wonder what he really is.”
“Maybe he’s just a pet,” Kerwin commented. “He acts like it, the way he follows people around.”
“What is the meaning of this dark spherical shape? Is he trying to mimic the battlezone projection?”
“Either that or he wants to go bowling again,” Rail muttered. In response to Ganun’s look of puzzlement, he added, “A Cro-Magnon sport. It involves problems in velocity and mass.”
“Mass,” Ganun murmured. “I wonder at its true mass. I don’t suppose you’ve ever measured it?”
“Not accurately. He can vary that as well also. When we were doing this bowling sport he was a modest weight, but at other times he cannot be moved. Then he becomes light as air, as he was a moment ago.”
“I can accept the levitation and all the rest.” The Captain was leaning back in his command chair and staring at the floating enigma. “Alteration of mass is something else. He cannot be changing his mass. There must be another explanation for the phenomenon. Perhaps he is moving quantities of himself between the here-and-now and someplace else.”
“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard,” said Kerwin before he could stop himself.
It didn’t upset Ganun. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. We know next to nothing about it, my cursory examination notwithstanding. Consider that we still do not know something as basic as whether or not it is alive or simply a clever device.”
“I lean toward device,” said Rail.
“Why?”
“Some things not even a unique lifeform is capable of.”
“You are holding back, goodness knows. Explain yourself. I am under attack by not one but two different war fleets. I have no time for guessing games.”
“It’s just that—well, watch.” Rail moved beneath the bowling ball sphere. “Izmir, take a hike. Just a short one.”
Without responding verbally, the globe expanded into a glistening sphere shot through with streaks of bright yellow.
“That’s impressive,” said Ganun.
“No, it’s not impressive at all,” Rail argued. “What’s going to happen next should be impressive.”
It was. It caused the most dedicated crew members to look away from their stations and stare.
The blue-eyed glowing sphere that was Izmir drifted slowly over to the viewport. Without hesitation it moved through the transparency, halting ten feet beyond the ship’s hull. It hung there in the void, unaffected, floating alongside the ship.
“You’re right,” Ganun whispered. “That’s very impressive.”
“I don’t have the slightest idea how he does it,” Rail said, “but it just doesn’t strike me as the sort of thing any lifeform, no matter how bizarre or adaptable, should be able to do. It’s obvious he doesn’t require the presence of an atmosphere. That much I’ve known for some time.” He walked over to the port.
“That’s enough, Izmir. Come back inside.”
Obediently, the bubble repeated its trick, floating back into the war room through the solid viewport. Two members of the crew rose to check the window on infinity.
“Not a scratch, goodness knows,” one of them reported. “No warping; no change at all.”
“He went through it like an open door.” Ganun couldn’t take his eyes off Izmir.
“Yeah, he does it all the time.” Rail sounded as much bored as bemused. “Solid walls, floors, anything. I’m sure it must be related to his shape-changing talent. Obviously he’s malleable on the molecular level, perhaps even the atomic. He can adjust his space. Once he even slipped through my body. I didn’t feel experience a thing, but it sure made me queasy. He does the trick with fields as well as solid obstacles.”
Ganun was nodding. “Impossible to cage or restrain. Also impossible to lock out. Our weapons people will be very interested.”
“Fortunately he has shown no inclination to harm anyone or anything,” Rail went on. “I’ve tried, believe me, to get him to defend us against the Oomemians, but he won’t. Whether it’s a conscious decision or not I’ve no way of knowing, though he did once assume the shape of an emerald trapezoid and drift through an Oomemian assassin’s head, which upset him sufficiently so that he forgot about trying to shoot me.”
“This is quite beyond me. It’s clear that we’re dealing here with new physics and potentialities that no one has thought of. No wonder your people as well as the Oomemians are willing to send entire fleets in pursuit of him. How do you control him?”
“He seems willing to listen to just about anyone, but I think he has a special feeling for me. Don’t ask why. I’ve tried to decipher his babble, but I’m beginning to doubt it has anything to do with speech. It may just be some kind of involuntary electronic emission.”
“I’d take you bowling,” Kerwin told the glowing sphere, “but we don’t have any pins.”
The blue eye shifted to stare down at him. It was extremely disconcerting and Kerwin found that sensation disconcerting in itself because there was no reason for him to be uncomfortable. He was unsettled nonetheless, perhaps because of the ability Izmir had just demonstrated.
“He’s fond of this bowling, you say.” Ganun looked thoughtful. “He likes to drift through solid surfaces. What else does he like to do? Move worlds out of their orbits?” He glanced at Rail. “I wonder if you have any idea what you’ve been wandering around with this past year. I wonder if any of us really suspect what we’re onto here.”
Kerwin had turned his attention to the battle sphere. “If the Oomemians end up winning, we’ll never have the chance to find out.”
“True enough, young cousin. The Oomemians can be disagreeable. However, we are neutrals.”
“That doesn’t mean a thing when Izmir’s involved,” Rail reminded him. “I really think believe they’d risk open war with House and its allies to get him back.”
“After that little demonstration I doubt nothing.” The captain nodded toward the viewport, which was still being studied by the disbelieving crew members. “At this point, nothing would surprise me.”
He was wrong, of course, but not for the reasons he imagined.
11
The appearance of the Oomemian fleet complicated the Prufillians’ pursuit, much as Ganun had suspected it would. By the time another day had passed, both fleets had drawn nearer to the fleeing House vessel, yet neither could approach within firing range because doing so would upset the delicate tactical balance being maintained between them. They were compelled to keep their distance from each other. The number of ships involved and the velocities at which they were maneuvering made Kerwin dizzy just thinking about it. He began to understand why interspatial combat was too complex to leave to mere organic brains.
Meanwhile, the computers did battle in rarified number-land and did not complain.
Ganun’s crew occupied themselves with games and recorded entertainment, reading, and various other recreational activities as they awaited the outcome of the mechanical battle. It still struck Kerwin as unreasonable and he said as much to Rail, not wishing to risk Ganun’s contempt a second time.
“It’s the way things are done,” the Prufillian explained.
“Hell of a way to run a war.”
“A typical Cro-Magnon perspective.”
Kerwin lowered his voice, tried not to sound like he was pleading. “Look, couldn’t you call me and my friends humans, too? Please? I mean, I don’t want to get into a fight about it. Not with these people. This is their ship, besides which they’re all bigger than me, but I’m tired of being addressed like something out of an anthropology text.”
“I am sorry apologetic, Kerwin, but consider that this is quite strange weird upsetting for me also. I do not wish to get involved in an interevolutionary squabble.”
“What do you think’s going to happen?”
“If something does not happen soon,” and Rail gestured with a thin green arm across the floor of the common room to where Miranda was
trying on two different pairs of shoes, “your female companion is going to perish of boredom.”
“Yeah, it must be tough for her. Nobody’s paying any attention to her except Seeth, and that’d be rough on anyone.” He didn’t see his younger brother and suspected he must be practicing his alien instrument in the privacy of his own small cabin. The soundproofing on the ship was excellent.
“But I meant happen to us.”
“The possibilities are limited,” said Rail thoughtfully. “If the Oomemians emerge the winners, they will take Izmir with them and execute the rest of us. If the Prufillians win, I don’t think any of us will come to any harm. Prufillia has strong rules concerning the treatment of aborigines.”
“I think I preferred Cro-Magnons.”
“Sorry. As for myself, I will either be tried and executed or decorated and enriched, no matter what efforts Ganun exerts on my behalf. Much will depend on the social status and personal politics of the fleet commander. If we succeed in reaching House’s sphere of influence they will doubtless, as Ganun explained, send out a fleet of their own. We will then find ourselves in the midst of a multiple battle, because I do not think the Oomemians, at least, will give up.”
“All because of him.” Kerwin sighed and pointed to where Izmir had transformed himself into three interconnected transparent poles, within which streaks of lightning were coursing up and down like so many markers on a video game.
“Yes. Because of him. Because he can do things that are impossible, like migrating without harm through the hull of a vessel traveling in slipspace.”
“You know what would be funny? If, after all this, whoever ends up with him can’t derive a single useful thing from studying him.”
“The possibility had occurred to me also. As I’ve said, my main reason for taking him was not in hopes of learning from him but to deny such learning to the Oomemians.”
That’s when the alarms started singing throughout the ship. For the first time in days there was some real activity above and beyond an exclamation of delight when someone won a gambling bet. Ganus’s people could move fast when they had to. Kerwin and his companions rushed to the war room.
Ganun himself was everywhere—giving orders, checking stations, absorbing and relaying information, reconfirming statistics. They caught up to him as he was bent over a complex, curving console manned by three high-ranking crew members. “Gracious no, that’s impossible. Check it again. Are you certain?”
“Yes, sir.”
Kerwin turned as Seeth burst, shouting, into the war room. “Hey, all you hairy relations! I just came from the dorsal observation dome and you ain’t never gonna guess what I saw!”
“Not now, Seeth!” Kerwin was trying to figure out what was going on, his brain and headset translator both working overtime to make sense of the multiple conversations taking place around him. “Nobody cares what you saw.”
But he was wrong. Everyone did care. And in a minute they all saw for themselves as it hove into view outside the main port.
It got real quiet in the war room. Quieter than Kerwin had ever heard it. Nobody moved except Izmir, who drifted along the ceiling, indifferent as always.
Miranda finally put her hands on her hips, staring out the port like everyone else. “Oh great. Now what? This means, like, it’s gonna take us a little longer to get home, right?”
There was a spaceship outside the port. Its approach hadn’t been noted by any of the ultrasophisticated detection devices Ganun’s vessel was equipped with. It had simply appeared, giving no time for evasive action, even though deep inside Kerwin sensed escape would have been impossible anyway. Whatever method of propulsion it employed, it was obviously radically different from the drive used by the Prufillians and the others. Perhaps it didn’t even travel so much as simply appear. Kerwin had a hundred questions about it, and he was not alone.
“How big is that thing?” Ganun was whispering to his technicians.
The ranking engineer began spouting figures that were more than a little irrelevant. The visitor was beyond easy comprehension. Words like huge, monstrous, and vast simply did not apply.
Seeth’s comments were supported by observation if not statistics. “I’d say it’s about the size of China, man. Or maybe Brazil. Geography wasn’t my best subject. I was more into auto shop.”
The flanks of the irregular object were alive with lights. There were no visible weapons or engines, nothing else to mar the smooth metallic surface. It was just a great gray shape floating in space; an illuminated moon.
“I knew it.” Miranda let out a tired sigh, looked resigned. “It’s, like, my own fault for getting mixed up with people who can’t do anything right.”
“Sweethips, nobody’s responsible for where we is right now,” Seeth told her. “I don’t usually spend my nights watching aliens war, you know?”
“Liar.” Kerwin looked back into the war room, toward the holographic battle sphere drifting in front of Ganun’s command chair.
The elaborately deployed Prufillian and Oomemian fleets were rapidly coalescing, abandoning their strategic alignments in favor of compact, easily defensible formations. The unexpected arrival of the gigantic alien vessel had made garbage of days of intricate maneuvering.
“Do you think we’re about to be attacked?” Rail nodded toward the newcomer.
Ganun stared at the gigantic starhip. It was staying close without visible expenditure of energy.
“Neither your people nor the Oomemians are fools. They will continue to track us but they won’t come close so long as that is around. I don’t think they’ll attack unless they have some idea of who or what they might be attacking.”
“I don’t think they’ll keep too close, sir. Have a look at this.” The chief technician adjusted his instruments.
Now everyone faced the battle sphere. Surrounding the minuscule green dot that represented the ship from House were six of the vast gray shapes, including the one visible through the port. Taken together, the six ships might enclose a volume as great as the Earth itself.
Rail swallowed. “Who could build such a craft, far less six of them?”
“Only one people. I never expected in my time to see one of their ships. No one has ever seen more than one. Yet there are six. The Isotat.”
The lights fluttered in the war room, and for an instant Kerwin was certain they were under attack. He crouched behind a table. Miranda shook out her hair and fumbled boredly through her purse until she found her sunglasses.
Hovering in the center of the room, and generating as much radiance as several large spotlights, were two globes—each six feet in diameter. Faint pink lines crisscrossed their surfaces and appeared to move within. Each globe trailed two dozen three-foot-long pale pink tentacles from their cream-colored undersides. They had no eyes, mouths or other visible external features. Yet one could sense what was front and back, what constituted top and bottom.
“Sorry for the intrusion,” the nearer globe said in a stentorian toie. Everyone in the war room clapped their hands to their outraged ears.
“Sorry for the loudness,” exclaimed the other globe more quietly. “You must be careful,” he informed his spherical companion. “These are simple minds equipped with the simplest of detectors.”
“In the excitement I had forgotten. I apologize.” To everyone’s astonishment, the first globe executed a slight bow.
It was a pure telepathic communication, Kerwin realized, but strictly oneway. The first blast of mental energy had overpowered everyone. Well, almost everyone. Seeth’s brain had been dulled by attendance at too many concerts. He’d spent too much time down on the floor beneath giant speakers. His receptors were already numbed.
“Far out,” he was murmuring. “Giant Christmas ornaments from space!”
“Shut up!” Kerwin said warningly. “They might not like being insulted.”
“Hey man, what makes you think it was an insult? I thought it was like a compliment. Anyway, bugs
like you and me, we’re probably beneath their notice, right?”
One of the globes turned and moved toward them, drifting slowly above the carpet, the tips of its tentacles dangling a foot off the floor. It halted a yard from Seeth, who squinted into the brightness.
“No harm intended, fat boy, okay?”
Two tentacles reached out. They wrapped around Seeth’s waist and lifted him off the floor. Kerwin took a step toward his brother but was held back by Rail.
“Don’t, my friend. There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing anyone can do.”
The Isotat leisurely examined its prisoner. “Fairly simple water-based lifeform.” It stuck another tentacle into Seeth’s left ear. Seeth contorted, then went limp, his jaw hanging slack and drool dripping from his mouth. If not for the presence of the alien it would have been a perfectly normal pose.
“Some intriguing undeveloped neuronic potential,” the globe went on while Kerwin gritted his teeth and held his ground. “Much of it misguided, I fear.”
The tentacle slipped free and the creature placed Seeth back on the floor. His legs were shaky and he would have fallen if Rail and Kerwin hadn’t grabbed him under the arms. They kept a wary eye on the nearby globes.
“You all right, kid?”
“Hey, I’m okay,” Seeth responded thickly. “I took some pills made me feel that way once, Jack. Like your head’s a ball bearing and the rest of you’s a chrome wheelcover.”
The globes continued across the room, examined one of Ganun’s technicians, then turned abruptly toward Arthwit Rail. The Prufillian let out a moan and bolted for the exit. There was a slight crackling noise and he crumpled to the deck, momentarily paralyzed. The Isotat repeated their inspection procedure before withdrawing, leaving him groaning but apparently unharmed by the ordeal.
“Associate species. Related form,” declared the second globe.
Now they headed toward Izmir.