Sundiver

26. TUNNELING

Jacob landed on the opposite side of the computer-console, falling hard on his back to save his blistered, bleeding hands. Fortunately, the springy material of the deck cushioned some of the impact.

He tasted blood and his head rang as he rolled over onto his elbows. The deck still bounced as the magnetovores overhead jostled against the underbelly of the Sunship, filling the interior of flip-side with brilliant blue light. They touched the ship, three of them, at about forty-five degrees “above” the deck, leaving a large gap directly overhead. That left room for the Refrigerator Laser to pour its deadly beam of stored solar heat between them, downward toward the photosphere.

Jacob had no time to wonder what they were doing… whether they were attacking, or just playful. (What a thought!) He had to take advantage of this respite quickly.

Hughes had landed nearby. The man was already on his feet, stumbling in shock. Jacob hurried up and took the man’s arm in his… avoiding contact between their wounded hands.

“Come on, Hughes. If Culla’s been stunned we might both be able to jump him!”

Hughes nodded. The man was confused, but he was willing. His movements were exaggerated, though. Jacob had to guide him the right way, hurrying.

They came around the curve of the central dome to find Culla just rising to his feet. The alien wavered but as he turned toward them Jacob knew it was hope-less. One of Culla’s eyes flashed brightly, the first time Jacob had actually seen one in operation. That meant…

There was a smell of burning rubber and the left strap of his goggles parted. He was dazzled by the blue brightness of the chamber as they fell off.

Jacob shoved Hughes back around the curve of the dome and flung himself after the man. At any moment he expected a sudden pain in the back of his neck, but they stumbled together all the way to the gravity-loop hatch and fell within, safe.

Fagin moved aside to let them in. He trilled loudly and waved his branches.

“Jacob! You are alive! And your associate as well! This is better than I’d feared!”

“How…” Jacob gasped for breath. “How long since we started falling?”

“It has been five, perhaps six minutes. I followed you down after regaining my wits. I may not be able to fight but I can interpose my body. Culla would never have enough power to cut his way through me to get above!” The Kanten piped shrill laughter.

Jacob frowned; that was an interesting point. How much power did Culla have? What was it he once read about the human body operating on an average of one hundred and fifty watts? Culla put out considerably more than that, but it was in short, half-second bursts.

Given enough time, Jacob could figure it out. When projecting his hoaxed Solarians, Culla had made the apparitions last for about twenty minutes. Then the anthropomorphic Ghosts “lost interest” and Culla was suddenly ravenously hungry. They’d all attributed his appetite to nervous energy, but actually the Pring had to replenish his supply of coumarin… and probably of high-energy chemicals to power the dye-laser reaction, as well.

“You are hurt!” Fagan fluted. The branches fluttered in agitation. “You had best take your compatriot upside and both have your wounds tended.”

“I guess so,” Jacob nodded, reluctant to leave Fagin alone. “There are some important questions I have to ask Dr. Martine while she’s treating us.”

The Kanten gave out a long whistling sigh, “Jacob, under no circumstances disturb Dr. Martine! She is in rapport with the Solarians. It is our only chancel”

“She’s what!”

“They were attracted by the flashing of the Parametric Laser. When they came, she donned her psi helmet and initiated communications! They positioned several of their magnetovores beneath us and have substantially arrested our fall!”

Jacob’s heart leapt. It sounded like a reprieve. Then he frowned.

“Substantially? Then we aren’t rising?”

“Regrettably, no. We are falling slowly. And there is no knowing how long the toroids can hold us.”

Jacob felt distantly in awe of Martine’s accomplishment. She had contacted the Solarians! It was one of the epochal accomplishments of all time, and still they were doomed.

“Fagin,” he said carefully. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Meanwhile, can you fake my voice well enough to fool Culla?”

“I believe so. I can try.”

“Then talk to him. Throw your voice. Use all your tricks to keep him busy and uncertain. He can’t be allowed more time at that computer access!”

Fagin whistled assent. Jacob turned, with his arm in Hughes and started around the gravity-loop.

The loop felt strange, as if the gravity fields had started to fluctuate slightly. His inner ear bothered him as it never had before, as he helped Hughes traverse the short arc, and he had to concentrate to keep his step.

Topside was still red — the red of the chromosphere. But fluttering blue-green Solarians danced just outside, closer than Jacob had ever seen them before. Their “butterfly wings” were almost as broad as the ship itself.

Blue traceries of the P-laser also shone in the dust up here. Near the edge of the deck, the laser itself hummed inside its bulky mounting.

They dodged several of the thin beams.

If only we’d had the tools to unship that thing from its holder, Jacob thought. Well, it was no use wishing. He steadied his partner until he could get him into a couch. Then he strapped the man in and went looking for the aid-kit.

He found it by the Pilot Board. Since he hadn’t seen Martine, it was apparent she’d chosen another quadrant of the deck to do her communing with the Solarians, away from the others. Near the Pilot Board, LaRoque, Donaldson, and the unliving body of crewman Dubrowsky lay firmly strapped in. Donaldson’s face was half covered with medicinal flesh-foam.

Helene deSilva and her remaining crewman bent over their instruments. The Commandant looked up as he approached.

“Jacob! What happened?”

He kept his hands behind his back, to keep from distracting her. It was getting hard to stay on his feet, though. He’d have to do something soon.

“It didn’t work. We got him talking, though.”

“Yes, we heard it all up here, then a lot of noise. I tried to warn you before we impacted the toroids. I was hoping you could use it.”

“Oh the impact helped, all right, It shook us up but it saved our lives.”

“And Culla?”

Jacob shrugged. “He’s still down there. I think he’s running low on juice. During our fight up here he burned off half of Donaldson’s face with one shot. Down there he was a miser, taking tiny pot shots at strategic places.”

He told her about Culla’s attack with his mashies. “I don’t think he’s going to run out early enough. If we had lots of men we could keep throwing them at him until he went dry. But we haven’t. Hughes is willing, but he can’t fight anymore. I suppose you two can’t leave your posts.”

Helene turned to answer a beeping alarm from her control board. She stabbed a switch and it cut off. Then she looked back, apologetic.

“I’m sorry, Jacob. But we’ve got all we can handle here. We’re trying to get through to the computer by actuating the ship’s sensors in coded rhythms. It’s slow work, and we have to keep turning away to handle emergencies. I’m afraid we’re slipping. The controls are deteriorating.” She turned to answer another signal.

Jacob backed away The last thing he wanted to do was distract her.

“Can I help?”

Pierre LaRoque looked up at him from a couch a few feet away. The little man was constrained, his couch straps secured out of reach. Jacob had all but forgotten about him.

He hesitated. LaRoque’s behavior just before the fight topside hadn’t inspired confidence. Helene and Martine had strapped him in to keep him out of everyone’s hair.

Yet Jacob needed someone’s hands to operate the aid-kit. Jacob remembered LaRoque’s near escape on Mercury. The man was unreliable, but he had talent when he chose to use it.

LaRoque looked coherent and sincere at the moment. Jacob asked Helene for permission to release him. She glanced up and shrugged.

“Okay. But if he comes near the instruments I’ll kill him. Tell him that.”

There was no need to tell him. LaRoque nodded that he understood. Jacob bent over and fumbled with the strap hooks with the good fingers of his right hand.

Helene hissed behind him. “Jacob, your hands!”

The look of concern on her face warmed Jacob. But when she started to get up he’d have none of it. Right now her job was more important than his. She knew this. He took the fact that she was torn at all as a great display of affection. She smiled briefly in encouragement then bent to answer a half dozen alarms that started blaring at once.

LaRoque rose, rubbing his shoulders, then picked up the aid-kit and motioned to Jacob. His smile was ironic.

“Who should we fix first?” he said. “You, the other man, or Culla?”

27. EXCITATION

Helene had to find time to think. There must be something she could do! Slowly the systems based on Galactic science were failing. So far it had been the time-compression and the gravity thrust, plus several peripheral mechanisms. If internal gravity control went out they’d be helpless before the tossing of the chromosphere storms, battered within their own hull.

Not that it’d matter. The toroids that were holding them up against the pull of the Sun were obviously tiring. The altimeter was slipping. Already the rest of the herd was high overhead, almost lost in the pink haze of the upper chromosphere. It wouldn’t be long.

An alarm light flashed.

There was positive feedback in the internal gravity field. She did a quick mental calculation, then fed in a set of parameters to damp it out.

Poor Jacob, he’d tried. His exhaustion had been written on his face. She felt ashamed not to have shared the fight on flip-side, though, of course, it had never been likely that they could dislodge Culla from the computer on flip-side.

Now it was up to her. But how, with every damned component falling apart!

Not every component. Except for the maser link with Mercury, the equipment derived from Earth technology still ran perfectly. Culla hadn’t bothered with any of it. The refrigeration still worked. The E.M. fields around the hard shell of the ship still ran, though they had lost the ability to selectively let in more sunlight on flipside. Naturally.

The ship shuddered. It bounced as something bumped against it once, twice. Then a brightness appeared at the edge of the deck. Suddenly the rim of a toroid appeared, rubbing against the side of the ship. Above it, several Solarians fluttered.

The bumping became a scraping sound, loud and hideous. The toroid was livid with bright purple blotches around its rim. It pulsed and throbbed under the proddings of its tormentors. Then, in a sudden burst of light, it was gone. The Sunship tipped as its forward end, unsupported, fell suddenly. DeSilva and her partner struggled to right it.

When she looked up she could see her Solarian allies drifting away, with the two remaining toroids.

There was no more they could do. The toroid that had deserted them was just a spot of light overhead, receding rapidly atop a pillar of green flame.

The altimeter began to spin faster. On her view-screens Helene could see the pulsing granulation cells of the photosphere, and the Big Spot, now bigger than ever.

They were already closer than anyone had come before. Soon they’d be in there — the first men in the Sun.

Briefly.

She looked up at the now distant Solarians, and wondered if she should call everyone together to… to wave good-bye or something. She wanted Jacob here.

But he’d gone below again. They’d hit before he could make it back.

She gazed up at the tiny green lights and wondered how the toroid had been able to move so fast.

She jerked upright with a curse. Chen looked up at her. “What is it, skipper? Shields going?”

With a cry of exultation Helene started throwing switches.

She wished they could monitor their telemetry back on Mercury, because if they died here on the Sun now it would certainly be in a unique way!

Jacob’s arms still throbbed. Worse, they itched. He couldn’t scratch, of course. His left hand was in a solid block of flesh-foam and so were two of the fingers of his right hand.

He crouched again just inside the hatch of the gravity-loop, looking out onto the deck on flip-side. Fagin moved aside so he could push his new mirror, this one glued to the end of a pencil with more flesh-foam, out beyond the combing.

Culla wasn’t in sight. The hulking cameras stood out against the pulsing blue ceiling presented by the laboring magnetovores. The trail of the P-laser crisscrossed, marked by scattering from dust in the air.

He motioned for LaRoque to lay down his load just inside the hatch, next to Fagin.

They took turns coating each other’s necks and faces with more flesh-foam. The goggles were sealed down with extra blobs of the pliant, rubbery material.

“Of course you know this is dangerous,” LaRoque said. “It may protect us from damage from a quick shot but this stuff is highly flammable. It’s the only flammable substance allowed in spaceships, for that matter, because of its unique medicinal properties.”

Jacob nodded. If he looked anything like LaRoque, now, they’d stand a good chance of scaring the alien to death!

He hefted the brown cannister, then sprayed a shot out onto the deck. It didn’t have much range but it might do as a weapon. There was still plenty of the stuff left.

The deck jerked under them, then jounced twice more. Jacob looked out and saw that they were tipping over. The magnetovore that held up this side of the ship was rolling along lower and lower, toward the edge of the deck and away from where the photosphere covered the sky.

One of the beasts on the other side must have lost its hold, then. That meant it was almost over.

The ship shuddered and then began to right itself. Jacob sighed. There still might be time to save the ship if he could disable Culla immediately. But that was clearly impossible. He wished he could go up and join Helene.

“Fagin,” he said. “I’m not the man you used to know. That man would have had Culla by now. We’d have been out of here and safe. We both know what he was capable of.

“Please understand. I tried. But I’m just not the same anymore.”

Fagin rustled. “I knew, Jacob. It was to achieve this change that I invited you to Sundiver in the first place.”

Jacob stared at the alien.

“You are my artful dodger,” the Kanten whistled softly. “I had no idea the issues here were as critical as they turned out to be. I asked you here solely to help break the chrysalis you have been in since Ecuador and then to introduce you to Helene deSilva. The plan succeeded. I am pleased.”

Jacob was at a loss.

“But Fagin, my mind…” he trailed off.

“Your mind is fine. You simply have an overeager imagination. That is all. Truly, Jacob, you invent such fantasies. And so elaborate! I have never met a hypochondriac such as you!”

Jacob’s mind raced. Either the Kanten was being polite, or he was mistaken or… or he was right. Fagin had never lied to him before, especially regarding personal matters.

Could it be that Mr. Hyde wasn’t a neurosis at all but a game? As a child he had created play universes so detailed that they could hardly be distinguished from reality. His worlds had existed. The neo-Reichian therapists had merely smiled and credited him with a powerful, non-pathological imagination because the tests always showed that he knew he was playing, when it mattered that he know it!

Could Mr. Hyde have been a play-entity?

It’s true that until now it never did any actual harm. It was a perpetual annoyance, but there always turned out to be a valid reason for the things it “made” him do. Again, until now.

“You were non-sane for a time when I met you, Jacob. But the Needle cured you. The cure frightened, so you went into a game. I do not know the details of your game; you were very secretive. But I know now that you are awake. You have been awake for perhaps twenty minutes.”

Jacob clamped down. Whether or not Fagin was right, he had no time to stand here and blather about it. He had only minutes to save the ship. If it was possible at all.

Outside, the chromosphere shimmered. The photosphere loomed over their heads. The dust trails of the P-laser crisscrossed the inner shell.

Jacob tried to snap his fingers, and winced in pain.

“LaRoque! Run upstairs and get your lighter. Quick!”

LaRoque stepped back. “Why, I have it right here,” he said. “But of what use…”

Jacob was moving toward the intercom. If Helene had some reserve of power she’d been holding back, now was the time to use it. He needed a little time! Before he could switch it on, though, an alarm filled the ship.

“Sophonts,” Helene’s voice rang out. “Please prepare for acceleration. We will be leaving the Sun shortly.”

The woman’s voice sounded amused, almost whimsical.

“Due to the mode of our imminent departure, I would recommend that all passengers dress as warmly as possible! The Sun can be very cold this time of year!”

28. STIMULATED EMISSION

A blast of cold air blew constantly from the ventilator ducts around the Refrigerator Laser housing. Jacob and LaRoque huddled around their fire, trying to keep the cold air off it.

“Come on, baby. Burn!” A pile of flesh-foam shavings smoldered on the deck. Slowly the flames grew as they piled on more chips.

“Ha ha!” Jacob laughed. “Once a caveman, always a caveman, eh, LaRoque? Men get all the way to the sun, and they build a fire to stay warm!”

LaRoque smiled weakly, and kept piling on larger and larger shavings. The loquacious journalist had said very little since Jacob released him from his couch. Now and then, though, he would mutter something angry and spit.

Jacob held a torch into the flames. It was made from a clump of flesh-foam stuck to the end of a liquitube. The end began to smolder, giving off thick black smoke. It was beautiful.

Soon they had several torches. Smoke billowed into the air, carrying a foul stench. They had to stand back, in the path of the air duct, to be able to breathe. Fagin moved well into the gravity-loop.

“Okay,” Jacob said. “Let’s go!” He hopped out of the hatchway to the left and tossed one of the smoldering brands to the end of the deck, as far as he could see. Behind him LaRoque was doing the same in the opposite direction.

With a heavy rustling, Fagin followed them out. The Kanten went straight out from the hatch to the opposite end of the deck to act as a lookout, and to draw Culla’s fire if possible. Fagin had refused a coating of flesh-foam.

“It is all clear,” the Kanten whistled softly. “Culla is not to be seen.”

That was good and bad news. It localized Culla. It also meant the alien was probably working to bolix up the Refrigerator Laser. It was getting COLD!

Once it had begun, Helene’s scheme made perfect sense to Jacob. Since she still had control over the screens surrounding the ship, (the crew were alive to prove it), she could let in heat from the Sun at whatever rate she wished. This heat could be sent directly to the Refer Laser and pumped back out into the chromosphere, plus waste heat from the ship’s power plant. Only this time the flow was a torrent, and directed downward. The thrust had stopped their fall and they had begun to climb.

Naturally, such meddling with the ship’s automatic heat control system had to be inaccurate. Helene must have decided to program the mechanism to err in the direction of coldness. In that direction mistakes would be more easily corrected.

It was a brilliant idea. Jacob hoped he’d get to tell her so. Right now it was his job to make sure it had a chance to work.

He edged around the dome until he reached the point where Fagin’s view was cut off. Without looking around, he threw two more of the brands to different parts of the deck ahead of him. Smoke boiled from each of them. The chamber was getting hazy from the smoke released so far. The trail of the P-laser beam shimmered brightly in the air. Some of the weaker trails were disappearing, attenuated by cumulative passage though the smoke.

Jacob moved back into Fagin’s cone of view. He had three more smoldering brands. He backed up onto the deck and tossed them at different angles over the top of the central dome. LaRoque joined him and threw his as well.

One of the torches passed directly over the center of the dome on its way over. It entered the x-ray beam of the Refrigerator Laser and vanished in a cloud of vapor.

Jacob hoped it hadn’t deflected the beam much. The coherent x-rays supposedly passed through the shell with near zero contamination of the ship, but the beam wasn’t designed to handle solid objects. “Okay!” he whispered.

He and LaRoque hurried to the wall of the dome, where spare parts for the recording instruments were stored. LaRoque opened a cabinet and climbed as high as footholds allowed, then offered his hand. Jacob scrambled up next to him. Now they were all vulnerable. Culla must react to the obvious threat implied by the firebrands! Already visibility was dropping well below normal. The chamber was filled with a foul stench and Jacob was finding it increasingly uncomfortable to breathe.

LaRoque braced his shoulder in the top jamb of the cabinet, then offered his cupped hands to Jacob. Jacob took the boost and climbed up onto LaRoque’s shoulder.

The dome was sloping here, but the surface was smooth, and Jacob had only three fingers instead of ten. The flesh-foam coating helped. It was still somewhat sticky. After two unsuccessful attempts Jacob concentrated and leapt from LaRoque’s shoulder, nearly hard enough to shake the man loose.

The surface of the dome was like quicksilver. He had to flatten himself and move with scrambling speed to gain each inch.

Near the top, he had. to worry about the Refer Laser. He could see the orifice as he rested near the summit.

Two meters away it hummed softly; the smoky air shimmered and Jacob wondered what the transparency safety distance was from the deadly mouth.

He turned away so as not to have to think about it.

He couldn’t whistle to let them know he’d made it. They’d have to rely on Fagin’s superb hearing to track his movements, and to time the distraction.

There were at least a few seconds to wait. Jacob decided to take a chance. He rolled over onto his back and looked up at the Big Spot.

Everywhere was the Sun.

From his point of view there was no ship. There was no battle. There were no planets or stars or galaxies. The rim of his goggles even cut off the sight of his own body. The photosphere was everything.

It pulsed. The spicule forests, like undulating picket fences, hurled their noise up at him, and the breakers split just above his head. The sound divided and swept around toward the irrelevencies of space.

It roared.

The Big Spot stared back at him. For an instant the broad expanse was a face, the bristled, grizzled face of a patriarch. The throbbings were its breath. The noise was the booming of its giant voice, singing a billions-year-old song that only the other stars could hear or understand.

The Sun was alive. What was more, it noticed him. It gave him its undivided attention.

Call me lifegiver, for I am your sustenance. I burn, and by my burning you live. I stand, and in standing supply your anchor. Space curls around, my blanket, and funnels down to mystery in my bowels. Time beats his scythe on my forge.

Living thing, does Entropy, my wicked Aunt, notice our joint conspiracy? Not yet, I think, for you are yet too small. Your puny struggle against her tide is a fluttering in a great wind. And she thinks I am still her ally.

Call me lifegiver, oh living thing, and weep. I burn endlessly and, burning, consume what cannot be re-placed. While you sip daintily at my torrent the font runs slowly out. When it empties other stars shall take my place, but oh not forever!

Call me lifegiver and laugh!

You, living thing, hear the true Lifegiver’s voice from time to time, it is said. He speaks to you but not to us, His first born!

Pity the stars, oh living thing/ We sing away the aeons in pretended joy as we toil for His cruel sister, awaiting the day of your maturity, you tiny embryo, when He turns you loose to change the way of things again.

Jacob laughed soundlessly. Oh what an imagination! Fagin was right, after all. He closed his eyes, still listening for the signal. Seven seconds, exactly, had passed since he reached the top of the dome.

“Jake…” it was a woman’s voice. He looked up without opening his eyes.

“Tania.”

She stood by the pion-scope in her lab, exactly as he had seen her so many times when he came to pick her up. Braided brown hair, slightly uneven white teeth grinning generously, and large, crinkled eyes. She came forward with surefooted grace and confronted him with fists on hips.

“It’s about time!” she said.

“Tania. I… I don’t understand.”

“It’s ’bout time you brought up an image of me doing something besides falling! Think it’s fun doin’ that over and over again? Why haven’t you brought me back having some of the good times!”

He suddenly realized that it was true! For two years he’d only thought of Tania in that last instant, not thinking about their time together at all!

“Well, I’ll admit it’s done you some good,” she nodded. “You seem to finally be free of that damned arrogance. Just think about me from time to time, for heaven’s sake. I hate being ignored!”

“Yes, Tania. I’ll think of you. I promise.”

“And pay attention to the star! Stop thinking you imagine everything!”

She softened. The image began to fade. “You’re right, Jake, dear one, I do like her. Have a good…”

He opened his eyes. The photosphere throbbed overhead. The spot stared back at him. The granulation cells pumped slowly like leisured heartbeats.

Did you just do that? he asked, silently.

The answer permeated him, drilled through his body and came out the other side. Neutrinos to cure neuroses. A most original approach.

A short whistle came from below. Before he was aware he had moved, he was slithering toward the sound and to the right, silently and without a wasted motion.

He peered over to look down on the head of Culla ta-Pring ab-Pil-ab-Kisa-ab-Soro-ab-Hul-ab-Puber.

The alien faced Jacob’s left, his hand still on the open access plate to the computer-input. Though the smoke dimmed it almost to nothing, there was still a glare as the P-laser beam hit the spot.

From the left came a rustling. Somewhere to the right was the sound of running feet, LaRoque hurrying around the dome.

A few silver-tipped twigs poked out from the curve of the dome. Culla crouched and one of Fagin’s shiny light receptors curled up in smoke. The Kanten gave out a high pitched keening and retreated out of sight. Culla swiveled quickly.

Jacob pulled the flesh-foam sprayer out of his pocket. He aimed and pressed the nozzle. A thin jet of liquid shot out in an arc toward Culla’s eyes. In the instant before it struck, Pierre LaRoque appeared, running, his head down as he charged through the smoke toward Culla.

Culla jumped back. The spray passed in front of his eyes. At that instant a bright spark flashed at a point along its length.

With a whoosh the entire stream burst into flame. Culla stumbled backwards, hands in front of his face. LaRoque barrelled through the falling embers and collided with the Pring’s midsection.

Culla almost went down in the thick smoke. Breath wheezed as he gripped LaRoque around the neck, first for balance and then closing tightly to squeeze on the man’s windpipe. LaRoque struggled wildly but his momentum was gone. It was like trying to escape from a pair of boa constrictors. His face turned flush and started to puff.

Jacob gathered himself for a leap. The smoke was so thick he could hardly keep from coughing. Desperately he suppressed the urge. If Culla saw him before he could jump, the alien wouldn’t bother killing LaRoque the hard way. He’d finish them both off with a look.

His muscles pressed like hard springs and he launched himself from the dome.

The midair flight was suspenseful. His own subjective version of time-compression made the transit seem slow and leisurely. It was a trick from the bad old days, and now he used it again, automatically.

When a third of the distance was covered he saw Culla’s head start to turn. It was hard to tell exactly what the E.T. was doing to LaRoque at that instant. A thick pall of smoke obscured everything but Culla’s bright red eyes and two flashes of white beneath them.

The eyes came up. It was a race to see who’d arrive first at a certain point in space, just above and to the right of the alien’s head. Jacob wondered at what angles Culla could shoot a narrow beam.

The suspense was killing him. It was almost satirical. Jacob decided to speed things up and see what happened.

There was a flash, then a tooth jarring, numbing smash as his shoulder hit the side of Culla’s head. He clutched and got a tight grip on the front of the alien’s gown as his inertia carried both of them over into a crashing tumble onto the deck.

Human and alien fought for breath amidst fits of coughing as they rolled into a tangle of slashing, grabbing arms and legs. Somehow Jacob got around behind his opponent and held on tightly to the slender neck as Culla thrashed, trying to turn his head to snap with his cleavers or bum with his laser eyes.

The powerful, tentacular hands clutched back, snatching for a purchase. Jacob dodged his head aside and struggled to get Culla around, so he could get his legs into a scissors lock. After rolling almost halfway across the deck, he succeeded, and was rewarded by a lancing pain in his right thigh.

“More,” he coughed. “Shoot, Culla. Use it up!”

Twice more bolts struck his exposed legs, sending small tsunamis of agony up to his brain. The pain he shunted aside and he held on, praying that Culla would send some more.

But Culla stopped wasting his shots and began to roll about faster, buffeting Jacob every time the human struck the deck. They were both coughing, Culla sounding like half a dozen ball bearings shaken in a bottle, every time he wheezed in the thick, billowing smoke.

There was no way to choke the devil! When he wasn’t holding on for dear life, Jacob tried to turn his grip around Culla’s throat into a strangle hold. But there didn’t seem to be any vulnerable points! It was unfair. Jacob wanted to curse the bad luck but he couldn’t spare the breath. His lungs could barely hold enough to make a small cough, each time the Pring rolled over on top.

Streams of tears blurred his vision and his eyes hurt. He suddenly realized that his goggles were gone! Either Culla had burned them off again in that first instant as he launched himself from the dome, or they’d been torn off during the fight.

Where the hell is LaRoque!

His arms shuddered with the strain and there was a rubbed-out pain in his abdomen and groin from the constant pounding of the cavort across the deck. Culla’s coughing was sounding more pathetic and strained, and his own-took on an ominous gurgle. He could feel the first stages of heat prostration and a dreadful fear that the ordeal would never end, even as their struggle brought his back up against one of the smoldering flesh-foam brands.

It smothered in a broiling release of heat as he screamed. The pain was too sudden and from too unexpected a quarter to be shunted aside. His tight grip around Culla’s throat slacked for an instant of agony and the alien tore at his hands. The grip parted and Culla rolled away even as Jacob grabbed after him.

He missed. Culla scrambled farther away, then turned quickly to face him. Jacob closed his eyes and covered his face with his encased left hand, expecting a laser bolt.

He tried to stand, but something was wrong with his lungs. They wouldn’t work properly. His breath was shallow and he could feel the balance waver as he slowly rose to his knees. His back felt like charred hamburger meat.

Not far away, two meters at most, there was a loud clack! Then another. Then another, closer.

Jacob’s arm fell. He no longer had the strength to hold it up. There was no use in keeping his eyes closed, anyway. He opened them to see Culla, kneeling a meter away. Only the red eyes and gleaming white teeth showed through the thick stomach.

“Cu… Culla…” he gasped Wheezing, the words sounded like tiny, failing gears. “Give up now, this is your last chance. I’m… warning you…”

Tania would have liked that, he thought. It was almost as good a parting shot as hers had been. He hoped Helene had heard it.

Parting shot? Hell, why not give Culla one! Even if he cuts my throat or drills a hole into my brain through my eyelids, I’ll still have time to give him a present!

He pulled the flesh-foam sprayer out of his belt and started to raise it. He’d give Culla such a spraying! Even if it meant he’d die at that instant by laser instead of by decapitation.

Excruciating pain burst like steel needle through his left eye. It felt like a lightning bolt crashing all the way to the back of his head and out the other side. At that same instant he pressed the release and held it in the direction Culla’s head had been.

29. ABSORPTION

Helene lifted her eyes briefly as the ship rose past the toroid herd on the left.

The greens and blues were faded, eaten by the distance. Still the beasts shone like tiny incandescent rings, specks of life ordered in their miniscule convoy, dwarfed by the immensity of the chromosphere.

The herdsmen were already too far away to be seen.

The herd passed behind the dark bulk of the filament, out of sight.

Helene smiled. If only we still had our maser link, she thought. They could have seen how hard we tried. They would have known that the Solarians didn’t kill us, as some will think. They tried to help us. We talked to them!

She bent to answer two alarms at once.

Dr. Marline wandered aimlessly behind her and the copilot. The parapsychologist was rational, but not very coherent. She had only just returned from the opposite end of topside. She walked unevenly and muttered softly under her breath.

Martine had enough sense to stay out of their hair, thank Ifni ! But she refused to strap herself in. Helene hesitated to ask her to go around to flip-side. In her present condition the good doctor wouldn’t be much help.

There was a stench in the air. Helene’s flip-side monitors showed only a thick billowing cloud of smoke. There had been shouting and sounds of a terrible fracas just minutes ago. Twice the intercoms had carried the sound of someone screaming. Just moments ago came a shriek that could have waked the dead. Then silence.

The only emotion she allowed herself was a detached sense of pride. The fact that the fight had lasted so long was a tribute to them, especially to Jacob. Culla’s weapons should have finished them off quickly.

Of course it wasn’t likely. they’d succeeded. She’d have heard something by now. She clamped a lid on her feelings and told herself she was shivering because of the cold.

It had dropped to five Celsius. The less efficient her reactions got, as she tired, the more she weighted the cold side of the Refrigerator-Laser’s increasingly erratic swing. The hot side would be disaster.

She answered a shift in the E.M. field that threatened to leave a window in the XUV band. It subsided nicely under her delicate control and continued to hold.

The Refer Laser groaned as it sucked heat in from the chromosphere then back out and downward as x-rays. They climbed with agonizing slowness.

Then an alarm clanged. It wasn’t a drift-warning, it was the cry of a ship dying.

The stink was terrible! Worse, it was freezing. Someone nearby was shivering and coughing at the same time. Dimly, Jacob became aware that it was himself.

He came erect in a fit of hacking that set his body trembling. For long moments after he got it under control he just sat, wondering numbly how he was alive.

The smoke had begun to clear slightly near the deck. Shreds and tendrils drifted past him toward the whining air compressors.

The fact that he could see at all was amazing. He brought his right hand up to touch his left eye. It was open, blind. But it was whole! He closed the lid and touched it over and over with his three fingers. The eye was still there, and the brain behind it…saved by the thick smoke and the depletion of Culla’s energy supply.

Culla! Jacob swung his head about to scan for the alien. He felt a wave of nausea come on and rode it out as he peered around himself.

A slender white hand lay on the floor, two meters away, exposed by the opening cloud of smoke. The air cleared a little more and the rest of Culla’s body came into view.

The E.T.’s face was burned, catastrophically. Black crusts of seared foam hung in shreds from the remnants of the huge oculars. A sizzling blue liquid seeped from large cracks in the sides.

Culla was obviously dead.

Jacob crawled forward. First he had to check on LaRoque. Then Fagin. Yes, that was the way to do it.

Then hurry and get someone down here who can work the computer panel… if there was still a chance to reverse the damage Culla’d done.

He found LaRoque by following the man’s moans. He was several meters past Culla, sitting up and holding his head. He looked up blearily.

“Oooh… Demwa, is that you? Do not answer. Your voice might blow my poor delicate head away!”

“Are you… all right, LaRoque?”

LaRoque nodded. “We are both alive so Culla must not be, no? He left his job on us incomplete so we may merely wish we were dead. Mon Dieu! You look like spaghetti! Do I look like that!”

Whatever the effects of the fight, it had brought back the man’s appetite for words.

“Come on, LaRoque. Help me up. We still have work to do.”

LaRoque started to rise, then wavered. He clutched Jacob’s shoulder to keep his balance. Jacob choked back tears of pain. Jerkily, they helped each other up and onto their feet.

The firebrands must have burned out, because the chamber was rapidly clearing. Wisps of smoke trailed in the air, though, hanging before their faces as they staggered along the dome in a clockwise direction.

Once they encountered the P-laser beam, a thin, straight tracery in their way. Unable to go over or under, they went through. Jacob winced as the beam stitched a bloody line along the outside of his right thigh and the inside of his left. They continued.

When they found Fagin, the Kanten was comatose. A faint sound came from the blowhole and the silver chimes tinkled, but there was no answer to their questions. When they tried to move him they found it impossible. Sharp claws had emerged from Fagin’s root pods and dug into the tough springy material of the deck. There were dozens, and no way to loosen them.

Jacob had other business to tend to. Reluctantly, he led LaRoque around the Kanten. They staggered toward the hatchway in the side of the dome.

Jacob gasped for breath next to the intercom.

“Hel… Helene…”

He waited. But no one answered. He could hear, faintly, his own words echoing from topside. So he knew it wasn’t the mechanism. What was wrong?

“Helene, can you hear me! Culla’s dead! We’re pretty badly torn up… though. You… you or Chen come down… down and fix…”

The cold air blasting from the Refer Laser sent him into a fit of shivering. He couldn’t talk anymore. With LaRoque helping, he stumbled up past the duct and fell to the sloping floor of the gravity-loop.

He fell into a fit of coughing, lying on his side to favor his burned back. Slowly the hacking subsided, leaving him raw and aching in his chest.

He fought off sleep. Rest. Just rest here a moment, then over and around to topside. Find out what’s wrong.

His arms and legs sent tremors of sharp pain up to his brain. There were too many and his mind was too unfocused to cut all the messages off. It felt as though one of his ribs was cracked, probably from the struggle with Culla.

All of this paled beside the throbbing burden of the left side of his head. He felt as if he was carrying a hot coal there.

The deck of the gravity-loop felt strange. The tight, wraparound g-field should have pulled evenly along his body. Instead it seemed to. swell like the surface of the ocean, rippling under his back with tiny wavelets of lightness and weight.

Obviously something was wrong. But it actually felt good, like a lullaby. Sleep would be so nice.

“Jacob! Thank God!” Helene’s voice boomed around him, but still it sounded far away — friendly, definitely, warm — but also irrelevant.

“No time to talk! Come up here quick, darling! The g-fields are going! I’m sending Martine, but…” There was a clattering and the voice cut off.

It would have been nice to see Helene again, he thought dimly. Sleep invaded in force this time. For a while he thought of nothing.

He dreamt of Sisyphus, the man cursed forever to roll a boulder up an endless hill. Jacob thought he had a way to be tricky about it. He had a way to make the hill think it was flat while still looking like a hill. He’d done it before.

But this time the hill was angry. It was covered with ants that climbed up onto his body and bit him all over, painfully. A wasp was laying its eggs in his eye.

What’s more, it was cheating. The hill was sticky in places and didn’t want to let him go. Elsewhere it was slippery and his body was too light to get a grip on its surface. It heaved with sickening unevenness.

He didn’t remember anything in the rules about crawling, either. But that seemed to be part of it. At least it helped the traction.

The boulder helped too. He only had to push it a little. Mostly it crawled on its own. That was nice, but he wished it wouldn’t moan so. Boulders shouldn’t moan. Especially not in French. It wasn’t fair to make him listen to it.

He awakened, Wearily, in sight of a hatchway. Which hatchway he wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t very smoky.

Outside, beyond the deck, he could see the beginnings of a blackness, a transparency, returning to the red haze of the chromosphere.

Was that a horizon, out there? An edge to the Sun? The flat photosphere stretched out on ahead, a feathery carpet of crimson and black flame. In its depths it crawled with tiny movements. It pulsed, and filaments sewed elongated patterns above brightly waving jets.

Waving. Back and forth, on and on, Sol waved before his eyes.

Millie Martine stood in the doorway, with her fist up near her mouth and an expression of horror on her face.

He wanted to reassure her. Everything was all right. It would be from now on. Mr. Hyde was dead, wasn’t he? Jacob remembered seeing him somewhere, in the rubble of his castle. His face was burned up and his eyes were gone and he gave off a terrible stink.

Then something reached up and grabbed him. Down was now towards the hatchway. There was a steep slope in between. He tumbled forward and never remembered crashing to a halt just outside the door.