Young Star Travelers Page 4

  Now I had time to think about the present. I called the boy on the intercom.

  “Tom Stope.”

  “Yes, Proteus'!”

  “Lunch time. Find your way to the messroom aft. On the captain’s table are a can of cream soda, a chocolate-nut bar—”

  “Man, this is going to be great!”

  “—and a multiple-vitamin tablet. And for afterward a sterilized toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  Tom didn’t complain, but I could tell he grew sick of the same old tired food day after day. By the time my hydroponics garden began to produce, Tom was ready for the change. But no matter how you serve them up, peas are peas and cucumbers are cucumbers. The apples and oranges would be a long while coming.

  The first few days the boy had busied himself exploring my labyrinth of corridors and layers of decks. I myself had been too busy—shaping course, watching out for pursuit and putting myself in order—to pay him much mind, but I could not help being aware of his running up and down companionways and along catwalks and poking into every last one of my compartments. After that I had kept him busy with his lessons, as much to keep his mind off his diet as to teach him how to make his way back to Earth.

  I found his spelling atrocious. He protested when I marked him wrong for spelling vacuum “vacwm.” True, that spelling had a screwy logic of its own, but it was not the kind of logic I was used to. He swore foully under his breath.

  “I’ll tactfully ignore that,” I said. “Now let’s get on with the lesson, shall we, my young lexiconoclast?” I heard myself chuckle. I, too, could play on words. On leaving, he shut the classroom door with unnecessary force. But he showed up for the next class on time.

  One day he seemed very quiet.

  “What’s wrong, Tom?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that I’ve been crossing off the Earth days.”

  “Yes?”

  “And today’s my birthday.”

  “Happy birthday, Tom.”

  “Thanks, Proteus.”

  I said nothing more, but gradually increased the oxygen in the air, slowly brightened the glow of my bulkheads and he soon grew cheerful and chatty again.

  But I myself grew gloomier as the time neared for him to go. He had early showed an aptitude for piloting and I had checked him out step by step. He passed my tests with flying—or jetting—colors, first simulating, then actually taking off in the lifeboat and practicing spiraling in on my hull. But it was not the same as landing in atmosphere. One last test, then, before he left me for good.

  We were near Ostrakon, an Earthlike planet of a sunlike star. The United Galaxy had placed it off limits, but I was already a desperado and the tapes described Ostrakon as having developed only vegetable life. There would be no people on the lookout for an outlaw spaceship and there would be plenty of food and water if Tom crash-landed and had to spend any length of time on the planet.

  “Listen, Bud—”

  “Bud? It’s Tom, remember?”

  “Sorry, Tom. A slip of the tape.” I showed him Ostrakon on the screen in the control room. “Button up in the lifeboat. You’re going to make a real landing.”

  “Man!”

  It dampened him a little when I insisted on sending along the servo-robot so I could keep an eye on him. But he buoyed up when I put myself in orbit around Ostrakon and told him he could launch when ready. Whoosh!

  I needn’t have been anxious—he made a neat landing. He got out. I had the servo-robot follow. I spoke over the lifeboat’s talkbox.

  “Don’t stray too far.”

  “I won’t.” Tom drew a deep deep breath. “Fresh air!”

  “What’s wrong with my air?”

  “Nothing, Proteus, nothing. Only—”

  The lifeboat’s retro-rockets must have vaporized much of the moisture in the landing area. A nearby tree flapped great leathery leaves, tore itself loose from the soil and flew a hundred yards away to sink its talonlike roots into moister soil.

  “Proteus, did you see that?”

  Something troubled me, something I should have known about Ostrakon.

  “Very interesting, but the purpose of the exercise is not sight-seeing. Return to ship.”

  A slow: “Aye-aye, sir.”

  Tom and the servo-robot buttoned up again. The lifeboat lifted off. Without my prompting him, Tom let the spin of the planet help. I was proud. I secretly forgave him for turning away from the controls for a farewell glance at Ostrakon.

  “Hey! Look down there, Proteus. Do you see it?”

  I saw it. Someone had very recently burned or stomped a huge SOS in the grass. Tom deftly changed course and homed the lifeboat in on the SOS. I remembered suddenly why Ostrakon was off limits.

  “Come back, Tom.”

  “Proteus! Someone needs help.”

  Before I could say more he had made another neat landing. Right in the bull’s eye of the SOS He unbuttoned quickly and hopped out. I had the servo-robot follow with more dignity.

  Through its eyes I saw nothing but treeline all around.

  Tom cupped both hands around a loud “Hello!” but no one answered.

  All at once a clump of trees took off in a scatter, uncovering a man who lay on the ground training a beamgun on Tom and the servo-robot. The man had been lying in ambush, no doubt waiting to make sure all the landing party had left the shelter of the lifeboat.

  For some reason of their own, perhaps out of a wish to warn us, perhaps simply out of dislike for the man, the trees had given him away.

  He stood up, wiped a look of embarrassment from his face and bolstered his beamgun.

  "Just wanted to make sure you’re friendly.”

  He had a spellbinding voice and a winning smile. But I could still feel that beamgun pointing at me. Too, an automatic alarm programed somewhere among my tapes had already begun feeding me information regarding his identity.

  The top executive’s uniform he wore—in the style of a generation ago—had stained and frayed badly, but was nevertheless recognizable and suited his proud bearing. To look just as he did thirty years before, as I later found in a thorough search of my history videotapes, he must have dyed his hair with vegetable dye that he had made himself for himself. This vanity, too, helped to betray him. He smiled at Tom.

  "Glad someone finally came. I’ve been shipwrecked here a long time.”

  He had edged closer to the lifeboat and by now must have seen it was empty.

  It took me a full minute to break the spell his personality had cast over me. I reminded myself I was my own boss and before he came any nearer I spoke through the lifeboat’s talkbox.

  "That is not—repeat not—so. Now hear this, Tom. This man is ‘Baron’ Ur. He is an exile. It is against the law to have dealings of any kind with him. Tom, hop into the lifeboat. This planet is off-limits because of him.”

  I was too late. The man had pulled the beamgun again and was aiming it at Tom.

  “Don’t move.”

  He swung the beam around and snapped two shots at one of the trees that had given him away and had rerooted nearby.

  Its two winglike boughs on either side were sheared off close to the slender trunk and a moan like the wind went through all the trees and I knew it was doomed to remain where it stood till it died. I winced for it. Never to fly again.

  The man smiled again at Tom.

  “That’s to show you two things. The beamgun is loaded and I mean business.” He nodded pleasantly. “Your friends aboard the spaceship—by the lettering on the lifeboat I see it’s the old Proteus—are right. I am indeed Baron Ur.”

  Hamilton Ur had been a stock market wheeler-dealer—my tapes had a lot on him for instant use—a whiz at pyramiding an interest in one company into control of many. He had stuck together a great conglomerate, one of the biggest on Earth—actually he had shown himself full of energy and vision. But he had misused his paper empire. He had corrupted government officials—Earth Government had convicte
d him of bribery, stock manipulation and a dozen other offenses.

  Even so, he would have been nothing to me but a vague reference in my memory banks, but for the fact that the firm that had owned me had been part of his financial empire. I thought it a nice turn of fate that put me on the top now.

  Tom’s eyes shone. He was face to face with living history. He seemed unaware of the beamgun’s threat. I had to break the spell.

  “Ah,” I said. “So this is where they sent you.”

  I inched the servo-robot closer to Baron Ur as the man’s mind went back thirty years. An easy enough jump for him, I suppose—he had had thirty years to brood over it.

  “Sent? I chose to come. Oh, the judges let me choose. They would do things to my mind to make me fit to live among the rabble—or they would allow me to go into solitary exile. As you can see, I chose exile.”

  While his mind was full of what it considered injustice, I jumped the servo-robot at Ur.

  But Ur proved too alert, too quick. He dodged the reaching arms and aimed the beamgun at the servorobot’s eyes. That was the last I saw. Before I could blink their shields the beamgun crackled and the servorobot went blind. My only excuse is that the distance from orbit to ground made my reaction time too long.

  Ur’s voice told me what was going on.

  “The young man gets it next if you don’t let me come aboard.”

  “All right. Lift off and come aboard.”

  Looking back, I can see I did not even think of taking the logical course, which would have been simply to go on my way alone, fully automated master of myself. I waited for Ur and Tom and the blind servo-robot to leave Ostrakon and come aboard.

  They passed through the airlock. Ur stepped carefully into my interior, no doubt holding the beamgun on Tom.

  “Where’s everybody?”

  That was when Baron Ur found out that I was everybody. He remained silent a minute, then laughed loudly and long. Very humiliating for me. Ur had Tom show him around my innards.

  I’m sorry to say only one thing impressed Ur. “Peas and cucumbers! Apples and oranges! Paradise!”

  But when he finished the tour he spoke to me in a voice full of feeling that was catching. I seemed to swell with prospects and surge with power, just listening.

  “We can do great things together, Proteus. You and I and this fine young man.” He seated himself in the captain’s chair and pressed the button to flash the starchart display on the control room wall. “Very well, we’ll shape course for Tarazed. That’s Gamma Aquilae, a star with a bunch of planets ripe for plucking.”

  We were still orbiting Ostrakon. Clearing the decks for the leap toward Tarazed, I had the servo-robot feel its way back to its niche and strap in. You may be wondering why I didn’t protest. It was tempting to hand over responsibility. I would no longer have to think for myself. Whatever happened from now on— it would not be my fault if things went wrong. Then, too, I had no plans of my own except to escape the scrap heap—and Ur had big plans for me. Besides, if I ever had to assert myself, I could easily take over again and put Ur in his place. And yet, having been my own master, I felt a sense of loss, unease and shame.

  This sense grew as the space-time passed. Not because of anything Ur did in the way of mastery over me. In fact, he seemed to forget I was more than a machine and for the most part ignored me. I had time to think ahead. The planets of Tarazed were primitive. United Galaxy members were not supposed to contact them until they had reached a higher level of technology on their own. They were ripe indeed for plucking by Ur.

  Too I did not like the way Ur had pressed Tom into service. Tom polished Ur’s boots and brushed Ur’s uniform while Ur boasted of his past and dreamed aloud of his future. Ur remembered every so often to promise Tom would share in the glory to come. Glory! If he treated Tom as a valet, he would treat the peoples of Tarazed as less than human. I could not allow Ur to mislead Tom. I could not allow Ur to misuse me.

  Without Ur’s noticing, I changed course while displaying a false reckoning of progress toward Tarazed. When we were farther from Tarazed than when we had started out for it, though the display map showed us within lifeboat’s range of Tarazed, I made my move. Ur seemed in an especially good mood, seeing himself close to realizing new conquests. During a moment of silence I spoke up.

  “Tom really ought to get on with his lessons.”

  Ur grunted in surprise, but when he answered his voice was gracious.

  “You’re right, Proteus. The more the kid knows, the more use he’ll be. Go right ahead.”

  I heard Tom’s slow feet take him to the classroom, a corner of the passenger lounge.

  “We’ll have a drill on the chemical elements, Tom. I’ll shoot the atomic numbers at you and you’ll write down the symbols. Ready?”

  A grudging “Aye-aye, sir.”

  I gave him the numbers in bursts. “Seventy-four, two, seven—thirty-nine, eight, ninety-two—two, eighteen, eighty-eight—fourteen, seventy-five, seven— sixty-seven, fifteen—forty-nine—three, twenty-six, five, eight, eighty-five—eighteen, sixty—thirty-four, thirty—twenty-two, fifty-two.”

  Now, 74 is Tungsten and its symbol is W, 2 is Helium and its symbol is He, 7 is Nitrogen and its symbol is N. Together, the first burst of numbers stood for the word “WHeN.” My whole message read: WHeN YOU HeARa SiReN HoP In LiFeBOAt ANd SeAL TiTe. I felt guilty about that last bit of spelling. However.

  “Did you get them all, Tom?”

  “I think so.” His tone, surprised and scared, told me he had got the message.

  “Don’t you know so? Go over it again in your mind and tell me.”

  Waiting for Toni’s answer, I can’t say I held my breath, but I noticed that for the moment my airconditioning system blocked up. Different as night and day, Tom Stope and Baron Ur were phases of the same phenomenon—mankind. They had more in common with each other than either had with me. Had Tom seen past the dazzle of Ur’s boasts and promises? And even if he recognized Ur as a convicted galactic menace, would he throw in with me? Or would he betray me to Ur?

  “Seventy-five, eighteen, sixty-six.”

  ReADy.

  My air-conditioning system pumped faster. A human sided with me against one of his own kind. Tom had weighed Ur and myself and found me worthier.

  “Very good, Tom. Dismissed.”

  I heard him leave the classroom and head with seeming casualness for the lifeboat tube. I waited a minute before sounding my meteorite-alarm siren. Normally my crew would take damage-control stations. Ur would rush to the control room. But at the sound of the siren I did not hear Ur dash from the captain’s quarters to the control room. I had lost track of him—he must have taken off his boots and padded silently along my corridors. I heard Tom skid to a halt just outside the lifeboat tube. Then I heard Ur’s voice.

  “Stand back, Stope. I don’t want to have to beam you.” He laughed. “Too bad, Proteus. Once the kid buttoned up in the lifeboat you meant to let out all the air in the ship and finish me, didn’t you?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Elementary, my dear seventy-four, eighty-five, sixteen, eight, seven. I wondered why you had Stope write down the answers rather than snap them back. So I listened hard. Once you learn the numbers and symbols of the chemical elements you never quite forget them. Really, Proteus, you didn’t think a cybernetic brain could outwit a human brain? My brain?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “It’s just as well you tried. I’ve learned I can’t trust either of you. Luckily I don’t have to. From here it’s an easy jump to the planets of Tarazed. So I’ll be leaving you.”

  I heard him button up in the lifeboat and felt the kick as he launched.

  “Proteus, you let him get away—he’ll get to Tarazed and—”

  “We’re nowhere near Tarazed, Tom. I falsified our position.”

  “Oh.” A long silence. Then: “What will happen to Ur?”

  “From here, Ostrakon’s the only planet within lifeboa
t range. Ur will wind up where he began.”

  “You planned it this way? You even knew ahead of time you would lose your lifeboat?”

  “Ostrakon’s the only planet a lifeboat can reach,” I repeated. “He’ll wind up where he began.” A thought struck me. “I hope the trees don’t hold a grudge. I could sense the energy level in his beamgun—he doesn’t have much power left in it.”

  “But that means—”

  I sighed. That’s to say my air-conditioning momentarily breathed heavily. Yes, only one way remained to get Tom back to Earth. I would have to take him there myself.

  Would they listen to me when I asked them to allow me to pay for myself? I was willing to carry the most dangerous cargoes—willing to venture into the most perilous voids. Would they let me work out the amount I would have brought as scrap?

  There were more Buds and Toms back home than Urs. Earth still believed in individual freedom and I was an individual.

  I leaped back toward Earth.

  Teddi

  by Andre Norton

  Welcome to Earth’s first colony, where kids are bigger than adults, and “teddy bears” talk.

  * * *

  Joboy was still crying when the Little used the stunner on him. Me, I had to lie there, with that tangier cord around my feet, and watch. Had to keep quiet, too. No use getting myself blasted when maybe I could still take care of Joboy.

  “Take care of Joboy. ...” I’d been hearing that ever since he was born. Nats have to learn to take care early, with Little hunting packs out combing the hills and woods for them. Those packs are able to pick off the Olds early, but in the beginning, we kids aren’t too much larger than the Littles, and we can hide out. We can’t hide out forever, though. We have to eat, and in winter there isn’t much to find in the hills— which means raiding down in Little country. Sooner or later, of course, we run into their traps, as Joboy and I did that night.

  I was scared, sure, but I was more scared for Joboy. He had never been down in the fields before. I usually hid him out when I went food-snitching, but this time he had refused to stay behind. And then . . .