Seed of the Gods

Scanned by Highroller. Proofed by the best elf proofer. Made prettier by use of EBook Design Group Stylesheet. Seed of the Gods by Zach Hughes Chapter One The flying saucer picked up the Volkswagen that had yellow flowers painted on its dented fenders as it crossed the causeway, rattled the loose boards of the swing bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway and sputtered in acceleration up the narrow asphalt road between the Flying Saucer Camp on the left and the newly cleared pulpwood land on the right. «Hello, dum-dum,» Sooly said to it, but there was a little lifting feeling in her stomach as adrenal activity belied her calm. The flying saucer, in the form of a symmetrical lightglow, posted itself on her port bow and paced her through the pre-dawn dark. She watched it with one wary eye. It was too early in the morning for her to be in the mood to play games with it, but she knew that if she slowed it would slow, and that if she accelerated it would accelerate, and that it would not, if it adhered to the usual pattern, eat her. «My daughter, Sue Lee,» her father would say when introducing her to people. «She sees flying saucers.» It was all a grand joke. Unless you were the one the damned things glommed onto every time you stuck your head out of the house at night. There were two blinking red lights atop the storage tanks at the Flying Saucer Camp. It was still too dark to count the tanks to see if there were six or seven of them. The lightglow off the port quarter followed her chugging Volkswagen past the sod-strip airport, the location of which had dictated the installation of one red blinking light on the tallest cylindrical storage tank at the Flying Saucer Camp. It lowered slightly as the car moved through an area of sparse population. Frame houses alongside the road showed lights here and there as someone prepared for an early fishing trip or, more unluckily, for early work, Sooly turned on the radio, pointedly ignoring the flying saucer. She was sick of the whole mess. Someone had left the radio on the country music station. She was blasted by the gut-bucket voice of Johnny Cash and silenced his tuneless growlings with a quick flip of the dial. The more pleasing sounds of hard rock came from the Big Ape, far to the south. The light of dawn was showing, dimming the glow of the flying saucer. Ocean City, an early rising town, was waking. It would be a sad day for fish. Everyone in town owned a boat either for making money or for escaping the tensions of making money ashore and the mackerel were running. On Main Street, Ocean County's only stop light was silent and dead. Sooly shifted down, engine whining, rolled down the window to see if her escort were still around, saw it low and directly above her, and rolled up the window. She turned up the radio and broke the speed limit on Water Street making it down to the small clapboard restaurant on the Yacht Basin. The flying saucer stopped with her, shifted almost uncertainly as she ran from the car to the building, then settled low above the flat roof of the restaurant. There was the smell of buttered pancakes, coffee, an arrogant early morning cigar, stale fumes of booze from a sad looking party of four fishermen who had spent the night drinking and playing poker instead of resting in preparation for the early departure from the docks. Most of the tables were filled. Sooly paused inside the door, liking the friendly buzz of voices, the clink of forks against plates, the tight, odorous security of the place. The slight shiver which jerked her arms could have been the result of the abrupt change from the early coolness of the outdoors to the moist closeness of the restaurant. She saw Bud. He was sitting with a couple of the charter boat skippers. He had a woolen sock cap pushed back from his forehead, his long hair puffing out around it. He was lifting a coffee cup when she spotted him, and the movement seemed to her to be as full of athletic grace as a Bart Starr pass. For long moments she stood there melting inside as she looked at him. Then she moved toward him, a solidly built, All-American-girl-type in a warm sweat shirt and cut-off jeans, legs smooth and healthy below the ragged blue, breasts making their presence known even through the bulky shirt, hair cut short for ease of upkeep, no makeup except for a slight flush from the early morning air. She moved with hip-swaying ease through the crowded tables, smiling at Bud with pretty, white teeth, her brown eyes speaking but unable to communicate her fabulously warm feeling. Bud was an easy smiler with a handsome handlebar mustache, bushy eyebrows. He was better looking, she thought, than Elliot Gould and, although not quite as groovy, even more handsome than George Peppard. As she approached him she felt that vast, surging love sweep through her body with a force which caused her step to falter as her mind overflowed with a confusion of nice thoughts: young puppies and clean babies in blue bassinets and rooms with thick red carpets and cozy fireplaces and the smell of broiled steak and baby formula. «Hi, Sooly,» Bud said. «I tole 'em the usual.» He didn't bother to stand. You don't stand up for the girl you've been dating since the tenth grade, the girl who wrote you seven hundred and thirty letters during the two years you were in the service and over in Nam at a cost of seventy-three dollars in airmail postage alone, not counting the perfumed stationery. «Hi, Bud.» She said his name in a way which made the older men, the two charter boat skippers, feel both uncomfortable and envious. He squeezed her hand and looked at her fondly. She felt a great tide well up and capsize all her dikes before it. Outside, in the growing light of dawn, a marine diesel, fired and caught and began to cough out evil-smelling fumes over the smooth, dark water of the Basin. Gulls stopped sleeping or resting on the water and soared, scouting for tidbits. One of the drinking fishermen fell down the three steps of the restaurant and ground his face into the gravel. He lay there embarrassed, bewailing his luck in his befuddled mind, while his three companions shifted their feet. He'd only lost a hundred and six dollars at Acey-Deucey the night before and now this. Low atop the flat roof of the restaurant, hidden behind the upward extension of the walls, the flying saucer flickered and winked out of existence. Sue Lee Kurt, better known to Bud Moore, her intended, and to other residents of the small coastal fishing village as Sooly, because it was easier to say than Sue Lee and because Southerners tend to slur two-name names, fell to with a healthy gusto as a stack of pancakes with an over-easy egg atop were, delivered to the table. She ladled on five pats of butter, poured on half a pitcher of syrup, punctured the eye of the egg and smeared the yellow over the pancakes and, with one contented, «M-mmm,» filled her mouth. Bud Moore was taking a busman's holiday. His charter party had canceled out at the last minute, and since he wasn't being paid to take people out into the deep green to catch big, fierce king mackerel, he was taking Sooly and a couple of friends out into the deep green to catch big, fierce king mackerel for fun and, possibly, for enough fish flesh to sell and pay the cost of running his 55-foot Harker's Islander out to the edge of the continental shelf. Sooly had put together a massive six-course lunch of boiled eggs, tins of Vienna sausage, potato chips, cookies and Schlitz beer, giggling when she bought the latter because Freep Jackson at the market asked to see her I.D. when he knew full well she was over nineteen. Everyone else brought food, too. The ice chest aboard the boat was full, with much of the space given over to cans of beer. There was a tiny hint of a southeast breeze at the mouth of the river. The bar was bouncy with the breeze blowing into a falling tide. Sooly and Bud, knowing that Carl Wooten was prone to seasickness, began to chant, «Up and down. Up and down.» Carl obliged by barfing over the stern rail while Melba and Jack Wright laughed, lying side by side on the padded engine cover, arms entwined, causing a flood of pure and happy envy to engulf Sooly. Melba and Jack had been married for over a year and were fabulously happy. Jack wasn't hard-headed like some people Sooly knew. Bud looked at her with a raised eyebrow, asking silently what he'd done to deserve her dirty look. «You and your damned security,» she said, but softly so that no one, not even Bud, could hear over the muted roar of the big G.M. 671 under the engine hatch. Carl wobbled up from the stern. «Up and down,» Sooly said at him, but without real heart. Carl made a weak sound and pretended that he was going to strike her. At mid-morning, the engine was purring at trolling speed and Carl was forgetting to be seasick for minutes at a time as kings came flashing and squirming aboard, straining arms and slipping drags on the working Penn 6/0 reels. Sooly was at the wheel and Bud acted as mate, taking fish off the lures, untangling lines, handling a gaff hook with one hand and a Schlitz in the other. For a man who got up at four o'clock, mid-morning was the middle of the day and time for a pick-me-up. Sooly thought drinking beer in the morning was delightfully sinful, but there was something about a fishing day which seemed to call for at least one before noon. She liked the taste, but didn't like what alcohol did to her and was known to be a one-drink girl at parties. The action slowed and Bud stood beside Sooly. She was perched on the stool in front of the wheel. As she brought the boat around to run back through the school of fish, she said, «I saw it again this morning.» «Saw what?» Bud asked, his eyes busy trying to spot the school. «You know.» «Want another beer?» Bud asked. «It doesn't bother you at all, does it?» «Aw—» «You don't care that every time I go out across the damned marsh at night, no matter what time it is, I'm apt to be carried off or something.» «We oughta get back into 'em soon,» Bud called out to the fishermen in the chairs. «It just doesn't bother you in the slightest, does it?» she asked. «Or is it that you just don't believe me?» «Sure,» Bud said. «I believe you, Sooly. Why shouldn't I?» Carl was watching the big, green swells overtake the boat from the stern, lifting and then dropping her. He heaved emptily over the rail. Bud giggled and Sooly, feeling sorry for Carl and admiring him for his love of fishing under such terrible conditions, laughed with Bud and forgot all about flying saucers and glowing lights and just let herself revel in the goodness of being alive in the sun with the water clean and deep and the fish cooperating and Melba and Jack sitting in the stem chairs looking at each other so lovingly that it was enough to tear her heart out. Chapter Two Meanwhile, back at the Flying Saucer Camp, Toby and Jay were unloading the new shipment. They worked swiftly and smoothly getting the securely packed cases off the vehicle and into the shed before the day became too far advanced. Toby did the heavy work. Jay had a boss complex. He was newly promoted and in charge of his first independent operation. Responsibility was heavy on his shoulders, so heavy that he neglected his share of work to have time to worry. He panted in his anxiety as he let his worry increase his heart rate, accelerate his pulse and further redden his rodent-like face. His skin was too tight over his cheeks, his large eyes bulged and he looked, all in all, to be hyper-thyroid and coronary prone. Because Jay was senior and older, and because Toby's young body didn't protest at the extra load of work thrust upon it, Toby did the work with the aid of the machinery, carting the power plants from the vehicle to the shed quickly as the sun melted redly through a silken cloud-bank to the east. He paused, the work done, to admire the sunrise. He wished, momentarily, for time to explore the area. It was a nice place, if one liked salt marshes and pine stands and the silty, polluted water of the canal. He'd seen a lot worse places. The red disc of the sun cleared the clouds and Jay was calling. Toby joined him. There would be no return cargo this trip, so it was only necessary to close the empty vehicle. However, it would be a full day. Wiring had to be run and ducts installed before the power plants could be connected. In the shed there was an all pervasive smell of long dead and rendered menhaden. The entire facility reeked of it. It was all right out in the air and the wind, but the sheds and storage tanks held the stench and the earth was poisoned sterile-bare by leakage, although the plant had not been operative for years. From the road the menhaden rendering plant looked, to passing residents of Ocean County, to be as deserted as ever. Long ago, when the local boosters and Jay-Cees announced the «landing» of a new industrial facility, the county had rejoiced because their area had been honored by being picked as the site for the plant, but that was before the plant started melting down thousands of tons of that small, oily fish called pogy, fatback or menhaden. Those who lived downwind from the plant soon began to question the value of industrial progress. At peak operation, the plant employed a half dozen men and brought a hell of a lot more stink than money to poor, isolated Ocean County, and not even the boosters mourned when the plant was closed without explanation and left to smell quietly in the sun. The plant had operated for only one season and the local explanation was that it had been built as a tax dodge. Only a few people knew that the plant had changed hands recently at a surprisingly low price. The financial problems of the parent company didn't make the weekly paper in Ocean City, but insiders at the courthouse could look at the documentary stamps attached to the legal papers in the files of the Register of Deeds and know within a hundred dollars how much money had been exchanged. The ridiculously low total would make more than one land speculator moan, curse and cry in his beer, for along with the abandoned rendering plant went fifty acres of land bordering the Intracoastal Waterway, a sturdy pier built to hold a hundred and fifty foot pogy boat in winds up to near hurricane force, three large buildings, two small houses, assorted boilers and pipes and other odds and ends of rusting machinery, a loft filled with rotting nets and bags of used net floats, three beached purse boats with gasoline motors still mounted and usable after overhaul and six huge storage tanks which had been erected to store the rendered menhaden oil pending shipment to fertilizer and pet food plants further inland. The most disgusted of all the land speculators was the Squire. He mumbled into his beer and moaned and cursed because the whole works went for less than a fair acreage price. All that hardware, which could have been sold for scrap; all the buildings, which weren't worth much but would have yielded some good material for resale upon being torn down; the tanks, which would have brought a pretty penny on the scrap market; that beautiful, sturdy dock, which could have been used to tie up the Squire's boat, thus saving thirty dollars a month dockage at the Yacht Basin; all went for less than the Squire had paid for his last housing development site on the Waterway. He was chagrined. He bewailed his stupidity. He cursed the previous owner of the plant as a New Jersey Yankee and he judged the new owners harshly, especially the new one with the rat face who came into town in a used Ford pick-up to buy a few dollars worth of lumber from the building supply. Outsiders, all of them. «Looks like you missed out on that one, Squire,» said that smartass, John Kurt when the word got around. «Fifty acres on the Waterway close to the beach, the airport and town. Let's see—six lots to the acre at about a thousand bucks a lot, say three thousand for the waterfront stuff—» «Haven't you got some oysters to watch?» the Squire asked sourly, sipping his beer and patting his paunch. Squire was short, somber of mien and perpetually evil of disposition because he fancied himself to be a problem drinker. Having this problem added a new dimension to his character and got him some sympathy, but it forced him to drink at least a six-pack a day and he didn't really like beer. Beer added inches to his paunch, which already sagged softly over his belt, irritated the lining of his stomach and stimulated the production of acid to give the Squire a permanent case of heartburn. Add to those troubles the effrontry of a mere state employee—a warden with the Commercial Fisheries Division of the Department of Conservation and Development—and you had a situation which raised Squire quickly to a simmer. «As a matter of fact,» John Kurt said, pushing his boy scout-type hat back and grinning, for the conversation was taking place at the shrimp dock with a few basin characters as audience, «I've been thinking seriously of going out to the big bend in Big Piney Creek to check on pollution.» The Squire cringed and killed his beer, burping deeply but without much satisfaction. He knew what Kurt meant. On the inland side of the bend in Big Piney there was an open garbage dump. The dump grew more rapidly than its source, which was the Squire's own little town, Big Piney Beach. As the son of the founder and current and perpetual mayor of Big Piney Beach, Squire knew that the town could not afford the cost of a sanitary fill, even if the run-off from the dump did kill a few oysters in the creek. The creek was already ripe with the results of raw sewage dumpage from the big towns upstream, but the Squire resisted the temptation to put the lowly game warden in his place. In fact, he smiled. The effort forced his face to bend slightly. The effect was not so grotesque that it sent the younger members of the audience screaming away, but it did shock some of the older ones who had known the Squire long enough to know that he didn't smile except at the closing of a deal where lots of money changed hands in the Squire's favor or as a ploy while making such a deal. To see the Squire smile was rare. To see him actually use his most potent weapon on a lowly game warden was an event. «I thought you'd be checking on the new owners of the rendering plant,» the Squire said. «When that old plant was operating it dumped the waste right into the canal.» «I don't think they're planning to render fish,» Kurt said. «At least they've made no application to dump stuff in the Waterway.» «You don't think?» the Squire asked nastily, seizing on the weak word in Kurt's statement. «You're so busy worrying about a harmless garbage dump and trying to raise the taxes of honest citizens that you haven't even checked out a real threat to the ecology of the area?» Got you, the Squire thought. He didn't wait for a rebuttal. He waddled toward his Lincoln, pushing his paunch ahead of him, leaving the loafers to chuckle as John Kurt swung easily into his outboard, backed it deftly away from the dock and went tooling down the Waterway in his never-ending quest for oyster rustlers and shrimp poachers. Chapter Three Garge Cele Mantel knew that she was being capricious and irrational in ordering the two Pronts to two consecutive tours of fatigue duty. Their offense was minor and should have been punished by a tongue lashing. Moreover, they were doing make-work. The outer hull had already been inspected. The tiny meteorite pits sustained while maneuvering at sub-blink speed through a rather impressive asteroid belt had been filled and the ship was conveying perfect mechanical health. Nevertheless, two young unrated crewmen were outside in the cumbersome suits made necessary by the yellow sun's potent particle spray, crawling slowly over the angles and curves of the hull, checking in dutifully with the watch officer according to Fleet safety procedures and Cele could not find it in herself to be sorry. She was a woman in a woman's world and one of woman's prerogatives is to be capricious in small matters. A delightful unpredictability was one of the small traits which went into making women superior. Men tended toward a plodding seriousness, moving toward a goal relentlessly while overlooking what they considered to be frivolous things which, often, took on importance through sheer neglect. If it were left up to men, for example, all ships would be cold and barren. She shuddered, remembering the almost deplorable state of the U.A.T. Entil when she assumed command. The bulkheads were expanses of drab, bare metal. The crew's quarters were unadorned and utterly ghastly. She was firmly convinced that the monotony of surroundings had been an important factor in the difficulties which arose on past tanker cruises and still, to this day, made fleet tanker crewmen prime candidates for rehabilitation upon return from long blinks. She had, in fact, spent many hours on the outward blink preparing a paper which she would present to the Fleet Board upon return. There was some work left to be done, for the paper would not be complete until she had integrated the statistics regarding crew morale improvement following her renovation of the aging Entil, but she was convinced that the final results would be overwhelmingly positive and would result in renovation for the entire tanker force. It was joyful to watch the changes. The growing incidence of something so simple as a smile was reward for her work. The job was not an easy one. It was a stunning challenge, in fact. A lot of time and energy had been expended on the outward blink in a transferral of certain materials from the cargo wells to their designated places, but as paint was applied to dull walls and bulkheads in pleasing brightness, as soft hangings muted the harsh contours of the quarters, she could see the improvement. She would have to justify the expense of tossing perfectly good but unattractive hard metal furniture out the jettison hatch to be replaced by soft-hued, rich woods from the decorator colony on Ankan II, but she was not concerned. The planet below, hidden from her view by the bulk of its large satellite, was an example of what could happen when tanker crews were bored, lonely and far from home without the supervision of a woman. A happy crew is an orderly crew. By the time she got home, she'd have enough proof to convince even the penny-pinching senior Garges on the Fleet Board. A Bakron rating knocked, entered on her signal, laid a report on her free-form desk. Seeing him, she was once again reminded of Manto Babra Larkton's magnificent job of uniform design. The crew of the Entil would have no reason to be ashamed upon return to the home planet. Thanks to Babra's imagination and talent they would be able to stand proudly beside any ship's crew, even that of one of the titanic exploration ships. Cele had not seen anything to match the Entil's new colors, not even aboard the Hursage, private vessel of Unogarge Clarke, a ship which was the pride of the system and boasted the latest equipment and luxury and was crewed by handpicked talent from the five home worlds and all the colonies. The Entil's colors, with the exception of the scarlet capes worn by the officers, were deliriously understated. Yet they were so smart that a full review inspection with the crew in dress made Cele's eyes sting with pride. She felt that her pride was justified, not only in the uniform, but in the entire ship. The Entil was, after all, nothing more than a powered cargo hold. The decorating problems were stupefying when one considered the limitations. The quarters, crew and officer country alike, were wedge-shaped cubbyholes stuck on almost as an afterthought around the huge central cavity of the holds. The lighting was atrocious. Odd shapes and protruding machines defied conventional methods of decorating. Moreover, Cele had been allowed only two months to specially order the custom furnishing and she'd been budgeted to such an insignificant total that she'd been forced to buy some items for her own quarters out of her own pocket. Yet, seventy-four long blinks from home, the ship snug in its orbit behind the screening satellite, the job was complete. She should have been pleased. The mission was proving to be unexpectedly complicated and there were new, unprecedented demands on her energies and concentration, more than enough to keep her busy. Still, she was restless. A woman does not rise to the rank of Garge in the Ankani Fleet without developing the gift of knowing herself, so she could analyze the reasons. But being a woman, simply knowing the why of her slight feeling of dissatisfaction did not dispel it. She was simply let down. Now that the renovation was complete, there was nothing to do to satisfy her feminine cravings. She reached out a shapely arm and picked up the report left by the rating. It was a confirmation of the latest arrival, without detection or incident, at the planetary base. She sighed. Her mature, firm breasts rose and fell under her officer's green blouse. Once the power plants were installed, a simple procedure rehearsed a dozen times on the blink out, the slow process of extraction could begin. Meanwhile, survey teams were working in other parts of the planet, sending back a steady stream of reports, some dull, some interesting, some marked «urgent,» all of which were beginning to build up a picture which, if she let herself think about it, made her feel a mixture of anger and sadness. Cele was a mature woman, an outstanding example of Ankani womanhood—born to lead, trained to excel, Garge at forty, a full five years ahead of her classmates, three years in grade and in line for promotion. Her hair was done in the traditional round circlet of burnished bronze around her well-shaped head. Her makeup was applied with a generous hand but was immaculately neat. Her body showed that sensuous maturity which comes only after a woman has borne her two compulsory children. Her genetic configuration was so nearly perfect that she'd been awarded the relatively rare privilege of bearing two girl babies. One was a rising young Larftontwo serving in the home fleet, and the other, less career-minded, was contributing to the aesthetic wellbeing of the race by doing light paintings in the art colony on Ankan II. Two of her second daughter's light paintings formed an eye-pleasing focal point on the long wall of the lounge in Cele's suite. Daughter number one had already been awarded one female birth, proving that Cele had chosen well when she had opted that nice, quiet Larfton from Computer Center to father the girl. She was, she knew, a fortunate woman. There was no reason for her depression. It was silly to be sad simply because the interesting work was done and only the duty remained. She would think positively. Although the Entil was just a tired old fleet tanker, being assigned to command was a positive thing. It was standard practice to toss a dull but necessary command to a rising Garge before handing out the split comets, symbol of Larftongarge rank, the magic key to command of one of the expo ships. The Fleet Board knew that it was sometimes a difficult assignment to keep the spirits of a whole ship's crew high in the face of endless months of blinking across empty space to the ore-producing planets of the outer fringes, and during the deadly months of waiting while the extraction team did its work, and then the sluggish, heavily laden blink home. And in view of the disasters involving tanker crewman in the early days of ore extraction, when Fleet command considered the missions so deadly boring that the ships were manned by male punishment tour crews, tanker command had ceased to be a dead-end for unpromising officers and had taken on the aspects of patriotic duty and high responsibility. Yes, she was fortunate. She was even fortunate enough to encounter an entirely new situation which gave her an opportunity to exercise the full feminine judgement with which she'd been gifted. If she handled it well, and she had no doubts on that score, her promotion would be assured. Meanwhile, she had to shake her mood. If the Garge, herself, had morale problems, what about those poor men in the crew? She moved her hand and was in instant contact with the control bridge. The face on the screen was that of a technician, Bakron grade. He was at attention, his eyes showing a sort of wistful respect. He was a fine looking lad on his second deep space blink and Cele had been aware for months that he had developed a passionate attraction for her. Reminded by his eyes, she studied him carefully, considering the situation. She ran a taut ship, but she was not the stand-offish type of Garge. In her previous commands she'd discovered that a bit of compassion on the part of senior officers did wonders for morale. It was not only democratic, it was good policy to opt a tech grade male now and then. Such broadmindedness proved that the Garge was human and didn't consider herself untouchable by lowly tech grades. Of course, she'd already endeared herself to the crew by opting a career Koptol on the blink out, but there was a long period of boredom coming up and showing her warmth to this handsome young Bakron would, at least, be an interesting diversion. A good officer thinks of business first. «Progress at the base?» she asked, in her no-nonsense voice of command. «Transportation completed,» the Bakron said. «Local reference point moved during the operation, but stayed well within guidable limits.» «I want to be kept informed regarding installation,» Cele said. «Yes, Lady,» the Bakron said, still at attention, waiting for her to break the circuit. Cele smiled. A red flush of pleasure crept up the young man's neck to his face. «You've done a good job, Bakron,» Cele said. «Thank you, Lady.» His voice was choked with emotion. «I'm pleased with your success in finding a strong emanation,» she said. «It has speeded the mission.» «Lady,» the Bakron said, clicking his heels in delight. «You will find that diligent work does not go unrewarded on my ship,» Cele said. «Would you be free during your next off-watch?» One never made an opting request an order. Even a male has some freedom of choice. «Oh, Lady,» the Bakron gasped. «You do me the greatest honor.» Cele shifted to a more comfortable position on the lounge, letting her strong, feminine legs show as she raised one knee. She let him look for a long moment, then closed off with a smile. She knew the word would spread rapidly. Before the end of the current watch every rating on the ship would know that their Garge was, indeed, a very warm and human woman and the reward earned by Bakron John Truto would be an incentive for every man on the ship. Some Garges were cold and limited their favors to ranking Larftons, putting an unbridgeable void between themselves and the ratings. Cele knew that she was known throughout the fleet as a warm Garge and that her efforts on this blink would reinforce that reputation. Her popularity would soar and, although promotion depended on more important things, a high popularity would certainly not hurt her chances. Around her the Entil lived. A deep space ship, whether a glamor-wagon exploration vessel or a working tanker, was a complex of interwoven wonders which seemed, at times, to have a life of its own. A deep space ship was never totally silent, and there was something reassuring about the low level of vitality expressed in the movement of hidden things, the almost inaudible hums, the muted clatter of computers on the bridge, the click of switches and relays acting out the automatic routine of sustaining the life of the crew, the mutter of voices in the quarters, the crisp military precision of the duty watch, the sullen, low roar of power in the engine room. Outside there was a frighteningly hostile nothing. Space. Airless and cold, hateful to all life. The sounds and the feel of the ship made good psychological counter to the mute threat of the great emptiness. To those who chose space as a career, a ship was more than a complex of machinery. Each ship had its own personality. Cele's last ship, an interplanetary passenger liner, was in total contrast to the old Entil. A liner was a Lady, sleek and luxurious. A liner's inertial cushions made blinking almost indiscernible, while the poor old Entil, prior to blinking, churned and muttered and groaned and shivered as her power banks built the charge and jerked one's eyeballs out as she blinked. A working tanker could well utilize the space given over to inertial cushions on the luxury ships. A liner was a dancer, sweeping smoothly through space. The Entil was a laborer in heavy shoes slogging its way from point to point. Not that the Entil wasn't comfortable now that Cele's renovations were finished. Outside she was utilitarian and clumsy, but inside, except in the engine rooms, which were made hopeless by huge mountains of machinery and which had always been and always would be man's country, she was as smart as a ship of the line and only slightly less plush than Cele's former command, the liner. She could not, of course, come close to the oldest and smallest of the exploration ships in style, comfort or equipment, but then the choice everything went into the expos. If Cele had not entertained every expectation of having an expo ship of her own, and not too far in the future, she could have very easily resented the emphasis put on expos. Even when one looked forward to mounting the bridge of an expo, one could still wonder about the wisdom of putting so much emphasis on them. One could wonder if it were actually worthwhile to make expo top priority, as it had been for a thousand years, since the discovery of the Wasted Worlds near Galaxy Center. The best officers, the finest equipment, a surprising percentage of the wealth of the United Ankani Worlds went into those titanic, fantastically beautiful ships which touched down on an Ankani planet only long enough to refit, recrew and reprovision before blinking out again on a computed course into the dense starfields. Cele, being a good Ankani, did not consider pride to be a vice, and there was a certain pride to be had from the fact that the Ankani were a persistent bunch of bastards. A lesser people would have given up. A thousand years of searching had failed to produce a single additional clue, and still the huge expos lifted, blinked and punched holes in the fabric of space, covering incredible distances, investigating a million stars and a myriad of planets only to send back the report—negative. «A vast waste,» the naysayers cried. «We are alone. Turn the exploratory toys into cargo ships. Concentrate on making our Ankani worlds perfect jewels in this sea of nothing.» In Stellar History IV, at the Academy, Cele read the works of Mari Wellti, Expo Garge, Unogarge of Ankan, intellectual. «The most profound argument against a policy of isolation,» Prof. Wellti wrote, «is a tour of the Wasted Worlds.» Cele's graduation trip was to the Planet of Cities. She looked down from a height to see graceful towers, magnificent architecture spreading from ocean to ocean. Then the ship lowered and she smelled the emptiness. She walked through streets and buildings built by something of humanoid form and saw the fused metals and cried because of the total lack of life, the absence of records, the mystery of what happened to what seemed to be so strong and so beautiful a race. A thousand worlds spun in space: city worlds, factory worlds, farm worlds, pleasure worlds, and all that remained was enduring stone and plastic—no life, no records, no language. Even the inscriptions on stone and plastic had been obliterated, leaving Cele with the conviction that the fate of all the Ankani worlds depended on one word: why? For if there was a force in the Galaxy terrible enough to waste a thousand worlds, could not that force, someday, come sweeping down on peaceful Ankan? «We are alone,» said the isolationists, who were still in the minority. And yet there was Orton. Out of a thousand thousand cataloged stars there was one small yellow sun with a nice little family of planets, and on one of them there was life. «Sub-human life,» said the isolationists. «Life on Orton,» wrote Mari Wellti, as she argued for continuation of the exploration program, «proves conclusively that the Ankani planets are not unique in the Galaxy. Our scientific teams have brought back evidence of a definite evolutionary process. The sub-human life on Orton is reaching up, by a process of change which, according to theory, is the result of certain qualities of Orton's sun. There is every reason to believe that Orton life could, at some distant point in the future, achieve all the qualities of humanity.» «The sub-human life on Orton perverted our men,» screamed the isolationists. «This hateful sub-life should be exterminated to remove any future temptation from our weaker sex.» Fortunately for the life on Orton, less bloody-minded counsel prevailed and the problem was solved by manning the essential tanker traffic to Orton with picked officers to stand guard over the baser instincts of the Ankani male. Orton ceased to be an issue. The decades passed uneventfully as Orton continued to yield a vital mineral, an element which had always been in short supply on the Ankani worlds, a metal which became more and more important to Ankani technology as the centuries passed and the home supply was used up. Other worlds had the mineral, but Orton had it in more abundance, an incredible 65 parts in one million by weight of the entire planetary mass. For over 4,000 years Ankani ships had blinked out to Orton on regular schedules to mine the mineral directly from the crust. Then more convenient planets were discovered and the small, blue planet with its amazing zoo of life was left to wheel in its lonely orbit undisturbed by Ankani ships for almost two millennia. Then came the Entil. She came with every expectation of being able to lower to the surface and extract her cargo directly and quickly from Orton's crust, but Garge Cele Mantel had not advanced over all her classmates by being rash. Although Orton was well-known and had been scouted hundreds of times in the not-so-distant past, she observed all the rules for approaching an alien world, ordering out a scout party in the space dinghy. Cele was on the bridge when the first report came back. It was such an astounding report that it took her mind off putting the last pleasurable touches on her redecoration project. It began informally. «Larkton to Mantel.» «Yes, Babra,» Cele answered to her second in command. «Cele, we're getting something from the satellite.» Babra's voice showed a surprising excitement. «Be specific, Manto,» Cele ordered, the use of Babra's title telling her second officer that she considered the situation serious enough to warrant strict military formality. «Yes, Lady,» Babra said, chastised. There was a moment of silence. «Our analyzer says it's high frequency radio waves. They seem to be aimed in a tight beam toward the planet.» «Impossible,» Cele said. She moved a hand toward a technician. «Monitor the dinghy's analyzer and feed it into the big computer.» It was done. Within seconds it was established that the signals from the planet's satellite were encoded measurements of the particle spray from the yellow sun. Cele felt weak. For one delirious moment she was sure that she, Cele Mantel, had found them, the people from the Wasted Worlds. At worst, she'd found the people who had destroyed the civilizations there. In one split second she felt the feminine weakness, and then her brain took over and the pitifully inadequate weapons of the poor old Entil were readied and the crew was scrambling to full alert and Cele was barking orders and then there was Babra's voice again. «My God, Cele, the whole planet's alive. All sorts of activity. Long and short waves. Voice transmissions. Good God! Picture transmission!» «Impossible,» repeated Garge Cele Mantel. She still had hopes that the people had come to Orton. Anything else was unbelievable, for 2,000 short years ago the sub-humans of Orton had been naked animals sacrificing their fellows on blood altars and killing one another with crude, hand-made projectile weapons. «They're into atomics,» Cele heard Manto Babra Larkton say with ill-concealed awe. «The evil little beggars are trying to poison themselves.» «Impossible,» Cele said. But it was true. She'd studied the report of the last expedition to Orton, which described the sub-humans as dark skinned, big nosed, thick haired and having only a rudimentary written language. «They've been in space,» Cele called. «I get launch pads on two continents with vehicles capable of carrying man— I mean—» She paused. They all paused and wondered and sent out careful scout parties and cursed the bastards down on Orton who had, by making a fantastic leap into the future, added months to their mission. For with an atomic shallow-space culture down there, it would be impossible to lower to the surface and do their extraction. Fortunately, the Ankani were a thorough race of people. The Entil had the equipment aboard to meet the emergency and the know-how in its Garge and crew to do the assigned job in spite of the unexpected difficulties. Chapter Four Inqui, the Fierce Saber-Toothed Tiger, and the world's finest New York alley cat according to John Kurt, bounded on stiff legs from behind an oak tree and attacked Bem, the panting, fat, ancient Boston dog, as she followed Sooly from the deck at the back of the house toward the weathered dock on the tidal creek. Inqui/Tiger (who knew both names because Sooly insisted on using her first-quarter French and her imagination, and because her father refused to twist his tongue around the word 'Inqui,' calling the gray-striped kitten Tiger instead) ruffled his fur in pleasure when his attack caused the old waddling dog to grunt in displeasure. Sooly felt as warm as the July sun. She had done everything, helping her mother put the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher, running the vacuum, scrubbing the grout in the hall bath which represented a never-ending chore, since the salt-water climate mildewed the damnable stuff as fast as she could clean it with Clorox and elbow grease. Now, with the day less than halfway gone, she was a free agent, content with her world and heading for the dock with serious intent. Her goal was to bake herself to a degree of brownness which would cause oohs and ahs of envy when she went back to school in September. She had to halt halfway to the dock to watch the family's prize pair of cardinals giving their new hatch flying lessons and she spoke harshly to the Tiger, who took a greedy and unwarranted view of the proceedings. «Beast,» she yelled at the Tiger, flipping at him with her towel to divert his attention from the excited bird sounds coming from the small tree. The Tiger made it out of there, tail high, moving so swiftly that Sooly had to laugh at him. He waited on the dock, his head jerking from the flight of a white water bird to the cardinals. For a city cat, he was adapting to country life well. The Tiger was the only worthwhile thing to come from Sooly's brief stay in New York. «I think that would be fabulously exciting,» Sooly's mother had said when Aunt Jean asked Sooly to spend the summer in New York working in Jean's office. So Sooly went as much to please her mother as to satisfy her curiosity about big-city life, and she'd stayed three weeks, just long enough to miss Bud with a heart-pounding intensity, to rescue the Tiger from unwanted extinction and discover that New York was not for her. «The most expensive New York alley cat in the world,» her father would say when he wasn't holding the Tiger in his lap or chasing him out of the planter, which he seemed to prefer to his kitty litter. For Sooly had spent almost all her briefly earned salary buying shots, a carrying basket and an airline ticket to bring the Tiger home. «No animals,» John Kurt was always yelling. «We're not going to have any more animals. You're good at bringing them home, and then you bug off to school leaving me and your mother to take care of them.» But there was the old Boston dog who was only a few years younger than Sue Lee, and all of John Kurt's grumblings didn't disguise the fact that he liked Bem. «I spend more on that dog than I do on myself,» he'd growl, but he always paid the bill for the medication for Bem's heart condition, the pills for Bem's grass fungus, the special salt-free diet dog food which she required. And he'd spend hours playing with the Tiger, who liked sacks and boxes. «You're nothing but a big fake,» Beth would tell her husband when he groused about Sue Lee's animals. Indeed, animals took to John. When the Tiger finished his first inspection of the Kurt living room, showing by his thorough probing into very small corners that he was aptly named by Sooly, he decided to rest from his rather nerve-racking airplane ride in John Kurt's lap. «You think he doesn't know who to butter up?» Beth asked, when the kitten leaped up onto John's khaki-clad legs. When the Tiger, who had never seen dirt before, only the pavement of the city and the interior of Aunt Jean's apartment, made his first trip to the great outdoors, it was John who watched and roared with amusement as the city cat walked gingerly, lifting each foot and shaking it, through the rustling leaves. It was John who retrieved the frightened kitten from under the car, where he'd retreated upon discovering that the country outdoors is a threatening maze of movement—trees, squirrels, blowing grass, flying birds. And it was John who waited anxiously when the developing nerve of the city cat sent him picking his way slowly and with great care into the uncleared bay beside the house. When the Tiger emerged from the jungle thirty minutes later within six inches of the spot where he'd entered, John breathed a sigh of relief and allowed as how the Tiger might just make it. Sooly liked her parents. She was not in one-hundred-percent agreement with them on everything, but there was none of that communications gap she observed between her friends and their parents. She shared her father's love of the outdoors, would fish with him for speckled trout on the rawest of late fall days and she pleased her very feminine mother constantly with her interest in domestics. Sooly would have been more than content to stay with her mother and practice keeping house and sewing and cooking until Bud saved enough money to get married, but Sooly's abilities extended beyond making a mean pot roast and sewing in invisible zippers. With an ease which she took for granted, she'd graduated with the highest grades in her class, made a valedictorian's speech about the responsibilities of the younger generation and earned a scholarship to a great little girl's school in Virginia where the science faculty was very good. There, during a long, endless school year, she'd added to her total of letters written to Bud Moore, caught rides home for weekends to fish, made-out breathlessly in the back seat of Bud's old Mustang and issued broad hints that Bud could take her away from all that school mess any time he was ready. As a reward for being a good girl, her father told her not to look for a summer job. She had earned a full scholarship and her school cost him only clothes and spending money so there wasn't a great drain on his just-adequate state salary. She sometimes felt guilty, especially after her failure in New York, because she was, after all, over nineteen and not pulling her weight. But at such times, he would merely hug her and say,