When he woke he thought he was on Earth. Bright sunlight, blue sky, the tickling of grass against his back and legs, the touch and sound and smell of a cool and pollinated breeze… had he been abandoned in another national park, then? He rolled on his side and saw Brennan.
Brennan sat on the grass, hugging his knobby knees, watching him. Brennan was naked but for a long vest. The vest was all pockets: big pockets, little pockets, loops for tools, pockets on pockets and within pockets; and most of the pockets were full. He must have been carrying his own weight in widgetry.
Where the vest didn’t cover him, Brennan’s skin was all loose brown wrinkles like soft leather. He looked like the Pak mummy in the Smithsonian, but he was bigger and even uglier. The bulge of chin and forehead marred the smooth lines of the Pak head. His eyes were brown and thoughtful, and human.
He said, “Hello, Roy.”
Roy sat up convulsively. There was Alice, on her back, eyes closed. She still wore her pressure suit, but the hood was open. There was the ship, resting belly-down on… on…
Vertigo.
“She’ll be all right,” Brennan was saying. His voice was dry, faintly alien. “So will you. I didn’t want you coming out with weapons blazing. This ecosystem isn’t easy to maintain.”
Roy looked again. Uphill across a rounded green slope, to where an impossible mass floated ready to fall on them. A grass-covered spheroid with a single gigantic tree growing out of one side. The ship rested beside its trunk. It should have fallen too.
Alice Jordan sat up. Roy wondered if she’d panic, but she studied the Brennan-monster for a moment, then said, “So we were right.”
“Pretty close,” Brennan agreed. “You wouldn’t have found anything at Persephone, though.”
“And now we’re caught,” she said bitterly.
“No. You’re guests.”
Her expression didn’t change.
“You think I’m playing euphemisms. I’m not. When I leave here I’m going to give you this place. My work here is almost finished. I’ll have to instruct you in how not to kill yourselves by pushing the wrong buttons, and I’ll give you a deed to Kobold. We’ll have time for that.”
Give? Roy thought of being marooned out here, unreachably far from home. A pleasant enough prison. Did Brennan think he was setting up a new Garden of Eden? But Brennan was still speaking — “I have my own ship, of course. I’ll leave you yours. You intelligently saved the fuel. You should become very rich from this, Roy. You too, Miss.”
“Alice Jordan,” she said. She was taking it well, but she didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands. They fluttered.
“Call me Jack, or Brennan, or the Brennan-monster. I’m not sure I’m still entitled to the name I was born with.”
Roy said one word. “Why?”
Brennan understood. “Because my job here is over. What do you think I’ve been doing out here for two hundred and twenty years?”
“Using generated gravity as an art form,” said Alice.
“That too. Mainly I’ve been watching for high-energy lithium radicals in Saggitarius.” He looked at them through the mask of his face. “I’m not being cryptic. I’m trying to explain so you won’t be so nervous. I’ve had a purpose out here. Over the past few weeks I’ve found what I was looking for. Now I’ll be leaving. I never dreamed they’d take so long.”
“Who?”
“The Pak. Let’s see, you must have studied the Phssthpok incident in detail, or you wouldn’t have gotten this far. Did you think to ask yourselves what the childless protectors of Pak would do after Phssthpok was gone?”
Clearly they hadn’t.
“I did. Phssthpok established a space industry on Pak. He found out how to grow tree-of-life in the worlds of the galactic arms. He built a ship, and it worked for as far as any Pak could detect it. Now what?
“All those childless protectors seeking a mission in life. A space industry to build ships designed for one job. Something could happen to Phssthpok, you know. An accident. Or he might lose the will to live, halfway here.”
Roy saw it then. “They’d send another ship.”
“That they would. Even if he got here, Phssthpok could use some help searching a volume thirty light years in radius. Whoever followed Phssthpok wouldn’t aim directly for Sol; Phssthpok would have searched Sol by the time he got here. He would aim to the side, away from Phssthpok’s obvious area of search. I figured that would give me a few extra years,” said Brennan. “I thought they’d send another ship almost immediately. I was afraid I wouldn’t be ready.”
“Why would it take them so long?”
“I don’t know.” Brennan made it sound like an admission of guilt. “A heavier cargo pod, maybe. Breeders in suspended animation, in case we died out over two and a half million years.”
Alice said, “You said you’d been watching—”
“Yah. A sun doesn’t burn fuel quite like a Bussard ramjet. There’s a constriction and a hell of a lot of heat, then the gas expands into space while it’s still fusing. A Bussard ramjet will put out a lot of funny chemicals: high-energy hydrogen and helium, lithium radicals, some borates, even lithium hydride, which is generally an impossible chemical. In deceleration mode those all go out in a high-energy stream at nearly lightspeed.
“Phssthpok’s ship worked that way, and I didn’t expect they’d fool with his design. Not just because it worked, but because it was the best design they could get. When you’re as bright as a Pak, theres only one right answer for a given set of tools. I wonder if something happened to their technology after Phssthpok left. Something like a war.” He pondered. “Anyway, I’ve found funny chemicals in Saggitarius. Something’s coming.”
Roy dreaded to ask. “How many ships?”
“One, of course. I haven’t actually found the image, but they’d have sent the second ship off as soon as they built it. Why wait? And maybe another ship behind it, and another behind that. I’ll search them out from here, while I’ve still got my quote telescope unquote.”
“Then what?”
“Then I’ll destroy as many ships as there are.”
“Just like that?”
“I keep getting that reaction,” Brennan said with some bitterness. “Look: If a Pak knew what the human race was like, he’d try to exterminate us. What am I supposed to do? Send him a message, ask for truce? That information alone would tell him enough.”
Alice said, “You might convince him you were Phssthpok.”
“Probably could at that. Then what? He’d stop eating, of course. But first he’d want to deliver his ship. He’d never believe we’ve already developed the technology to make artificial monopoles, and his ship is the second of its kind in this system, and we might need the thalium oxide too.”
“Um.”
“Um,” Brennan mimicked her. “Do you think I like the idea of murdering someone who came thirty-one thousand light years to save us from ourselves? I’ve been thinking this through for a long time. There’s no other answer. But don’t let that stop you.” Brennan stood up. “Think it through. While you’re at it, you might as well explore Kobold too. You’ll own it eventually. All of the dangerous things are behind doors. Have a ball, swim where you find water, play golf if you like. But don’t eat anything, and don’t open any doors. Roy, tell her about the Bluebeard legend.” Brennan pointed over a low hill. “That way, and through the garden, and you come to my laboratory. I’ll be there when you want me. Take your time.” And he went, not strolling, but running.
They looked at each other.
Alice said, “Do you think he really meant it?”
“I’d like to,” said Roy. “Generated gravity. And this place. Kobold. With gravity generators we could move it into the solar system, maybe, and set it up as a disneyland.”