Phthor Read online

  “Hmph.” They watched the holograph projection, seeing the experiment-sphere within its vacuum torus. The sphere was about the size of a man’s fist, and the torus was a transparent donut (Arlo had read of this delicacy in LOE and pestered his mother to make one once: it was a disappointment, nothing but sweetened cooked dough) fifty feet in diameter. The outer rim was braced by a twelve-inch-thick steel girder backed by twenty feet of reinforced concrete, and the whole thing was set into bedrock. The center of the torus was a giant electromagnet, its elements surrounding the vacuum chamber on three sides: top, bottom, inner. Chthon explained it all in nonverbal concept, for Arlo could hardly have grasped the significance independently.

  The metal sphere would be attracted by a magnetic force so great it could theoretically remain stable at 99 percent of the velocity of light. The magnet would not be turned on until a significant fraction of light speed was achieved, for the sphere would have no chance to move otherwise.

  “Self-powered,” the white-frocked man said. “Slow to begin.”

  “So I notice,” the Black Jacketed one said. The ball was traveling, thanks to the initial rolling impetus of introduction to the torus, at a velocity of approximately one inch per second, or five feet per minute. Slowly it accelerated.

  “I’ll jump the tape forward one hour,” the white-frocked one said. “It does start slowly, but as you’ll see—”

  Suddenly the sphere was moving at about a foot per second, sixty feet per minute.

  “Great!” Black Jacket said derisively. “In one hour it accelerated to substantially less than one mile per hour. Great in rush-hour traffic!”

  (“Rush-hour traffic?” Arlo inquired. “The press of Human machines through clogged apertures: a standing source of personal irritation,” Chthon’s voice explained.)

  “Here is another hour.”

  Now the sphere was doing ten miles an hour. “Its acceleration, without a doubt, is improving,” Black Jacket said. “But frankly at this rate—”

  “Don’t you see—it’s a geometric rate. It accelerates to ten times its former velocity—every hour.”

  “Sure—so far. Let’s see the next three hours.”

  The image changed. Now the sphere was rolling around its channel at a hundred miles an hour. Another jump—and it became a blur, invisible.

  “Back off!” Black Jacket exclaimed. “That’s—”

  “One thousand miles an hour,” White Frock said smugly. “We’re too close and it is too small to make out comfortably at this velocity.”

  “Pick it up from one hundred per, and let me watch it straight.”

  They did. The sphere accelerated smoothly from one hundred to one thousand miles an hour, then continued on rapidly to two thousand, four thousand, and ten thousand miles per hour.

  “You aren’t getting input from the magnet?”

  “Magnet was off. No exterior input. That’s why it’s rolling, owing to friction with the outside surface. The magnet would maintain it in a kind of orbit, no contact with any physical surface. The thing appears to draw power from some exterior reservoir—but not our magnet or anything else we can detect. A lot of power. In fact, there seems to develop a transfer of power the other way: from the test sphere to the magnet, later in the program. Otherwise the sphere would have broken free—”

  “Sounds to me as if you’re talking perpetual motion!”

  “Perhaps we are. Actually, perpetual motion exists, as with an object hurtling through deep space. But—”

  “All right!” Black Jacket mopped his brow. “You know what I mean.”

  “It all depends on how great the reservoir of hidden power is. If, as we suspect, it is fundamental to the structure of the universe—perhaps the inertial velocity of the original cosmic explosion—”

  “You mean if we use up this power, the universe will stop expanding and begin to collapse?”

  “A few seconds sooner than otherwise, yes. Considering the tens of billions of years in that time scale, the effect would be infinitesimal, and not even detectable until long after our species has passed from the scene, even if we caused a differential of eons.”

  “Free power, then.”

  “It does look like it, sir.”

  Black Jacket nodded. “We’ll look this gift horse in the mouth very thoroughly, very soon.

  (“Gift horse?” Arlo inquired. “A four-footed mammal—” “I know what a horse is, from LOE. But what’s this business of—” “An Earth horse commands a good price unless defective. Advanced age is a defect. The teeth in its mouth indicate its age by their wear. Therefore—” “I see,” Arlo said dubiously.)

  “If there is any fakery involved...” Black Jacket continued, trailing off meaningfully. “We welcome your investigation,” White Frock said. “The civilian wants to know as badly as the military, I can assure you. We frankly don’t understand this thing, and don’t trust it—but we suspect its effect on our economy will be profound.”

  “Profound! If true, it’s nuclear!”

  “More than that. We’re frankly scared of it.”

  “How fast does it go?”

  “Measurements are necessarily imprecise. But if the observed ratio is maintained—” He made a little flourish with his hand, resembling a figure-8 lying sideways.

  “Out with it, man! How Fast?”

  “In approximately ten hours, it should match the velocity of light in a vacuum.”

  “Um. We brasshats are not entirely dull. You realize what you’re saying?”

  “I realize what I am implying. Relativistically—”

  “Paradox. So let’s look for the flaw. How long did you run the test?”

  “Three days.”

  “Seventy-two hours? Why didn’t you turn it off?”

  “We were unable to activate the unit’s control system.”

  “What kind of tests do you run? Everything’s supposed to be fail-safe!”

  “Theoretically, yes. But—”

  “So just turn off the switch!”

  “We tried.”

  “Look, doctor—”

  “Our switch seems to have become inoperative.”

  “Well, repair it! Considering the billions dumped in this sump—”

  “It is in working order. The problem is, our remote control is limited to the speed of light. Of the electromagnetic propagation of energy.”

  Black Jacket paused. “You’re telling me that the sphere didn’t level off at light speed? That that thing’s going too fast to—faster than light?”

  White Frock nodded. “That seems to be the case. We are picking up Cherenkov radiation—”

  “What?”

  “Cherenkov radiation. An impulse that manifests when some other energy exceeds the velocity of light through a medium. Light slows as it passes through certain substances, you see. Only in a vacuum does it maintain full speed.”

  “And you have a vacuum in your test-torus?”

  “Yes. Not perfect, of course, but quite good. Never before has Cherenkov radiation been observed in this hard a vacuum. It appears that our sphere had exceeded the velocity of light in a vacuum—the fastest theoretical velocity possible—or so we once thought.”

  “I’m no physicist. But if what you say is true—”

  “Precisely. We may have found the means to conquer space itself.”

  Indeed they had. From this discovery the § system dated, and in the course of the next century it replaced the conventional calendar entirely. Just as Newtonian physics had become a special case of relativistic physics, relativistic physics became a special case of §. All were valid—in their terms. Since the details of the breakthrough were shrouded in secrecy, legends grew up to fill the vacuum—

  (“Vacuum!” Arlo chortled. “That’s funny!” )

  —naming a “Professor Feetle” as the serendipitous inventor of §. Large models of the logarithmic § accelerator were constructed and placed in space ships. Within the field of the sphere, space and time were normal—b
ut the sphere traveled through galactic and intergalactic space at velocities that made light seem virtually stationary. The universe was available to man—in hours. The species Human was the fourth—and last—of the galactic sentients to achieve §.

  The first substantial Human interstellar colonization commenced in §20. Since time and power were no longer limitations, only the costs of construction, organization, and selection of personnel governed emigration. Thus the nova-like expansion of the Human demesnes. Within a century the volume was as extensive as was reasonably possible without infringement of the concerns of the other galactic empires. Only intensifying settlement within that volume remained, utilizing less and less ideal planets. §50 to §100 were popularly regarded as the golden years of colonization, during which the best available planets were discovered and settled. In §71 the heaven planet of Idyllia; in §79 the garden world of Hvee.

  One entrepreneur of special note was Jonathan Reginald Point, §41–154. Not only was he a top-notch stellar scout, he was alert to the private potentials of his discoveries. In §75 he discovered an ideal star—and made a fortune by selling it to a private group. This was of course against Human law, but he had a lawyer back on Earth who was equivalently industrious and unscrupulous; the deed was shrewdly finessed. He named the star after himself, Point, and the planets after units of type: so many “points’ to the inch. Thus the planets of that system were designated Excelsior, Diamond, Pearl, Nonpareil, Minion, Brevier, Bourgeois, and Elite—the names corresponding to their positions in orbit, counting outward (the closest two being unusable and unnamed), and also to points. Excelsior was 3 point, Diamond 4 point, and the best one, Minion, seventh and 7 point.

  The group that settled Minion was working on genetics: a secret, largely illicit project. It was their notion to achieve wealth by breeding the most beautiful, intelligent, and acquiescent of Human females in the galaxy, for sale to rich potentates as houri or hetaerae. They would be semi-telepathic, to respond better to their masters’ hidden desires, and would remain lovely and faithful as long as their masters survived, having no object in life except to please them. The physical model used was the most beautiful woman of the day: a green-eyed, red-haired, ideally proportioned creature obviously built by nature for love. A thousand clones were made, virtually identical, and these were closely inbred to perfect the refinements.

  But the substantial modifications resulted in one spectacularly unfortunate side effect: emotional reversal, or the appearance of it. The hetaerae’s actual feelings were similar to those of normal Human women—but the telepathy, like a photographic negative, reversed it. Thus the market for such women was extremely limited, with the chief appeal being to incorrigible sadists. This gave the brand a bad name in the trade. Soon Planet Minion was closed off, and later proscribed and forgotten. The inhabitants were left to fend for themselves, deprived of both the controls and the advantages of civilized technology. They survived by adapting to their established nature: completely incestuous, sadistic monogamy. A horrified, fascinated mythology grew up about them: the fatal romance of the minionette.

  (Arlo called another halt. “The minionettes—they are people like us! They don’t intend any evil—they’re just the way they are!”

  “They are the enemy,” Chthon replied, in thought and voice. “That emotional inversion subverts the myxo, abates our power. Unchecked, they will destroy us.”

  “But they could destroy you anyway—by blasting apart the planet from space!”

  “No.” And Chthon explained this, too: )

  The first really formidable problem the Humans encountered in space was what they termed the chill. It decimated their populations, unamenable to any treatment. Yet this was coincidental, for the chill was merely the side effect of a signal message. When the chill reached Chthon—not directly, but in the form of Coquina, who had contracted it—Chthon recognized it as the handiwork of its kind: mineral sentience. Others like Chthon, in other galaxies, had succeeded in generating this impulse, to alert their own kind.

  Given the hint, Chthon set about doing its part. It generated a band of radiation that prevented chemical or nuclear explosions. This did not inhibit the § ships—but they were far too costly to use as simple shot against a planet. This prevented the forces of Life from attacking Chthon with modern technology. Lasers and blasters could be used, but these had very little effect on solid rock, and so became less efficacious than simple hand weapons. Meanwhile, Chthon was preparing a modified chill radiation that would expand at light speed to force the compounding of all life-related forms of fluorine with oxygen, wiping out all life in its presence. Both fluorine and oxygen were ubiquitous in life, and those few organisms that did not require oxygen could hardly escape its effect since it was common in both air and water. This destruction would take time, for the galaxy was large, but within a hundred thousand years the sterility would be complete. Chthon would have restored this region of the universe to the purity of its origin and would be ready to join the fellowship of the mineral intellects of the other galaxies.

  The killchill would actually be a modification of the chill. It could not be initiated until triggered by the arrival of the chill at Chthon in §426, since the extragalactic entities were more advanced in radiation technology than Chthon. The code for its magnification into completely killing intensity was buried within the chill wave itself, and Chthon could not anticipate that secret. So it prepared its basic circuits and waited for the formula.

  But somehow the forces of Life, perhaps alerted by Benjamin, had fathomed this threat, and mounted an invasion of the caverns just before the chill wave arrived. This caught Chthon by surprise; never before had life forms come voluntarily to the caverns. Deprived of most power weapons, the invaders had adapted other hand instruments—and sent as shock troops the subspecies most resistant to Chthon’s internal weapon. Thus the army of minionettes, who perceived the myxo siege as the utmost delight. It was a savage, sophisticated campaign, with an advance agent whose mission was to subvert the human element of Chthon’s defense.

  “Vex!” Arlo exclaimed, aware now how well she had succeeded.

  A disturbance developed as he spoke that name. “What’s happening?” he demanded, seeking the return tunnel.

  An encounter between Chthon’s minion and Life’s, Chthon explained mentally.

  Arlo grasped the references immediately. “Bedside and Vex! She must have tuned in on me when I thought of her, and come—” For he still loved his minionette, desiring her beyond all else. If she should return to him—

  What she offers is not for you, Chthon warned.

  “I’ll judge for myself!” And Arlo wrenched himself back to his physical body. With great effort, he cracked open his eyes.

  Bedside and Vex were fighting, literally, physically. Bedside had a scalpel in one hand, its point orienting steadily on the girl, but he did not attack. Vex seemed not to watch the blade, but she stalked him carefully, never laying herself open for a thrust.

  Vex made a feint to her right, then suddenly whirled left, grabbing the knife wrist with her left hand while her right came across to catch under his right shoulder. Her knees bent as she continued her turn, and she heaved the man up and over her shoulder.

  Arlo recognized the maneuver. It was one of the throws his father knew, part of the spaceman’s judo, which skill derived from older martial arts of Earth. No doubt there existed a volume somewhere, similar to LOE, but instead of covering the Literature of Old Earth, this would be COA: Combat of Old Earth. If it were as rich as LOE, it would be a devastating text!

  For a moment he saw Bedside flipping over her shoulder, his feet flying up as his body came down face-up on the cavern floor. A bruising landing! But Arlo’s anticipation deceived him, for Bedside did not take the fall. Instead he jerked to his left, stepping forward, his right elbow looping over her head—and Vex was left straining at nothing.

  Instantly she attacked again, and he whirled to face her, the knife on guard.
Her attempted throw had been very pretty—but it was as if he had expected it, so readily had he foiled it. Perhaps Chthon had read her intent and guided the doctor’s response. No—Chthon could not enter the mind of a minionette! Bedside, though he talked rationally, was actually largely directed by Chthon. Surely Vex had been well trained in combat, and had accepted Arlo’s first blow, back at their first meeting, merely to instill in him that initial guilt and remorse that had so undermined him. But her antagonist was not a normal man. Bedside was more and less than human, and under Chthon’s directive he could accomplish things that the man alone could not.

  Yet Bedside, however directed, did not seem to be trying to kill her. Arlo realized that the key lay not with Vex but with him, Arlo: because of the contract he had made with Chthon. No direct attack on the minionette. The man was merely balking her; Vex was doing the attacking.

  Why? She had gone to Aton, her father, in the minionette fashion. Or would, eventually, inevitably. Why should she come here to Arlo, however much he might long for her? Not to kill him, certainly; his hvee still rested in her hair, glowing brightly blue, distinct from all other plants. Had she changed her mind, renounced the compelling call of her ancestry, returned to her brother? Or had Aton rejected her, absolutely? It hardly mattered, so long as she did return!

  Vex moved toward Arlo. Bedside blocked her way with the scalpel, warningly. That was his mistake. She knocked the arm out, then caught the wrist and shoved him back with a twisting motion. Bedside scuttled back and to the side, regaining his balance—but she shoved him into the cavern wall, half stunning him before Chthon could guide his defense. Because she had reacted to his thrust, instead of initiating a planned attack, Chthon had been unable to anticipate her. She had reflexes like those of a salamander: a dangerous opponent, especially when mindless.

  Vex clubbed Bedside on the wrist, jarring loose the blade. Then she jammed her fingers into his neck, interrupting the supply of blood to his brain. Even Chthon could not reanimate him immediately—and seconds were all she needed to win through to Arlo.