But didn't crawl anywhere, because an unfamiliar voice in his ear was speaking to him. "You are Stan Avery, aren't you? Don't go any farther. We need to talk."
Stan looked around, saw no one, hazarded a guess. "Is that you, Raafat?"
"No. Who is Raafat? In any case I am not he. I am Marc Antony, formerly your chef and now"—there was a hint of humor in the voice— "perhaps your rescuer. That is, with some assistance from yourself."
Then everything went quickly. The last bit of the climb was the hardest. It was also the shortest, though, and if the climber didn't worry about more scratches and scrapes—and now had no fear of the weapon that had killed Geoffrey; Marc Antony had disabled it—it could go quickly. By the time he reached the door Marc Antony had opened it. "Sit down by those knurled wheels," he commanded. "Sorry about the perch, but you won't have to be there long. Now, the first thing you have to do ..."
And Stan did as ordered, setting the smaller knobs on the right side just so, then the ones on the left side moved just a smidgen, then this, then that, then quickly this other—
It all worked out just as Marc decreed. The spacecraft lifted. It slid gracefully through the air to the encampment, touched lightly down on the greensward, and there they were.
The first captive to see the ship coming down for them shouted so loudly that everyone was awake and yelling with excitement by the time it touched down, a few meters from the lake shore. Then it was simple. Everyone began boarding at once. There was nothing to pack, nothing that anyone wanted to take away from the planet of Arabella.
Achiever was the first aboard, twitching with excitement as he saw his ship's controls again. Salt was next, but not by herself. She was shepherding Grace and the brightest of the Old Ones, the youth named Pony, as between the two of them they were helping Estrella aboard.
Stan spent the next few minutes hugging and being hugged. When the last of the Old Ones, grumbling and belching, came aboard the ship Achiever—already perched at the pilot's seat, his hands already on the controls—called impatiently to Marc Antony, "Is proper time for departure, I expect?"
"One moment," Marc Antony commanded. He indicated one of Wan's handling machines, stilting down the slope. It bore eight or ten storage fans. "Bring them aboard," he ordered. "Then we can leave."
Stan had been waiting for that moment. "Where to? Do you know where the nearest civilized planet is? I mean really civilized, with a good hospital and everything?"
"I do not think the matter is that urgent, Stan. Estrella looks reasonably well to me. I prefer to return to the Core."
Stan looked baffled. "But—Oh, I see! It hadn't gone off before you left, so you don't know. Look, Marc. I wouldn't guarantee there's anything left of the Core. Wan left orders to blow up the star anyway."
That got Marc Antony's full attention. "Explain that," he ordered.
"What's to explain? Before Wan left the Core he ordered one of his people—Orbis? Some name like that—to give them enough time to get away, and then fire it off. This Orbis sounded like a real nut. He wanted—"
"How long a time?" Marc demanded.
"Oh, I don't know. Not long."
Grace cut in. "It was twenty-four hours. DeVon Washington told me."
Surprisingly, Stan saw the first smile he had ever seen on Marc Antony's face. "Twenty-four hours," he said. "Core time, you mean. That is twenty-four hours multiplied by the 40,000-to-l differential. No, we're in no hurry, Stan Avery. No hurry at all."
22
The Rescue
I
I was not unmoved by Gelle-Klara Moynlin's passionate entreaties. I shared her impatience with the pusillanimous behavior of the Heechee. There is such a thing as being too unremittingly logical, and besides the Stored Minds had had no right to make decisions for human beings.
However, it was true that the danger to Planetless Very Large White Very Hot Star overrode any personal considerations. My primary efforts, therefore, had to be directed to neutralizing that menace.
It is embarrassing to me to admit my efforts did not succeed.
The difficulty was in locating the torpedo that carried the star-bursting device. To do so required sorting through every spacecraft trail that had ever approached that star, identifying the approaches and departures for every one of them until the one which approached the star but did not depart again was found. That, of course, would be the one we sought. In principle it was quite a simple task, though arduous. When I displayed the trails for my analysis there were a much larger number of them than I had anticipated.
While I was considering that matter, Klara's shipmind called.
I heard them out but made no promises. Then, when I returned to my own surround, I came to a decision. I summoned one of the high-speed torpedoes, and while waiting for its arrival gave my sous-chefs new instructions. No one of them was anywhere near as able as myself, to be sure. But there were 293 of them and, collectively, they possessed great analytical power.
Diverting them away from their usual tasks meant that many clients would be getting a restricted menu for a time, but I saw no choice.
Then I took off.
It was a tedious flight, but not a challenging one. I had had no difficulty in tracking Wan's ship-traces to his hideout. Its identity was not a surprise to me. There is a saying I have heard, though I was never given the source—most likely Plato, or George Washington, or some other ancient political person: "The dog returns to his vomit." Wan had. Its name was Arabella.
Truthfully, I had rather expected that would be the case. Even for an organic, Wan was not particularly inventive.
After I had left my vessel in a forced orbit I sought for and quickly found Achiever's ship. It sat on top of a smallish mountain, below which lay the little valley where the captives were held.
It was a nuisance that Wan had removed the servomodule, thus deprogramming the ship so that no nonmaterial person could fly it anymore. I suppose he did that because he was afraid that, given a chance, some of his nonmaterial people would get bored with life on Arabella and fly off with it. But with the help of one of the organics—it was that young Turkish boy that Klara had been concerned about, Stan Avery, the one who had excluded me from his residence for a time—I flew the ship to the valley. The captives seemed to be in good shape, or as good shape as organics ever are in, so I opened the ship's doors to them. While they were boarding everyone my presence was not required, so I attended to the more important business.
Dealing with Wan presented no real difficulties. I easily identified the collection of rabbit warrens tunneled into the mountain that Wan and his servants had occupied. It had not changed much since my last visit, except, of course, that everything that could decay had done so. (Not a surprise. By Outside standards, that had been a seriously long time ago.) Most of the tunnels were no longer in physical use, since there were no longer any organics with his company. But Wan did have to have a physical place to store their data fans, and that too was easy to locate.
Wan's people were all there, waiting for me as I entered the storage chamber—rather unimaginatively protected with bars and locks, but with nothing that could keep out even the feeblest AI. And his entire company of machine-stored servants were deployed around the rack of storage fans that held their—well, I've heard organics call them their "souls." Most of them stood silently, looking as though they wished they were somewhere else. One, however, seemed pugnacious.