And when the rogue next turned its attention to the girl she was gone.
The rogue was quick to search for her, and find her. She was in flight.
Mounted on the sleek black shoulders of the sleeth, veiled in its transflection fields, she was climbing away from the rogue planet's frigid skin of snow, flying toward the inner planets of that great white star toward which the planet was plunging.
The rogue thrust out a darting arm of plasma, of its own electrons meshed in transcience forces. It reached to overtake her, pierced effortlessly the sleeth's transflection shield, shook her small sphere of air with an effector.
"Where are you going, Molly Zaldivar?" the air screamed shrilly in her ear.
She turned her head to look at the rogue's shining plasma finger, but she did not answer. The rogue paused, considering. There was strangeness here. Strange that to the rogue she seemed so very lovely. The redder suns of Almalik struck red fire from her hair; the blue suns burned violet in her eyes. But why should these things matter? the rogue asked itself, interested and curious. Why should the remembered and absorbed thought patterns of the organized matter called Cliff Hawk exert so powerful an influence on it still? The rogue made the air shriek in a piercing whisper again: "I love you, Molly Zaldivar. Once I was tinier than you, so small you could not see me; now I am so huge you are no more than a fleck of dust. We have never been akin, and I see no bridge for love between us—but I love you!"
"You're insane, monster," she said at last. But her eyes were gentle.
The rogue pondered. "Where are you going?" it demanded again.
"I am flying to the inhabited planets of Almalik. On Kaymak they will deal with you—once I warn them."
"Do you hate me, Molly Zaldivar?"
The girl frowned at its bright sensor and shook her head. "You can't help what you are."
The rogue scanned all her matter for the cold green blaze of fury; it was absent. Eagerly it asked, "Then do you love me now?"
Her face crinkled oddly about the eyes, the skin tawny gold beneath Almalik's far suns. "How could I? I am human—you a monster!" And her violet eyes were damp as they peered at the rogue's shining sensor.
"I love you . . ."
"Insane!" sobbed the girl. And then, "Perhaps I pity you, because you are so sadly deformed, because all your power is thrown away." She shook her head vigorously, the colored lights of Almalik dancing in her hair. "I'm sorry for you!"
She paused, then said, "If I am in love, I think it must be with little Andy Quam. Monster, I will go back to him. Once I get to the inhabited planets and give my warning—and you are destroyed—I will go to him through a transflex station. But I pity you, monster."
"I will not be destroyed."
"You will be destroyed—unless you kill me first, and keep me from warning the inhabited worlds."
The rogue thought for microseconds. Then at last it shook the air again. "I will not destroy you," the air shrieked. "But I will not be destroyed. Observe! I will kill Almalik before you can warn anyone!"
And it withdrew its plasma arm, as the girl stared wonderingly after.
The rogue flexed its energies, and prepared for the assault.
It tightened the transflection fields that held and moved its planetary mass. The agonized rock of its mantle screamed and grated as it flattened its bare black peaks, compressed its deserts of snow, squeezing itself into a denser projectile. It drove itself toward the blazing sun.
I will die, thought the rogue. So will Almalik.
Tardily, almost carelessly, the congeries of massed beings that made up the total of Almalik took note of the intruder and lifted a careless effector to defend itself.
It was not the white star ahead of the rogue that resisted. That sun lay steadily glowing, ignoring the threat. But from a mighty double sun above it, a golden giant and its immense blue companion spinning close together, a bolt was launched.
The bolt sprang from the inner plasmas of the golden star, and its energies were immense. An enormous leaping snake, thicker than the rogue's own snow-encrusted planetary body, blazed bright as the star itself. It flashed with transflection speed across the void, faster than the rogue could move to evade it.
But it bypassed the rogue, and struck toward Molly Zaldivar.
Even at the planetary distances that already separated them, the rogue could see the red flash of terror dart through her being as she saw that darting coil of golden fire. Help me, monster! she cried; the rogue could hear no words, but the message was clear, and it responded.
It hurled out an arm of its own ions and their linking transcience energies, coiling it into a plasma shield around the girl and the sleeth. But it was not strong enough. The golden arm of Almalik was stronger; it burst through the shielding plasma wall, coiled a net of golden fire around Molly and the sleeth and snatched them away toward that double sun.
The rogue could not help her. But an emotion that it could not identify as savage joy filled all its patterned mass. She called me. She asked my help. If I cannot help her, I still can destroy this near white star of Almalik!
The rogue paused, testing itself, preparing itself to dispose of energies greater than even it had yet employed. It was not strong enough, it calculated coldly. Not yet. It needed to be stronger.
The planet was cold, but at its core it was not yet dead; crushed gelid masses of iron and heavier metals still seethed, not yet congealed into solids, not yet exhausted of radioactivity and heat. From them the rogue devoured energy and strength. Controlled lightnings flashed along its plasma paths. The planetary mass of its body was now no more than a slinger's pebble to it; a weapon, a missile, a way of killing Almalik.
The rogue intensified its driving field until its crushed mountain ranges smoked, and the deserts of snow thawed and bubbled into boiling seas. The deep core shuddered with earthquake shocks; arcs and auroras raged through its reborn air.
The rogue plunged on to shatter the enemy star.
But Almalik was not unprepared.
From the binary sun above, the golden spear of plasma stabbed at the rogue again. It pierced all the shielding fields, burned through its steaming seas, exploded its crust and jarred its heart with seismic waves. The rogue coldly calculated its damage. Much. Not too much. I still can kill Almalik!
The plasma snake recoiled to strike again, and yet again, pocking all the rogue's surface with enormous glowing craters, shattering its being with waves of destruction that the rogue felt as searing pain.
But the rogue would not let itself be destroyed.
It drew on its last immense reserves to increase the power of its transflection shields, holding all the atoms of its shattered planetary mass in a remorseless, destroying grip. Daring—and learning—it even reached out to suck new energies from the plasma snake itself.
Molly Zaldivar and the sleeth were gone now, lost even to the rogue's far-ranging perceptions as the plasma coil drew them back toward some distant planet's surface. Every bit of matter of more than molecular dimensions for many A.U.'s around was gone, drawn into the rogue itself or volatilized by the seething energies employed.
But the rogue was not destroyed. It plunged on to strike the unresisting white sun. It knew the watcher's pride in its wild rebel power, and they both rejoiced.
23
"Monitor Quamodian," said the flyer chattily, "you're not going to hear much with your bare ears. They're talking about you."