"Solo!" He tried to force his stiffened face into a grin. "It's great luck you turned up just now, because Molly Zaldivar is desperate for your expert aid. If you'll read her message . . ."
"Forget it!" Scott's gray claw slapped carelessly at Molly's transfac tape. "Come out of this cold, so we can talk."
But Quamodian hung back, his stomach turned by one glimpse of the gloomy space beyond the haggard man and the inner valve. Filthy rags and torn paper. Tumbled piles of broken scientific instruments. Empty plastic food containers. Dust and rust and human dung.
"What's all this?" He couldn't help shivering. "I—I hardly knew you, Solo. What has happened to you?"
"I suppose I am a changed man." Scott's quiet voice seemed almost rational. "What happened is that I learned something. I learned the message I bring to you."
"Whatever happened, it's great good luck you came along." Quamodian raised his voice to hide revulsion. "Molly says the Companions back on Earth don't believe in rogue stars. . ."
"They're right." The gray cowl nodded solemnly. "The rogues are a myth—that's something I learned." The gaunt man bent nearer, and Quamodian tried not to shrink from his breath. "Andy, the great thing I learned is that we human beings have always followed a false philosophy of life."
The words seemed commonplace, but Scott's hollow voice gave them a hypnotic power that Quamodian knew he would never forget.
"We tried to make competition the basic law of being. I guess we came to make that blunder because our forefathers had lived by hunting for too many million years, killing for survival. Anyhow, Andy, the rogue star is the mythic ideal of our killer kind. The perfect individual. Absolutely free. Omnipotent as anything. Immortal as the universe. Nothing anywhere can curb a rogue star."
"I know." Quamodian nodded uneasily. "That's why I'm afraid . . ."
"The rogue was once my own ideal." The gaunt man ignored the interruption. "Hawk's, too, I should imagine. When I came here to set up the stellar section, I was competing with everybody else in my field of science. I was a man and that was the game. I had to challenge the best brains from all the galaxies, gathered here at Exion. I had to beat the robots, all linked together in their transflex webs, sharing memory banks and programs that united them into a single monstrous mind. I had to match all the multiple citizens, pooling their logical processes as the robots did. I had to compete with all my fellow human beings who had given up their individual freedom for symbiotic union with the fu-sorians." The gray cowl tossed. "That was the rogue ideal, which pitted me against Cliff Hawk, and led me out to the runaway star he found."
"Solo, what happened there?"
"I found Hawk's so-called rogue." Scorn chilled the grating voice. "No rogue at all. A sentient sun—but born so far from all the galaxies that it had never encountered another intelligence. A feeble thing, ignorant and afraid. In flight from the whole universe. Its untrained mind was weaker than my own. It was afraid of me!"
He cackled into shrill laughter that bent him double and became a paroxysm of asthmatic wheezing. Quamodian caught his bony arm to steady him, and peered uncomfortably into his dark lair beyond the valve.
"That was my lesson," Scott gasped when he could speak. "I never came back to the stellar section, because I've learned a higher principle. The law of association. That's the law that drew the first cells of life together to begin the evolution of man. The same law the plants obey when they exhale oxygen for men to breathe, and the law we obey when we exhale carbon dioxide for them. That's the law that ties men into families and clans and nations. Andy, that's the same universal law that is now knitting men and fusorians and sentient stars into the symbiotic citizen called Cygnus."
"Maybe so," Quamodian muttered. "But what has this to do with my trip to Earth. . ."
"Forget the Earth." Scott's hoarse voice had become a croaking chant. "Forget Cliff Hawk and Molly Zaldivar. Forget all the false concerns of your misguided self and all the worthless goals you've been striving for. Forget the fool's law of competition. Try association."
Quamodian was edging warily backward.
"Listen, Andy." Scott's cold claws gripped his shoulder. "I've given up the rogue ideal. I'm telling the association story. That's my message for you. I beg you to join us in the universal fellowship of Cygnus."
Swept with a sudden panic, Quamodian twisted free. He retreated to the outer valve and stopped there, frowning, grasping for sanity. "I guess everybody has to make his own terms with society," he said at last. "But I don't want symbiosis. As a Companion of the Star, I'm a useful citizen. All I really need is Molly Zaldivar . . ."
His voice caught when he saw the gray claws on that thin gold blade. He dodged back to get a breath of clean air.
"Watch it, Scott!" he gasped. "Don't touch me."
"My touch is eternal life." Scott's flat, bright stare and his hollow voice held no trace of warmth or reason. "This syringe is loaded with symbiotic fusorians." His bloodless fist poised the glowing point. "A life-form older than our galaxy. Old enough to know the law of association. Flowing in your blood, the microscopic symbiotes will keep your body new. They'll mesh your mind with all of theirs, and with many billion human symbiotes, and with the sentient suns."
"Hold on, Scott!" Quamodian raised his empty hands and tried to calm his voice. "I can't quite imagine what you're up to. But I do know the citizen Cygnus—my own parents belong. I know that it allows no evangelism. People must ask to join. So I know you're somehow phony." He peered at the gaunt man. "If Molly didn't want you . . ."
"Let's forget our lonely selves," Scott was creaking. "Let's rejoice in everlasting union . . ."
As he spoke, the gold needle jabbed. Quamodian grabbed his sticklike wrist and felt a surge of metal force beneath the dirty robe. The needle quivered overhead, dripping yellow drops. Savage power forced it slowly downward.
Quamodian gasped for breath and caught a nauseating reek. He lunged for open air. The gray robe tripped him. Falling against the wall of the lock, he clung to that twisting stick, fought it off his throat.
"Forget the rogue!" Scott was wheezing. "Forget. . ."
His mad power died, and his rattling voice. The stick-wrist bent with a brittle crack. The lank frame slid down inside the dirty robe. Drops of gold fire spurted from the broken needle driven through the cowl.
Quamodian looked once, and staggered out into the icy wind. Hovering near, the flyer picked him up and carried him back to the edge of the ramp before the robot guardians arrived. He lay gratefully back in his seat for a long time, shivering in the flyer's warmth and gasping for good air, before he started asking questions.
"The guardians are unable to discover how Scott survived his encounter with the rogue star," the flyer informed him then. "They cannot determine how he got back to Exion Four, or why he landed here. But they report that he is dead."
"I guess—" Quamodian gulped uneasily. "I guess I killed him."
"The guardians observed the incident," the flyer said. "They saw him fall against the hypodermic needle which pierced his throat and caused his death. They will file no charge against you."
"How could the needle kill him?" Quamodian asked. "If it contained benign fusorians?"
"But it didn't," the flyer said. "The luminescent fusorians in the syringe are not symbiotic. They are a related type, found in the reefs of space, which act as a virulent toxin in the blood of your species. The guardians infer that Scott came here to murder you."
"Why?" Quamodian shivered again. "Why me?"
"The guardians lack adequate files on the irrational patterns of self-destruction prevalent among your species," the flyer droned. "They can only answer your question with another. Who has any reason to stop your trip to Earth?"