Refuge

Chapter 16. Wolruf Again

“It’s hopeless;’ said Derec.

Mandelbrot was trying to patch their hull.

“It’s got to work,” Ariel said, biting her lip behind her helmet…Otherwise, Wolruf -”

The other Star Seeker had been hit harder than their own and was scarcely maneuverable. Mandelbrot, using rockets welded onto his body and a line gun, had brought them close together, with Ariel doing most of the maneuvering. There was very little air in either ship-and there was no spacesuit for the caninoid alien.

“We’ve been stressed too severely. The best we can do is temporary patching.” Derec tried to rub his head, and his hand encountered his helmet for the fifteenth time. Frustrated, he let it drop.

“If it holds long enough to Jump out of here-” she said.

Derec shook his head. “Four Jumps to Robot City-five for safety,” he said…That’s days of work checking courses and calculating. I wouldn’t want my life to depend on that kind of patching. And we’ll be maneuvering. That’ll strain the patches even more.”

“Something’s got to be done! Maybe Aranimas’s ship-”

Jumping at straws, and she knew it. “Even Wolruf doesn’t really know how to fly it-assuming any of us had the arm reach for that control board. No computer aid, Ariel!”

She nodded soberly…I know. It’s not possible; it’s these ships or nothing. “

“Maybe there’s air or food over there. We could use both.”

They looked at each other somberly. It was not a pleasant position.

On a wrecked ship, barely maneuverable, with most of its instrumentation out, leaking like a proverbial sieve, on a trajectory that would take it somewhere near Procyon in a few million years, short on air, water, and food, with a friend on another, worse ship, sealed into a single room.

“Join the Space Service and see the stars,” Derec said, forcing a grin.

Ariel grinned back, just as wanly.

The alien ship was all around them, and some of the pieces definitely had once been living. Derec, feeling none too good to start, avoided looking at them, though they were at such a distance that details were lost. His imagination supplied them. Many were Narwe, but there was a goodly number of the starfish-shaped dwellers-in-darkness he had glimpsed in his brief time aboard the ship.

“I’m amazed they aren’t trying something,” he said again. They’d both been saying that for nearly an hour.

“Derec…I think they’re all gone.”

It could be. But-”Dead?” he asked.

Many were. Ariel shook her head, though. “I don’t think so. I think they must have Jumped out at the height of the battle. “

Leaning forward, Derec eagerly scanned such of the surroundings as were visible, trying to count the hulls. It was no use. “I don’t know how many hulls there were, and they all look different now. The central one, I suppose, had the hyperatomic motors. Maybe some of the other hulls did, too. I don’t think there’s more than one hull missing, though.”

“You agree, then?” she asked, worried.

“I agree,” he said. “Knowing Aranimas, if he were alive and here, he’d be shooting at us. With something.”

“Yes.” She was silent for a moment. “It’s not likely that all that damage could have been done by Mandelbrot.”

Wolruf had dropped the robot off when she had braked sufficiently to bring the relative motion of the ships down to a level Mandelbrot’s rockets could handle. The robot had made a landing on the alien ship, damaging one knee joint, and then had swarmed allover it, planting explosive charges at the joins of the hulls. The mighty ship had simply broken up.

“We already know that there were explosive charges at the hull connections,” Derec said. Aranimas had dropped one of his hulls to make his escape at Rockliffe Station.

“Yes. He must have blown them all, got his central hull free, and Jumped.”

“If he Jumped blind, he could be anywhere in the universe,” Derec said. “Let’s hope he never finds his way back!”

It wasn’t something they could count on.

Half an hour later, Mandelbrot called them on the radio and suggested that they go lock-to-lock with Wolruf’s ship. Presently, Ariel brought them together, Mandelbrot guiding them, and the open airlocks grated together. They were compatible, and with a little nudging clanked into position.

“This join will not hold air long,” observed the robot. “We must charge it, and Wolruf must move fast, despite the bag.”

They had been pumping their leaking air into bottles, to save at least some of it. Derec took one of the bottles to the lock, shoved its bayonet fitting into the lock’s emergency valve, and opened the bottle. Presently Wolruf banged on the inner door, the outer door clanking shut behind her. Derec let the air continue to hiss to equalize pressure-but the bottle went empty first.

Muttering, he jerked it out of the emergency valve, which closed automatically, and turned to the manual spill valve. It took a good grip to hold that open, but after a moment pressure was equal and they hadn’t lost much of their precious air.

Wolruf entered in a transparent plastic balloon, now half deflated under cabin pressure. She looked a little short of breath-or scared; Derec certainly couldn’t blame her. Itcould not have been easy to flounder in free-fall, inside that balloon, through the other ship and the twinned locks.

The little caninoid emerged from the release zipper with a shake, saying, “Thank ‘ou. Itwass a nervous time. I ‘ave grreat fearr of the Erani.”

“We think Aranimas is gone,” said Ariel.

“I ‘ope so, but I do not understand.”

Ariel explained tersely.

“He would sshoot, if he could,” Wolruf agreed.

Mandelbrot’s voice came over the radio. “I will enter the other ship and bring forth what items I can,” he said. “You will need more organic feedstock for the food synthesizers, and of course air. Perhaps it would be wise to explore the alien ship also.”

That was a thought. Itmade Derec more than a little nervous, and he could see that Ariel wasn’t much happier.

“That wreckage is grinding around a good bit. Still, the bigger pieces are getting farther and farther away from each other,” she said. “It should be safe-as things go.”

“That apartment back on Earth looks more and more cozy every minute,” said Derec with a weak laugh.

“I sstay behind and fly ship,” said Wolruf. “I glad to do thiss; do not thank me!”

Laughing crazily, they floundered into their suits and crowded into the airlock with Wolruf’s plastic bag. Normally it was used to convey perishable items across vacuum. Now they pumped it up to half cabin pressure, pushed it up against the inner door of the lock, and started the lock pumps. As soon as lock pressure fell below half cabin pressure, the bag began to push them against the outer door.

Their suits braced them against the push, and the expansion of the balloon speeded the removal of the air outside of the bag from the lock. When the outer door was opened they were shoved out-Ariel just quick enough to grab a handhold on the door, Derec grabbing her foot. Laughing again, they shoved the balloon back inside and slammed the lock.

Their first item was to transfer the undamaged antennas of Wolruf’s ship to their own, and to replace the burnt-out or smashed eyes. The two ships floated near to each other, linked by the light, strong line. Derec had brought tools, and also made a stop-gap repair on Mandelbrot’s knee. An hour of work saw that completed, while the pieces of the alien ship got farther and farther away.

They squeezed back inside the ship to rest, recharge their air, and eat. Ariel said tiredly, “How did you come to be here-near Earth-Wolruf?”

The caninoid snapped hungrily at synthetic cabbage. “When ‘ou Jump with Key, I hear static hyperwave. I hear two burrsts static, and I get fix on one. I expect it to be Robot City, but iss not. We know coordinatess of Robot City. It a long way away, but Mandelbrrot and I Jump to follow. Dangerouss, one long Jump. But we darrre not make more, orr we lose bearings. Sso one Jump all we take.”

She paused to gulp more food. They were used to her table manners.

“When we arrive at Earth, Mandelbrot make identification. He lissten to broadcasst-hyperwave still not worrking-and tell me, iss Earth, and explain Earth. We do not have to wonderr for long if thiss where ‘ou went with Key. I hear two more burrstss static, close together, same place: Earth. I not know how ‘ou use Key so close together.”

“Simple,” said Derec. He was tired and his head felt unduly light, even more than free-fall would explain. “The Key was focused on that apartment. Using it to leave anyplace else, even on the same planet, takes you back to the apartment. We won’t starve-if necessary we can always go back to Number 21, Sub-Corridor 16, Corridor M, SubSection a, Section 5, of Webster Groves, in St. Louis City.”

“Anyway, we wait. After a while, though, we detect hyperwave burrst of Aranimas’s sship arriving, and we know therre will be trrouble. He also had detected Key use.”

“How long has he known how to do that?” Ariel asked.

Wolruf shrugged. “Possible he always knew. Aranimass not one for saying all he know. Or more likely he learrned since we left him at Rockliffe Station. Is obviouss when ‘ou think about it.”

“How so?” Ariel asked sharply.

“Obviouss, Key must be hyperatomic motor,” said Wolruf, and Derec interrupted.

“I don’t think so. The robots of Robot City learned to duplicate them-they may even have made the Key we have. I don’t think humans or their robots could duplicate any such radical advance in science and technology as would be represented by the reduction of a hyperatomic motor to pocket size. I think the Keys are very compact hyperwave radios. These subetherics trigger the hyperatomic motors, which are elsewhere, and focused on the Keys.’.’

“Ah, ‘ou think motors are in Perihelion?”

Wolruf was a starship pilot too, and knew the theory of hyperatomics. “Probably,” said Derec.

The caninoid made a sound of interest, paused to eat more, and resumed her tale after pondering Derec’s conclusion. “Anyway, we sat therre waiting, and Aranimas sat thecre waiting. We expected ‘ou to use the Key and escape. Aranimas musst have been chewing nails and sspitting rivets. He could not know what wass going on, and Earth too big even for reckless one like him to attack. “

“How did you know we were us?” Ariel asked, and Derec, head throbbing, tried to follow the logic of her sentence.

“When ‘ou used ‘our hyperwave radio, he musst have known. Aranimas bum to intercept, and we follow him. We fortunate to be closerr by half a solar orbit, get in firrst. Aranimas not sstop to think how lucky he be to have crock to hide behind, going just his way almost as fasst as he. Only mistake he evecr make. “

Derec hoped it would be his last.

“What did you do to his ship, though?” Ariel asked, exasperated.

“Blow up. All time we waiting in orrbit, we were making explosivess. Carbonite recipe in Dr. Avery ship data bank. I know enough chemistry to add oxidizer. Had to use food synthesizerr feedstock, but only one of me to feed, and I ssmall.”

The robots had no doubt needed carbonite for the building of Robot City. Derec knew generally how it was made: it was a super form of black powder, using activated charcoal saturated with potassium nitrate or sodium nitrate. Since the carbon was nearly all burned up-it approached one hundred percent efficiency and was therefore nearly smokeless-carbonite was about ten times as powerful as TNT.

“Even so, it would not worrk if Aranimass had not panicked and Jumped. But he could not know what wass happening.”

Derec nodded, immediately wished he hadn’t; the room seemed to spin. “His panic is understandable,” he said.

“Are’ ou all right?” Wolruff asked.

“No, but I’m not getting worse. I mean, I’m feeling no worse than before the battle.”

Ariel broke in to explain about the chemfets, and Wolruf was concerned but unable to help. She knew nothing of robots, nor did any race she knew of, save humans.

“I hope ‘ou will be well,” she said, but clearly had her doubts. She seemed shaken by the idea of this invasion.

Derec thought of it as a disease, and at least had the hope that the chemfets were programmed with the Three Laws.

“Shall we go?” he asked. He turned and found Mandelbrot looking at him.

“What do you intend to do about this infestation?” the robot asked.

“Go to Robot City and either turn the problem over to the Human Medical Team or seize Dr. Avery and force him to reverse it-or both,” said Ariel.

“I see. I can think of nothing better, for I do not believe that the medical and/or robotic resources of Aurora or the other Spacer worlds would be adequate to the task of eradication of chemfets,” Mandelbrot said. “That then must remain purely as a final resort.”

“Rright,” said Wolruf. “We go find Dr. Avery. He worrse than Aranimass!”

The next step was to explore the alien ship. They cast off from Wolruf’s Star Seeker and jetted lightly toward one of the larger, more intact hulls. They carried clubs, and Ariel a knife from the galley, but they found it airless and had little fear of survivors. There were none, as it turned out. Nor were there all that many bodies.

“Aranimas musst have sounded the recall and called them to the main hull,” Wolruf said. “They would be valuable to him, of courrse.”

Still, a good number of innocent Narwe-and not-so-innocent starfish folk-had died in the battle. They found nothing of immediate use in the first two hulls, and became depressed.

“We must have air, if nothing else,” Mandelbrot said. “ And we should also find organic feedstock for the synthesizers. It is, you tell me, five Jumps to Robot City. It will take at least three weeks, and then there is the final approach, and a reserve against emergencies. This hull will not hold air for three days. It can be patched up more, but probably not enough to hold air for more than a week. We will need four complements of air, and even so, I must spend every moment patching till the Jump.”

“You’ll be patching after every Jump,” Derec said grimly.

Mandelbrot was right. They returned to the search, though the hulls were getting far apart now.

The next hull had been one occupied by the starfish folk, and they immediately gave up hope of finding air here; the strange aliens breathed a mix containing a sulfur compound that Wolruf called “yellow-gas.” On the way out, though, they found a robot.

At Ariel’s cry, Derec shook his head and took a deep breath. The robot, when he came into the open chamber where she was, seemed a breath of sanity in unreality: the shot-up spaceship, in free-fall and airless, was like an Escher print of an upside down world. The body of one of the starfish folk was stuck to one wall, a vicious-looking energy piston in one tentacled grip. Ariel and the robot were spinning slowly in the vacuum, drifting toward a bulkhead. She had leaped to seize it.

“It’s dysfunctional,” she said.

Timing his moves with hers, he intercepted them at the bulkhead and they turned their lights on it. It made no move, but whether it was speaking or not, they could not tell.

Mandelbrot entered while they were examining the robot’s body. “Energy scoring on the head, and fuse marks here and there, mostly on the body. It looks like the starfish over there shot it up during the battle.

“How did it come to be in the ship?” Ariel asked.

“Hmm. I suppose Aranimas must have come upon it somewhere and captured it,” said Derec.

“Where could he have found it?”

Derec considered. “Possibly it’s one he found at the ice asteroid. But I doubt it. He was desperate for me to make him a robot. He’d have given me all the parts he had.”

Mandelbrot fixed his cold eyes on the damaged robot. “This is a robot from Robot City.”

“Yes.” The design style was unmistakable to the trained eye.

“Let’s get it into air; maybe it’s trying to speak,” said Ariel.

But back in the Star Seeker it lay as inert as before. Removing his spacesuit, Derec got out the toolkit and looked at Mandelbrot. The prospect of work on the robot made him feel better than he had in days. A matter of interest. They quickly learned that power to the brain was off. Reenergizing it, though, did no good.

“A near-miss from an energy beam might well cause brain burn-out without visibly damaging the brain,” said Mandelbrot.

The positronic brain was a platinum-iridium sponge, with a high refractivity; it wouldn’t melt easily. But the positronic paths through it were not so resistant.

“So we can learn nothing from questioning it,” Derec said, dejected. “Wait a minute. What’s this?”

Clutched tightly in its fist was a shiny object. A shiny rectangular object.

“A Key to Perihelion,” said Mandelbrot expressionlessly. “

Aranimas would have taken it away from the robot if he’d known it had one,” said Ariel. “I wonder what the robot was doing with it?”

“We’ll never know. Maybe it took the first moment it wasn’t under observation to try use the Key. And the starfish caught it in the act.” Derec gripped the Key and pulled it out of the fist. Instantly he knew it was different.

“It feels like two Keys built together!”

“It is,” said Mandelbrot, peering at it. “One, I suppose, to take the robot from Robot City. One to return him to Robot City.”

“Which is which?” Ariel asked.

Derec and Mandelbrot spent a few minutes determining that. They found that one Key had a cable plug in one end.

“I see,” Ariel said, when they showed her. “A tiny cable, with five tiny prongs. It must be for reprogramming. I don’t know what would plug into it-”

“Something like a calculator,” said Derec, “to enable one to input the coordinates of the destination. “

The other Key had no provision for changing its programming, and was therefore set permanently on Robot City.

“Not that it does us any good,” said Ariel wistfully. “It’s initialized for a robot. Too bad; we desperately need to get to Robot City, especially Derec. And only Mandelbrot can get there.”

“That is true; Derec must go to Robot City soon, and the Key is better than three weeks in a ship, even if the ship did not leak,” said Mandelbrot. “I will take you there, Derec.” He wrapped his normal arm around Derec, half carrying him.

“What about us?” Ariel cried. “This ship is no safer for Wolruf and me.”

Mandelbrot’s mutable Avery-designed arm was already stretching into a long tentacle. “That is correct-it is very likely that you and Wolruf will die if you do not accompany us,” he said. “Therefore, I shall have to take you all.”

The tentacle coiled about Ariel and Wolruf and splayed out into a small hand at the end. “The Key, if you please, Derec.”

Derec placed the doubled Key in the small hand. “At least Dr. Avery won’t be expecting us,” he said.

“He find out soon ‘nough,” said Wolruf.

Mandelbrot extruded another finger from the hand that held the Key to Perihelion. It rose up and pressed, in sequence, the corners of the Key, and waited for the activating button to appear. Knowing it was irrational, Derec felt the air get staler in the tiny pace of time it took. Then, Perihelion.

And then a planetary sky burst blue and brilliant above them. They were breathing deeply, standing atop the Compass Tower-the mighty pyramid that reared over Dr. Avery’s Robot City.