Way Station

31

He found some empty cartons stacked in the kitchen corner, boxes that Winslowe had used to bring out from town the supplies that he had ordered, and began to pack.

The journals, stacked neatly in order, filled one large box and a part of another. He took a stack of old newspapers and carefully wrapped the twelve diamond bottles off the mantel and packed them in another box, thickly padded, to guard against their breakage. Out of the cabinet he got the Vegan music box and wrapped it as carefully. He pulled out of another cabinet the alien literature that he had and piled it in the fourth box. He went through his desk, but there wasn't too much there, only ops and ends tucked here and there throughout the drawers. He found his chart and, crumpling it, threw it in the wastebasket that stood beside his desk.

The already filled boxes he carried across the room and stacked beside the door for easy reaching. Lewis would have a truck, but once he let him know he needed it, it still might take a while for it to arrive. But if he had the important stuff all packed, he told himself, he could get it out himself and have it waiting for the truck.

The important stuff, he thought. Who could judge importance? The journals and the alien literature, those first of all, of course. But the rest of it? Which of the rest of it? It was all important; every item should be taken. And that might be possible. Given time and with no extra complications, it might be possible to haul it all away, all that was in this room and stored down in the basement. It all was his and he had a right to it, for it had been given him. But that did not mean, he knew, that Galactic Central might not object most strenuously to his taking any of it.

And if that should happen, it was vital that he should be able to get away with those most important items. Perhaps he should go down into the basement and lug up those tagged articles of which he knew the purpose. It probably would be better to take material about which something might be known than a lot of stuff about which there was nothing known.

He stood undecided, looking all about the room. There were all the items on the coffee table and those should be taken, too, including the little flashing pyramid of globes that Lucy had set to working.

He saw that the Pet once again had crawled off the table and fallen on the floor. He stooped and picked it up and held it in his hands. It had grown an extra knob or two since the last time he had looked at it and it was now a faint and delicate pink, whereas the last time he had noticed it had been a cobalt blue.

He probably was wrong, he told himself, in calling it the Pet. It might not be alive. But if it were, it was a sort of life he could not even guess at. It was not metallic and it was not stone, but very close to both. A file made no impression on it and he'd been tempted a time or two to whack it with a hammer to see what that might do, although he was willing to bet it would have no effect at all. It grew slowly, and it moved, but there was no way of knowing how it moved. But leave it and come back and it would have moved-a little, not too much. It knew it was being watched and it would not move while watched. It did not eat so far as he could see and it seemed to have no wastes. It changed colors, but entirely without season and with no visible reason for the change.

A being from somewhere in the direction of Sagittarius had given it to him just a year or two ago, and the creature, Enoch recalled, had been something for the books. He probably wasn't actually a walking plant, but that was what he'd looked like-a rather spindly plant that had been shorted on good water and cheated on good soil, but which had sprouted a crop of dime-store bangles that rang like a thousand silver bells when he made any sort of motion.

Enoch remembered that he had tried to ask the being what the gift might be, but the walking plant had simply clashed its bangles and filled the place with ringing sound and didn't try to answer.

So he had put the gift on one end of the desk and hours later, after the being was long gone, he found that it had moved to the other end of the desk. But it had seemed too crazy to think that a thing like that could move, so he finally convinced himself that he was mistaken as to where he'd put it. It was not until days later that he was able to convince himself it moved.

He'd have to take it when he left and Lucy's pyramid and the cube that showed you pictures of other worlds when you looked inside of it and a great deal of other stuff.

He stood with the Pet held in his hand and now, for the first time, he wondered at why he might be packing.

He was acting as if he'd decided he would leave the station, as if he'd chosen Earth as against the galaxy. But when and how, he wondered, had he decided it? Decision should be based on weighing and on measuring and he had weighed and measured nothing. He had not posed the advantages and the disadvantages and tried to strike a balance. He had not thought it out. Somehow, somewhere, it had sneaked up on him-this decision which had seemed impossible, but now had been reached so easily.

Was it, he wondered, that he had absorbed, unconsciously, such an op mixture of alien thought and ethics that he had evolved, unknown to himself, a new way in which to think, perhaps some subconscious way of thought that had lain inoperative until now, when it had been needed.

There was a box or two out in the shed and he'd go and get them and finish up the packing of what he'd pick out here. Then he'd go down into the basement and start lugging up the stuff that he had tagged. He glanced toward the window and realized, with some surprise, that he would have to hurry, for the sun was close to setting. It would be evening soon.

He remembered that he'd forgotten lunch, but he had no time to eat. He could get something later.

He turned to put the Pet back on the table and as he did a faint sound caught his ear and froze him where he stood.

It was the slight chuckle of a materializer operating and he could not mistake it. He had heard the sound too often to be able to mistake it.

And it must be, he knew, the official materializer, for no one could have traveled on the other without the sending of a message.

Ulysses, he thought. Ulysses coming back again. Or perhaps some other member of Galactic Central. For if Ulysses had been coming, he would have sent a message.

He took a quick step forward so he could see the corner where the materializer stood and a dark and slender figure was stepping out from the target circle.

"Ulysses!" Enoch cried, but even as he spoke he realized it was not Ulysses.

For an instant he had the impression of a top hat, of white tie and tails, of a jauntiness, and then he saw that the creature was a rat that walked erect, with sleek, dark fur covering its body and a sharp, axlike rodent face. For an instant, as it turned its head toward him, he caught the red glitter of its eyes. Then it turned back toward the corner and he saw that its hand was lifted and was pulling out of a harnessed holster hung about its middle something that glinted with a metallic shimmer even in the shadow.

There was something very wrong about it. The creature should have greeted him. It should have said hello and come out to meet him. But instead it had thrown him that one red-eyed glance and then turned back to the corner.

The metallic object came out of the holster and it could only be a gun, or at least some sort of weapon that one might think of as a gun.

And was this the way, thought Enoch, that they would close the station?

One quick shot, without a word, and the station keeper dead upon the floor. With someone other than Ulysses, because Ulysses could not be trusted to kill a long-time friend.

The rifle was lying across the desk top and there wasn't any time.

But the ratlike creature was not turning toward the room. It still was facing toward the corner and its hand was coming up, with the weapon glinting in it.

An alarm twanged within Enoch's brain and he swung his arm and yelled, hurling the Pet toward the creature in the corner, the yell jerked out of him involuntarily from the bottom of his lungs.

For the creature, he realized, had not been intent on the killing of the keeper, but the disruption of the station. The only thing there was to aim at in the corner was the control complex, the nerve center of the station's operation. And if that should be knocked out, the station would be dead. To set it in operation once again it would be necessary to send a crew of technicians out in a spaceship from the nearest station-a trip that would require many years to make.

At Enoch's yell, the creature jerked around, dropping toward a crouch, and the flying Pet, tumbling end for end, caught it in the belly and drove it back against the wall.

Enoch charged, arms outspread to grapple with the creature. The gun flew from the creature's hand and pinwheeled across the floor. Then Enoch was upon the alien and even as he closed with it, his nostrils were assailed by its body stench-a sickening wave of nastiness.

He wrapped his arms about it and heaved, and it was not as heavy as he had thought it might be. His powerful wrench jerked it from the corner and swung it around and sent it skidding out across the floor.

It crashed against a chair and came to a stop and then like a steel coil it rose off the floor and pounced for the gun.

Enoch took two great strides and had it by the neck, lifting it and shaking it so savagely that the recovered gun flew from its hand again and the bag it carried on a thong across its shoulder pounded like a vibrating trip hammer against its hairy ribs.

The stench was thick, so thick that one could almost see it, and Enoch gagged on it as he shook the creature. And suddenly it was worse, much worse, like a fire raging in one's throat and a hammer in one's head. It was like a physical blow that hit one in the belly and shoved against the chest. Enoch let go his hold upon the creature and staggered back, doubled up and retching. He lifted his hands to his face and tried to push the stench away, to clear his nostrils and his mouth, to rub it from his eyes.

Through a haze he saw the creature rise and, snatching up the gun, rush toward the door. He did not hear the phrase that the creature spoke, but the door came open and the creature spurted forward and was gone. And the door slammed shut again.