“Explain, please.”
Flint jumped. But it was not an Ancient voice answering him, but H:::4, who had overheard his remark.
“I’m talking to the Kirlian field, trying to get its secret,” Flint explained.”
“Try visualizing the equations.”
“Good idea!” Flint animated the complex formulas he had memorized eidetically for spreading transfer technology. They took form in midair, the symbols of mathematical, engineering, and symbolic logic chains. He spread out the whole thing, then willed the complex calculus forward in thrust—beyond what he had in his mind.
Suddenly the equations spread. Perhaps through some kind of animation-enhanced telepathy he was drawing the answers from the Ancient equipment, reducing the field itself to its conceptual expression. Perhaps the equipment was geared to provide this sort of information. Maybe the Ancients had wanted this technology to spread! At any rate, here it was.
And Mintaka sliced into the room. Polaris was not in evidence; he had either been lost or killed. There was ichor on one of the disks: Polarian blood?
It took Mintaka only a moment to appraise what he was doing. Then the laser beam flashed.
Flint was a sitting duck. He threw himself to the floor, rolled, and flipped about to come at the disk-harrow feet first. It tried to move aside, but he caught the creature by surprise, and it was not made for sideways travel. His feet struck the disks, shoving them to the side. One of the end-tentacles wrapped around his left ankle and hauled his foot toward the nearest disk. The entire creature rolled, trying to pin his foot between the floor and the cutting edge.
If Mintaka were represented by a Tarot suit, Flint thought amidst his desperate effort, it should be Solid; otherwise known as Disks.
Flint had worked out a general plan of combat against this creature beforehand, in case of need. He had similar contingency plans for all of the group. It was the kind of thing he did automatically, as a Stone Age hunter who liked life. He jammed the reinforced heel of his right foot down between the first and second disks, forcing them apart in what had to be a painful hold. Then he grabbed the tentacle with his right hand and bent it at right angles. Like a pinched water hose it lost power, and he drew his left foot free.
But now the body twisted. From between the farthest two disks another laser flashed, similar to the communications signal, but more intense. The beam missed him—but the next one wouldn’t.
Flint realized that the creature was too tough for him. Mintaka could finish him with a laser before he could knock him out. But at least he had bought time for his allies.
His allies? Only Canopus remained, and H:::4 was not in immediate danger. Flint was fighting for his own life and information, nothing more.
Yet there was more, something highly significant. But he could not identify it in the throes of this battle.
He shoved violently with his feet, making the creature slide cross the floor. Before it could orient on him again, Flint leaped into the animation stage. And thought of himself.
Suddenly there was another Flint beside him, his duplicate. Then two more, and four more. In moments a score of Flints were running around the arena, capering like monkeys. The Mintakan’s ray speared one, but had no effect. “You can’t hurt me, nyaa, nyaa!” that image mouthed. “I’m only a Doppelgänger.”
The laser struck another image. Then a third. It seemed the spy had plenty of power, and was prepared to wipe out every image in order to nail him in the end. The law of chance dictated that this effort would succeed in time.
“Canopus!” Flint cried, and all his images mouthed it with him. Good thing the spy’s translator couldn’t orient specifically on the origin of the sound!
“Sol,” H:::4 replied. “How may I assist?”
“Use your armament. Demolish this entire site. Kill every creature in it.”
“Do not do it!” Mintaka cried in translation. “Sol is the spy. He wants to prevent us from acquiring the Ancient’s secrets.”
Time and again, Flint realized, this creature had raised seemingly valid points that had led them astray. Even the agreements had been camouflage, making it seem to be a true Mintakan in spirit as well as in body. But it had given itself away by that “Concurrence,” which Flint now recognized as an Andromedan transfer-message convention. “I commence action,” the Master said. “I am recording our dialogue, since I will be obliged to defend myself from suspicion as the sole survivor. Can you provide the key formulations?”
“Yes,” Flint said. He concentrated, and the equations appeared again, superimposed on the moving images of himself. “This is terrific! The Ancients had complete mastery of inorganic Kirlian aura: How to set up a field around energy that enables it to be transmitted any distance instantly, how to orient on any Kirlian transfer—”
“Begin with that one,” H:::4 said. “I shall ensure its arrival at all our Spheres.”
“Keep firing,” Flint said. “If this spy survives me—and if any survive, it will be the Mintakan—it will ray you down. Destroy everything, and don’t let anything you may see dissuade you. It will probably be an animation image calculated to deceive you.”
“I understand, and commend your courage,” the Master said. Already the shaking of his bombing could be felt. “I shall not fail. No living thing will emerge from this site.”
“Orientation on transfer,” Flint said. And he read off the array of symbols.
A laser struck him dead center, holing his suit. Flint moved with seeming casualness, so as not to attract attention to himself by reaching. His stomach burned ferociously, but it was not a mortal wound; either his flesh was too solid for the beam to penetrate far, or the spy was losing his power, after all that firing. There had to be some fatigue! Flint dared not even make all the images imitate his action, for then Mintaka would know the critical one had been hit. He put his left fist over the puncture and pressed it tight, inhibiting the leakage of vital gases.
It worked. The agent of Andromeda thought he was merely another image, and moved on to the next. And he continued reading off the equations without break, so that his voice would not give him away. He also made one of the images gesticulate and collapse when rayed, drawing several more beams: a decoy.
He completed the readoff for transfer orientation—so that was how the enemy had always located him before!—and started on the Kirlian-energy formulation. He could not rush this, for any mistake would make the whole effort a waste.
Meanwhile, the Canopian’s bombing progressed. The chamber shook with increasing violence. The walls and ceiling cracked. H:::4 had not been bluffing about his armament!
Now Mintaka gave up with the laser, having struck every image, and entered the arena physically. The harrow charged through the images, slicing them with the disks.
Flint kept the figures moving around, but the spy would surely catch him soon. He was already handicapped by the two holes in his suit, and was in no position to renew physical conflict. All he could do was keep dodging and reading off formulas until the end. If he made it through a couple more concepts, he would have given his galaxy the key to victory.
The ceiling split open. But instead of falling in, it blew out, as the gas dissipated into the vacuum of the surface. Then it imploded. Debris funneled down, dropping through the images. His life-air hissed out around his pressing fist.