But, he remembered, Pluto was supposed to be a stowaway in the solar system. There was its queer orbit, and some mathematical discrepancy in its size. Perhaps it was captured by Sol before he awakened.
But in three hundred years? Highly unlikely.
Kzanol raised his face, and his face showed terror. He knew perfectly well that three hundred years was his lower limit; the brain board had given him a three-hundred-year journey using half the ship's power. He might have been buried much longer than that.
Suppose he accepted Pluto. What about the slave race, happily living where there should have been only yeast, covering the oceans a foot deep, or at most whitefoods, big as brontosaurs and twice as pretty, wandering along the shorelines feeding on mutated scum?
He couldn't explain it, so he dropped it.
But the asteroid belt was certainly thinner than it had been. True, it would have thinned out anyway in time, what with photon pressure and solar wind pushing dust and the smaller particles outward into deep space, and collisions with the bigger planets removing a few rocks, and even some of the most eccentric asteroids being slowed and killed by friction with the solar atmosphere which must extend well past Earth. But that was not a matter for a few hundred years. Or even thousands. Or hundreds of-
And he knew.
Not hundreds of years, or hundreds of thousands. He had been at the bottom of the sea while the solar system captured a new planet, and lost a good third of its asteroid belt, while oceans of food yeast mutated and went bad, and mutated again, and again… At the bottom of the sea he had waited while yeast became grass and fish and now walked on two legs like a thrint.
A billion years wouldn't be long enough. Two billion might do it.
He was hugging his knees with both arms, almost as if he were trying to bury his head between them. A thrint couldn't have done that. It was not the pure passage of time that frightened him so. It was the loss of everything he knew and loved, even his own race. Not only Thrintun the world, but also Thrint the species, must be lost in the past. If there had been Thrintun in the galaxy they would have colonized Earth long ages ago.
He was the last thrint.
Slowly he raised his head, to stare, expressionless, at the wide city beneath him.
He could damn well behave like a thrint.
The car had stopped. He must be over the center of Topeka. But which way was the spaceport? And how would he get in? Greenberg, worse luck, had had no experience in stealing spacecraft. Well, first find out where it was, and then…
The ship was vibrating. He could feel it with those ridiculously delicate fingertips. There was sound too, too high to hear, but he could feel it jangling in his nerves. What was going on?
He went to sleep. The car hung for a moment longer, then started down.
'They always stack me in the rear of the plane,' Garner grumbled.
Lloyd Masney was unsympathetic. 'You're lucky they don't make you ride in the baggage compartment- seeing as you refuse to leave that hot rod there alone.'
'Well, why not? I'm a cripple!'
'Uh huh. Aren't the Ch'ien treatments working?'
'Well, yes, in a manner of speaking. My spinal cord is carrying some messages again. But walking ten paces around a room twice a day just about kills me. It'll be another year before I can walk downtown and back. Meanwhile my chair rides with me, not in the luggage compartment. I'm used to it.'
'You'll never miss that year,' Masney told him. 'How old are you now, Luke?'
'Hundred and seventy next April. But the years aren't getting any shorter, Lloyd, contrary to public opinion. Why do they have to stack me in the rear? I get nervous when I see the wings turn red hot.' He shifted uncomfortably.
Judy Greenberg came back from the rest room and sat down next to Lloyd. Luke was across the aisle, in the space made by removing two chairs before takeoff. Judy seemed to have recovered nicely; she looked and moved as if she had just left a beauty parlor. From a distance her face was calm. Garner could see the slight tension in the muscles around the eyes, in the cheeks, through the neck. But Garner was very old. He had his own, non- psychic way of reading minds. He said, as if to empty air, 'We'll be landing in half an hour. Greenberg will be sleeping peacefully until we get there.'
'Good,' said Judy. She leaned forward and turned on the tridee screen in the seat ahead.
Kzanol felt a brand new and horribly unpleasant sensation, and woke up sputtering. It was the scent of ammonia in his nostrils. He woke up sputtering and gagging and bent on mass murder. The first slave he saw, he ordered to kill itself in a horrible manner.
The slave smiled tremulously at him. 'Darling, are you all right?' Her voice was terribly strained and her smile was a lie.
Everything came back in a rush. That was Judy… 'Sure, beautiful, I'm fine. Would you step outside while these good people ask me some questions?'
'Yes, Larry.' She stood up and left, hurrying. Kzanol waited until the door was closed before he turned on the others.
'You.' He faced the man in the travel chair. He must be in charge; he was obviously the oldest. 'Why did you subject Judy to this?'
'I was hoping it would jog your memory. Did it?'
'My memory is perfect. I even remember that Judy is a sentient female, and that the idea of my not being Larry Greenberg would be a considerable shock to her. That's why I sent her away.'
'Good for you. Your females aren't sentient?'
'No. It must be strange to have a sentient mate.' Kzanol dug momentarily into Greenberg's memories, smiled a dirty smile, then got back to the business at hand. 'How did you bring me down?'
The old one shrugged. 'Easy enough. We put you to sleep with a sonic, then took over your car's autopilot. The only risk was that you might be on manual. By the way, I'm Garner. That's Masney.'
Kzanol took the information without comment. He saw that Masney was a stocky man, so wide that he seemed much shorter than his six feet two inches, and his hair and eating tendrils or whatever were dead white.
Masney was staring thoughtfully at Kzanol. It was the kind of look a new biology student gives a preserved sheep's heart before he goes to work with the scalpel.
'Greenberg,' he said, 'why'd you do it?'
Kzanol didn't answer.
'Jansky's lost both his eyes and most of his face. Knudsen will be a cripple for nearly a year; you cut his spinal cord. With this.' He pulled the disintegrator out of a drawer. 'Why? Did you think it would make you king of the world? That's stupid. It's only a hand weapon.'
'It's not even that,' said Kzanol. He found it easy to speak English. All he had to do was relax. 'It's a digging or cutting tool, or a shaping instrument. Nothing more.'
Masney stared. 'Greenberg,' he whispered, as if he were afraid of the answer, 'who do you think you are?'
Kzanol tried to tell him. He almost strangled doing it. Overtalk didn't fit human vocal cords. 'Not Greenberg,' he managed. 'Not a… slave. Not human.'
'Then what?'
He shook his head, rubbing his throat.
'Okay. How does this innocuous tool work?'
'You push that little button and the beam starts removing surface material.'
'That's not what I meant.'
'Oh. Well, it suppresses the… charge on the electron. I think that's right. Then whatever is in the beam starts to tear itself apart. We use the big ones to sculpture mountains.' His voice dropped to a whisper. 'We did.' He started to choke, caught himself. Masney frowned.
Garner asked, 'How long were you underwater?'
