"Bella didn't seem able to help herself," said Quarla Snow. "She seemed to want to go right on—to her own destruction—or to something she feared even more."
"Like those fools in my ship," rapped General Wheeler. "Is that where the Starchild was? In that Reef?"
Quarla Snow hesitated. "I don't know. Truly, General Wheeler, I don't know what I saw in the Reef. I know that I saw a great many things that weren't there."
"Illusions?" the general demanded. "You were hallucinating?"
She nodded uncertainly. "Yes . . . No. I don't know. I only know I saw things that couldn't have been there. One of them was Harry Hickson, and I knew he was dead. Another was Colonel Zafar. And another —why, Boysie, one of them was you."
They were deep in the core of Reef Whirlpool now. The spaceling's frenzy grew. They were long past the outer rim of rock where the pyropods nested, but there was something ahead that terrified Bella more than the tunneled nests of the beasts.
"It's all right, honey," said the voice of her father in her ear.
She cried out and stared around her. He was not there. No one was there, inside the tiny envelope of air the spaceling carried with them as they fled through dead, airless space.
"Go on, darling," said another voice. It was the voice of the man she had just seen disappear in a whirlpool of light, the man she was seeking, Boysie Gann.
And a third voice: "Quarla, girl! Don't hang back now!" And that was the voice that terrified her most of all, for she knew it, though she had not heard it in a long time and knew its owner was dead. It was the voice of Harry Hickson.
Illusion?
It had to be illusion. Hickson was dead. No one was there—no one in sight, and no possibility that someone could be lurking out of sight, beyond Bella's envelope of air. For outside that elastic sphere there was nothing to carry a voice's sound.
Yet that illusion stayed with her. "Don't fret about pyropods, girl," advised the voice, slow, rough, kind—Harry Hickson's own, she was sure of it. "Get on with it! We're waiting for you."
She remembered some words the dying Colonel Zafar had said: ". . . mind trap . . . beware your heart's desire . . ." There was a warning there.
But she could not take caution from the warning; will she, nill she, the spaceling was carrying her deeper and deeper into Reef Whirlpool, with the gleam of lesser reeflets darting past them as they flew, glittering diamond fungi, luminous blue polygons, jungles of incandescent wire, glowing nightmare worldlets for which she could find no name.
And then they were at what she knew was the core.
A great ship swung emptily about, huge as the whole Reef of Freeha-ven, giant, lethal weapons staring out of open ports. It was in free orbit at the heart of Reef Whirlpool. Its weapons were unmanned. Its drives were silent.
"Great Plan!" shouted Machine General Wheeler, wild with excitement. "The Togethership! It had to be the Togethership!"
Quarla Snow looked at him, faintly puzzled. "That was the name it bore, yes. Your ship, General?"
The general cackled with glee. "It is now! My ship—my Machine that's been locked in its holds—and my worlds, as soon as I reach it! You'll take me there, woman. You'll lead me to the Togethership! When I've made myself the master of the Planning Machine it carries I'll be back here on the Plan Worlds. Not just a general—not even a Planner— I'll rule the Machine itself! I'll—" He broke off, staring at Boysie Gann. "What's the matter?" he rapped.
Gann said, "How do you propose to reach it, General?"
The general's face darkened. He scowled at the screen, where his cruiser, now hopelessly beyond his reach, seemed to be dodging around the great solar flare that had developed in the moments while they were watching.
"Go on," he growled. "I'll find a way. I'll get the Togethership, and then. . . Never mind! Go on."
Around that great battlecraft of the Plan, painted dead black for camouflage in space, studded with laser scopes and bristling with missile launchers, there was a queer golden mist.
Quarla looked, and looked again. It was like a fog of liquid gold. Like a golden cloud.
Impossible that there should be a cloud in space, even here. Yet she saw it. And at its heart was a great golden sphere, larger and brighter than the elfin Reefs, more perfectly round.
Like a laser burst hurtling to a target, the spaceling drove toward it. Quarla cried out in terror, for as they raced toward it its surface seemed to lift to meet them. A bulge appeared and grew, became a tentacle reaching toward them. And the phantom voice of Harry Hickson said roughly, "Quarla, honey! Don't be scared. Come on!"
She could not have stopped if she had tried. Bella was out of control.
The voice was surely illusion, yet Quarla found it reassuring. Her horror ebbed. Queerly detached, she watched the bulge on the golden surface swell and divide into three parts. Each stretched out until it became a bright golden snake. She watched them coil toward her. . .
They struck.
Hot yellow coils whipped and tightened around her.
Yet there was no pain. There was even less fear. The living ropes of gold hauled her in like a hooked trout, down to that golden sphere, and her calm and detachment grew. Even the spaceling had lost all of its fear. Nestling into the hot, contracting coils, Bella purred like a huge kitten. She was drowsy.
Quarla was drowsy too. She thought she heard Harry Hickson speaking to her again—calmly but urgently—telling her things of great importance. You must go, child, he seemed to say, you must go to this place and do that thing. You must avoid these. Then you must return here . . .
It was greatly soothing to hear his calm, wise voice. Quarla Snow slept.
She slept, and time passed. . . .
"And," she said, "when I woke up, I knew what I must do. I had to come here and fetch you. All of you. He wants you to come to him."
General Wheeler rasped, "The Starchild! He's the one you mean, eh?"
But she was shaking her head obstinately. "I don't know that. I only know what I must do. Only"—her expression became worried—"the men were here and they were afraid of me. They locked me up. They would not listen."
Sister Delta Four sang, "Major Gann. General Wheeler. Miss Snow. Have you observed the screen?"
They turned as one, startled, staring at the screen.
Up there hung the Sun. The bright prominence that had grown so swiftly was huger still. It overhung the shape of the fleeing Plan cruiser with the three men who should have been dead—overhung it like a crested wave, like the hood of a striking cobra.
And like a snake it was striking.
The Plan cruiser had changed direction—too late. Slow though the great, jetting tongue of flame seemed in the screen, its movement was miles per second. Twist and turn though it would, the cruiser could not escape. The prominence touched it.
The tiny black shape disappeared.
Boysie Gann found himself shaking, heard the metallic, monotonous steady cursing of the general by his side. The cruiser had been swept out of space. Slowly the incredible tongue of flame began to fall back toward the mottled surface of its star, the Sun.
The general recovered himself first. The coppery spikes of his hair, his flat bronze features, his whole expression showed resolution. "All right," he said. "We don't have to worry about trying to get that ship back any more. It's gone. Question is, how do we get out of here? Second question, how do we then get to the Reefs—and the Togethership?"
Sister Delta Four sang proudly, "There will be no difficulty in that. The Machine has said that the gateway to the Togethership is to be found here."