Seed of the Gods

other floors, but at the center of the star, circled by a wide hall, was a solid core of the enduring plastic used for much of the building on the Planet of Cities. The enclosed space was large, but there were no entrances. «It could have contained a sealed power unit of some sort,» Toby guessed. «Such a large space would not have been wasted,» Jay agreed. «If we had a weapon, we could blast out a section,» Toby said. Jay produced a small hand blaster. Toby had forgotten that his former superior rating had carried an illegal weapon back on Orton. Jay stepped back as far as possible, put the weapon on narrow beam, and aimed it. The force was absorbed by the material of the circular wall of the inner core. Jay frowned, increased power. The energy would have cut through five feet of stainless steel. The wall, however, did not change in the slightest. Jay walked a few paces, tried another spot. The result was the same. «We must be onto something,» Toby said. «There is no material known which can withstand a sustained blaster force.» As if to confirm that statement, Jay pointed the blaster at the outer wall and a section of material smoked and disintegrated. «It would seem to me,» Toby said, «that the entire thing is a sort of test. That object which you say was buried on Orton had been there for a long time and no one heard it before you. To get to this planet, we had to have certain advanced knowledge. Perhaps we don't, as yet, possess the knowledge required to break through this wall.» «We have to,» Sooly said. They started walking around the circular core of the building again, examining the wall carefully. It was solid and continuous. Not one crack or blemish marred its white expanse. At intervals Jay tried the blaster with negative results. Sooly was becoming increasingly desperate and irrationally angry. They'd been led this far and she was not going to be put off by trickery. After circling the unbroken wall twice, Toby was stumped. «Look,» he said. «Let's go back to the ship, have some food, think it over.» «No,» Sooly said emotionally. «This is it. I know it is. We can't give up.» She faced the wall and hated it with a fury which sent color into her face, increased her heart-beat, set her glands working furiously. «You, in there,» she said, her voice low, intense. «You've got to help us. You can't just lead us on and then stop us cold.» Directly in front of them the wall changed color. The unbroken white turned dim blue and deepened in the shape of an arched doorway. They waited. The color change was complete and still the wall was intact. Toby pushed against the blue outline of the doorway and it was firm, solid. He stepped back. Jay used the blaster. The blue doorway melted, leaving an opening into a large, circular room. It, like the other rooms of the building, was empty, but in the center was a round column which extended from floor to ceiling and, upon approaching it, they saw two niches in the shape of the human form, one obviously female, the other male. With a wild excitement, Sooly approached the column. She touched it, waiting. Nothing. «I think we're supposed to stand inside, in the niches,» Toby said. Sooly moved quickly into the niche which was cut into the shape of a female. She fit snugly. Toby stood in the other. She heard, felt, sensed it immediately. But it was merely a meaningless series of numbers. She opened her mind and waited. The series of numbers was repeated. Disappointment was a vile taste in her mouth. After hearing the series of numbers three times, she stepped out. Toby was standing in his niche, frowning. «Did you hear anything?» he asked. «Didn't you?» «No,» he said. «It was just numbers,» she said. She repeated the first few as best she could remember. Toby looked at Jay. «Blink coordinates?» Toby asked. Jay nodded, interest on his face for the first time in weeks. «Go in again,» Toby said. «Write them down carefully. Be sure you don't miss a single digit.» She listened four times through to be sure. Satisfied, she handed Toby the paper upon which she'd written the series of numbers which were meaningless to her. «Let's get down to the ship and check the charts,» Toby said. «The first one is the coordinate for this planet. But I think the second and third must be wrong.» Back in the scout, hunger forgotten in the excitement, Toby checked and rechecked. «Meaningless,» he said sadly. He showed his calculations to Jay. Jay's face fell. Toby tried to think how he could tell Sooly that the blink coordinates she'd heard in the room there atop the ancient building were meaningless. «Right out into inter-Galactic space,» Jay said. «Right into limbo.» «What does he mean, Toby?» Sooly asked worriedly. «Blinking is tied to the known mass of a particular star,» Toby explained. «When a ship blinks, it ceases to exist, for all practical purposes. It goes out of the fabric of time and space and is in—» he thought of something she'd understand, «—whatever it is, but you might call it another dimension, but it's a dimension with no dimension. It just doesn't exist. It happens so fast that you don't know it. It seems almost instantaneous. But when a ship blinks, it and everything in it literally ceases to exist and the only way it comes back into existence is to use the mass of a large star to pull it back from this nowhere. To blink, you have to know in advance the exact location and the exact mass of the anchor star. We've been traveling a route which was mapped out laboriously, going from star to star to set up known beacons and coordinates. But this first blink in your series of numbers would put us completely outside the Galaxy, out in space where there would be no anchor. We'd have nothing to pull us back. We'd just cease to exist.» «No,» Sooly said, remembering the sadness, the kindness she felt when she first heard the call of the small object beneath the African plain. «They wouldn't do that. They must have known.» «Perhaps the mechanical object which delivered the message has lost some of its effectiveness,» Jay said. «It could have given her the wrong coordinates.» «Yes,» Toby said. «Check again,» Sooly told him. «It's right. I know it's right.» Toby checked again. This time he checked the entire blink through. From the plane of the Galaxy, the first blink went out toward the vast emptiness on a line perpendicular to the flattened spiral. The second extended outward, coming back toward the plane of the spiral at an angle, to end near a giant, outlying star. That one made sense. It ended near an anchor. The third blink disappeared into the thin stars of the periphery opposite the planet of Orton, all the way across the huge, central bulge of stars from Ankan. «Could they have calculated the mass of the entire Galaxy?» Toby asked, with sudden inspiration. «I know it sounds impossible, but could they have done it?» Jay was interested. «The first blink is far enough out,» he said. «It's a fantastic idea. It would open us to inter-Galactic exploration.» «They built this planet,» Toby said. «They put people on Orton, according to Sooly's memories.» He made his decision. «I'm willing to try.» «What the hell?» Jay shrugged, using an Ortonian phrase. Chapter Seventeen The Galaxy was spread before them like an illustration in an astronomy book. The flattened central disc was a brightness which seemed to draw the eye from the whorls of the spiral arms. Huge globular clusters appeared as single stars. Other, more distant galaxies were pinpoints in the blackness. There was time to admire and for a long time none spoke and when they did it was in awed whispers. Meanwhile, the power banks were drawing on that vast panorama of stars, using the entire Galaxy instead of a single star and the process was accelerated, the second blink programmed and executed before they had time to enjoy, to drink in the incredible beauty of a spiral galaxy seen from a distance just great enough to allow an appreciation of the symmetry of the system. Jerked out of nothingness by a huge fellow on the Sagittarius periphery, they were still awed by the last vista which had sent light patterns into their eyes before blinking. The nearness of scattered stars was a letdown. But now only one short blink was ahead. They came out near a kind of dim star without a family of planets. Alone, it wandered an emptiness on the fringe of the Galaxy, their destination—and an evident disappointment until Toby activated the sensors and found, at a respectable distance from the sun, a tiny mass too small to be called planet, too large to be called asteroid. They moved close enough to measure its mass, blinked in close. And they knew that they had reached the end of the search, for the planetoid was artificial, a circular mass of white material with the same readings as the unbreachable wall back in the Tower of the Star. Expecting another test, Toby lowered the scout to the surface and was preparing to set down when a force seized them, moved them across the surface, lowered them, power banks dead, through an opening which appeared at the last second. Blank white walls surrounded them with an unbroken expanse. A quick test proved the atmosphere to be breathable. With a growing eagerness and some fear, Sooly followed Toby outside the scout. A section of wall opened. An unseen force urged them forward into a chamber which was so luxuriously furnished, that it took Sooly's breath. The carpet underfoot had the feel of thick, closely-mowed grass. Furnishings were strangely shaped, but blended into the overall contrast of color and texture in an alien but delightful way. And the walls, while giving the impression of being at a distance, were not walls but shouting, heart-stopping works of art which seemed to change and alter while speaking directly to the mind, giving an impression of beauty which made Sooly's heart forget, for the moment, the urgency of the situation. Children, you have come so far The voice was unheard, inside them. It was feminine. «Please,» Sooly said. «Please talk with us.» So far we are pleased «Are you the people of the Wasted Worlds?» Toby asked. You call them that you will be seated while we———— you There was no understanding of the concept. However, they sat on soft, yielding cushions which, while yielding, supported them in comfort. Pleased, excited laughter. But you have combined forces marvelous. Puzzlement? The native life form? Unforeseen —a male voice-—pleasure, surprise. The large-eyed ones and the hairy animals of——————III. Delightful. Children you may go «Go?» Sooly asked. «We can't. Not yet. You must help us. They're going to kill everyone—» Regret. Indifference. A trace of resentment and boredom and impatience and then a leak-through of pleasure so keen that the infinitesimal amount which filtered through Stop you'll burn them out Random punchings. Wait can't you see No matter Yes put them back Long, long journeys into ecstasy with three frail children lying, stunned, on the grass-like floor Put them back Feminine weakness if you want them back you put them back I went out it is the rule a small part of you Simpler to eject them No put them back we all agreed to see them A glow over the fallen bodies touching, entering, erasing, an unseen force lifting, moving. A small, black animal giving one startled bark before she, too, was limp. A glow hovering and time which wasn't time passing as the scout blinked and lowered to a dead Planet of Cities and then movement in the recesses of the ship's instruments as time turned backward to leave no record of the Late in the evening of the second day, dusty, tired, despairing, they reached the topmost level. The tips of the star were much the same as on