The pinkly glowing cloud citizen was worst damaged of the party. Little cloudlets of his material had been detached; some were still floating after him, rejoining the central mass of his being; others were hopelessly lost in the crush behind them. The grass-green spirals had merely tightened their orbits, maintaining exact spacing and speeds.
"All right," said Andy Quam. "Let's go!"
But a great shout from the dome behind them made them turn.
Every citizen, warm-blooded or cold, humanoid or amorphous, was staring upward, through the crystal ceiling of the dome, with ten thousand thousand eyes, photoreceptors, radar scanners, sensors of every description.
There, streaked like a child's bright daub on the calm blue skies of Kaymar, hung the bright and glittering globe of the invading rogue star. Lightnings played about its blazing body as it shot across the sky, its motion visible even though its distance was many millions of miles.
Andy Quam tore his eyes away. "Come on," he muttered. "We've got even less time than I thought".
The Grand Hall of the Companions of the Star was empty. The thirteen suns of Almalik blazed down from the ceiling on an auditorium that could seat thousands, and now held no one at all.
Senior Monitor Clothilde Kwai Kwich said dolefully, "I can't understand. I thought here at least we'd find someone who could help . . ."
The chant of the grass-green spirals sounded in Andy Quam's ears: "No indications! No operative functions being performed! This construct not inhabited!"
The boy clutched Quamodian's arm. "But, preacher," he said. "Almalik told us to come here. Didn't he?"
Quamodian said, "He gave us permission. Directly. Yes." He turned, searching the vast room with his eyes. "But perhaps something has happened."
The weary sigh of the cloud citizen whispered: "There exists a large-scale entity which is observing us."
Quamodian flung himself into a chair, trying to think. Time was so short! He had counted on finding the order of Companions of the Star still functioning. Perhaps it had not been realistic, but in his mind he had expected to find the great hall thronged with worshippers, the many offices and administrative sections busy about the endless tasks of Almalik. If he had thought at all, he had thought that a robot monitor of a citizen would have greeted them at the entrance, led them directly to someone in supreme authority, received his information about the rogue —and acted. Acted in time to save this world, and all the worlds of Almalik.
He had not expected that the building would be empty.
The others were waiting quietly for him to act. He realized that, right or wrong, he would have to make the decisions for all of them. And there was less time with every passing clock-tick. . .
He stood up. "All right," he said, "we'll go back to the transflex cube. Perhaps the monitor there can help us."
"Through that mob, preacher? Impossible!" cried the boy.
"Impossible or not, that's what we'll have to do. Unless you have a better idea . . ."
But then, as they turned to leave, a Voice rumbled softly in their ears.
"Wait," it said.
They froze where they stood. The girl looked imploringly at Andy Quam. She did not speak, but her lips formed a word: "Almalik?"
He nodded; and the Voice spoke again:
"Behold," it said, and the great dome lifted on its transflection forces to reveal the splendor of the heavens of Almalik themselves. It was daytime now; the glittering stars that the dome was designed to reveal could not be seen. But the bright smear of the invader was there, blighting the beauty of the calm clouds. And near it in the sky, dropping toward them . . .
"It's Miss Zaldivar!" shouted the boy. "Look, preacher! It's her and the sleeth!"
They were in that great hall for less than a quarter of an hour, and in all that time Quamodian could not afterward remember taking a breath. He was overpowered by the immense majesty of Almalik himself, brooding over them, watching and helping. Even the nearness of the girl he had crossed half a universe to find could not break him free from the spell of that immortal and immense star.
Though what was said was surely catastrophic enough to rouse him to action; for Molly Zaldivar, she said, was dying.
"Dear Andy," she whispered across the vast gulf of the chamber, her voice warm and affectionate in his ears. "No! Don't come any closer to me. I'm charged with radiations, Andy dear—the old ones from the Plan of Man machines, new ones that our little monster-star used to try to save my life. Or to give me life again; because I was dead. Anyway, if you come near me now it will be your death. . ."
Even so, he rose to run toward her; but she stopped him with a gesture. "Please," she whispered. "Now. What was it that you came from Earth to tell?"
He stammered out the story the Reefer had told him, while Clothilde Kwai Kwich and the boy, one on each side of him, stood silent and awed. Molly Zaldivar listened gravely, her face composed though her eyes widened, then danced, as she saw how Clothilde's hand sought his.
Then she said, "Thank you, Andy. You've always been the best friend I could ever hope to have. I. . ."
Her composure almost broke for a moment, but she controlled herself, and smiled. "I don't mind leaving this world much, dear Andy. But I do mind leaving you."
And then she was gone, mounting once more toward the sky on the great, patient back of the sleeth, while the enormous dome of Almalik swung majestically back into place to blot her out.
27
The rogue sensed the fear in that distant watcher, the fear of a father for a threatened son. It thought to call for help, but the distance was a thousand times too far. Even here, its thin thread of sensor had been snapped; it had lost Molly Zaldivar and her sleeth.
It tried to find them again for many picoseconds, but in vain. Some force larger than itself had shut her off, blinded it to her activities. A sense that in a human might have been called foreboding filled the rogue; but it had no time for even meta-emotions; it was driving ever closer to its enemy sun, and it needed all its forces for the task ahead.
The third planet had fallen far behind it now. It flashed through the orbit of the second planet, now hidden from it at inferior conjunction by the expanding white sun. The great white disk grew ahead of it.
Still the star ignores my attack. It refuses to resist. It offers no apology for the attacks it has made on me through its lesser stars. Still it is watching—mocking me . . .
"Monster! Stop for me."
The thin filament of the rogue's probing sensor was alive again, carrying a message for it. The rogue energized its perceptions and saw that Molly Zaldivar was pursuing, racing after it on the black and shining sleeth. There was a power flowing from her that the rogue could not quite recognize, but that made it uneasy, unsure of itself. The feeble human figure of organized matter that was the girl should not have been able to dispose such powers. Not even with the energies the rogue itself had bestowed on her; not when her life was close to an end, and all her accumulated strengths were being disposed at once.
The rogue considered for some nanoseconds the possibility that these forces came from its enemy, Almalik. But it dismissed the possibility. It simply did not matter. Contact was only minutes away. Already the thin solar atmosphere was boiling around it. It did not stop, perhaps could not stop; the gathered mass of its planetary body was plunging too fast to be diverted now.
But it sent a message through its plasma effector, shaking the thin atmosphere that the sleeth carried with it through space. "What do you want, Molly Zaldivar?" its tiny voice piped. "Do you love me now?"