TAR BABY

Originally published in Worlds of If, March-April 1974.

Either the spaceworn Homingbird had zigged when it should have zagged or the GO-type star and its lone planet loomed where they didn’t belong.

Mate Gwyn Vestring grimaced. Just when they were on the homestretch, getting set for the last jump—the jump to Earth. She fought down the urge to glance at her husband-captain. Maybe Boyd had not seen; he had said nothing yet.

As though making a simple adjustment she swung the astrogate a touch to starboard. This swept the star and its tempting planet off the screen and brought a more familiar-looking array into view for real-time register with Homingbird’s inertial-guidance log.

Too late. Boyd had spotted the planet. He overrode the astrogate and swung the aperture back.

“Hold it, honey. What have we here?” He centered the planet and zoomed it nearer. “Hmm. The life-potential reading’s positive. One point two on the evolutionary scale.” He turned to face her with a cool smile. “Now don’t tell me you missed that apple.”

Gwyn forced an answering smile.

“I wasn’t looking for one more juicy prospect. We already have our quota twice over.” She rested her hand on his arm. “Boyd, you agreed that we have a good cargo and that it’s time we got back home.”

Boyd patted her hand but somehow managed to lift it off.

“I know, honey. I did and we have and it is. But how can we pass this up after falling over it like this? I ask you.”

He was obviously determined. She sighed, looked down at the roundness of her belly. She slid forward in her contour couch to make room to put her hands to the small of her back. She gave an isometric shove to her back to counter the weight within.

If Boyd saw, it didn’t change his mind.

Gwyn said no more and made her face a mask of indifference as Boyd swung Homing bird into recon orbit.

The Homingbird’s sensors took note of the planet’s conditions and under her mask Gwyn felt satisfaction that they would have to suit up if they landed and went out among the natives to trade. The inconvenience would serve him right.

But she felt a pang as she saw the eagerness fade from Boyd’s face. After all, it was that eagerness, the light of a free spirit, that had drawn her to him in the first place.

Boyd’s face grew longer and more puzzled. Where was the promised life? Was he failing to recognize its form? The planet looked all plain, smooth and dark, the chocolate coating of lava flow. Nothing else was visible. Gwyn could see him shepherding himself toward sheepishness, toward grinning defeat.

Then he spotted a spaceport. There was no mistaking it. He held Homingbird above a vast stand of spaceships. Hundreds of ships, all sizes, all shapes. Though most conformed to the cigar shape, some looked so grotesque as to seem incapable of landing or lifting off. But, as bees had proved, with enough power anything is aerodynamic.

This planet out of nowhere had to be a trade center of some importance, though the general barrenness and the forbidding atmosphere would make it uncomfortable for most species.

He switched on the transceiver and over the intragalactic trade band gave Homingbird’s call sign.

The answer came almost at once, in an artificial but warm voice.

* * * *

“WELCOME to Tahrlabi. You may land two ship’s lengths primary-ward of the green-and-orange ship.”

Boyd helped Gwyn fasten herself into her contour couch. He patted the roundness.

“Cheer up, you two. We’ll zoom in and zoom out.”

Gwyn smiled for two.

Boyd picked out the green-and-orange ship at the far edge and tapped the instructions into the descent-mode coordinator. While it took over he gave himself up to rubbernecking at the monitor. He had decided that the natives of Tahrlabi lived underground and he hoped to catch sight of them as they popped up to greet the Homingbird.

They were almost down when Gwyn grasped his arm convulsively. “Boyd, look!”

He saw. All the spaceships were stumpier than even fore-shortening would have made them appear. There were no launch pads visible beneath the spaceships, there were no flame buckets. All the spaceships were meters deep in Tahrlabi’s crust. Colored candles stuck in a chocolate birthday cake.

Boyd’s face tightened but his fingers moved swiftly and smoothly to shoot the Homingbird back up. The Homingbird stopped descending, poised, started to ascend. Boyd and Gwyn heard loud slaps against the hull. The Homingbird stopped ascending, poised, started to descend.

The monitor showed them a great spout of lava lipping and lapping at the Homingbird. The clinging solidified and in a linear-g tug of war the lava overcame the Homingbird’s thrust and pulled it down and down and down. The poor old Homingbird shook as though it would tear itself apart as Boyd refused to ease up on the thrust.

In the end he had to cut it off. The air was stiflingly hot and stank of scorched insulation. The Homingbird had sunk three meters into the crust, which had hardened about its base. He was wasting fuel.

With a sinking feeling to match the Homingbird, Boyd scanned the trapped spaceships the Homingbird had joined. There was a blurred vagueness of outline to them. Were they even spaceships? Perhaps they were mere decoys designed only to lure passing vessels such as the Homingbird into range. If so, they had worked.

He grimaced. Time later to worry about that. Time now to put first things first. To save power, he shut down all of the vessel but essential life-systems.

The cabin air grew even stuffier. Sweat beaded on Gwyn’s face.

Boyd unbuckled, got up moving a bit too fast for a man who hadn’t yet got his planet-legs, undogged the hatch to the cargo hold. He tore a fingernail on the ring pull of the unsealer in his haste to break open a crate of hibernating gokdrob seedlings. He carried an armful of vacuum cans back into the cabin, opened them, and stood the seedlings strategically about.

For a few minutes he feared the Bordorg trader had diddled him. Then the seedlings came slowly to life, and with them the atmosphere inside the Homingbird.

Gwyn breathed deeply and smiled gratefully at Boyd.

“Better.”

Boyd nodded, but his face had not lost its tightness. He returned to the console and set himself to make contact with the spaceport—assuming it was a spaceport.

“Interstellar vessel Homingbird calling Tahrlabi control. Come in, Tahrlabi control.”

The warm artificial voice responded at once.

“This is Tahrlabi. Welcome, Homingbird. May you have a happy stay.”

“Happy stay, hell. What do you mean by telling me to land in an area of volcanic activity?”

“You sought permission to land. I welcomed you.”

“Some welcome. Some welcome mat.” Still, the voice was warm and seemed to be genuinely friendly. “Let that pass for the time being. We’ll straighten it out later. Meanwhile, as long as I’m here, let’s do business. What have you got to trade?”

“Nothing.”

Boyd stared openmouthed at the blasphemy. Had he heard right? “What was that you said?”

“Nothing.”

He had heard right and left, in both ears. It was not the cabin heat, which the gokdrob seedlings were dissipating nicely; he was burning up: zero results for all this waste of time.

“Then we’d better straighten it out right now. No use my sticking around. What are you going to do about helping me lift off?”

“Nothing.”

“What was that you—?. Never mind.” He knew he had heard right the first time the second time. “Now listen here, I know my rights. I demand permission to lift off, and all necessary assistance thereto, under intragalactic law.”

“Sorry. No liftoffs.”

Well, there might be emergency conditions he was unaware of calling for the temporary grounding of all spacecraft.

“For how long?”

“Forever.”

* * * *

Once they got past bluster and standfast, the question had to be why.

Boyd put all the reasonableness he could into his voice.

“Why?”

The answer came back with even more reasonableness.

“I have extended you my hospitality. You have accepted it. It would be ungracious of me to withdraw it. It would be unkind of you to renounce it.”

“Hospitality? You mean imprisonment.”

“Imprisonment?” The voice sounded shocked. “Did you feel your ship to be a prison when you were in space?”

“Of course not. But—”

“Then why should it be a prison now?”

“Because you’re immobilizing it.”

“How, immobilizing? Does it not move with me as I move through space?” Editorial we, yes; but planetary I? Local idiom?

“I suppose so. But—”

“There is no profit in talking longer at this point. You will have time to rethink your terms and you will come to see I am right. Meanwhile I am plugging your ship into my power source. From now on you have all the energy you need. However, I must warn you—it is against my law for you to cut the umbilical once I have patched you in. I will sign off for now.”

“Hold on damnit!”

“It’s no use, friend.” This was a new voice breaking in. “We’ve all argued our cases and lost. Tar Baby has solidified its logic around the basis of its thought. You may as well relax and enjoy.”

“That’s right, Homingbird.” Another voice joining in. “Once you touch the sacred surface you can never leave it. Tar Baby can’t understand how anyone could want to leave it. In any case, it won’t let you leave it. You’ve accepted Tar Baby’s welcome and you’re stuck with it.”

There was sympathy in the voices but there was also welcome-to-the-club satisfaction. Boyd steamed.

“Now you tell us. Why didn’t you warn us while we were still in recon orbit?”

“Couldn’t.” It was the first voice again, apologetic. “Whenever a sucker comes along Tar Baby jams all communications but its own.”

Sucker. It was a long time since anyone had called Boyd Moomaw a sucker. His ears burned and he avoided Gwyn’s eyes.

“Tar Baby. Is that a corruption of—what is it?—Tahrlabi?”

“Right.”

Boyd scanned the obsidian matrix holding all of them fast.

“I see what you mean. But I don’t see the natives. When do they come out?”

“They don’t. There aren’t any. There’s just Tar Baby.”

Boyd had just absorbed the fact that Tar Baby was the planet itself, and that it was in effect one piezoelectric crystal unit, when the sinking sun suddenly picked out in glow and shadow cobweb strands running from spaceship to spaceship.

The sight nearly drew a hysterical laugh from Boyd and did start him ranging the scope for a monstrous spider before he saw the catenaries were hawsers and lines of breeches buoys. Sighting a monstrous spider would not have turned him paler.

“Tell us, is there a law against setting foot on Tar Baby?”

“Ah, you’ve spotted the web. We were going to warn you of that, Homingbird. We’ve learned by unhappy example—the poor fellow—that Tar Baby can’t help embedding anything or anyone that touches its surface. That’s why we’ve rigged this aerial network for paying each other visits. Suit up and open your air lock and I’ll shoot you a line.”

* * * *

It was Hapyr Atirk who shot the line. He was a fellow Terran but Boyd and Gwyn couldn’t place the latitude of Atirk’s clothing style in Earth’s past. And Boyd wasn’t sure he liked Atirk’s attitude; Atirk was a young squirt but his smile said he looked on Boyd and Gwyn as younger than himself.

The other member of the welcoming committee was Sizri, a Thubani. As they passed into the Homingbird’s cabin, Sizri showed embarrassment at seeing a Terran woman, and a pregnant one at that. He remained but closed all his sensors throughout the visit.

Boyd made to introduce Gwyn and himself but Atirk, smiling his knowing smile, stopped him.

“Don’t tell me. You’re Boyd Moomaw and Gwyn Vestring, the first of the free traders. You became something of a legend. Back on Terra they wrote ballads and plays about the mysterious disappearance of the Homingbird: Your exploits as traders—or the legend of your exploits—inspired those of us who came later.”

Boyd and Gwyn stared at each other and saw in each other’s eyes they shared the feeling of being mired in madness or nightmare. The cords of his neck swelling and straining, Boyd turned back to Atirk.

“For psych’s sake, man, what are you talking about? We just now got here.”

“That’s right.” Atirk’s smile faded, changing the reading of his face. It was now a smileless knowing. He sighed. “It’ll take some explaining. But one thing you learn here is not to satisfy all your curiosity at once. You have to save some for later. Sitting here we see only the long dry stretches of later. The most immediate thing to talk about is the makeup of Tar Baby. You have to know that in order to survive.”

But Atirk was in no hurry to talk. It was as if he had to roll this moment on his tongue. Gwyn filled in by playing hostess. Sizri, of course, was unresponsive but Atirk did not let that stop him from helping himself to handful after handful of dried thagvo berries. He sighed again—or was that the thagvo berries reconstituting themselves explosively in his mouth? He fixed his gaze on Boyd.

“You asked where the natives are and I said there aren’t any. That doesn’t mean there never were any. There’s evidence a life form did evolve here. When Tar Baby trapped the last spaceship—” apologetic correction—“—the last one before Homingbird, that is; the orange and green spaceship… Let’s see, that was about a year-and-a-half Terran ago. Just a minute; Sizri can tell me the precise date.”

Atirk made to shake Sizri open. Boyd stopped him with a gesture just short of curt.

“Never mind. Save it.”

“Right. Well, in its heavings when it trapped the orange and green spaceship—Sizri’s, by the way—Tar Baby threw up some fossil remains. I caught the fossils on tape before they sank again.”

Atirk produced a pocket tape-projector that hologrammed on astonishingly real image in their midst. Boyd and Gwyn watched three slug-shaped creatures boil in slow motion out of a fire-edged rip in the crust.

Gwyn frowned.

“How do we know it was native to this planet? They might have come from a spaceship Tar Baby swallowed.”

Atirk smiled.

“They might’ve. But I prefer them native for my guess as to how Tar Baby came to be the thinking thing it is.”

He froze the tape a frame before the last of the specimens sank out of sight. He pointed with weary enthusiasm.

“Look at the armored plate. Read the spectroscopic data on the outside of the picture. When we think of armor on a creature we think of horn. But this armored plate’s an assembly of bituminous tubes, each with a spine of antimonial lead. Lead oxide fills the space between the spine and the tube.”

Boyd started.

“Then these things were—”

Atirk wasn’t going to let anyone do him out of the telling.

“—living batteries. See, the spine collects electric current. And where did it get electric current? Notice these temporary quartz-outcroppings in the far corner of the picture. Remember; piezoelectric quartz crystals produce a voltage when subjected to mechanical stress and undergo mechanical stress when subjected to voltage. There’s a hell of a lot of internal groaning in Tar Baby. The damned things plugged into quartz whenever they needed recharging.”

He grinned.

“As for sex life, see here how they could hook up in series or in parallel. As for getting around, look at these rods in the underbelly of the creature; before it got trapped in lava flow it walking on them. Probably had a built-in knee-jerk reflex that kicked each rod backward in its slot as it hit the ground, shoving the whole assembly, forward like a stiff-legged centipede.

“This baby was a two-tonner, having, I’d guess, around a thousand amperage per hour capacity and capable of going six years Terran before needing a recharge.” The picture vanished. Atirk pocketed the player. He shrugged.

* * * *

“I don’t know how long the species roamed Tar Baby before evolution took the next step. Willingly or unwillingly—it doesn’t matter now which—the living batteries gave their minds and bodies to Tar Baby. Tar Baby became one great piezoelectric crystal unit. And that unit said unto itself, ‘Let there be power.’”

Atirk smiled.

“And Tar Baby felt the power, and it was good. And Tar Baby got religion. And that religion is Tar Baby.” The smile faded. “And with reason; Tar Baby has power like you wouldn’t believe.”

Boyd raised an eyebrow.

“For instance?”

Atirk looked sulky, as though he had wanted to save that for later. Then his weary enthusiasm took over again.

“For instance, this crystal unit is powerful enough to cavitate space. Tar Baby can create a pseudo black hole and twist itself—and its primary—out of the universe and back in again.”

He smiled his knowing smile again.

“You’re staring at me. You think I’m kidding—or crazy. Then tell me how Tar Baby and its primary got here—” a nod skyward “—where all the star charts show empty space. I won’t press it. You’ll have a chance to see for yourself. One of these nights you’ll find a new star pattern out there. And some other night another pattern. Tar Baby really gets around.”

The smile faded again.

“From our point of view there’s a bad side effect. I won’t get into the relativistics of spatial cavitation, but e over m does give c². Sooner-than-instantaneous travel. Each time Tar Baby pops out of the universe and back in it’s gone further into the past. That’s what I was trying to tell you earlier—you were before my time and yet I got here first.”

Atirk stood up to leave them with that thought.

Boyd shook his head, trying to take it all in and not wanting to take it in. Even if they managed to tear free they could never go home again.

Atirk shook Sizri open and they departed to their respective homes away from home.

* * * *

The fleet that had lost its fleetness held gams here, just as the ancient sailing ships had allowed their crews to visit back and forth when two vessels fell in with each other in alien seas in the old whaling days on Terra. Homingbird quickly wove itself into the web.

Boyd noticed one spaceship that stood aloof from the web of hawsers and lines.

“What about that one? Why is whoever’s in there so stand-offish? Sulking? Dead? Or is he ostracized?”

It was a stag party at Sizri’s and Sizri was the life of it. Sizri laughed, flapping the wings of his nose in the manner of his kind.

“No one’s in there. It’s a fully-automated ship. Friendly enough, though. It was on its shakedown cruise and its hold was empty when Tar Baby trapped it, so naturally it’s out of things. Now about that lot of vulnyl you want to trade for my srikvi—”

* * * *

In a manner of speaking they took in each other’s laundry. Out of habit and to have something to do with their time they traded. Aside from trading their various recycled foods for the sake of variety, they traded cargoes for the sake of trading. In fact, trading for trading’s sake had become the way of life on Tar Baby.

What with wear and tear, goods in general had grown scarcer, more precious. Homingbird’s novelty and its promise of replenishing the total inventory made it Tar Baby’s busiest captive for the time being.

Boyd had no time to sit and think, and was glad to have no time to sit and think.

It was when he found himself bartering listlessly the second time the same crate of jila that had come to Tar Baby in the Homingbird’s hold and had since been in almost all the other holds that he cried silently, Hold, enough! It shocked him into awareness.

Boyd upped his asking price with a savage suddenness that drove the Aldebarani he had been haggling with out of the Homingbird in a huff and a puff of indignant blue smoke.

Alone now with Gwyn, Boyd braced himself to really look at her for the first time since Tar Baby had trapped them. He saw by the set of her jaw that she had made up her mind not to reproach him, not to show her despair, not to break down. It might have been healthier for her, for both of them, for all three of them, if she had let her feelings out instead of holding in. But that was Gwyn.

Her time was near and he had promised her that their child would be born on Terran soil. She smiled now, meeting his gaze, but he felt that she would never truly forgive him. And he felt something worse—that she would be right never to forgive him.

He felt guilty too that there were no other Terran women among them. There were females of other species and they were kind to her but they were not the same.

But what could he do to make up for letting her down short of lifting off and escaping?

Escaping from Tar Baby’s hold was impossible. They all said so. Many had tried. All had failed.

He slammed the cargo hatch shut on the priceless and useless jila and all the other goods choking the Homingbird’s hold. He stood looking down at the cargo hatch, now flush with the cabin deck. Below the cargo hold was the engine room housing all Homingbird’s thrust, locked in Tar Baby’s crust.

Maybe, just maybe…

* * * *

He called the Aldebarani back. The Aldebarani got the jila at less than the original bid price, in exchange for a handful of ghir. The Aldebarani examined the jila suspiciously, then buoyed the crate away quickly before Boyd could change his mind.

It went against Boyd’s grain to strike bad bargains but beginning with this trade Boyd took losses and ill-hidden scorn with a wild zest. Always he bartered more for less, giving ten fat kilos of, say, vulnyl for a microscopic milligram of, say, srikvi.

If Gwyn wondered, she said nothing, only set her jaw harder and went on making ready for the third member of the Homingbird’s crew.

In spite of the tendency of the others to dawdle, to stretch out, to make a Japanese tea ceremony out of a trading session, Boyd made rapid headway. At those prices no one could go wrong and no one dallied over a deal—there was always someone else waiting to snap it up.

But when the cargo hold was one-fourth empty his plan threatened to hit a snag. If the Spican twinsome had their way the Homingbird’s hold seemed doomed to stay three-fourths full, unless Boyd jettisoned his cargo—but that would only alert Tar Baby.

The snag came up at a general meeting. All but the automated spaceship attended in person. The meeting took place inside a Vegan vessel because it was the largest. The Spican twinsome had the floor and the wall. They had lately lost a valuable load in transit when a line snapped and the lot plunged to the surface and Tar Baby swallowed it whole.

“We propose eliminating the tedious and dangerous business of transferring goods from ship to ship. Everyone knows what everyone has. There is no need to unstow stock. We move that there be simply the exchanging of scrip.”

Boyd shot to his feet.

“That sounds good. But what are we going to do with the time and trouble we save? Isn’t the whole rationale for this stupid business to keep us busy?”

There was much more on both sides but the sentiment slowly but surely swung Boyd’s way. The Spican held out, then split with itself. At last the recalcitrant half made it unanimous.

Sweating to beat the birth deadline and frightened by the close call, Boyd now made offers no one could refuse. Even so, the hold failed to empty out as swiftly as he had hoped. The others knew they were here forever; he could push them only so fast.

In a flash of inspiration he staked the automated spaceship to much of the bulkiest of his slower-moving stuff. It was pathetically grateful to get into the swim. Boyd had the feeling, though, that if his plan went wrong and he had to stick around he would find it as stiff a competitor as the others.

* * * *

At last the hold was empty enough. At last he could tell Gwyn what he was up to.

Her jaw loosened and her mouth trembled. She felt light as she ran heavily into his arms. The unborn child that had come between them bound them together with its kick.

Gwyn’s suit was a tight fit but they thought it best to suit up. Even if the lava seal about the Homingbird’s base were perfect some of Tar Baby’s atmosphere might be trapped in the space around the rocket motor.

The smile Boyd had let Gwyn see as he climbed down into that trader’s nightmare, a nearly empty hold, became a rictus. Careful not to touch the umbilical Tar Baby had fastened to the Homingbird, Boyd lowered himself through the service hatchway, then through the inner and outer valves of the emergency hatch.

Careful not to touch Tar Baby’s surface, Boyd hung onto the bottom rung and played his lamp around. Blocking the nuclear ticking from his mind, he hung there till he had made sure the Homingbird’s last burn had kept lava from clogging the tubes. When he climbed back up he could give Gwyn a smile smile.

She helped him rig tackles. The service hatch was too narrow to pass the motor through. Boyd lasered a larger hole in the deck-bulkhead between cargo hold and engine compartment and they lifted the resultant doughnut out and shoved it to one side. Boyd attached the hook to the hoisting eye of the motor and drew the self-locking hoist taut. It would be close. If and when the motor cleared the cargo deck the tackle would be chock-a-block.

Boyd carefully lasered the motor free of its mounting. Gwyn pressed the power button and at the lowest speed hoisted the motor while Boyd took up the slack in the flexible cables and tubing. Boyd welded the motor into the new opening and filled in around it with bites of the doughnut to make the new bottom spacetight. Now the cargo hold was the new engine room.

He cut a new hole in the deck, welded the service hatch—the hole in the doughnut—into it, swung back down into the old engine room, and twisting around on a bosun’s chair, used the laser to slice the hull through and through just above the lava line. Now a truncated but spaceworthy Homingbird rested freely on the cut rim—ready for liftoff.

He lashed the laser in place beneath the cut, aiming it at the umbilical, and left it waiting for him to switch it on by remote control. He took one last look around, pulled himself back up into the new engine room, dogged down the hatch. He and Gwyn sealed themselves inside the cabin.

While Homingbird computed its new weight and adjusted itself Boyd carefully webbed Gwyn in, then himself. He patted her hand and smiled. Even if they never got back to the Earth of their own era, what a trading advantage they would have on an earlier Earth!

Homingbird gave the green light. Boyd said a silent goodbye and good riddance to Tar Baby, and a mute farewell to its captives. He switched Homingbird over to internal power, fired the laser to cut the umbilical, pressed for liftoff.

Homingbird rose, dripping festoons of hawsers and lines. Boyd looked in the monitor and laughed to see Tar Baby lick up futilely at the Homingbird. Then they were shuddering up through Tar Baby’s atmosphere into a wonderful free stillness. They had made it!

* * * *

All that remained was the aborted jump to Terra. As Boyd switched on the astrogate and brought a familiar-looking array of stars into view for real-time register with Homingbird’s inertial-guidance log, the stars vanished.

For less than an eyeblink the stars swam as in a whirlpool, trailing watery streaks of light as in a time exposure. Then there came a blackness beyond that blackness which is the absence of light. In this blackness Tar Baby’s primary remained the only light, not so much accenting the blackness as lost in it.

Boyd stared. He saw now what Hapyr Atirk had meant by spatial cavitation. They were outside the universe.

With nothing to lose, Boyd pressed the jump button anyway. Nothing happened. Homingbird was stuck in Tar Baby’s local space as it had been stuck in Tar Baby.

There was no way but back. But Boyd was slow in returning the Homingbird to recon orbit and even slower in acknowledging Tar Baby’s signal.

Tar Baby sounded anxious.

“Are you all right, Homingbird?”

Boyd winced to see Gwyn looking pale and sweaty in spite of her reassuring smile. Was this latest shock bringing on premature labor?

“Are you all right, Homingbird?”

“Well enough.”

“Ah. Then welcome back to Tahrlabi. You may land two ship’s lengths primary-ward of your old spot.”

Boyd grimaced.

“No, thanks.”

They had only this one card to play. By staying in recon orbit Homingbird remained a reproach to Tar Baby, stood out as a relatively free denial of Tar Baby’s sacred hospitality.

It was Tar Baby’s turn to take long.

“Why not?”

“Your surface is sacred, right?”

“Right.” How smug could a planet get?

“Well, so is our planet’s to us.”

“Oh? Can that be?”

“It damned well is. So much so, that we were returning to Earth because my mate is with child and I have sworn that my child would be born on Terran soil.”

The jealous warmth of Tar Baby’s response surprised him.

“Why is your home planet’s soil so holy to you?”

“You have no soil, so you wouldn’t know.”

“Behold!”

Looking down, Boyd watched a pyrotechnical display, a vast pattern of scintillating iridescence on the dark glassy hemisphere.

“Can your home planet’s soil perform wonders?”

Boyd frowned. Talc? Mud packs? He shook his head with an angry smile. This was too serious. Aureomycin, streptomycin, terramycin? More like it but still not good enough. The Homingbird passed over the field of trapped ships. Of course. Life.

“Earth gives rise to life. You swallow life.”

Again Tar Baby took long.

“If I fix it so your child is born on Terran soil will you acknowledge my holiness?” A strange note had crept in. “Is it a deal?”

So Tar Baby had been eavesdropping on its captives as they whiled away the time of their captivity! The note, strange to Tar Baby, was familiar to Boyd. It was the sound of a trader convinced of his own trickiness. Boyd ate such traders for breakfast. Quick, before Tar Baby could change its mind. He kept the smile out of his own voice.

“It’s a deal.”

A sudden light on the panel caught Boyd’s eye. The Homingbird’s inertial-guidance log had gone mad. Homingbird, as far as Boyd could tell by eyeball, remained in orbit just as it had been. But it was also moving in directions the log could not handle.

Timelessly a shimmer grew in the middle of the blackness. Now, while Homingbird froze in orbit, the shimmer became a ghostly skein. Could that small thing be the universe? Once you were outside the universe you were everywhere. You surrounded the universe. You could touch it where you willed.

Tar Baby reached out, touched Earth. Tar Baby’s local space followed the thread of a wavicle into the skein.

The Solar System filled the monitor, then Earth alone. Because he saw what he wanted most Boyd was afraid to let himself enjoy the sight too much. Gwyn, Boyd saw, felt the same. She closed her eyes, tears squeezed out.

Boyd brought Earth’s surface and Tar Baby’s as close as he could in the monitor. The two were one at one point.

Holding itself delicately in a state of masslessness, relative to the rest of the universe, Tar Baby touched one of the rolling hills of Earth.

Boyd’s throat swelled with all the emotion he could not express. He longed to land the Homingbird right now and open the airlock and breathe the fresh air of Earth. But that gate between two worlds looked a shimmering almost immaterial thing. Besides, Homingbird seemed frozen in orbit.

Now the resolution improved, as if Tar Baby had got them in phase. Boyd saw a startled cave bear lumber away.

Again Hapyr Atirk had proved right. Twisting in and out of the universe, Tar Baby moved back through time.

Was marooning Homingbird and its crew in Earth’s past the trickery Tar Baby’s tone had hinted at?

Well, being stuck in Earth’s prehistoric past beat being stuck on Tar Baby any time. This was hardly the Garden of Eden, but it was life, it was freedom. He had the sudden feeling of reliving something. Was this how it had all started on Earth?

Wondering, he awaited Tar Baby’s signal freeing the Homingbird to land on Earth.

But Tar Baby gave no such signal. Instead Boyd watched an arm of lava reach out and scoop in several hundred cubic yards of earth.

Then Tar Baby broke contact. Earth, then the Solar System, diminished in the monitor. The universe shrank to a ghostly skein out of which Tar Baby’s local space had followed the thread of a wavicle. The blackness beyond blackness. Then the watery lights, unwhirling. They were back in the universe, though the star patterns showed them to be in another part of it. They had lost Earth forever.

* * * *

Their child was a girl.

Tar Baby had the decency to wait. Only after Sizri opened his sensors and left, the last of their fellow captives to pay a breeches-buoy call on the proud parents, did Tar Baby signal Homingbird.

“Remember our deal.”

Boyd smiled. He had to admire the tricky bastard. The child had been born on Terran soil. Tar Baby had packed the several hundred cubic yards of earth down hard with great tamping wallops. And here, two ship’s lengths from the buried stump of its old self, the Homingbird had landed and stood now and forever on Terran soil.

“I acknowledge your holiness.”

“It is good.”

Boyd wondered how long Tar Baby would think so. There were more roots than the new umbilical Tar Baby had tied to Homingbird. Already bits of green had broken up through the packed earth.

The soil held lichen and molds and insects and bacteria. The lichen would begin the process, the acid in its root-like fibers dissolving out of the lava rock the minerals the lichen lived on. The lava would grow spongy, hold water. The water would freeze, the rock would crack, the soil would deepen, spread. In time all Tar Baby would live as did this handful of dirt. Many generations from now Tar Baby would teem with life. And see who would own Tar Baby then!

Meanwhile…

Boyd signaled his potential son-in-law, Hapyr Atirk.

“Be interested in a nulvuv-jila trade?”

“Be right over.”