“Then I could retire,” Flint said. But the notion no longer filled him with enthusiasm. He had had himself put in the records as officially dead, so that Honeybloom would have his pension. There was no longer any life to retire to. And this business of traveling to strange civilizations had slowly grown on him; this was his type of adventure.
“You could retire, having saved our galaxy,” the Minister agreed, not aware of the irony. “We have elected to compromise. We have sent message capsules to all our neighbors with the news. The potential significance of this discovery transcends local Sphere boundaries. The other Spheres of this cluster have agreed to a cooperative mission, with all discoveries to be shared equally, for the good of the galaxy. They are notifying their neighbors, and we hope several of these will participate also. We have of course also advised Sphere Knyfh of the inner galaxy, but naturally they cannot afford to mattermit a representative five thousand light-years on speculation.”
Flint nodded. “If all the Spheres mattermit their own physical representatives to the Hyades that will be some menagerie!”
“That’s why we’re sending you. You have had direct experience with some of these creatures. You will be able to recognize them and deal with them despite their strange or even repulsive aspects. Other humans would be at a severe disadvantage.”
“That’s true,” Flint agreed, remembering the way human beings had seemed to him when he occupied a Polarian host. He had been shocked and nauseated, and so had blundered badly. Of course, he still suffered some from an aversion to illness or deformity—his recent excursion in the body of a one-armed boy had been a real exercise in control!—but alienophobia was a nearly universal phenomenon. This Hyades group would not be the most compatible assemblage!
Yet the prospect remained intriguing, and not merely because of the monstrous potential of the Ancient site. To deal physically, in his own body, with all the alien sapients he had known only in transfer…
He arrived at Gondolph IV at night. Four bright stars were visible in the sky, overwhelming the more distant field. They were Gondolph’s neighbors, II, III, V and VI, all within half a light-year, but they had the aspect of stars, not suns. No perpetual day here after all; the cluster was not that tight. Maybe someday he would visit a closed or globular cluster; then he’d see something!
The cluster of civilizations was not that tight, either, he thought. Each Sphere functioned independently of its neighbors, with only minor interactions. Together the massed Spheres made up the disk-shaped cluster of the Milky Way galaxy, like so many cells forming a creature. The Milky Way had also operated largely independently of its neighbors in the cluster of galaxies. Until recently…
Flint was in a spacesuit, and it was no more awkward than adapting to an alien host-body. This was not like the old Luna spacesuits, clumsy and suspect; the material of this suit fit him like a sheath of exterior muscles. It yielded wherever his motions required, but maintained comfortably normal atmospheric pressure. A porous layer next to his skin permitted the transfer of fluids and gases necessary to his health. His body would not suffocate from lack of oxygen or drown in its own sweat. It had discreet airlocks for intake and outgo, so that all natural functions could be accommodated readily and safely. The suit was tough—but it had limitations. If it were perforated and not immediately patched, he would quickly die of exposure and decompression. Therefore he carried no power weapon; it was too possible for it to be used against him. He was, however, armed—unobtrusively.
He looked about. The Hyades, mythologically, were the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas and the nymph Aethra, and they were half-sisters to the Pleiades. There were two ways to relate that to the present situation; the Titan was the Milky Way galaxy, and his daughters the Spheres, perhaps seven of which would be represented here. Or the Titan was the empire of the Ancients, and his daughters were the scientific and cultural artifacts left behind—each one of immense potential significance to the contemporary scene.
At a time like this, he longed for the ability to journey back into the time-frame of the Ancients. Not merely to penetrate their technological and cultural secrets, but just to get to know them as individuals. Surely they had been something very, very special!
But now to meet his companions—and commence the archaeological research. A Nathian lifeship had discovered the site and set down the first mattermitter. For reasons comprehensible only to the Nath mind, that device had sat on the planet unused for twenty Earth years. News of galactic peril brought by micromessage from Sphere Polaris, and the quick transmission of transfer information had brought this site back into awareness. The Nath government had recognized the possible relevance and finally revealed the existence of its device. After that, things had moved rapidly. More mattermission units had been sent through the first and attuned to their Spheres of origination. Thus all representatives could be shipped at a common time.
They were to meet at a designated staging area within the site. Flint wondered why the units hadn’t been grouped together to begin with, but assumed it was to provide a certain initial privacy. The shock of coming face to face with alien monsters—yes, it was better to allow some spacing and nominal adjustment room. But the Nathian organizers might have had some quite different notion.
Flint’s eye was attracted by a surprising but familiar form: the disk of a Canopian flying saucer. He had thought these craft were airborne, but evidently they used another mechanism. At least this one did, for it traversed the vacuum effortlessly. It spotted him, and coasted down to hover close above. “Conveyance, Sphere Sol?” its speaker inquired in the standard language of Imperial Earth.
“Sphere Canopus comes in style,” Flint observed, grasping the flexible ladder that descended for his convenience. “You mattermitted the whole craft?” That would have cost tens of trillions of dollars worth of energy, unless they had worked out a really economical system.
His benefactor turned out to be a Master: facet-eyed, mandible-mouthed, with wings forming a cloak, and half a dozen spindly legs. It looked like a monstrous insect, and perhaps it was—but it was also highly intelligent and of inflexible nerve. In Sphere Canopus these were the Master species, while humanoids were Slaves—and Flint had learned the hard way not to interfere with that social scheme. In fact, he had developed a lot of respect for the Masters. “What we do, we do properly,” it said in its melodious voice. “This does not imply any pleasure in the task.”
Of course. The Canopian Masters wanted to be left alone to run their Sphere in their efficient fashion. Slavers generally did not appreciate the cynosure of dissimilar cultures. But the one in charge of Flint’s case when he had visited there in transfer, B:::1, had yielded to the inevitable, and Canopus had joined the galactic coalition. “I am Flint of Outworld. I visited your Sphere a few months ago.”
The Masters seldom showed emotion, but something very like surprise made this one’s mandibles twitch. “I regret I did not recognize your specific identity, in your natural host. I am H:::4, of Kirlian intensity forty-five.”
“Your government risks a high-Kirlian entity on a mattermission mission?”
The Master extended one thin leg to touch Flint’s shoulder. Even through the suit, Flint felt the power of the aura. It seemed higher than forty-five—unless his own reduced aura made the differential seem less. “The secret of the Ancients necessarily involves some aspect of Kirlian force. I suspect all representatives here will be Kirlian, even as you and I.”