Molly Zaldivar had been here, he was sure of that. But she was here no longer.
Where had she gone?
The nervous sigh of the cloud citizen interrupted him. "These energies," it whispered despairingly, "they are ionizing my gases, interfering with my particulate control. I must return to the surface."
"Go ahead," said Quam absently.
"Perhaps we should do the same," bayed the predator in the back seat. "This is dangerous!"
"In a minute," said Andy Quam. He was observing, remembering, analyzing. Dispassionately he realized, with a small surface part of his brain, that from the moment Molly Zaldivar's message had reached him, galaxies away, he had been allowing his love and his emotions to drive him. His carefully trained reasoning faculties, the trait of analysis and synthesis which was so basic a part of his indoctrination as a monitor, had been ignored.
But now he was using them again, and a picture was unfolding under his eyes, Cliff Hawk, rebel, adventurer, skilled transcience expert. The Reefer, callous misogynist. The two of them together in this place, given these energies, the months and even years of time when they had been left unsupervised.
It was all quite logical, he noted abstractly. Hawk's scientific hunger; the Reefer's loathing for humanity and, above all, the fusorian brotherhood; the people, the place, the facilities. They had used them to create a rogue, and in return the rogue had thrust them aside, or killed them, or ignored them.
But it had not ignored Molly Zaldivar.
The rogue was no longer present; its energies would have been detected by any of the citizens in the party. It had gone. And wherever it had gone, Quamodian felt certain, there would be Molly Zaldivar as well.
The girl monitor said hesitantly, "Andy. I mean, Monitor Quamodian . .
"Eh? What is it?"
"Perhaps the other citizens are right. I—I don't like the look of this place."
Quamodian frowned. Then a fearsome suspicion crossed his mind. "Clothilde! What was it the cloud said?"
"You mean the cit. . ."
"Yes! About the energies!"
"Why, it said they were ionizing gases. It has returned to the open air."
"Flyer!" cried Andy Quam. "Analyze those radiations! Quickly!"
The flyer said sulkily, "Thought you'd never ask. Sustained lethality, eight times permissible levels. Safe period at this distance, one hour. We have now been exposed to them for nineteen minutes, and I was going to give a warning alert in sixty seconds."
"Get us out of here!" ordered Andy Quam. "Fast!"
The flyer bucked, spun, drove upward toward the tunnel. Quamodian stared out the viewplate. The glowing deadly sphere of light flashed past his field of vision, then the tight spiral of the tunnel walls; but he did not see them.
Andy Quam was seeing something quite different, and far worse.
The radiation from that glittering mist of nuclear fire that had flamed for ages in the spherical cave was deadly.
The flyer's instruments had measured its intensity. They were reliable. Quamodian had installed and checked them himself. If they said that the maximum safe dose was one hour, then there was no question, give or take a minute or so, allowing for possible error.
It was not Quamodian's own safety that concerned him, nor Monitor Clothilde Kwai Kwich's, nor the boy's.
How long had Molly Zaldivar been held prisoner in that cave, soaking in those deadly rays?
Quamodian's calculation could be little more than a guess. But it was eighteen hours or more since she had been stolen from the little bedroom of Rufe's house. It was not sensible to suppose that less than half of that time had been spent in the cave.
And if it was in fact true that she had been there that long, or anything close to that long, Molly Zaldivar was already as good as dead.
24
They burst out into the cold night air. And even in his fear and anguish Andy Quam stared incredulously at the sky.
Overhead lay a lacy net of blue and violet fire. Great pale slow lightnings of color writhed through the heavens, soundlessly and immense; they were so bright that trees cast shadows on the rocky hillside, blurred shadows of color that moved with the supple shifting of the aurora.
The carnivorous citizen thrust its long muzzle forward, past Quamo-dian's cheek. He felt its hot, faintly fishy breath on his ear as it whined softly, "This spectacle does not appear usual. Can you explain it?"
Quamodian said simply, "I think our own sun has gone rogue. I don't know why."
"But that's impossible," cried the girl. "Sol is not an intellectic body! No trace of volition has ever been detected!"
Quamodian spread his hands, indicating the violence of the aurora. "Then you explain it," he said.
The distant chorus of the grass-green spirals chimed in, "We have recorded reflected intensity of stellar emissions. They have approximately doubled. Three conjectures: One, that this star is prenova; improbable. Two, that previous soundings to determine intellect in this star have been in error; improbable. Three, that it has acquired volition."
"You mean it's gone rogue?" the girl demanded. "What probability do you give that?"
"No assessment," chanted the spirals. "No known data for comparison."
"Report to Almalik!" ordered the girl. "You, citizen! You have transcience facilities!"
But the spirals replied, "Our signals from Almalik are disordered. We cannot comprehend their meaning. Nor can we receive acknowledgment of our own reports."
Quamodian had had enough. "Forget Almalik!" he ordered. "And never mind about the sun, either; we can worry about that later. Right now I'm worried about a girl. A human girl named Molly Zaldivar. Perhaps she is somewhere nearby, with or without the rogue intellect. Can any of you detect her?"
Silence.
"Try!" roared Andy Quam. Then, sulkily, the predator citizen lifted its muzzle.
"For some time now," it bayed softly, the transcience receptor in Quamodian's ears converting it into words he could understand, "I have registered the presence of quarry on that far hill."
"Quarry?"
"An ancestral trait," the citizen explained. "It is a particular refinement of chemosampling in ambient air. What you call the sense of smell. But—is not Senior Monitor Kwai Kwich 'human girl' and are not you 'human male,' Monitor Quamodian?"
"Certainly! What about it?"
"Then this quarry cannot be what you seek. It is male. And it is severely injured."
They skimmed over the pitted road, dropped toward the hillside where the carnivore citizen had scented a man. Its sense of smell had not been in error.
The man was the Reefer, huddled against the trunk of a bent evergreen tree. He looked gray and ill in the flickering colored fights of the aurora. One arm, badly swollen, was in a sling. He gazed up at the flyer apathetically as Quamodian jumped out.
"I want a word with you," Andy Quam shouted.
The Reefer growled hoarsely, "Make it short. I'm a sick man."
"Where is the rogue? Where is Molly Zaldivar?"
The Reefer shifted his weight awkwardly, flinching from the movement of his arm. "Gone. I don't know where."
"When?"
The Reefer shook his head wearily. Pale with pain, he pulled a short black stick from his pocket, gnawed the end off it and began chewing grimly. "A root that grows on the reefs," he said, his voice almost inaudible. "Filthy to chew, I guess, but it eases pain. It has always been my personal substitute for Almalik. When did the rogue go? I don't know. It dumped me here this afternoon. Couple hours ago something went on over there—" he gestured weakly at the hill that lay over the cave, "and I saw something bright in the sky."
"The aurora?" Quamodian demanded,
"No! That's been going on since dark. This was something else. I think—" his voice trailed off; he shook himself and finished, "I think the rogue is out in space. Maybe took the girl with him."