Jack Chalker - Kaspar's Box

“Them three worlds, they’re the Kings?” Mary Margaret asked, looking at the same picture.

Maslovic nodded. “Yes. You saw their pictures at Macouri’s big place in the city.”

“Yeah, I remember. I can tell you, and I dunno why, that the guy I’m hearin’ is on the one in the middle and the girl’s on the big one closest in. That help?”

“On Melchior! Yes, that does help. Darch?”

“I don’t get any human readings for the world, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few or even a few hundred down there. That small a signature would be lost in that sea of alien life.”

“Okay, okay. So we have people on at least two of them, and they can contact each other. Now, if our watchers are on Kaspar, that could mean that they don’t even pay attention to that kind of local traffic.”

“No,” Captain Murphy said, thinking in his usual bent way. “But you and I both know, Sarge, that they’d be lookin’ at us right this moment.”

Maslovic nodded. “I agree. Girls, still no sign of your mysterious friend?”

“Shush!” responded Brigit Moran. “We’re tryin’ to put ourselves together so we can really eavesdrop!”

The marine put his finger to his lips and made sure the others in the room saw it. If the girls wanted to chant a little and hold hands and get in sync to boost their power, that was exactly what he wanted this time.

The girls, as usual, started off in anything but unison, but within a few minutes the chanting—not just the words, which were mostly nonsense, but the pitch and meter—seemed to come together, first as a sort of harmony, and finally as if a single voice, even though the three voices were very different normally. All three had their eyes closed and seemed lost in a world of their own.

This was the most dangerous time for the experiment, they all knew. The last time these three had achieved this level of unity they’d managed to almost literally take over a starship.

Maslovic decided they were far enough into their self-induced hypnotic trance that speaking was no longer a problem, although he kept his voice quiet and low.

“Anything, Captain?”

“I felt several weak probes of my systems,” Chung responded, keeping that quiet tone and localizing it as much as possible on the science control panel. “Nothing threatening at all, though. They’re casting out, but it’s strictly one-way. Nobody or nothing’s yet trying to come through them at me or us.”

“Stay alert. It might come in the twinkling of a star and those folks know their system a lot better than we know how to stop it.”

“I’ll let you know. If they do break through, at least I feel confident at this point that I could warn you about it.”

Maslovic turned and looked over at Murphy. “Cap, you want to give it a try? They still seem to trust you, for some reason.”

The old man shrugged. “Well, I’ll give it me best. The big problem may be gettin’ through to ’em.”

He walked over to where the three had stopped chanting now but were standing together holding hands with eyes closed.

“Hello, darlin’s, this is Captain Murphy. Can you hear me?”

No response.

“C’mon, darlin’s! Speak to the old captain, now.”

Still no reaction. He was just about to give it up as a bad bet when all three voices as one said, “Captain?”

There was something in the way they said it that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. It didn’t sound like them or anybody else he knew at all.

“Yes? And who might ye be?”

“You have an accent. It is hard to make it out.”

“I doubt if it’s me accent that’s the problem. Just who might I be speakin’ to through these girls?”

“I had no idea you were speaking through others. Are you on Balshazzar?”

“Goodness, no! I’m on a ship in space.”

There was no reaction for a moment, then the voice said, “You are in a spaceship? From the colonial sector?”

“Yes. We’re just comin’ insystem now.”

Maslovic gave him a frown at that, but he figured that any possible enemy around who hadn’t noticed a naval destroyer approaching inbound by this time wasn’t much of a threat.

“How about you?” he asked the voice. “Are you human, or one of them peek-a-books from the stones?”

“I’m human. Just barely any more. It’s been very hard here.”

“Looked like Balshazzar wasn’t that bad a place to be stuck,” he noted.

“We—we’re not on Balshazzar. We’re on Melchior.”

That caused some consternation among everybody on the Agrippa .

“Melchior! Ain’t supposed to be no folks like me there!”

“There’s not many. Four of us are left. We were marooned when the salvage freighter Stanley deserted us. No way to get off. No human population, no alien population that we can trust.”

“How is it you’re talkin’ to me like this, then?”

“The stones. We can use them like communicators. They grow here. Millions of them, probably. Too many around and they’ll drive you insane, but you can handle a few. Large population of us on Balshazzar. We can talk through these. For God’s sake, if you can come and get us, please do so! Don’t try Balshazzar. Something will let you land but won’t let you leave.”

“Names,” Maslovic hissed. “We need names!”

“Just who are ye, then? Kinda hard to make out when you’re hearin’ yourself this way.”

“I am Doctor Randi Queson, sort of science jack-of-all-trades. With me are engineer Jerry Nagel, shuttle pilot Gail Cross, and team leader An Li. Li suffered a breakdown or seizure or something partly due to the stones and hasn’t been anything but childlike since. We have minimal food we’ve been able to gather, too much water, no supplies.”

Murphy thought a moment. “You say somethin’ keeps folks from leavin’ Balshazzar? What about where you are?”

“Should not be a problem. We went back and forth to the Stanley . My head is killing me now. This only works for short periods. Got to stop or I’ll pass out.”

“Wait! Is there any way we could locate you? That’s a mighty big world down there!”

“We have nothing. Lost everything now in the storms and quakes and always moving. Big oceans, lots of dust and islands. Oh, God! This close! I don’t know how…”

“Do you think you could link up with me girls here again via these alien stones?”

“I dunno! Got to quit! I—”

It was clear from the total slack in the faces of the three young women that there was no longer any contact.

Darch threw his arms up in a gesture of helplessness. “Damn! If we had a conventional signal, anything, I could trace it, but sending and receiving via the brains of morons helps not a bit! How do I find four humans who could be anywhere on a world bigger than the one we left not long ago? It’s impossible!”

“We have time, I think,” Maslovic said. “They’ve survived this long, they can make it another couple of days, and we have a valuable heads-up on Balshazzar. The prettiest one’s always the biggest trap. That’s probably why all the humans are there. Weird, though, that these stones would be formed on a hellhole like Melchior.” He sighed. “Okay, people! We got a couple of days to work out a way to locate these folks. No question we can use some locals aboard, particularly if they’re adults who can use these things without us having to go into chanting rituals and who don’t think everything is magic.”

“Of course, we hav’ta make sure that they’re actually rescued, too,” Murphy noted. “Just gettin’ ’em off there ain’t gonna do much good if we wind up stuck someplace else.”

Murphy looked over at the still-entranced girls. “So what do we do with them for now?”