John Maddox Roberts - Space Angel Read online

  It is quite true.

  The Vivers froze for a moment, then K'Stin gobbled out a phrase in a language none of the standard humans understood. Kelly felt a twinge in his ears; apparently some of the words went into the supersonic. Sphere replied in what sounded like the same tongue. The Vivers slowly resumed their seats.

  "It knows the Secret Tongue," K'Stin said. "Only a Viver should know that, and that thing is no Viver. How old is it?" A typical Viver question.

  My age is so great that it could not be encompassed in your mathematics. I was old when your galaxy was a cloud of dust and gas.

  "I think he exaggerates," K'Stin announced loudly. "Still, to have such knowledge is indicative of estimable longevity. I must refuse this mission, however. The test calls for severe danger, not suicide."

  "First off," said Ham, "we can't go back. Old Sphere, there, has complete control of the ship's drive, and it won't tolerate movement that isn't toward the center of the galaxy. But consider a moment: If we complete this mission, whatever that may be, and by some chance return, think what we'll have learned. Think what secrets we'll have discovered and brought hack. K'Stin, would you want us standard humans to have a monopoly on such knowledge?" The mate was learning quickly how to talk to Vivers.

  "Knowledge is strength," the Viver mused, nodding. "One can never have too much strength. Also, might we not discover threats at the Center which we Vivers must encounter someday? It would likewise be desirable to learn more about this Sphere thing. There may be more of them, and it does seem to possess an admirable durability. Very well, we go with you willingly. The Grand Council of the Homeworld must receive word of this at all costs. Sphere, what is your mission at the Center?"

  Nothing that need concern you. Merely bear in mind that your return home depends upon your success in delivering me to my destination.

  "Nancy, how much of the galaxy has been explored by humans?" Kelly asked the question as he helped the Communications officer program her computer. It was the question nagging all of them, now that they had time to reflect. Their adventure became real as they spent long weeks in hyper, longer than any of them had ever spent outside of real space.

  "Not much," said Nancy. For several days, Kelly had been able to elicit short sentences from her in addition to instructions in communications and computer handling. "I've read that if you blew up a picture of the galaxy to the size of a sports stadium, the area traversed by humans would be about the size of a peanut."

  "And we're about to go millions of times farther than anyone's gone before. I wonder where we are now."

  "When you're in hyper, you're not exactly anywhere. Hasn't Finn been giving you lessons in hyperspatial geometry and navigation?"

  "Sure, but I really don't understand much. The State schools didn't emphasize the finer points of education, you know." Without his wanting it, Kelly's voice had taken on an edge of bitterness and even a little envy.

  "I couldn't read until I was thirteen, Kelly." Nancy was staring at him coolly.

  "That's hard to believe."

  "My parents were rice farmers on Li Po who worked the Warlord's estate as serfs. When the Commandos unsuccessfully raided to capture the Warlord, I was evacuated with some other children to a refugee ship with the armada. We were lucky. We missed the invasion.

  "Me and my big mouth," said Kelly, shamefaced. He had always felt sorry for himself because he had no parents. Now he realized that Nancy didn't even have a planet! "How did you get to be a Communications officer?"

  "I was sent to a refugee camp on Baldur. One day the Angel landed at our field, delivering food on a government contract. I got myself on the work detail carrying empty grain sacks back to the hold. When the others left, I buried myself in the sacks and waited. When I figured we were far enough away from Baldur that the Space Angel wouldn't return, I revealed myself. Luckily, I'd fallen in with a good tramp and not one of the line ships that goes by the book.

  "They put me to work as ship's girl, the same job you have now. Luckily, Bert's an exschoolteacher, and I learned the basics pretty quickly. The old comm officer took me on as his apprentice, and by the time he was ready to retire a couple of years ago, I had my papers and just stepped into the position. I've been lucky, I guess."

  Torwald's head appeared in the hatch. "Nancy, can you spare me your assistant, there, for a while?"

  "Sure, Tor. We're about finished here, anyway." Kelly followed Torwald to the supply room. He knew that Torwald had been taking everybody's measurements for body armor. While inventorying the stores, Torwald and Kelly had found sheets of hardened ceramic fiber, and Torwald had decided to make armor for everyone since it seemed likely that they would be in some decidedly hostile surroundings, if not actual combat. He and K'Stin had improvised shaping dies with which the heated ceramic could be pressed into shape, then rehardened. Kelly went through the supply room and into the machine shop, where the floor was littered with pieces of armor.

  "Fashion-show time," Torwald announced. "This is your suit, so let's see if it fits. First, the legs." Each was made in one piece, to snap around leg and thigh, and was held shut by its own springiness. The knees were much more complex and required exact fitting for easy movement. The arm pieces were similar. Breast-and-back plates were made in several overlapping pieces for mobility. When the boy was fully fitted, Torwald had him jump, squat, lie down, and get up until he was satisfied that the armor was properly fitted. Kelly admired himself in the supply room mirror. He looked like a Space Marine recruiting poster.

  "Where did you learn to make this stuff?" Kelly asked, admiring the sleek lines and gleaming black surface.

  "During the War I had to convalesce for six months after copping a wound, so they put me to work in the armory of a Marine troopship. With your helmet on and your visor shut, you'll be almost invulnerable in that... Okay, kid, it fits. You can take it off."

  "Torwald, what do you think about this crazy trip we're on?"

  "Think? Well, mostly I try not to think about it at all. Because, if I have to think about it, here's the inescapable conclusion: Nobody knows the nature of the Center, but it's believed that the stresses, radiation, and even the natural processes differ so radically from what pertains in our little bailiwick out toward the Rim that exploration might prove impossible, even if we could come up with a drive that could make the trip in less than ten generations. Now, I'm going to traverse almost a full radius of the galaxy, and not on a huge, lavish exploration vessel. Instead, I'm going in a beat-up, superannuated tramp freighter armed with a couple of popguns, navigated by a sapient football, and crewed by kids and rejects."

  "Is it really that bad?" asked Kelly.

  "Just about. Well, Drake's Golden Hind was a miserable little cockleshell displacing a hundred and twenty tons, and he sailed it clean around the world and took a Spanish treasure ship, to boot. Maybe we'll be as lucky. Maybe."

  A thump at the hatch announced a visitor—two visitors, in fact: Bert and Finn. Bert opened the conversation.

  "Things have been going a bit fast until now, and a certain trepidation sets in. Is that thing really going to take us where it says it will? If so, can we survive the trip? Having accomplished its purpose, will it really send us back? I, for one, have no ambition to crew on the Flying Dutchman of the inner galaxy."

  "Look at it this way," Finn said. "It's like being in the Navy again. We go where we're sent because Someone In Charge finds it meet that we should do so. The choice has been taken out of our hands."

  "We've always got old Sphere, Finn. Bert's said that its powers are nearly godlike. Maybe it really can protect us."

  "I've revised my estimate, Kelly. It might have been godlike at one time, but no longer. It needs a ship to travel in, doesn't it? If it's reduced to reliance on mechanical devices for movement, maybe its other powers are similarly weakened."

  "And," Finn continued, "it regards us with about the same esteem that we accord to amoebae. It might discard us at any time should we prove no
longer useful."

  "Don't talk like that where the Vivers can hear you," Torwald said. "Talk like that stirs up their survival instincts. They might try to cycle us through the airlock and take the ship back themselves, not that they'd ever be able to navigate back from wherever Sphere's got us now."

  "Do you think bringing those two along was such a good idea?" Finn asked. "They're ill-mannered and volatile, and whereas they may be survival specialists compared to us, their chances against what we're likely to encounter at the Center are laughably low."

  "They're no guarantee of survival," Torwald admitted. "But, they may give us an edge. Wait till you see them in action." A voice from the intercom interrupted the conversation.

  "Kelly, coffee to the bridge." Kelly took a quick leave of the others in the supply room, dashed across the companionway into the galley, drew a pitcher of coffee from the dispenser, then ran forward to the bridge up the companionway between Communications and Navigation. As he entered, he found the skipper in her customary chair, Bert in the mate's chair next to her, and K'Stin standing between them. One of the Viver's eyes darted around to a rear aperture to see who was behind him, and his leg spurs unsheathed about an inch in anticipation of defense. It was an unnerving habit that Kelly had noticed before.

  "Just me, K'Stin. Here's the coffee, Skipper. How do the instruments read?"

  "Nothing that makes any sense. I've just been familiarizing K'Stin with the controls."

  "Yes. Since you will all probably be killed, B'Shant and I must know how to pilot this vessel home."

  Kelly leaned over the skipper's shoulder and looked at the panel. By now he had had some basic instruction in the ship's controls, but he had never seen the dials and screens behaving like this. Two screens were blank, but three others glowed nonsensically with a multitude of colors.

  "Whatever kind of hyperspace we're in," the skipper continued, "it's not the one that the Whoopee Drive takes us into. Instruments don't act like this during a standard jump. Sphere's been soaking up the computer's memory banks for the last couple of hours. Pretty soon it's going to know all of human history and most of human knowledge." She fiddled and fumed for a while, then lit up one of her cigars.

  "Kelly," she said, finally, "when you go back, tell Torwald to start setting up some kind of survival training system. We've got lots of time on our hands and little to do. You younger hands haven't had training like that and the rest of us are rusty. It'll give us something to do, and maybe leave us a little better prepared for what's ahead."

  From somewhere, Torwald unearthed a stack of Navy manuals, and he, Ham and Bert put together classes in escape and evasion, camouflage, ballistics, field medical procedure, basic scavenger mechanics, and dozens of other subjects. The course served to keep them mentally active and, as Torwald explained, they cultivated a receptive frame of mind—something always valuable when one hasn't the first idea of what will happen next. The extra work also helped keep the crew from getting on each other's nerves. At best the Space Angel's complement was used to a freighter's short jumps; the crew had not been chosen to function smoothly through long periods of tedium, as had the crews of big explorer ships.

  For weapons training, Torwald rigged dummy pistols and beam rifles from scrap metal and plastic, with functioning sights and triggers that activated harmless light beams. To keep the crew in shape while confined to the ship's cramped area, he had the younger crew members carry heavy packs the length of the ship at a dead run along the companionways dozens of times daily. The Vivers regarded these exercises with tolerant amusement.

  One day, when Torwald was giving Kelly unarmed —and unrequested—combat instruction, Sphere at last spoke up.

  We are now in real space.

  Kelly beat Torwald through the door by two paces and they both dashed for Finn's navigation bubble, closely followed by the rest of the crew. Beneath the clear blister, they stood speechless, seeing the stars as men had never seen them before; even the Vivers seemed awed.

  Single stars could be seen, double stars, triples, stars in clusters of hundreds and of thousands. Stars of every color were visible: red giants glowed big as the moon on a clear summer night, pinpoint blue-white dwarfs, so bright it was painful to look at them, so many stars that it was as bright as daylight inside the bubble. And everywhere, in clouds and curtains and delicate veils, were nebulae, gas clouds, dust clouds, and the ghostly remnants of long-ago novas, shimmering like silken webs, multicolored gauzes so vaporous that it seemed impossible that they could be real.

  "If we never make it back," Michelle whispered to Torwald, "it was worth it to see this."

  "Sphere," said the skipper, after another lengthy silence, "how far are we from the Center?"

  About 90 percent of the distance is behind us now. You are looking back the way we have come, toward the Rim. Now, I will show you the Center.

  The ship rotated slowly, the stars seeming to move overhead, and the center of the galaxy hove over the edge of the horizon formed by the ship's side like a sunrise, only this "sun" was 'composed of billions of stars and was so bright that the bubble's filters cut in immediately. Even fully filtered, the Center was impossible to look at directly.

  Nancy finally put what they were all feeling into words, "It's the Face of God," she said, her voice trembling and her composure for the first time thoroughly shaken. "The Face of God, from Dante's Paradiso!"

  "Thank you, Nancy," said the skipper. "That's how I'll put it down in the log. I wonder how Dante ever got out here to see this?"

  "What now, Sphere?" Ham asked when they were all once again assembled in the mess, their nerves beginning to calm down a bit. Their brains were beginning to chop the experience into digestible chunks that could be stored away without causing any damage.

  We shall reconnoitre, taking short hops, perhaps contacting intelligences upon a number of planets.

  "To learn what, Sphere?" The skipper was becoming impatient. "We still don't have the slightest idea what we're supposed to be looking for, or what we're supposed to do when we find it. Will you kindly enlighten us?"

  You are to look for news, information, intelligence. What you do when you have collected this intelligence I shall tell you at that time.

  "News about what, Sphere?" Ham asked.

  About the Core Star.

  Silence claimed them for a moment as they thought that one over. They were trying to remember a detail from the dream they had all had when Sphere first came aboard, but no one could recall it with any clarity.

  "All right, what's the Core Star?" The skipper's anger was becoming more apparent in her voice.

  A phenomenon found at the center of most galaxies of any magnitude, the star which coalesced at the center of the galaxy when that galaxy first formed. Beyond that mass of stars you saw as the center of this galaxy, which you termed the Face of God, is a wide band of empty space, bare of all save wayward clouds of dust and gas. At its center is the Core Star, a star a billion times as large as the other largest stars in the galaxy.

  After taking a few moments to digest that concept, Finn spoke up. "Why doesn't it collapse from the weight of its own mass?"

  The rules of physics and the laws of nature with which you are familiar are limited phenomena that pertain only to a narrow spectrum of reality in that tiny one of the rim of this galaxy you inhabit. They apply considerably less in this zone near the Center and not at all within the Core Star. Within that mass, space, time, reality, take on entirely different meanings. Your minds cannot comprehend it. Even your system of mathematics does not apply. It is as if, within the ( ore Star, two plus two equals eighty-seven, but that is a simple and misleading example. Just as likely, and more to the point, two plus two equals green. Law exists, but it is not your law.

  "If the Core Star is so incomprehensible, how can we gather information about it?" the skipper asked.

  You need merely find out what has been occurring within the empty space between the last stars and the Core Star over the l
ast billion or so years.

  "I hope you don't want a detailed report," Bert said.

  A random sampling will do.

  Irony was wasted on Sphere.

  "Right, then, down to business," said the skipper. "If we're going to get any information, it'll have to be on Earth-type worlds circling Type G suns. You've had our computer's information, so I presume you can find us such worlds?"

  "We, on the other hand, are not so limited," K'Stin said to Sphere. "We Vivers can stand gravity that would crush these puny ones. We can breathe air of a thinness that would collapse their lungs, or water that would drown them. Our chitin is impervious to radiation, which would fry their innards, and our beauty would delight the eyes of any discerning races we might meet, while their ugliness would certainly blight the sensibilities of any such."

  "That's okay with me," said Finn. "I'd just as soon they took all the risks, anyway."

  Enough of this. Here where the stars are so dense there is no need to explore worlds that are only marginally inhabitable by your kind. Thousands exist like your Earth, and will have developed life analogous to your kind or have been colonized by such.

  "Well, when do we start?" asked the skipper.

  We have. I have jumped to hyper and we are now within a stellar system around a Type G star that is part of a cluster of many thousands of stars. With the primaries in such proximity, the chances of any favorable planet being inhabited are quite high.

  They cruised the system but found no planet duplicating Earth's gravity and atmosphere closely enough. They jumped to another system within the same stellar cluster, but had no better luck. Sphere decided to try for a location closer to the Center.

  Five

  What's the breaking strength of one-ply armor cloth?" Torwald barked at Lafayette.

  "Uh, two and one-quarter tons per square centimeter."

  Then Torwald pointed to Nancy. "What are the symptoms of fat starvation?"

  "Weakness, debilitation, diarrhea, inability to maintain body temperature." Her answer came, as always, without hesitation.