"The time comes when I have done what I can for a particular system."
By using its enormous power, it transported large ice-and-air meteorites to airless planets and made them habitable, cleared away dangerous s.p.a.ce debris, altered poisonous atmospheres into nonpoisonous ones. ...
"Presently the job is done, and I realize it"s time to go on to explore the infinite cosmos. So I make my pretty picture of the inhabited planets, as you saw, and head for outer s.p.a.ce."
"And the Silkies?"
They were an old meteorite life form.
"I found them long ago, and because I needed mobile units that could think, I persuaded them into a permanent relationship."
Cemp did not ask what persuasive methods had been used. In view of the Silkies" ignorance of what they had a relation-ship with, he divined that a sly method had been used. But still, what he had seen showed an outwardly peaceful arrangement. The Glis had agents-the Silkies-who acted for it in the world of tiny movements. They, in turn, had at their disposal bits and pieces of the Glis"s own "body", which could apparently be programmed for specific tasks beyond the Silkies" ability to perform.
"I am willing," said the Glis, "to make the same arrange-ment with your government for as long as I remain in the solar system."
But absolute secrecy would be necessary.
"Why?"
There was no immediate reply, but the communication band remained open. And along the line of communication there flowed an essence of the reaction from the Glis-an impression of unmatched power, of a being so mighty that all other individuals in the universe were less by some enormous percentage.
Cemp felt staggered anew. But he telepathed, "I must tell someone. Somebody has to know."
"No other Silkies-absolutely."
Cemp didn"t argue. All these millennia, the Glis had kept its ident.i.ty hidden from the s.p.a.ce Silkies. He had a total conviction that it would wreck the entire planetoid to pre-vent them from learning it.
He had been lucky. It had fought him at a level where only a single chamber of the meteorite had been destroyed. It had restricted itself.
"Only the top government leaders and the Silkie Council may know," the Glis continued.
It seemed an adequate concession; yet Cemp had an awful suspicion that in the long past of this creature every person who uncovered its secret had been murdered.
Thinking thus, he could not compromise. He demanded, "Let me have a complete view of you-what I caught a fleeting glimpse of earlier."
He sensed, then, that the Glis hesitated.
Cemp urged, "I promise that only the persons you named will be told about this-but wemust know!"
Floating there in the cave in his Silkie form, Cemp felt a change of energy tension in the air and in the ground. Although he put forth no additional probing energies, he recognized that barriers were going down. And presently he began to record.
His first impression was of hugeness. Cemp estimated, after a long, measuring look, that the creature, a circular rocklike structure, was about a thousand feet in diameter. It was alive, but it was not a thing of flesh and blood. It "fed" from some inner energy that rivaled what existed in the heart of the sun.
And Cemp noticed a remarkable phenomenon. Magnetic impulses that pa.s.sed through the creature and impinged on his senses were altered in a fashion that he had never observed before-as if they had pa.s.sed through atoms of a different structure than anything he knew.
He remembered the fleeting impression he had had from the molecule. This was the same but on a ma.s.sive scale. What startled him was that all his enormous training in such matters gave no Clue to what the structure might be.
"Enough?" asked the creature.
Doubtfully, Cemp said, "Yes."
Glis accepted his reluctant agreement as a complete authorization. What had been a view through and past the cave wall disappeared abruptly.
The alien thought spoke into his mind, "I have done a very dangerous thing for me in thus revealing myself. Therefore, I again earnestly impress on you the importance of a limited number of people being told what you have just witnessed."
In secrecy, it continued, lay the greatest safety, not only for it, but for Cemp.
"I believe," said the creature, "that what I can do is over-whelming. But I could be wrong. What disturbs me is, there is only one of me. I would hate to suddenly feel the kind of fear that might motivate me to destroy an entire system."
The implied threat was as deadly-and as possible-as anything Cemp had ever heard. Cemp hesitated, feeling overwhelmed, desperate for more information.
He flashed, "How old do Silkies get?" and added quickly, "We"ve had no experience, since none has yet died a natural death."
"About a thousand of your Earth years," was the answer.
"What have you in mind for Earth-born Silkies? Why did you want us to return here?"
Again there was a pause; once more the sense of colossal power. But presently with it there came a reluctant admis-sion that new Silkies, born on planets, normally had less direct knowledge of the Glis than those who had made the latest trip.
Thus, the Glis had a great interest in ensuring that plenty of time was allowed for a good replacement crop of un-knowing young Silkies.
It finished, "You and I shall have to make a special agree-ment. Perhaps you can have E-Lerd"s position and be my contact."
Since E-Lerd no longer remembered that he was the contact, Cemp had no sense of having being offered anything but ... danger.
He thought soberly,I"ll never be permitted to come back here, once I leave .
But that didn"t matter. The important thing was-get away! At once!
10.
At the Silkie Authority, the computer gave four answers.
Cemp rejected two of them at once. They were, in the parlance of computer technology, "trials". The machine simply presented all the bits of information, strung out in two lookovers. By this means a living brain could examine the data in segments. But Cemp did not need such data-not now.
Of the remaining two answers, one postulated a being akin to a G.o.d. But Cemp had experienced the less-than-G.o.dlike powers of the Glis, in that it had twice failed to defeat him. True, he believed that it had failed to destroy him because it did not wish to destroy the planetoid. But an omnipotent G.o.d would not have found thata limitation.
He had to act as if the amazing fourth possibility were true. The picture that had come through in that possibility was one of ancientness. The mighty being hidden in the planetoid predated most planetary systems.
"In the time from which it derives," said the computer, "there were, of course, stars and star systems, but they were different. The natural laws were not what they are today. s.p.a.ce and time have made adjustments since then, grown older; therefore, the present appearance of the universe is different from that which the Glis knew at its beginnings. This seems to give it an advantage, for it knows some of the older shapes of atoms and molecules and can re-create them. Certain of these combinations reflect the state of matter when it was-the best comparison-younger."
The human government group, to whom Cemp presented this data, was stunned. Like himself, they had been basing their entire plan on working out a compromise with the s.p.a.ce Silkies. Now, suddenly, here was a colossal being with unknown power.
"Would you say," asked one man huskily, "that to a degree the Silkies are slaves of this creature?"
Cemp said, "E-Lerd definitely didn"t know what he was dealing with. He simply had what he conceived to be a scientific system for utilizing a force of nature. The Glis res-ponded to his manipulation of this system, as if it were simply another form of energy. But I would guess that it controlled him, perhaps through preconditioning installed long ago."
As he pointed out, such a giant life form would not be concerned with the everyday living details of its subjects. It would be satisfied with having a way of invariably getting them to do what it wanted.
"But whatdoes it want?" That came from another man.
"It goes around doing good," said Cemp with a tight smile. "That"s the public image it tried to give me. I have the im-pression that it"s willing to make over the solar system to our specifications."
At this point Mathews spoke. "Mr. Cemp," he said, "what does all this do to the Silkie situation?"
Cemp said that the Silkies who had defected had clearly acted hastily; "But," he finished, "I should tell you that I find the s.p.a.ce Silkies a very likeable group. In my opinion, they are not the problem. They have the same problem, in another way, that we have."
"Nat," said Charley Baxter, "do you trust this monster?"
Cemp hesitated, remembering the deadly attacks, re-membering that only the Kibmadine defense screen and energy-reversal process had saved him. He remembered, too, that the great being had been compelled to reveal its pre-sence to prevent him from forcing E-Lerd to open his mind-which would have informed the s.p.a.ce Silkies of the nature of the Power.
"No!" he said.
Having spoken, he realized that a simple negative was not answer enough. It could not convey the reality of the terrify-ing danger that was out there in s.p.a.ce.
He said slowly, "I realize that my own motives may be suspect in what I am about to say, but it"s my true opinion. I think all Earth Silkies should be given full knowledge of the Kibmadine attack-and-defense system at once and that they should be a.s.signed to work in teams to keep a constant watch on the Glis, permitting no one to leave the planetoid-except to surrender."
There was a pregnant silence. Then a scientist said in a small voice, "Any chance of logic of levels applying?"
"I don"t see how," said Cemp.
"I don"t either," said the man unhappily.
Cemp addressed the group again. "I believe we should gird ourselves to drive this thing from the solar system. We"re not safe until it"s gone."
As he finished speaking, he sensed an energy tension ... familiar! He had a sensation, then, of cosmic distance and cosmic time-opening. Power unlimited!
It was the same feeling he had had in the second attack, when his senses had been confused.
The fear that came to Cemp in that moment had no parallel in his experience. It was the fear of a man who suddenly has a fleeting glimpse of death and destruction for all his own kind and for his planet.
As he had that awful consciousness, Cemp whirled from where he was standing. He ran headlong toward the great window behind him, shattering it with an arc of lightning as he did so. And with eyes closed against the flying gla.s.s, he plunged out into the empty air seventy stories above the ground.
As he fell, the fabric of s.p.a.ce and time collapsed around him like a house of cards tumbling. Cemp transformed into cla.s.s-C Silkie and became immensely more perceptive. Now he sensed the nature of the colossal energy at work-a gravitational field so intense that it actually closed in upon itself.
Encompa.s.sing all things, organic and inorganic, it squeezed with irresistible power. ...
Defensively, Cemp put up, first, his inverter system ... and perceived that that was not the answer.
Instantly, he triggered gravity transformation-an in-finitely variable system that converted the encroaching superfield to a harmless energy in relation to himself.
With that, he felt the change slow. It did not stop. He was no longer so involved, so enveloped; yet he was not com-pletely free.
He realized what held him. He was oriented to this mas-sive segment of s.p.a.ce-time. To an extent, anything that hap-pened here happened to him. To that extent, he could not get away.
The world grew dim. The sun disappeared.
Cemp saw with a start that he was inside a chamber and realized that his automatic screens had protected him from striking the hard, glittering walls.
And he became aware of three other realities. The cham-ber was familiar, in that there below him was one of the glowing images of a planet. The image showed the oceans and the continents, and since he was looking down at it, he felt that he was somehow back inside the Silkie planetoid, in one of the "art"
rooms.
What was different was that as he looked down at the planetary image, he saw the familiar outlines of the con-tinents and oceans of Earth. And he realized that the feeling of a virtually unlimited force pressing in was a true explana-tion of what was happening.
The ancient monster that lived at the core of the planetoid had taken Earth, compressed it and everything on it from an 8,000-mile-in-diameter planet into a hundred-foot ball, and added the ball to its fabulous collection.
It was not a jewel-like image of Earth there in the floor-it was Earth itself.
Even as he had the thought, Cemp sensed that the planetoid was increasing its speed.
He thought,We"re leaving the solar system.
In a matter of minutes, as he hovered there, helpless to act, the speed of the planetoid became hundreds, then thousands of miles a second.
After about an hour of continuing acceleration, the velocity of the tiny planetoid, in its ever-widening hyper-bolic orbit, was nearly half that of light.
A few hours later, the planetoid was beyond the orbit of Pluto, and it was traveling at near light speed.
And still accelerating ...
11.
Cemp began to brace himself. Anger spilled through him like a torrent down a rocky decline.
"You incredible monster!" he telepathed.
No answer.
Cemp raged on, "You"re the most vicious creature that ever existed. I"m going to see that you get what"s coming to you!"
This time he got a reply. "I"m leaving the solar system forever," said the Glis. "Why don"t you get off before it"s too late? I"ll let you get away."
Cemp had no doubt of that. He was its most dangerous enemy, and his escape and unexpected appearance must have come as a hideous shock to the Glis.
"I"m not leaving," he retorted, "until you undo what you"ve done to Earth."