"I am," Ramstan said. "And you haven't proved, can't prove, that you aren't."
"What about the Vwoordha?"
"I cannot see into their true nature any deeper than I can see into yours."
"Have faith in me."
Ramstan laughed and said, "There is only One in whom we should have faith. And that One, as you know, depends upon us and is out to kill us, though It doesn't know it. You must be desperate if you make an appeal like that."
"I'm never desperate. I can wait."
"For what? For whom? For how long? Do you think that in the succeeding Pluriverse you'll find anyone different from me? And, if you do, that one will use you solely for his ends."
"You're not?"
"I am capable of evil and have done evil. But my ends now are not evil. Being not-evil doesn't necessarily make me good. It doesn't matter. I have decided. I will not change my mind."
"The index of a rigid mind and rotten nature," the glyfa said.
"Your traps are sprung, and I'm still free."
"No one is truly free."
"But I know that I am."
"You know nothing."
"You're wrong. The one thing that I truly know is that I know nothing. Therefore, I do not know nothing. Good-bye, glyfa. I won't be seeing or listening to you again."
"You can't stop me from talking and you hearing!" the glyfa cried in the mother's voice. "So much for free will!"
The piteous tone in the voice vised his heart. But he said, "The free will consists in ignoring your voice.
He turned and walked swiftly from his quarters. On the way to the bridge, he said, "Shiyai! Were you eavesdropping?"
"Yes," his father's voice said. "Ramstan, what now? When you rejected the glyfa, were you accepting us?"
He might need the Vwoordha. He said, "For the moment. What I do after . . . if . . . we kill the bolg depends on what you do now."
"We will earn your faith. The glyfa doesn't understand that that is how you get others to have faith in you."
"It's had long enough to learn how," Ramstan said. He thought, And so have you.
The minutes, the hours, marched slowly by strewing flowers of anxiety. The tension became heavier, as if it were air compressed under a slowly driving piston in a cylinder. It strummed in the chests of some like a fine but strong wire being pulled at both ends and in others like the heaviness preceding a heart attack. Stomachs were twisting like Möbius strips or bobbing like apples in a tub.
In all minds was the image of the Tolt ship exploding.
"If the bolg fires soon at a great distance, we can avoid the missiles," Ramstan said to Tenno. "I don't think that the missiles are self-propelled and -guided. They're like shotgun pellets discharged at a general area. If the bolg waits until we're close, we can try to evaporate them with lasers. Our success will depend on how many are shot within a certain time.
"However, the bolg may not have any missiles as yet. Or it may have only a few, in which case we may destroy or evade them.
"The Vwoordha think that our lasers and atomic bombs will not damage its surface at all. They think, though they don't know, that the bolg's shell is made out of the same material as the glyfa's. We'll launch four warhead- missiles which will be programmed to land within an area of 0.1 kilometer. At the same time, we'll concentrate all ten forward lasers on another nearby area not more than 0.1 meter in diameter."
"If these fail to wound it . . . I mean, damage it?"
"We alaraf. Maybe. I may decide on another move. It'll depend on the situation."
The bridge personnel were tense, but a component of their tightness was not, Ramstan thought, caused by the approaching conflict. They had accepted him again as their captain but only during this emergency. He did not doubt that, once it was over, he would be relieved of his command and arrested. Regulations required that, though, just now, regulations were suspended. That they were thinking of this was betrayed in their faces, their voices, and subtle body movements.
To relieve some of this tension and to occupy some time, Ramstan told them about the sigils and how he had traveled roundabout back to the Vwoordha.
"Then," Tenno said, "that means that the Vwoordha can still get away."
"Yes."
"Even if we die, they don't. Neither does the glyfa."
Ramstan did not reply. He ordered food for the hungry. He stayed on the bridge and chewed down half a sandwich and drank a big glass of milk. His stomach would tolerate no more and almost did not accept that.
Doctor Hu called Ramstan from the morgue.
"I've completed the dissection. Commodore Benagur died of a massive heart attack. Do you want the medical details now?"
"No. I'll read your report later," Ramstan said. He thought, If there is a later.
He paced back and forth, his arms behind him, hands locked, shoulders and back bent forward. His reflection in the only mirror on the bridge looked like a weird bird, one that Tenniel might have drawn for Through the Looking Glass if Carroll had thought of such. The "Worry Bird"? After that, though he continued pacing, he walked with shoulders and back straight and his hands swinging by his sides. It would not do for the crew to see him so deeply concerned.
After a few more turns around the bridge, he stopped. "Tenno, I'm not going to use the weapons unless we're attacked. The Vwoordha have told me that they might not affect the bolg in the slightest. Why awaken the sleeping giant?"
Tenno looked at the viewplate showing the bolg.
"Napoleon's words, more or less, right? Well, it's not China, but I think his advice is appropriate."
"It's possible that its detectors aren't on," Ramstan said. "It's not ready for action. It's recharging. Why should it expend even a minimum of energy on powering detectors? It's invulnerable. I mean that its exterior is. Even a very large asteroid would do no more than bump it off its orbit, and it must have swept space far enough to notice anything like that. As for us, it may think us negligible . . . well, I don't mean that it thinks, it surely is as brainless and as mechanical as a virus . . . what I mean is that its reaction mechanisms, its tropisms and antitropisms, would not make it react to us. It might have stored data about us to track us down when Grrymguurdha has been raked with missiles. But I suspect that it went into a sort of hibernation when it got into its orbit. We'll ease up on it and see if we can sneak by it."
"Good thinking," Shiyai said in his father's voice.
Both the bolg and al-Buraq were on the nightside of the planet now. The shadow of the dark world beneath made a crescent on the bolg. One of the markings which looked like the eye of a skull was bright; the other, unseen. Almost, the bolg seemed to be winking at them as if it was enjoying a grim jest and wanted even its victims to share in it.
It was rotating as Earth's moon turned, just enough to keep one side towards the planet. This had been calculated for, and so al-Buraq moved towards the vast opening of one vast horn in a path which would intercept it. The hours went by. The opening, so tiny at first, swelled larger and larger. Al-Buraq, in accordance with the program, decelerated. It would not do to enter the horn at such a velocity that ship would smash herself against the inside or have to slow down so quickly that her crew would be splashed against the bulkheads.
The energy from the deceleration would be detectable, of course. Ramstan hoped that it would not cause the bolg to react.
Its face was as cold and impersonal as that of Earth's moon and it looked as lifeless as the moon or a mechanical object, an artifact. But it was neither a thing of never-alive matter nor a thing made by sentient mind and hands. It was alive, though it surely had no more consciousness than a bacterium or a virus or an antibody. Functionally, it was an antibody produced by a living organism to protect it from destructive bacteria or cancer.
The horn was made of the same dark substance as the body. It rose at a right angle to the surface to a height of 999.9 kilometers. The diameter at the muzzle was 3.33 kilometers; at the base, 333.3 kilometers. Not even the Vwoord
ha knew what force expelled the missiles from it, but they thought that it was an electromagnetic field. The missiles must be made by energy-matter conversion in matrices inside the bolg. Though the thing had a surface area of almost 531 million square kilometers, its intake of solar energy would not be enough for it to make many projectiles in a short time. But perhaps it did not use solar energy.
As al-Buraq neared the expanding hole at the tip of the horn, she applied gasjet deceleration instead of the energy used at higher velocities. Presently, ship was moving just enough to match the pace of the slowly turning bolg. The hole was illumined by the sun on the side away from the planet; the light formed a crescent. The rest was darkness.
More gasjetting turned ship's nose downwards until her longitudinal axis was lined up with that of the horn.
This was perhaps the most nerve-ratcheting time so far. For all Ramstan knew, the bolg had been waiting for this. At any second, millions of the missiles might shoot out of that muzzle. Ship's radar might give a second's notice. Even though at this point of entry, al-Buraq could still use alaraf drive and though al-Buraq was programmed to go alaraf immediately on detection of missiles, she might not be quick enough. Ship and crew would die as the Popacapyu had died.
"I hope the bolg discharged the last of its missiles at the Tolt," Ramstan muttered.
There was no use waiting. He gave the order -- the electromechanical communication system was not necessary now -- and al-Buraq, nudged by small spurts of gasjets, moved down the hole.
... 32 ...
"As easy as slipping milk down a baby's throat," Tenno said.
"As easy as a minnow entering a shark's mouth," Toyce said.
Ramstan said, "Quiet! No talking until I say so."
On a viewplate and on the radar and laser screens was the three-tiered houseship of the Vwoordha. It shone in the sun and was behind al-Buraq by a kilometer. Its hull would not be pierced by the missiles. However, it would be hurled backwards at such a velocity that its occupants would be spread out paper-thin against the walls.
The houseship plunged into the darkness. The Vwoordha were fully committed. Ramstan had not been sure that they would be.
The detector plates and screens showed pictures of the hollow. The sides were as smooth as a bull's horn and opened out downwards. Then the entrance to the sphere was ahead of them. Al-Buraq passed slowly through it. Now the detectors probed the interior of the bolg. Unlike the smooth exterior surface, the inside surface was crowded with regular rows of stalagmite-shaped structures. These ranged in height from 0.5 centimeter to 66.6 kilometers. The arrangement was in no sequence that could be figured out as yet. Sometimes, there would be sixty of the tall structures and sometimes several hundred of the tiny ones beside those. Sometimes, one or two or three tall structures would be flanked by thousands of the shorter ones.
The other phenomena so far detected were not in the visible spectrum. Some were in the ultra-violet; some, in the infrared. They shot out from a sphere that hung in the center of the sphere, a dark interior moon of the body of the bolg. They were of various shapes as they flickered off and on: lanceolate, pyramidal, tongue-like, some rodlike with balls forming at their slender tips. The "slender" was relative, since their diameter was probably approximately three kilometers. The ball hanging in the center was large enough to be an asteroid, 135.791 kilometers in diameter. It was rotating at its equator at 379.17 kilometers per hour.
The tec-op said, "Captain! Something else!"
Ramstan looked at the indicated screen. Far below the lip of the hole through which they had just emerged was a bulk as big as a mountain. The tec-op covered it with finer-tuned detectors, narrowed down the field, and several thousand of the larger spherical projectiles were clear on the screen. At Ramstan's order, the tec-op broadened the screen. The entire pile was larger than Mount Everest; it was 100 kilometers wide and 12 kilometers high.
Other screens showed similar-sized piles around or below the other five openings.
"The bolg isn't turning swiftly enough to make centrifugal force there," Ramstan said. "What's keeping the missiles from floating off?"
The tec-op said, "There's a weak e-m field there, sir."
Ramstan told him to focus on the edge of the nearest pile. The scanners moved slowly along the circumference, then stopped at an order from Ramstan. A tiny bead had suddenly dropped onto the pile and bounced off onto the smooth floor between two stalagmitoids. Within two minutes more it began putting on layers. Meanwhile, other beads fell and started to go through the same process.
The instruments indicated a tremendous amount of energy concentrated in narrow fields.
Ramstan thought that eventually the missiles would be lifted by e-m force to the hollow horn and moved up it. When the bolg was ready, it would propel these out of the horn. But to hit even in the general direction of its targets must require some directing force. Perhaps that was in the missiles themselves. It did not seem likely. Yet, the missiles functioned with great efficiency.
"Head for the globe in the center," he said. "That must be the heart of the thing, the main generator or converter."
Shiyai spoke in his father's voice. "Ramstan. What do you plan?"
"We'll place all our warhead-missiles around the central globe. We'll set them up to be activated by radio signal. We'll go to the exterior then, and we'll set the warheads off by signal transmitted through the horn opening. If that doesn't do it, then I don't know what we'll do."
"Captain!"
The tec-op pointed at the colors and numbers flickering wildly on his screens. "There's a hell of a lot of energy out there!"
There was the entrances to the horns. The piles beneath them were moving, their individual parts rising toward the holes. Even as he watched, the mountains disappeared. But more spheres, small and large, were forming.
"It's a trap!" Toyce said.
Ramstan did not bother to rebuke her. He was very shaken himself. He did not think that the bolg had a mind. Therefore, it had not deliberately waited until the vessels were within it. It was their misfortune not to have entered much sooner. They had come in just before the bolg, acting on whatever commands it obeyed, was moving its first loads to the tips of the horns. The next loads would be deposited behind the first. That would take a long time, but it might be too late for the ships to get out. All the holes would be jammed with missiles.
He gave the order. Al-Buraq and its companion curved slowly around and headed for the nearest hole. The maneuver did not take long since they were going so slowly. But when the vessels entered the horn, the detectors confirmed that the tip was no longer open. Their passage was blocked.
It was not necessary to announce what had happened. Every face on the bridge said, dumbly, "What do we do now?"
The warhead-missiles could be sent against the pile. They would vaporize some of it but not enough. The lasers could then set about drilling a tunnel through the fused shell. But their power would give out long before the work was done.
Even if they could get out, they would have left the bolg undamaged. It would continue to stock its projectiles.
Shiyai said gently in his mother's voice, "We three can sit here until the way is clear. We will not run out of food and water. But if we shared with you, we would."
"And if we stay here until we starve to death, then you can come in and get the glyfa," Ramstan said.
"That mind of yours! No, we did not plot this. The turn of events is as much a surprise to us as to you. Well, almost. Having lived much longer than you, we can figure out probabilities much better. We knew that this might happen. Nevertheless, we took the chance. And lost."