Sundiver

14. THE DEEPEST OCEAN

Project Icarus it was called, the fourth space program of that name and the first for which it was appropriate. Long before Jacob’s parents were born — before the Overturn and the Covenant, before the Power Satellite League, before even the full flower of the old Bureaucracy — old grandfather NASA decided that it would be interesting to drop expendable probes into the Sun to see what happened.

They discovered that the probes did a quaint thing when they got close. They burned up.

In America’s “Indian Summer” nothing was thought impossible. Americans were building cities in space — a more durable probe couldn’t be much of a challenge!

Shells were made, with materials that could take unheard of stress and whose surfaces reflected almost anything. Magnetic fields guided the diffuse but tremendously hot plasmas of corona and chromosphere around and away from those hulls. Powerful communications lasers pierced the solar atmosphere with two-way streams of commands and data.

Still, the robot ships burned. However good the mirrors and insulation, however evenly the superconductors distributed heat, the laws of thermodynamics still held. Heat will pass from a higher temperature to a zone where the temperature is lower, sooner or later.

The solar physicists might have gone on resignedly burning up probes in exchange for fleeting bursts of information had Tina Merchant not offered another way. “Why don’t you refrigerate?” she asked. “You have all the power you want. You can run refrigerators to push heat from one part of the probe to another.”

Her colleagues answered that, with superconductors, equalizing heat throughout was no problem.

“Who said anything about equalizing?” the Belle of Cambridge replied. “You should take all excess heat from the part of the ship were the instruments are and pump it into another part where the instruments aren’t.”

“And that part will burn up!” one colleague said. “Yes, but we can make a chain of these ‘heat dumps,’ ” said another engineer, slightly more bright. “And then we can drop them off, one by one…”

“No, no you don’t quite understand.” The triple Nobel Laureate strode to the chalkboard and drew a circle, then another circle within.

’Here!” She pointed to the inner circle. “You pump your heat into here until it is, for a short time, hotter than the ambient plasma outside of the ship. Then, before it can do harm there, you dump it out into the chromosphere.”

“And how,” asked a renowned physicist, “do you expect to do that?”

Tina Merchant had smiled as if she could almost see the Astronautics Prize held out to her. “Why I’m surprised at all of you!” she said. “You have onboard a communications laser with a brightness temperature of millions of degrees! Use it!”

Enter the age of the Solar Bathysphere. Floating in part by buoyancy and also by balancing atop the thrust of their refrigerator lasers, probes lingered for days, weeks, monitoring the subtle variations at the Sun, that wrought weather on the Earth.

That era came to an end with Contact. But soon a new type of Sunship was born.

Jacob thought about Tina Merchant He wondered if the great lady would have been proud, or merely bemused, to stand on the deck of a Sunship and cruise calmly through the worst tempests of this irascible star. She might have said “Of course I” But how could she have known that an alien science would have to be added to her own for men to ride those storms?

To Jacob the mixture didn’t inspire confidence.

He knew, of course that a couple of dozen successful descents had been made in this ship. There was no reason to think that this trip would be dangerous.

Except that another ship, the scaled-down replica of this one, had mysteriously failed just three days before.

Jeff’s ship was probably now a drifting cloud of dissolving cermet fragments and ionized gases, scattered through millions of cubic miles in the solar maelstrom. Jacob tried to imagine the storms of the chromosphere the way the chimp scientist saw them in the last instant of his life, unprotected by the space-time fields.

He closed his eyes and rubbed them gently. He had been staring at the Sun, blinking too seldom.

From his point of view, on one of the observation couches flush with the deck, he could see almost an entire hemisphere of the Sun. Half of the sky was filled by a feathery, slowly shifting ball of soft reds and blacks and whites. In hydrogen light, everything glowed in shades of crimson; the faint, delicate arch of a prominence, standing out against space at the star’s rim; the dark, twisting bands of filaments; and the sunken, blackish sunspots with their umbral depths and penumbral flows.

The topography of the Sun had almost infinite variety and texture. From flickers too fast to follow with the eye, to slow majestic turnings, all he could see was in motion.

Although the major features changed little from one hour to the next, Jacob could now make out countless lesser movements. The quickest were the pulsations of forests of tall slender “spicules” around the edges of great mottled cells. The pulses took place within seconds. Each spicule, he knew, covered thousands of square miles.

Jacob had spent time at the telescope on the Flip-side of the Sunship, watching the flickering spikes of superheated plasma jetting up out of the photosphere like quick waving fountains, flinging free of the Sun’s gravity great rolling waves of sound and matter that became the corona and the solar wind.

Within the spicule fences, the huge granulation cells pulsed in complicated rhythm as heat from below finished its million-year journey of convection to escape suddenly as light.

These, in turn, bunched together in gigantic cells, whose oscillations were the basic modes of the almost perfectly spherical Sun — the ringing of a stellar bell.

Above all this, like a broad deep sea rolling over the ocean floor, flowed the chromosphere.

The analogy could be overstated, but one could think of the turbulent areas above the spicules as coral reefs, and of the rows of stately, feathery filaments,, tracing everywhere the paths of magnetic fields, as beds of kelp, gently swaying with the tide. No matter that each pink arch was many times the size of Earth!

Once more Jacob tore his eyes away from the boiling sphere. I’m going to be useless for anything if I keep staring like this, he thought. I wonder how the others resist it?

The entire observation floor was visible from his position, except for a small section on the other side of the forty-foot dome at the Center.

An opening grew in the side of the central dome and light spilled out into the deck. Silhouetted, a man emerged, followed by a tall woman. Jacob didn’t have to wait for his eyes to adapt to know the outline of Commandant deSilva.

Helene smiled as she walked over and sat cross-legged next to his couch.

“Good morning, Mr. Demwa. I hope you had a good night’s sleep. It’ll be a busy day.”

Jacob laughed. “That’s three times in one breath you’ve talked as if there was anything called night here. You don’t have to keep up the fiction, like providing this sunrise here.” He nodded to where the Sun covered half of the sky.

“Rotation of the ship to make eight hours of night allows groundlubbers a chance to sleep,” she said.

“You needn’t have worried,” Jacob said. “I can catch Zee’s anytime. It’s my most valuable talent?’

Helena’s smile widened. “It was no Inconvenience. But, now that you mention it, it’s always been a tradition of Helionauts to rotate the ship once before final descent and call it night.”

“You have traditions already? After only two years?”

“Oh this tradition is much older than that! It dates back to when nobody could imagine any other way to visit the Sun but…” She paused.

Jacob groaned out loud.

“But to go at night, when it isn’t so hot!”

“You figured it out!”

“Filimentary, my dear Watson.”

It was her turn to groan. “Actually, we are building up some feeling of tradition among those who have gone down to Helios. We make up the Fire-Eaters Club. You’ll be initiated back on Mercury. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what the initiation consists of… but I hope you can swim!”

“I don’t see any place to hide, Commandant. I’ll be proud to be a Fire-Eater.”

“Good! And don’t forget, you still owe me that story about how you saved the Finnila Needle. I never did tell you how glad I was to see that old monstrosity when the Calypso returned, and I want to hear about it from the man who preserved it.”

Jacob stared past the Sunship Commandant. For a moment he thought he could hear a wind whistling, and someone calling… a voice crying out indecipherable words as somebody fell… He shook himself.

“Oh, I’ll save it for you. It’s much too personal to talk about in one of those story-swaps. There was someone else involved in saving the needles, someone you might like to hear about.”

There was something in Helene deSilva’s expression, something compassionate, that implied she already knew about what had happened to him at Ecuador, and would let him tell about it in his own good time.

“I’m looking forward to it. And I’ve finally thought of one for you. It’s about the ‘song-birds’ of Omnivarium. It seems the planet is so silent that the human settlers have to be very careful lest the birds start mimicking any noise they make. This has an interesting effect on the settler’s lovemaking behavior, particularly among the women, depending on whether they want to advertise their partner’s ‘abilities’ in the age-old fashion or remain, discreet!

“But I must go back to my duties now. And I certainly don’t want to give away the whole story. I’ll let you know when we reach the first turbulence.”

Jacob rose to his feet with her and watched as she walked toward the command station. Partway into the solar chromosphere was probably an odd place to be enthralled by the way a fem walked, but until she went out of sight he felt no inclination to turn his eyes away. He admired the limberness that members of the interstellar corps inculcated into their extremities. Hell, she was probably doing it on purpose. Where It didn’t interfere with her job, Helene deSilva obviously pursued libido as a hobby.

There was something strange, though, In her behavior towards him. She appeared to trust him more than would normally be warranted by the small contributions he’d made on Mercury and their few friendly conversations. Perhaps she was after something. If so he couldn’t figure out what.

On the other hand, maybe people were more naturally ultimate when they left Earth for the long Jump on Calypso. Someone brought up on an O’Niel Colony, in a period of introspection caused by political stultification, might be more willing to trust her instincts than a child of the highly individualistic Confederacy.

He wondered what Fagin had told her about him.

Jacob went to the central dome, the outside wall of which contained a little boxlike head.

When he came out, Jacob felt much more awake. On the other side of the dome, by the food and beverage machines, he found Dr. Martine standing with the two bipedal aliens. She smiled at him, and Culla’s eyes brightened with friendliness. Even Bubbacub grunted a greeting through his Vodor.

He pressed buttons for orange juice and an omelette.

“You know, Jacob, you turned in too early last night. Pil Bubbacub was telling us some more incredible stories after you went to bed. They were astounding, really!”

Jacob bowed slightly at Bubbacub.

“I apologize, Pil Bubbacub. I was very tired, otherwise I would have been thrilled to hear more about the great Galactics, particularly of the glorious Pila. I’m sure the stories are inexhaustible.”

Martine stiffened next to him, but Bubbacub showed his pleasure by preening. Jacob knew it would be dangerous to insult the little alien. But by now he’d guessed the Ambassador wouldn’t know any accusation of hubris as an insult. Jacob couldn’t resist the harmless dig.

Martine insisted that he come over to eat with them, where the couches had already been raised for dining. Two of deSilva’s four crewmen ate nearby.

“Has anyone seen Fagin?” Jacob asked.

Dr. Martine shook her head. “No, I’m afraid he’s been on Flip-side for over twelve hours. I don’t know why he doesn’t join us here.”

It wasn’t like Fagin to be reticent When Jacob had gone to the instrument hemisphere to use the telescope, and found the Kanten there, Fagin had hardly said a word. Now the Commandant had put the other side of the ship off limits to everyone except the E.T., who occupied it alone.

If I don’t hear from Fagin by lunchtime, I’m going to demand an explanation, Jacob thought.

Nearby, Martine and Bubbacub talked. Occasionally Culla said a word or two, always with the most unctuous respect. The Pring seemed always to have a liquitube between his giant lips. He sipped slowly, steadily consuming the contents of several tubes while Jacob ate his meal.

Bubbacub launched into a story about an Ancestral of his, a member of the Soro race who had, some million or so years ago, taken part in one of the few peaceful contacts between the loose civilization of oxygen breathers and the mysterious parallel culture of hydrogen-breathing races which coexisted in the galaxy.

For aeons there had been little or no understanding between hydrogen and oxygen. Whenever conflict arose between the two a planet died. Sometimes more. It was fortunate that they had almost nothing in common, so conflicts were rare.

The story was long and involved, but Jacob admitted to himself that Bubbacub was a master storyteller. Bubbacub could be charming and witty, as long as he controlled the center of attention.

Jacob allowed his imagination to drift along as the Pil vividly described those things which only a handful of men had ever even sampled: the infinite strangeness and beauty of the stars, and the variety of things which dwelt on a multitude of planets. He began to envy Helene deSilva.

Bubbacub felt the cause of the Library intensely. It was the vehicle of knowledge and of a tradition which unified all of those who took in oxygen as breath. It provided continuity and more, for without the Library, there would be no bridges between species. Wars would not be fought with restraint but to extinction. Planets would be ruined by over-use.

The Library, and the other loosely-knit Institutes, helped to prevent genocide among its members.

Bubbacub’s story reached its climax and he allowed his awed audience a few moments of silence. Finally, he good-naturedly asked Jacob if he would care to honor them with a story of his own.

Jacob was taken aback. By human standards, perhaps, he had led an interesting life, but certainly not remarkable! What could he talk about from history? Apparently the rules were that it had to either be a personal experience, or an adventure of an Ancestor or Ancestral.

Perspiring in his chair, Jacob considered telling a story about some historical figure; perhaps Marco Polo or Mark Twain. But Martine would probably not be interested.

Then there was the part his grandfather Alvarez had played in the Overturn. But that story was rather heavily political and Bubbacub would think its moral downright subversive. His best story had to do with his own adventure at the Vanilla Needle, but that was too personal, too filled with painful memories to share here and now. Besides he’d promised it to Helene deSilva.

It was too bad LaRoque wasn’t here. The feisty little man would probably have been able to talk until the fires below burned out.

An impish thought struck Jacob. There was a character out of history, who was» a direct Ancestor of his and whose story might be sufficiently relevant. The amusing part was that the story could be interpreted on two levels. He wondered how obvious he could get without certain listeners catching on.

“Well, as a matter of fact,” he began slowly. “There’s a male from the history of Earth who I would like to talk about. He is of interest because he was involved in a contact between a ‘primitive’ culture and technology and another that could overpower it in almost every respect. Naturally, you’re all familiar with the premise. Since Contact, it’s been almost all historians talk about.

“The fate of the Amerind Is this era’s morality play. Old twentieth-century movies glorifying the ‘Noble Red Man’ are shown today strictly for laughs. As Millie reminded us, back on Mercury, and as everyone back home knows, the Red Man did just about the poorest job of any of the impacted cultures at adapting to the arrival of Europeans. His vaunted pride kept him from studying the white man’s powerful ways until it was too late, exactly opposite to the successful “co-opting” made by Japan in the late nineteenth century… the example that the ‘Adapt and Survive’ faction keeps pointing out to all who will listen these days.”

He had them. The humans were watching him silently. Culla’s eyes were bright. Even Bubbacub, usually inattentive, kept his beady little eyes on Jacob. Martine had winced when he mentioned the A S faction, though. A datum.

If LaRoque were here, he wouldn’t care for what I’m saving, Jacob thought. But LaRoque’s distress would be nothing next to that of his Alverez kin, should they ever hear him talk like this!

“Of course, the failure of the Amerinds to adapt wasn’t entirely their fault,” Jacob continued. “Many scholars think that western hemisphere cultures were in a periodic slump that happened, unfortunately, to coincide with the arrival of Europeans. Indeed, the poor Mayans had just finished a civil war in which they’d all moved out to the country and left their cities, and princes and priests, to rot. When Columbus arrived the temples were mostly deserted. Of course, the population had doubled and wealth and trade had quadrupled over the Golden Age of the Maya, but those are hardly valid measures of cultures.” Careful, boy. Don’t go too heavy on the irony. Jacob noticed that one of the crewmen, a fellow he’d met named Dubrowsky, had backed away from the others. Only Jacob could see the sardonic grin on the man’s face. Everyone else appeared to be listening with unsuspicious interest, though it was hard to tell with Culla and Bubbacub.

“Now this ancestor of mine was an Amerind. His name was Se-quo-yi, and he was a member of the Cherokee nation.

“At the time, the Cherokee lived mostly in the state of Georgia. Since that was the East Coast of America, they had even less time than the other Amerinds to prepare to deal with the white man. Still, they tried, after their own fashion. Their attempt was nowhere near as grand or complete as the Japanese, but they tried.

“They were quick to pick up on the technology of their new neighbors. Log cabins replaced lodge houses and iron tools and blacksmithing became a part of Cherokee life. They learned about gunpowder early, as well as European methods of fanning. Though many didn’t like the idea, the tribe even became a slaveholding enterprise at one point.

“That was after they’d been whipped in two wars. They’d made the mistake of supporting the French in 1765, and then backed the Crown during the first American Revolution. Even so, they had a fair-sized little republic in the first part of the nineteenth century, partly because several young Cherokee had picked up enough of the white man’s knowledge to become lawyers. Along with their Iroquois speaking cousins to the north, they did a fair job of playing the treaty game.

“For a while.

“Enter my ancestor. Se-quo-yi was a man who didn’t like either of the choices offered his people, either staying noble savages and getting wiped out, or co-opting the settlers’ ways completely and disappearing as a people. In particular, he saw the power of the written word but thought the Indian would forever be at a disadvantage if he had to learn English to become literate.”

Jacob wondered if anyone would make the connection, comparing the situation that faced Se-quo-yi and the Cherokee with humanity’s present predicament, vis-a-vis the Library.

Judging by the look on Martine’s face, at least one person was surprised to hear such a long historical tale from the normally quiet Jacob Demwa. There was no way she could, or ever would, know about the long lessons, after school, in history and oratory that he and the other Alvarez children had endured. Though he had turned away from politics, a family black sheep, he still had some of the skills.

“Well, Se-quo-yi solved his problem to his own satisfaction by inventing a written form of the Cherokee language. It was a Herculean task, accomplished at cost of episodes of torture and exile, for many in his own tribe resisted his efforts. But when he finished all of the world of literature and technology was available, not just to the intellectual who could study English for years, but to the Cherokee of average intelligence, as well.

“Soon even the assimilationists accepted the work of Se-quo-yi’s genius. His victory set the tone for all succeeding generations of Cherokee. These people, the only Amerinds whose principle hero was an intellectual, and not a warrior, chose to be selective.

“And that was their big mistake. If they’d let the local missionaries change them over into imitation settlers they would have been able, probably, to merge into the yeoman class and be looked upon by the Europeans as a slightly lower type of white man.

“Instead, they thought they could become modern Indians, retaining the essential elements of their old culture… obviously a contradiction in terms.

“Still, there are some scholars who think they might have made it. Things were going well until a group of white men discovered gold on Cherokee land. That got the settlers fairly excited. They got a bill through the Georgia legislature to declare the land up for grabs.

“Then the Cherokee did a strange thing, something that wasn’t adequately duplicated for about a hundred years after. That Indian nation took the Georgia state legislature to court over the land seizure! They had some help from some sympathetic white men and managed to bring the case before the United States Supreme Court.

“The Court ruled that the seizure was illegal. The Cherokee could keep their land.

“But here is where the incompleteness of their adjustment let them down. Because they’d made no major attempt to fit themselves into the basic structure of settler society, the Cherokee had no political power to back up the tightness of their cause. They trusted, and cleverly used, the high and honorable laws of the new nation, but didn’t realize that public opinion has every bit as much force as law.

“To most of their white neighbors they were just another tribe of Indians. When Andy Jackson told the Court to go to hell, and sent the Army in to evict the Cherokee anyway, there was nowhere for them to turn.

“So Se-quo-yi’s people had to pack a few belongings and march the tragic Trail of Tears to a new ‘Indian Territory,’ in western lands none of them had ever seen.

“The story of the Trail of Tears was an epic of human courage and endurance. The sufferings of the Cherokee on that long march were deep and sad. Some very moving literature came out of it, as well as a tradition of strength in privation that has affected the spirit of that people ever since, even down to today.

“That eviction wasn’t the last trauma to fall on the Cherokee.

“When the United States had a Civil War, the Cherokee did as well. Brother killed brother when the Confederate Indian Volunteers met the Union Indian Brigade. They fought as passionately as did the white troops, and usually with more discipline. And in the process their new homes were ravaged.

“Later there were troubles with bandit gangs, diseases, and more land seizures. In their stoicism they came to be known by some as the ‘Amerind Jews.’ While some other tribes dissolved in despair and apathy in the face of the crimes committed against them, the Cherokee maintained their tradition of self reliance.

“Se-quo-yi was remembered. Perhaps in symbolism of the pride of the Cherokee, his name was given to a certain type of tree, one that grows in the misty forests of California. The tallest tree in the world.

“But all of this leads us away from the folly of the Cherokee. For while their pride helped them survive the depredations of the nineteenth century and the neglect of the twentieth, it held them back from participating in the Indian Consolation of the twenty-first. They refused the ‘cultural reparations’ offered by the American governments just before the beginning of the Bureaucracy; riches heaped on -the remnants of the Indian Nations to salve the delicate consciences of the enlightened, educated public in that era that is today, ironically, referred to as America’s ‘Indian Summer.’

“They refused to set up Cultural Centers to perform ancient dances and rituals. While other Amerind revivalists resurrected pre-Columbian crafts to ‘regain contact with their heritage,’ the Cherokee asked why they should dig up ‘Model TV’ when they could be building their own specially-flavored version of twenty-first-century American culture.

“Along with the Mohawks and scattered groups from other tribes, they traded their ‘Consolation’ and half of their tribal wealth to buy into the Power Satellite League. The pride of their youth went up to help build the cities in space, as their grandfathers had helped build the great cities of America. The Cherokee gave away a chance to be rich in exchange for a share of the sky.

“And once again they paid terribly for their pride. When the Bureaucracy began its suppression, the League rebelled. Those bright young males and fems, the treasure of their nation, died by the thousands alongside their space-brothers, descendants of Andy Jackson and of Andy Jackson’s slaves. The League cities they built were decimated. The survivors were allowed to remain in space only because someone had to be there to show the. Bureaucracy’s carefully selected replacements how to live.

“On Earth the Cherokee suffered, too. Many took part in the Constitutionalist Revolt. Alone of the Indian nations, they were punished by the victors as a group, along with the VietAms, and the Minnesotans. The Second Trail of Tears was as sad as the first. This time, though, they had company.

“Of course, the first ruthless generation of Bureaucracy leaders passed, and the era of the true bureaucrats arrived. The Hegemony cared more about productivity than vengeance. The League rebuilt, under supervision, and a rich new culture developed in the O’Niel Colonies, influenced by the survivors of the original builders.

“On Earth, the Cherokee still meet, long after many tribes have been absorbed into cosmopolitan culture or into quaintness. They still haven’t learned their lesson. I hear that their latest crackpot scheme is a joint project with the VietAms and Israel-APU to try to terra-form Venus. Ridiculous, of course.

“But all of that is beside the point. If my Ancestor, Se-quo-yi, and-his kin, had adapted completely to the ways of the white man they could have won a small place in his culture and been absorbed in peace, without suffering. If they had resisted with indiscriminate stubbornness, along with many of their Amerind neighbors, they would have suffered still, but finally been given a place, through the ‘kindness’ of a later generation of white man.

“Instead, they tried to find a synthesis between those obvious good and powerful aspects of western civilization, and their own heritage. They experimented and were choosy. They picked and fussed over the meal for six hundred years and suffered, because of it. more than any other tribe.

“The moral of this story I have told, should be obvious. We humans are faced with a choice similar to that faced by the Amerinds, whether to be picky or to accept wholeheartedly all of the billion-year-old culture offered us through the Library. Let anyone who urges choosiness remember the story of the Cherokee. Their trail has been long, and it isn’t over yet.”

There was a long silence after Jacob finished. Bubbacub still watched him with little black eyes. Culla stared fixedly. Dr. Martine looked down at the deck, her eyebrows knotted in thought.

The crewman, Dubrowsky, stood well back. One arm was crossed in front of him. His other hand covered his mouth. Crinkles around his eyes; did they betray silent laughter?

Must be a League-man. Space is infested with them. I hope he keeps his mouth shut about this. I took enough of a chance as it is.

His throat felt parched. He took a long drink from the liquitube of orange juice he had saved from breakfast.

Bubbacub finally placed both little hands behind his neck and sat up. He looked at Jacob for a moment.

“Good sto-ry,” he snapped, finally. “I will ask you to rec-ord it for me, when we get back. It has good les-son for Earth folk.

“There are some ques-tions I would ask, though. Now or la-ter. Some things I do not un-der-stand.”

“As you wish, Pil-Bubbacub,” Jacob bowed, trying to hide his grin. Now to change the subject quick, before Bubbacub could get started asking about pesky details! But how?

“I too, enjoyed my friend Jacob’s story,” a whistling voice fluted from behind them, “I approached as silently as I could, when I came into range to hear it. I am pleased that my presence did not disturb the telling.”

Jacob shot to his feet with relief.

“Fagin!” Everyone rose as the Kanten slithered toward them. In the ruby light, he looked jet black. His movements were slow.

“I wish to offer apologies! My absence was unavoidable. The Commandant graciously assented to allow more radiation through the screens so that I could take nourishment. But, understandably, it was necessary that she do so only on the unoccupied reverse side of the ship.”

“That’s true,” Martine laughed. “We wouldn’t want any sunburn here!”

“Quite so. And yet it was lonely there, I am glad to have company again.”

The bipeds sat down and Fagin settled himself onto the deck. Jacob seized the opportunity to get out of his fix.

“Fagin, we’ve been exchanging some stories here, waiting for the surfing to start. Maybe you can tell us one about the Institute of Progress ?”

The Kanten rustled its foliage. There was a pause. “Alas, Friend-Jacob. Unlike that of the Library, the Institute of Progress is not an important society. The very name is poorly translated into English. There are no words in your language to represent it properly.

“Our small order was founded to fulfill one of the least of the Injunctions that the Progenitors placed upon the oldest of races when they left the galaxy so long ago. Crudely stated, it imposed upon us the duty to respect ‘Newness.’

“It may be hard for a species such as your own, orphans so to speak, who have until recently never felt the bittersweet bonds of kinship and patron-client obligation, to understand the inherent conservatism of our Galactic culture. This conservatism is not bad. For admidst so much diversity a belief in the Tradition and in a common heritage is a good influence. Young races heed the words of those older, who have learned wisdom and patience with years.

“You might say, to borrow an English expression, that we hold a deep regard for our roots.”

Only Jacob noticed that Fagin shifted his weight slightly at that point. The Kanten was folding and unfolding the short knotty tentacles that served as his feet. Jacob tried not to choke as a swallow of orange juice went down wrong.

“But there remains a need to face the future, as well,” Fagin continued. “And in their wisdom, the Progenitors warned the Oldest not to scorn that which is new under the Sun.”

Fagin was silhouetted against the giant red orb, their destination. Jacob shook his head helplessly.

“So when word got out that somebody’d found a bunch of savages sucking at a wolfs teat, you came running, right?”

More rustling foliage. “Very graphic, Friend-Jacob. But your surmise is essentially correct. The Library has the important task of teaching the races of Earth what they need to know to survive. My Institute has the humbler mission of appreciating your Newness.”

Dr. Martine spoke.

“Kant Fagin, to your knowledge, has this ever happened before? I mean, has there ever been a case of a species which has no memory of Ancestral Upbringing, bursting into the galaxy on their own like we did?”

“Yes, respected Doctor Martine. It has happened a number of times. Space is large beyond all imagining. The periodic migrations of oxygen and hydrogen civilizations cover great distance, and rarely is even a settled area ever full explored. Often, in these great movements, a tiny fragment of a race, barely raised from bestiality, has been abandoned by its patrons to find its way alone. Such abandonments are usually avenged by civilized peoples…” The Kanten hesitated. Suddenly Jacob realized why with a shock as Fagin hurried on.

“But since it is usually at a time of migration that these rare cases occur, there is an added problem. The wolfling race may develop a crude spacedrive from the dregs of its patron’s technology, but by the time it enters interstellar space, its part of the galaxy might be under Interdict. Unknowingly it might fall prey to hydrogen breathers whose turn it may be to occupy that cluster or spiral arm.

“Nevertheless, such species are found occasionally. Usually the orphans retain vivid memories of their patrons. In some cases, myth and legend have taken the place of fact. But the Library is almost always able to trace the truth, for that is where our truths are stored.”

Fagin lowered several branches in Bubbacub’s direction. The Pil acknowledged with a friendly bow.

“That is why,” Fagin went on, “we await with great expectation the discovery of the reason why there is no mention of your Earth in that great archive. There is no listing, no record of previous occupation, in spite of five full migrations through this region since the Progenitors departed.”

Bubbacub froze in his bow. The small black eyes snapped up to bear on the Kanten with narrowly focused ferocity, but Fagin appeared not to notice as he continued.

“To my knowledge, mankind is the first case in which there exists the intriguing possibility of evolved intelligence. As I am sure” you know, this idea violates several well-established principles of our biological science. Yet some of your anthropologists’ arguments possess startling self-consistency.”

“It is quaint idea,” Bubbacub sniffed. “Like per-pet-ual motion, these boast-ings by those you call ‘Skins.’ The theories of ‘natural’ growth of full sent-ience, are great source of good-natured jokes, human-Jacob-Dem-wa. But soon the Lib-rar-y give your troub-led race what it needs; the com-fort of knowing where you came from!”

The low hum of the ship’s engines grew louder, and for a second Jacob felt a slight disorientation.

“Attention everybody,” the amplified voice of Commandant deSilva carried throughout the ship. “We’ve just crossed over the first reef. From now on there will be momentary shocks like that one. I’ll inform you when we near our target area. That is all.”

The Sun’s horizon was now nearly flat. On all sides of the ship, a sparse red and black tangle of curling shapes stretched away to infinity. More and more of the highest filaments were coming even with the vessel to become prominences against what remained of the blackness of space, and then to disappear into the reddish haze that grew over their heads.

The group moved, by mutual consent, to the edge of the deck where they could look straight into the lower chromosphere. They were quiet, for a while, watching as the deck quivered from time to time.

“Dr. Martine,” Jacob said. “Are you and Pil Bubbacub ready with your experiments?”

She pointed to a pair of stout space-trunks on the deck next to Bubbacub’s station and her own.

“We have all we need right here. I’m bringing along some psi equipment I used on earlier dives, but mostly I’m going to help Pil Bubbacub in any way I can. My brain wave amplifiers and Q-devices are like knucklebones and tea leaves next to what he’s got in his case. But I’ll try to be of assistance.”

“Your help be take-en with glad-ness,” Bubbacub said. But when Jacob asked to see the Pil’s psi-testing apparatus he held up his four-fingered hand. “Later, when we are ready.”

The old itchiness returned to Jacob’s hands. What does Bubbacub have in those trunks? The Branch Library had next to nothing on psi. Some phenomenology, but very little on methodology.

What does a billion-year-old galactic culture know, he thought, about the deep fundamental levels that all sentient species seem to have in common? Apparently they don’t know everything, for the Galactics still operate on this plane of reality. And I know for a fact that at least some of them don’t have any more telepathy than I do.

There were rumors that older species periodically faded away from the galaxy; sometimes from natural attrition of war or apathy, but also occasionally by simply “stepping off”… disappearing into interests and behavior that have no meaning to their clients or neighbors.

Why does our Branch Library have nothing on these events, or even on the practical aspects of psi?

Jacob frowned and locked his two hands together. No, he decided. I’m going to leave Bubbacub’s trunk alone!

Helene deSilva’s voice came on again over the intercom.

“We will be approaching the target area in thirty minutes. Those who wish may now approach the Pilot Board to get a good view of our destination.”

The rest of the Sun seemed to dim slightly as their eyes adapted to the added brightness of the area. The faculae were bright pinpoints, flashing on and off far below in sudden brilliance. At some indeterminable distance, a great sunspot group stretched away. The nearest spot looked like an open pit mine, a sunken recess in the grainy “surface” of the photosphere. The dark Umbra was very still, but the penumbral regions around the sunspot’s rim rippled incessantly outward, like wavelets spreading from a pebble thrown into a lake. The border was vague, like a plucked piano string, vibrating.

Above and all around, the huge shape of a filament tangle loomed. It had to be one of the biggest things that Jacob had ever seen. Following the lines of magnetic fields that merged, twisted, and looped around one another, giant clouds swirled and flowed. A strand emerged from nothingness, rose, twisted around another, and then disappeared into “thin air.”

All around them now was a swirl of smaller shapes; almost invisible, but excluding the comforting black of space in an overall pink haze.

Jacob wondered what a literary man would make of this scene. For all of his egregious — perhaps murderous faults — LaRoque had a reputation built on a beautiful facility with words. Jacob had read several of his articles and enjoyed the flowing prose, while perhaps laughing at the man’s conclusions. Here was a scene that demanded a poet, whatever his politics. He thought it a pity that LaRoque wasn’t here… for more than one reason.

“Our instruments have picked up a source of anomalous polarized light. That’s where we start our search.”

Culla stepped up to the lip of the deck and stared intently at a position pointed out to him by a crewman.

Jacob asked the Commandant what he was doing.

“Culla can detect color far more accurately than we,” deSilva said. “He can see differences in wave length down to about an angstrom or so. Also he’s somehow able to retain the phase of the light he sees. Some interference phenomenon, I suppose. But it makes him really handy at spotting the coherent light these laser beasties put out. He’s almost always the first one to see them.”

Culla’s mashies clacked together once. He pointed with a slender band.

“It ish there,” he stated. “There are many points of light. It ish a large herd, and I believe that there are sheperdsh there ash well.”

DeSilva smiled, as the ship hastened its approach.

15. OF LIFE AND DEATH…

In the center of the filament, the Sunship moved like a fish caught in a swift current. The current was electrical, and the tide that swept the mirrored sphere along was a magnetized plasma of incredible complexity.

Lumps and streaming shreds of ionized gas seared thither and back, twisted by the forces that their very passage created. Flows of glowing matter popped suddenly in and out of visibility, as the Doppler effect took the emission lines of the gas into and then out of coincidence with the spectral line being used for observation.

The ship swooped through the turbulent chromospheric crosswinds, tacking on the plasma forces by subtle shifts in its own magnetic shields… sailing with sheets made of almost corporeal mathematics. Lightning fast furling and thickening of those shields of force — allowing the tug of the conflicting eddies to be felt in one direction and not another — helped to cut down the buffeting dealt out by the storm.

Those same shields kept out most of the screaming heat, diverting the rest into tolerable forms. What got through was sucked up into a chamber to drive the Refrigerator Laser, the kidney whose filtered waste-flow was a stream of x-rays which clove aside even the plasma in its path.

Still, these were mere inventions of Earthmen. It was the science of the Galactics that made the Sun-ship graceful and safe. Gravity fields held back the amorous, crushing pull of the Sun so the ship fell or flew at will. The pounding forces of the center of the filament were absorbed or neutralized, and duration itself was altered by time-compression.

In relation to a fixed position on the Sun (if such a tiling existed), it was swept along the magnetic arch at thousands of miles per hour. But relative to the surrounding clouds, the ship seemed to poke its way slowly, pursuing a quarry seen in glimpses.

Jacob watched the chase with half an eye, and kept Culla in sight the rest of the time. The slender alien was the ship’s lookout. He stood by the helmsman, eyes glowing and arm pointing into the murk.

Culla’s directions were only a little better than those given by the ship’s own instruments, but the instruments were difficult for Jacob to read. He appreciated having someone there to show passengers, as well as crew, the way to look.

For an hour they’d chased after specks that glowed in the distant haze. The specks were extremely faint, in the blue and green lines deSilva had ordered opened, but occasionally a burst of greenish light stabbed out from one or another, like a searchlight that suddenly took in the ship and then swept past.

Now the glimpses occurred more frequently. There were at least a hundred of the objects, all about the same size. Jacob looked at the Proximity Meter. Seven hundred kilometers.

At two hundred their shape became clear. Each of the “magnetic grazers” was a torus. At this range the colony looked like a large collection of tiny blue wedding rings. Every little ring was aligned the same way, along the filamentary arch.

“They line up along the magnetic field where it’s most intense,” deSilva said. “And spin on their axes to generate an electric current. Heaven knows how they get from one active region to another when the fields shift. We’re still trying to figure out what keeps them together.”

Toward the edge of the crowd a few toruses wobbled slowly as they spun. Processing.

Suddenly, for an instant, the ship was bathed by a sharp green glow. Then the ochre hue returned. The pilot looked up at Jacob.

“We just passed through the laser tail of one torus. An occasional shot like that doesn’t do any harm,” he said. “But if we were coming up from behind and below the main herd we might have had trouble!”

A clump of dark plasma, either cooler or moving much faster than the surrounding gas, passed in front of the ship, blocking their view.

“What purpose does the laser serve?” Jacob asked.

DeSilva shrugged. “Dynamic stability? Propulsion? Possibly they use it for cooling like we do. I suppose there might even be solid matter in their makeup, if that were true.

“Whatever the purpose, it sure is powerful to punch green light through these red-tuned screens. That’s the only reason we discovered them. Big as they are, they’re like pollen blowing in the wind down here. We could search for a million years and never find a toroid, without the laser for a trace. They’re invisible in the hydrogen alpha, so to observe them better, we opened up a couple of bands in the green and blue. Naturally we won’t be opening the wavelength that laser’s tuned to! The lines we choose are quiet and optically thick, so whatever you see that’s green or blue comes from a beastie. It should come as a pleasant change.”

“Anything would be welcome but this damned red.”

The ship passed through the dark matter and suddenly they were almost among the creatures.

Jacob gulped and closed his eyes momentarily. When he looked again, he found that he couldn’t swallow. On top of three days of unbelievable sights, what he saw left him helpless before a powerful tremor of emotion.

If a group of fish “is called a “school” for its discipline, and several lions comprise a “pride,” named for their attitude, Jacob decided that the cluster of solar-beings could only be called a “flare.” So intense was its brilliance that its members seemed to shine against black space.

The nearer toroids shone with the colors of an Earth spring. Only with distance did the colors fade. Pale green shimmered below their axes, where laser light scattered in the plasma.

Around all of them sparkled a diffuse halo of white light.

“Synchrotron radiation,” a crewman said. “Those babies must really be spinning! I’m picking up a big flux at l00KeV!”

Four hundred meters across and more than 2,000 distant, the nearest toroid spun madly. Around its rim geometric shapes flew past like beads on a necklace, changing, so that deep blue diamonds became purple sinuous bands, circuiting a brilliant emerald ring, all within seconds.

The Sunship captain stood by the Pilot Board, eyes darting from indicator to gauge and alert to every detail. To glance at her was to watch a softened version of the show outside the ship, for the fluxious, iridescent colors of the nearest toroid bathed her face and her white uniform and were thereby tamed and diffused for the second half of the trip to Jacob’s eye. First faintly, then more brightly as green and blue mixed with and drove out the pink, the colors sparkled each time she looked up and smiled.

Suddenly, the blueness swelled as a burst of exuberance from the toroid coincided with an intricate display of patterns, like a weaving of ganglia around the ring-beast’s rim.

The performance was peerless. Arteries erupted in green and twined with veins drawn in pulsing, chaste blue. These throbbed in counterpoint, then grew like gravid vines, peeling back to release clouds of tiny triangles — sprays of two dimensional pollen that scattered in a multitude of miniscule three-point collisions around the non-Euclidian body of the torus. At once the motif became isosceles, and the doughnut-rim became a cacophote of sides and angles.

The display reached a peak of intensity, then receded. The rim patterns became less bright and the torus backed away, finding a place to spin among its fellows as the red started to return, pushing out greens and blues from the deck of the ship and from the faces of the watchers.

“That was a greeting,” Helene deSilva said finally. “There are skeptics back on Earth who still think that the magnetovores are just some form of magnetic aberration. Let them come and see for themselves, then. We are witnessing life. Clearly the Creator accepts few limits to the range of his handiwork.”

She touched the pilot’s shoulder lightly. His hands moved on his controls and the ship began to bank away.

Jacob agreed with Helene, though her logic was unscientific. He had no doubts that the toroids were alive. The creature’s display, whether it was a greeting or simply a territorial response to the presence of the ship, had been a sign of something vital, if not sentient.

The anachronistic reference to a supreme deity had sounded oddly fitting to the beauty of the moment.

The Commandant spoke again into Tier microphone as the flare of magnetovores fell back and the deck turned.

“Now we go hunting ghosts.

“Remember, we aren’t really here to study the magnetovores but their predators. A constant watch is to be maintained by the crew for any sign of these elusive creatures. Since they have been sighted as often by accident as not, it would be appreciated if everyone helped. Please report anything extraordinary to me.

DeSilva and Culla held a conference. The alien nodded slowly, an occasional flash of white between huge gums betraying his excitement. Finally, he set off around the curve of the central dome.

DeSilva explained that she had sent Culla to the other side of the deck, flip-side, where normally only Instruments stood, to act as a lookout in case the laser beings should appear from the nadir, where the rim-mounted detectors could not reach them.

“We’ve had a number of zenith sightings,” deSilva repeated. “And these have often been the most interesting cases, such as when we saw anthropomorphic shapes.”

“And the shapes always disappeared before the ship could be turned?” Jacob asked.

“Or the beasts would turn with us to stay overhead. It was infuriating! But that gave us the first clue that psi might be involved. After all, whatever their motives, how could they know about our way of placing instruments at the rim of a disc and follow our movements so precisely, without knowing what we intended to do?”

Jacob frowned in thought. “But why not put a few cameras up here? Certainly it wouldn’t be much of a chore?”

“No, not much of a chore,” deSilva agreed. “But the support and dive crews didn’t want to disturb the ship’s original symmetry. We would have to put another conduit through the deck to the main recording computer, and Culla assured us that this would eliminate whatever small ability we might have to maneuver in a stasis-failure… though that ability is probably negligible anyway. Witness what happened to poor Jeff.

“Jeffrey’s ship, the small one you toured on Mercury, was designed from the start to carry recorders aimed at zenith and nadir. His was the only one with this modification. We’ll have to make do with the rim instruments, our eyes, and a few hand-held cameras.”

“And the psi experiments,” Jacob pointed out.

DeSilva nodded expressionlessly.

“Yes, we are all hoping to make friendly contact, of course.”

“Excuse me, Captain.”

The pilot looked up from his instruments. He held a button speaker to his ear. “Culla says there’s a color difference at the upper north end of the herd. It might be a calving.”

DeSilva nodded.

“Okay. Proceed along a north tangent to the field flux. Rise with the herd as you make your way around and don’t get close enough to spook them.”

The ship began to bank at a new angle. The Sun rose on the left until it became a wall that stretched up and ahead to infinity. A faint luminescence twisted away from them, down toward the photosphere below. The sparkling trail paralleled the alignment of the herd of toruses.

That’s the path of superionization our Refrigerator Laser left when we were pointed that way,” deSilva said. “It must be a couple of hundred kilometers long.”

“The laser is that strong?”

“Well, we have to get rid of a lot of heat. And the whole idea is to heat up a small part of the Sun. Otherwise the refrigerator wouldn’t work. Incidentally, that’s another reason why we’re so careful not to let the herd get ahead of or behind us.”

Jacob felt momentarily awed.

“When win we be in sight of… what was it he said? A calving?”

“Yes, a calving. We’re very lucky. We’ve only seen this twice before. The shepherds were there both tunes. They appear to assist whenever a torus gives birth. It’s a logical place to start looking for them.

“As for when we get there, that depends on how violent things are between here and there, and how much time-compression we need to get there comfortably. It could be a day. If we’re lucky…” She glanced at the Pilot Board. “… we could be there in ten minutes.”

A crewman stood nearby holding a chart, apparently waiting to see deSilva.

“I’d better go and warn Bubbacub and Dr. Martine to get ready,” Jacob said.

“Yes, that would be a good idea. I’ll make an announcement when I know how soon we’ll arrive.”

As he walked away, Jacob had a strange feeling that her eyes were still on him. It lasted until he passed around the side of the central dome.

Bubbacub and Martine took the news calmly. Jacob helped them pull their equipment boxes to a position near the Pilot Board.

Bubbacub’s implements were incomprehensible, and astounding. Complex, shiny, and multifaceted, one of them took up half of the crate. Its curling spires and glassy windows hinted at mysteries.

Bubbacub laid out two other devices. One was a bulbous helmet apparently designed to fit over the head of a Pil. The other looked like a chunk off of a nickel iron meteoroid, with a glassy end.

“There is three ways to look at psi,” Bubbacub said through his Vodor. He motioned with a four-fingered hand for Jacob to sit. “One is that the psi is just very fine sens-or-y power, to pick out brain waves at long range and de-cinher them. That the thing I will see ab-out with this.” He pointed at the. helmet.

“And this large machine?” Jacob moved to look closer.

“That sees if time and space are be-ing twisted here by the force of a soph-ont’s will. The thins is done^; some-times. It sel-dom all-owed. The word is pi-ngrli. You have no word for it. Most, in-eluding hu-mans, do not need to know of it since it is rare.

The Li-brar-y prov-ides these ka-ngrl,” he stroked the side of the machine once, “to each Branch, in case out-laws try to use pi-ngrli.”

“It can counteract that force?”

“Yes.”

Jacob shook his head. It bothered him that there was a whole type of power to which man had no access. A deficiency in technology was one thing. It could be made up in time. But a qualitative lack made him feel vulnerable.

“The Confederacy knows about this… ka-ka…?”

“Ka-ngrl. Yes. I have their leave to take it from Earth. If it is lost, it will be re-placed.”

Jacob felt better then. The machine suddenly looked friendlier. “And this last item… ?” he began to move toward the lump of iron.

“That is a P-is.” Bubbacub snatched it up and put it back in the trunk. He turned away from Jacob and began to fiddle with the brain-wave helmet.

“He’s pretty sensitive about that thing,” Martine said when Jacob came near. “All I could get out of him was that it’s a relic from the Lethani, his race’s fifth high Ancestrals. It dates from just before they ‘passed over’ to another plane of reality.”

The Perpetual Smile broadened. “Here, would you like to see ye olde alchemist’s tools?”

Jacob laughed. “Well, our friend Pil has the Philosopher’s Stone. What miraculous devices have you for mixing effluvium, and exorcising highly caloric ghosts?”

“Besides the normal run-of-the-mill psi detectors, such as they are, there’s not much. A brain-wave device, an inertial movement sensor that’s probably useless in a time-suppression field, a tachistoscopic 3-D camera and projector…”

“May I see that?”

“Sure, it’s at the far end of the trunk.”

Jacob reached in and removed the heavy machine. He laid it on the deck and examined the recording and projecting heads.

“You know,” he said softly. “It’s just possible…”

“What is?” Martine asked.

Jacob looked up at her. “This, plus the retinal pattern reader we used on Mercury, could make a perfect mental proclivities tester.”

“You, mean one of those devices used to determine Probation status?”

“Yes. If I had known this was available back at the base, we could have tested LaRoque then and there. We wouldn’t have had to maser Earth and go through layers of fallible bureaucracy for an answer that might have been tampered. We could have found out his violence index on the spot!”

Martine sat still for a moment Then she looked downward.

“I don’t suppose it would have made any difference.”

“But you were sure there was something wrong with the message from Earth!” Jacob said. “This could save LaRoque from two months in a brig if you were right. Hell, it’s possible he would have been with us right now. We’d be less unsure about the possible danger from the Ghosts, too!”

“But his escape attempt on Mercury! You said he was violent!”

“Panicky violence does not a Probationer make. What’s the matter with you anyway? I thought you were sure LaRoque was framed!”

Martine sighed. She avoided meeting his eyes.

“I’m afraid I was a little hysterical back at the base. Imagine, dreaming up a conspiracy, just to trap poor Peter!

“It’s still hard to believe that he’s a Probationer, and maybe some mistake was made. But I no longer think it was done purposely. After all, who would want to saddle him with the blame for that poor little chimpanzee’s death?”

Jacob stared for a moment, unsure what to make of her change of attitude. “Well,… the real murderer, for one,” he said softly.

Immediately he regretted it.

“What are you talking about?” Martine whispered. She glanced quickly to both sides to be sure that no one was nearby. Both knew that Bubbacub, a few meters away, was deaf to whispered speech.

“I’m talking about the fact that Helene deSilva, much as she probably dislikes LaRoque, thinks it’s unlikely the stunner could have damaged the stasis mechanism on Jeff’s ship. She thinks the crew botched up, but…”

“Well then Peter will be released on insufficient evidence and he’ll have another book to write! We’ll find out the truth about the Solarians and everybody will be happy. Once good relations are established I’m sure it won’t matter much that they killed poor Jeff in a fit of pique. He’ll go down as a martyr to science and all this talk of murder can be ended once and for all. It’s so distasteful anyway.”

Jacob was beginning to find the conversation with Martine distasteful as well. Why did she squirm so? It was impossible to follow a logical argument with her.

“Maybe you’re right,” he shrugged.

“Sure I’m right.” She patted his hand and then turned to the brain-wave apparatus. “Why don’t you go look for Fagin. I’m going to be busy here for a while and it’s possible he doesn’t know about the calving yet.”

Jacob nodded once and got to his feet. As he crossed the gently quivering deck he wondered what strange things his suspicious other half was thinking. The blurt about a “real murderer” worried him.

He met Fagin where the photosphere filled the sky in all directions, like a great wall. In front of the treelike Kanten, the filament in which they rode spiraled down and away into red dissipation. To the left and right and far below, spicule forests wriggled like effervescent rows of elephant grass.

For a time they watched together in silence.

As a waving tendril of ionized gas drifted past the ship, Jacob was reminded for the nth time of kelp floating in the tide.

Suddenly he had an image. It made him smile. He imagined Makakai, wearing a waldo-suit of cermet and stasis, plunging and leaping among these towering fountains of swirling flame, and diving, in her shell of gravity, to play among the children of this, the greatest ocean.

Do the Sun Ghosts while away the aeons as our cetaceans do? he wondered. By singing?

Neither have machines (or any of the neurotic hurry that machines bring — including the sickness of ambition?), because neither have the means. Whales have no hands and cannot use fire. Sun Ghosts have no solid matter and too much fire.

Has it been a blessing for them or a curse?

(Ask the humpback, as he moans in the stillness underwater. Probably, he won’t bother to answer, but someday he may add the question to his song.)

“You’re just in time. I was about to call,” the Captain motioned ahead into the pink haze.

A dozen or more of the toroids spun in front of them colorfully.

This group was different. Instead of drifting passively they moved about, jostling for position around something deep in the middle of the crowd. One nearby torus, only a mile distant, moved aside and then Jacob could see the object of their attention.

The magnetovore was larger than the others. Instead of the changing, multifaceted geometric shapes, dark and light bands alternated around its circuit, and it wobbled lazily while its surface rippled. Its neighbors milled about on all sides but at a distance, as if held back by some deterrent.

DeSilva gave a command. The pilot touched a control and the ship turned, righting itself so the photosphere soon was beneath them once more. Jacob was relieved. Whatever the ship’s fields told him, having the Sun on his left made him feel sideways.

The magnetovore Jacob thought of as “Big One” spun, apparently oblivious to its retinue. It moved sluggishly, with a pronounced wobble.

The white halo that bathed every other torus flickered dimly around the edges of this one, like a dying-flame. The dark and light bands pulsed with an uneven undulation.

Each pulse evoked a response in the surrounding crowd of toroids. Rim patterns sharpened starkly in bright blue diamonds and spirals as each magnetovore kept its own backbeat to Big One’s slowly strengthening rhythm.

Suddenly, the nearest of the attendant toruses rushed toward the banded Big One, sending bright green flashes of light along its spinning path.

From around the gravid torus, a score of brilliant blue dots flew up toward the intruder. They were in front of: it in an instant, dancing, like shimmering drops of water on a hot skillet, next to its ponderous hulk. The bright dots began to push it back, nipping and teasing, it seemed, until it was almost below the ship.

The ship turned under the pilot’s hand to present its edge to the nearest of the sparkling motes, only a kilometer away. Then, for the. first time, Jacob could clearly see the life forms that were called Sun Ghosts.

It floated like a wraith, delicately, as if the chromospheric winds were a breeze to be taken with barely a flutter, as different from the firm, spinning, dervish-like toruses as a butterfly is from a whirling top.

It looked like a jellyfish, or like a brilliantly blue bath towel flapping in the wind as it hung on a clothesline. Possibly it was more an octopus, with ephemeral appendages that flickered in and out of existence along its ragged edges. Sometimes it looked to Jacob like a patch of the surface of the sea itself, somehow skimmed up and moved here, maintained in its liquid, tidal movement by a miracle.

The ghost rippled. It moved toward the Sunship, slowly, for a minute. Then it stopped.

It’s looking at us too, Jacob thought.

For a moment they regarded one another, the crew of water beings, in their ship, and the Ghost.

Then the creature turned so that its flat surface was toward the Sunship. Suddenly, a flash of brilliant multicolored light washed the deck. The screens kept the glare bearable, but the pale red of the chromosphere was banished.

Jacob put a hand out in front of his eyes and blinked in wonder. So this is what it’s like, he thought somewhat irrelevantly, inside a rainbow!

As suddenly as it came, the light show disappeared. The red Sun was back, and with it the filament, the sunspot far below, and the spinning toruses.

But the Ghosts were gone. They had returned to the giant magnetovore and once more danced as almost unseen dots about its rim.

“It… it blasted us with its laser!” the pilot said. “They never did that before!”

“One never came that close before in its normal shape, either,” Helene deSilva said. “But I’m not sure what either action is supposed to mean.” ;

“Do you think it meant to harm us?” Dr. Martine spoke hesitantly. “Maybe that’s-how they started with Jeffrey!”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was a warning…”

“Or maybe it just wanted to get back to work,” Jacob said. “We were in almost the opposite direction as the big magnetovore out there. You’ll notice that all of its companions went back at the same time.”

DeSilva shook her head.

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll be all right if we just stay here and watch. Let’s see what they do when they finish with the calving.”

Ahead of them, the big torus began to wobble more as it spun. The dark and light bands along its rim became more pronounced, the darker becoming narrow strictures and the lighter bands ballooning outward with each oscillation.

Twice Jacob saw groups of bright herdsmen jet away to head off a magnetovore that came too close, like sheepdogs at the heels of a wayward ram, as others stayed with the ewe.

The wobble deepened and the dark bands grew tighter. The green laser light, scattered below the big torus, dimmed. Finally it disappeared.

The Ghosts moved in. As the big one’s nutation reached an almost horizontal pitch, they gathered at the rim to somehow seize it and complete the turnover with a sudden jerk.

The behemoth BOW spun lazily on an axis perpendicular to the magnetic field. For a moment the position held, until the creature suddenly began to fall apart.

Like a necklace with a broken string, the torus split where one of the dark bands tightened to nothing. One by one, as the parent body spun slowly, the light bands, now small individual doughnut shapes themselves, were flung free, each as it rotated to the place where the break occurred. One at a time, they were cast upwards, along the invisible lines of magnetic flux, until they ran like beads across the sky. Of the Big One, the parent, nothing remained.

About fifty of the little doughnut shapes spun dizzyingly in a protecting swarm of bright blue herdsmen. They precessed uncertainly and, from the center of each, a tiny green glow flickered tentatively.

In spite of their careful watch, the ghosts lest several of their erratic charges. Some of the infants, more active than their peers, jetted out of the queue. A brief burst of green brilliance took one baby magnetovore out of the protected area and toward one of the adults that lurked nearby. Jacob hoped it would continue toward the ship. If only the adult torus would get out of the way!

As if it heard his thoughts, the adult began to drop away below the oncoming path of the juvenile. Its rim pulsed with green-blue diamonds as the newborn passed overhead.

Suddenly the torus leaped upward on a column of green plasma. Too late, the juvenile tried to flee. It turned its feeble torch toward its pursuer’s rim as it jetted away.

The adult was undeterred. In a moment the baby was overtaken, drawn down into its elder’s pulsing central hole and consumed in a flash of vapor.

Jacob realized that he was holding his breath. He let it out and it felt like a sigh.

The babies were now arranged in orderly ranks by their mentors. They began to move away from the herd slowly, while a few herdsmen stayed to keep the adults in line. Jacob watched the brilliant little rings of light until a thick wisp of filament floated in to cut off his view.

“Now we start earning our pay,” Helene deSilva whispered. She turned to the pilot. “Keep the remaining herdsmen aligned with the deck-plane. And ask Culla to please keep his eyes peeled. I want to know if anything comes in from the nadir.”

Eyes peeled! Jacob suppressed an involuntary shudder, and firmly said no when his imagination tried to present an image. What kind of an era did this fem come from!

“Okay,” the Commandant said. “Let’s approach slowly.”

“Do you think they’ll notice we waited until they were through with the calving?” Jacob asked.

She shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe they thought we were just a timid form of adult tortis. Perhaps they don’t even remember our earlier visits.”

“Or Jeff’s?”

“Or even Jeff’s. It wouldn’t do to assume too much. Oh, I believe Dr. Martine when she says her machines register a basic intelligence. But what does that mean? In an environment like this… even more simple than an ocean on earth, what reason would a race have to develop a functioning semantic skill? Or memory? Those threatening gestures we saw on previous dives don’t necessarily indicate a lot of brains.

“They might be like dolphins were before we started genetic experiments a few hundred years ago, lots of intelligence and no mental ambition at all. Hell, we should have brought in people like you, from the Center for Uplift, long ago!”

“You’re talking as if evolved intelligence is the only route,” he smiled. “Galactic opinion aside for the moment, shouldn’t you at least consider another possibility?”

“You mean that the Ghosts might have once been uplifted!?” deSilva looked shocked for a moment. Then the idea soaked in and she leaped on the implications, her eyes sharp. “But if that were the case, then there’d have to have been…”

She was interrupted by the pilot.

“Sir, they’re starting to move.”

The Ghosts fluttered in the hot, wispy gas. Blue and green highlights rippled along the surface of each as it hovered lazily, a hundred thousand kilometers above the photosphere. They retreated from the ship slowly, allowing the separation to diminish, until a faint corona of white could be seen surrounding every one.

Jacob felt Fagin come up beside him on his left.

“It would be sad,” the Kanten fluted softly, “if such beauty were found sullied by a crime. I could have great trouble sensing evil while struck in awe.”

Jacob nodded slowly.

“Angels are bright…” he began. But of course, Fagin knew the rest.

“Culla says they’re about to do something?” The pilot peered ahead with a hand over his ear.

A wisp of darker gas from the filament moved swiftly into the area, momentarily blocking off the view of the Ghosts. When it cleared, all but one had moved farther away.

That one waited as the ship edged slowly closer. It looked different, semi-transparent, bigger and bluer. And simpler. It looked stiff and did not ripple like the others. It moved more deliberately.

An ambassador, Jacob thought.

The Solarian rose slowly as they neared.

“Keep him edge-on,” deSilva said. “Don’t lose instrument contact!”

The pilot glanced up at her grimly, and turned back to his instruments with tight lips. The ship started to rotate.

The alien rose faster and drew near. The fan-shaped body seemed to beat against the plasma like a bird trying to gain altitude.

“It’s toying with us,” deSilva muttered.

“How do you know?”

“Because it doesn’t have to work that hard to stay overhead.” She asked the pilot to speed up the rotation.

The Sun rose on the right and crept toward the zenith. The Ghost continued to beat toward a position overhead, even though it had to be spinning upside down along with the ship. The Sun rolled overhead and then set. Then it rose and set again in less than a minute.

The alien stayed overhead.

The spin accelerated. Jacob gritted his teeth and resisted an urge to grab Fagin’s trunk for balance as the ship experienced day and night in seconds. He felt hot, for the first time since the journey to the Sun began. The Ghost stayed maddeningly overhead and the photosphere blasted on and off like a flashing lamp.

“Okay, give it up.” deSilva said.

The spinning slowed. Jacob swayed as they came to complete rest. He felt as if a cool breeze was washing his body. First heat, then chills: Am I going to be ill? he wondered.

“It won,” deSilva said. “It always does, but it was worth a try. Just once I’d like to try that, with the Refrigerator Laser operating though!” She glanced at the alien overhead. “I wonder what would happen when he got near a fraction of the speed of light.”

“You mean you had our refrigerator turned off just then?” Now Jacob couldn’t help it. He touched Fagin’s trunk lightly.

“Sure,” the Commander said. “You don’t think we want to fry dozens of innocent toruses and herdsmen do you? That’s why we were under a time limit. Otherwise we could have tried to line him up with the rim instruments till hell froze over!” She glared up at the Ghost.

Again, the touching turn of phrase. Jacob wasn’t sure whether the woman’s fascination lay in her more straightforward qualities or in this way she had with quaint expressions. In any event, the overheating and subsequent cool breezes were explained. For a time the heat of the Sun had been allowed to leak in.

I’m glad that’s all it was, he thought.

16.…AND APPARITIONS

“All we get is a dim picture,” the crewman said. “The stasis screens must be bending the Ghost’s image somehow because it looks warped… like it’s refracted at an angle through a lens.”

“Anyway,” he shrugged as he passed the photos around. “This is the best we can do with a hand-held camera.”

DeSilva looked at the picture in her hand. It showed a blue, streaky caricature of a man, a stick figure with spindly legs, long arms, and big, splayed hands. The photograph had been taken just before the hands had balled into fists, crude but identifiable.

When his turn came, Jacob concentrated on the face. The eyes were empty holes, as was the ragged mouth. In the photograph they looked black but Jacob recalled that the crimson of the chromosphere had been the real color. The eyes burned red and the maw worked as if mouthing vicious oaths, all in red.

“One thing, though,” the crewman went on. “The gay’s transparent The H-alpha panes right through. We only notice it in the eyes and mouth because the blue he’s putting out doesn’t swamp it there. But as far as we can tell, his body doesn’t block any of it.’”

“Well, that’s your definition of a Ghost if I ever heard one,” Jacob said, and handed the picture back.

Glancing up again, for the hundredth time, he asked, “Are you sure the solarian is coming back?”

“It always has,” deSilva said. “It was never satisfied with just one round of insults before.”

Nearby, Martine and Bubbacub rested, ready to put on their helmets if the alien reappeared. Culla, relieved of his duties on the flip-side, lay in a couch, sucking slowly on a liquitube containing a blue beverage. The big eyes were glossy now. and he looked tired.

“I guess we all should lie down,” deSilva said. “It won’t do to break our necks looking up. That’s where the Ghost will be when he shows.”

Jacob chose a seat next to Culla, so he could watch Bubbacub and Martine at work.

The two had little time to do much during the first appearance. No sooner had the Sun Ghost taken a position near the zenith than it had changed into the manlike, threatening shape. Martine hardly got her headset adjusted before the creature leered, shook a balled image of a fist, and then faded away.

But Bubbacub had time to check his ka-ngrl. He announced that the Solarian was not using the particularly potent type of psi the machine was designed to detect and counteract. Not then at least. The little Pil left it turned on anyway, just in case.

Jacob rested back in the seat, and touched the button that allowed it to recline slowly until he looked up at the pink, feathery sky overhead.

It was a relief to learn that the pi-ngrli power was not at work here. But if not, what was the reason for the Ghost’s strange behavior? Idly, he wondered again if LaRoque might have been right… that the Solarians knew how to make themselves partly understood because they knew humans from days gone by. Surely men never visited the Sun in the past, but did plasma creatures once go to Earth, and even nurture civilization there? It sounded preposterous, but then, so did Sundiver.

Another thought: If LaRoque was not responsible for the destruction of Jeff’s ship, then the Ghosts might be capable of killing them all at any time.

If so, Jacob hoped the journalist-astronaut was right about the rest of it; that the Solarians would feel more restraint in dealing with humans, Pila, and Kan-ten than they had toward a chimpanzee.

Jacob considered trying his own hand at telepathy when the creature next appeared. He’d been tested once and found to have no psi talent, despite extraordinary : hypnotic and memory skills, but maybe he should try-anyway.

A movement to his left caught his eye. Culla, staring at a point in front of him and forty-five degrees to zenith, lifted a deck-mike to his lips.

“Captain,” he said, “I believe it ish coming back.” The Pring’s voice echoed around the ship. “Try angles 120 by 30 degrees.”

Culla put the mike down. The flexible cord drew it back into a slot, next to his slender right hand and the now-empty beverage tube.

The red haze darkened briefly as a wisp of darker gas passed the ship. Then the Ghost was back, still small with distance but getting bigger as it approached.

It was brighter this time, and more crisp around the edges. Soon, its blueness was almost painful to look at.

It came once again as a stick figure of a man, the eyes and mouth glowing like coals as it hovered, half way up to zenith.

For several long minutes it stayed there, doing nothing. The figure was definitely malevolent. He could feel it! Dr. Martine’s cursing brought him around, and he realized that he had been holding his breath.

“Damn it!” she tore off her helmet. “There’s so much noise! One moment I think I’m onto something… a touch here and there… and then it’s gone!”

“Do not bo-ther,” Bubbacub said. The clipped voice came from the Vodor, now lying on the deck next to the little Pil. Bubbacub had his own helmet on and stared intently with small black eyes at the Ghost.

“Hu-mans do not have the psi they use. Your attempt, in fact, does cause them pain and some of their anger.”

Jacob swallowed quickly. “You’re in touch with them?” he and Martine asked almost at once.

“Yes,” the mechanical voice said. “Do not bo-ther me.” Bubbacub’s eyes closed. “Tell me if it moves. Only if it moves!” After that they could get nothing from him.

What’s he saying to it? Jacob wondered. He looked at the apparition. What can one say to a creature like that?

Suddenly, the Solarian began to wave its “hands” and move its “mouth.” This time its features were more clear. There was none of the image warping they had seen at its first appearance. The creature must have learned to handle the stasis screens; one more example of its ability to adapt. Jacob didn’t want to think about what that implied about the safety of the ship.

A flash of color drew Jacob’s attention to the left He groped on the panel next to him, then pulled up his deck-mike and switched it to personal.

“Helene, look at about one eight by sixty-five. I think we’ve got more company.”

“Yes,” deSilva’s voice quietly filled the area of the couch occupied by his head. “I see it. It seems to be in its standard form. Let’s see what it does.”

The second Ghost approached, hesitantly, from the left. Its rippling, amorphous form was like a patch of oil on the surface of the ocean. Its shape was nothing like a man’s.

Dr. Martine drew her breath in sharply when she saw the intruder and started to pull her helmet on.

“Do you think we should arouse Bubbacub?” he asked quickly.

She thought for a moment, then glanced up at the first Solarian. It still waved its “arms” but it hadn’t changed positions. Nor had Bubbacub. “He said to tell him if it moves,” she said.

She looked up eagerly at the newcomer. “Maybe I should work on this new one and let him go on with the first one undisturbed.”

Jacob wasn’t sure. So far Bubbacub was the only one to come up with anything positive. Marline’s motive for not informing him of the second Solarian was suspect Was she envious of the Pil’s success?

Oh well, Jacob shrugged, E.T.’s hate to be interrupted anyway.

The newcomer approached cautiously, in short fits and starts, toward where its larger and brighter cousin performed its impersonation of an angry man.

Jacob glanced at Culla.

Should I tell him at least? He seems so intent on watching the first ghost. Why hasn’t Helene made an announcement? And where’s Fagin? I hope he’s not missing this.

Somewhere above there was a Sash. Culla stirred.

Jacob looked up. The newcomer was gone. The first Ghost slowly shrank back and faded away.

“What happened,” Jacob asked. “I only turned away for a second…”

“I don’t know, Friend-Jacob! I wash watching, to see if the being’sh visual behavior might betray some cluesh to itsh nature, when suddenly a shecond one came. The first one attacked the shecond with a bursht of light, and made it depart. Then it too shtarted to leave!”

“You should have told me when new one came,” Bubbacub said. He was on his feet, the Vodor around his neck once more. “No mat-ter. I know all I need to know. I now re-port to hu-man deSilva.”

He turned and left. Jacob scrambled to his feet to follow.

Fagin awaited them, near deSilva and the Pilot Board. “Did you see it?” Jacob whispered.

“Yes, I had a good view. I am eager to hear what our dear esteemed friend learned.”

With a theatrical wave of his arm, Bubbacub asked everyone to listen in.

“It said that it is old. I be-lieve it. It is ver-y old race.”

Yes, Jacob thought. That’s the first thing Bubbacub would find out.

“The Sol-ar-ians say that they killed the chimp. LaRoque killed him too. They will start to kill hu-mans also, if they do not leave f or-ever.”

“What?” deSilva cried, “What are you talking about? how could LaRoque and the Ghosts be responsible!”

“Re-main calm, I urge you,” the voice of the Pil, moderated by the Vodor, carried a tone of threat. “The Sol-ar-ian told me that they caused the man to do the thing. They gave him his rage. They gave him a need to kill. They gave him the truth as well.”

Jacob finished summarizing Bubbacub’s remarks to Dr. Martine.

“…Then he finished by saying that there was only one way that the Ghosts could have influenced LaRoque from such a distance. And if they used that method it explained the lack of Library references. Anywhere anyone uses that power is taboo, closed off. Babbacub wants us to stick around just long enough to check and then get the hell out of here.”

“What power?” Martine asked. She sat with the crude Earth psi helmet in her lap. Nearby Culla listened in, another slender liquitube between his lips.

“It’s not pi-ngrli. That’s used sometimes legally. Besides, it can’t reach that far and he couldn’t find any trace of it anyway. No, I think Bubbacub plans to use that stonelike thing.”

“The Lethani relic?”

“Yes.”

Martine shook her head. She looked down and fiddled with a knob on her helmet.

“It’s so complicated. I don’t understood it at all. Nothing’s gone right ever since we got back to Mercury. No one is what he appears to be.”

“What do you mean?”

The parapsychologist paused, then shrugged.

“Never be sure about anyone… I was so sure that Peter’s silly pique with Jeffrey was both genuine and harmless. Now I find that it was artificially induced and deadly. And he was right, I guess, about the Solarians, too. Only it wasn’t his idea, it was theirs.”

“Do you think they really are our long lost Patrons?”

“Who knows?” she said. “If it’s true, it’s a tragedy that we can’t ever come back here again to talk to them.”

“Then you accept Bubbacub’s story without reservations?”

“Yes, of course! He’s the only one who’s ever made contact and besides, I know him. Bubbacub would never mislead us. Truth is his life’s work!”

But Jacob knew, now, of whom she spoke when she said “never be sure you know anyone.” Dr. Martine was terrified.

“Are you sure that Bubbacub was the only one to make any sort of contact?”

Her eyes widened, then she looked away. “He seems to be the only one with the ability.”

“Then why did you stay behind with your helmet on, when Bubbacub called us together for his report?”

“I don’t have to take a cross-examination from you!” aha answered-hotly. “If it’s any of your business, I stayed to try once more. I was jealous of his success and wanted another go at it! I failed, of course.”

Jacob was unconvinced. Marline’s testiness seemed uncalled for and it was clear she knew more than she was saying.

“Dr. Martine,” he said, “what do you know about a drug called ‘Warfarin’?”

“You too!” she reddened. “I told the Base Physician I never heard of it, and I certainly don’t know how any got into Dwayne Kepler’s medicine. That is, if there ever was any in the first place!”

She turned away. “I think I’d better rest now, if you don’t mind. I want to be awake when the Solarians come back.”

Jacob ignored her hostility; a bit of the toughness of his other self must have leaked out with the suspicion. But it was obvious Martine wouldn’t say any more. He rose to his feet. She pointedly ignored him as she lowered her couch.

Culla met him by the refreshment machines. “You are upshet, Friend-Jacob?”

“Why no, I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

The tall E.T. gazed down at him. He looked tired. The slender shoulders drooped, though the huge eyes were bright.

“I hope you are not taking thish too hard, thish news that Bubbacub hash announced.”

Jacob turned fully from the machines and faced Culla, “Take what too hard, Culla? His statements are data. That’s all. I’d be disappointed if it turned out that Sundiver has to end. And I’ll want some way to verify what he says before I’ll agree that’s necessary…like at least a Library reference. But other than that my strongest emotion is curiosity.” Jacob shrugged, irritated at the question. His eyes smarted, probably from an overdose of red light.

Culla slowly shook his large round head. “I think it ish otherwise. Excuse my presumption, but I think you are very dishturbed.”

Jacob felt an instant of hot anger. He almost spoke it, but managed to hold back. “Again, what are you talking about, Culla?” He spoke slowly.

“Jacob, you have done a good job in staying neutral in your species’ remarkable internal conflict. “But all sophontsh have opinionsh. You are badly hurt to find that Bubbacub made contact where humansh fail. Though you have never expreshed a position on the Origin Question, I know you are not happy to find that humanity did indeed have Patronsh.”

Jacob shrugged again.

“It’s true, I’m still not convinced by this story of Solarians uplifting mankind in the dim past and then abandoning us before the job’s finished. Neither part makes any sense.”

Jacob rubbed his right temple. He felt a headache coming on. “And people have been behaving very peculiarly everywhere in this project. Kepler’s suffered from some sort of unexplained hysteria and was overly dependent on Martine. LaRoque was more than his usual abrasive self, sometimes self-destructively. And don’t forget his alleged sabotage. Then Martine herself turns from an emotional defense of LaRoque to a very strange fear of saying anything that might undermine Bubbacub. It makes me wonder…” he paused.

“Perhapsh the Sholarians are responsible for all of thish. If they could make Mishter LaRoque do a murder from so far away, they might have caused other aberrationsh ash well.”

Jacob’s hands balled in fists. He looked up at Culla barely able to choke back his anger. The alien’s bright eyes were oppressive. He didn’t want to be under them.

“Don’t Interrupt,” he said, tight-lipped, and as calmly as he could.

He could tell that something was wrong. A cloud seemed to surround him. Nothing was very clear but still there was a felt need to say something important. Anything.

He looked quickly around the deck.

Bubbacub and Martine were at their stations again. Both wore their helmets and looked his way. Martin was talking.

The bitch! Probably she’s telling the gross arrogant little fool everything I said. Toady!

Helene deSilva stopped by the two while making her rounds, taking their attention away from Culla and Jacob. For a moment he felt better. He wished Culla would go away. It was too bad the fellow had to be put down but a Client must know his place!

DeSilva finished speaking to Bubbacub and Martine, and started to walk toward the refreshment machines. Once again Bubbacub’s small black eyes were on him.

Jacob growled. He swiveled away from the beady stare and faced the beverage machine.

Fuck them all. I came here for a drink and that’s what I’m going to get. They don’t exist anyway!

The machine wavered in front of him. An internal voice was shouting about some sort of emergency but he decided that the voice didn’t exist either.

Now this is a strange machine, he thought. I hope it isn’t like that sneaky one aboard the Bradbury. That one hadn’t been friendly at all.

No, this one has a bunch of transparent 3-D buttons that stand out from the others. In fact there are rows and rows of little buttons, all of them standing out in space.

He reached forward to press one at random, then caught himself. Uh-uh. We’ll read the labels this time!

Now what do I want. Coffee?

The little internal voice was screaming for Gyroade. Yes, that’s sensible. A wonderful drink, Gyroade. Not only is it delicious, but it also straightens you out. A perfect drink for a world full of hallucinations.

He had to admit that it might be a good idea to have some at that. Something did seem a little fishy. Why was everything going so slowly?

His hand’moved like a snail toward the button he wanted. It shifted back and-forth a few times but finally he was aimed right for it. He was about to press it when the little voice came back, this time begging him to stop!

Of all the nerve! You give me good advice and then you chicken out. Dammit, who needs you anyway?

He pressed. Time speeded up a little, and he heard the sound of liquid pouring.

Who the hell needs anybody! Damn upstart Culla. Snobby Bubbacub and his fish-cold human consort. Even crazy Fagin… dragging me away from Earth to this stupid place.

He bent over and pulled the liquitube out of its slot It looked delicious…

Time speeded up now, almost back to normal. He already felt better, as if a great pressure was relieved. Antagonisms and hallucinations seemed to fade away. He smiled at Helene deSilva as she approached. Then he turned to smile at Culla.

Later, he thought, I’ll’ apologize for being rude. He raised the tube in a toast.

“… been hovering around out there, just at the edge of detection.” deSilva was saying. “We’re ready whenever it is so maybe you’d better…”

“Shtop, Jacob!” Culla shouted.

DeSilva cried out and leaped forward to grab his hand. Culla joined in, adding his own slight strength to pull the tube away from his lips.

Spoilsports, he thought amiably. Show a puny alien and a ninety-year old woman what a mal can do.

He pulled them off one by one, but they kept attacking. The Commandant even tried some nasty disabling shots but he parried them and brought the drink to his face slowly, triumphantly.

A wall broke and the sense of smell he hadn’t known he’d lost returned like a steamroller. He coughed once and looked down at the vile concoction in his hand.

It steamed brown and poisonous with lumps and bubbles. He threw it away. Everyone was looking at him. Culla chattered from the floor where he’d been thrown. DeSilva stood up warily. The other humans were gathering around.

He could hear Fagin’s concerned whistle coming from somewhere. Where is Fagin, he thought as he stumbled forward. He made it three steps and then collapsed onto the deck in front of Bubbacub.

He came around slowly. It was difficult because his forehead was so tight. The skin felt stretched like the leather on a drum. But it wasn’t dry like leather. It kept getting wet, first with perspiration and then with something else, something cool.

He groaned and brought his hand up. It touched skin, someone else’s hand, warm and soft. Female, he could tell by the smell.

Jacob opened his eyes. Dr. Martine sat nearby; with a washcloth in her brown hand. She smiled and bought out a liquitube to hold to his lips.

For a moment he started, then he bent forward to take a sip. It was lemonade, and it tasted wonderful.

He finished it off while he looked around himself. The couches scattered on the deck were filled with recumbent figures.

He looked up. The sky was almost black!

“We’re on our way back,” Martine said.

“How…” he could feel his larynx hum from disuse. “How long have I been under?”

“About twelve hours.”

“Was I sedated?”

She nodded. The Perpetual Professional Smile was back. But it didn’t seem so put-on now. He brought a hand to his forehead. It still hurt.

“Then I guess I didn’t dream it. What was it I tried to drink yesterday?”

“It was an ammonia compound that we brought along for Bubbacub. It probably wouldn’t have killed you. But it would have hurt, a lot.

“Can you tell me why you did it?”

Jacob allowed his head to settle back against the cushion. “Well… it seemed like a pretty good idea at the time.”

He shook his head. “Seriously, I guess something went wrong with me. But I’ll be damned if I know what it was.”

“I should have known something was wrong when you started saying strange things about murders and conspiracies,” she nodded. “It’s partly my fault for not recognizing the signs. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I think it’s just a case of orientation shock. A Sunship dive can be an awful disorienting experience, in so many ways!”

He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

“Well, you’re right about that last part for sure. But it just occurred to me that some people are probably thinking I was influenced.’¹

Martine started, as if surprised to find him so alert so soon.

“Yes,” she said. “In fact Commandant deSilva thought it was the Ghost’s work. She said they were probably demonstrating their psi powers to prove their point. She even started talking about shooting back. The theory has merits but I prefer my own.”

“That I went crazy?”

“Oh no, not at all! Just disoriented and confused! Culla said you were behaving… abnormally in the minutes before your… accident. That, plus my own observations…”

“Yes,” Jacob nodded. “I owe Culla a real apology… Ohmigosh! He wasn’t hurt, was he? Or Helene?” He started to rise.

Martine pushed him back. “No, no, everyone is okay. Don’t worry. I’m sure the only concern anyone had was for your welfare.”

Jacob dropped back. He looked down at the empty liquitube. “May I have another?”

“Sure. I’ll be right back.”

Martine left him alone. He could hear her soft footsteps move toward the refreshment center… the place where the “accident” occurred. He winced as he thought about it. He felt shame mixed with disgust. But most of all there was the burning question, WHY?

Somewhere behind him two people spoke softly. Dr. Martine must have met somebody at the R.C.

Jacob knew that sooner or later he would have to make a dive that made Sundiver seem tame. That trance would be a lulu, but it would have to be taken if the truth was to come out. The only question was when? Now, when it might split his mind wide open?

Or back on Earth, in the presence of therapists at the Center, but where the answers might do him, Sundiver and his job no good at all?

Martine came back. She dropped down beside him and offered full liquitube. Helene deSilva was with her. The Commandant sat next to the parapsychologist.

He spent several minutes assuring her that he was all right. She brushed his apologies aside.

“I had no idea you were so good at U.C., Jacob,” she said.

“U.C.?”

“Unarmed combat. I’m pretty good, though I’m rusty I admit. But you’re better. We found out in the surest way, a fight between parties each anxious to disable the other without pain or harm. It’s awful hard to do but you’re an expert.”

He never would have thought it possible to blush at that sort of compliment, but Jacob could feel himself redden.

“Thanks. It’s hard to remember but it seems-you were pretty tricky, too.”

They looked at each other in complete understanding and grinned.

Martine looked from one to the other. She cleared her throat “I don’t think Mr. Demwa should spend too much time talking. A shock like that calls for plenty of rest.”

“I just want to know a few things, Doctor, then I’ll cooperate. First of all, where’s Fagin? I don’t see him anywhere.”

“Kant Fagin is on flip-side,” deSilva said. “He’s taking nourishment.”

“He was very concerned about you. I’m sure he’ll be glad to know you’re okay,” Martine said.

Jacob relaxed. For some reason he had been worried about Fagin’s safety.

“Now tell me what happened after I passed out.”

Martine and deSilva shared a glance. Then deSilva shrugged.

“We had another visitation,” she said. “It took quite a while. For several hours the Solarian just fluttered around at the edge of visibility. We’d left the toroid herd far behind and with it all of its fellows.

“It’s a good thing It waited though. We were in an uproar for a while because of, well…”

“Because of my attention-grabbing performance,” Jacob sighed. “But did anyone try to make contact while it flittered out there?”

DeSilva looked at Martine. The doctor shook her head very slightly.

“Nothing much was done then,” the Commandant went on hurriedly. “We were still pretty upset. But then, at about fourteen hundred, it disappeared. It came hack a while later in its… ‘threatening mode.’ ”

Jacob let the interchange between the two women pass. But a thought suddenly occurred to him.

“Say, are you all positive “that they were the same Ghosts at all? Maybe the ‘normal’ and ‘threatening’ modes are actually two different species!”

Martine looked blank for a moment. “That could explain…” Then she shut up.

“Uh, we aren’t calling them Ghosts anymore,” deSilva said. “Bubbacub says they don’t like it.”

Jacob felt a moment of irritation, but he suppressed it quickly lest either woman notice it. This conversation wasn’t getting them anywhere!

“So what happened when it came in its threatening mode?”

DeSilva frowned.

“Bubbacub talked with it for a while. Then he got angry and made it go away.”

“He what?”

“He tried reasoning with it. Quoted the book on Patron-Client rights. Promised trade, even. It just kept making threats. Said it would send psi messages to Earth and cause disaster of some undescribed sort.

“Finally Bubbacub called it quits. He had everybody lie down. Then he pulled out that lump of iron and crystal he was so secretive about. He ordered everyone to cover their eyes, then said some mumbo jumbo and set the darn thing off!”

“What did it do?”

She shrugged again.

“The Progenitors only know, Jacob. There was a dazzling light, a feeling of pressure in the ears… and when we next looked, the Solarian was gone!

“Not only that! We went back to where we thought we’d left the toroid herd. It was gone too. There wasn’t a living thing in sight!”

“Nothing at all?” He thought about the beautiful toruses and their bright multicolored masters.

“Nothing,” Martine said. “Everything had been scared away. Bubbacub assured us that they hadn’t been harmed.”

Jacob felt numb. “Well, then at least there’s protection now. We can bargain with the Solarians from a position of strength.”

DeSilva shook her head sadly.

“Bubbacub says there can be no negotiation. They’re evil, Jacob. They’ll kill us now, if they can.”

“But…”

“And we can’t count on Bubbacub anymore. He told the Solarians there’d be vengeance if Earth was ever harmed. But other than that he won’t help. The relic goes back to Pila.”

She looked down at the deck. Her voice grew husky.

“Sundiver is finished.”