Sundiver

10. HEAT

Like taffy twists and feather boas, the ochre shapes drooped in a pink misty background, as if suspended from invisible strings. The row of wispy dark arches, each a fluffy rope of gaseous tendrils, led off into the distance, each farther arch smaller in perspective than the one before, until the last faded into the swirling red miasma.

Jacob found it difficult to focus on any one detail of the recorded holographic image. The dark filaments and streamers that made up the visible topography of the middle chromosphere were deceptive in both shape and texture.

The closest filament almost filled the left forward corner of the tank. Wispy strands of darker gas soiled about an invisible magnetic field which arched over a sunspot almost a thousand kilometers below.

High above the place where most of the Suns energy production leaked out into space as light, an observer could make out details for tens of thousands of miles. Even so it was still hard to get used to the idea that the magnetic arch he now looked at was about the size of Norway. It was merely one filigree in a chain that arched for 200,000 kilometers over a sunspot group below.

And this one was a wimp, compared to many they’d seen.

One arching spectacle had stretched a quarter of a million kilometers from end to end. The image had been recorded several months back, over an active region that had long since vanished, and the ship that recorded it had kept its distance. The reason became clear when the top of the gigantic, twisted faerie arch erupted into the most awesome of Solar events, a flare.

The flare was beautiful and terrible — a churning, boiling maelstrom of brightness representing an electrical short circuit of incomprehensible magnitude. Even a Sunship would not have survived the sudden surge of high energy neutrons from the nuclear reactions driven by the flare, particles immune to the ship’s electromagnetic shields, too many neutrons to damp away using time compression. The Sundiver Project chief emphasized, for that reason, that flares were usually predictable and avoidable.

Jacob would have found the assurance more comforting without the proviso, “usually.”

The briefing had been rather routine otherwise, as Kepler led his audience through a quick review of solar physics. Jacob had learned most of the material earlier in his studies aboard the Bradbury, but the projections of actual dives into the chromosphere were, he had to admit, fantastic visual aids. If it was hard to comprehend the sizes of the things he saw, Jacob could blame no one but himself.

Kepler had briefly covered the basic dynamics of the Sun’s interior, the real star, to which the chromosphere was just a thin skin.

In the deep core the unimaginable weight of the Sun’s mass drives the nuclear reactions, producing heat and pressure and preventing the giant ball of plasma from contracting under its own gravitational pull. Pressure keeps the body “inflated.”

The energy given off by the fires at the core works slowly outward, sometimes as light, and sometimes as a convective exchange of hot material from below for cooler stuff returning from above. By radiation, then convection, then radiation again, the energy reaches the kilometers-thick layer known as the photosphere — the “sphere of light” where it finally finds freedom and leaves home forever, for space.

So dense is matter inside a star, that a sudden cataclysm in the interior would take a million years to show up in a change in the amount of light leaving the surface.

But the sun doesn’t stop at the photosphere; the density of matter falls off slowly with height. If one included the ions and electrons that forever stream out into space in the solar wind — to cause auroras on Earth and to shape the plasma tails of comets — one might say that there was no real boundary to the Sun. It truly reaches out to touch the other stars.

The halo of the corona shimmers around the rim of the Moon during a Solar eclipse. The tendrils that seem so soft on a photographic plate are comprised of electrons heated to millions of degrees, but they are Diffuse, almost as thin, (and harmless to Sunships) as the Solar wind.

Between the photosphere and the corona lies the chromosphere, the “sphere of color”… the place where old Sol makes the final alterations to his light show, where he places his spectral signature on the sunshine Earthmen see.

Here the temperature suddenly plummets to its minimum, a “mere” few thousand degrees. The pulsing of the photospheric cells send ripples of gravitation upwards through the chromosphere, subtly strumming chords of space-time across millions of kilometers, and charged particles, riding the crests of Alfven waves, sweep outward in a mighty wind.

This was the domain of Sundiver. In the chromosphere, the Sun’s magnetic fields play games of tag, and simple chemical compounds ephemerally brew. One can see, if the right bands are chosen, for tremendous distances. And there is a lot to see.

Kepler was in his element, now. In the darkened room his hair and moustache glowed reddish in the light given off by the tank. His voice was confident as he used a slender rod to point out features of the chromosphere for his audience.

He told the story of the sunspot cycle, the alternating rhythm of high and low magnetic activity that flips polarity every eleven years. Magnetic fields “pop out” of the Sun to form complicated loops in the chromosphere — loops which could sometimes be traced by looking at the paths of the dark filaments in hydrogen light.

The filaments twisted around the field lines and glowed with complex induced electric currents. In close up they-looked less feathery than Jacob had at first thought. Bright and dark red strips knotted around one another all along the length of the arch, sometimes swirling in complicated patterns until some tightening knot squeezed closed and splattered bright droplets away like hot grease from a skillet.

It was numbingly beautiful, although! the red monochrome eventually made Jacob’s eyes hurt. He looked away from the tank and rested by staring at the wall of the viewing room.

The two days since Jeffrey had waved good-bye and taken his ship off to the Sun were mixed pleasure and frustration for Jacob. They had certainly been busy.

He saw the Hermetian mines yesterday. The great layered flows that filled huge hollowed caverns north of the base with smooth rainbowed crusts of pure metal startled Jacob with their beauty, and he stared in awe at the dwarfed machines and men that ate at their flanks. He would carry with him always the amazement he felt… at both the loveliness of the giant field of frozen melt and at the temerity of the tiny men who dared to disturb it for its treasure.

Also enjoyable was an afternoon spent in the company of Helene deSilva. In the lounge of her apartment she broke the seal on a bottle of alien brandy whose worth Jacob didn’t dare to calculate, and shared it all with him.

In a few hours he came to like the Base Commandant for her wit and the range of her interests, as well as for her pleasantly archaic flirtatious charm. They exchanged stories of peripheral interest, saving, by mute agreement, the best for later. He told her about his work with Makakai, to her delight, explaining how he persuaded the young dolphin — by means of hypnosis, bribery (letting her play with “toys” such as the waldo-whales), and love — to concentrate on the kind of abstract thought that humans used, instead of (or in addition to) the cetacean Dreaming.

He described how the whale dream, in turn, was slowly becoming understood… using Hopi and Australian Aborigine philosophies to help translate that totally alien world view into something vaguely accessible to a human mind.

Helene deSilva had a way of listening that drew the words out of Jacob. When he finished his story she radiated satisfaction, then reciprocated with a tale about a dark star that nearly stood his hair on end.

She spoke of the Calypso as if it were mother, child, and lover all in one. The ship and its crew had been her world for only three years, subjective time, but on the return to Earth they became a link with the past. Of those she had left behind on Earth, on her first voyage out, only the youngest had lived to see Calypso’s return. And they were now old.

When an interim assignment with Sundiver had been offered, she had jumped at the opportunity. While the scientific adventure of the solar expedition, plus a chance to gain some command experience, were probably reasons enough, Jacob thought he could sense another reason behind her choice.

Although she tried not to show it, Helene apparently disapproved of both extremes of behavior for which returning star ship crewmen were famous: — cloistered insularity of boisterous hedonism. There was a core of… “shyness” could be the only word to describe it… which peeked out from beneath both the articulate and competent outer persona and the laughing, playful inner woman. Jacob looked forward to finding out more about her during his stay on Mercury.

But the dinner was postponed. Dr. Kepler had called a formal banquet and, in the manner of such things, Jacob had little to think about all evening, while everyone bent over backwards being polite and flattering.

But the biggest frustration came from Sundiver itself.

Jacob tried questioning deSilva, Culla, and perhaps a dozen base engineers, getting about the same answer each time.

“Of course, Mr. Demwa, but wouldn’t ft be better to talk about it after Dr. Kepler’s presentation? It’ll be so much clearer then…”

It became very suspicious.

The pile of Library documents still sat In his room. He read from the pile for an hour at a time, in a normal state of consciousness. While he slogged through the pile, isolated fragments jumped into familiarity as soon as he read them.

…nor is it understood why the Pring are a binocular species, since no other indigenous life form on their planet has more than one eye. It is generally assumed that these and other differences are the result of genetic manipulation by the Pila colonists. Although the Pila are reluctant to answer questions from any but officials from the Institutes, they do admit to having altered the Pring from a brachiating, arboreal animal to a sophont capable of walking and serving in their farms and cities.

The unique Pring dental arrangement had its origin in their previous state as tree grazers. It evolved as a method for scraping off the high-nutrient outer bark of their planet’s trees; that bark serving in the place of fruit as a fertilization-spore spreading organ for many of the plants on Pring…

So that was the background behind Culla’s weird dentation! Knowing their purpose somehow made a mental image of the Pring’s mashies less disgusting. The fact that their function was vegetarian was downright reassuring.

It was interesting to note, while re-reading the article, how good a job the Branch Library had done with this report. The original had probably been written scores, if not hundreds of light years away from Earth, and long before Contact. The semantics machines at the Branch in La Paz were obviously getting the knack of converting alien words and meanings into English sentences that made sense, though, of course, something might have been lost in the translation.

The fact that the Institute of the Libraries had been forced to ask for human help in programming those machines, after those first disastrous attempts just after Contact, was a source of some small satisfaction. Used to translating for species whose languages all derived from the same general Tradition, the E.T.’s had been boggled, at first, by the “flighty and imprecise” structure of all human languages.

They had moaned (or chirped or zithered or flapped) in despair at the extent to which English, in particular, had declined into a state of sublime, contextually discursive, disorder. Latin, or even better, late Neolithic Indo-European, with its highly organized structure of declensions, and cases, would have been preferred. Humans obstinately refused to change their lingua franca for the sake of the Library, (though both Skins and Shirts began studying Indo-European for fun — each for their own reasons) and instead sent their brightest mels and fems to help the helpful aliens adjust.

The Pring serve in the cities and farms of nearly all Pil planets, except for the home planet, Pila. The sun of Pila, an F3 dwarf, is apparently too bright for this generation of uplifted Pring. (The Pring sun is F7.) This is the reason given for continuing genetic research on the Pring visual system by the Pila, long after their Uplift license would normally have expired…

… have only allowed the Pring to colonize class A worlds, devoid of life and requiring terraforming, but free of use restrictions by the Institutes of Tradition and Migration. Having taken leadership in several Jihads, the Pila apparently don’t wish to have their Clients in a position to embarrass them by mishandling an older, living world…

The data on Culla’s race spoke volumes about Galactic Civilization. It was fascinating, but the manipulation it told of made him uncomfortable. Inexplicably, he felt personally responsible.

It was at this stage in the re-reading that the summons to Dr. Kepler’s long awaited talk arrived.

Now he sat in the viewing room, and wondered when the man would get to the point. What were the magnetovores? And what did people mean when they mentioned a “second type” of Solarian… that played tag with Sunships and made threatening gestures to their crews in anthropomorphic shapes?

Jacob looked back at the holo-tank.

The filament Kepler chose had grown to fill the tank and then expanded until the viewer felt himself visually immersed in the feathery, fiery mass. Details became clearer — twisted clumps that meant a tightening of magnetic field lines, wisps that came and went like vapor as movement dopplered the hot gasses into and out of the camera’s visible band, and clusters of bright pinpoints that danced at the distant edge of vision.

Kepler kept up a running monologue, sometimes getting too technical for Jacob, but always returning to simple metaphors. His voice had become firm and confident, and he clearly enjoyed giving the show.

Kepler gestured at one of the nearby plasma streamers: a thick, twisted strand of dark red, coiling around a few painfully bright pinpoints.

“These were first thought to be your usual compressional hot spots,” he said. “Until we took a second look at them. Then we found that the spectrum was all wrong.”

Kepler used a control at the base of his pointer to zoom in on the center of the sub-filament.

The bright points grew. Smaller dots became visible as the image expanded.

“Now you’ll recall,” Kepler said, “that the hot spots we saw earlier still looked red, albeit a very bright red. That’s because the ship’s filters, at the time these pix were taken, were tuned only to let in a very narrow spectral band, centered on hydrogen alpha. You can see, even now, the thing that caught our interest.” Indeed I do, Jacob thought. The bright points were a brilliant shade of green! They nickered like blinkers and they had the color of emeralds.

“Now there are a couple of bands in the green and blue that are cut out less efficiently than most, by the filter. But the alpha line usually washes these out entirely with distance. Besides, this green isn’t even one of those bands!

“You can imagine our consternation, of course. No thermal light source could have sent that color through these screens. In order to get through, the light from these objects had to be not only incredibly bright, but totally monochromatic as well, with a brightness temperature of millions of degrees!”

Jacob straightened up from the slumped posture he had assumed during the talk, interested at last.

“In other words,” Kepler went on. “They had to be lasers.”

“There are ways in which lasing action can occur naturally in a star,” Kepler said. “But no one had ever seen it happen in our Sun before, so we went in to investigate. And what we found was the most incredible form of life anyone could imagine!”

The scientist twisted the control on his pointer and the field of view began to shift.

A soft chime sounded from the front row of the audience. Helene deSilva could be seen picking up a telephone receiver. She spoke softly into the instrument.

Kepler concentrated on his demonstration. Slowly the bright points grew in the tank until they resolved into tiny rings of light, still too small to make out in detail.

Suddenly Jacob could make out the murmur of deSilva’s voice as she spoke into the phone.

Even Kepler stopped what he was doing and waited as she shot hushed questions to the person on the other end.

She put the phone down, then, her face frozen in a mask of steel control. Jacob watched her rise and walk to where Kepler stood, nervously twisting his baton in his hands. The woman bent over slightly to whisper in Kepler’s ear, and the Sundiver director’s eyes closed once. When they reopened his expression was totally blank.

Suddenly everyone was talking at once. Culla left his seat in the front row to join deSilva. Jacob felt air rush by as Dr. Martine sped down the aisle to Kepler’s side.

Jacob rose to his feet and turned to Fagin, who stood in the aisle nearby. “Fagin, I’m going to find out what’s going on. Why don’t you wait here.”

“That will not be necessary,” the Kanten philosopher fluted.

“What do you mean?”

“I could overhear what was said to Commandant Human Helene deSilva over the telephone, Friend-Jacob. It is not good news.”

Jacob shouted inside. Always deadpan, you damn leafy eggplant egghead, of course it’s not good news!

“So what the hell is happening!” he asked.

“I grieve most sincerely, Friend-Jacob. It appears that Scientist-Chimpanzee Jeffrey’s Sunship has been destroyed in the chromosphere of your Sun!”

11. TURBULENCE

In the ochre light of the holo-tank, Dr. Martine stood by Kepler’s side, speaking his name over and over and passing her hand in front of his empty eyes. The audience milled onto the stage, jabbering. The alien Culla stood alone, facing Kepler, his great round head rolling slightly on his slender shoulders.

Jacob spoke to him.

“Culla…” The Pring didn’t seem to hear him. The huge eyes were dull and Jacob could hear a buzzing sound, like teeth chattering coming from behind Culla’s thick lips.

Jacob frowned at the grim red light pouring out of the holo-tank. He went to where Kepler stood in shock, to pry the controller rod gently from the man’s hands. Martine took no notice of him as she vainly tried to get Kepler’s attention.

After a couple of tentative twists on the controller, Jacob got the image to fade and brought the room lights back on. The situation seemed much easier to deal with now. The others must have sensed this as well, because the cacophony of voices subsided.

DeSilva looked up from the telephone and saw Jacob holding the controller. She smiled her thanks. Then she was back on the line shooting terse questions to the person at the other end.

A medical team arrived on the run with a stretcher. Under Dr. Martine’s guidance they laid Kepler in the fabric frame and gently bore him off through the crowd gathered at the door.

Jacob turned back to Culla. Fagin had managed to push a chair up behind the Library Representative and was trying to get him to sit down. The rustling of branches and high pitched flutings subsided when Jacob approached.

“He is, I believe, all right,” the Kanten said in a singsong voice. “He is a highly empathic individual, and I fear that he will grieve excessively over the loss of his friend Jeffrey. It is often the reaction of younger species to the death of another with whom one has become close.”

“Is there anything we should do? Can he hear us?” Culla’s eyes didn’t appear to be focused. But then Culla’s eyes never did tell Jacob anything. The chattering from inside the alien’s mouth went on. “I believe he can hear us,” Fagin answered. Jacob took hold of Culla’s arm. It felt very thin and soft. There didn’t appear to be any bone.

“Come on, Culla,” he said. “There’s a chair right behind you. You’d make us all feel a lot better if you’d sit down now.”

The alien tried to answer. The huge lips parted and suddenly the chattering was very loud. The coloration of his eyes changed slightly and the lips closed again. He nodded shakily and allowed himself to be guided to the chair. Slowly the round head came down into his slender hands.

Empathic or no, there was something eerie about the alien feeling this strongly about the death of a man — a chimpanzee — who would be, down to his fundamental body chemistry, always an alien; a being whose fishlike far ancestors swam in different seas than his, and gaped in anaerobic surprise at the sunshine of a totally different star.

“May I have your attention please!” deSilva stood on the dais.

“For those of you who haven’t yet heard, preliminary reports Indicate that we may have lost Dr. Jeffrey’s ship in active region J-12, near Sunspot Jane. This is only a preliminary report, and further confirmation will have to wait until we can go over the telemetry we received up to the mishap.”

LaRoque waved from the far side of the room to attract the Commandant’s attention. In one hand he held a small steno-camera, a different model from the one taken from him in the Sunship Cavern. Jacob wondered why Kepler hadn’t returned the other one yet.

“Miss deSilva,” LaRoque cut in. “Will it be possible for the press to attend the telemetry review? There should be a public record.” In his excitement, LaRoque’s accent had virtually disappeared. Without it, the anachronistic appelation, “Miss deSilva,” sounded very odd.

She paused without looking directly at the man. The Witness Laws were very clear about denying access to a public record at news events without a “Seal” from the Agency for Secrets Registration. Even the ASR people, responsible for enforcing honesty above the law, were reluctant to allow it. LaRoque obviously had her cornered, but he wasn’t pushing. Yet.

“All right. The observing gallery above the Control Center can hold just about everybody who wants to come… except,” she glared at a cluster of base crewmen who had gathered near the door, “for people who have work to do.” She ended with a raised eyebrow. There was an immediate bustle of motion by the exit.

“We’ll gather in twenty minutes,” she concluded and stepped down.

Members of the Hermes Colony Staff started leaving right away. Those wearing Earth clothing, recent arrivals and visitors, left more slowly.

LaRoque was already gone, no doubt on his way to the maser station to send his story to Earth.

That left Bubbacub. He had been talking to Dr. Mar-tine before the meeting began, but the little bearlike alien hadn’t come in. Jacob wondered where Bubbacub had been during the meeting.

Helene deSilva joined him and Fagin.

“Culla’s quite a little Eatee,” she said to Jacob, softly. “He used to joke that he got along with Jeffrey so well because they were both low men on the status pole, and because they’d both come down so recently from the trees.” She looked at Culla with pity, and put out one hand to the side of the alien’s head.

I’ll bet that’s comforting, Jacob thought.

“Sadness is the primary perquisite of youth.” Fagin rustled his leaves, like a tinkling of sand dollars in a breeze.

DeSilva let her hand fall. “Jacob, Dr. Kepler left written instructions that I was to consult with you and Kant Fagin if anything ever happened to him.”

“Oh?”

“Yessir. Of course the directive has very little legal weight. All I really have to do is let you in on our staff meetings. But it’s obvious anything you’d offer would be useful. I was hoping that the two of you, in particular, wouldn’t miss the telemetry replay.”

Jacob appreciated her position. As Base Commandant she would bear the onus of any decision made today. Yet of those with substantial reputations now on Mercury, LaRoque was hostile, Martine was barely friendly to the project, and Bubbacub was an enigma. If Earth should hear many accounts of what went on here, it would be in her interest to have some friends as well.

“Of course,” Fagin whistled. “We will both be honored to aid your staff.”

DeSilva turned back to Culla and asked softly if the alien would be all right. After a pause, he lifted his head from his hands and nodded slowly. The chattering had stopped, but Culla’s eyes were still dull, with bright pinpoints nickering randomly at the edge. He looked exhausted, as well as miserable.

DeSilva departed to help prepare the telemetry replay. Shortly afterwards Pil Bubbacub puffed importantly into the room, his sleek fur ruffled in a collar around his short fat neck. When he spoke his mouth moved in quick snaps and the Vodor on his chest boomed out the words in audible range.

“I have heard the news. It vital that all be at the Tel-e-me-try Review, so I es-cort you there.”

Bubbacub moved to look behind Jacob. He saw Culla sitting absently oft the flimsy folding chair.

“Culla!” he called. The Pring looked up, hesitated than made a gesture that Jacob didn’t understand. It seemed to imply supplication, negation.

Bubbacub bristled. He emitted a series of clicks and high pitched squeaks at a rapid clip. Culla stumbled to his feet quickly. Immediately Bubbacub turned his back on them all to start in short powerful steps down the hallway…

Behind him, Jacob and Fagin walked with Culla. From somewhere at the top of Fagin’s “head” there came a strange music.

12. GRAVITY

Automation kept the Telemetry Room small. A mere dozen consoles made two rows below a large viewing screen. Behind a railing, on a raised dais, the invited guests watched as the operators carefully rechecked the recorded data.

Occasionally a man, male or female, would lean forward and peer at some detail on a screen, in vain hope for a clue that a Sunship still existed down there.

Helene deSilva stood near the pair of consoles closest to the dais. From there the recording of Jeffrey’s last remarks played on a visual display.

A row of words appeared, representing fingerstrokes on a keyboard forty million kilometers away, hours before.

RIDE IS SMOOTH ON AUTOMATICS… HAD TO DAMP TIME FACTOR OF TEN DURING TURBULENCE… I JUST HAD LUNCH IN TWENTY SECONDS HA HA…

Jacob smiled. He could imagine the little chimpanzee getting a kick out of the tune differential.

DOWN PAST TAU POINT ONE NOW… FIELD LINES CONVERGING AHEAD… INSTRUMENTS

SAY THERE’S A HERD THERE JUST LIKE HELENE SAID… ABOUT A HUNDRED… CLOSING NOW…

Then Jeffrey’s simian voice came on, gruff, abrupt, over a loudspeaker.

“Wait ’til I tell em inna trees, boys! First solo onna Sun! Eat yer heart out, Tarzan!” one of the controllers started to laugh, then cut it off. It finished sounding like a sob.

Jacob started. “You mean he was all alone down there?”

“I thought you knew!” deSilva looked surprised. “The dives are pretty well automatic nowadays. Only a computer can adjust the stasis fields fast enough to keep the turbulence from pounding a passenger to jelly. Jeff had two: one onboard and also a laser remote from the big machine here on Mercury. What can a man do anyway, besides add a touch here or there?”

“But why add any risk?”

“It was Dr. Kepler’s idea,” she answered, a little defensively. “He wanted to see if it was only human psi patterns that were causing the Ghosts to run away or make threatening gestures.”

“We never got to that part of the briefing.”

She brushed a lock of blonde hair back.

“Yes, well in our first few encounters with the magnetovores, we never saw any of the herdsmen. Then when we did, we watched from a distance to determine their relationship to the other creatures.

“When we finally approached, the herdsmen just ran away at first. Then their behavior changed radically. While most of them fled, one or two would arc up over the ship, out of the plane of the instrument platform, and come down close to the ship!”

Jacob shook his head, “I’m not sure I understand…”

DeSilva glanced at the nearest console but there was no change… The only reports from Jeff’s ship were solonomic data — routine reports of solar conditions.

“Well, Jacob, the ship is a flat deck inside an almost perfectly reflecting shell. The Gravity Engines, Stasis Field Generators and the Refrigerator Laser are all in the smaller sphere that” sits in the middle of the deck. The recording instruments line the rim of the deck on the “bottom” side, and the people occupy the “top” side, so both will have an unobstructed view to anything looked at edge on. But we hadn’t counted on anything purposely dodging our cameras!”

“If the Ghost went out of view of your instruments by coming up overhead, why didn’t you just turn the ship? You have complete gravity control.”

“We tried. They just disappeared! Or worse; they stayed overhead however fast we’d turn. They’d just hover I That’s when some of the crew started seeing some of the most damnable anthropoid shapes!”

Suddenly Jeffrey’s raspy voice filled the room again.

“Hey! There’s a whole pack of sheep dogs pushin’ those toroids around! Coin’ in to give em a pet! Nice Doggies!”

Helene shrugged.

“Jeff was always a skeptic. He never saw any shapes-in-the-ceiling and he always called the herdsmen ‘sheep dogs’ because he saw nothing in their behavior to imply intelligence.”

Jacob smiled wryly. The condescension of super-chimp toward the canine race was one of the more humorous aspects of their me-too obsession. Also perhaps it diluted their sensitivity over the special relationship, of dog with human being, that antedated their own. Many chimps kept dogs as pets.

“He called the magnetovores toroids?”

“Yes, they’re shaped like huge doughnuts. You would have seen that if the briefing hadn’t… been interrupted.” She shook her head sadly and looked down.

Jacob shifted his feet. “I’m sure there’s nothing anyone could have done…” he began. Then he realized that he was sounding foolish. DeSilva nodded once and turned back to the console; busy, or pretending to be, with technical readouts.

Bubbacub lay sprawled on a cushion to the left, near the barrier. He had a book play-back in his hands and had been reading, in total absorption, the alien characters that flashed from top to bottom on the tiny screen. The Pil had raised his head and listened when Jeffrey’s voice came on, and then gazed enigmatically at Pierre LaRoque.

LaRoque’s eyes flashed as he recorded an “historic moment.” Occasionally he spoke In a low excited voice into the microphone of his borrowed steno-camera.

“Three minutes,” deSilva said thickly.

For a minute, nothing happened. Then, the big letters came on the screen again.

THE BIG BOYS ARE HEADING TOWARD ME FOR ONCE! OR AT LEAST A COUPLE OF ’EM ARE. I JUST TURNED ON THE CLOSEUP CAMERAS… HEY! I’M GETTIN A T-T-TILT IN HERE! TIME-COMPRESSION JAMMED!!

“Gonna abort!” came the deep, croaking voice, suddenly. “Ridin’ up fast… More tilt! ’S’ falling!… The Eatees! They…”

There came a very brief burst of static, then silence followed by a loud hiss as the console operator turned up his gain. Then, nothing.

For a long moment nobody said a word. Then one of the console operators rose from his station.

“Implosion confirmed,” he said.

She nodded once. “Thank you. Please prepare a summary of the data for transmission to Earth.”

Strangely, the strongest emotion Jacob felt was a poignant pride. As a staff member of the Center for Uplift, he’d noticed that Jeffrey spurned his keyboard in the last moments of his life. Instead of retreating before fear, he made a proud, difficult gesture. Jeff the Earthman spoke aloud.

Jacob wanted to mention this to somebody. If anyone could, Fagin would understand… He started over to where the Kanten stood, but Pierre LaRoque hissed sharply before he got there.

“Fools I” The journalist stared about with an expression of disbelief.

“And I am the biggest fool of all! Of any here I should have seen the danger in sending a chimpanzee down to the Sun alone!”

The room was silent. Blank expressions of surprise turned to LaRoque, who waved his arms in an expansive gesture.

“Can you not see? Are you all blind? If the Solarians are our Ancestrals, and there can be little doubt of that, then they have obviously gone to great pains to avoid us for millennia. Yet perhaps some distant affection for us has kept them from destroying us so far!

“They have tried to warn you and your Sunships off ( in ways that you could not ignore, and yet you persist in trespassing. How are these mighty beings to react, then, if they are burst upon by a Client race of the race they have abandoned? What is it you expect them to do when they are invaded by a monkey… !”

Several crewmen rose to their feet in anger. DeSilva had to raise her voice to get them to subside. She faced LaRoque, an expression of iron control on her features.

“Sir, if you will please put your interesting hypothesis down on paper, with a minimum of invective, the staff will be only too happy to consider it.”

“But…”

“And that will be enough on the subject now! We’ll have plenty of time to talk about it later!”

“No, we don’t have any time at all.”

Everyone turned. Dr. Martine stood at the back of the Gallery, in the doorway. “I think we’d better discuss this right now,” she said.

“Is Dr. Kepler all right?” Jacob asked.

She nodded. “I’ve just come from his bedside. I managed to break him out of his shock and he’s sleeping now. But before he fell asleep he spoke rather urgently about making another dive right away.”

“Right away? Why? Shouldn’t we wait until we know for certain what happened to Jeffrey’s ship?”

“We know what happened to Jeff’s ship!” she answered sharply. “I overheard what Mr. LaRoque said just as I came in, and I’m not at all happy with the way you all received his idea! You’re all so hidebound and sure of yourselves that you can’t listen to a fresh approach!”

“You mean you really think that the Ghosts are our Ancestral Patrons?” DeSilva was incredulous.

“Perhaps, and perhaps not. But the rest of his explanation makes sense! After all, did the Solarians ever do more than threaten before this? And now they suddenly became violent. Why? Could it be that they felt no compunctions over killing a member of a species as immature as Jeff’s?”

She shook her head sadly.

“You know, it’s only a matter of time before human beings begin to realize just how much we’re going to e to adapt! The fact is that every other oxygen-breathing race subscribes to a status system… a pecking order based on seniority, strength, and parentage. Many of you don’t find this nice. But it’s the way things are! And if we don’t want to go the way of the non-European races in the nineteenth century, we’ll just have to learn the way other, stronger species like to be treated!”

Jacob frowned.

“You’re saying that if a chimpanzee is killed, and human beings are threatened or snubbed, then…”

“Then perhaps the Solarians don’t want to mess around with children and pets…” One of the operators pounded his fist onto his console. A glare from deSilva cut him off. “…but might be willing to speak with a delegation with members of older, more experienced species. After all, how do we even know until we try?”

“Culla’s been down there with us on most of our dives,” the console operator muttered. “And he’s a trained ambassador!”

“With all due respect to Pring Culla,” Martine bowed slightly toward the tall alien. “He is from a very young race. Almost as young as ours. If s apparent that the Solarians don’t think he’s any more worthy than us of their attention.

“No, I propose that we take advantage of the unprecedented presence here on Mercury of two members of ancient and honored races. We should humbly ask the Pil Bubbacub and Kant Fagin to join us, down in the Sun, in one last attempt to make contact!”

Bubbacub rose slowly. He looked around deliberately, aware that Fagin would wait for him to speak first. “If human beings say they need me down on Sol, then despite the seen dangers of prim-it-ive Sunships, I be inc-lined to ac-cept.”

He returned complacently to his cushion.

Fagin rustled and his voice sighed. “I too shall be pleased to go. Indeed, I would perform any labor to earn the lowest berth on such a craft. I cannot imagine what help I could be. But I will happily go along.”

“Well I object, damnit!” deSilva shouted. “I refuse to accept the political implications of taking Pil Bubbacub and Kant Fagin down, particularly after the accident! You talk of good relations with powerful alien races, Dr. Martine, but can you imagine what would happen if they died down there in an Earth ship?”

“Oh fish and falafal!” Martine said. “If anyone can handle things so no blame falls on Earth, it’s these sophonts. The galaxy is a dangerous place, after all. I’m sure they could leave depositions or something.”

“Such documents are already recorded in my case.” Fagin said.

Bubbacub, as well, stated his magnanimous willingness to risk his life in a primitive craft, absolving all of responsibility. The Pil turned away as LaRoque began to thank him. Even Martine joined in asking the man to please shut up.

DeSilva looked to Jacob. He shrugged.

“Well, we’ve got time. Let’s give the crew here a chance to check the data from Jeff’s dive, and let Dr. Kepler recover. Meanwhile we can refer this idea to Earth for suggestions.”

Martine sighed. “I wish it were that simple, but you just haven’t thought this out. Consider, if we were to try to make peace with the Solarians, shouldn’t we return to the same group that was offended by Jeff’s visit?”

“Well, I’m not sure that necessarily follows, but it sounds right.”

“And how do you plan to find the same group, down in the solar atmosphere?”

“I suppose you’d just have to return to the same active region, where the grazers are feeding… Oh, I see what you mean.”

“I’ll bet you do,” she smiled. “There is no permanent ‘Solography’ down there to make a map from. The active regions, and sunspots themselves, fade away in a matter of weeks! The Sun has no surface, per se, only different levels and densities of gas. Why, the equator even rotates faster than the other latitudes! How are you ever going to find the same group if you don’t leave right away, before the damage done by Jeff’s visit spreads over the entire star?”

Jacob turned to deSilva, puzzled. “Do you think she might be right, Helene?”

She rolled her eyes upward. “Who knows? Maybe. It’s something to think about I do know that we aren’t going to do a damn thing until Dr. Kepler is well enough to be heard.”

Dr. Martine frowned. “I told you before! Dwayne agreed that another expedition should leave right away!”

“And I’ll hear from him personally!” deSilva answered hotly.

“Well, here I am, Helene.”

Dwayne Kepler stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. Beside him, supporting his arm. Chief Physician Laird glared across the room at Dr. Martine.

“Dwayne! What are you doing out of bed! Do you want a heart attack?” Martine strode toward him, furious and concerned, but Kepler waved her back.

“I’m fine, Millie. I’ve just diluted that prescription you gave me, that’s all. In a smaller dose it really is useful, so I know you meant well. It’s just that it wasn’t helping to knock me out like that!”

Kepler chuckled weakly. “Anyway, I’m glad I wasn’t too doped up to hear your brilliant speech. I caught most of it from the doorway.”

Martine reddened.

Jacob felt relieved that Kepler didn’t mention the part he had played. After landing and obtaining Laboratory space, it had seemed a waste not to go ahead and analyze the samples he’d pilfered, back on the Bradbury, of Kepler’s pharmacopoeia.

No one asked where he got his samples, fortunately. Although the base surgeon, when consulted, thought that some of the doses seemed a bit high, all but one of the drugs turned out to be standard for treatment of mild manic states.

The unknown drug stayed at the back of- Jacob’s mind; one more mystery to solve. What sort of physical problem did Kepler have that required large doses of a powerful anticoagulant? Physician Laird had been incensed. Why had Martine prescribed Warfarin?

“Are you sure you’re well enough to be up here now?” deSilva asked Kepler. She helped the physician guide him to a chair.

“I’m all right,” he answered. “Besides, there are things that just won’t wait.

“First of all, I’m not at all sure about Millie’s theory that the Ghosts would greet Pil Bubbacub or Kant Fagin with more enthusiasm than they’ve shown to the rest of us. I do know that I’m definitely not taking responsibility for taking them down on a dive! The reason is that if they were killed down there it wouldn’t be at the hands of the Solarians… it would be caused by human beings! There should be another dive right away… without our distinguished extraterrestrial friends, of course… but it should leave immediately to go to the same region, as Millie suggested.”

DeSilva shook her head emphatically. “I don’t agree at all, sir! Either Jeff was killed by the Ghosts, or something went wrong with his ship. And I think it was the latter, much as I hate to admit it… We should check everything out before…”

“Oh, there’s no doubt it was the ship,” Kepler interrupted. “The Ghosts didn’t kill anybody.”

“What is it you say?” LaRoque shouted. “Are you a blind man? How can you deny the obvious facts!”

“Dwayne,” Martine said smoothly. “You’re much too tired to think about this now.” Kepler just waved her away.

“Excuse me, Dr. Kepler,” Jacob said. “You mentioned something about the danger coming from human beings? Commandant deSilva probably thinks you meant an error in propping Jeff’s ship caused his death. Are you talking about something else?”

“I just want to know one thing,” Kepler said slowly. “Did the telemetry show that Jeff’s ship was destroyed by a collapse of his stasis field?

The console operator who had spoken earlier stepped” forward. “Why… yessir. How did you know?”

“I didn’t know,” he smiled. “But I guessed pretty well, once I thought of sabotage.”

“What!?” Martine, deSilva and LaRoque shouted almost at once.

And suddenly Jacob saw it. “You mean during the tour…?” He turned to look at LaRoque. Martine followed his eyes and gasped.

LaRoque stepped back as if he had been struck. “You are an insane man!” he cried. “And you are as well!” He shook a finger at Kepler. “How could I have sabotaged the engines when I was sick all of the time I was in that crazy place?”

“Hey look, LaRoque,” Jacob said. “I didn’t say anything, and I’m sure Dr. Kepler is only speculating.” He ended in a question and raised an eyebrow to Kepler.

Kepler shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m serious. LaRoque spent an hour next to Jeff’s Gravity Generators, with no one else around. We checked the Grav Generator for any damage that might have been caused by anyone fumbling around with their bare hands, and we didn’t find any. It didn’t occur to me until later to check Mr. LaRoque’s camera.

“When I did, I found that one of its little attachments is a small sonic stunner!” From one of the pockets of his tunic he pulled out the small recording device. “This is how the kiss of Judas was delivered!”

LaRoque reddened. “The stunner is a standard self-defense device for journalists. I had even forgotten about it. And it could never have harmed so big a machine!

“And all of that is beside the point! This terra-chauvinist, archlaeo-religious lunatic, who has nearly destroyed all chance of meeting our Patrons as friends, dares to accuse me of a crime for which there is no motive! He murdered that poor monkey, and he wishes to thlrow the blame on someone else!”

“Shut up, LaRoque,” deSilva said evenly. She turned back to Kepler.

“Are you aware of what you’re saying, sir? A Citizen wouldn’t commit murder, simply out of dislike for an individual. Only a Probationary Personality could kill without dire cause. Can you think of any reason Mr. LaRoque might have had to do such a drastic thing?”

“I don’t know,” Kepler shrugged. He peered at LaRoque. “A Citizen who feels justified in killing still feels remorse afterward. Mr. LaRoque doesn’t look like he regrets anything, so either he’s innocent, or a good actor… or he is a Probationer after all!”

“In space!” Martine cried. “That’s impossible, Dwayne. And you know it. Every spaceport is loaded with P-receivers. And every ship is equipped with detectors also! Now you should apologize to Mr. LaRoque!”

Kepler grinned.

“Apologize? At the very least I know LaRoque lied about being ‘dizzy’ in the gravity loop. I sent a maser-gram to Earth. I wanted a dossier on him from his paper. They were only too happy to oblige.

“It seems that Mr. LaRoque is a trained astronaut! He was separated from the Service for ‘medical reasons’ — a phrase that’s often used when a person’s P-test scores rise to probation levels and he’s forced to give up a sensitive job!

“That may not prove anything, but it does mean that LaRoque has had too much experience in spaceships to have been ‘scared to death’ in Jeffrey’s gravity loop. I only wish I realized this conflict in time to warn Jeff.”

LaRoque protested and Martine objected, but Jacob could see the tide of opinion in the room turn against them. DeSilva eyed LaRoque with a cold feral gleam that startled Jacob somewhat.

“Wait a minute,” he held up a hand. “Why don’t we check if there are any Probationers without transmitters here on Mercury. I suggest we all have our retina patterns sent back to Earth for verification. If Mr. LaRoque isn’t listed as a Probationer, it will be up to Dr. Kepler to show why a Citizen might have thought he had reason to murder.”

“All right, then, for Kukulkan’s sake, let us do it now!” LaRoque said. “But only on the condition that I not be singled out!” For the first time Kepler began to look unsure.

For Kepler’s benefit, deSilva ordered the entire base reduced to Mercurian gravity. The Control Center answered that the conversion would take about five minutes. She went on the intercom and announced the identity test to the crew and visitors, then left to supervise the preparations.

Those in the Telemetry Room began to drift out, on their way to the elevators. LaRoque kept close to Kepler and Martine, as if to demonstrate his eagerness to disprove the charges against him, his chin raised in an expression of high martyrdom.

The three of them, plus Jacob and two crewmen, were waiting for an elevator car when the gravity change happened. It was an ironic place for it to occur for it felt as if the floor had suddenly started to drop.

They were all used to changes in gravity — many places in Hermes Base were kept off Earth Gee. But usually the transition was through a stasis-controlled doorway, itself no more pleasant than this but, from familiarity, less disconcerting. Jacob swallowed hard and one of the crewmen staggered slightly. In a sudden violent motion LaRoque dove for the camera in Kepler’s hand. Marline gasped and Kepler grunted in surprise. The crewman who grabbed after the journalist got a fist in the face as LaRoque twisted like an acrobat and began to run backward down the hall, bringing up his recaptured camera. Jacob and the other crewman gave chase, instinctively.

There was a flash and a shooting pain in Jacob’s shoulder. Something in his mind spoke as he dove to avoid another stunner bolt. It said, “Okay, this is my job. I’m taking over now.”

He was standing in a hallway, waiting. It had been exciting, but now it was sheer hell. The passageway dimmed for a moment. He gasped and reached to steady himself on the rough wall as his vision cleared.

He was alone in a service corridor with a pain in his shoulder and the remnants of a deep, almost smug sense of satisfaction dissipating like a fading dream. He looked carefully around himself, then sighed.

“So you took over and thought you could handle it without me, didn’t you?” he grunted. The shoulder tingled as if it was just now coming awake.

How his other half had got loose Jacob had no idea, nor why it had tried to handle things without the main persona’s help. But it must have run into trouble to have given up now.

A sensation of resentment answered that thought. Mr. Hyde was sensitive about his limitations, but capitulation came at last.

Is that all? Full memory of the last ten minutes flooded back. He laughed. His amoral Self had been confronted by an insurmountable barrier.

Pierre LaRoque was in a room at the end of the hallway. Amid the chaos that followed his seizure of the camera-stunner only Jacob had been able to stay on a man’s trail, and he’d selfishly kept the stalk to himself.

He had played LaRoque like a trout, letting him think he’d eluded all pursuit. Once he even diverted a posse of base crewmen when they were getting too close. Now LaRoque was putting on a spacesuit in a tool closet twenty meters from an outer airlock. He’d been in there five minutes and it would take at least another ten for him to finish. That was the insurmountable barrier. Mr. Hyde couldn’t wait. He was only a collection of drives, not a person, and Jacob had all of the patience. He’d planned it that way.

Jacob snorted his disgust but not without a twinge. Not too long ago that drive had been a daily part of him. He could understand the pain that waiting caused the small artificial personality that demanded instant gratification.

Minutes passed. He watched the door silently. Even in his full awareness he began to get impatient. It took a serious effort of will to keep his hand off the door latch.

The latch started to turn. Jacob stepped back with his hands at his sides.

The glassy bubble of a spacesuit helmet poked through the opening as the door swung outward. LaRoque looked to the left and then to the right. His teeth made a hissing shape when he saw Jacob. The door swung wide and the man came forward with a bar of plastic bracing material in his hand.

Jacob held up a hand. “Stop, LaRoque! I want to talk to you. You can’t get away anyway.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Demwa. Run!” LaRoque’s voice twanged nervously from a speaker on his chest He flexed the plastic cudgel menacingly.

Jacob shook his head. “Sorry. I jimmied the airlock down the hall before waiting here. You’ll find it a long walk in a spacesuit to the next one.”

LaRoque’s face twisted. “Why?! I did nothing! Particularly to you!”

“We’ll see about that. Meanwhile, let’s talk. There isn’t much time.”

“I’ll talk!” LaRoque screamed. “I’ll talk with this!” He came forward with the bar, swinging.

Jacob dropped into a deflection stance and tried to raise both hands to seize LaRoque’s wrist. But he’d forgotten about the numb left shoulder. His left hand just fluttered weakly, halfway to its assigned position. The right shot out to block and got a piece of the bar coming around instead. Desperately, he fell forward and tucked his head in as the club whistled inches above.

The roll, at least, was perfect. The lesser gravity helped as he came up and around effortlessly in a crouch. But his right hand was numb now, as he automatically shut off the pain from an ugly bruise. In his suit LaRoque swiveled more lightly than Jacob expected. What was it that Kepler said about LaRoque having been an astronaut? No time. Here he comes again.

The bar came down in a vicious overhead cut. LaRoque held it in a two-handed kendo grip; easy to block if only Jacob had his hands. Jacob dove under the cut and buried his. head in LaRoque’s midriff. He kept driving forward until together they slammed into the corridor wall. LaRoque said “Oof!” and dropped the bar.

Jacob kicked it away and jumped back.

“Stop this, LaRoque!” He gulped for breath. “I just want to talk to you… Nobody has enough evidence to convict you of anything, so why run? There’s no place to run to anyway!”

LaRoque shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry, Demwa.” The affected accent was completely gone. He lunged forward, arms outstretched.

Jacob hopped backward until the distance was right, counting-slowly. At the count of five his eyelids fell and locked into slits. For an instant Jacob Demwa was whole. He dropped back and traced a geodesic in his mind from the toe of his shoe to his opponent’s chin. The toe followed the arc In a snap that seemed to expand to minutes. The impact felt feather soft.

LaRoque rose into the air. In his plentitude, Jacob Demwa watched the space-suited figure fly backward in slow motion. He empathized, and it was he, it seemed, who went horizontal in midair and then drifted down in shame and hurt until the hard floor slammed into his back through the utility pack.

— Then the trance ended and he was loosening LaRoque’s helmet… pulling it off and helping him to sit up against the wall. LaRoque was crying softly.

Jacob noticed a package attached to LaRoque’s waist. He cut the attachment and started to unwrap it, pushing LaRoque’s hands aside when he resisted. •

“So,” Jacob pursed his lips. “You didn’t try to use the stunner on me because the camera was too valuable. Why, I wonder? I might find out if we play this thing back.

“Come on, LaRoque,” he rose and pulled the man to his feet. “We’re going to stop where there’s a readout machine. That is unless you have something to say first?”

LaRoque shook his head. He followed meekly with Jacob’s hand on his arm.

At the main corridor, as Jacob was about to turn to the photo lab, a posse led by Dwayne Kepler found them. Even in the reduced gravity the scientist leaned heavily on the arm of a med-aid.

“Aha! You caught him! Wonderful! This proves everything I said! The man was fleeing a righteous punishment! He’s a murderer!”

“We’ll see about that,” Jacob said. “The only thing this adventure proves is that he got scared. Even a Citizen can be violent when he panics. The thing I’d like to know is where he thought he was going. There’s nothing out there but blasted rock! Maybe you should have some men go out and search the area around the base to be sure.” Kepler laughed.

“I don’t think he was going anywhere. Probationers never do know where they’re going. They act on basic instinct. He simply wanted to get out of an enclosed place, like any hunted animal.”

LaRoque’s face remained blank. But Jacob felt his arm tense when a surface search was mentioned, then relax when Kepler shrugged the idea aside.

“Then you’re giving up the idea of an adult-murder,” Jacob said to Kepler as they turned toward the elevators. Kepler walked slowly.

“On what motive? Poor Jeff never harmed a fly! A decent, god-fearing chimpanzee! Besides, there hasn’t been a murder by a Citizen in the System for ten years! They’re about as common as gold meteors!”

Jacob had his doubts about that. The statistics were more a comment on police methods than anything else. But he remained silent.

By the elevators Kepler spoke briefly into a wall communicator. Several more men arrived almost immediately and took LaRoque from Jacob.

“Did you find the camera, by the way?” Kepler asked.

Jacob dissembled briefly. For a moment he considered hiding it and then pretending to discover it later.

“Ma camera a votre oncle!” LaRoque cried. He thrust out a hand and reached for Jacob’s back pocket. The crewmen pulled him back. Another came forward and held out his hand. Jacob reluctantly handed over the camera.

“What did he say?” Kepler asked. “What language was that?”

Jacob shrugged. An elevator came and more people spilled out, including Martine and deSilva.

“It was just a curse,” he said. “I don’t think he approves of your ancestry.”

Kepler laughed out loud.

13. UNDER THE SUN

To Jacob the Communications Dome seemed like a bubble stuck in tar. All around the hemisphere of glass and stasis, the surface of Mercury gave off a dull, lambent shine. The liquid quality of the reflected sunlight enhanced the feeling of being inside a crystal ball that was trapped in mire, unable to escape into the cleanliness of space.

In the near distance, the rocks themselves looked strange. Unusual minerals formed in that heat and under constant bombardment of particles from the solar wind. The eye puzzled without quite knowing why, at powders and odd crystal shapes. And there were-puddles as well. One shied away from thinking about those.

And something else near the horizon demanded attention.

The Sun. It was very dim, cut down by the powerful screens. But the whitish yellow ball seemed like a golden dandelion near enough to touch, an incandescent coin. Dark sunspots ran in clusters, fanning north-and south-eastward, away from the equator. The surface had a fineness of texture that just escaped focus.

Looking directly at the Sun brought a strange detachment in Jacob. Dimmed, but not red tuned, its light bathed those inside the dome in an energizing glow. Streamers of sunshine seemed to caress Jacob’s forehead.

It was as if he had, like some ancient lizard seeking more than warmth, exposed every part of his self to the Lord of Space and, under those fires, felt a pulling force, a need to go.

He felt an uneasy certainty. Something lived in that furnace. Something terribly old, and terribly aloof.

Beneath the dome, men and machines stood on a fused plate of iron silicate. Jacob craned his head back to look at the huge pylon that filled the center of the chamber and protruded from the top of the stasis shield, into the hot Mercurial sunshine.

At its tip were the masers and lasers which kept Hermes Base in touch with Earth, and, via a net of synchronous satellites, orbiting 15 million kilometers above the surface, followed the Sunships down into the Maelstrom of Helios.

The maser beam was busy now. One retinal pattern after another flew at lightspeed to the computers at home. It was tempting to imagine riding that beam back to Earth, to blue skies and waters.

The Retinal Reader was a. small machine attached to the laser optics of the Library-designed computer system. The reader was essentially a large eyepiece against which a human user could press cheek and forehead. The optical input did the rest.

Although the E.T.’s were exempted from the search for Probationers (there was no way they could qualify, and there certainly weren’t any retinal codes on file for the few thousand galactics in (’the solar system) Culla insisted on being included. As Jeffrey’s friend he claimed a right to participate, however symbolically, in the investigation of the chimpanzee scientist’s death. Culla had trouble fitting his huge oculars one at a time into the pieces. He was very still for a long time. Finally, at a musical tone, the alien walked away from the machine.

The operator adjusted the height of the eyepiece for Helene deSilva.

Jacob’s turn came then. He waited until the eyepiece was adjusted, then pressed his nose, cheek, and forehead against the stops and opened his eyes.

A blue dot shone inside. Nothing else. It reminded Jacob of something, but he couldn’t focus on what. It seemed to turn around and sparkle as he looked, eluding analysis, like the shining of somebody’s soul.

Then the musical tone told him his turn was over. He stepped back and made room, as Kepler came forward, leaning on Millie Marline’s arm. The scientist smiled as he passed Jacob.

Now that’s what it reminded me of! he thought. The dot had been like a twinkle in a man’s eye.

Oh well, it fits, Computers can just about think today. There are some that are supposed to have a sense of humor, even. Why not this as well? Give the computers eyes to flash, and arms to put akimbo. Let them cast meaningful glances or stares that would kill if only stares could. Why should they not, the machines, begin to take on the aspect of those whom they absorb?

LaRoque submitted to the Reader, looking confident. When he finished, he sat aloof and silent under the gaze of Helene deSilva and several of her crew.

The Base Commandant had refreshments brought in, as everyone connected with the Sundiver ships took his or her turn at the Reader. Many of the technicians grumbled at the interruption of their work. Jacob had to admit, as he watched the procession pass, that it was an awful lot of effort to go through. He had never thought Helene would want to check on everybody.

DeSilva had offered a partial explanation in the elevator on the way up. After putting Kepler and LaRoque in separate cars, she had ridden with Jacob.

“One thing confuses me,” he had said.

“Only one thing?” she smiled grimly.

“Well, one thing stands out. If Dr. Kepler accuses LaRoque of sabotaging Jeff’s ship, why does he object to taking Bubbacub and Fagin on a followup dive, whatever the result of this investigation? If LaRoque is guilty that would mean that the next dive will be perfectly safe with him out of the way.”

DeSilva looked at him for a moment, pondering.

“I guess if there’s anyone on this base I can confide In it’s you, Jacob. So I’ll tell you what I think.

“Dr. Kepler never did want any E.T. help on this program. You’ll understand that I’m telling you this in strict confidence, but I’m afraid the usual balance between humanism and xenophilia that most spacemen get might have swung a bit too far in his case. His background makes him bitterly opposed to the Danikenite philosophy, and I suppose that converts into a partial distrust of aliens. Also, a lot of his colleagues have been thrown out of work by the Library. For a man who loves research as much as he, it must have been hard.

“I’m not saying he’s a Skin or anything like that! He gets along with Fagin pretty well and manages to hide his feelings around other Eatees. But he might say that if one dangerous man got on Mercury, another could, and use our guests’ safety as an excuse to keep them off his ships.”

“But Culla’s been on almost every dive.”

DeSilva shrugged.

“Culla doesn’t count. He’s a Client.

“I do know one thing, though; I’m going to have to go over Dr. Kepler’s head if this proves out. Every man on this base is having his identity cheeked and Bubba-cub and Fagin go on the next dive if I have to shanghai them I’m not going to let the slightest rumor get around that human crews are unreliable!”

She nodded with her jaw set. At the time Jacob thought her grimness was excessive. Though he could understand her feelings, it was a shame to masculinize those lovely features. At the same time he wondered if Helene was being totally candid on her own motivations.

A man who stood waiting by the maser link tore off a slip of message tape and carried it to deSilva. There was a tense silence as everyone watched her read. Then, grimly, she motioned to several of the husky crewmen who stood by.

“Place Mr. LaRoque under detention. He’s to be returned on the next ship out.”

“On what charge!” LaRoque shouted. “You cannot do this, you, you Neanderthaler woman! I will see that you pay for this insult!”

DeSilva looked down at him as if he were a form of insect. “For now the charge is illegal removal of a probationary transmitter. Other charges may be added later.”

“Lies, lies!” LaRoque shrieked as he leapt up. A crewman seized his arm and pulled him, choking with rage, toward the elevators.

DeSilva ignored them and turned to Jacob. “Mr. Demwa, the other ship will be ready in three hours. I’ll go tell the others.

“We can sleep en route. Thanks again for the way you handled things downstairs.”

She turned away before he could answer, giving orders in a low voice to crewmen who clustered about, efficiency masking her anger at the news: a Probationer in space!

Jacob watched for a few minutes as the dome slowly emptied. A death, a wild chase, and now a felony. So what, he thought, if the only felony proven so far is one I’d probably commit if I ever became a P.P.… it does mean that there’s a good chance that LaRoque caused the death as well.

As much as he disliked the man, he had never thought him capable of cold-blooded murder, in spite of those wicked swipes with the plastic cudgel.

At the back of his mind Jacob could feel his other half rubbing hands gleefully… amorally delighted at the mysterious twists and turns the Sundiver case had taken and clamoring now to be set loose. Forget it.

Dr. Martine approached him near the elevator. She appeared to be in shock.

“Jacob… you, you don’t think Pierre could kill that silly little fellow, do you? I mean, he likes chimpanzees!”

“I’m sorry, but the evidence seems to point that way. I don’t like the Probation Laws any more than you do. But people who are assigned that status are capable of easy violence, and for Mr. LaRoque to remove his transmitter is against the law.

“But don’t worry, they’ll work it all out on Earth. LaRoque is sure to get a fair hearing.”

“But… he’s already being unfairly accused!” she blurted. “He’s not a Probationer, and he’s not a murderer! I can prove it!”

“That’s great! Do you have evidence here?”

He frowned suddenly. “But the transmission from Earth said he was a Probationer!”

She bit her lip, looking away from his eyes. “The transmission was a forgery.”

Jacob felt pity for her. Now the supremely confident psychologist was stammering and grasping at farfetched ideas in her shock. It was degrading and he wished he was elsewhere.

“You have proof that the maser message was a lie? Can I see it?”

Martine looked up at him. Suddenly she seemed very unsure, as if wondering whether to say more.

“The… the crew here. Did you actually see the message? That woman… she only read it to us. She and the others hate Pierre…”

Her voice trailed off weakly, as if she knew her argument was thin. After all, Jacob thought, could the Commandant have faked reading from a piece of tape and known for certain that no one would ask to see it? Or, for that matter, would she place LaRoque in a position to sue her for every penny she’d earned in seventy years, just for a grudge?

Or had Martine been about to say something else?

“Why don’t you go down to your quarters and get some rest,” he said gently, “and don’t worry about Mr. LaRoque. They’ll need more evidence than they have now to convict him of a murder in a court on Earth.”

Martine let him lead her into the elevator. There, Jacob looked back. DeSilva was busy with her crew, Kepler had been taken below. Culla stood morosely near Fagin, the two of them towering over everyone else in the chamber, under the great yellow disc of the Sun.

He wondered, as the door closed, whether this was really a good way to begin a journey.