The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (93 page)

The beam.

It was a full five centimeters across, larger than Ing had ever before seen it. The nearness of that potential violence filled him with a conditioned dread. He'd milked too many beams in too many tubes, wary of the slightest growth in size to keep him at a safe distance.

This was a monster beam. All his training and experience cried out against its size.

Ing reminded himself of the analysis which had produced the false cleaner around him now.

Eighty-nine of the cleaners recovered from the tube floor had taken their primary damage at the pickup orifice. They'd been orientated to the beam itself, disregarding the local particle count. But the most important discovery was that the cleaners had fallen through the beam without being sliced in two. They had passed completely through the blade of that purple knife without being severed. There'd been no break in the beam. The explanation had to rest in that topological anomaly—angspace. Part of the beam and/or the cleaners had gone into angspace.

He was gambling his life now that the angspace bounce coincided with the energy phasing which kept the cleaners from deflecting the beam. The outside carrier, Ing's false cleaner, was phased with the beam. It would be demolished. The next inner shell was one hundred and eighty degrees out of phase. The next shell was back in phase. And so on for ten shells.

In the center lay Ing, his hands and feet on the controls of a suit that was in effect a miniature lifeboat.

As the moment of final commitment approached, Ing began to feel a prickly sensation in his stomach. And the ankle continued to itch. But there was no way he could turn back and still live with himself. He was a trouble-shooter, the best in the Haigh Company. There was no doubt that the company—and those lonely drifting human embryos had never needed him more desperately.

“Report your condition, Ing.”

The voice coming from the speaker beside Ing's face-mike was Washington's with an unmistakable edge of fear in it.

“All systems clear,” Ing said.

“Program entering its second section,” Washington said. “Can you see any of the other cleaners?”

“Forty contacts so far,” Ing said, “All normal.” He gasped as his cleaner dodged a transient 'lash.

“You all right?”

“All right,” Ing said.

The ride continued to be a rough one though. Each time the beam lashed, his cleaner dodged. There was no way to anticipate the direction. Ing could only trust his suit webbing and the oil-bath shocktank to keep him from being smashed against a side of the compartment.

“We're getting an abnormal number of transients,” Washington said.

That called for no comment and Ing remained silent. He looked up at his receiver above the speaker. A quartz window gave him a view of the tiny beam which kept him in contact with Washington. The tiny beam, less than a centimeter long, glowed sharply purple through its inspection window. It, too, was crackling and jumping. The little beam could stand more interference than a big one, but it clearly was disturbed.

Ing turned his attention to the big beam in the view-screen, glanced back at the little beam. The difference was a matter of degree. It often seemed to Ing that the beams should illuminate the area around them, and he had to remind himself that the parallel quanta couldn't deviate that much.

“Getting 'lash count,” Washington said. “Ing! Condition critical! Stand by.”

Ing concentrated on the big beam now. His stomach was a hard knot. He wondered how the other troubleshooters had felt in this moment. The same, no doubt. But they'd been flying without the protection Ing had. They'd paved the way, died to give information.

The view of the beam was so close and restricted that Ing knew he'd get no warning of whip—just a sudden shift in size or position.

His heart leaped as the beam flared in the screen. The cleaner rolled sideways as it dodged, letting the beam pass to one side, but there was an ominous bump. Momentarily, the screen went blank, but the purple rope flickered back into view as his cleaner's sensors lined up and brought him back into position.

Ing checked his instruments. That bump—what had that been?

“Ing!” Washington's voice came sharply urgent from the speaker.

“What's the word?”

“We have one of the other cleaners on grav-track,” Washington said. “It's in your shadow. Hold on.”

There came a murmur of voices, hushed words, indistinguishable, then: “The beam touched you, Ing. You've got a phase arc between two of your shells on the side opposite the beam. One of the other cleaners has locked onto that arc with one of its sensors. Its other sensors are still on the beam and it's riding parallel with you, in your shadow. We're getting you out of there.”

Ing tried to swallow in a dry throat. He knew the danger without having it explained. There was an arc, light in the tube. His cleaner was between the arc and the beam, but the other cleaner was up there behind him, too. If they had to dodge a 'lash, the other cleaner would be confused because its sensor contacts were now split. It'd be momentarily delayed. The two cleaners would collide and release light in the tube. The big beam would go wild. The protective shells would be struck from all sides.

Washington was working to get him out, but that would take time. You couldn't just yank a primary program out. That created its own 'lash conditions. And if you damped the beam, the other cleaners would home on the arc. There'd be carnage in the tube.

“Starting phase out,” Washington said. “Estimating three minutes to control the second phase. We'll just…”

“Lash!”

The word rang in Ing's ears even as he felt his cleaner lift at the beginning of a dodge maneuver. He had time to think that the warning must've come from one of the engineers on the monitor board, then a giant gong rang out.

A startled: “What the hell!” blasted from his speaker to be replaced by a strident hissing, the ravening of a billion snakes.

Ing felt his cleaner still lifting, pressing him down against the webbing, his face hard against the protective mask. There was no view of the big beam in his screen and the little window which should've showed the line of his own small beam revealed a wavering, crackling worm of red-purple.

Abruptly, Ing's world twisted inside out.

It was like being squeezed flat into a one-molecule puddle and stretched out to infinity. He
saw
around the outside of an inner-viewed universe with light extended to hard rods of brilliance that poked through from one end to the other. He realized he wasn't seeing with his eyes, but was absorbing a sensation compounded from every sense organ he possessed. Beyond this inner view everything was chaos, undefined madness.

The beam got me,
he thought.
I'm dying.

One of the light rods resolved itself into a finite row of spinning objects—over, under, around … over, under, around.… The movement was hypnotic. With a feeling of wonder, Ing recognized that the object was his own suit and a few shattered pieces of the protective shells. The tiny beam of his own transmitter had been opened and was spitting shards of purple.

With the recognition came a sensation of being compressed. Ing felt himself being pushed down into the blackness that jerked at him, twisting, pounding. It was like going over a series of rapids. He felt the web harness bite into his skin.

Abruptly, the faceplate viewscreens showed jewel brilliance against velvet black—spots of light: sharp blue, red, green, gold. A glaring white light spun into view surrounded by whipping purple ribbons. The ribbons looked like beam auroras.

*   *   *

Ing's body ached. His mind felt as though immersed in fog, every thought laboring against deadly slowness.

Jewel brilliance—spots of light.

Again, glaring white.

Purple ribbons.

The speaker above him crackled with static. Through its window, he saw his tiny beam spattering and jumping. It seemed important to do something about that. Ing slipped a hand into one of his suit arms, encountered a shattered piece of protective shell drifting close.

The idea of drifting seemed vital, but he couldn't decide why.

Gently, he nudged the piece of shell up until it formed a rough shield over his receiver beam.

Immediately, a tinny little voice came from his speaker: “Ing! Come in, Ing! Can you hear me, Ing?” Then, more distant: “You there! To hell with the locks! Suit up and get in there. He must be down…”

“Poss?” Ing said.

“Ing! Is that you, Ing?”

“Yeah, Poss. I'm … I seem to be all in one piece.”

“Are you down on the floor some place? We're coming in after you. Hold on.”

“I dunno where I am. I can see beam auroras.”

“Don't try to move. The tube's all smashed to hell. I'm patched through the Imbrium tube to talk to you. Just stay put. We'll be right with you.”

“Poss, I don't think I'm in the tube.”

From some place that Ing felt existed on a very tenuous basis, he felt his thoughts stirring, recognition patterns forming.

Some of the jewel brilliance he saw was stars. He saw that now. Some of it was … debris, bits and pieces of cleaners, odd chunks of matter. There was light somewhere towards his feet, but the sensors there appeared to've been destroyed or something was covering them.

Debris.

Beam auroras.

The glaring white spun once more into view. Ing adjusted his spin with a short burst from a finger jet. He saw the thing clearly now, recognized it: the ball and sensor tubes of a Seeding Compact container.

He grew conscious that the makeshift shield for his little beam had slipped. Static filled his speakers. Ing replaced the bit of shell.

“… Do you mean you're not in the tube?” Washington's voice asked. “Ing, come in. What's wrong?”

“There's an SC container about a hundred meters or so directly in front of me,” Ing said. “It's surrounded by cleaner debris. And there're auroras, angspace ribbons, all over the sky here. I … think I've come through.”

“You couldn't have. I'm receiving you too strong. What's this about auroras?”

“That's why you're receiving me,” Ing said. “You're stitching a few pieces of beam through here. Light all over the place; there's a sun down beneath my feet somewhere. You're getting through to me, but the container's almost surrounded by junk. The reflection and beam spatter in there must be enormous. I'm going in now and clean a path for the beam contact.”

“Are you sure you're…”
Hiss, crackle.

The little piece of shell had slipped again.

Ing eased it back into position as he maneuvered with his belt jets.

“I'm all right, Poss.”

*   *   *

The turn brought the primary into view—a great golden ball that went dim immediately as his scanner filter adjusted. To his right beyond the sun lay a great ball of blue with chunks of cottony clouds drifting over it. Ing stared, transfixed by the beauty of it.

A virgin planet.

A check of the lifeboat instruments installed in his suit showed what the SC container had revealed before contact had gone intermittent—Theta Apus IV, almost Earth normal except for larger oceans, smaller land masses.

Ing took a deep breath, smelled the canned air of his suit.

To work,
he thought.

His suit jets brought him in close to the debris and he began nudging it aside, moving in closer and closer to the container. He lost his beam shield, ignored it, cut down receiver volume to reduce the static.

Presently, he drifted beside the container.

With an armored hand, he shielded his beam.

“Poss? Come in, Poss.”

“Are you really there, Ing?”

“Try a beam contact with the container, Poss.”

“We'll have to break contact with you.”

“Do it.”

Ing waited.

*   *   *

Auroral activity increased—great looping ribbons over the sky all around him.

So that's what it looks like at the receiving end,
Ing thought. He looked up at the window revealing his own beam—clean and sharp under the shadow of his upraised hand. The armored fingers were black outlines against the blue world beyond. He began calculating then how long his own beam would last without replacement of anode and cathode. Hard bombardment, sharp tiny beam—its useful life would only be a fraction of what a big beam could expect.

Have to find a way to rig a beam once we get down,
he thought.

“Ing? Come in, Ing?”

Ing heard the excitement in Washington's voice.

“You got through, eh, Poss, old hoss?”

“Loud and clear. Now, look—if you can weld yourself fast to the tail curve of that container we can get you down with it. It's over-engineered to handle twice your mass on landing sequence.”

Ing nodded to himself. Riding the soft, safe balloon, which the container would presently become, offered a much more attractive prospect than maneuvering his suit down, burning it out above a watery world where a landing on solid ground would take some doing.

“We're maneuvering to give re-entry for contact with a major land mass,” Washington said. “Tell us when you're fast to the container.”

Ing maneuvered in close, put an armored hand on the container's surface, feeling an odd sensation of communion with the metal and life that had spent nine hundred years in the void.

Old papa Ing's going to look after you,
he thought.

As he worked, welding himself solidly to the tail curve of the container, Ing recalled the chaos he had glimpsed in his spewing, jerking ride through angspace. He shuddered.

“Ing, when you feel up to it, we want a detailed report,” Washington said. “We're planning now to put people through for every one of the containers that's giving trouble.”