Another race might have thought of using that fact to establish dominance for itself, but the T’Worlies didn’t think that way. They had never invented empires, either. So when the T’Worlies began to be deeply interested in Object Lambda it was easy enough to find some hundreds of drones on courses and at points that were not too remote from it.
The next job for the T’Worlie computers was calculating which of these drones was on the course that would involve least time and energy in diverting it to the neighbourhood of Lambda, with its huge Galaxy-ward velocity. Fortunately a handful of drones in that section had been redirected inward long before, to fill gaps in the global screen. Among them was one that was, by the best of luck, on a course that could match Lambda in less than five years.
Alter that there was no problem. The drone’s matter receiver was put to work giving birth to automatic tools, hull sections, drive units, instruments, finally people. The tools went to work, assembling the hull sections, installing the drives, making room for the people. What had been a tiny kick-ram, no bigger than Earth’s early Apollo capsule, was transformed and expanded into a thousand-metre vessel with room for a crew of several hundred.
There was, to be sure, one problem.
The rebuilt T’Worlie ship, now named Aurora, was big; but it needed to be big. It did not possess a great deal of surplus mass.
The ship was driven by the sequential explosion of hydrogen fusion charges, directional in a cone-shaped blast against a great battering plate at its base. Not much of the ionizing radiation from the fusion explosions seeped through the base plate, but enough did so that the members of the crew were constantly bathed in it.
T’Worlie and Sheliaks, purchased people and Boaty-bits, robots and humans - all responded to this in their individual and idiosyncratic racial ways. But few complex chemical or electronic processes can operate without damage in the presence of ionizing radiation. It didn’t matter who they were. In the long run it came to much the same for all of them. They died.
Pertin and the chimp scrambled to the corridor entrance and peered out. The vinegary T’Worlie smell was strong now, and they could hear the sounds of something happening outside: a puncture-tyre hiss, a faint high-pitched singing.
A circus procession was sailing towards them down the centre of the corridor. First was a T’Worlie, a bat’s head on butterfly body, no bigger than a pigeon but strong enough to be dragging with it a kitten-sized furry creature with enormous saucer eyes as it flew with powerful strokes of its green-spotted filmy wings. Behind the T’Worlie and the being it carried was a glittering cloud of steel-blue particles, like a swarm of gnats in the sun; and behind them, coming fast but decelerating strongly because of its mass, the square-edged form of a Scorpian robot, all fore jets pumping reaction mass.
The T’Worlie made its shrill whistling sounds, and the Pmal translator on Pertin’s shoulder rattled into life. “I identify you as a Pertin,” it said with mechanical precision. “I propose you transfer at once to high-G accommodations suitable to your structure, mode urgent.”
“Why, Nimmie!" cried Ben James, suddenly, inexplicably, foolishly glad. “It’s good to see you.”
The T’Worlie braked with its filmy wings, and the five pattered eyes studied Pertin. “Verify your statement of identity” the Pmal translator rattled in his ear. “Query implications. Request clarification.”
“Why, it’s me, Ben Ch— Ben James Pertin. From Sun One. Why, just yesterday I saw you in the social concourse, remember?” But he stopped; this copy of the T’Worlie he had known would not remember.
The T’Worlie hesitated. It was some Nimmie or other, Pertin was sure; the key to recognizing T’Worlies was not the five eyes, or the small sphincter mouth with its cat’s-whisker vibrissae, but the patterns on the wings. Green spots predominating on a pale yellow background; five of the bigger spots arranged in a sort of wobbly letter W, like the constellation Cassiopeia from Earth; yes, it was Nimmie, all rights Pertin knew. But perhaps a Nimmie he had never met, in some different line of descent.
The vinegary smell deepened; it was a sign of polite cogitation in a T’Worlie, like a human being’s Hmmm. But Nimmie did not respond exactly. He was distracted by the swarm of tiny beings, who swept into the tachyon transport room, swirled around Pertin and the chimp and re-formed under the T’Worlie’s wings.
The kitten-like creature spoke, with a voice like a purr. The translator rendered it as: “No time kidding around, get hell out!”
And the T’Worlie concurred:
"Mode urgent. Accept transportation via robot. Your physical safety at risk!”
Doc Chimp chattered: I told you I wasn’t going to like this place, Ben James. It isn’t safe. Of course, I’m only a monkey, so it doesn’t matter much about me. It’s you I worry about.”
"You’re an ape,” Pertin corrected automatically, his brain concentrating on what the T’Worlie had said.
“Sure, but an ape that knows what isn’t safe. Come on, Ben James! Let’s do like Bat-Ears says and split!”
Suddenly, the decision was taken from Pertin. The Scorpian robot hissed slowly by, still decelerating, came to a stop, reversed itself and began to pick up momentum for the return. And as it passed Pertin and Doc Chimp it simply caught them up, each under a silvery tentacle, and bore them away. In reverse order the procession steamed away: first the robot with the two terrestrial primates, then the swarm of bit-creatures, then the T’Worlie and its passenger.
The probe was powered by huge nuclear thrusters; the power was only off for short periods, long enough to permit instrument readings or other work that could not be carried on during deceleration times, and the rest of the time the entire environment suffered under a surging uneven pulsing drive that averaged nearly seven gravities.
The welcoming-and-transport committee barely got them to a place of refuge before the thrusters started again. The Boaty-Bits had darted away at the first warning white-noise blast; they could not operate at all under thrust and had to find safety lest they be stepped on. The T’Worlie and his passenger were next to go, leaving only the robot to see to tucking Pertin and Doc Chimp in. The robot had no particular objection to high gravity - Pertin had noticed that on the trip from the tachyon chamber; when the robot had to change direction it simply braced itself with a few of the steel-coil tentacles, stopped against whatever was in the way and pushed off in another direction. The sensation for Pertin was like being tossed around at the end of a cracking whip, but he survived it.
The thrusting started before the robot had finished sealing their cocoons, and it was even worse than the ride. The cocoons, meant to protect them against the thrust, were tailor-made to their dimensions, equipped with the best of springing devices and every comfort. But there was no such thing as antigravity, and that was what was needed.
The robot tarried for a moment. It could no longer jet about, but its tentacles held it easily off the floor, octopus-like. As the thrusts came the appendages gave gently, then returned to position.
The robot seemed to be trying to communicate. Pertin, looking out of the cocoon faceplate, shrugged and spread his hands. One Scorpian looked like another, but if this one had come from Sun One it might recognize the human gesture. The trouble was, there was no way to tell whether it was responding to it.