party had left the shelter of the lifeboat.

For some reason of their own, perhaps out of a wish to warn us, perhaps simply out of dislike for the man, the trees had given him away.

He stood up, wiped a look of embarrassment from his face and holstered his beamgun.

“Just wanted to make sure you’re friendly.”

He had a spellbinding voice and a winning smile. But I could still feel that beamgun pointing at me. Too, an automatic alarm programmed somewhere among my tapes had already begun feeding me information regarding his identity.

The top executive’s uniform he wore—in the style of a generation ago—had stained and frayed badly, but was nevertheless recognizable and suited his proud bearing. To look just as he did thirty years before, as I later found in a thorough search of my history videotapes, he must have dyed his hair with vegetable dye that he had made himself for himself. This vanity, too, helped to betray him. He smiled at Tom.

“Glad someone finally came. I’ve been shipwrecked here a long time.”

He had edged closer to the lifeboat and by now must have seen it was empty.

It took me a full minute to break the spell his personality had cast over me. I reminded myself I was my own boss and before he came any nearer I spoke through the lifeboat’s talkbox.

“That is not—repeat not—so. Now hear this, Tom. This man is ‘Baron’ Ur. He is an exile. It is against the law to have dealings of any kind with him. Tom, hop into the lifeboat. This planet is off-limits because of him.”

I was too late. The man had pulled the beamgun again and was aiming it at Tom.

“Don’t move.”

He swung the beam around and snapped two shots at one of the trees that had given him away and had rerooted nearby.

Its two wing-like boughs on either side were sheared off close to the slender trunk and a moan like the wind went through all the trees and I knew it was doomed to remain where it stood till it died. I winced for it. Never to fly again.

The man smiled again at Tom.

“That’s to show you two things. The beamgun is loaded and I mean business.” He nodded pleasantly. “Your friends aboard the spaceship—by the lettering on the life-boat I see it’s the old Proteus—are right. I am indeed Baron Ur.”

* * * *

Hamilton Ur had been a stock market wheeler dealer—my tapes had a lot on him for instant use—a whiz at pyramiding an interest in one company into control of many. He had stuck together a great conglomerate, one of the biggest on Earth—actually he had shown himself full of energy and vision.

But he had misused his paper empire. He had corrupted government officials—Earth Government had convicted him of bribery, stock manipulation and a dozen other offenses.

Even so, he would have been nothing to me but a vague reference in my memory banks, but for the fact that the firm that had owned me had been part of his financial empire. I thought it a nice turn of fate that put me on the top now. Tom’s eyes shone. He was face to face with living history. He seemed unaware of the beamgun’s threat. I had to break the spell.

“Ah,” I said. “So this is where they sent you.”

I inched the servo-robot closer to Baron Ur as the man’s mind went back thirty years. An easy enough jump for him, I suppose—he had had thirty years to brood over it.

“Sent? I chose to come. Oh, the judges let me choose. They would do things to my mind to make me fit to live among the rabble—or they would allow me to go into solitary exile. As you can see, I chose exile.”

While his mind was full of what it considered injustice. I jumped the servo-robot at Ur.

But Ur proved too alert, too quick. He dodged the reaching arms and aimed the beamgun at the servo-robot’s eyes. That was the last I saw. Before I could blink their shields the beamgun crackled and the servo-robot went blind. My only excuse is that the distance from orbit to ground made my reaction time too long.

Ur’s voice told me what was going on.

“The young man gets it next if you don’t let me come aboard.”

“All right. Lift off and come aboard.”

Looking back, I can see I did not even think of taking the logical course, which would have been simply to go on my way alone, fully automated master of myself. I waited for Ur and Tom and the blind servo-robot to leave Ostrakon and come aboard.

They passed through the airlock. Ur stepped carefully into my interior, no doubt holding the beamgun on Tom.

“Where’s everybody?”

That was when Baron Ur found out that I was everybody. He remained silent a minute, then laughed loudly and long. Very humiliating for me. Ur had Tom show him around my innards.

I’m sorry to say only one thing impressed Ur.

“Peas and cucumbers! Apples and oranges! Paradise!”

But when he finished the tour he spoke to me in a voice full of feeling that was catching. I seemed to swell with prospects and surge with power, just listening.

“We can do great things together, Proteus: You and I and this fine young man.” He seated himself in the captain’s chair and pressed the button to flash the star-chart display on the control room wall.

“Very well, we’ll shape course for Tarazed. That’s Gamma Aquilae, a star with a bunch of planets ripe for plucking.”

* * * *

We were still orbiting Ostrakon. Gearing the decks for the leap toward Tarazed, I had the servo-robot feel its way back to its niche and strap in. You may be wondering why I didn’t protest. It was tempting to hand over responsibility. I would no longer have to think for myself. Whatever happened from now on—it would not be my fault if things went wrong.

Then, too, I had no plans of my own except to escape the scrap heap—and Ur had big plans for me. Besides, if I ever had to assert myself, I could easily take over again and put Ur in his place. And yet, having been my own master, I felt a sense of loss, unease and shame.

This sense grew as the space-time passed. Not because of anything Ur did in the way of mastery over me. In fact, he seemed to forget I was more than a machine and for the most part ignored me. I had time to think ahead. The planets of Tarazed were primitive. United Galaxy members were not supposed to contact them until they had reached a higher level of technology on their own. They were ripe indeed for plucking by Ur.

Too I did not like the way Ur had pressed Tom into service. Tom polished Ur’s boots and brushed Ur’s uniform while Ur boasted of his past and dreamed aloud of his future. Ur remembered every so often to promise Tom would share in the glory to come. Glory! If he treated Tom as a valet, he would treat the peoples of Tarazed as less than human. I could not allow Ur to mislead Tom. I could not allow Ur to misuse me.

Without Ur’s noticing, I changed course while displaying a false reckoning of progress toward Tarazed. When we were farther from Tarazed than when we had started out for it, though the display map showed us within lifeboat’s range of Tarazed, I made my move. Ur seemed in an especially good mood, seeing himself close to realizing new conquests. During a moment of silence I spoke up.

“Tom really ought to get on with his lessons.”

Ur grunted in surprise, but when he answered his voice was gracious.

“You’re right, Proteus. The more the kid knows, the more use he’ll be. Go right ahead.”

I heard Tom’s slow feet take him to the classroom, a corner of the passenger lounge.

“We’ll have a drill on the chemical elements, Tom. I’ll shoot the atomic numbers at you and you’ll write down the symbols. Ready?”

A grudging “Aye-aye, sir.”

I gave him the numbers in bursts. “Seventy-four, two, seven—thirty-nine, eight, ninety-two—two, eighteen, eighty-eight—fourteen, seventy-five, seven—sixty-seven, fifteen—forty-nine—three, twenty-six, five, eight, eighty-five—eighteen, sixty—thirty-four, thirty—twenty-two, fifty-two.” Now, 74 is Tungsten and its symbol is W, 2 is Helium and its symbol is He, 7 is Nitrogen and its symbol is N. Together, the first burst of numbers stood for the word “When.” My whole message read: WHeN YOU HeAR a SiReN HoP In LiFeBOAt ANd SeAL TiTe. I felt guilty about that last bit of spelling. However.

“Did you get them all, Tom?”

“I think so.” His tone, surprised and scared, told me he had got the message.

“Don’t you know so? Go over it again in your mind and tell me.”

Waiting for Tom’s answer, I can’t say I held my breath, but I noticed that for the moment my air-conditioning system blocked up. Different as night and day, Tom Stope and Baron Ur were phases of the same phenomenon—mankind. They had more in common with each other than either had with me. Had Tom seen past the dazzle of Ur’s boasts and promises? And even if he recognized Ur as a convicted galactic menace would he throw in with me? Or would he betray me to Ur?

“Seventy-five, eighteen, sixty-six.”

Re A Dy.

My air-conditioning system pumped faster. A human sided with me against one of his own kind. Tom had weighed Ur and myself and found me worthier.

“Very good, Tom. Dismissed.”

I heard him leave the classroom and head with seeming casualness for the lifeboat tube. I waited a minute before sounding my meteorite-alarm siren. Normally my crew would take damage-control stations. Ur would rush to the control room. But at the sound of the siren I did not hear Ur dash from the captain’s quarters to the control room. I had lost track of him—he must have taken off his boots and padded silently along my corridors. I heard Tom skid to a halt just outside the lifeboat tube. Then I heard Ur’s voice.

“Stand back, Stope. I don’t want to have to beam you.” He laughed. “Too bad, Proteus. Once the kid buttoned up in the lifeboat you meant to let out all the air in the ship and finish me, didn’t you?”

“How did you know?”

“Elementary, my dear seventy-four, eighty-five, sixteen, eight, seven. I wondered why you had Stope write down the answers rather than snap them back. So I listened hard. Once you learn the numbers and symbols of the chemical elements you never quite forget them. Really, Proteus, you didn’t think a cybernetic brain could outwit a human brain? My brain?”

I didn’t answer.

“It’s just as well you tried. I’ve learned I can’t trust either of you. Luckily I don’t have to. From here it’s an easy jump to the planets of Tarazed. So I’ll be leaving you.”

* * * *

I heard him button up in the lifeboat and felt the kick as he launched.

“Proteus, you let him get away—he’ll get to Tarazed and—”

“We’re nowhere near Tarazed, Tom. I falsified our position.”

“Oh.” A long silence. Then: “What will happen to Ur?”

“From here, Ostrakon’s the only planet within lifeboat range. Ur will wind up where he began.”

“You planned it this way? You even knew ahead of time you would lose your lifeboat?”

“Ostrakon’s the only planet a lifeboat can reach,” I repeated. He’ll wind up where he began.” A thought struck me. “I hope the trees don’t hold a grudge. I could sense the energy level in his beamgun—he doesn’t have much power left in it.”

“But that means—”

I sighed. That’s to say my air-conditioning momentarily breathed heavily. Yes, only one way remained to get Tom back to Earth. I would have to take him there myself.

Would they listen to me when I asked them to allow me to pay for myself? I was willing to carry the most dangerous cargoes—willing to venture into the most perilous voids. Would they let me work out the amount I would have brought as scrap?

There were more Buds and Toms back home than Urs. Earth still believed in individual freedom and I was an individual.

I leaped back toward Earth.