"But if he's dead—" Babylon faltered.
"Another copy, of course," Pertin said impatiently. "Look at him for yourself!"
Babylon leaned closer to the pane, crowding Doc Chimp out of his way. The lander's hatches were closed now, and almost the last of the queer lot of aliens had bobbed, flown, or floated aboard. A great blue Sirian eye hung overseeing the last of the loading, and in the tiny knot of remaining creatures one was human. Tall. Golden-skinned. Eyes downcast, arms obediently wrapped around a great black object shaped like a radar eye; but there was something about his bearing that suggested internal fires and readiness quite unlike the Purchased People.
Babylon drew a sudden breath. Of course! He had seen the man before; he was the one who had looked back at him with anger and intelligence, as he was herded out of the Tachyon Base on Earth.
They hung spellbound as the lander closed its ports and the great hatch to the outside infinite opened. The vessel slid out and away. Then Org Rider stirred. "They don't know everything, at least," he mused. "They didn't know I left a tachyon receiver down at the temple."
Pertin scoffed resentfully, "Score one for our side! And against that, what don't we know? We don't know what they're doing. We don't know why they're doing it. We don't even know where they're going!"
"I think we know that much at least," Org Rider boomed peacefully. "To the temple—otherwise why would the Watcher be going with them?" He shook his head. "No," he declared, "we know more than you think, Ben- pertin. They are going to see if they can find what is under the lake, and if they do I think it will be serious."
"It's serious now!" Pertin cried, swatting irritably at something that gleamed and danced by his head—a Boaty-Bit, Babylon realized. "Question is, what can we do about it? I think nothing. They've got all the weapons from the wrecked ship, and what have we got? Two scarecrows! A monkey! A bumpkin from Earth who doesn't even know when he's in trouble, and—" He hesitated, then finished miserably, "And an old drunk." He stared out the open ship hatch at the pale blue flame of the distant lander's thrusters.
There was a moment's silence. Then Org Rider boomed, "We have one other thing, Benpertin. We have a little time. They're going by lander, and it will take them time to get there."
"That's right!" Zara cried. "We can call an emergency council! Put it before every being on the orbiter—let the sensible ones decide what to do!"
"And who are the sensible ones?" Pertin demanded cuttingly. "Which ones can you trust?"
"Why, the T'Worlie for one race!" Zara insisted. "And— well—" die hesitated, and the silence grew.
"And maybe not even the TWorlie," Pertin finished for her. "There's just one race on the orbiter we can rely on. The human race! —And, of course, other Earth primates," he added hastily, as he met Doc Chimp's injured gaze.
"I should think so," the chimpanzee declared with dignity. "I can do anything a human being can do that doesn't need just mass! Go anywhere. Hide where a human can't hide, live on what would make a human starve—" He stopped short as he caught sight of a swift change in Ben Pertin's expression. "Now, what are you thinking?" he demanded. "You couldn't— Oh, no! Ben! You can't possibly want me to—"
Ben Pertin nodded with sudden glee. "You're absolutely right! You can go down there on the tachyon transporter and be waiting for them when they arrive."
The chimpanzee laid back its lips and screeched. "Me? You mean me?"
"You bet I do! You can play it by ear—hide and watch them if you have to. Even stroll right out and join them! Say Babylon sent you to, uh, I don't know—get some more hexagons. Anything!"
"Oh, no, Ben!" the chimpanzee howled. "Zara! Org Rider! Dr. Babylon! Make him say he's joking!" He stared around at them, then sobbed, "Oh, if you could see your faces— like I was a monkey in a zoo—"
Babylon offered, "It wouldn't really be you, Doc—just a tachyon duplicate—"
"It's me, all right! It's always me! It's always been me, dying a hundred times, maybe a thousand times—"
"Wait!" Org Rider said suddenly. "What's the lander doing?"
At almost the limit of vision they could see the vessel— strangely, better now than a few moments earlier. But it was not strange. The lander had suddenly become luminous. It glowed with a greenish color that hurt the eyes, and as they watched the color swelled, clumped toward the nose of the craft, and launched itself at an unseen target. Moments passed.
Then it struck.
Whatever the lander had chosen to test its weapons, it was suddenly limned in green flame. Tiny asteroid, bit of space flotsam—it ceased to exist as the flame brightened and exploded and was gone.
The five watchers each cried out as the searing green stung their eyes, then turned and regarded each other.
Doc Chimp was the first to speak. "When you come right down to it," he said, "I don't really have much choice, do I? None of us do. With those weapons getting killed once or twice isn't going to matter—because they can do it to all of us, anytime they like."
THIRTEEN
Te'ehala Tupaia, paramount king-warrior in the forces of Free Polynesia, stumbled out of the tachyon-transporter chamber to take his place in line—
But there was no line!
He was not in the tachyon center on Earth—was not even on Earth! The place he saw was eerily lighted, filled with repellent creatures out of a nightmare; and in it he had no weight! He bobbed like a balloon toward a creature like a huge blue eye, who dodged away with an irritable crackle of electric force, until he was caught by a Purchased Person who had been in line with him. He was thrust against a wall while half a dozen additional Purchased People came popping out of the tachyon chamber, then they were all ordered to form ranks and move out.
After the first terrible moment of terror and shock, Tupaia was neither frightened nor confused. He did not know where he was, precisely, but he knew where he had been, in the Tachyon Base in Old Boston, and he knew what that meant.
Even if he hadn't, what he saw around him would have told him that he was somewhere out in deep space. For not all his companions were human. With him were some, not all, of the Purchased People he had been with in the Tachyon Base—the very fat man with the huge blue eyes was there, so were the long-haired girl and the youth with the scar blazing white on his terror-stricken face; but at least half the group was absent. To make up, a dozen others had been added. And what others! Creatures like great floating eyeballs, creatures like children's sculptings of dough, angular, metallic creatures that puffed hisses of steam as they chugged along the hallways of this new place.
He could, of course, understand nothing of the screeches and yelps and drum rattles that passed for speech among these freakish beings, but that did not matter. The Purchased People were a labor squad, drafted for their brawn rather than for conversation. The queer alien that looked like a lump of baker's dough when at rest—but was seldom at rest—extended a tentacle and hung something around the neck of the girl with the flowing blond hair. It made a series of unearthly sounds, and the machine around her neck whispered to her in English translation, whereupon she became the gang foreman for these unwilling laborers.
The labor was endless. For what must have been more than a day Tupaia was kept at the tasks of a slave, holding this, lugging that, stowing strange machines and supplies in a great rocket vessel. Now and then he came near a port, and once or twice managed to steal a look outside. A sun, a moon, a planet—anything might help tell him where he was. But there was nothing. Not even stars. Only an occasional distant silvery smudge that might not have been real at all. When allowed, he slept. When given food, he ate— strange metallic-tasting stuff that seemed to have come from synthesis vats. A part of his mind was sick with longing for the sweet fish, the coconut milk, the papaya-poi of his childhood, but it was drowned in that larger part that wanted only freedom.