that level of sophistication which produces planned obsolescence. The temperature inside the suit was perfect, even a little warmer than in the ship.
But the suit could not compensate for the wearer's imagination. Kzanol felt the outer chill as his ship fell behind. Miles-thick blankets of nitrogen and oxygen snow had boiled away here, leaving bubbly permafrost which showed dark and deep green in the light of his helmet lamp. There was fog, too, not dense but very deep, a single bank that stretched halfway around the world. The fog narrowed his universe to a circular patch of bubbly ice.
Moving in great, easy flying hops, he reached the first rise of the crescent in forty minutes. It was six miles from the ship. The crescent was now a slightly higher rise of permafrost, scarred and pitted from the fire that had crossed it. Kzanol's portable radar, borrowed from the
Kzanol began to climb the slope.
'We're out of arrows,' the man in Number Two ship said gloomily. He meant missiles. 'How do we protect ourselves?'
Lew said, 'We'll be on our way home before Garner comes within sniffing distance of Pluto. The best he can do is shoot at us as we pass. His arrows aren't good enough to hit us when we're moving that fast, except by accident. He knows it. He won't even try, because it might start the Last War.'
'He may decide the stakes are high enough.'
'Dammit, Tartov, what choice have we got? Garner must not be allowed to leave here with that amplifier! If he does, we'll see a period of slavery such as nobody has even dreamed of up to now,' Lew exhaled noisily through his nostrils. 'We've got to go down and destroy the thing by hand. Land on the dawn side and mount an expedition. Hexter, can you dismount a ship's radar so it'll still work?'
'Sure, Lew. But it'll take two men to carry it.'
Tartov said, 'You miss my point. Of course we've got to wreck the damn amplifier. But how can we prove to Garner that we did wreck it? Why should he trust us?'
Lew ran spatulate fingers through tangled cotton hair. 'My apologies, Tartov. That's a damn good question. Comments?'
Kzanol aimed the disintegrator thirty degrees downward and flipped the firing switch.
The tunnel formed fast. Kzanol couldn't see how fast for there was nothing but darkness inside after the first second. A minor hurricane blew out of the tunnel. He leaned against the wind as against a wall. In the narrow cone of the beam the «wind» was clear, but beyond the edge it was a dust storm. The wind was dust, too, icy dust torn to particles of two and three molecules each by the mutual repulsion of the nuclei.
After ten minutes Kzanol decided the tunnel must be getting too wide. The opening was less than a foot across; he used the disintegrator to enlarge it. Even when he turned off the digging tool he couldn't see very far into it.
After a moment he walked into the darkness.
With his left hand Larry reached out and shook the pilot's shoulder. Nothing. It was like a wax figure. He would probably have felt the same way. But the man's cheek was cool. He was not paralyzed, but dead.
Somewhere in the back of his mind was Judy. It was different from the way it had been in the past. Now, he believed it. Even when separated by over three billion miles, he and Judy were somehow aware of each other. But no more than that.
He couldn't tell her anything. He couldn't warn her that the Bug Eyed Whoosis was hours or minutes from owning the Earth.
The pilot couldn't help him. He had had an instant to make a choice, that professional hauler of millionaires, and he had made first a right choice and then a wrong one. He had decided to die, killing everyone aboard ship, and that was right. But he should have turned off the fusion shield, not the fuel feed! Now he was dead, and Kzanol was loose.
It was his fault. Without Larry Greenberg, Kzanol would have been blasted to gas when he made turnover for Pluto. He'd never have known the suit was on Pluto! The knowledge was galling.
Where was his mind shield? Two hours ago he had held an impenetrable telepathic wall, a shield that had stood up to Kzanol's most furious efforts. Now he couldn't remember how he'd done it. He was capable of it, he knew that, and if he could hold it.
No, it was gone. Some memory, some Thrintun memory. Well, let's see. He'd been in Masney's office when the thrint had screamed at everybody to shut off their minds. His mind shield had- but it had already been there. Somehow he had already known how to use it. He had known ever since.
Sunflowers eight feet across. They turned round and round, following the sun as it circled the plantation at Kzathxt's??? pole. Great silver paraboloid platters sending concentrated sunlight to their dark green photosynthetic nodes. Flexible mirrors mounted on thick bulging stalks, mirrors that could ripple gently to put the deadly focus wherever they wanted it: on a rebellious slave or a wild animal or an attacking enemy thrint. That focus was as deadly as a laser cannon, and the sunflowers never missed. For some reason they never attacked members of the House they protected.
In the grounded luxury liner, Larry Greenberg tingled. Fish on fire! The sunflowers must have been controlled by the tnuctipun house slaves! He had not the slightest proof, but he knew. On a day in the past, every sunflower in the galaxy must have turned on its owner… He thought, We Thrintun- those Thrintun really set themselves up. Suckers!
Remembering again, he saw that the sunflowers weren't as big as they looked. He was seeing them from Kzanol's viewpoint. Kzanol one and a half feet tall, a child of eight Thrintun years. Kzanol half grown.
The maser beam reached for Pluto, spreading itself wide, dropping ever so slightly in frequency as it climbed out of the Sun's gravitational well. By the time it reached its target more than five hours had passed, and the wave front was a quarter of a million miles across.
Pluto didn't stop it. Pluto barely left a noticeable hole. There was enormous power behind this beam. The beam went on into the void, moving almost straight toward the galactic center, thinned by dust clouds and distance. It was picked up centuries later by beings who did not resemble humanity in the least. They were able to determine the shape of the conical beam, and to determine its apex. But not accurately enough.
In its wake, Tartov said, 'You were right, Lew. There's no fire where we're going.'
'That's that, then. You three go on down. I'll warp into an orbit.'
'We really ought to draw again, you know.'
'Nuts, Mabe. Think how much I'll win at poker after using up all my bad luck out here. Got my orbit, Tartov?'
'Hook in your idiot savant and I'll give it the data direct.'
'Autopilot on.'
BEEP.
Lew felt his ship turning as the sound of the beep ended. The spears of fusion light alongside him began to dwindle in size. Could they manage without him? Sure, they were Belters. If danger came it would come here, in orbit.
He said, 'All ships. Good luck. Don't take any stupid chances.'
'Hexter calling. Something on the Earth channel, Lew.'
Lew used his frequency dial. 'Can't find it.'
'It's a little lower-'
'Oh. Typical….. Dammit, it's in code. Why should it be in code?'
'Maybe they've got little secrets,' Tartov suggested.
'Whatever it is, it's bound to be a good reason to finish this fast.'
'Yeah. Look, you go ahead and land. I'll send this to Ceres for decoding. It'll take twelve hours to get an answer, but what the hell.'
