"INTERFERENCE FADING. STAND BY. SIGNAL RECEPTION RESUMING."
The Sun One sign burned itself onto the screens: a red disk inside a thin green ellipse—the artificial satellite called Sun One, inside the Galaxy itself. Before it appeared the tall, glowing cone of a Sheliak official, back at Sun One. He was speaking, apparently oblivious to the interruption, while his translator turned his soft hooting into Earth English on Ben Line's screen. Green symbols overrode the image for a moment:
"INTERFERENCE HAS CEASED. SOURCE NOT TRACKED."
Venus and Ben line looked at each other.
"What was that all about?" he demanded.
Slowly she shook her silvery head. "At any rate, it's over." All around the dome, beings were resuming their interrupted chores. "One moment, Ben Line," she added gravely; and then, "Yes, we have concurrence. We authorize you to transmit a call for additional survey forces."
Ben Line Pertin nodded and cued in the tachyon transmitter. Carefully he began to phrase the report that the supervelocity tachyons would flash toward the distant Galaxy, to the artificial planet called Sun One— where all the races of the Galaxy maintained the headquarters that had launched this survey party—and from there on to the home planets of scores of kinds of beings. His own words might sooner or later reach his own world, Earth.
Ben Line wondered if somehow, back on Earth, that original Ben Pertin who had volunteered for tachyon transmission long before might hear the voice of his double, and if so what he might think. v But that was not profitable wondering. Behind it lay too much pain, too much loss, too many regrets for what could never be undone. Behind it lay the memory of the girl he had married on Sun One. Zara had not lost her husband; but Ben, her husband, in this copy at least, had lost his wife forever. And it hurt.
THREE
Although the boy named Fifteenth was strong, launching himself from the ground was very hard work, only for emergencies. When at last he began to run out of strength on his first long flight across the plain toward Knife-in-the-Sky he was careful to choose a spot where hillocks gave him a small height advantage for the next launch. A tall tree would have been better, but here there were only fire-trees and bee-trees, and neither was any good for climbing. When you climbed fire- trees no matter how careful you were some of the fire clung to your skin and, although it did not seem to do immediate harm, after a time you sickened and died. And bee-trees, of course, were guarded by their bees. These were not really bees in any sense, but they shared with Earthly bees a disposition to assault invaders en masse, so the boy avoided them.
He did not sleep on his first landing, only ate from the stocks he carried, rested drowsily for a thousand breaths, and then launched himself again. It was unsatisfying flying over the marshes that he soon encountered. There were few updrafts, and only weak ones, to climb in. Nearer home, generations of wingmen had located reliable springs of rising air in many places— where the lowest slopes of the mountain shaped the wind, or where for some reason the ground was always warm. But he was at the edge of the known world already, as far as his people were concerned. He could recognize some helpful signs. Nearly always fire-trees meant rising air, not because the trees themselves were warm but because they only grew in warm soil. But the stands of fire-trees here in the marshes were spindly and infrequent. Better than nothing. Not very good.
So he climbed mostly with the power of his lean, long arms and chest muscles, and flying was steady work. Better than walking. Still, not good.
It did not matter. The boy's purpose held, and after every rest or meal or sleep he launched himself again and drove on toward Knife-in-the-Sky.
He had known that mountain all his life, but he hadn't known how far it was. He slept twenty-three times crossing the alternating marsh and flatlands past the edge of the grass, and eighteen times more crossing what was pure marsh, where he could rest only on hillocks and the steamy mist that rose around him while he slept was malodorous and cloying. Each time he knotted the count into the cord around his throat when he woke, and looked toward Knife-in-the-Sky; and still it seemed no larger.
Beyond the marshes he crossed an endless carpet of thick, bright moss that had a queerly sharp smell which he associated with the electrical storms that rolled around the upper reaches of his mountain—but he had no name for "ozone." Something in the air above the mossland made him sneeze. The moss bore no fruit and it gave him no game. He counted twenty-eight sleeps on his way across it, and came out giddy with hunger and thirst.
He came down, with the last of his strength, on the bank of a shallow river that rimmed the moss world. Flying off again would be hard work, but it couldn't be helped. He knelt and drank the black water until he began to feel ill, and then looked for food in the forest on the far bank. Its plants were club-shaped and leafless, shining with their own cold light like dwarfed, warped fire-trees. Shining daggers of thorns guarded the hard red nuts they bore. He picked a few doubtfully, and looked farther. But there was none of the game he knew from the grasslands near his home, none of the fleet four-legged herd animals, or the horned, two-legged hoppers. His arrows killed a small weakly flying thing that fed on the nuts, but its flesh was tasteless and dry. He roasted some of the nuts, and felt sicker after eating them than he had before.
He summoned the strength to pitch his wings together to make a tent, pegged against one of the club- shaped trees. He rolled inside, curled up in a ball, and tried to sleep. It was not easy. The boy had never known what insomnia was, but he had heard old people speak of it sometimes and now he understood what they meant. He was drained and aching. For the first time he began to wonder if he were not as crazy as his brother had said. His brains truly felt as if they were bound to the ground. His thoughts could not rise and fly over him; they were limited to fear and misery and depression.
After a time he decided that he must eat, no matter what, and rose again.
Here in the marshes the sky was darker than on the slopes of his mountain; there were fewer fire-trees, and the light from the steely bright moss on the far side of the river was of little help. The boy had never heard of concepts like "day" or "night." He had never seen a sun in his sky, or for that matter a moon or stars. There were none to be seen, except for the occasional rare coils of silvery haze that, he had no way of knowing, were distant galaxies. One time was as good as another to sleep, or to eat, or to hunt. But he was not used to being hungry or ill.
It made him feel dizzy and faint, and when he crawled out of his wing-tent and saw the bright cube that whirled away out of sight he thought at first it was the imagining of sickness.
Sick as he was, his brain cleared almost at once. Once or twice before, in the long flights over grass and marsh and moss, he had thought he had glimpsed something small and bright and far behind. But it had always hung just at the threshold of visibility. He knew that the Watchers traveled in huge things that were bright and shiny. But this did not seem very large, nor did it ever come closer. He had heard of the small new Watchers that his brother had told him about. Was this one of them? He could not say.
All he could be sure of was that it had not harmed him so far, at least, and certainly there would never be a better chance to do him harm than while he lay shaking and weak in the wing-tent.
It gave him much to think about, but he could think without fear, for somehow he did not believe that this small Watcher intended to hurt him.
Curiously, the effort of thinking, perhaps also the sense that some sort of creature was not far away, even if hiding, seemed to sharpen his mind and his will. He stood up, drank again from the river, and began to search for the sprays of flame-bright red bloom he had seen from the air. These marked a thick-rooted plant. When he found them he dug out roots, and found among them nests of blood-red worms that, he thought, he had heard the older wingmen of his people describe as edible in bad times.