A Jungle of Stars (1976) (13 page)

"And I'm included in that crop?" Koldon asked, bemused.

"Sure. You fight for conscience, whatever that is. Gayal fights to free her homeland, as does this fellow Vard. Me, I'm just more honest: I like it."

"We're in station off Valiakea," the cyborg's voice interjected. "Their control would like to speak to you."

Bumgartner sighed, and went over to the forward console. Koldon remained seated on the floor, finishing off the lastof his monstrous meal.

The Terran flipped the transceiver switch. "Ship with load of three, as arranged. Appointment code R-821."

"Thank you, R-821," came a calm, toneless voice. "What do you have for us to do?"

"Got a Fraskan that must be acclimated to oxygen/CO2 norms, a Delialian and a Quoark for gravitational adjustments of muscle, tone to +2 norms and some mild atmospheric tolerance adjustments."

"I see," answered the voice. "We'll outfit a ship and be up to you. Give us an hour. In the meantime, no one is to eat anything and tell that Quoark that we'll pump his stomach."

Koldon dropped his plate. "Dammit all," be swore. "I think those bastards presume too much!"

Bumgartner chuckled and switched off. "It'll be good for you, you know.

Haven's a lot heavier than you're used to."

"I've been there before," the Quoark reminded him brusquely, "and it's never troubled me before."

"Suit yourself," Bumgartner shrugged. "I'll call Old Frozen."

He flipped a switch and called Vard, explaining what would happen. Vard acknowledged the call but didn't seem too thrilled by the idea, even though this would mean the physical company of others that he'd been denied.

Gayal entered. "Is this the Adaption process coming up?" she asked.

The Terran nodded. "Yeah. It's fairly quick and absolutely painless.

I've had to undergo treatment here a couple of times, and there's nothing to worry about. The only thing that'll happen is that you'll feel more comfortable."

"This place we're going to -- are there other Delialians there?" she asked, a bit hesitantly.

"No. You know there aren't," Koldon replied. "And if you're willing, it might be better for you. . ."

Bumgartner, who could not read minds, looked puzzled. "What's this all about?" he demanded.

Gayal started to speak, then thought better of it and turned sheepishly to Koldon.

"Psychology," Koldon explained. "Delialians are herd types, Ralph, not loners like us. You know, we generally let everybody retain their forms because of the identity sense?" Bumgartner nodded affirmatively. "Well, it's a little different here," Koldon continued. "Gayal is afraid of being a pariah, a freak. She'd rather fit in."

"Well, I don't know. . ." the Terran said, scratching his chin. "The Valiakeans can make you into anything at all: four legs, two, tail, anything at all." He stopped, and coughed apologetically, realizing that Gayal already had a tall. He looked up in the air. "Hey, doll, what do you think of all this?""Leave it to me," the cyborg's voice replied. "Alien but familiar. The Valiakean ship's just pulling alongside and I think I can feed in the necessaries."

"Okay, doll, do it," Bumgartner ordered. Then he looked directly at Gayal. "But on your own head be it," he warned her. "Whatever you come out is it for the duration."

Gayal nodded seriously. "I'm willing. They can change me back if -- when

-- I return home, can't they?"

"Yeah, or any other time you're out here. Okay, let's do it. What about you, Koldon?"

The Quoark snorted. "You know this is a perfectly normal shape, the only proper one for civilized people. Besides, if things go sour at Haven, I'm set for life at the San Diego Zoo."

The airlock door opened and a creature stepped in. It looked like a hairless half-formed humanoid, devoid of identifiable organs of sex and totally naked."

"Are the subjects ready?" the Valiakean asked.

Bumgartner nodded, and gestured for Koldon to go with the strange creature.

Gayal stayed, hesitant. "So that's a Valiakean. Looks like a nothing."

"Pretty much," the Terran agreed. "That's just the best form for limited use in this environment. If we should suddenly lose temperature and pressure or start having a neon atmosphere at absolute zero, that 'nothing' would just instantly change form to the proper equipments. Their world's such a horror and a hell that they're all really just blobs of protoplasmic jelly, able to adapt to any environment -- and they have almost every environment almost every day down there. We wouldn't last ten seconds."

"Sounds useful. Why don't we just become like them for the duration?"

"It would be handy," Bmngartner admitted, "but they just won't do it. It would louse up their business. Now, get going! This is costing!"

She went.

The Valiakean came back and looked around. "There was a third? You?"

"No, a Fraskan. Had to keep him in the lifeboat because he couldn't survive here."

The Valiakean nodded. "Very well. We shall open a lock and a tube for Fraskan norms. I'll get him."

Gayal entered a chamber glowing with a greenish light. A stool stood, in the center, with a notch for the tail so that she could sit down, something uncommon to her race, which even slept standing up.

"Sit on the stool," instructed a Valiakean voice, that sounded like the other Valiakean voices she had heard. "We will need some pictures." She sat, feeling very uncomfortable, and heard a series of whining noises, then nothing. A Valiakean entered, holding some photographic plates. It looked enough like the other to have been the same creature.

As it started to examine her, much like any doctor, Gayal noticed some strange phenomena. Tracking a muscular series with the aid of the photos, its right hand grew long enough to go around her left shoulder while the left one stayed short. She glanced at the photos and didn't see much of anything. She'd expected at least X-rays. Then she looked at the creature's eyes. They no longer looked like hers, but were more prismatic, multifaceted. She had the opinion that the creature could see right through her.

Finally, the Valiakean went over to the wall, a pulsating bright green plane that seemed to have no outlet, and pressed a part of it. A chamber, something like a coffin, materialized from the wall and slid into the larger room. "Get in, please, on your side," the Valiakean instructed.

It was almost a perfect fit, she saw as she climbed inside.

"You will be unconscious for a short period while the alterations are made," the Valiakean told her, sounding like a tailor. "Do not be alarmed...

This will start now!"

Everything went blank for Gayal.

Elsewhere in the Valiakean ship the other two experienced the same thing.

Koldon was the first back, having needed the least work.

While they were out, Bumgartner had readjusted the entire ship to Earth norms. Koldon, now adapted to the changes, felt no real differences, but did feel a bit more comfortable and at home.

"That's much better," he said aloud.

The Terran jumped. "You spoke!" Bumgartner almost accused the other.

"Sure. Easier for radios, intercoms, and the like, where mostly nontelepathic people are. I thought of it after I was in, but I assumed the expense account would stand it."

Bumgartner shook his head in dismay. "All these changes . . . I mean, I'll have to justify the whole batch!"

Koldon shrugged. "Got the food locker sorted out?" he asked. "Those bastards really did clean out my stomach!"

In about fifteen-minutes Koldon was gorging himself once again, his appetite unaffected by the changes, when Gayal reappeared in the ship. The bear-creature stopped his eating and Bumgartner rose out of his seat.

"I don't believe it!" they both said in unison.

"Is there something wrong?" Gayal asked, concerned.

"No, no, no, nothing at all. A perfect compromise," Bumgartner assured her. "Perfect."

The cyborg had been presented with a problem and had solved it. Simply stated, it was to retain as much of the Delialian as was possible to remain comfortable and normal-seeming, while making her more acceptable to the far more Earth-human types she would be around.

Long black hair tumbled over very Earth-human shoulders. Her face looked Oriental, somewhat Mongoloid, and was a beauty by Earth standards. Her breasts had been Earth-humanized and perfectly proportioned. Yet a very slight bluish cast remained in the skin. It gave an exotic, almost erotic effect. From the waist down, starting just below the navel, her more equine features remained, although trimmer and more proportioned, giving her more the appearance of a faun. They saw that the tail had been trimmed back, softened, and reshaped, so that she could sit on it.

"Put a long dress on, down to the floor, and she could walk in New York City -- even though that complexion would drive everybody nuts," Bumgartner said at last. "Perfect," he muttered, and shook his head in wonderment.

"I -- I look more like your people, don't I?" she asked him.

"Well, yes, I guess -- and no, too. Good enough to drive some guys wild, from the waist up," he acknowledged.

Koldon said nothing but was generally satisfied, even though he knew the apprehension in Gayal's mind. It would fade. It was different for most of the races: they had families, or compatriots, or the like similar to themselves back in Haven. Gayal didn't, and the more human, or human-mythological approach, was the best available compromise. It was still alien, but it would make her feel much more comfortable.

Vard was the last through. He had been barely changed, physically -- he still looked like a very tall walking skeleton over which a thin, transparent skin had been stretched. Any normal Earth-human seeing him would be convinced that the dead do rise from the grave. But this, too, was all right, since Vard had felt alienated even at his internal acclimation and would have suffered worse with a more severe change. In a pinch, Vard, too, could pass on normal Earth -- if it was dark, and if the observers were not too close. That probably wouldn't be necessary for any of them, Bumgartner knew, but it was helpful just in case.

The Fraskan studied his alien companions awhile, then went over to the cot which Koldon had almost crushed and lay down. He, too, did not fit on it, although he was as thin as Koldon was fat.

"I intend to sleep for a time," Vard said imperiously. "Please wake me for anything important."

The other three stared at him and at each other, and shrugged. So much for the need for companionship.

Bumgartner arranged for payment of accounts with the Valiakeans via Quoark and the two ships broke off.

The Haven ship moved out into space.

Ralph Bumgartner made his way back to the aft cabins and stopped at Gayal's. She was reading something from the ship's library tapes, and it looked like physics. "Heavy reading," he commented, indicating the reading screen.

She smiled, and flipped the viewer off.

"I was studying something on how these ships operate," she told him. "It is quite confusing, really. All of the science I ever learned said that nothing could exceed the speed of light, yet we travel vast distances in very short times."

"Oh, it's not impossible to grasp. It involves tiny particles called tachyons, particles that move always faster than light and do unpredictable things. These things have a pretty weird set of characteristics when you put them into a spin or half-spin."

"But -- this book says that they are so tiny they cannot be seen. How can such things power us at all?"

He grinned, and sat down on the little ledge on the wall. "Well, it's a pretty big engine below us, much larger than the living area of the ship. The thing's basically a figure eight ... sorry, a toroidal shape," he corrected, remembering that eights were not 8's in all languages. "The front of the ship is a scoop; it sucks up any materials, large and small, that we run into while traveling in space. And despite what you've heard about space being a vacuum, there's a lot of junk -- gases, tiny particles of matter, and the like -- out here. This matter is scooped in and fed to the toroidal plasma "bottle" and past high-flux density coils. There's a reaccelerating field for maintaining linear exhaust through the nozzle assembly much like the electron field manipulation in a cathode ray tube."

"Like television!" she put in.

"Exactly!" he agreed. "The vibration, the pulsing, you feel through the ship is the result of the collapse and regeneration of the fields that keep the engine going and protect us from the effects of this kind of event."

"This action generates tachyons?" she asked. "And starts them spinning?"

"Right! Tachyons can spin in one of two directions, and cause some of the strange effects I mentioned in the field, and we're in the field, too. The pilot, or cybernetic monitor, has different uses for the tachyons, depending on whether they spin positively or negatively. When only the separated, positive tachyons are used, we attain what we call 'A' impulse -- slower than light, but very fast. This is the local drive we use for getting in and out of systems and such, like a conventional drive. The progression using these

"plus" tachyons can get us from almost dead slow to close to the speed of light. For in system work, not more than a couple thousand kilometers per second, we call the ranges A-1, A-2, and the like. Each increases the speed geometrically."

"But, at interstellar distances and velocities this would put everything and everyone within the ship into a slower time rate than the rest of the galaxy," she pointed out. "We would arrive centuries, even longer, after we'd left, only to find those born our contemporaries long dead."

"That would be true," he responded, "if we had to live with positive-spin tachyons only. Without the incredible speed and accuracy of the cybernetic controls, we couldn't use a tachyon space drive at all. If you tried to run an engine, like this, it would explode, because tachyons are also generated that spin negatively and they are anti-matter -- they annihilate positive matter. Their field and that of the plus-rotating tachyons interact, releasing tremendous energy, and cause the basic drive.