"Regret," sang the control dome sweetly. "It is a matter of priorities."
"That's what I demand, emergency priority!"
"But Monitor Quamodian," sang the control dome, "when you arrived yesterday you stated the emergency was here."
"It was here. Now I have new facts! I expect a most serious danger to the suns of Almalik!"
Clothilde Kwai Kwich whispered, "Andy, may I speak to him? Perhaps he will listen—" But Quamodian froze her with a glare. She subsided without comment. She had become a softer, more feminine person since the visit to the cave, the discovery that Andy Quam's fears were not groundless.
"State these facts," the monitor rapped out melodiously.
"They are already available to Almalik," said Quamodian. "They exist in the mind of a man called the Reefer who has just received the Visitants. I wish to be on hand among the stars of Almalik, to assist with the interpretation and use of this new information."
He did not add his more urgent private reason; it would have been of no use, since it was not the sort of thing that would influence the control dome's transcience patterns. But he clung to a wild, despairing hope that Molly Zaldivar might appear with her captor, somewhere about the multiple suns of Almalik. If she did, Quamodian wanted to be there.
"Moment," sang the monitor dome. Andy Quam shifted uneasily in the seat of the flyer.
Clothilde Kwai Kwich frowned thoughtfully. "We have priorities," she stated, as if to no one.
"What about it?" Quam demanded.
"Nothing, Andy. Except that the rest of us can go to Almalik at once and plead your cause."
"Agree," chanted the chorus of the grass-green spirals. "Impatient. Urgent. Suggest no delay."
And the cloud citizen sighed, "There exist great forces deployed against Almalik. It is necessary to prepare immediately."
Quamodian said stubbornly, "Do what you like. I am going anyway."
Clothilde looked at him doubtfully, but said nothing. She was saved the need to, anyway; the control dome spoke in all their ears, through the little communicator plugs:
"Monitor Quamodian, your request is denied, Senior Monitor Kwai Kwich, your priorities, and those of your party, are withdrawn. There can be no travel to that destination now."
The news struck them all with consternation. The green spirals whirled furiously in their interlocking orbits, their collective thoughts a babel of whispered fear and excitement, just below the threshold of comprehensibility for the others. The predator citizen whined mournfully and edged closer to the boy, Rufe, who stared wide-eyed at Andy Quam. The pinkly glowing cloud citizen whispered somber predictions about the disasters that lay ahead, and Clothilde Kwai Kwich's hand crept out, unnoticed, to take the hand of Andy Quam.
"Why?" he demanded furiously. "We are monitors! We cannot be denied priority rights!"
"All priorities are withdrawn," said the control dome somberly. "Our headquarters report anomalous astronomical phenomena among the planets and multiple suns of Almalik. Robot Inspector, please clarify."
Unnoticed, the black egg-shaped form of the robot had drifted across the square toward them. Its oval sensor was cool and bright and blank. Its high voice hummed: "That is correct, Monitor Quamodian. The outer planet of Almalik Thirteen has suddenly stopped in its orbit. It is moving on a collision course toward its primary at many times the normal acceleration of gravity."
Quamodian's eyes narrowed. His mind whirled with chaotic flashes of foreboding. Molly was there! He was certain of it now, and certain that he must get to her. "Not surprising!" he barked, surprising himself. "That is precisely what I hoped to prevent! I must get there at once to limit the damage, avoid it if I still can."
"Impossible, Monitor Quamodian," the robot whirred. "The collision of the anomalous planet with Almalik Thirteen is expected to occur within a few hours. All transflex facilities are in use for the evacuation of the threatened planets. Even so, they are inadequate. Only a fraction of the population can be saved. Under these circumstances, no incoming travel is permitted."
Clothilde Kwai Kwich gasped. The predator citizen lifted his snout and emitted a long, mourning howl.
Quamodian stammered, "But—but I must go there! To help! It is still possible to do something . . ."
The robot did not respond. Its bright black case hung motionless.
Rufe whispered fearfully, "Preacher, what's the matter? Is it dead?"
Quamodian shook his head, staring. The robot's plasma sensor flickered, darkened, went out. Three thick black effector whips slid out of its body shell and dangled limply below it, brushing the dusty pavement of the square.
"Robot Inspector?" Quamodian called querulously. Beside him the girl whispered, "There's something terribly wrong! It's out of communication entirely."
But abruptly the effectors snapped back into the case. The sensor glowed again.
"We have received a further instruction from headquarters," it hummed. "The information states that a powerful rogue invader has destroyed the native intellects in two of the suns of Almalik. The invader has established its own transcience patterns in these suns, and it is now attacking the planets of Almalik Thirteen."
Quamodian caught a sudden, rasping breath.
"Call Cygnus!" he demanded.
"Sacred Almalik, spokesman star of Cygnus, is calling here," the robot's high whine interrupted him. "Your transflex travel priority has been approved. You and your party may depart from the Wisdom Creek transflex station at once."
25
Light-millennia away, the rogue's consciousness grew and sharpened in the heat of a cosmic fury. The huge sentience of stripped electrons and plasma soliloquized to itself like a stellar Hamlet:
My seas boil dry ... my magma bleeds from glowing wounds . . . my core itself is shattered by those savage plasma spears . . . still I hurl myself toward the great white sun ahead. . .
The inner planets of the sun spread wider in their orbits as it approached. They began flashing backward past it; it was hours only now until they, and all the space about, would be dissolved in the blazing debris of the sun the rogue was about to destroy.
And still the sun did not resist.
Swelling vast ahead of the rogue, it lay serenely white, beautiful and quiet, undisturbed by the rogue's attack.
By now the rogue was ancient and mature—in its own terms at least; it had existed and learned through billions of cycles of its picosecond reflexes. It had learned a full complement of "emotions," or at any rate of those polarizing tropisms which did for it what the glandular byproducts called emotions did for human beings. It had learned anger, and the calm pride of the target sun called forth anger in the rogue:
If it would only recognize me! If it would only admit causing the sun of Earth to strike at me! If it would offer some apology for deceiving me, for its contempt of me—then perhaps I could yet stop my blow . . .
But it ignored him.
The rogue was not entirely ignored. Though the great white star blazed on passionlessly, benevolently, still the rogue found itself the target for great forces from elsewhere. Another sun of Almalik had joined the attack upon it. The blue companion of the golden giant stabbed at it with a twisting shaft of plasma, a monstrous snake of glowing ions and transcience energy, which pierced to the rogue's heart, withdrew and jabbed again.
An agony of meta-pain jolted the rogue to its innermost plasma swirl; but it was not destroyed. It gathered its forces and sought for a weapon to hurl back the thrust of the blue star.