“You’re right on target,” Flint said, interrupting his reading. “Drop one right down the hole and finish it. The Mintakan is right here.”
“But the formula is incomplete,” the Master protested.
“What, are you wavering?” Flint demanded. “We can’t let Andromeda escape with this stuff. I’ll try to get out the last—”
And Mintaka caught up with him. The devastating blades sliced into his feet, cutting off his toes. His remaining air exploded out, jetting him up momentarily; then he fell across his enemy. He made a last effort to call in H:::4’s final bomb to finish them both, but his mind suffered a short-circuit. All he could remember was the need to inform the authorities of Sphere Mintaka what had happened, to warn them—
Mintaka! he thought with all his being as he died.
10. Blinding the Giant
*alarm! priority development*
—out with it—
*ancient mode transfer from hyades open cluster*
—disaster! initiate council available entities—
*too late milky way galaxy has mastered ancient technology our agent failed we are helpless*
—recall all agents from that galaxy immediately we may be able to salvage something—
*but that would mean surrendering our energy transfer stations*
—that’s right we’ll have to gamble by leaving them in place and putting all our personnel on alert—
*POWER*
—oh, disconnect!—
His body was astonishing. Whenever he moved, he jangled, beeped, and boomed. His several feet were little clappers, supporting a triple web of taut wires like three harps. Fitted within the inner curves of these were tiers of drum-diaphragms. Strong tubular framing provided resonance for moving air, with emplaceable reeds. In short, he was an animate orchestra.
He had some kind of sonar/radar perception. He used it to orient on something more familiar: the night sky, perceivable through the image-porous ceiling. There were stars, not exactly bits of light but similar centers of emission. He concentrated, determined to find some point of orientation. This was not the sky of the Ancients, but it was within a galaxy, for there were the massed clouds and stars, the milky way to be seen within any galaxy.
He visualized (though this was not exactly what his new mind did) the night sky as seen from Sphere Sol, and from Etamin, Canopus, Polaris, and the Hyades, trying to superimpose some aspect of it on what he saw here. This was a challenging exercise, the more so because he was aware that some stars had different intensities of emission in the range he could now perceive. What appeared to be a small-illumination visible star might be a large-emission infrared star. But his mind was trained in this, and he made the necessary adjustments. It was rather like rotating a sphere of galactic space, taking cross-sectional slices, sliding them around, searching for any region of congruence.
A fringe of familiarity came. Here was a large red giant, like Betelgeuse, just about the same magnitude he knew. There was a cluster of—could it be the Pleiades? But they were over four hundred light-years away from Sol, whereas this cluster was twice that distance by the aspect of it, even after allowing for his changed perception, if it were of the same absolute brightness, and there was no Taurus constellation associated with it. Here was one like Rigel, but a bit brighter, therefore closer? And—yes it was! The Great Nebula of Orion, not in Orion at all, but brighter, in the correct position relative to Rigel and Betelgeuse.
Abruptly it clicked into place. This was Sphere Mintaka! Naturally the Great Nebula was not in this constellation now; he was in it, looking back five hundred light-years toward Sol, where the Nebula was. He was well beyond Rigel and Betelgeuse, on a planet in the Belt, fifteen hundred light-years from Sol.
So this had to be a Mintakan host. The Ancient animation arena had really been a transfer station whose destination was controlled by the thought of the transferee. He was thinking of Mintaka as he died—and here he was!
So his life had been returned to him—for a while. For his Kirlian aura was at reduced strength, and his human body had been blasted apart. No one at home would know what had really happened to him. He had, in his fashion, gone to heaven.
Well, he would communicate from the dead. He retained the remaining formulas, and this added revelation of the nature of the Ancient equipment would enable the Milky Way galaxy to overcome the Andromeda galaxy. He had perhaps sixty Earth days, maybe more, before his Kirlian aura faded below the threshold of human individuality. That should be time enough, considering that Sphere Mintaka had already been contacted by Sphere Mirzam and given transfer. Providing that was not a lie told by the renegade Mintakan.
Renegade Mintakan? How was that possible, when this musical body was the true Mintakan form? The spy could not have been any form of Mintakan. Yet it had not been a transferee either. Paradox!
No—merely erroneous conclusion. The representative from Sphere Mirzam had been the first killed, for it would have known the spy was no Mintakan. Yet if neither Mintakan nor transferee, what could it have been, so fierce in the defense of the interests of Andromeda?
Who else but his nemesis, ¢le of A[th] or Llyana the Undulant, native of Andromeda? Now he remembered: The creature he had fought in the Hyades had had extremely high Kirlian force, parallel to his own. He had not been able to make the connection in the midst of the battle, but now it was obvious. The Queen of Energy!
She had been mattermitted in her own body all the way from Andromeda. The cost—beyond belief. Which was why he had not believed it. What value the enemy had put on that site!
Now she was dead, and it was doubly important that he get his information to his galaxy. Andromeda had set that value, and Andromeda was in a position to know. It was, literally, the ransom of a galaxy.
All right. Mintaka would have transfer technology now, because he would provide it. Then he would get in touch with Sphere Sol, making a complete report that would change the face of this section of the universe. This cluster of stars known as the Milky Way would survive. Then he could fade out, satisfied that he had done his job. His galaxy had been saved, and Honeybloom would live happily in her Stone Age idyll, and Tsopi the Polarian in her circular one.
A nurse approached. Her Castanet feet made a pleasant clatter, and the lines of her tubing were esthetic. Flint always had acute perception for feminine allure, whatever form it happened to take, and this was a good specimen. “Welcome to Sphere Mintaka,” she played.
And that was literal. Her strings and tubes played an intricate little melody counterpointed by the beat of her drums. The meaning was in the music itself. “From what Sphere do you sing?”
No need for concealment! “I am from Sphere Sol,” Flint played in reply. The music came automatically, for it was inherent in this entity’s nature; still it was a pretty melody. “I am pleased to discover Mintaka so well provided with hosts.”
“We are pleased to possess at last the secret of transfer,” she fluted. The music for the concept of transfer was a complex chord with undertones of technology and overtones of spirituality: a completely fitting definition. Already Flint liked this mode of communication better than any of the others he had experienced, including the human. Every entity an expert musician and orchestra combined! “And we owe it all to Sphere Sol, who released the information to the galaxy. We regret very much that we are not suited to vacuum maneuvers and could not participate in the Hyades exploration, but we are most interested. Please come with me.”
Flint followed her, relieved that contact was so easy right when he needed it. It had been similar in Sphere Polaris, but he had messed that up with his own unwarranted suspicions. Now he was in the final Death/Transformation stage of his Tarot reading—how apt that was!—and had no cause for anxiety. His clapper-feet made a tapdance of satisfaction-syncopation. His paraphernalia, at first so strange, was becoming normal. Music was the most natural thing, so why not make it naturally?