The chimp swallowed. He thrust himself up on an elbow, regardless of the pain, and stared into Pertin’s eyes.
“He didn’t know me, Ben James! The two new ones that were half him, they came after me. The T’Worlie saw what was happening and tried to stop them - and that’s how I got away, while they were killing him. So I ran. But where is there to run to, in this ship?”
When they could move again they found the T’Worlie easily enough. He was floating upside down, purplish drops of blood, perfectly round, floating beside him. The little vibrissae around his sphincter mouth, more like cat’s whiskers than anything on a proper earthly bat, were perfectly still. Nummie was rigid. The pattern of five eyes was unmoving. The intricate pattern of blotches of colour on his filmy wings was fading.
There was no one else around. “What’ll we do with him, Ben James?” chattered the chimp.
“Throw him out in to space, I guess,” Pertin said harshly. Normally the mass would be useful in the tachyon receiver, but there were to be no more incoming tachyon transmissions.
It didn’t do to think of that. He stared at the T’Worlie. A slow encrustation of thick gel was matting the fluffy surface of Nummie’s chest, and where it had once protruded sharply, like a bird’s wishbone, it was crushed and concave.
Pertin felt the muscles on his face drawing taut, perhaps partly because of the intense vinegar reek. He said, “Why would the Sheliaks break up equipment?”
The chimpanzee stared at the mess in the room. Bright green and orange transistors and microchips were scattered like jigsaw pieces in the air. “I don’t know, Ben James! None of that was that way when I ran out of here. Do you suppose they just lost their temper?”
“Sheliaks don’t lose their temper that way. They broke up instruments on purpose. What was coming in before you decided to play Peeping Tom?”
“Oh—” The chimp thought. “More reports on Object Lambda. The density was confirmed. Very low. Like a sparse cloud of interstellar gas.”
“We already knew it was Cloud-Cuckoo Land. That couldn’t have had any effect on them.”
“Something did, Ben James,” cried the chimp. “Look, We’ve got to do something. They’ll be looking for me, and—”
“Unless,” said Pertin thoughtfully, “it wasn’t the Sheliaks who did it. The robot was up to something. And there are still a couple of purchased people not accounted for. And—”
Too late!” howled the chimp. “Listen, Ben James! Somebody’s coming!”
But it wasn’t the Sheliaks who came in on them, it was Aphrodite, the silver pseudogirl, the heavy-planet creature in human form. Her fingers were outstretched towards them, listening, as her great foil wings drove her forward.
Behind her was the Scorpian robot.
They made an eerie pair, the striking orange-eyed girl with her coif of metallic hair and steel-bright body hues, and the mechanical creature shaped like a metal octopus. Its central body was a massive disc, the colour of the pseudogirl’s flesh, and its silvery tentacles made a fringe of snakes around it. A greenish membrane that bulged above the upper surface of the disc fluttered, producing a drum-roll of sound. Pertin’s Pmal translator obediently turned it into recognizable words: “DO NOT RESIST. WE WISH YOU TO COME WITH US.”
“Where?” he demanded.
There was no answer, at least not in words. Pertin was caught in something like a metal whip that stung a trail of fire around his waist. It was one of the robot’s tentacles that had caught him; it pinned his arms, and the pseudogirl launched herself at him, her metal fist catching him full in the face. Floating as he was, the blow was robbed of some of its force, but it doubled him, flung him back against the robot’s lash, dazed with pain and sobbing for breath.
He heard a cry of anguish from Doc Chimp, but could not turn to see what was happening. The vinegary smell of the dead T’Worlie penetrated his nostrils, mixing with the tang of his own blood.
“Why?” he croaked, and tried to raise his arms to defend himself as the girl dropped towards him again. She did not answer. She was on him like a great silvery bat, metal feet kicking, shining fists flying. The lights went out. He lost touch with space and time.
Pertin was not wholly unconscious, but he was so near to it, so filled with pain and confusion, that he could hardly remember what happened next. He had a fugitive impression of great shapes whirling around him, then of being carried away while someone behind him sobbed his name, the voice diminishing in the distance.
A long time later he opened his eyes.
He was alone, in a part of the ship he knew only sketchily. A large open cocoon hung from a wall, and inside it was what looked like one of the purchased people. Pertin’s face was swollen and his eyes not focusing well at all; he squinted, but could not make out the features on the person in the cocoon. It appeared to be male, however, and it appeared to be in the last stages of dissolution.
It moved and looked towards him. A caricature of a smile disturbed the weeks-old beard, and the dry tongue licked the lips. A cracked voice muttered something, the tone hoarse and indistinguishable.
“Who are you? What do you want?” demanded Ben James Pertin.
The figure rasped a sort of hacking cough, that perhaps was meant for a chuckle. It tried again, and this time its words came clear enough - clear, and familiar, in a way that Pertin had not expected.
“I want to talk to you, Ben,” it croaked. “We have a lot in common, you know.”
Pertin frowned, then his swollen eyes widened. He pushed himself towards the swathed figure, caught himself at the lip of the cocoon and stared down. The eyes that looked up at him were pain-filled but very familiar. He was looking into his own, battered, obviously dying face.
Pertin remembered a time, months ago.
He had gone to the tachyon transmitter and light-heartedly enough given his blueprint to the scanners and allowed one self of him to be beamed to the Aurora. It had not seemed like an important thing to do. At that tune, it was not clear that the Aurora was a doomed ship. At that time he had no one to consult but himself; Zara Doy was still only a casual acquaintance, the new girl from Earth with the pretty face.
“Ben Frank,” he whispered.
“Right as rain,” croaked the ghastly voice. “And I know about you well enough. You’re Ben James Pertin, and you’ve been aboard two weeks now. Not very thoughtful of you, failing to visit a dying relative.”
“But I thought you were dead already! They said -I mean, I wouldn’t have had to come, if—”
“Blaming me, Ben James? Well, why shouldn’t you? How often have I laid here, blaming you, and me, and all the Ben Pertins there ever were.” A spasm of coughing racked him, but he talked rightly through it. “I wanted them to think I was dead. Only fair, isn’t it? They were killing me, and now I’ve killed their Project Lambda.”
“You?”
“With a lot of help. My Sirian friends were the first and best, but there have been plenty since. It was the Sirians who told me you were aboard; you gave one of them quite a start, when he saw you in the instrument room. Wrecked his mission, you did.”
Coughing drowned the voice out; the other Ben Pertin convulsively clutched at the cocoon monitor controls. A warning panel lit over the bed. He was very near death; but the cocoon was not yet defeated; it metered coloured fluids into the external blood supply that was trying to replace the destroyed blood cells.