"My subordinates won't risk a prediction." She frowned like Molly. "They can't place the rogue in any normal pattern, even for sentient stars. Its power is unlimited. But its motives are incomprehensible. Its sheer intelligence is just about absolute. But its ignorance of other beings—especially of human beings—is nearly total. Its resulting behavior can be appallingly naive, or stunningly clever, or simply insane." She shrugged. "Who knows what to expect?"
Quamodian helped set the terminal controls, which were in a cargo barge buried in the black sand beneath the towers. Clothilde Kwai Kwich gave him a brisk handclasp. He walked back to his waiting flyer and waited for her signal.
She waved her hand. The flyer swam between the entrance towers, into that web of shining wire. He glanced toward that ominous sun, but it had already flickered and dissolved. He was lost again.
Gray spaces roared around him and probing cold sucked away his life. The flyer rocked and spun until he thought the mad rogue had flung them into some more dreadful trap . . .
But then the careening flyer steadied under him. "Prepare to emerge, Mr. Quamodian," it sang in his ear, and the roaring storm of sound and sensation died away.
The skeleton walls of the wire tesseract had turned real around him. They were greenish-gray, and painted in bold black characters that identified the Wolf Creek Station on Earth. Ahead of him the exit gate expanded.
He felt stunned. The contrast was nearly too much for him. There was no alien beach, no red sea, no snake-armed rogue. Neither was there a bitter oxy-helium wind whipping at a long line of impatient citizens bent on business, competing for priorities and snarling at delay. In this pastoral quiet, Exion Four and the world of the rogue became twin nightmares that he didn't want to think about.
Quamodian leaned forward eagerly as the flyer glided out of the cube, and looked for the first time in his adult life on the warm, broad acres that were lit by the single sun of Earth.
Twenty minutes later most of his relief and all Earth's pastoral charm had evaporated. He was snapping furiously at his flyer. "What do you mean, you can't reach Miss Zaldivar? I've come all this way from Exion Four. Do you mean I can't get a message to her now?"
"Your messages can't be delivered at this time, Mr. Quamodian. Your communication circuits are blocked."
"Nonsense! Try the local office of the Companions of the Star . .
"Also blocked, Mr. Quamodian. A local custom. I have been informed that in fourteen hours, local time, all the normal lines of communication will be open for service. But until that time . . ."
"I've no time for fools!" Quamodian shouted. "I've gone through a lot to get here, and I don't propose to twiddle my thumbs while these yokels divert themselves. Here, I'll go to that office myself!"
"Certainly, Mr. Quamodian." The flyer began to settle toward a dusty plaza in front of the transflex tower. "Of course," it added apologetically, "you will have to go on foot. By local custom, flyers are not permitted to operate more than one hundred meters from the transflex center at this time."
"Great Almalik! Oh, very well." Fussily Quamodian collected himself and stamped out of the opening door. "Which way?"
A voice by his ear answered, as the flyer activated its external speakers. "Down this street, Mr. Quamodian. The gold building with the ensign of the Companions."
He turned and stared. Behind him, the flyer quietly rose, drifted back to the tall, tapered, black transflex tower and settled to wait at its base. Quamodian was alone on the planet of his birth.
He was, he realized, more alone than he had expected. He knew that parts of Earth were still scarcely populated—nothing like the teeming metropolises of the hub-worlds of the universe: nothing, even, like the relatively minor planets of his university training and recent practical experience.
But he had not expected Earth, even this part of Earth, to be empty.
Yet there was not a soul in sight. He peered back toward the transflex tower: his waiting flyer, motionless and peaceful; nothing else. He looked down a long artificial stone boulevard: a school building, a hospital, a few supply centers—and no one in sight. He saw a park with benches and a playground, but no one was near any of them; saw parked vehicles, seemingly abandoned, a library without readers, a fountain with no one to watch its play.
"Ridiculous," he grumbled, and walked toward the building that glinted in the sun.
Earth's single star was hot, and the full gravity of his home planet was more than Andreas Quamodian had been used to for a good many years. It was a tiring walk. But there was something pleasant about it, about the dusty smell of the hot pavement and the luminous young green leaves of the trees that overhung the walk. Peace lay over the village, like a benediction of Almalik.
But Quamodian had not come to Earth in search of peace. He increased his stride, and chugged up the walkway, beside the flagpole that bore the standard of the Companions of the Star: the thirteen colored stars of Almalik in the dotted ellipses of their intricate orbits, against a black field of space.
The door did not open for him. Quamodian nearly ran into it; he stopped only just in time.
"What the devil's the matter here?" he demanded, more surprised than angry—at least at first. "I am Andreas Quamodian, a monitor of the Companions of the Star. Admit me at once!"
But the bright crystal panel did not move. "Good morning, Citizen Quamodian," said a recorded robot voice. "The Wisdom Creek post of the Companions of the Star is closed today, in observance of local religious custom. It will be open as usual on Monday."
"I'll report this!" Quamodian cried. "Mark my words! I'll call the Regional Office of the Companions of the Star. . ."
"A public communications instrument is just to your left, Citizen Quamodian," the robot voice said politely. "It is cleared for emergency use even on Starday."
"Emergency, eh? You bet it's an emergency." But Quamodian had had enough of arguing with recorded voices. He stalked along the flank of the gold-colored ceramic building to the communications booth, angrily dialed the code for the Regional Office—and found himself talking to another recorded voice.
"Companions of the Star, Third Octant Office," it said briskly.
"Oh, confound—never mind. Listen. I am Monitor Quamodian. I am in Wisdom Creek to investigate a reported emergency, and I find the local office closed. This lax operation is highly irregular! I demand the office be opened and . . ."
"Monitor Quamodian," reproved the robot voice, "that is impossible. Under our revised covenant with the Visitants, no local posts operate on Stardays so that local personnel may be free to engage in voluntary religious activities. Even Regional Offices are machine-operated during this . . ."
"But this is an emergency! Can't you understand?"
"Monitor Quamodian, my sensors detect no emergency situation in Wisdom Creek."
"That's what I'm here for! I—well, I don't know the exact nature of the emergency, but I require immediate assistance. . ."
"Our Wisdom Creek post will open promptly at midnight, local time," the voice informed him blandly. "Competent assistance will be available then."
"Midnight will be too . . ."
But the line clicked, buzzed and settled to a steady hum.
Muttering with anger, Quamodian tried Molly Zaldivar's code. But his flyer had been right; there was no answer.
Puffing with irritation as much as fatigue, Quamodian lowered himself to the steps of the office of the Companions and scowled at the empty street. How many millions of light-years had he spanned to be here, on this day, in this backwash of life? What tremendous forces had he enlisted to hurl him across the gulfs of space, to race against the dreadful fears that Molly Zaldivar's message had conjured up?