Star Quest

XIII

They were flushed with the heat of love…

Lying naked on their grass mat in the cool darkness of the hut…

He rolled over to kiss the lips that he knew to be sweet and soft and warm…

And she had no face…

It had not been torn off, ripped bloodily away in rage, but had simply faded out of existence. “Tarni—” He began to say. But her name was slipping away too, dissolving from his memory…

He strained to remember the face … As if, by sheer power of the will, he could undo whatever the gods had done to their relationship…

For a moment, a mouth appeared with a greedy tongue. But that was worse than the blankness — that one, grotesque feature on the barren plain of the face. He stopped trying to remember. He simply ran…

He ran from the hut, weeping…

He ran through the coolness of the night with the stars overhead…

He ran with the booming of the surf in the distance…

He ran beneath the moons, wishing he could howl…

He ran through the bushes of amber leaves…

He ran through orange flowers, stopping suddenly to listen to something. What? What was it? What had he heard?

A hissing. An animal hissing in the bushes nearby…

“All right,” someone said, shaking his shoulder. “No more time for naps.”

He pushed himself off the couch, wobbling as he stood.

“We meet the Old Man in forty minutes on the edge of town. There is a passageway through the caves that will take us under the city wall.” Corgi's eyes were still flushing with brilliant color. He was excited about the swift culmination of all their years of work, the finish line of their centuries-long race.

Tohm stretched, blinked the last traces of sleep from his eyes. “I'm anxious to meet this Old Man of yours.”

“Quite a person, quite a person. Come along now. We mustn't be late.”

They entered the caves where he had first heard Mayna singing, where her hatred for him had bloomed, mushroomed into sight for a few short moments. She hadn't spoken a word to him since they had entered the hutch after escaping the Romaghin guards. She was perturbed, he was sure, by the fact that it had been her fault that Babe now wore his arm in a sling and had it patched with heavy heal-and-flex bandages. Corgi and Mayna took the lead, Fish guiding the Seer next, and Babe and himself with Hunk on his shoulder bringing up the rear. Moving past the lake, skirting its shores, they snaked downward for a time through phosphorescent corridors, then turned upward and finally struck out in a straight tunnel with no nonsense to it. Tohm estimated ten or twenty feet to the surface, perhaps as much as thirty.

The weight of Hunk was already burdening him down, sending throbbing pains through his shoulder. There was no flybelt now to support them, and he was taking all of the Mutie's weight himself with no help from the limited de-grav and propeller plates in the magic waistband.

“Not much farther,” Hunk said, sensing his discomfort.

“I can't believe it,” Babe said, puffing away on his tobacco cylinder. “I can't believe we're finally ready for the big show.”

“I wish,” Tohm said, “I understood what this big show is all about.”

“You will. In time, you will.”

Tohm tried to remember how long ago it had all begun. Strangely, he could not. Whether it had been a week or a month or a year, he did not know. All he knew was that he had come a long way, from hut to Jumbo to “pervert.” He had crossed millions of miles of space and thousands of years of civilization. Somehow, his destiny had become linked with these semi-people. There had, in the beginning, been few people in his life. Parents, a girl whom he had loved — or thought, in his inexperience, that he had — and a few tribal friends. Now there were many people and semi-people in his life whom he had directly or indirectly affected for better or for worse for as long as all should live. He had killed, it suddenly came to him with a bitterweet shock, as many people in this week-month-year as he had known all together in his previous life.

“Another half mile,” Corgi said, calling back over his shoulder.

Another half mile to what? What was going to happen when the Muties got together and did their thing? Who was the Old Man? What was the Fringe? Did he want to be a part of it, and would they let him even if he did? The last thought struck hard. He thought they liked him — aside from Mayna — but how could he be certain? Could one judge these people on normal human standards? Mayna herself had told him not to force his mores and values on her. Did they really want a peaceful world, or was that some front for a larger design they had on things? His mind was wrapped in on itself. Whatever was coming, however, and whatever had been left behind, he could not imagine anything but being a pervert. Their cause, at least, seemed just, the first righteous cause or purpose he had seen in civilization. Personally, he was hooked on these people: comical Babe, songwriter Fish, competent Corgi, incomparable Hunk, possibly even Seer now that he understood him… And there had been hissing in the bushes …

“This is it,” Corgi said, as they all gathered around him.

A small cavelet yawned upward at an angle.

A fresh breeze swept down, stirred their hair and tickled their nostrils with freedom.

“We cleaned out the mouth of this a long time ago, broke through to the surface. A back door for emergencies. It comes up in a clump of rocks just outside the gate. There's no cover for about a thousand feet. Remember, when you're out, run. The walls are very near, and you don't want to draw any attention. Don't stand about making a target of yourself''

Then he was snaking up through the blackness, moving amazingly fast if one thought of him as eyeless, progressing normally if one remembered he had radar cells. Dirt crashed down in handfuls, but there was no sign of a cave-in. Mayna went next with Seer, passing without notice, blending with the walls. Gone. Fish followed, then Babe, at his insistence. Hunk and he were the last. Heaving mightily, he lurched upward. He was grateful for his new and powerful body, for without it, he could never have done what was expected of him.

They broke ground in a pile of rocks just as Corgi had said. Straight ahead a clump of brush and trees loomed darkly. He wondered whether they had transferred the trees as well as the caves, then decided they hadn't. There were many other clumps of growth further out, exactly like this one, and they would not have transferred them all. Possibly, in the old city, this clump of brush and trees had been closer to the outlet. A thousand feet was a terribly long way when the guards were so close. He swiveled his head about, taking Hunk's with it, to look at the wall which was not even two hundred feet away. Once he had reached the trees where the others now waited, the growth would conceal their retreat to the meeting place the Old Man had chosen. This was the only dangerous ground, this open space. Heaving again, he cleared the rocks and began running, his ankles twisting slightly in the loose sand. But he would have made it — would have if some citizen had not been leaving the gate then. The huge portals swung open, and floodlights flashed on to show the traveler the road. The light caught him and Hunk. Plainly. Brightly. Less than half a dozen seconds passed before a stronger light snapped on, found him. The sand began boiling as near-miss laser beams splashed around him. The shrubs seemed an eternity away.

The searchlights began fanning the bushes, more than a dozen of then now, picking out darker forms that were Corgi, Babe, the others. Beams lanced in, setting the desert weed on fire. The brush erupted quickly, jumping from a tiny tongue of flame to an impenetrable wall of fire. The others were running from it. He saw Mayna fall on her belly, take aim, and laser out a searchlight. Another. Another still.

He ran, his tongue lolling from the corner of his mouth much like the tongue of a dog. He dropped onto the sand next to the others and drew his own pistol. Hunk had one clutched in his tentacle. They fired. Now and then he saw a guard slump away from the wall where he had been hiding. The majority of the Romaghins, however, were behind portions of the wall that were too well fortified and were too wary of the lasers to let themselves be injured very easily. Mayna pumped steadily at the lights, every shot counting, every shot making their hiding place a little less brilliantly illuminated. But the wall guards were searching out the source of her beam, trying to fix the exact location. Every shot she fired added to their basis for calculations, helped them vector in on her. A block of guards came through the gate, the front line blasting steadily to cover their advance.

“Run!” Corgi shouted, following his own advice.

They leaped from the sand and rounded the wall of flame, momentarily putting a barrier between themselves and the troops. But the Romaghins would soon clear it too. And suddenly they had cleared it. There was a scream. Tohm turned to his right and saw Fish grabbing at the air, his arms stroking as if he were swimming through very thick water. Then he fell, burning, rolled several times, and was still.

Tohm looked at his watch.

At first, nothing seemed to focus. Then his vision cleared through sheer willpower. There were still ten minutes until the Old Man arrived. Ten minutes, he realized, as Seer lost his head in a blaze of purple light and crashed to his knees, would be much too late. Much.

XIV

They were behind a ridge of sand, firing at the mass of Romaghin guards that had collected in the windblown dunes ahead. It was only a matter of minutes, Tohm knew, until the officers would direct their flanks to spread out and surround the Muties. And worst of all, they were too outnumbered to do anything about it. Far away, the roar of a desert tanker droned steadily forward, closer, louder. When the tanker moved in between the Romaghins and Muties and began lobbing shells, they would be dead to the last. He realized that the guards would not risk their own lives when a deadly and efficient machine like the tanker could kill for them.

Mayna was crying about Seer and Fish. It was the first time he had seen her cry real tears.

Corgi was cursing the oncoming artillery.

Just that suddenly, the thought of artillery reminded him of Jumbo Ten. Somewhere in his brain, a memory was dug out of storage and dusted off. The small communications bulb in his ear! He lifted a finger to the fleshy lobe. The bulb was still there, a little lump in the fat. He pressed it between two fingers, smashed it, activating the chemical broadcasters. Instantly, J-10 would be firing loose of the sands, homing in on the beam. Eight hundred miles at 24,000 miles an hour top speed. That meant it would be there in — he began doing some swift calculations…

But before he could even decide on a relative arrival time, he heard the roar of the mighty engines, the whine of the air being squeezed out of the way, rent in two like an old, rotten curtain. The retro-rockets fired a hundred miles off, lighting the sky. Then, abruptly, the giant machine was crashing down a hundred yards ahead, blocking his view of most of the Romaghins.

The tiny, sonic scope twiddled about, hunting his voice which it had recorded on its memory bank tapes.

“Behind and to the right,” he said. “Kill those soldiers.”

The Jumbo readjusted its position. The Romaghins, thinking at first that it was their own machine sent somehow, miraculously, to aid them, stood and began running toward it, laughing. Most ceased chuckling and guffawing when their first ranks were gunned down with laser cannon. They turned to run. But cannon beams and gas shells tore up the sand and the men indiscriminately. The armored tanker, seeing the gargantuan robot, wheeled about, tried to retreat. It made a dozen yards before the laser cannon melted it into slag.

The Muties were cheering. Babe had hold of Tohm's neck and was nearly strangling him with one arm while clubbing him with the cast of the other.

“Yours?” Corgi shouted.

“Mine!” He turned to Jumbo Ten which sat with all weapons ready. “At ease.”

The humming softened.

“We'll walk before it to where we meet the Old Man. We keep that Jumbo,” Corgi said excitedly. “We may need it before this is all over.”

“Hey!” Mayna shouted, pointing toward a sled that had drifted in low from the gate. There was a single figure on it. Small. As it came closer, Tohm could see that it was the boy with the white eyes, the albino who wan't an albino.

“Tohm!” Hunk shouted. “Order the Jumbo to—”

But then there was no Jumbo.

There was nothing for Tohm for one split second, then:

A lightningbolt smashed!

Another blasted down!

And yet another!

And out of the mists of their ozone clouds she came, faceless, moving easily, graceful, slinking…

But no face…

And no name…

He concentrated on her face, on what it should be, on what he knew it must look like…

Green eyes…

Green, green, greengreengreen…

Lips bursting with sweetness: a tiny, pink tongue licking little teeth in show of passion…

Hissing…

There was a scream that was not part of it. For a moment the dream cleared and he felt himself gaining control of his body again. Then the dream clamped down tighter than ever:

A lightningbolt smashed!

Another blasted down!

And yet another!

Hissing…

He placed his hands upon her breasts, looked into her faceless face…

Another scream. It was very close this time. In his ear, really. For a moment the world opened up again. The white-eyed boy was kneeling on the ground, the sled upset beside him. Hunk's tentacles were throbbing, wiggling. Hunk was screaming!

A lightningbolt smashed!

And another!

Out of the mists she came…

He wanted to violate—

Hunk's screams had been but a prelude to the latest from the boy. It covered all ranges of a scream. It vibrated on every decibel. It was a million-billion screams careening out of the void, smashing upon the rocks of his ears…

A lightningbolt smashed!

Naked, she—

But the dreams were not holding. They receded like the tide, weaker each time, coming in less and less. He wished Hunk would stop screaming.

A lightning—

And out of the mist—

Naked, she turned and—

And yet anoth—

The scream of all voices ceased and with it ceased every scrap of nightmare, every vestige of dream. Groggily, he looked about. The others were just coming to their senses too. Half a dozen tanks were rumbling across the sand, moving in under the screen they thought the boy was still putting up.

“Shell them!” he cried at the Jumbo.

Raising its barrels and launch tubes, the robot rapid-fired grenades and gas shells into the tankers, puffing them to ashes, smashing down the wall of the city and driving the other guards back into the heart of the capital, away from the walls.

He felt Hunk's tentacles begin to loosen. For the first time since the boy had attacked, he twisted his head to look at the Mutie. There was blood dribbling from his lips. Tohm dropped to his knees and lifted Hunk off, laid him gently on the ground. The others were gathering around. Hunk's lids were heavy, blotting out half of his eyes. Blood seeped from his mouth, out both ears. He was pale. He was dying.

Tohm felt the tears coming now. Fish had been nothing to him. Fish was withdrawn, a loner. It had been a blessing for Seer — this thing called death. But Hunk… He wanted to wade through the rubble of the city and slit the throat of every guard he saw. Rage boiled within him, fired his basest fires. And still he cried; with all the rage at hatred, the tenderness still surged to the surface.

Blood gurgled in a steadier stream from the lips.

“Hunk, my God, who was he?”

“He wasn't the same boy,” Hunk said thickly.

“Who?”

“A… Mutie.”

“But he was working against us!”

Hunk coughed clots of red, wheezed. “Tohm, can you imagine a Mutie born without a body? No, I'm not delirous. The others will back me up. Born without a body, as a mind, as a pure entity with no flesh shell.”

“I don't understand.”

“The White Eyes always look like one another, always the same. He is a living dream maker, a psychedelic drug. He creates his pseudo-flesh, the body that we see, from the raw force of men's desires. Lust is the strongest of man's basic emotions, it seems. So strong in some men that the White Eyes can spin it into a body, take the energy of those thoughts and create a shell of substance. Men once had a drive for food that was their strongest thought pattern, but now no one is hungry. Once it was self-preservation, but that is not so strong anymore. A dead man can often be rebuilt. Death is not always permanent. Once it was family love. But that died long ago in most people as our modern world encouraged love of self. So now it is lust. The White Eyes are tangible lust creatures. When one is born, the men flock to the womb to give him flesh in return for his realistic dreams.”

He coughed more blood. He closed his eyes and breathed easily for a while. The Jumbo was still shelling the walls. “The boy clothes itself in their desires. But the form is always — always the same.”

Tohm looked up to the others. Mayna was crying. Corgi may have been: the yellow was a very different shade from what Tohm had ever seen in the radar patches. It may have constituted tears.

“Too bad… about… Tarnilee,” Hunk said. “Too bad, Tohm.” And then he was gone: no less a man in death than ever took a breath. Tohm recognized that as a line from some poem he had picked out of the books in Triggy Gop's bowels. He removed his hand from the blood-covered chin and stood.

“We had better go,” Corgi said suddenly, turning away from the remains of Hunk. “They'll be calling in heavy artillery.”

Tohm ordered the Jumbo to follow.

They trudged across the desert, suddenly very weary in all their well-shaped and mis-shapen bones.

“He's here,” Corgi said at last, brightening a bit.

“The Old Man,” Babe whispered reverently in explanation.

Tohm could see, among the black shadows of the trees, a greater shadow of what seemed to be a ship. A portal hummed open. They stepped through. “Welcome,” the Old Man said.

Tohm gasped. “Good God, Triggy Gop!”

XV

“Who else?” the voice drifted from the walls.

'I'll be damned!”

“I doubt that. The others?”

“Dead,” Corgi said flatly and as quickly as he could. He did not seem to want to dwell upon it.

There was a moment of silence before Triggy spoke. “It happens. It has happened to others of us and will happen again. We must remember, however, the cause. In fact, we may all have a chance to die for the cause. The Romaghins have discovered, through their intelligence network, that a great number of Muties are entering Federation worlds via unknown means. They have not discovered that I am that unknown transport. But their suspicions are aroused. They have their eyes on Columbiad, where we have our greatest forces concentrated. Any moment, they may attack in an attempt to wipe out as many of us as they can before we can make our move,”

“What do we do?” Corgi asked. “I foresee a ninety percent chance that they will attack.”

Everyone frowned. “That isn't good,” Triggy sighed.

Corgi continued: “However, and this is odd, there seems to be only a thirty-five percent chance of their succeeding.”

“You're sure?” Triggy asked.

“Positive.”

Everyone had flopped onto couches. There were also ten normals, the Mutie sympathizers from the capital— ten out of three million who would actually do something about the injustice they saw.

“We are making the transfer in four hours,” Triggy announced.

There were gasps and murmurs of excitement.

“But are we ready?” Mayna asked.

“Yes, sweet child. You are the last colony to be evacuated. You will, because of your idea for total universe transfer, which was offered by your Hunk, be my staff for the operation.”

There were smiles.

“Now, please strap in. Tohm, you come to the main room and strap in the hypno-teacher. In your absence, I prepared a set of toto-experience tapes, working from the ground up. They bypass vocabulary and appeal to all senses. They should explain all of this to you.”

He stood. “I hope so.”

“They will. I'm sure of it. Perfect pieces of work — even if I say so myself.”

While the others strapped in, Tohm left and found the hypno-teacher. He was belted down before the blast came.

The tapes were very good.

He walked above the universes, looking down at each. He did not question where his vantage point may have been, but watched that which was shown with a singleness of purpose that could only have been hypno-suggestion. He understood that each universe (and there were countless trillions of them) was an all-encompassing and endless thing, yet each universe was separated from the others by a wall, a very definite barrier dubbed the Fringe. One layer of molecules separated each universe from its neighbors. In fact, that layer was one molecule stretching in all directions until eternity, though never bisecting another shell molecule.

He saw that the Muties were able to distinguish this area, to view it naturally in much the same way he was seeing it now. They could locate their own universe in this endless procession. The Mutie mind could distort the shell molecule, stretch it thin and rent it, making a portal into the neighboring universe. They could encompass their own universe with the fields of their minds, wrench it from its niche, and start it moving through the rent. If they studiously concentrated on not encompassing the Romaghin and Setessin worlds, those areas would be left behind.

The Muties' universe would not, however, collide with the neighboring universe on the other side of the rent molecule when it pushed through, for that neighboring universe would push against the shell molecule on its opposite end and force itself through into a third universal plane. The third would push into a fourth almost simultaneously; the fourth into a fifth, fifth into sixth. An endless chain would be started. The process of natural transfer of universes would never end. There would be no negative repercussions, for the process was not a circle that would eventually close itself.

The Muties wanted to encompass all of their own universe except the warlike worlds, thus pushing ninety-nine point nine percent through the rent. The gaps where the peaceful worlds had been would be (?) empty in the old universe, and the spots where the warlike worlds had been would be gaps in the new universe. It was quite like a cancer operation, cutting out the malignant growths — in this case, worlds — and leaving them behind. What happened to the Romaghins and Setessins in that great empty universe was not their worry. Cruel, perhaps, but wasn't it worth it to all those neutral peoples who had been caught up in an eight hundred year war?

All of this was shown him, not in words, but in mind pictures, in thought-image concepts that he could grasp with all senses.

At last, he understood.

“Well?” Triggy Gop said, when he came out of hypno-teach.

“It's clear now.”

“Are you with us?”

He grinned at the walls where the cameras would be watching him. “Of course.”

“I'm glad. I was intrigued by you that first time we met. When I learned you were with Corgi's group, I wasn't surprised. Not really. In fact, I was so intrigued with you that I began writing an opus about your exploits. I expect to get a full account from you so that I may work on the verse once we get through to the new universe and this great labor is over.”

“An heroic epic?”

“Something like that.”

“You know that my search never reached fruition.”

“Well, we shall see.”

“It didn't. A bust.”

“Time heals all wounds. Meanwhile, stay strapped in. We're landing on Columbiad in a few minutes. I have to attend to that now.”

Tohm leaned back in the chair. The entire concept was staggering. The Muties had been trying to transfer the capital of Basa II into another universe. But they had discovered that it was simpler to transfer everything but the Romaghins and Setessins! He still could not grasp it all. But it meant something now. He had seen how war and the war-makers had held back an entire people — the Muties — and had disrupted the entire lives of billions more. To end war was certainly a noble gesture. He wanted to be in on it. It was something to continue living for. And the hissing in the bushes … The filling in of a blank face …

The retro-rockets fired, jarring the library…

The time was coming swiftly…

XVI

“You sir over there,” Corgi said, pointing across the room full of Muties to an empty chair next to Mayna.

“Next to her?”

“Why not?”

“She hates my every cell.”

Corgi smiled sarcastically. “Sure.”

“She does. Please seat me elsewhere.”

“You really believe—”

“Listen, Corgi, she will claw me to pieces if I go near her.”

“You fool.”

“Look, don't call me that. Everyone has had a turn now, so shut up.”

Corgi grabbed his arm. “No. You are a fool. You are a fool not to see when someone is in love with you. Surely, your Tarnilee never looked at you the way Mayna does.”

Tohm wrinkled his brow in uncertainty. “I—”

“You're a fool. I'll say it again: you're a fool.”

“No. Look, she said I didn't understand—”

“And you didn't. You didn't understand that she had been taught to fight normals, to consider herself better, and she fell, instead, in love with one. All of her values and mores were upset. She fought you to bolster herself, her own beliefs that were being shattered by your presence. She fell in love — well, on first sight. But all you could think of was finding Tarnilee. Did you ever tell Mayna you loved her?”

“No!”

“But you do, don't you?”

He tried to deny it, but he could not find the words.

“She wanted to be sure that you understood us, for, if you really did, it would justify her love. Now go sit next to her. The time has come.”

He hesitated a moment, then struck off across the room. There were Muties in every chamber of Triggy Gop's belly. Two thousand of them. The remainder of their numbers were hooked electronically to the Old Man. The moment had come. He slumped into the chair, looked at her. “Good luck,” he said at last.

“Thank you, Hero Tohm.”

“For God's sake—”

But he was interrupted by Triggy. “Okay, let us prepare ourselves. We may not have time, but we can try. And if we succeed today, let us not forget that it was Hunk, a brave and intelligent man, who died for us and gave us this plan. Now, first stage.”

Tohm looked about at the weird conglomeration, the two-headed men, the graceful nymphets with eyes that constantly changed colors, the winged people. They were a wonderful phantasmagoria. As a single entity, they slipped into a trance.

The last word Mayna spoke was this: “Tohm.”

He looked to her full lips as they closed into sleep. Perhaps Corgi had been right. Perhaps he was the greatest fool to come down the space lanes in a thousand years. He put a hand on her shoulder, though she could not feel it, and waited. “Stage two,” Triggy Gop said. There was no noticeable outward change in the Muties, but Tohm thought he sensed a spiritual drawing away.

“Tohm!” Triggy snapped through his wire mouth.

He sat erect. “What?”

“The Romaghins. Good heavens, ten of their Jumbos are closing in on Columbiad. They'll find us before we can act.”

“I could lead them on a wild goose chase with Jumbo Ten.”

“Take her with you,” Triggy said.

“But—”

“She wouldn't want you to go without her. She didn't have to save you back on Basa II. The others were leaving early. They would have been gone before you were tortured, before you could have spilled their location to the police.”

His mouth fell open involuntarily. “Everyone knew but me.”

“You were a particular fool. Now move.”

He lifted the slight catgirl and carried her into the room with the waiting Jumbo. If this were death, and that seemed likely, it would not be lonely.

“Stage three,” Triggy said behind.

They were drifting like deadly seeds above Columbiad, scanning the planet below. Tohm brought J-10 up from the horizon and in behind them. They were too busy searching for the Mutie congregation on Columbiad to scan space too. He opened his corn-system to listen in on whatever they said. If they were not manned by Romaghins and were organic brain directed, he would not be as fast as they in battle. But he had the advantage of surprise. He joined their formation at the rear and armed all seven nuclear rockets. He would have to cut the odds swiftly.

“I HAVE THEM. MERICIVE CITY. I THINK ITS A FLOATING LIBRARY.”

“FEDERATION CONSPIRACY!” another said.

“WE WILL CLOSE—”

There was no sense in waiting. Every second would bring them closer to Triggy, and that was just what he had to stop. He set each rocket to home in on a different point of the formation, snapped the All Go button, and rocked with the concussion. There was an intensely brilliant flash as the seven nuclears exploded. But it was gone just as quickly as it had appeared. Seven Jumbos had been pulverized by direct hits, and one more had been crushed when caught between two blasts. The other two were still stunned by the change of events.

“WHO'S LEFT! WHO'S LEFT!” the command Jumbo barked. “WHO ARE YOU TWO?”

“THIS IS SANGELITH,” the second machine reported.

He could waste no time. He didn't know what name to report in under, so he blasted Sangelith with his laser cannon, boring a hole through the tough hide into the power area.

“RENEGADE. MY GOD, RENEGADE!” the command machine was screaming.

A beam lanced out at Tohm, missed, wild as all Hell.

Mayna moaned in the seat next to him.

He pulled back on the dive stick, took the Jumbo down. But not fast enough. A beam caught the visor cameras, blew them out, blinding the ship. He would have to rely on radar alone. And, suddenly, that was going to be bad, for a dozen new blips appeared, moving in from deep space. The lone Romaghin was getting aid. And if these newcomers had been watching the battle via radar, they knew the guilty party.

He put a hand out and stroked the silken hair of the beautiful creature next to him.

The distant blips were growing larger. He could not fight them with a laser cannon, not when they had seven missiles each. As he thought of the missiles, three smaller blips snapped into view on the screen, closing fast. There would now be only seconds.

He unsnapped her safety belt and drew her into his lap. He only wished she could be conscious now to tell him he had been a fool. He looked back to the screen just as the missiles and Jumbos disappeared completely…

XVII

Triggy gop's intestinal tract was filled with wild cheering. He shut down most of his audio receptors so as not to get a brainache. The robo-snoops they had stationed in space were reporting back on the areas where the Romaghin and Setessin worlds had been. They were gone, left behind. But, unlike anyone had expected, some of those locations were filled with new worlds. Obviously, the gaps in their universe had been filled in by corresponding leftovers from the universe they had forced out of this plane. And if the robo-snoop films could be believed, these planets were not inhabited by normals, but by Muties. Natural, evolved Muties, not radiation-induced ones. One of the new globes was peopled by honest-to-god satyrs! Another by mermen and mermaids. He wished Fish had lived. They had come, freaks, into a world where freaks were the normal. They belonged here.

He tried once again to contact Jumbo Ten. This time there was an answer.

“Hello?”

“Tohm, why in God's name haven't you answered me? I've been calling for over two hours!”

“First,” Tohm said, “what happened to those missiles and Jumbos?”

“I instructed the others not to encompass them when we made the transfer. They were left in the old universe.”

Silence. Except for a purring sound like an animal hissing in the bushes…

“Tohm!”

“Huh?”

“Are you both all right?”

“Sure. We're fine.” There was a hissing and giggling sound in the background. A hissing very much like a cat. A giggling very much like a young girl.

“Look,” Triggy said. “Are you going to marry her?”

Laughter at the other end.

Tohm spoke at length. “I am. But I fail to see where that is any of your business, Triggy.”

“I'll be damned! It certainly is my business. She's my daughter!”

“Your daught—” the voice began to shout before Triggy Gop broke the connection. He giggled. He had had the last word, and that pleased him. He made grand preparations for the time when they would land. He prepared a fabulous party with cakes and wines and tiny assorted sandwiches.

But the cakes grew stale, the wines went flat, and the sandwiches spoiled, for they did not land for ten days.