Wall Around a Star

EIGHTEEN

The ancient history of the human race was scarred with endless examples of genocides, witch hunts, and po­groms. Nero's Romans hunting down Christians as scape­goats for the burning of Rome, Europe's Christians ferret­ing out Jews to revenge the onslaught of plagues—Cossacks and Ayatollahs, Papal troops annihilating Catharists, Bos­ton zealots burning sick old women at the stake—the story of humanity was blotched with unsavory episodes of perse­cution.

But those were history! Ugly pages but forgotten ones, relics of a shameful past—and yet, on the orbiter, the purges and pogroms were being echoed with terrifying fi­delity, as the shocked and vengeful inhabitants sought out their betrayers.

Of the three hundred eighty-six beings on the orbiter, collective entities like the Boaty-Bits not counted, no fewer than fifty-four were found to be part of the conspiracy. Two Scorpian robots, four Canopans—not counting the dead one. Eight Sirians, a dozen Sheliaks, nearly all the deltaforms, and one or two each from dozens of other races. No T'Worlie was part of it. Neither was any human, apart from the Purchased People. And no race was com­pletely corrupted but one. The Boaty-Bits were one hundred percent among the forces of destruction. Two big swarms of them were destroyed, then only isolated mem­bers were seen, then none at all. "They're hiding," Doc Chimp whimpered, as he and Jen Babylon retreated from the scene where a furious Sheliak was methodically cre­mating the last scattered individuals of one swarm with his electrostatic whips. "Oh, they're mean ones, Dr. Babylon!"

Babylon demanded, "But why? What are they doing it for?"

The chimpanzee stared at him morosely, scratching his jaw with long, black fingers. "Seems to me if we wanted to know that we'd have had to keep a couple of them alive to ask."

"I don't mean just the Boaty-Bits, I mean everything that's been going on. All this strife and working at cross- purposes—from what you and Ben have told me, it's been like that almost from the orbiter's first days!"

The chimp was silent for a moment. Then he sighed. "Oh, even before that, Dr. Babylon. Back on the ship— back on Sun One—" He shook his head. "It's been a mor­tal long time that people have been betraying and hating each other, Dr. Babylon."

"I'm talking about here and now, and the Boaty-Bits!"

Doc Chimp nodded somberly. "They're the villains this time, no doubt about that. Maybe we should've guessed long ago—'course, we didn't really know they could take over other beings the way they do . . . But they're collec­tive beings, Dr. Babylon. They don't think like the rest of us, and they don't much like us. Noncollective beings are too prone to individual aberration, as they call it. So they've been taking over individuals—the ones that were halfway rotten already, I expect, like the Sheliaks and the deltaforms, most of them—"

"That doesn't tell me why\" The chimpanzee shrugged his narrow shoulders without answering. "I can't believe that one single race could prevail against the entire Gal­axy!"

Doc Chimp said, "No, and nobody else did, either—else we might have done something about it. Maybe they're not just one single race, though. Org Rider thinks there's some­thing beyond them—"

"Org Rider!" Babylon cried. "That's another thing! I haven't seen him or Zara since—since I don't know when, since before we found out about the Boaty-Bits, anyway. Where are they?"

The chimpanzee licked his narrow lips, peering fearfully at Babylon. "Could you please ask Ben that question, not me?" he pleaded. "It's a kind of a—well, a secret, Dr. Baby­lon. I know Ben would tell you, but I promised."

"Oh, for God's sake! Now what?"

The chimpanzee was obdurate, though intimidated. "Please! It's just—well, Ben can explain everything. He's scared the Boaty-Bits might be anywhere, just one of them, you know, that might hear something and go back and tell the others."

Babylon said furiously, "They're only little bugs, Doc! They're not gods!"

"Oh, don't say that, Dr. Babylon," the chimp said ear­nestly. "They're pretty special! One or two of them are nothing at all. But put a few hundred of them together and you've got the beginnings of intelligence. A couple of thou­sand, like the swarms we've had here on the orbiter, and there's a collective being as smart as you and me!" He laughed sourly. "And none of us was smart enough to take the next step. Ten thousand of them, a hundred thou­sand—Dr. Babylon, can you imagine what a million of them would be like? Why, I'm surprised they didn't just take us over, long ago! The more of them there are, the smarter and stronger they are—and there's just nothing we can do about it!"

Babylon nodded, beginning to appreciate what a power­ful foe they had in the Boaty-Bits.

He did not yet know how drastically he had undervalued them.

Ben Pertin was in his room, and not alone. Babylon pushed through the door, and stopped short. Hanging just before his eyes was the TWorlie, its butterfly wings wav­ing like gentle palm fronds to support its body. "Mimmie," he said. "Are you all right now?"

"Statement: Physically well, emotionally satisfactory." The five bright eyes peered at him with humor. "Query: Are you well?"

"I'm angry," Babylon growled, peering around the room.

"You, Pertin! What's the secret now? Where are Zara and Org Rider?"

Pertin snapped back, "Close the door, you idiot! Do you want the whole orbiter to hear you?" And then, when the room was secure again, he smiled with a look of silky self- satisfaction. "I got ahead of them for once," he boasted.

"How? Who are 'them' ?"

Pertin said gravely, "Everybody who is not in this room, I think." He nodded toward his companions—the T'Worlie, the silvery girl, and Doris. "We can talk in front of these three, so I can tell you that Zara and Org Rider are on their way home!"

"Home?"

Pertin smiled indulgently. "Oh, not the Earth. Org Rider's home." He gestured at the mural above his head of the huge mountain, and added in a superior tone, "If you'd studied the maps you would know that Knife-in-the-Sky is not much more than a thousand kilometers from that tem­ple by the lake—right next door, by Cuckoo standards!"

Babylon controlled his irritation as best he could, but there was an edge on his voice as he said: "Ben, I really do advise you to give me a straight answer. Why?"

Pertin seemed to shrink before his friend's anger. In a much more subdued way, he said quickly: "They're getting orgs, Jen. If you remember what those tunnels looked like, they're a long, slow hike on foot—but they're mostly pretty high and wide. An org can fly them at least ten times as fast as the party did with the Purchased People walking every step." He hesitated, then offered, "I, uh, I thought we ought to follow them, Jen."

There was a squeak from Doc Chimp but Babylon didn't even look at him. "Follow them?"

"Well, somebody has to, don't they? Org Rider and Zara went by lander—I wanted them to use tachyon transport, but Org Rider has some silly superstitious objections to it— and they'll meet us at the temple. With extra orgs, enough for all of us. Then we can just get on the orgs and—oh, dammit, Doc, what is it?"

The chimpanzee had been trying hesitantly to attract his attention. "Ben, who's 'us'? Do you mean me, too? And if you do, did you forget that that terrible beast has already killed me once down there?"

Pertin shrugged irritably. "We'll go armed," he said im­patiently. "We'll go by tachyon transport, so we'll be there before Org Rider and Zara—"

"Oh, no, we won't," Doc Chimp declared, pulling his leathery lips back in a scowl that bared his long yellow teeth. "Org Rider's not the only primate that has objections to tachyon transport, and with me it isn't superstition! I've been killed often enough! I don't want to be killed any­more."

"Then we'll go without you!" Pertin snapped. "Well, Jen? What about it?"

Babylon temporized. "What about the others?" he de­manded, and the Purchased Person, Doris, spoke in her slow, unearthly voice:

"This one has already concurred."

Babylon looked at the winged silvery girl, who met his gaze out of her calm, bright eyes. Her voice was like the sound of chimes as she answered: "I wish to go. I do not require an org to fly."

Which left only the T'Worlie.

The little bat-butterfly of a creature had been floating silently over Pertin's head, listening without saying a word. Now it spoke, and the Pmal gave its answer.

"Statement. Concur in desirability of proposal, express willingness to participate. Query: Is amplification or ex­planation desired?"

"My God, yes!" Babylon exploded.

The T'Worlie exuded its sour-lemon smell of amuse­ment. "Following is a synoptic series of statements and conclusions. Probability estimates vary, but in general ex­ceed point-nine. First statement. At some time t certain species, primarily the so-called Boaty-Bits, but with the as­sistance of individuals of eight other races of beings—"

Babylon groaned internally; you should never ask a T'Worlie to explain or amplify! But once started, the little being moved on implacably through the entire history of the events on, in, and around Cuckoo: the private tachyon transporter that the rebels smuggled aboard and used with­out authorization; the private control mechanism they seemed to have developed for Purchased People, perhaps a hidden power of the Boaty-Bits; the expedition; the dam­age to the interior of Cuckoo; the fighting far under the surface of Cuckoo; the revelation that Cuckoo itself was an artifact ... It went on endlessly; or so nearly endlessly that Babylon was astonished when at last the T'Worlie fell silent. "Well," he said quickly, "thank you for—"

But the T'Worlie had merely paused, it appeared, for dramatic effect. It squeaked on, and the Pmal drowned out Babylon's attempt to intervene:

"In consideration of foregoing evidence, in conjunction with other data not now specified, certain hypotheses may be offered for testing. These have been received or de­duced by me as part of my necessary regimen of rational self-therapy. In this process I was aided by certain other beings, including many TWorlie and the Purchased Person known as Doris—"

"Doris? You?" Babylon interrupted, staring at the girl. Something not human stared back at him out of her eyes, but she only said: "It is necessary that you receive the data the TWorlie is now offering you."

"Continuation," the T'Worlie said sharply, with a burnt- sugar scent for emphasis. "Also assistance from farlink and from the hexagons secured from the wrecked orbital vessel. Central conclusion: Entire ring system, and there­fore existence of object Cuckoo itself, is vulnerable."

"Vulnerable to what?" Babylon demanded, and the Pur­chased Person reached out to touch him.

With a voice like the tolling of a bell she said, "To de­struction. And all of us with it"

In all the long weeks Babylon had worked with the TWorlie he had never heard so long a monologue—and perhaps not one with such importance for him. For the T'Worlie was saying that he had reasoned out the entire story of Cuckoo! The gentle chirping went on and on, and his Pmal rattled out the translation: "Hexagon record encoded by ancient historians of early Watcher race purports to summarize their history. State­ment of historians: Race ancestral to Watchers was brought to Cuckoo by, quote—"

The translation from the Pmal stopped short: the T'Worlie's shrill bird song continued, but without translation. Ob­viously there was no equivalent store in the Pinal's datafile. "Don't play tricks, Mimmie," Babylon begged. "What does that mean?"

"Original ambiguous. Analogy with known terms sug­gests tentative translation as 'eternal master,' 'supreme cre­ator,' or possibly 'God.' To continue summary, the original Watcher race was brought aboard before the intergalactic voyage began, to defend Cuckoo. Evolved on a low-G world, they were gigantic winged warriors. The hexagon record seems to imply that the 'supreme creator' and most of his slave races were to sleep through a voyage lasting—" Again, all he heard was the T'Worlie's chittering. "Term ap­pears to indicate a time period of extreme duration, cer­tainly tens of millions of years. While others slept, the Watchers were stationed in the orbital forts and at points near the surface of Cuckoo to guard it at least during the first stages of the long voyage. If Cuckoo was created as vehicle of flight from anticipated galactic catastrophe, other beings may have sought to get aboard or even to seize the whole craft in hope of saving themselves.

"The successful emergence of Cuckoo from the endan­gered galaxy into intergalactic space made it safe from any such attacks. During the long ages of flight between galax­ies, no further military service from the Watchers was re­quired. They appear to have been neglected, if not forgot­ten. In the beginning, as the historians imply, no life had existed on the external surface, which was then a bare and sterile metal shell. The water and soil and atmosphere there now seem to have been accumulated through the ages of the flight, partly from collected cosmic dust but largely from waste products discharged to the surface from the internal mechanism of Cuckoo. Plants developed there, per­haps from spores and seed in the vented waste. Animals followed, brought perhaps by the Watcher garrisons or per­haps by escaping slaves of other races. These in turn were followed by degenerate dwarfish Watchers such as those we have encountered, which became predators upon the animals and finally enemies of all they had been intended to defend.

"The rebellion probably began in Watcher crews of the orbital forts. With their original duty forgotten, discipline was gone. The last historian speculates that supplies were interrupted and contact with the masters broken off. The orbital crews may have been forced to forage on the sur­face; perhaps they got a taste for freedom from the outlaw Watchers they met there. Using the advanced technology given them for operation of the orbiter, they discovered vulnerable points in the structure of Cuckoo and planned an attack against it—intending, the historian believes, to extort concessions, not to destroy it completely."

"Vulnerable?" Babylon shook his head, staring at the hovering TWorlie. "Where?"

"At eight points," the T'Worlie chittered. "The phrase in the record may be rendered as 'the fatal eight.' The vulner­ability exists because the position of the central sun is gravitationally unstable. In order to cancel out accidental drifts, which would be increased by positive gravitational feed­back, supporting rings must be monitored and continually adjusted. This is done through control stations established in each of the eight octants of Cuckoo. Such control is pos­sible because the atomic rings are elastic. Through applied magnetic force, they can be stretched in one octant and shrunk in another, to adjust their distance from the central sun and the consequent gravitational attraction. The eight stations—"

"Those points on the map?" Babylon whispered. "At the center of each octant? The place where we found the wrecked orbiter? And the temple over the lake? Are they the Achilles' heels?"

"Term 'Achilles' not found in Pmal lexicon, and such interruptions are counterproductive." The T'Worlie re­proved him with a sharp ammoniac reek. "Danger to Cuckoo is greater than mere collision. Hexagon record states that application of excessive control force could penetrate electronic sheath and reverse formation processes to break quark chains, disintegrating entire atomic ring into raw en­ergy and supermassive atomic fragments, themselves disin­tegrating. A ring-bomb all around Cuckoo, whose detona­tion would ignite a billion more. The rebel leaders planned to strike at the control network, using stolen technology. They hoped to conceal their actions by use of the tachyonic helmet. The helmet, as described by the author of the hexa­gons, is a device for mental contact through zero-mass tachyons. It was designed by the 'eternal creator for con­trol of his slaves and communication between them. The rebel Watchers found how to disable the spy circuitry, al­lowing them to use rebuilt helmets for illicit contact with one another, shielded from observation by their former masters.

"Preparing to strike, they obtained plans of the control stations. These are located deep inside the sphere, just above the inmost rings. The control stations are well de­fended, by special slave forces more loyal than the Watch­ers. The rebels knew that any successful attack would re­quire a powerful military force. After long preparation, they diverted the fortress from orbit to land where we found it. The main body of attackers left it there, attempt­ing to force their way down through the levels of Cuckoo to the station."

"And failed—"

"Clearly." An indignant chirp. "Details unknown. The plot required complex coordination of many difficult oper­ations. If all had succeeded, Cuckoo would no longer exist. The wreckers were probably unable to seize the station and divert sufficient power to threaten the ring system, but that is merely speculation. The historian remained aboard the wreck with the rebel commanders, waiting for the at­tackers to report possession of the control station and readi­ness to destroy Cuckoo unless the 'eternal creator' met their demands. No such reports were ever received. Instead, the wreck was soon surrounded with the electrostatic fortresses through which we passed with such danger. Historian and fellow Watchers remaining on orbiter were never able to leave it. They died there."

"If the system is impregnable—"

"Erroneous assumption." A sternly ammoniac breath. "Cuckoo was never impregnable. As you yourself foresaw, knowledge of the hexagons is hazardous. It has brought ex­treme peril upon me. Spy devices were placed in my quar­ters, and copies of my hexagon translations have been re­moved. All Cuckoo is now in danger from some of our own companions, who now know how to strike through those eight fatal points."

"Who?"

"Identities unknown. However, a deltaform scent was left in my quarters."

Babylon frowned. "I didn't know the deltaforms were that suicidal."

"Comment." The shrill chitter cut him off. "Allowing death of tachyonic duplicates is not suicidal for originals. Hypothesis: Destruction of Cuckoo may now be attempted by beings who have stolen its secrets and now hope to keep them from others. Evidence indicates that plotters may possess adequate forces and adequate techological sophisti­cation to achieve their objective." The T'Worlie hesitated, then finished strongly: "This is ethically intolerable to me," it stated. "Therefore I declare my willingness to participate in this project."

Babylon could not help himself, he exploded in a burst of laughter. The T'Worlie merely hung there, gazing at him with those five bright eyes until Babylon was able to speak. "You couldn't just say yes, could you?" he asked, wiping his eyes. There were smiles, too, on the face of Pertin and Doc Chimp—one could not expect them, after all, from the other occupants of the room.

But the smiles did not last.

They were already beginning to fade as the people in the room contemplated the significance of the T'Worlie's long discursion; and then they were wiped away entirely. There was a shudder that rocked the very fabric of the orbiter. They all felt it, and something like a gasp came from each of them. "What happened?" Babylon demanded.

No one answered. Then, after a moment, Doc Chimp whispered, "We'd better find out, Dr. Babylon, because there's something awfully wrong. The lights are going out."

The pogrom had failed to meet its goals; some conspira­tors had escaped. The proof was all around them. The orbi- ter's power had dwindled and died; the lights went out, the gentle, permanent sigh of air circulators whispered to a stop, the standby glow of the stereostage faded to dark.

They were in blackness, and everybody was talking at once; Babylon let go of the wall loop he had been holding, and at once was floating in absolute , darkness, with no up and no down and a terrifying, helpless vertigo. He brushed against something flimsy—the T'Worlie?—and yelped sharply as something metallically sharp raked his arm.

And then there was light. Not much. But a glimmer, and enough to see; Doc Chimp had had the presence of mind to find the door and wrench it open, and the pale emergency lights from the corridor filtered into the room. It was the silver woman's wingtip that had slashed him, Babylon found, and it was she who took command. Her voice chimed clearly, "There has been an explosion. The damage must be ascertained. Follow me!"

It was easier said than done. She could fly! Panting and swearing to himself as Doc Chimp pulled them along the dim corridors after her and the others, trying to help and more often slowing them down, Babylon was furious at the unfairness of it. Unfair that she had wings, and thus pres­ence of mind! Unfair that these senseless squabblings among hatefully strange beings should endanger him! Un­fair in the first place that he should even be here, so far from the quiet Cambridge laboratories where he belonged . . .

But the catalog of unfairness was too long. In all these last days and weeks, Jen Babylon had experienced almost nothing that was fair at all.

As they drove through they found the corridors filling with other beings all on the same errand, fast-flying delta- forms and slow, fumbling kitten-shaped creatures, robots and flesh, all together. By the time Doc Chimp and Baby­lon had caught up with the silver girl there was solid infor­mation. There had been an explosion, yes, and a particu­larly damaging one. Somehow someone—a fugitive Boaty- Bit swarm, no doubt—had jammed the tachyon-transport chamber so that incoming shipments rammed into matter already there, and the resulting blast had destroyed it. More than just itself. It had taken out the adjacent main power reserve and the farlink computer; it had shattered walls several tiers away, so that some of the reserved non- terrestrial habitats, with their queer atmospheres, were now open to the general oxygen-bearing air. "At least," Doc Chimp chattered, his shoe-button eyes darting back and forth at the devastation, "we've got one thing to be thank­ful for! The outer hull wasn't touched—we're not all trying to swallow vacuum now!"

"Yet," Ben Pertin snarled, and the chimpanzee's face became woebegone. For certainly the integrity of the hull meant only a reprieve—a short one at that. Without the constant shipments of food and replacements through the transport chamber, without the steady inflow of energy- dense transuranics for the power chamber, without any of the thousand things the orbiter needed to survive, its life span was short. The air would not circulate, and so in one place they would be gasping for breath, in others burning themselves out on excess oxygen. They could not even ask for help! And if they had, help was forty thousand light- years away . . .

Or a day or two.

Pertin's eyes widened suddenly, and he tugged at Baby­lon's arm, nodded to the others, and drew them all away to a more private part of the dim-lit, strange-smelling tunnels. "We're going to take a lander," he announced.

"We'll never get home in a lander," Doc Chimp moaned.

"Not back to the Galaxy, you fool! Down to Cuckoo."

"Oh, ofcouse, Ben!" cried the chimpanzee, nodding vigorously. "There's air there, and food—why, we could live a long time. Of course, there's no way to get back to our real home from there—"

"Shut up, Doc," Pertin ordered brutally. "We're not going home—not now, probably not ever. And we're not going to settle down and start a family, either. We're going to the temple to meet Zara and Org Rider—and then we're going inside!"

Doris stirred, and the faraway look in her eyes grew in­tense. "I concur," she said, "in that plan. What happened here is only a symptom; the cause of these events is within Cuckoo."

Babylon hesitated. "But Ben," he began, "somebody must try to repair things here—"

"Somebody will! And maybe they'll succeed—but I don't care whether they do or not." He was both angry and ex­alted, his long, untidy pigtails writhing as his head jerked in excitement. "I'm going to Cuckoo—if you want to come along, follow me. Otherwise stay here and rot!"

They drove through parts of the orbiter where Jen Baby­lon had never been before—where warm-blooded, oxygen- breathing mammals had never been, because the environ­ment was death for them. But now it was not. The explosion had sundered the retaining doors, and the poison atmospheres had been blended with the predominant oxygen-nitrogen mix. Babylon's heart was wrenched with pity as they passed still forms of methane-breathers and other exotics—and some not so still, queer soft-bodied things like toads made of jelly, gasping piteously as the cor­rosive oxygen destroyed their lungs. "Come on!" Pertin yelled furiously. "You can't help them! And we've got to get to a lander before others think of it!"

In the event, they were not quite that lucky; the first lander berths they came to were empty, and at the nearest that was occupied there was a mob of Sheliaks and kitten- creatures fighting to get in. They passed it by—

And found one ready to go, with no one else near— Or so they thought.

But as Pertin, shouting with triumph, cast himself to­ward its opened lock a dense steel-blue smoke poured out of it, and arranged itself as a shimmering cloak of diamond-bright beings before the hatchway.

Pertin clutched frantically at the wingtip of the silvery girl beside him, swore as his fingers were lacerated, but managed to halt his plunge. "Get out of the way, damn you!" he bellowed.

The shimmering curtain stirred, and the whine of the Boaty-Bits translated itself through their Pmals: "We can­not allow you to enter. You must die with everyone else on the orbiter."

"Die?" Doc Chimp whimpered. "Die again? Oh, but I've died so many times before—please! Don't make me do it again!"

The curtain rippled gently, almost as if moved by pity. Then the voice came: "Some part of you will live. Some part of all of us will live."

Pertin hesitated, almost choking with rage, and Jen Baby­lon, clinging to the lander-chamber wall, wondered des­perately if it would come to an attempt to brush through the shimmering cloak. Could such tiny beings really harm them? Was there any strength behind their commands?

He did not need to find out, for the silvery girl cast Pertin aside, spread her wings, and, hovering in midair, raised her hands toward the fugitive Boaty-Bit swarm. "Live if you can!" she cried. From her fingertips a flood of white-hot energy leaped out at the collective beings, cutting great swaths through the swarm; and again, and again, un­til only a few scattered individuals fled aimlessly away.

Babylon barely remembered hurling himself toward the lander after Pertin and the winged girl, thrust in by Doc Chimp, followed by the T'Worlie.

Then there was a gentle tremor, and they were free, out in space.

As the thrust of the lander's motors began to move them away and down toward the immense, glowing object be­neath them Babylon struggled to a port to look back at the orbiter.

The great, strange creation was dead. The aura that usually hung about its communications antennae was ab­sent; the lights from its ports were dark. All the visible signs of functioning had stopped.

But they were on their way.

Although Jen Babylon had never before seen the temple with his own eyes, he recognized it at once. What was dif­ferent was the lake. There was no lake. There was only a shallow bed where once a lake had been, and, on the greensward between the caked orange mud and the jungle that embraced it all, half a dozen terrible and strange winged creatures, with tall, lean human figures moving among them. Zara Doy came running to the lander. "We were worried about you!" she called, peering anxiously at the figures as they came out. Pertin explained about the explosion and the fact that they had had to come by slow landing craft instead of the near-instant tachyon transport . . . but Babylon wasn't listening. He was staring at the great creatures that squatted placidly on the margin of the dry lake. Their bodies were glittering bronze, their tails and the tips of their stubby wings shading to silver, as they moved they opened huge red mouths with sharklike teeth.

They did not look like creatures he wanted to be so close to.

Org Rider, grinning, came over to reassure him. "They're perfectly trained," he boasted. "They won't hurt you—as long as their owners are around. This org is mine, Babe Junior; the little one off by itself is Zara's. We can each take one of you, but I brought some friends along—I hope there aren't more than seven of you," he added, peer­ing anxiously toward the lander. "Because it's better if we don't put more than two on each org." Reassured, he intro­duced the other riders, every one as skinny and as im­mensely tall as Zara and Org Rider themselves. The names escaped Babylon; his attention was all on the orgs them­selves. Ride those creatures? With those great savage teeth so near? Especially when, Org Rider pointed out, each steed was "tamed" only in respect to its own individual rider, and if anything happened to the rider it would have to be considered as ferocious and as wild as any leopard or grizzly bear.

But once up on the creature's back, behind the graying, bearded old man named Wingsmith—a cousin of Org Rider's mother, he had been told—Babylon began to revise his opinions. The stubby wings were marvelously flexible. The broad back was warm and comforting beneath him. The org responded to every wish of Wingsmith as if the two were part of the same compound creature; the nine winged dragons all sprang into the air at once and circled the dry lake bed—Doc Chimp with Zara, Pertin behind Org Rider, Babylon, Redlaw, Doris with other riders from the tribe. There were two other orgs, but the winged silver girl and the TWorlie disdained them; the extra orgs were given the packed supplies and equipment.

"All ready?" Org Rider cried, nodded at the answer, and led the way.

In single file they plunged down toward the ancient doorway and flew steadily into the interior of Cuckoo.

The T'Worlie could not keep up. It folded its filmy wings and hung on to the tail of Org Rider's mount, its tiny weight not even noticed by the powerful org. But its pres­ence was essential. As they traced the convolutions of the tunnels they found themselves in a maze. A labyrinth; they would have been hopelessly lost in the first hour but for the T'Worlie. Its patient, supple mind had perceived the need for directions, and it had stored every scrap of data from the camera Doc Chimp had carried, from the glimpses obtained from the helmet, and from every other source, meticulously organizing them into a sort of strip map of the passages. When there was doubt, the T'Worlie supplied the answer. He had even plotted a route around the blocked stretch of tunnel that had defeated Te'ehala Tupaia; and they raced through the bowels of the immense artifact, down and down.

Babylon, hunched behind the gray-bearded rider, tried to count the number of days since his world had been stable and safe. It could not be more than a few weeks, but it seemed that since the beginning of time he had been thrust from one terrifying and unbelievable situation into another. His senses were saturated; his capacity for wonderment and even fear was almost exhausted. They sped through broad corridors and narrow, some so tight that Babylon could scarce believe the orgs were able to fly; they crossed immense flat spaces, with broad checkerboarded fields be­low them and ribbed metal ceilings above, the orgs uner­ringly darting between slender support columns. From time to time they saw traces of the party that had trudged these corridors before them—a discarded food packet, castoff bits of equipment. They stopped in one of the broad areas of growing things so that the orgs could forage and the riders take a break. The ceiling above them shone softly, and there was a steady drainage of chilled air that made Babylon shiver uncomfortably. He did not dare to eat the strange, soft-shelled nutlike things that grew on the land, and the machine-made food in the rations they had brought had a reek that took away his appetite. He was glad enough to be moving on—

And then they came to a sign of the party before them that was different from all the others. It was the body of a white-haired man. He had died with an expression of terror on his face, and the entire front of his torso had been ripped open.

The orgs halted while their riders stared down at the corpse. "Oh, I know what did that," Doc Chimp moaned. "It's that Watcher! The same one that killed me!" And his shoe-button eyes darted fearfully around, as if he were ex­pecting the maddened being to plunge out at them from any niche or tunnel.

That was the first of the corpses. It was not the last. Less than a hundred meters farther there were two others, then another single body—

And then the passage they were flying through opened into an immense cavern, filled with machines and conduits and huge, strange devices of many sorts, and Babylon found his capacity for startlement suddenly born again. "I know this place!" he cried.

"Of course," called Zara from the org beside him. "We saw it on Doc's camera!"

"No, no!" Babylon stared around, wondering. "I'm sure! I've seen it in a dream! Those glowing walls. Those bright spots that look like jewels, only they're glowing. Only— only I remember seeing those broken beams, and ugly glass crabs swarming over them trying to fix them—" He paused, trying to sort out dream from what he had seen in the stereostage or via the helmet. He shook his head. "Something terrible happened here," he said positively, "and I dreamed about this place even before it happened!"

The other orgs were dancing around, and Redlaw, who had gone ahead out over the great terrifying void, returned to boom: "Terrible enough, Babylon. Look down there!"

At the base of the vertical drop there was a cluster of forms. The orgs swooped down dizzyingly, and they ap­proached carefully.

But there was nothing to fear from the creatures at the bottom. They were all dead, humans and one which was not human. "The Watcher!" Doc Chimp chattered in ter­ror. "Oh, that's the one that killed me! Please, Dr. Baby­lon—Ben—Zara—please, let's get away from here!"

"It's dead, Doc," Zara said soothingly, gazing down at the hideous creature, shrouded in what was left of its im­mense leathery wings. Its body was ripped and torn, and next to it were other bodies. A huge, golden-skinned man whom Babylon recognized with a sharp intake of breath— the Purchased Person he had seen way back in Boston, in the Tachyon Transport Base. And another more startling still.

"Why, it looks like that old man we saw already!" Zara gasped. "Only—only he's been changed—"

"Edited," Ben Pertin snapped "Reduced in size. Tough­ened, to stand this place when it was still bursting open. Changed in a lot of other ways, no doubt . . . But dead," he finished, almost with satisfaction, as he gazed down at the gnomelike shape. "No sense in standing around and gaping—let's get on with it!" And he tapped Org Rider's shoulder, and they spun away.

A scattering of the glassy, crablike creatures still worked at the machines in that great chamber, but they paid no attention to the orgs or their passengers. The party entered another passage, and another, and another—

Babylon lost count of how many tunnels and galleries and caverns they traversed, even of how many times they stopped for food or rest. They flew through a featureless space to a pale gray rectangle that opened up to become the mouth of a vast metal tunnel; they passed side passages and openings that he did not bother even to glance into. They flew down a sloping tunnel with a queerly triangular cross section, the walls joining in a peak over their heads, with what looked like a shifting surface of moving cinders under their passage; he did not care. They crossed a mossy plain with the ceiling above dark and so high that they could barely see it, and when they entered the next tunnel, narrower and darker than the others, the first orgs shied away from new bodies on the floor—more of the gnome­like travesties of Purchased People, Babylon saw as they passed, and hardly cared that he saw.

He lost all sense of distance and of time. He was half drowsing when he realized that all the orgs had stopped, and their riders were dismounting.

"What's going on?" he asked, and Doc Chimp whispered in alarm: "Not so loud, please, Dr. Babylon! They're very close now—Zara said she heard voices!"

Babylon stared around. They were in another down- sloping passage, this one brighter than most, for at the far end of it there was a queer radiance. He listened, but heard nothing, and wondered whether it had been Zara's imagina­tion rather than a voice—

No. There was something. More a drum rattle than a human voice—a Scorpian robot! Very distant and very faint, but there was no doubt.

"I think we'd best leave the orgs here," Redlaw said, as softly as his deep voice could be made to sound. "Maybe the T'Worlie could go ahead and scout for us—"

But the T'Worlie did not at once obey. It hung in mid­air, its filmy wings moving slowly as the longest-range of its five patterned eyes peered ahead of them. The TWorlie were almost never agitated, but there was something shaky in its shrill whistle as it spoke: "Statement: Person or per­sons approaching rapidly. Recommendation: Caution. Fur­ther statement—"

And then it fell silent for a moment, hovering . . . and then, in a manner most unT'Worlielike, it whistled rag­gedly, "Also coming— Not physically coming— Immi­nently approaching—"

And then it did something no T'Worlie had ever done in the presence of a member of another race. It screamed.

The Pmals could find no comprehensible translation, and did not try. They simply reproduced the whistling, warbling sound of terror; and broke off when the T'Worlie collapsed upon itself, its five eyes staring emptily, its wings in helter-skelter disarray, and slowly, slowly settled to the floor of the corridor.

There was a time, and not long in coming, when Jen Babylon comprehended all things at once, with a terrible knowledge that hurled huger and newer questions at him . . . but that time had not yet arrived. To Jen, the next few moments were utter, anarchic madness. Everything seemed to happen at once. Even while the Pmals were pouring the T'Worlie's scream of horror and disbelief into his ears, there were two other sounds. Doris, the Purchased Per­son—she was screaming, too, if you could call the low, ec­static moan that came from her hps a scream. Her face was rapt, her eyes blazing with an emotion Babylon could not read—

And at the same time—

The silver girl lifted herself on her great wings and hurled herself at Babylon. She too was screaming, but words emerged from the Pmal: "A force! I perceive a new concentration of energies!" She collided with him, thrust something into his hands—

And at the same time—

Two figures burst out of the tunnel, one tinier than the other but both inhumanly short. They stopped abruptly as they caught sight of the org-riding group, but then the smallest of them cried out and came on, throwing itself at Zara Doy, wrapping his arms around her knees with a heartrending shout of Mama—

And at the same time—

The noise from the end of the corridor rose to a great rapturous shout—

And at the same time—

The thing in Jen Babylon's hands reached out with im­palpable tendrils and caught at his mind. It was the helmet. He knew that. He knew, too, that there was a surge of rawly horrifying energy coming from it that threatened to sweep him away through its mere touch, that would surely change him irrevocably and forever if he did not release it at once.

But he could not.

His arms had a life of their own. They lifted the helmet and settled it on his head.

And Jen Babylon's world changed forever.

There was a part of Jen Babylon that did not change. It merely—increased. That part of him was able to see the tiny figure that flung itself at Zara Doy and recognize it— grievously squashed, distorted, and hideous, it was never­theless the little boy he had seen, an eternity ago, with that other Zara Doy in the Tachyon Base. That part of him was able to feel the rake of the silver girl's wingtips as she con­vulsively struggled against whatever had her in its grip, ob­serve the lustrous gleam of her almost human body, feel its inhuman cold and rigidity. That part of him felt pain. But that part of him was now submerged in a larger self, as if a color-blind man were suddenly seeing a rainbow, a tone- deaf man hearing music; as if fingers that had never touched anything but themselves now reached out to palp a world.

Like that—but more than that. There were no words. The truth was something for which words did not exist! There could be only analogies and approximations; and the closest words could come to truth was to say that Jen Babylon, all of him, was exploding. Was both the Ground Zero and the infinitely expanding wavefront that was the blast itself.

But that was metaphor. For the reality there were no words.

There were no words to say how, as he exploded past tunnel walls and caverns, past the inner shell of Cuckoo, past every material object within its gravitational range, he reached and tasted each of its myriad creatures, and each of its myriad, myriad atoms.

There were no words to describe how he felt each feeling those beings felt, Doc Chimp's quivering horror, Zara's ter­rible blend of horror and love as she enfolded the carica­ture of her son, David's panicked longing, the raw emo­tions of Ben Pertin and Te'ehala Tupaia, of Redlaw and the battered, semiconscious TWorlie, of Org Rider and even of the orgs themselves.

There were no words to convey the billion-piece sym­phony of tastes and feelings that he sampled from the countless denizens of Cuckoo's shell, demented Watchers and sullen savages, of a thousand shapes and a thousand million states of mind.

There were no words to convey the sight that opened up before him, the great skeletal shell of Cuckoo itself, and within its curved embrace the restlessly seething auroras of plasma, the distant, bright sun, the immensity spanned by this wall around a star.

And there were, finally, no words to say what he felt when he knew that he was not alone. That even this im­mense new being was tiny beside its neighbor, newborn and unsuspected; that he was naked in the awful presence of ONE far greater than himself.