Zach Hughes: Mother Lode

propelled out of the sun's gravity well, or, at best, sent off on errant orbits, like comets. They're going to find that the planet they're building will be considerably smaller, maybe too small to hold an atmosphere.» Erin nodded. «They're not God,» Dent said. «They have the ability to fling the broken pieces together. Natural forces may or may not heat the core, but what then?» «They're pretty amazing,» Erin said. «They can totally disassemble a living thing and put it back together in the same form or in an altered form.» «But that is not creation,» Dent said. «That's my whole point. Maybe they can form a planet. Maybe, over a few million years, natural forces will cause vulcanicity. Maybe they can even accelerate the process. Since they can dismantle a living thing and use the cells or molecules or whatever for building blocks, maybe they can even manipulate nonorganic materials. Maybe they can break oxygen and hydrogen loose from the rocks and combine them to make water—» «I think I know what you're saying,» Erin said. «They haven't performed any act of creation. To form their bodies they had to have the material from Plough and his crew.» «So even if they can make a world and give it oxygen and water—» «They can't make a blade of grass.» «And before a planet is habitable there must be vegetation,» Dent said. «How much of his thoughts do you pick up?» Erin asked. «He gets a little careless at times. He's a horny bastard.» She shuddered, remembering his ruthless attentions. «He sees in his mind a sort of paradise, empty except for the two of them. There's lush vegetation but no animal life. Apparently they don't eat.» «Have you noticed that they're losing weight?» He nodded. «They don't eat, but their bodies are made of flesh and blood. That's another reason why I feel that they might be a little bit insane. Otherwise they'd have to see that they're using up the material that forms their bodies.» Mop, who had been sleeping at their feet, decided that it was time for him to get some attention. Erin rubbed his silky ears. He flopped onto his back with a contented sigh and she rubbed his chest and belly. «What's going to happen then?» Erin asked. «I think when they realize that they're going to fail in their attempt to recreate their world, they'll start looking for a world that has already been made.» She shuddered again. «Can you imagine them loose on a populated planet?» «If Mother had a self-destruct button, I might think of pushing it,» she said. Dent held her close, for the mere thought of her death devastated him. However, he had entertained similar thoughts. * * * They could use the power of the generator and their wills to break out oxygen and hydrogen from the rock. And they did it in mighty floods that quickly filled huge basins to form oceans. The power of the sun condensed water and there was weather. But under the rains the sterile rock glistened and endured. The process of erosion would be one for the ages. Soil formation was a thing of the far future. The waters of the blue oceans were unfruitful. They looked down on their work and fretted. They sent thunderbolts of pure power to shatter unyielding mountains, but there was no life. She vented some of her frustration on Erin, jerking her from her body to put her in storage inside the small skull of Mop the dog. The transition was no longer shocking. Man is a very adaptable animal. Erin used such times to try to make her little buddy aware that he was not alone in that odd little brain of his, that he had an unwilling but well-meaning guest. Life was so simple for Mr. Mop. He ate. He slept. He coaxed his humans into playing with him, or petting him. He did not have headaches, acid stomach, stiff limbs, or sore muscles. He went through the day with his stub of a tail pointed jauntily high, a barometer of his spirits. He had come to accept that now and then his humans were not available. He knew that Erin was not at home in her body at the moment. Of course, he could not think in those terms, he was just aware that it would be useless to try to attract Erin's attention as she made jerky, robotic movements at the control console of the Amplifier. «I'm here, Mop,» Erin was saying. «Listen to me, you hairy little rascal.» She tried various ways of getting Mop's attention. With great intensity she envisioned juicy, meaty tidbits of people food. Mop put his nose between his paws, twitched one ear, and took a little nap. When he awoke, she went back to the work of trying to break through into his doggy consciousness. Nothing worked. In mock anger she said, «May the fleas of a thousand camels infest you.» She didn't mean it, of course, she was just frustrated at being unable to have any effect at all on Mop's behavior. Mop lifted his left rear leg and scratched energetically. He squirmed, began to scratch with the other leg. «Hey,» Erin said. «I didn't mean it, buddy. You don't have fleas.» He continued scratching. She reviewed what had happened. Mop was getting a bit frantic, scratching and biting, and Erin knew that the sanitary measures taken before Mother left New Earth made it impossible for the dog to have fleas. What had she done? She talked to the dog, told him he didn't have fleas. Mop whimpered and scratched as if he were being eaten alive. She said angrily, «What in hell did I do?» His left ear twitched. «I am angry with you,» she stormed. «I have told you that you do not have fleas. Now stop that scratching.» Mop gave his right ear one final little twitch with his hind leg and sank down onto the deck. Anger. Or pretended anger. Anger penetrated the barrier. She experimented. «I want water,» she said angrily. Mop rose, stretched, went to press the button that gave him fresh water. «I want food,» Erin grated. Mop ate. He was a champion button pusher. Although he was color blind, he knew which button to push for water, which for his regular food, and he knew that pushing the button for his milk bone worked no more than twice a day. «It's all right, baby,» she said, still talking as if she were angry. «It's all right. Go lie down.» Mop looked around in puzzlement, seeking Erin. «I'm here,» she yelled at him. His stubby tail did a few circles as he turned all the way around, looking for her. He padded to the workroom and saw her there at the console, jumped into her lap, climbed up behind the controls and looked at her with his deep, brown eyes, saw the blankness in her face that meant she would not talk to him. «Over here, Mop,» Dent called. Mop jumped to the deck, leapt into Dent's lap and onto the console. Dent managed to pat him once before the male alien sent a wave of pain, his way of saying, «Leave the dog alone and concentrate on your work.» «It's all right, boy,» Dent whispered. «She'll be back.» The communicator rang. John Kenner's doorbell sound indicated that a radio call was being received. Mop bounced to the deck and announced that someone was at the door, barking excitedly. «No, no,» Erin shouted at him, because they were becoming annoyed by the noise. The doorbell sounded again thirty seconds later. Mop, seeing that neither Erin or Dent was doing anything about it, barked hysterically. That might be one of his friends at the door. «Mop, Mop, shut up,» Erin yelled, in real fear that they would do harm to Mop. But, although Mr. Mop was usually a very gentlemanly little dog, when there was an alarm to be sounded he did his duty. On the third sounding of the doorbell—Rimfire's communications officer had been ordered to broadcast the call to the Mother Lode several times at thirty second intervals—the female alien turned, let her lovely emerald eyes rest on the excited Mop for a moment before sending a small wave of force that hurled Mop out of the room and sent him sliding across the deck of the bridge to bang painfully into the pedestal of the command chair. He yelped just once and then crawled under the console, shivering in fright. Erin forgot to speak with mock anger as she tried to comfort him, but then, as she turned her attention to The She, her anger was real, causing Mop to quit licking his bruised leg and lift both ears in alarm. «You bitch,» Erin screamed, «you bloody, mothering bitch.» If pure hate could have killed, the alien would have died at that instant. It was the wave of enmity sent by Erin that made The She inquire about the irritating sounds issuing from the communications system. The male alien got the information from Dent's mind, sent Dent to activate the communicator, listened to the message from the Rimfire. He did not have to voice questions. He merely willed that Dent answer. «Rimfire is a large spaceship,» Dent said. «She has several hundred people aboard.» He went on and on, giving all of the information he had. Dent told the alien what he knew about the armament of an X&A explorer. There was no possibility of holding back anything. He had merely to command and Denton had no choice but to obey. Had he been able to resist, the alien could have gone directly into Denton's mind to find the answers. The aliens had become totally contemptuous of the presence of the humans. The He didn't bother to close off his thoughts as he said to The She, «The new ship will be useful.» «Captain to the bridge,» the communicator said, waking Julie Roberts from a dream of childhood in which she had been feeling such a sense of love and warm security that, on losing it, she looked at the plain walls of her cabin and shivered. She went to the bridge. Lieutenant Ursulina Wade was on watch again. «Ursy, if you're going to make a habit of waking me every time you have the duty—» Julie said. «Sorry, Captain,» Ursy said. «I thought you'd like to see these.» She punched buttons and brought up detailed photographs of the surface of the planet which Rimfire was approaching. «Well, hell,» Julie said, for the planet was raw. There was water and an atmosphere rich in oxygen, but barren, incredibly sharp and rugged mountains touched torrent-raining clouds and mighty rivers spread over the rock surface. There was no green. «Some days there just ain't no fish,» Ursy said. «Yep,» Julie said. «If the air is good, there'll be mining stations. And she'll be a good source of water if anyone ever finds a planet nearby that has soil but not much water.» «You're a little ray of sunshine,» Julie said. «She's negative in all areas of detection down to earthworm size,» Ursy said. «I can see why, but we'll have to check the seas.» «I've laid out an orbit, Captain,» Ursy said, bringing up measurements on the screen. «Close enough to take good readings for metals and minerals and to send down the scouts for air and water samples.» «Very well,» Julie said. «Do you mind, Lieutenant, if I go back to bed now?» «Not at all, ma'am,» Ursy said. «Have a nice rest.» Julie didn't bother to undress. She had slept for four hours. She punched up coffee and sipped moodily as she considered the implications of the current situation. Even if the planet that Erin Kenner had led her to was not a Class A Habitable world, it was a world, and it did have water and atmosphere. If it was the source of Erin's gold, it wouldn't be a complete washout. She'd squeak through without a reprimand, but the admirals wouldn't be happy. «Damn it, Erin, where are you?» she said aloud. It wasn't likely that Rimfire would find F.R.A.N.K. on a planet that wouldn't support a mouse. But if Erin wasn't on the planet, where was she? The temporary blink beacons from the Mother Lode ended here, at the orbit of that blue planet. It didn't add up. Erin Kenner was not irresponsible, not easily excited. Erin was, in Julie Roberts' opinion, one of the last people to bring Rimfire several thousand parsecs on a spook chase. She finished her coffee, paced the deck. She was moving toward the communicator to give orders to make a thorough surface search with scanners set to detect the presence of a small spaceship, Mule class, when she heard Ursy's voice to the communicator again. «Captain to the bridge. Captain to the bridge.» Julie patted an errant lock of hair into place and walked to the bridge. Ursy was grinning. «You did it again,» Julie said. «We've found her, ma'am,» Ursy said, motioning toward a viewer. At first the shape of the image on the screen did not make sense, and then Julie realized that what she was seeing was two ships, a squarish Mule and a sleek converted fleet destroyer lying side by side, air locks joined. «I assume you have tried radio contact?» Julie asked. «Yes, ma'am. Negative.» «Readings?» «Life readings. Four entities of roughly humanoid bulk, and one very small one, in the area of five pounds.» «Roughly humanoid?» Julie asked. «Two of them are quite large. One of them weighs in the neighborhood of four hundred pounds.» Ursy's eyes were wide, her cheeks a bit pale. Julie nodded, knowing what the lieutenant was thinking. «Did you double-check those readings?» «Affirmative, ma'am.» Ursy was being very formal. It helped her to control her excitement, but then the agitation broke through. «It's F.R.A.N.K., Captain, sure as hell.» CHAPTER TWENTY Although Mop learned quickly, it was very hard for him to keep silent when the doorbell that John Kenner had installed to indicate an incoming radio call rang again and again. Muffled «murfs» rumbled in his throat. He sought out Erin and Dent, stood on his hind legs to put his forepaws on their legs. Once he lost control and barked, risking the anger of the thing that had hurt him by throwing him across the deck. Erin scooped him up and closed his mouth with her hand, saying, «Shush, shush.» The big X&A explorer was picked up by the Mother Lode's instruments when she was still several astronomical units distant. Erin and Denton had been left to their own thoughts ever since Rimfire had announced her presence near the core by her first attempts to contact them. The aliens had closed themselves off mentally and physically. Erin and Dent stayed mainly in Erin's cabin. It was a relief not to have every move directed by an alien will, but the relative freedom served to make the knowledge of their helplessness even more bitter. Once, after several hours of noninterference from them, Erin went out onto the bridge and actually had the communicator on before a wave of pain swept through her. Compared to The She's usual efforts, the pain was not severe. It was as if the alien was so preoccupied with other, more important matters that she couldn't really be bothered to render more than a token punishment to Erin for her attempt to warn Rimfire. However, as Erin sent the mental order to her finger to activate the communicator, partial paralysis came with the pain and she backed slowly away toward her cabin. «We must do something,» Erin whispered. Denton, too, had been trying to think of some way to evade the control of the two winged beings. «I know,» he said, «but…"He spread his hands. He didn't have to say more. She'd been over the same things time and time again. Although she could not feel the alien's control at times, it was there, as she'd proven again by her attempt to use the communicator. Even if her macabre fantasy of using a nonexistent self-destruct button to disintegrate Mother and everything aboard her had been possible Erin would not have been able to push the button, for The She knew Erin's every thought, every impulse. Still Erin considered means of killing the aliens, or, at least, means of destroying their flesh and blood bodies, and it gave her pause to realize that she was thinking murderous thought about them without being punished. Her service hand weapon was in its holster on her flexsuit. It was capable, given time, of burning a hole in Mother's stout, double hulls. If the mining laser had not been left on Haven and if she could have jury-rigged some way to turn it on Mother, then some serious holing would have resulted. But if a frog had a glass ass, it wouldn't jump but once. Civilized man didn't think about ways to accomplish his own death along with the destruction of his spaceship. He considered ways of bringing about the death of others, if it become necessary. He went armed. Rimfire, in addition to having the best long-range detection equipment in the U.P. sector, was also the most powerfully armed spaceship ever built. With the weapons aboard her, she could make rubble of a world and—although it had never been tried—in the unlikely event that it was ever vital to the continued well-being of mankind, she could make a sun pretty sick. Man was a deadly species, and that made him pretty cocky, so confident in his own ability to meet any challenge that he didn't plan for defeat. Thus there was no self-destruct button aboard the Mother Lode, nor aboard any ship of the fleet, for that matter. There were no explosives on a Mule turned miner, no heavy weapons that could be turned against herself. Perhaps that was why Erin was able to imagine—because it was basically impossible—destroying Mother. She had never actually come face-to-face with death. The statistical risks she had faced during her just over thirty years of life had been small. As she'd once told Dent, everyone knows that he's going to die—someday. But since U.P. man had earned—by good nutrition, medical advances, and the elimination of most of the diseases, malfunctions, and to a large extent even the accidents that had once plagued the race—the lifespan mentioned in the Old Bible in Genesis 6:3, she had lived only one quarter of her allotted span and to her the concept of death was still an abstract idea. Not even in her current situation could she believe that she was going to die. So she indulged in idle speculations about how to overcome them, and felt guilt—for it was possible to concede that others might die—at doing nothing while men and women she knew were coming ever closer to being within reach of two things who had absolutely no regard for human life. She was letting the precious minutes spend themselves and she was doing nothing but lying on the bed with Dent's arm around her wishing that there was something she could do. She wept. Mop, with that canine instinct that knows when a beloved human is in stress, came to snuggle up to her side and licked her elbow just once, politely, as if to say, «Hey, Erin, I'm here and I'm sorry you're unhappy.» She slept. When she awoke to the alien's summons she knew it was too late to help her former shipmates in Rimfire. No longer capable of independent thought or action she went to the bridge and activated the communicator. Mop, having seen the slack look come over Erin's face, followed her out of the cabin and darted under the console and curled up into a hairy ball to wait for Erin to be Erin again. «Rimfire, Rimfire, this is the Mother Lode. « The answer was immediate, telling Erin—and The She who dominated her—that Rimfire had been keeping a constant communications watch. «Rimfire, I am Erin Kenner. I want to speak with Captain Julie Roberts.» «Wait one, Mother Lode. « Erin's trapped mind was writhing, struggling, but it was to no avail. «Hello, Erin,» Julie Roberts' voice said. «We have you on visual. What is your situation in regard to the converted destroyer?» Erin's voice was without inflection as she answered. «We claim salvage. The destroyer has been converted to private use. We found her abandoned and derelict.» «Her registration?» Julie Roberts was looking at the mobile graphs of a voice analyzer. Erin's words were being compared to her voiceprint from Rimfire's files. «There is ninety-eight percent correlation,» a technician said while Julie waited for Erin to answer. «She sounds almost as if she were under the influence of a drug,» Ursy Wade said. «The ship is registered to the Haven Refining Company, of the planet Haven,» Erin said. «Her name?» Julie asked. «Murdoch's Plough, « Erin said. «That's the ship that followed the Mother Lode when she lifted off from Haven,» Ursy said. Julie nodded grimly. Her eyes squinted in thought before she pressed the send button and spoke again. «Erin, it's nice to hear your voice. We got your stat that mentioned Ursy Wade's as yet to be met friend. Explain, please.» There was a long pause. Aboard the Mother Lode it took the alien thirty seconds to dig out of Erin's mind that the «yet to be met friend» was an entity named Frank. Then Erin said, «I'm afraid Ursy will be very disappointed. We discovered some fossil bones, that's all. They're humanoid and very interesting.» «Cap'n,» Ursy said, «If that's Erin Kenner speaking, there's something wrong with her.» «There is a certain oddness in her voice,» Julie agreed. «I think it's time we got down to business.» She pushed the send button. «Erin, our life sensors show four entities on your ship.» With sudden anger, The She caused Erin to turn off the communicator. To Erin's surprise, she was addressed directly, not in words but in thoughts. «They can detect our presence?» the alien asked. For the first time since she'd seen Denton explode into a red mist Erin knew hope. Could she, after all, hide at least some of her thoughts from her captor? «Yes,» she said. She started to add that Rimfire could also determine the body weight of any living thing and that, therefore, those aboard the X&A ship were well aware that the two extra entities aboard Mother were considerably larger than life, but she buried the thought and the alien did not detect it. «Tell them,» the alien ordered, «that you took on two extra spacehands on Haven.» «Yes,» Erin said, trying to hide her elation, for now she knew that the alien could not see everything that she was thinking. She relayed the lie to Rimfire. «Okay, Erin, fine,» Julie Roberts said. «Look, it's been a long time since we've had the pleasure of your company. I'm going to come over in the gig and bring a couple of your old friends.» «Like a dozen fully armed space marines?» Ursy asked. «No,» the alien had Erin say. Then, quickly, «Denton and I will come aboard Rimfire. « «Not bloody likely,» Ursy muttered, earning a raised eyebrow from Julie as the captain pushed the transmit button. «It will be good to see you,» Julie said. «We'll use the gig from the Plough,» Erin said. «We'll take you at lockport forward two,» Julie said. «Rimfire out.» «Captain,» Ursy protested, «is it a good idea to give them access to the ship?» «What do we know, Ursy?» Julie asked. «We know that there are two extra life-forms on that Mule, one of which weighs about twice as much as a very healthy professional athlete. I don't think they can sneak into the air lock with Erin and this Denton Gale without our notice, do you?» «No, ma'am,» Ursy said. «It's just—» «It's just that maybe, we're face-to-face with a living alien,» Julie said. «I don't think we should act like people in a low budget space opera and assume that all aliens are bad guys.» «They're not being very straightforward with us,» Ursy said. «How do you judge when an alien intelligence is being friendly?» Julie asked. «Unless you give them a chance to show their intentions.» «According to Erin, or whoever that is over there on the Mule, that converted destroyer was deserted. That means something happened to four or more people.» «Take it easy, Lieutenant,» Julie said. «I guess I'm just a bit nervous,» Ursy said. Julie laughed. «And you're the one who dreams about F.R.A.N.K.» «Used to,» Ursy said. «I've decided that I'd settle for a less than perfect ordinary human man.» «Captain,» said the rating who was monitoring the ship's detection systems, «there's a small boat leaving the destroyer's air lock.» «She's in a hurry,» Julie said, touching her fingertips to her cheek. «Ursy, tell the medical officer to stand by. We'll sanitize our visitors while they're in the lock.» «I'd like to order interior scans and ultrashock,» Ursy said. Julie hesitated. It wasn't really hospitable to submit guests to having their innards examined and to bombard them with unpleasant vibrations that sought out and killed any bacteria or virus that was not normal to the human body. Before the ultrashock technique was perfected, the treatment killed all of the necessary bacteria in the stomach, causing some inconvenience and discomfort for a while, but now those benign microorganisms were spared. The process was just unpleasant for a couple of minutes. «Permission granted,» Julie said. «Yeah, I know,» Ursy grinned. «You're thinking that I'm being too uptight, that a four hundred pound F.R.A.N.K. couldn't hitchhike into the ship with Erin and Gale.» «I'm thinking, Lieutenant, that your suggestion was a very good one,» Julie said. «Carry on.» Although Mop had made it a practice to stay out of reach when his humans were being odd, when he saw them leave Mother and go aboard the larger ship he had to follow. Then Erin and Dent were getting into a small vessel and it was obvious that they were going to go. Going was one of Mop's greatest joys. He jumped up and scratched the side of the gig, barking. He was ignored. The hatch started to close. He sat down, lifted his bearded muzzle, and howled his sadness at being left behind. The She started to quiet the dog with a surge of force, but then she felt Erin's thoughts forming. What Erin was feeling was anger, rage mixed with the fear that she would hurt Mop badly. She lowered herself once again to make direct communication with the subject entity. «Julie Roberts would know that I wouldn't leave Mop here all alone,» Erin said. Anger. Anger had helped her make contact with Mop while she was being «stored» in Mop's little skull. Anger apparently hazed over some of her thoughts, hid them from the alien. Julie Roberts had no way of knowing that Erin even had a dog. Mop leapt up excitedly as Erin opened the hatch. She lifted him into the gig. He raced around in great joy, managed to give Denton a big kiss right on the mouth. Denton didn't even lift his hand to wipe it off. Lieutenant Ursulina Wade was in the ship's sick bay with the chief medical officer, a graying sub-captain who had a lot of questions about just what the hell was going on. «You know, Lieutenant,» the doctor said, «that being shocked free of germs is damned uncomfortable. We do it to every poor son-of-a-bitch who goes into space for the first time. Are you sure this is necessary?» «Captain's orders, sir,» Ursy said. A low signal tone came from the ship's com-system. The doctor said, «What's that?» While it was true that a medical sub-captain outranked a field lieutenant on paper, officers like Ursy Wade looked upon non-operational ranks with condescending tolerance. «How long you been aboard, Doctor?» «Long enough to give up trying to figure out what the hell all your cute little bells and whistles mean,» he said. «The signal tone means that our guests are arriving,» Ursy said. The small shock of the gig's lock making contact vibrated through the deck under Ursy's feet. She activated the air lock viewers. Erin Kenner stepped through the lock first and, on seeing her face, Ursy frowned in thought. It was Erin, all right, but she looked as if she were sedated. The young man who followed her into the Rimfire's lock had the same vacuous expression on his face. Only the third occupant of the lock, a small, blond-headed dog, seemed to have any animation. The dog shivered when Rimfire's outer hatch clanged shut and stood on his hind legs, begging Erin to pick him up. «Well, Lieutenant, shall I zap the poor bastards now?» the doctor asked. «Zap away,» Ursy said, turning on the sound pickups. She heard the little dog yipe in surprise when the ultrashock hit him. He leapt into the air and turned one hundred and eighty degrees to see what had attacked him from the rear and then, perhaps remembering that he'd felt the odd sensations before, stood quivering. «They-are-using-ultrashock,» Erin Kenner said without expression. «It-is-normal-procedure.» «Who is she explaining it to?» the doctor asked. «You don't get into space without having been cleaned out with ultrashock.» CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE It was not the female alien who panicked when the reinforced ultrasonic vibrations began to beat against her. She heard and felt Erin Kenner's explanation. Denton Gale was a member of a class of people who had not been, despite the assertion of the chief medical officer aboard Rimfire, cleaned out inside by ultrashock before going into space. Before joining Erin in Mother Lode, Dent's one venture into space had been aboard a passenger liner, and paying customers on passenger liners did not have to undergo the discomfort of ultrashock. The feeling of being internally electrified came as a surprise to Denton Gale, and to the male alien, since he could not extract from Denton's mind knowledge that it did not have. The ultrashock was, of course, harmless to humans—and to little dogs, for that matter. It was in standard use throughout the United Planets sector as both a cure and a prevention of disease, and it was deadly to unwanted invaders of the human body as the originating machine changed frequencies at the rate of several times per second. The He and The She were alien to the bodies they inhabited. They were not microlife, not cells gone bad nor virus, but they were alien and the vibrations of the ultrashock threatened to break their attachment to the minds of their two carriers. The female, able to take warning from Erin's knowledge of the treatment, braced herself and clung to Erin, knowing that the force that was battering her would cease quickly. The male felt threatened and, as was his nature, lashed out. His anger sought the mind that was directing the attack against him. The medical sub-captain made an odd sound in his throat. Ursy Wade felt lightning flash through her and looked quickly to see if the ultrashock machine had shorted out or blown up. She couldn't breathe. Stabs of pain went horizontally and vertically throughout her entire body. She saw the doctor sink to the floor, saw the flesh begin to melt from his bones. His face fell away before he contacted the floor, leaving a partially exposed skull from which two eyeballs, looking as if they were twice normal size, stared out. Ursy tried to scream, but no sound came. She fought the pain and reached for the control panel just vacated by the doctor. Her hand hit the ultrashock lever and that saved her life, for the alien, about to lose his grasp on the living thing to which he had attached himself, was seeking relief, striking out at the next nearest living being. His full force of deadly will was being turned toward Ursy. When he felt the battering force cease, he pulled back. That give Ursy a moment. She gasped in a breath and her fingers flew over the control console. Rimfire's systems obeyed. Several things happened with a speed that left the aliens in the air lock raging. While it was true that space-going man did not spend time and resources providing himself with ways to commit suicide and destroy his ship, he had given considerable thought to completing the second stated intent of X&A's mission, the finding of alien life. Alien life did not necessarily have to be intelligent life, nor did it have to be of interest. The first explorers to encounter a Tigian tiger had learned as much, while discovering that an alien animal might have little respect for human life. The lock to which Julie Roberts had directed the gig from Murdoch's Plough was the capture and hold lock. It had been designed to imprison a beast as strong and as fierce as a Tigian tiger and, at least in theory, things that strained the imagination, up to and including what many scientists thought to be a definite possibility, a life-form consisting of pure force. Ursy Wade had seen a shipmate die a horrendous death, with his flesh melting away from his bones. Her fingers were given extra urgency by the feeling that her own flesh was beginning to slip. She hit the «Secure All» switch on the control panel. Doors of durasteel clanged closed at the inner hatch. The air in the corridor outside the lock sizzled and hissed as incredible power was drawn from the ship's Blink generator to be concentrated in the intricate webbings of circuitry installed between the triple bulkheads of the air lock and create a field of force that would have withstood the direct strike of a lightning bolt. The female alien felt the presence of the force field too late. The lash of her anger, at an intensity that would have vaporized more than half of the Rimfire's crew, was absorbed by the field. The male joined her in an effort to smash the walls of their prison. «Enough,» she said. She was weeping in frustration, for once she had possessed the power to reduce the entire ship to its constituent subatomic particles. «Rest,» he said. «We will need our energy later.» «I want a med-crew here, now,» Ursy Wade ordered. She was trembling. Her limbs were weak. Her eyes ached. On the deck, the doctor's blood was pooling. The air filters had cranked up to remove the meaty smell of it. The door burst open and a med-tech skidded to a halt. The doctor had fallen onto his back. His white skull peered out from sagging folds of bloody flesh. «Captain,» Ursy said into the communicator. «I have activated 'Secure All.' « «I'll be right there,» Julie Roberts said. «May I suggest 'Full Alert'?» Ursy said. «We've got us some bad mothers here.» Within five seconds she heard the ship's speakers sounding «Alert-Interior.» She'd heard the signal in drills, but never had she thought, not even in her wildest nightmares, that anything threatening could gain access to Rimfire's interior. Julie Roberts ran into the room where the med-team was examining the doctor and where Ursy was glued to the viewers showing the interior of the air lock. Julie saw Erin Kenner and a handsome young stud standing almost at attention, faces blank of emotion. Her heart gained a beat in sympathy when she saw the little dog cowering at Erin's feet, looking up pleadingly. «Put me on,» she told Ursy, pointing to the communicator. «All ship.» Ursy flipped switches, gave central communications an order, nodded to the captain, who said, «Now hear this. We have secured in air lock forward two an unknown force. To the eye it looks as if the lock is occupied by a man and woman, the woman being ex-lieutenant Erin Kenner, who served aboard this vessel in the recent past. Neither Kenner nor the man is armed. However, there has been one casualty of a particularly violent nature. My orders to you are to be alert, to stay at your stations.» Since Rimfire was on Full Alert, the airtight doors that isolated her various compartments were already closed. «Since we are dealing with an unknown killing force that penetrated the bulkheads of lock forward two before the force field could be activated, my orders are this. Should Erin Kenner or her companion escape the security of lock forward two, all force is authorized to destroy them. Stand by for visuals.» Ursy's fingers flew. The blank faces of Erin and Dent were shown on all viewers throughout Rimfire. «Now hear this,» Julie said, still talking to the entire crew. «We intend, at this time, to try to make contact with the occupants of the air lock. I will leave the audio and visual channels open so that you may see and hear what happens.» She nodded to Ursy, said, «Put me through to them.» «You're on,» Ursy said. «Erin?» Julie said softly. Erin Kenner slowly turned her eyes toward the speaker at the top of the lock's inner hatch. «Erin, do you hear me?» «I hear you,» Erin said in a flat, unmodulated voice. «Erin, we know you are not alone in the lock.» «Yes. Denton Gale, my friend, is with me,» Erin said woodenly, as the alien directed, for the being was still searching frantically for a way out. «And there are others, Erin,» Julie said. There was a visible flash of force that seemed to emanate from Erin's eyes. Julie jerked backward in spite of herself, then recovered. «It would be just about as easy to penetrate the force field that surrounds you as it would be to escape the gravitational pull of a black hole,» Julie said calmly. The alien ceased her attempt to break through to the arrogant human. «We know you are there,» Julie said. «Can we talk? We might discover that we have common ground. You live. We live. We are both creatures of intelligence.» The She laughed through Erin's lips. The sound was sarcastic, brittle. «I think I detect a certain arrogance,» Ursy Wade said, keeping the communicator open. «But think about this, sweetie. You're the one who's got her ass locked up inside durasteel walls and a force field, not us. So who the hell is the most intelligent?» The alien stormed. Mop crawled away to cringe against the bulkhead at the back of the lock. Both Erin and Dent swayed with the force of the blast of anger and frustration. «Look at baby,» Ursy said, «someone licked the red off her candy.» A scream of pure anguish howled from Erin Kenner's lips and then all was quiet. «Since our detection instruments show two living bodies aboard the Mother Lode, « Julie Roberts said, «I assume that you are present—» She paused, rolled her eyes at Ursy. «How do you say this?» «They're present only in spirit?» Ursy said. «We are here,» the alien said, speaking with Erin's lips, but without hesitation, emphasizing the word, «here.» «Who are you?» Julie asked. «You would not understand.» «Let me try,» Julie said. «I am—» «You're right,» Ursy said, breaking into a rolling sound that continued on for long, long seconds, «we don't understand. Is that a name or a confession?» The She was thinking more clearly. They had been robbed of the full extent of their greatness, but not by mental pygmies like the arrogant humans. While it was true that they were unable to break the field of force and the durasteel walls that enclosed them, there were other means of taking charge. «My name is Legion,» she said. «Sounds vaguely familiar,» Ursy said, casting a look at Julie. «I am Captain Julie Roberts of the United Planets X&A ship U.P.S. Rimfire. I am fully empowered by my government to make contact with you and to discuss mutual concerns. We cannot forgive the fact that you have killed one of us, but we are open to discussion.» As her voice came from Erin's lips, there was no hesitation, no lack of modulation. It was a strong but pleasant voice with a husky contralto range. «We have misjudged you,» she said. «We will compensate you for the loss of one of your crew members.» «I don't think compensation is the question,» Julie said. «The problem is, how do we carry on a peaceful dialogue?» «Now that we understand you better,» the alien said, «there will be no more conflict between us. You may lower your force field.» «No, no,» Erin screamed from her place of imprisonment, and so strong was her hate that her lips moved before the alien silenced her with a burst of mental pain. The movement of Erin's lips was not lost on Ursy Wade. «Erin?» she whispered. «Erin, are you there?» «I'm here,» Erin tried to say, against the pain that the alien was giving her. «Don't let them into the ship.» She spoke directly, and silently, to Erin. «I have been more than patient. One more outburst and I will—» Erin did not understand the word that she used, but the meaning was made clear by the menace in her voice. Ursy cut off the communicator for a moment. «When she suggested that we lower the force field, I saw Erin's lips move. She said, 'No, no.' « «I saw,» Julie said. «I don't think we'll lower the force field.» Ursy activated the communicator again. «We have reason to believe that you have taken control of a woman who is our friend,» Julie said. «You are not, you who are now conversing with me, Erin Kenner, and yet you speak with her lips.» «We did not want to alarm you by coming to you in our own form,» the alien said. «Well, I'm not too easily alarmed,» Julie said, «but I don't quite cotton to the idea that you can take over Erin's body.» «She has not been harmed,» the alien said. «Help us and she and the man will be as they were.» «How can we help you?» Julie asked. «Lower your force field and we will talk of what we can do to mutually help each other.» The med-team was carrying the doctor away. Julie looked directly down into the exposed bones of the man's skull. «I think not,» she said. «Perhaps we will be able to talk more successfully if you return to your own forms and release Erin Kenner and her friend.» There was a long pause as the alien carried on an interior dialogue with Erin. «She is trying to trick us,» the alien said. «When we are away from the Rimfire in the gig, she will fire on us.» «No,» Erin said. «She will keep her word.» «You must convince her to lower the force field.» «I can't,» Erin said. «And I wouldn't if I could.» Actually, the conversation, as such, was not in words. The She probed forcefully, seeking answers deep in Erin's mind. She found Erin's wall of anger and hate and could not penetrate it, but was not concerned, for she felt human emotions to be a sign of racial weakness and, in her superiority, she could not imagine that Erin's «inferior» mind had depths beyond the protective anger. She found what she wanted to find, Erin's memories of Julie Roberts. «Truly,» the female told the male, communicating on another level, «the men have a peculiarity. They think that it is honorable to keep their word, even to—» she laughed—"an enemy who will destroy them. We will let her set the terms and then we will wait for the one opening we need.» «There are hundred of life units on this ship,» he said. «They will be very useful when it is time to make our world fruitful.» She gave him the equivalent of an affirmative nod. Life was life. It could be converted into any form, including but not limited to flowers, trees, waving fields of grass. She spoke through Erin's lips. «We will do as you say, Captain Julie Roberts. We will return to our ships and regain our own forms.» «Any display of force once you are disengaged from our air lock will be met by overwhelming destruction. I don't know exactly what you are, but I doubt if you can survive laser disintegration.» «There will be no force,» she said. They could survive laser blasts, but in their present state they would be left to float in space without means of movement. No, they would not initiate force. «Go into the gig,» Julie said. «We will cast you off. When you have reached the Mother Lode, you will assume your own form and release Erin Kenner and Denton Gale. Is that agreed?» «Agreed.» she said. «Then we will talk,» Julie said. «Agreed,» she said. «Don't let them go,» Erin tried to say. «Don't— don't—» The She was annoyed, but she had found the Erin entity to be useful. She was not yet finished with it. She exerted minor will and Erin was looking up at herself and Dent from a height of inches. Dent went into the gig. When Erin followed, Mop started after her. Erin thundered her anger and ordered Mop to sit. The little dog, confused, delayed just long enough for the outer hatch to close. «They've left the dog,» Ursy said. «So I see.» «With one of them inside?» Julie mused for a moment. «I think it would be best to evacuate the lock.» «Ah, the poor little thing,» Ursy said. To evacuate the lock meant death for the dog as his body was blown into the vacuum of space. «We can't do that.» «No, I guess not,» Julie said. «But until we're sure he's nothing more than a flop-eared little dog, he's going to stay there behind the force field.» Mop, left all alone, lifted his muzzle and howled. The gig left Rimfire's lock and fluxed toward the two joined ships that formed one small star as they reflected sunlight. Julie Roberts punched a number and was answered by Rimfire's technical officer, Jack Burnish. «Jack, any findings about our recent visitors?» «Mainly a feeling of awe,» Burnish said. «What force can go through three layers of durasteel without damaging them and kill a man?» Burnish's action station was in a tight little room filled with monitors and controls for Rimfire's massive array of sensors and detectors. «I can tell you one thing,» Burnish went on. «There were two of them. We had a good chance to work on them while they were in the lock. We got emanations originating from the brains of Kenner and Gale in three totally alien ranges. The human thought patterns were almost undetectable, overpowered by the alien presence.» «Jack,» Ursy asked, «can you be sure there were only two of them?» «I wouldn't bet my hat and ass on it,» Jack said, «but we had three separate indications of a powerful force from the man and the woman.» «None from the dog?» Ursy asked. «Nope.» «Are you still monitoring?» Ursy asked. «We see a very confused and sad little pooch,» Burnish said. Ursy turned off the communicator. Mop was still howling brokenheartedly. «Julie—» Ursy said, spreading her hands in supplication. «No,» Julie said. Ursy turned up the volume of the sound. Mop's mournful howl echoed in the room. The female alien would have called it weakness, and, had she suspected that the humans could be so foolishly sentimental, she would have tried to take advantage of the flaw in the racial character. Julie Roberts looked at the sad little dog, all alone in the barren air lock, and said, «Let Jack and his little gang of geniuses observe him for a while, and then—» Ursy grinned. When the inner hatch of the air lock hissed open, Mop's good ear stood up with interest. He saw a woman in uniform. The woman knelt and held out one hand, saying, «Hey, fella. Hi. How ya doin'?» Mop had always been a gregarious dog. He'd only met one human he didn't like, but his recent experiences with the aliens aboard the Mother Lode had colored his natural friendliness with suspicion. Ursy moved forward, talking soothingly. Mop advanced cautiously, sniffed at Ursy's fingers, decided to risk it and let Ursy wiggle her fingertips on the top of his head. He decided that Ursy smelled good and—although he tensed and was a bit nervous—let her pick him up. She rubbed him and talked softly. He gave her hand one gentle, polite little lick and, with a sigh, threw himself onto his back in the crook of her arm, exposing his chest and belly for a little rub. Julie Roberts was on the bridge. The gig carrying Erin Kenner and Denton Gale and them was disappearing through the access port of the converted destroyer. She saw Ursy come onto the bridge with the little dog in her arms, but her attention was on the viewers and the radio. The duty ratings on the bridge took turns getting acquainted with Mop. He was polite, offering his paw to be shook, getting in a little lick now and then. Ursy took her watch position at the weapons control panel. Mop sat at her feet, looking up with his hopeful, brown eyes. She reached down and put him in her lap. After a while he stepped gingerly up onto the console, found a small area that was blank of buttons and keys and levers, sighed, and curled up for a little practice nap. «Captain,» a rating said in an edgy voice, «the generator on the Mule has just been activated on flux.» «Weapons, stand by,» Julie ordered. Ursy clicked off the fail-safes for Rimfire's battery of laser cannon. The Mother Lode slowly separated from the converted destroyer. «Weapons ready,» Ursy said. «Stand by,» Julie ordered. A melodic tone indicated the activation of Rimfire's radio receiver. The strong contralto voice came from the speakers. «We have done as we agreed,» the alien said. «We are now ready to talk.» «I'm pleased that you have decided to be peaceful,» Julie sent. «If you will allow Erin Kenner and Denton Gale to contact me—» «Those you mention,» the alien said, «are aboard the vessel called Murdoch's Plough. However, it will be some time before either of them can speak. I hasten to inform you that they are unharmed, but it will be a few hours before they recover from the non-damaging mental trauma of being, once more, separate entities.» «Until then,» Julie said, «we have nothing to discuss. You can, however, demonstrate your good will by turning on the holo-viewers so that we can see you.» «It is my pleasure,» she said. And in an instant every viewscreen aboard Rimfire showed them. Their graceful bulk filled the screens. Their wings were partially unfurled. «They're magnificent,» Ursy whispered in awe. «Thank you,» Julie Roberts said, not unaffected by their radiance but hiding her surprise well. «We regret that our contact with your race was based on misunderstandings,» she said. «Our first impressions were based on the belligerence of the men on board the vessel called Murdoch's Plough. They were armed, and their first reaction to us was to try to use their weapons.» «What did you do with them?» Julie asked. «Unfortunately, they are dead,» the alien said. «And why did you seize control of Erin Kenner and Denton Gale?» Julie asked. «As you know, we are not completely invulnerable,» she said. «After our experience with the crew of Murdoch's Plough we acted with caution. We did not, as you know, kill the Kenner and Gale things. We merely looked into their minds and saw that not all men are evil, as were the men we first encountered.» «I'm not buying this,» Ursy whispered to Mop, who had come to attention, one ear raised, as he listened to Julie's conversation with the alien. «Captain, ask her why they killed the doctor?» «As for the incident aboard your ship,» she said, «it is regrettable, but you must remember that we were attacked by the first men we encountered. When your technicians began to bombard the Kenner and Gale things with what you call ultrashock, my companion assumed that we were being attacked once more.» «She heard you, Lieutenant,» a rating said. The alien was still speaking. «Now, Captain Roberts, while we wait for the Kenner and Gale things to become themselves once more, we ask your indulgence. Our intentions are to take this vessel to a landing on the large land mass in the planet's northern hemisphere. There we will be more comfortable, for the atmosphere aboard your ships seems quite close and stale to us.» Erin Kenner, able to hear through hairy, floppy ears, looking out onto the scene on the bridge of the Rimfire through Mop's eyes screamed out, «She's lying. I'm here. Don't let them go. Blast them now. Blast them into empty space.» Erin knew that in one of Mother's cabins was the huge and complicated electronic construction that she had thought of as the Amplifier. She'd seen its incredible power. She was certain that they were going to turn the power of the Amplifier on Rimfire, but even though she made Mop aware of her by pretending anger, she could not do more than influence Mop's actions. And he was just a hairy little dog. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO «We have no immediate need for the man things,» The She told The He, as they left the gig and made their way from the hold of the converted destroyer to the Mother Lode. They left the bodies of Erin and Denton lying on a bed aboard Murdoch's Plough. The only movement was the rise and fall of their chests in deep, even breathing. To the aliens the bodies represented raw material. For a moment she regretted wasting the life force of the female by leaving it aboard the big ship. He put the Denton Gale thing into deep sleep for possible use in the future, after they had solved the annoying little problem represented by the warship that was observing them from a distance that was well within the range of the force of the Amplifier. They had agreed that they would take no chances. Once they would merely have paralyzed everyone aboard Rimfire from a safe distance, doing it instantly to prevent the use of the ship's weapons. Now they had to use guile, but soon, once they obtained the raw materials aboard Rimfire and began the reblossoming of their world, their full powers would be restored. Surely, she thought, that must be true. It was logical to think that some of the vast power they had once possessed came from the world that they had rebuilt. It was certain that the power of the Amplifier would be magnified when it was grounded on the planet, using the mass of the world as a resonator. The blast of stunning force that would then engulf the Rimfire would leave the arrogant Captain Julie Roberts and her crew impotent. At their leisure, the aliens would draw upon the raw material and begin the work of restoring their world to its former beauty. She didn't wait for permission from the Rimfire. She fluxed the Mother Lode downward at reckless speed, screamed the ship into atmosphere, slowed as the outer plates began to glow with heat, and landed at the exact geographical center of the large, northern hemisphere continent. Her companion leapt into action, beginning to rig the grounding device that would allow the power of the Amplifier to resonate throughout an entire planet and be multiplied. «I get life signals, two of them, from the destroyer,» a technician announced. «They're the right size for Kenner and Gale.» «Very well,» Julie said. «Ma'am,» Ursy said, «they're up to something.» «Ursy, we're the first to have seen a living alien species,» Julie said. «Are you advocating destroying them without giving them a chance?» «I don't mind becoming a part of history,» Ursy said, «but I don't want to be history starting now.» The tone indicated an incoming radio signal. It was the female's voice, and it rang with arrogance. «My dear Captain Roberts,» she said. «Now we can talk. I have many wonderful gifts for your rather backward race.» «That's very kind,» Julie Roberts said, «in view of the fact that I see no technology on what you say is your world. In fact, I see only a raw and very primitive planet which supports no life.» «Ah, but your human eyes see only surface things,» she said. On another level she was communicating with her companion. He was being very slow in readying the Amplifier for the stunning blast of power. It would be necessary for her to keep the attention of the humans diverted. «It is in the advancement of the mind and its hidden powers that we can help you most,» she said. Ursy Wade was turned half away from the weapons control console looking at the view screen, gazing raptly at the magnificent female alien. The eyes of the others on the bridge were also dazzled by her beauty. Only one pair of round, brown eyes was otherwise occupied. Mop the dog was confused. He seemed to be hearing Erin's voice, but he could not see Erin. He was sitting on the edge of the weapons control console and Erin kept telling him to do something that he couldn't quite understand. «Listen, you little son-of-a-bitch,» Erin stormed, «listen to me. You're hungry. You're thirsty. Look.» Her anger made him aware of her. He wanted to please her. He was just having difficulty understanding. «Buttons, Mop,» Erin screamed. «Push buttons and get a goodie.» Mop licked his chops, thinking of nice, chewy tidbits. He turned, lifted his head to the weapons control panel. Erin thought of them, on the planet's surface, imagined them readying the Amplifier, knowing the power of the instrument when it was combined with their wills. Erin had seen the Amplifier accelerate vast chunks of asteroid to speeds that, upon impact with other masses, made the darkness of space blaze with light. She remembered the alien's casual cruelty, and let her hate for the being become anger, through which she caused Mop to stand on his hind legs and press a certain button. The alien's voice continued to boom forth from the speakers. She spoke of the wonders that mankind could accomplish once he had mastered the gifts that they would bestow. «Food, Mop,» Erin yelled. «That button. No. No.» Mop shook with frustration, showing his sharp little teeth and his red tongue, then tried again to please his Erin. His paw pulled a protective cover away from a switch and swept downward. The switch clicked. A blinking red light came on, but Ursy Wade was mesmerized by the alien's magnificence and by her rose promises. Two of the preliminary steps to activate a weapons system that had not been used in a thousand years had been taken. There remained only two steps, two buttons to be pushed. * * * The female alien heard her companion say, «One last step and I will be ready.» She continued her soothing speech of good will and cooperation to the bemused humans aboard Rimfire. «Tell me when you are prepared,» she said to her partner. «It will be my pleasure to activate the force.» «Candy, Mop,» Erin promised. «Push that button and there will be candy.» She envisioned a tidbit of chocolate, one of Mop's favorite treats and one he didn't get often, for candy was not good for him. Mop pawed at a yellow button. A click. A soft, warning gong. «Ursy, what the hell?» Julie Roberts yelled, as she heard the gong telling her that a planet buster was armed and ready for launch, waiting only the last order to fire. Ursy jerked around to face the weapon's control console in time to see a hairy little dog paw at a button that pulsated light the color of blood. She seized Mop by the scruff of his neck and jerked him off the console. «Captain,» came Jack Burnish's voice, «we have just fired a planet buster.» «Get that thing, Ursy,» Julie Roberts ordered with fierce intensity. It wasn't much of a world. It was raw and new, but it had good air and enough water to supply the needs of a couple of nearby desert planets, if such worlds existed. Most importantly, in a galaxy glutted with glowing bodies and blazing bodies and dark bodies and useless, sun-scorched planets of rock, and gas giants and frozen hulks it was a world that, some day, could support human life. A water world was the most precious thing in an uncaring galaxy and this one would be destroyed in a matter of minutes as a missile blazed toward it carrying a weapon that would first penetrate through the relatively shallow crust and then explode with a force that would spew the molten core of the world into space as the crust shattered. Ursy's fingers flew. «Damn,» she said. For switches that had been on ready were turned off. Rimfire's missile defense system had been downloaded from the ready status that she had programmed in. «Oh, damn,» she said. «Ursy!» Julie Roberts yelled. «Oh, my God,» Ursy moaned, knowing that she was too late. She was telling him laughingly how easy it was to distract the inferior humans. He paused in his work to enjoy her domination of them. She was distracting them with the power of the words she had learned from the Kenner thing while he prepared the instrument that would destroy them. She felt an elation that made her seem, to the feebleminded humans who were watching her image on their screens, even more beautiful as she became one with her world once more, as her senses reached out to the barren lands and the sterile seas and envisioned them as they would be soon, when she and he had the raw material to begin the implantation of life on their world. And after that they would have the most advanced starship built by the puny men and charts to tell them where there were many planets teeming with raw material. The world was beautiful, indeed. True, it was smaller than it had been, but it had enough mass to give it orbital and gravitational stability and to hold an atmosphere. She let herself be one with it even as she continued to beguile the humans aboard Rimfire. Sensing her inner ecstasy, he merged with her, to better share their triumph. So it was that they felt the impact of the planet killing missile together. They felt the missile penetrating, burrowing through the crust of their world. It was only as the eroded head of the planet buster entered molten lava and continued for long seconds before the intense heat detonated the warhead that she realized the true horror of what was happening. She screamed and, wings pumping, soared to bang forcefully against the overhead on Mother's bridge. «No,» he whispered, for it was happening again. The planet shuddered. The molten core of a world burst upward and outward through thousands of weakened areas. The sky burned red. The destruction crept toward the Mother Lode. She was the first to gain the open air. She lifted her wings and leapt to fly upward. He was soon with her, his more powerful wings beating hard as he passed her so that the erupting, fiery havoc overtook her first and encased her as it had done once before. Her screams of agony quickly ceased to have a physical source as she knew the torment of immobility, of imprisonment inside a mass of cooling core material. «My God,» Ursy Wade said, as she watched a world explode into fragments. Julie Roberts gave quick orders. Rimfire blinked away from the exploding world, lest she be struck by the debris that was spreading into space. Ursy Wade took one quick look at Murdoch's Plough before the blink and, after Rimfire was back in normal space she activated a detector. To her amazement, the converted destroyer was still there. The instruments showed masses of rock and debris scattered all around her, but she was still there, apparently whole. Mop leapt into Ursy's lap, licked her hand. «My God,» Ursy said, «do you have any idea what you did?» «You bet your sweet ass,» Erin Kenner said, unheard. EPILOGUE Although the lights were low in the luxurious cabin aboard the sleek X&A destroyer converted into a private yacht and equipped with mining gear, Mop the dog's built-in alarm told him it was time to get up. He lay in his bed with his feet up in the air, his head hanging over the edge of the soft mattress, hairy ears brushing the thick carpet. He rolled to his feet, yawned and stretched, scratched behind his left ear with a quizzical expression on his face, and then walked to the big bed. He released a few experimental grunts and when there was no movement he crouched and leapt up onto the foot of the bed because when it was time for Mop the dog to get up it was time for everyone to get up. He crept softly upward, peered into the sleeping faces, made soft, grunting sounds in his throat. Still nothing. He went back to the foot of the bed, lay down with his head resting on a covered leg and waited patiently for about two minutes. By that time he was convinced that it was more than time for everybody to be up and about and giving some love and attention to a little dog. He began to scratch at the covers, found an opening, burrowed underneath and chewed gently on a set of shapely, bare toes. «Unnnnn,» Erin Kenner Gale groaned, moving her foot. Mop pursued, pushing his way under the covers, and began to get toes again. «You hairy little varmint,» Erin said, reaching down to pull Mop up beside her. «All right, all right. I'm awake, you animated alarm clock. Get Daddy.» Mop wriggled in excitement. His most pressing duty aboard ship was to see to it that everyone got out of bed in the morning to give a little dog a pat or two. He scampered across the bed and lapped a big, wet, doggie kiss right on Denton Gale's lips. Denton sat up, sputtering, wiping his mouth. He reached for the dog, who playfully leapt away and then came back to growl fiercely and gnaw gently on Dent's hand. «What would we do without you, Mr. Mop?» Dent asked. «Get a little extra sleep, I imagine,» Erin said. Dent leaned over to give her a good morning kiss. «Go brush the doggie slobber away,» Erin said. «He's your damned dog,» Dent said, seizing her and pushing her down onto the bed. She struggled to avoid his kiss. Mop got in on the fun and managed to lap one across her mouth as she twisted her head to avoid Dent's lips. «Well, what the hell,» she said, relaxing, putting her arms around Dent, accepting his kiss. The Yorkshire Terror, named in honor of a hairy little dog who had mastered the buttonology of the weapons' control system on an X&A explorer, was orbiting alongside a ring of debris that had been, not once but twice, a world. After breakfast, Erin and Dent went to mining control and began a search. Two days later they were about to give up when the detectors sang of gold, gold in plenty. They latched onto an extra large asteroid and soon Terror's mining equipment was digging out a vein so rich that in less than a week the number one cargo bay was laden with ore. The search went on. Another good ore bed was mined. Terror's instruments were for superior to those of the old Mother Lode. She could sit off from the asteroid belt and search hundreds of chunks of rock for gold and other things without moving. In less than three months she was laden to capacity with rich gold ore. Erin started the generator charging, wanting to be able to blink well past the Dead Worlds before having to halt for charge again. Dent was sleeping. She sat in the command chair, feet up on the console. Mop dozed, curled into a ball in an open space behind the computer keyboard. Erin closed her eyes, let a pleasant drowsiness take her. Somewhere aboard the converted destroyer a relay was activated and an air filtering system came on with a whoosh. The sound caused Erin's eyes to jerk open and cast around for the source of the sound. Moments like that came to her now and then—pure panic. It had been almost two years since she'd last been in the star-crowded area near the galactic core, but the memories were still vivid. Out there in a ring around the sun was their world. Somewhere among the masses of shattered rock and space-cooled masses of the planet's formerly molten core they were there. Mop, sensing Erin's momentary distress, moved close to her and offered his right paw. She shook it tenderly. «Yep,» she said, «Mr. Mop. Mr. Mop the hero.» Mop grinned, not because he was a hero—he didn't understand hero—but because he liked Erin to hold his paw. «They could not have survived that,» Ursy Wade had said, after the planet buster burrowed its way into the mantle to burst the world open like a dropped melon. But they had survived just that once before. «I don't want to go out there again,» Denton told Erin, after they had answered X&A questions repeatedly for over ninety days. The questions had been asked behind closed doors because a curtain of secrecy had been thrown over the Rimfire incident by the president of the United Planets Council. «But how, Miss Kenner, did you, ah, reenter your, ah, body after the aliens, whom you claim could, ah, 'stash you away' as you say in the brain of a very small dog— « She had said, «I don't know.» The inert bodies, the bodies of Erin Kenner and Denton Gale, were removed from Murdoch's Plough to the sick bay aboard Rimfire. Denton Gale regained consciousness within hours of his arrival aboard the X&A ship. Erin Kenner didn't move, other than to breathe evenly and deeply, until a small, hairy dog sneaked in when a med-tech opened the door. He jumped up onto Erin's bed and licked her politely on the cheek and Erin sat up in bed and said, «Hi, Mr. Mop. What do you think?» Ursy Wade said it was like a movie where the dying heroine is revived by her lover's kiss. «Are you calling me a bitch, Ursy?» Erin asked jokingly. «Hey, you could do worse than Mr. Mop,» Ursy said. «I think we both did, once,» Erin said, winking at Ursy and nodding toward Jack Burnish. «Now that's a real dog, « Ursy said, grinning. All that joking was after Julie Roberts had thrown a fit on Erin for having used Mr. Mop to launch a planet buster. Julie was still a bit stiff toward Erin even when she heard it all from Erin and Dent. They had been, after all, the only living aliens ever to be encountered by man. Julie knew that there were people on Xanthos who would feel that she had lost a great opportunity to advance man's knowledge, people who would feel that she should have risked everything up to and including ship and crew to keep the aliens alive and to stay in contact with them. But she'd seen the exposed facial bones of the ship's chief med-officer. She saw a holo-tape from the library of Murdoch's Plough documenting how the aliens had built a planet from scraps. She had heard both Erin and Dent describe, while under the influence of a hypnotic drug that made them incapable of either falsehood or exaggeration, the thinking process of the aliens, their attitude toward human life. Julie had decided, by the time Rimfire blinked back to Xanthos with the converted destroyer locked in her generator field, that Erin had been right to put the aliens back into cold storage. She didn't know what they had been, although there were some fanciful speculations aboard Rimfire when the holo-tapes of the female's extended speech were shown. Some of the more scholarly and a few of the more religious ones had some interesting theories based on her statement that her name was «Legion.» «It must be pointed out specifically,» said Ursy, during one heated argument, «that they never created anything. They just moved atoms and molecules and stuff around. So if you say they were divine angels, you're as full of shit as a Christmas turkey and, furthermore, not just a little bit blasphemous, because these were evil mothers. Evil.» «There were angels who were once divine, but then were not,» said a sub-commander called Preacher, because his main form of relaxation was studying the Bible. «She said her name was Legion. That phrase was used once before, when Jesus cast out devils and put them into a herd of swine.» «Whether or not she was a devil, she was a devil,» Ursy said. Julie didn't want to waste her life in idle speculation. They were gone. She just wanted them to stay gone. In fact, she recommended that an X&A cordon be placed around the asteroid ring to keep anyone from stumbling onto their bones the way Erin and Dent had until a small fleet of X&A ships could reduce the asteroid belt to motes in space. She was overruled. Perhaps, she thought, they didn't believe what they heard back there on Xanthos far from the eerie star fields of the Dead Worlds and the asteroid belt that lay beyond in the glare of the old, malevolent core stars. «I want you two to go back out there,» Julie told Erin and Dent, after the courts had awarded the converted destroyer to Mr. and Mrs. Denton Gale in lieu of a salvage settlement from the defunct Haven Refining Company. «I don't want to go back out there,» Erin said. «I can't go,» Julie said. «I have orders. You can. And you must.» Erin shuddered. «You want us to go bone hunting again.» «That's the idea.» «And if we find anything?» «That ship you own has a laser cannon as powerful as those aboard most fleet ships of the line.» «I think I understand,» Denton said. «You're afraid that sometime in the future some unlucky prospector might find a few fossilized bones and take them aboard his vessel.» «I know someone who did just that,» Julie said. «It's a job for X&A,» Erin protested. «Honey, X&A is made up of people. And Headquarters is made up of that peculiar type of people who think that longevity guarantees wisdom. We're in a period of time when the Service is commanded by ground pounders. What can you expect?» «Oh, shit,» Erin said. The Yorkshire Terror was charged. Erin decided to make one last check. She put the ship on flux and used up several weeks in a spirited circumnavigation of the asteroid ring, the sensors set to the density of fossil bone. «We're spinning our wheels,» Dent said. «The bones we found were in the crust of the original planet. When they reassembled it, everything was mixed together. Maybe some bones survived the impacts, but I'd guess that they were either shattered into tiny pieces or went into the interior and became molten when the pressures heated the core. I fail to see how the bones we found were preserved in the first place. You saw the holo-tapes of the blowup. The crust shattered. The core burst out. If they got caught up in the molten material, they were simply vaporized. There would be no bones left.» «You're saying that they might just be floating around in space?» He shuddered. «God, I hope not.» He smiled at his own reaction. «I think they're gone, Erin. Gone for good. At best, enclosed in megatons of cooled core material.» «If I had the power,» she said, «I'd vaporize every asteroid into space dust the way Julie suggested.» But she didn't have the power. The Terror blinked past the Dead Worlds to Haven where her cargo brought three-and-a-half million U.P. credits. Added to the money already in the banks, that made Mr. and Mrs. Gale not filthy rich, but rich enough so that they didn't have to go out looking for gold unless it pleased them to do so. They were quite rich enough to buy a demure little Yorkshire damsel who, when she was introduced to Mr. Mop, licked him sensuously on the nose and began to lead him a merry chase that resulted, when she was ready, in a squirming litter of four little Mops and Mopettes. «I think he's got the right idea,» Dent said, lifting a pup in both hands, much to Mrs. Mop's concern. «What do you think? Think we should follow his example?» «You want me to have a litter of pups?» she asked. «Whatever,» he said, reaching for her.