H.M. Hoover - Lost Star (10 page)

got electrocuted, again there had to be a reason. She joined the lumpies at dome's edge; the wet surface was icy cold.

Seeing her there, one of the tolats called, "It is (untranslatable). It could pass through star fire and not heat."

"But what is it?" she called back.

Whatever the tolat said consumed at least twenty sounds in its language. The translator converted his answer to "Beautiful!"

An airtruck lumbered in to land. As it sank down to unhook the heavy water bags, one struck a tree and ripped. The water dropped in one great splash upon the tolat, knocking him slat on his back.

Thrown off balance by the weight of the remaining water bag, the airtruck flipped up, came down hard on the weighted side, teetered precariously, and safely set down.

The whole incident took less than ten seconds. Poonie galloped toward the half-drowned tolat. Lian and the others followed. Lian was running, not to help the tolat, but because she was afraid that if Poonie touched the creature, its heavy claw arms would strike out in fear and hurt Poonie. Pausing to peer at the fallen tolat, Poonie looked like a small gray bear with an extra pair of arms. The tolat crew crouched to jump on Poonie. "Don't," yelled Lian. "He's a medic! Don't hurt him." And the tolats paused.

Poonie waved to the other two. They hurried around the still body and lifted it by the opposite side of the shell. Poonie splayed his fingers against the bottom shell, braced himself, and nodded. The other two gave the victim one quick bounce. There was a gurgling noise, and water poured out of the tolat's mouth. Its legs jerked convulsively as Poonie shoved. More water came, and a loud hissing word. Poonie nodded and backed away; his helpers lowered the body.

With a grunt the wet tolat flipped itself over, eyes whipped up to stare at the lumpies; then it pivoted on

its toes, said to its kind, "Engineers!", and scuttled back to work. From a tolat there was no higher praise.

Within the dome, control boards were lighting in a dozen auxiliary rooms; inactive terminals hummed to life as the power cells charged with sunlight. Here and there was a dry, twiglike snapping of ancient circuitry shorting out. In the dense liquid honeycomb beneath the blue floor thought flickered from cell to cell. The mind that was the Counter began to revive from its prolonged malnourishment and consider thoughts of survival other than its own.

In its weakened condition, to repel yesterday's attack on its outer hull had almost cost it its life. It remembered the alien Guardian coming in with the people; then pain had taken away all other awareness. Now it was alone again. The Counter called out to the people.

The lumpies were listening to something. Their
faces had the rapt look of a cat watching invisibles. An airtruck came in to land. They paid no attention to it.

"Can you hear anything?" Lian called to the tolats. Their eyes went up. "It would be coming from the dome."

"Signals? Sounds?" They advanced at once and touched the glass with their foreclaws, feeling for vibrations. "No sound," came the report. One hurried off for an instrument of some sort and brought it over to the dome. After a few seconds the tolat gave an oddly joyous jump. "Cells charge!" it hissed jubilantly. "Cells charge!"

Oblivious to this, first Cuddles, then Poonie dropped to their feet and started off. The rest followed. Then, as if remembering something, Cuddles circled back and held out a hand to Lian. Seeing her leave with the lumpies, the tolats began gathering their equipment, preparing to follow.

The vines around the entrance had all been stripped away. The bank below was trampled flat and littered with equipment. The round door, too heavy to move, lay where she had first seen it. The air of peace was gone and the change saddened her. Lights had been strung in the halls. Staff members looked up in surprise as this procession of lumpies and tolats hurried by. One by one the archaeologists put down their work and came along.

As the gate slid up to reveal the interior of the dome, there was an excited hiss from the tolats and a soft "Wow!" from Lian. The polished roof turned the sky to pale green, the clouds deeper green, and trees fringed it all. The tolats barely glanced up before pushing past Lian and lumpies to hurry down the ramp. They circled the floor, their legs clacking as they jumped to see into each cubicle, where panels now glowed with light. Slowly the rest of the staff straggled in and joined the tolats in their exploration.

"Be careful of the open end of the computer," Lian warned them, and then remembered to whistle the response that shut off the bell tone.

"Which part?" said Dr. Farr.

"The far end."

A tolat made a hissing sound that could have been contempt. "This is all computer. That"—it pointed to the central unit—"in there"—it pointed to the cubicles lining the dome—"floor, roof, walls ... all one artificial mind. We think. Yes."

There was a blast of static that made Lian jump, a high-frequency whine, and thumping noises. The lumpies huddled together nervously, and everyone else froze where they were, not knowing what to expect. From the central speaker came a sound like a child chanting verse, swift and melodic; then the voice slowed and went lower in pitch and became almost a song. Several of the lumpies rose to listen, faces alert. There was nervous laughter from the humans.

"Be quiet!" Dr. Farr commanded. "Listen. It's speaking a language."

"Lis-son," the computer's voice slowly mimicked, and the intruders backed away from it

The faintest of screeches came from the computer. A panel was sliding open on its blank side to reveal a large display screen flickering to life. A spectrum of color bands crossed it in horizontal drift. Script flashed on the screen and was made jumpy by glitches. A melodic sound track came on at a very low volume.

The script dissolved to dark mist, and out of the mist came the picture of a solar system, its star much too red. Almost immediately the picture changed to something totally foreign—a geometric array of what could be dancing mold spores or flowers. But if it made no sense to Lian or the staff, it did to the lumpies. Either the picture or the sounds she had been dismissing as background music were pulling them closer to the screen. They clustered around her, sitting on the floor to watch.

After a moment Lian joined them and tried to clear her mind to truly hear, but there was too much distraction in the room. The tolats had gathered in a hissing clump. Several were recording this film. Some staff members were still exploring the walls, tapping the panels, trying to force them open. The lumpies paid attention only to the screen.

Since the rest of the film was unintelligible to all but the lumpies, what was the point of that opening shot? Lian wondered. Was it an acknowledgment of her and her interests, a gift from this mind to hers, like giving beetles to Buford?

As if in response to her thought, the screen went Hank, flickered, and then repeated the prologue shot of the dying star. The camera closed in on the ninth planet to show an encapsulated history of that world and its people. They saw the ancestors of the lumpies first as the creators, then the stewards, and finally the pampered wards of a technology so advanced that it could attempt to perpetuate both itself and its creators by assembling, over generations, a vast fleet of ships that left the orbit of their planet and, one by one, like great searching eyes, disappeared into the darkness of space.

When the pictures again became abstract forms, there was restless movement and whispering among the research group. Then a tolat gave voice to the obvious. "This site is not city. It is starship. We are standing on control deck."

From their dust bath by the landing pad, wor-
tles watched the shining aircar sit down. The hatch opened immediately, and the pilot stepped out—a tall woman in white wearing dark glasses like a mask. Just as her toe touched the ground, Buford hurried across the tarmac to meet her.

The pilot retracted the toe and from the bottom step called, "Hello? Is anyone here?" The worm's antennae quivered. Both pilot and craft had the thin, cold scent of high altitudes where no bugs sang. Like the wortles, the worm immediately lost interest.

When she saw the orange thing disappear into the tall grass, the pilot stepped down. "Hello?" she called again. Her tongue suggested a voice accustomed to immediate response. When none came, she strode up the main street, boots flashing in the sunlight.

A tolat who had been repairing the autoserver came out of the dining hall and stopped still, as surprised to see the visitor as she was to see it.

"You are a tolat!" There was relief in identification.

"You are human. Yes." The tolat walked over to stare at the large blue aircar, finding it of greater interest than its pilot.

"I'm looking for my daughter. Is she here?"

The word "daughter" meant nothing to the androgynous tolat. The words "Mount Balthor Observatory" on the side of the car did.

"Star watcher is with Tsri Farr.
⁵⁸

"And where would that be?"

The tolat pointed a gripper arm at the dig. "Down there."

The woman glanced at the distance between herself and the site. "Would you call them, please?"

"They are inside. Where intercom does not operate. Walk down." The pragmatic tolat returned to its work. It had answered all questions necessary.

This woman who thought nothing of traveling across light years of space in a metal container disliked the Idea of walking alone on this planet's surface. It made her feel vulnerable to be exposed to this bowl of open sky and to living creatures. If it were not for Lian . . . She began to walk.

Lian hardly heard the tolat or the outburst of conversation that followed; she was absorbed in the feeling emanating from the lumpies. It was as if they had received some understanding that caused their minds to clear and lighten, as if hope had freed them at last from some long and onerous burden.

They sat £is they had before, silently watching the screen that continued to show something intelligible only to themselves, but now their eyes glowed, the smiles were true smiles, and their faces began to resemble their ancestors.

She looked from their faces to those of the staff around them, outsiders, excited by the same discovery, but in a totally different way—and almost totally ignoring each other.

"Can you imagine bringing this thing in for a landing?" she heard Dr. Farr say. "That's no earthwork; it's the dirt the landing jets blew up when it came down!"

"It may be resting on a crater if 'dug.
⁵⁹

"How much flood damage do you think there is?"

"The weight of it must have depressed the ground by.. .'
^s

"How far "down do you think the
levels
go?"

"Lian?" Dr. Farr touched her shoulder. "Did you recognize their solar system? Could they have come from the star in supernova?"

"Has this ship been here at least a hundred thousand years?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Probably no more than three hundred at the most."

She grinned. "That's hardly a wink of time's eye. No, they aren't from the supernova. The size and heat of that sun would have killed life on any planet circling it long, long ago. If the lumpies' star novas, you and I will never see it—even if we learn which system it is."

"It takes so long?"

"In human time, yes. In sidereal time it's very fast."

He mused over this for a moment. "So when I say, as an archaeologist, that a culture is very old, my concept of great antiquity is an astrophysicist's concept of 'only a moment ago'?"

"Something like that," she agreed. "It takes a little getting used to—" She paused in midsentence, distracted by the movement of a human figure standing outside, looking down at the edge of the dome. As Dr. Farr watched, all animation left Lian's face and it became as blandly expressionless as a lumpie's. "It's my mother," she said, answering the question he had not yet spoken aloud.

"Here?"

"Out there." She indicated direction with a lift of

her chin, thinking, Why did she have to come now and spoil this?

"Handsome woman,
⁹⁵
was Dr. Farr's first verbal reaction. "Why didn't she call and give us warning? It would have saved her from having to hunt us up down here."

"It would never occur to her to call," Lian said.
^S£
Fd better go meet her. She looks lost."

"I'll go with you." Dr. Farr glanced about, his face showing his fear that they might miss something important while they were gone.

"You don't have to."

"Oh, but I do, Lian," he said with a smile. "First because she's important to you—and also because the further one goes from civilization, the more important courtesy becomes."

"Visitor outside," someone called.

"It's Dr. Webster—from the observatory," Dr. Farr answered as a general announcement. Heads turned to see the visitor through the green glass dome, then turned to look at Lian.

Poonie looked away from the screen to Lian's face, then got up and walked over to see. Cuddles followed, and they watched the stranger circling the rim of the dome above them. One by one the other lumpies noticed, and there was much finger talking among them.