Awtprun was much too far.
And to top it off, he realized, he was sucking his lpt gnal. He sat there feeling sorry for himself until it was gone, then began to pace the floor.
Of course!
He stood stock still in the middle of the cabin, thinking out his inspiration, looking for the flaw. He couldn't find one. Hurriedly he tapped at the brain board: 'Compute course for a food planet minimizing trip time. Ship need not slow on arrival. Give details.'
His eating tendrils hung limp, relaxed. It's going to be all right, he thought, and meant it.
For protoplasmic life forms, there are not many habitable planets in the galaxy. Nature makes an unreasonable number of conditions. To insure the right composition of atmosphere, the planet must be exactly the right distance from a G type sun, must be exactly the right size, and must have a freakishly oversized moon in its sky. The purpose of the moon is to strip away most of the planet's atmosphere, generally around 99 percent of it. Without its moon a habitable world becomes shockingly uninhabitable; its air acquires crushing weight, and its temperature becomes that of a «hot» oven.
Of the 219 habitable worlds found by Thrintun, 64 had life. Seventeen had intelligent life; 18 if you were broad minded. The 155 barren worlds would not be ready for Thrintun occupancy until after a long seeding process. Meanwhile, they had their uses.
They could be seeded with a tnuctipun-developed food yeast. After a few centuries the yeast generally mutated, but until then the world was a food planet, with all its oceans full of the cheapest food in the galaxy. Of course, only a slave would eat it; but there were plenty of slaves.
All over the galaxy there were food planets to feed the slave planets. The caretaker's palace was always on the moon. Who would want to live on a world with barren land and scummy seas? Not to mention the danger of bacteria contaminating the yeast. So from the moons a careful watch was kept on the food planets.
After the yeast had mutated to the point where it was no longer edible, even to a slave, the world was seeded with yeast-eating whitefood herds. Whitefoods ate anything, and were a good source of meat. The watch was continued.
At his present speed Kzanol would hit such a planet hard enough to produce a blazing plume of incandescent gas. The exploded rock would rise flaming into space, vivid and startling and unmistakable even to a watcher on the moon. The orange glow of the crater would last for days.
Chances were that Kzanol would end underground, but not far underground. The incandescent air and rock which move ahead of a meteorite usually blow the meteorite itself back into the air, to rain down over a wide area. Kzanol, wrapped safely in his stasis field; would go right back out his own hole, and would not dig himself very deep on the second fall. The caretaker could find him instantly with any kind of rock-penetrating instrument. A stasis field is the only perfect reflector.
The brain interrupted his planning. 'Nearest available food planet is F124. Estimated trip time 202 years 91.4 days.'
Kzanol typed: 'Show me F124 and system.'
The screen showed specks of light. One by one, the major planets and their moon systems were enlarged. F124 was a steamy, quick-spinning ball: a typical food planet, even its moon's rotation was almost nil. The moon seemed overlarge, but also overdistant. An outer planet made Kzanol gasp in admiration. It was ringed! Gorgeously ringed. Kzanol waited until all the major worlds had been shown. When the asteroids began to appear in order of size he typed: 'Enough. Follow course to F124.'
He'd left his helmet off. Other than that he was fully dressed for the long sleep. He felt the ship accelerating, a throb in the metal from the motors. The cabin's acceleration field canceled the gees. He picked up his helmet and set it on his neck ring, changed his mind and took it off. He went to the wall and tore off his star map, rolled it up and stuck it through the neck ring into the bosom of his suit. He had the helmet ready to tog down when he started to wonder.
His rescuer could claim a large sum for the altruistic act of rescuing him. But suppose the reward didn't satisfy him? If he were any kind of thrint he would take the map as soon as he saw it. After all, there was no law against it. Kzanol had better memorize the map.
But there was a better answer.
Yes! Kzanol hurried to the locker and pulled out the second suit. He stuffed the map into one arm. He was elated with his discovery. There was plenty of room left in the empty suit. Briskly he moved about the cabin collecting his treasures. The amplifier helmet, universal symbol of power and of royalty, which had once belonged to his grandfather. It was a light but bulky instrument which could amplify the thrint's native Power to control twenty to thirty non-thrints into the ability, to control an entire planet. His brother's farewell present, a disintegrator with a hand-carved handle. He had a thought which made him put it aside. His statues of Ptul and Myxylomat. May they never meet! But both females would be dead before he saw them again, unless some friend put them in stasis against his return. His diamond-geared, hulifab-cased watch with the cryogenic gears, which always ran slow no matter how many times it was fixed. He couldn't wear it to F124; it was for formal events only. He wrapped each valuable in one of his extra robes before inserting it into the suit.
There was room left over.
In a what-the-hell mood he called the little racarliw slave over from the storage locker and made it get in. Then he screwed the helmet down and pushed the panic button.
The suit looked like a crazy mirror. All the wrinkles remained, but the suit was suddenly more rigid than diamond or hulifab. He propped it in a corner, patted it fondly on the head, and left it.
'Cancel present course to F124,' he typed. 'Compute and follow fastest course to F124 using only half of remaining power, completing all necessary power maneuvers within the next day.'
A day later, Kzanol was suffering mild gnal withdrawal symptoms. He was doing everything he could think of to keep himself busy so that he wouldn't have to think about how much he wanted a gnal.
He had, in fact, just finished an experiment. He had turned off the field in the second suit, placed the disintegrator in its glove, and turned on the field again. The stasis field had followed its metal surface. The digging instrument had gone into stasis along with the suit.
Then the drive went off. Feeling considerable relief, Kzanol went to the board and typed: 'Compute fastest course to eighth planet of F124 system. Wait one-half day, then follow course.' He put on his suit, picked up the disintegrator and some wire line, and went out the airlock. He used the line to stop his drift until he was motionless with respect to the ship.
Any last thoughts?
He'd done the best he could for himself. He was falling toward F124. The ship would reach the unwatched, uninhabitable eighth planet years before Kzanol hit the third. It should make a nice, big crater, easy to find. Not that he'd need it.
There was a risk, he thought, that the rescue switch might be set off by reentry heat. If that happened he would wake up underground, for it took time for the field to die. But he could dig his way out with the disintegrator.
Kzanol poised a thick, clumsy finger over the panic button. Last thoughts?
Regrettably, there were none.
Kzanol pushed the panic button.
Larry Greenberg climbed out of the contact field and stood up. His footsteps echoed in the big dolphin tank room. There were no disorientation effects this time, no trouble with his breathing and no urge to wiggle nonexistent flippers and tail. Which was natural enough, since the «message» had gone the other way.
The dolphin named Charley was lying on the bottom of the tank. He had sunk from under his own specially designed contact helmet. Larry walked around to where Charley could see him through the glass, but Charley's eyes weren't looking at anything. The dolphin was twitching, all over. Larry watched with concern, aware that the two marine biologists had come up beside him and were looking just as worried. Then Charley stopped twitching and surfaced.
'That wasss willd,' said Charley in his best Donald Duck accent.
'Are you all right?' one of the seadocs asked anxiously. 'We kept the field at lowest power.'
