Piers Anthony: Cluster

But now the body twisted. From between the farthest two disks another laser flashed, similar to the communications signal, but more intense. The beam missed him—but the next one wouldn’t.

Flint realized that the creature was too tough for him. Mintaka could finish him with a laser before he could knock him out. But at least he had bought time for his allies.

His allies? Only Canopus remained, and H:::4 was not in immediate danger. Flint was fighting for his own life and information, nothing more.

Yet there was more, something highly significant. But he could not identify it in the throes of this battle.

He shoved violently with his feet, making the creature slide cross the floor. Before it could orient on him again, Flint leaped into the animation stage. And thought of himself.

Suddenly there was another Flint beside him, his duplicate. Then two more, and four more. In moments a score of Flints were running around the arena, capering like monkeys. The Mintakan’s ray speared one, but had no effect. “You can’t hurt me, nyaa, nyaa!” that image mouthed. “I’m only a Doppelgänger .”

The laser struck another image. Then a third. It seemed the spy had plenty of power, and was prepared to wipe out every image in order to nail him in the end. The law of chance dictated that this effort would succeed in time.

“Canopus!” Flint cried, and all his images mouthed it with him. Good thing the spy’s translator couldn’t orient specifically on the origin of the sound!

“Sol,” H:::4 replied. “How may I assist?”

“Use your armament. Demolish this entire site. Kill every creature in it.”

“Do not do it!” Mintaka cried in translation. “Sol is the spy. He wants to prevent us from acquiring the Ancient’s secrets.”

Time and again, Flint realized, this creature had raised seemingly valid points that had led them astray. Even the agreements had been camouflage, making it seem to be a true Mintakan in spirit as well as in body. But it had given itself away by that “Concurrence,” which Flint now recognized as an Andromedan transfer-message convention. “I commence action,” the Master said. “I am recording our dialogue, since I will be obliged to defend myself from suspicion as the sole survivor. Can you provide the key formulations?”

“Yes,” Flint said. He concentrated, and the equations appeared again, superimposed on the moving images of himself. “This is terrific! The Ancients had complete mastery of inorganic Kirlian aura: How to set up a field around energy that enables it to be transmitted any distance instantly, how to orient on any Kirlian transfer—”

“Begin with that one,” H:::4 said. “I shall ensure its arrival at all our Spheres.”

“Keep firing,” Flint said. “If this spy survives me—and if any survive, it will be the Mintakan—it will ray you down. Destroy everything, and don’t let anything you may see dissuade you. It will probably be an animation image calculated to deceive you.”

“I understand, and commend your courage,” the Master said. Already the shaking of his bombing could be felt. “I shall not fail. No living thing will emerge from this site.”

“Orientation on transfer,” Flint said. And he read off the array of symbols.

A laser struck him dead center, holing his suit. Flint moved with seeming casualness, so as not to attract attention to himself by reaching. His stomach burned ferociously, but it was not a mortal wound; either his flesh was too solid for the beam to penetrate far, or the spy was losing his power, after all that firing. There had to be some fatigue! Flint dared not even make all the images imitate his action, for then Mintaka would know the critical one had been hit. He put his left fist over the puncture and pressed it tight, inhibiting the leakage of vital gases.

It worked. The agent of Andromeda thought he was merely another image, and moved on to the next. And he continued reading off the equations without break, so that his voice would not give him away. He also made one of the images gesticulate and collapse when rayed, drawing several more beams: a decoy.

He completed the readoff for transfer orientation—so that was how the enemy had always located him before!—and started on the Kirlian-energy formulation. He could not rush this, for any mistake would make the whole effort a waste.

Meanwhile, the Canopian’s bombing progressed. The chamber shook with increasing violence. The walls and ceiling cracked. H:::4 had not been bluffing about his armament!

Now Mintaka gave up with the laser, having struck every image, and entered the arena physically. The harrow charged through the images, slicing them with the disks.

Flint kept the figures moving around, but the spy would surely catch him soon. He was already handicapped by the two holes in his suit, and was in no position to renew physical conflict. All he could do was keep dodging and reading off formulas until the end. If he made it through a couple more concepts, he would have given his galaxy the key to victory.

The ceiling split open. But instead of falling in, it blew out, as the gas dissipated into the vacuum of the surface. Then it imploded. Debris funneled down, dropping through the images. His life-air hissed out around his pressing fist.

“You’re right on target,” Flint said, interrupting his reading. “Drop one right down the hole and finish it. The Mintakan is right here.”

“But the formula is incomplete,” the Master protested.

“What, are you wavering?” Flint demanded. “We can’t let Andromeda escape with this stuff. I’ll try to get out the last—”

And Mintaka caught up with him. The devastating blades sliced into his feet, cutting off his toes. His remaining air exploded out, jetting him up momentarily; then he fell across his enemy. He made a last effort to call in H:::4’s final bomb to finish them both, but his mind suffered a short-circuit. All he could remember was the need to inform the authorities of Sphere Mintaka what had happened, to warn them—

Mintaka! he thought with all his being as he died.

*alarm! priority development*

—out with it—

*ancient mode transfer from hyades open cluster*

—disaster! initiate council available entities—

*too late milky way galaxy has mastered ancient technology our agent failed we are helpless*

—recall all agents from that galaxy immediately we may be able to salvage something—

*but that would mean surrendering our energy transfer stations*

—that’s right we’ll have to gamble by leaving them in place and putting all our personnel on alert—

*POWER*

—oh, disconnect!—

His body was astonishing. Whenever he moved, he jangled, beeped, and boomed. His several feet were little clappers, supporting a triple web of taut wires like three harps. Fitted within the inner curves of these were tiers of drum-diaphragms. Strong tubular framing provided resonance for moving air, with emplaceable reeds. In short, he was an animate orchestra.

He had some kind of sonar/radar perception. He used it to orient on something more familiar: the night sky, perceivable through the image-porous ceiling. There were stars, not exactly bits of light but similar centers of emission. He concentrated, determined to find some point of orientation. This was not the sky of the Ancients, but it was within a galaxy, for there were the massed clouds and stars, the milky way to be seen within any galaxy.

He visualized (though this was not exactly what his new mind did) the night sky as seen from Sphere Sol, and from Etamin, Canopus, Polaris, and the Hyades, trying to superimpose some aspect of it on what he saw here. This was a challenging exercise, the more so because he was aware that some stars had different intensities of emission in the range he could now perceive. What appeared to be a small-illumination visible star might be a large-emission infrared star. But his mind was trained in this, and he made the necessary adjustments. It was rather like rotating a sphere of galactic space, taking cross-sectional slices, sliding them around, searching for any region of congruence.