"Orders!" FARLINK'S voice rapped out of the speakers. "The transmission of Replicate 4182, known as Venus, is canceled. A newly detected singularity in the incoming signals has altered the estimate of requirements. Stand by for assignment of replacement."
"Congratulations, Venus," Doc Chimp cried. "That's a last-minute reprieve, if I ever heard one. Wonder who they'll send instead? A Scorpian robot, maybe? A sheliak. Or—"
"Orders," the wall speaker rasped. "The substitute for transmission is required to proceed at once to the tachyon station for replication. He is Replicate 5153, known as Ben Line Pertin."
"Oh, no," Doc Chimp cried.
"Communication of regret," shrilled the T'Worlie, Nammie.
"I'm sony, Ben Line," the silvery girl whispered.
Pertin stood numb. He had not expected it; he did not know how to respond.
"Replicate 5153," FARLINK growled from the wall speakers. "There is the time pressure. Proceed at once for replication!"
"Come on, Ben Line," Doc Chimp said as gently as he knew how, taking one arm. He gestured to Venus, who took the other; and the two of them walked the unresisting Ben Line Pertin along the corridors to the radial shaft that led to the tachyon transmitter. He let them. He felt nothing . . .
Nothing while he was on his way to the transmitter.
Nothing (except the sudden surprising hard metal lips of Venus against his own, just before he went inside) as he entered the transmitter and stood through its silent omniscient scan.
Nothing when he looked around, and realized he was that he who had remained behind.
Nothing, even, while the chimp and the silvery girl escorted him back to the rec room, the T'Worlie fluttering behind. They chattered doubtfully among themselves, then pooled their small quotas of open-choice mass to buy him two more Scotches, doubles. He gulped them down, hardly tasting them. He was still here, as nothing had happened. But he was also there.
And he could never come back.
Later, he was not sure how much later, there was a final message of progress from FARLINK. "The transmission," the speakers rasped, "has been successful. First acknowledgment of arrival has been received, along with samples for environmental analysis. Unfortunately they are not life-sustaining beyond a fairly short period."
There was a small silence before Doc Chimp said, "Well, anyway, Ben Line, congratulations. You arrived."
"I arrived," Ben Line agreed. "And I'm dead."
Down inside the atmosphere of Cuckoo, nearly two hundred million miles away from the orbiter on Cuckoo's far side, the exploring team was practicing its flying skills.
The expedition, so far, was going well. From their altitude, miles above Ground Station One, miles out from the slope of the enormous mountain, even Cuckoo looked almost small—not the great sweep of its surface, to be sure, but the detail on it: tiny trees, winking bright puddle of lake, silvery thread of river. In the air itself were the curious bright clouds that sailed around, each seeking its own level, seeming to drop spores of some bright seedlings; living glowing things that gave Cuckoo almost the only light it had, bar the glow of plants and animals on the surface itself.
They did not know these glowing clouds to be dangerous, but they gave them a wide berth. Anyway, there was plenty of room in the sky. Not only to travel to a destination, but for pleasure too: Valkyrie and Zara and the T'Worlie took joy in doing loops and barrel rolls, soaring far off from the little procession of Scorpian robot, Sirian eye, and husband, as they chugged sedately along, and returning. Zara found herself laughing from sheer physical joy. She weighed so little in Cuckoo's air that it was almost irrelevant whether she was flying head up or down. She followed the piping, frolicking T'Worlie up in a loop. Below her the great sloping flank of the mountain seemed to subside into a plain; then the plain tipped and became a slope that rose in the other direction, then passed out of sight completely as she topped out her loop and began to come down.
In her earplug communicator her husband's voice, faintly amused and faintly annoyed, said "If you three will please stop playing, we'd better stay close together. This is dangerous territory, you know."
Rebuked, Zara flopped over and flailed her wings to get her bearing. The T'Worlie, used to flight, darted back and hung before her, exuding an odor that she would come to recognize as an expression of rueful embarrassment, like a child caught in the cookie jar.
Zara burst out laughing. She caught sight of the silver girl, far overhead, soaring down toward them with great, strong strokes of her wings. Zara cried: "Come on, Val, Nleem! Race you back to the others!" And she let them signal agreement and start their powerful, effortless flight back toward the sober, sedate members of the party. Then she aimed herself headfirst toward the three distant dots, folded her wings except for a tiny web from wrists to hips for control, and activated her pulse- jet. Thrump, thrump, thrump, thrump . . . The radioisotopes poured heat into measured slugs of water, flashed them into steam, expanded them into the pulse- jet, and she arrowed toward the others at a hundred miles an hour, easily passing the gallant but small T'Worlie, catching up with Valkyrie and leaving her behind a thousand meters from the steady three. Stopping was the problem; she shut off the jet and tried to lose speed by zooming sharply up; but in Cuckoo's wan grip the loss to gravity was so small she found herself looping the loop again, involuntarily, before, laughing and dizzy, she was properly back in line with the rest of the party. '
Her husband, in line ahead of her, turned to look disapprovingly at her over his shoulder. "About time you got here," he grumbled.
Zara, who was concentrating on an even, rippling flow of her wings, gave him a docile, absentminded smile. What a butterball he was, she thought dispassionately; even in the stretched-out edited version for Cuckoo, his round body and pipestem legs made him look like a stork. "The Scorpian's getting a strong signal from one of the transponders," Jon added. "That means we are getting near one of our objectives— probably a downed exploring ship."
"How nice," said Zara, winking at the silver girl.
Valkyrie did not wink back; her copy of Earthly human anatomy was not close enough for that. But Zara could hear her chuckle.
" Three places ahead of her in line, the Sirian eye raised itself out of the file on its crackling spread of electric forces, and turned to confront her. It had no expression, but she felt reproof in its stare. The tiny sphincter mouth, surrounded by the forty crablike little legs, worked convulsively. Zara could hear no sound from it; Sirians used sound for communication, but the frequencies were far higher than Man's; twenty thousand Hertz was a low basso-profundo note for them. But the Pmal caught it, and rapped reprovingly in her ear: "Estimate: Your use of jet propulsion has increased our risk. Assumption: Such sounds in past have attracted predators. Validation: Air-palping reveals several unidentified traces moving toward us at three hundred and seventeen degrees right ascension, minus six degrees declination."
"Confirmed," the Scorpian robot stated without passion. It did not speak aloud at all. Its talk circuits used radio waves, but the Pmals picked up and faithfully translated the messages.
Zara pressed her elbows into her sides and felt herself begin to drop. It was not what she had intended, but it was better than floundering around while she tried to adjust her telescopic visor. She caught a glimpse of something at the indicated position, realized she was falling farther behind and below the others than she wanted, flapped herself back into position and at last got a clear look at what the Sirian had reported.
There were three of them, all right. But of what? A body gleaming like metallic copper; stubby wings that shone silver at the tips; great claws that were coming out of concealment from under the creatures' body, in anticipation of combat.