The starship hung in orbit like a mountain of dirty ice.
To RyRelee, watching the viewscreen as his shuttlecraft drew near, the Coran starships always called to mind a congealed comet, bereft of its tail and frozen in some ungainly posture. He loathed embarking from the firm-walled compartments of the trim shuttlecraft from his homeworld to enter the seemingly organic mazes of a Coran starship, but a summons from the rulers of the measurable galaxy was not to be denied.
Such occasional summons invariably had prefaced demands upon his considerable abilities to carry out certain tasks for the Cora as their emissary—usually without the knowledge of those to whose world RyRelee was sent. While such missions inevitably entailed deadly risks, RyRelee did not normally respond to their summons with such a sense of fatalistic dread as he now felt. While the Cora had not yet informed him of the reason for this summons, RyRelee thought he knew why, and had there been any possible alternative but to obey, he would have taken it.
The interior of the Coran ship was small improvement over the comet-like appearance it gave from the outside. It had the look of something hacked from soft stone, or foamed into shape out of the spittle of an insect. The hatch closed behind his shuttlecraft as though it were growing together by a process of greatly accelerated crystalline accretion. The efficiency of Coran science was beyond question, but the organic nature of it bothered RyRelee every time it called itself to his attention. It disturbed him that he, himself an interstellar emissary and one whose race had long ago developed its own stardrive, should nonetheless be unable to comprehend the technology of the race that ruled the galaxy.
A ragged hole dissolved in one wall of the air lock. RyRelee waited for his crew to release the hatch of the shuttlecraft, then steeled himself to disembark. Though the atmosphere within this section of the starship was breathable, it smelled musty and had overtones of old meat. It was also very cold, though RyRelee's shivering was not solely a result of that physical cause. That his shuttlecraft had orders to depart immediately after bringing him here only confirmed his fear.
He had guessed quite well why the Cora had summoned him, must have summoned him; and he had obeyed nonetheless. If the Cora required his presence, they would get it—however far he ran before they made it their business to catch him. One could be reasonably safe in one's personal projects so long as such enterprises did not come to the attention of the Cora. If they did . . . well, there was always the chance of mercy.
The crewman who now gestured peremptorily through the opening to RyRelee was neither a biped nor, of course, a Coran. It walked on six of its eight flat, multi-jointed limbs. Their surface and that of the crewman's segmented body were covered with fine yellow bristles. As RyRelee followed down the twisting corridor, he noticed that the carrion odor was stronger close to the crewman. Perhaps, then, the cold temperature and musky atmosphere were balanced for the crewmen rather than simply being faults in a life support system built by methane breathers for servants who required oxygen. RyRelee knew from experience that a Coran starship might contain any number of environments within its various sections, each suited to the needs of any particular race of beings that might be on board. The Cora were not the only intelligent race to exist in an atmosphere of liquid methane, but RyRelee knew of few others.
The crewman stopped and waved RyRelee ahead with either a limb or a mandible. The corridor, never more than a blue-lit wormhole in the ice, ended ahead of him.
The emissary stepped forward to the end of the corridor, pretending not to give any sign that he knew the next few seconds would determine his fate. He did not turn to watch the crystalline wall grow shut behind him, but he felt a change in the ambient pressure. He stood in a cell instead of a hallway, and he did not know whether he would ever be allowed to leave during his lifetime.
An atmosphere bubble popped into being around him. RyRelee guessed that it was maintained somehow by a sort of forcefield despite the presence outside either of a vacuum or a thousand atmospheric pressures. He disliked both its apparent insubstantiality as well as its further evidence of Coran technological superiority.
The wall at the end of the corridor dissolved. He was not to be entombed, then—not, at least, until he had been interrogated about his part in the fiasco. He stepped forward, holding himself tall within the atmosphere bubble as it moved with him. The lock closed behind him, leaving him alone in an immense chamber with one of the Cora.
The Coran also was huge, though it was hard to arrive at specific dimensions. Within the roiling currents of hydrocarbons, the flowing multicolored veils of the Coran's tissue both swam forward and receded beyond his view. None of its sensory apparatus was visible—or at least recognizable. The vague blue light that illuminated the atmosphere bubble pierced the sea of methane adequately for RyRelee to glimpse the Coran, but he suspected that such lighting was for his benefit alone. The Coran itself seemed to shift colors constantly as it swam above the bubble. RyRelee understood that the Cora communicated through such subtly changing veils of color; such a medium was far beyond the capabilities of his eyes to translate.
The communications node affixed behind the external tendrils of his ears began to transmit in the colloquialism of his homeworld. If RyRelee chose to relax—which he did not—he might pretend he was listening to the actual speech of some congenial high official of his own race—which of course he was not.
"We Cora thank you for answering our summons so promptly once again, RyRelee." The counterfeit voice even managed to convey an official tone of impersonal politeness. "We have a problem beyond our own physical capacities—one which is serious enough to force us to require the special talents of an emissary such as yourself."
"I have always considered it my privilege to be able to serve the Cora," said RyRelee formally, covering his surprise. While he suspected that the courtesy invariably shown by the Cora in fact masked a sneer toward the lesser races, nevertheless the galactic rulers did not indulge in sadistic jokes. If the Cora had indeed known what RyRelee had assumed they knew, they would not toy with him now. RyRelee would have been formally charged, found guilty, sentenced, and the sentence carried out—hardly a minute needed, all told.
"But you do not merely serve the Cora, RyRelee," the Coran chided gently. "Perhaps the Cora are first among equals, but we all must remember that we are parts of a confederation of equals."
After a moment's pause, the Coran resumed in a less avuncular tone. "You know, of course, that blood sports and the traffic in subjects for such perversions are a continuing stain on the civilization of our galaxy. On several occasions it has been necessary for you yourself to act as our agent in punishing those involved in fostering this disgusting practice."
RyRelee found that he was more comfortable if he focused his eyes directly ahead, than if he tried to follow the drifting majesty of the Coran itself. "Some of the so-called intelligent races of our confederation have been unable to shrug off the trappings of barbarism," he said carefully, still on dangerous ground. "Like slavery, or the use of violent force to seize power, such antisocial behavioral patterns are difficult to eradicate among certain cultures." His own, for example, RyRelee did not add.
"We can only remain firm in our resolve," said the Coran brusquely. "And vigilant. We were pursuing a vessel which we suspected was smuggling beasts—certainly destined for blood sports in the arena. It attempted to escape by diving into the gravity well of an oxygen world—a proscribed world in Class 6."
RyRelee thought carefully before asking: "You say, they attempted escape? One assumes they were therefore either captured or destroyed."
"Utterly destroyed," the Coran said. "They attempted to land using their stardrive, and the result was the predictable catastrophic failure."
There was a power in the universe greater than the Cora after all, thought RyRelee, and it had just preserved him. "I could not wish for fellow citizens of the Federation to be vaporized, of course," he temporized. "But in this case, the accidental result may have been that of justice. You perhaps would like me to make a reconnaissance of the devastated area—to ensure that no artifacts survived that might interfere in the development of a proscribed world?"
"Actually, we've taken care of that sufficiently, RyRelee," said the Cora. "As you will see."
RyRelee did see the events recorded next, but the images were received directly by the visual centers of his brain without being transmitted through his eyes. A landing shuttle spiraled out of a bay in the starship's hull. The image was superimposed upon that of the chamber in which he stood. It was not a purely visual effect—a hologram projected across the chamber. The blue light and the rippling Coran were no less clear than before, but the outlines of the shuttle were a stronger presence. The scenes were in his mind—a recording transmitted directly through the communications nodes affixed to his skull. RyRelee stood very still as images tumbled and the Coran waited for him to assimilate the data.
It was a blue world, a water world, he saw as the shuttle approached, passing over the oceans to focus on an arid landscape. Abruptly the image concentrated on an area of limestone hillside. The russet stone was blackened and fused to chert in a long scar whose outlines blurred like those of a rope of seaweed. The point of view held at a constant but indeterminable height as it followed the line of destruction. RyRelee had no certain scale, but they must have tracked the scar for at least a mile. Plants with fleshy, dust-colored leaves were shriveled to either side of the blackened stone, and there were occasional highlights where molten metal had splashed and coated the rock, leaving a shallow depression in the hillside. There was no sign of any artifact. The point of view rose, panning more and more of the barren landscape. Even when the full course of the smuggler's desperate attempt to land was visible as a tortured black ribbon, there was no hint of anything but total catastrophe.
"Their stardrive envelope began to collapse from the stern forward." RyRelee spoke in part to organize events in his own mind, and in part to reconstruct the situation that he sincerely desired to have transpired. "Friction eroded the hull and everything within it. They could not possibly have launched a lifeboat under those circumstances."
He paused to clear his throat before he concluded: "There is nothing here to affect the development of a world without stardrive. In fact, I don't suppose you yourselves can be sure of the identity—for that matter, of what race the smugglers were." His lips sucked in in a gesture that he would have suppressed had he been aware of it.
"Only in the second assumption are you correct," said the Coran. Its voice was made dreamlike by the other events going on in RyRelee's mind. "We did proceed to determine the opinion of the local inhabitants about the event. One cannot be too careful with a Class 6 world. But there was a delay, of course. A delay in deploying the atmosphere shuttle in the first place, a further delay in disrupting the locality ourselves except to the extent necessary. The delays proved to be unfortunate."
The images the emissary saw this time were kaleidoscopic. They were still fully comprehensible, but muted through the sensory media of another organism. RyRelee recognized this as a recording derived through a memory scan of a living creature—presumably that of one of the planet's autochthones.
It was night. A drystone hut huddled on the plain. It was a windowless dome with its low doorway closed by a bundle of thorny brush. The corral appended to the hut was also of stones laid without mortar. More brush raised the corral wall and threatened the belly of anything attempting to leap it, herd animal or predator alike. In the near distance sprawled the ridge along which the smuggler's vessel had disintegrated.
The creatures within the hut were bipedal, half a dozen of them. They stirred like a spaded-up nest of rodents when the hut lifted into the air in a single piece. It was through the biped's eyes that RyRelee saw who the Cora had sent to make the initial survey: eight-limbed crewmen like the one who had led him into the Coran's presence.
The hive of natives collapsed in thrashing confusion. One of the crewmen had calibrated the precise setting needed to disconnect motor control without doing permanent harm to the subjects. The aborigines were not stunned, but they had no conscious control of their movements. They watched themselves being loaded onto the antigravity sled with the unceremonious care given valuable objects. The images were faultlessly accurate, though doubtless the conscious portions of the natives' minds interpreted the event as an episode of hopeless madness.
"You freed these aborigines after you had examined them?" he asked. He kept his voice as perfectly neutral as he could. There was no evidence that the Cora were aware of the inflectional subtexts of spoken words—but RyRelee did not dare chance accusing his masters of either ruthlessness or stupidity.
"Yes, although of course we wiped their memories," the Coran agreed easily. "We kept guard on the dwelling and herd for the few hours we were forced to hold the aborigines. We landed, after all, to eliminate disruption to the Class 6 natives, not to cause it."
"Yes, of course," RyRelee quickly agreed. He recalled the summons that had snatched him from his palace and brought him here—to death or torture, for all he had known. Class 6 natives were to be protected, but he himself—he was merely a catspaw to be used by the Cora, to carry out their clandestine assignments, and if he were to be killed during his task, he would simply be replaced by a more efficient tool. In theory the Cora only acted for the general best interests of the galaxy. Such doubts as he cherished, RyRelee kept to himself. The Cora paid well.
"We took the precaution of obtaining memory scans of these and other subjects to ascertain how those aborigines who might have witnessed the starship's crash would have interpreted the event," the Coran continued. "As it happened, their intellects were too primitive to have made any technological interpretations. To them, it was simply another natural catastrophe or an act of their gods—incomprehensible in either case. It was, however, exceedingly fortunate that we made so thorough an examination of the site, as you will perceive from these next recordings."
A new series of images played through his communications nodes. This time RyRelee failed to repress a hiss of consternation—one which he hoped would be interpreted as only natural dismay. The reassurance he had only moments ago dared to hope for now melted away.
It was the same arid landscape, but something walked across it now that should never have been there. The creature was in riveted irons that must have weighed as much as the blue-scaled biped did itself—and then were only marginally adequate, RyRelee knew well.
"There was a phile on board," a voice murmured, and RyRelee could not be sure whether the Coran had spoken or whether the words came from his own throat.
RyRelee's tongues were too dry for ready speech, but he was now in conscious control again. "But, of course, that's impossible. You must be misinterpreting what the aborigines saw. It's some native species that only resembles a phile."
The clarity of the continuing series of images of the phile gave the lie to RyRelee's statement. The creature was part of a long line of native animals, forty or more of them. The phile was shackled between a pair of them—great beasts that dwarfed it and their aboriginal handlers. Hunching against the mass of its chains, the phile took three of its quick strides for every one of those of the beasts to which it was fastened. Its movements were hobbled, but it managed to keep up.
"Elephants," explained the counterfeit voice of the Coran. "Being hunted in the valleys nearby for use, I regret to say, in blood sports much like those for which the phile itself must have been intended. The recently captured elephants are shackled to pairs of domesticated beasts. The same technique appears to be sufficient to control the phile, for now."
The procession of handlers, beasts, and—no, only handlers and beasts: for all its cunning the phile was no more than a beast—drew away in the distance. The elephants became dark humps against the soft yellow dust that drifted downwind from their feet. The phile was not even that, only a memory. But it had been there; that could not be in doubt.
Uneasy, RyRelee asked: "Was a lifeboat released after all, then? Surely, the phile could not have been landed at an earlier time—could it?"
"We presume," replied the Coran, "that it was caged near the bow. As the stardrive envelope shrank and the smuggler's vessel disintegrated from the stern forward, one of the cage walls must have been destroyed a moment before the final impact. If the phile's timing were precise, it might have been launching itself toward that opening at the instant the stardrive itself was destroyed."
"Nothing could survive such a landfall," RyRelee whispered.
"Nothing but a phile," said the Coran.
Again RyRelee saw the phile as it stared at the aborigine through whose eyes the procession had been recorded. Yes, a phile was intelligent enough to seize a split-second chance of escape, quick enough to succeed in it. They were difficult to kill even with energy weapons, and their recuperative powers were uncanny. The limp with which it walked was probably the result of injury, rather than from the weight of its chains as RyRelee had first thought.
As the phile returned the aborigine's stare, its gaze was flat and black and as coldly lethal as the glitter of a falling axe.
"Precisely how it escaped destruction is unimportant," said the Coran. "The matter that concerns us is that Class 6 natives have captured a phile. They must have discovered it before it had recovered from the crash, and even then only luck could have permitted them to take it captive. How will they ever avoid the mistake that releases it? They are not wholly without intelligence, you know, these philes."
Besides its eyes, there was only one fleck of brightness in the dusty image of the phile. It held in its forelimbs the chain tethering it to the leading elephant. The aborigine had seen, although below his awareness, that one thumb-thick link of that chain was scarred by the ceaseless abrasion of the phile's claws as it staggered forward in the solitude of its own red thoughts.
"In certain aspects," the Coran continued, "the philes are perhaps more intelligent than the natives of this planet. While the philes have never developed any sort of technology, they are quick to comprehend its applications when confronted with such. They understand the threat of a stone-tipped projectile or of an energy weapon, for example, and they recognize surface vehicles or planetary shuttlecraft as transport vessels. Moreover, there is substantial evidence of low-level telepathy. It has been suggested that while they comprehend basic mechanical principles, the philes consciously disdain their application. There was once some consideration over upgrading Zuyle to Class 6 status, but it was decided that although the philes are the dominant lifeform on their planet, their environment is too savagely violent ever to permit the development of any organized social culture."
"Perhaps that's just as well," RyRelee commented, remembering that planet. Zuyle, the homeworld of the philes, was a nightmarish cauldron of ceaseless volcanic activity and violent storms, of brief blinding-hot days and long frigid nights. The flora and fauna had evolved appropriately to so murderous an environment—poisonous flesh-eating vegetation, venomous crawling things, mammoth armored beasts. Everything that walked or swam or flew or crept or burrowed on Zuyle was adapted to survival under the deadliest of conditions, and the philes were the dominant species of that world. The focus of their evolution had been survival from one second to the next, and their intellect had developed accordingly. RyRelee thought it fortunate that their savage fight for existence had never given the philes leisure to begin the climb toward technological society.
RyRelee took a deep breath, again producing an audible hiss as the air rushed through the plates of his nostril pit. "Where is the phile now?"
"That will be for you to discover, emissary." At last the Coran was disclosing the reason for his summons. "We were able to trace the phile to a coastal port of a small sea where it was dispatched by surface vessel, apparently destined for a large blood sports arena in this civilization's principal city. Too much time has been lost, and presumably the phile will have already reached this destination—that is, if it hasn't managed to escape in transit."
"My assignment, then?"
"To pick up its trail—a cold trail, I regret. You must seek out the phile and destroy it. As it has by now quite probably penetrated the major city of this region, we must act secretly to find it and destroy it without inflicting a major disruption to their developing culture.
"As you have observed, RyRelee, you share many physical similarities to the native race of this world. You will find their gravity, atmosphere and climate quite compatible, and you will be protected against their disease strains and parasites. It will require only minor cosmetic modifications and surgical adjustments for you to pass as a native from some distant region of the planet—each civilization there is ignorant of lands and cultures beyond its own sphere of influence. We have recordings of scans acquired from several of the aborigines, so your communications nodes will be programmed with an adequate selection of native languages and customs. Of course, you will be issued the usual essential equipment for operations in the field."
RyRelee knew it was pointless to inquire further about such modifications and adjustments. He had experienced such indignities on previous assignments, and there was some comfort in knowing that Coran surgery could usually undo what it had done.
"How will I be able to destroy the phile?"
"You will be equipped with the necessary weapons, concealed within your cosmetic constructions: a device to stun the natives should the need arise, and another to destroy the phile. To the aborigines it will appear that you have only gestured with your hand; try not to be observed, but if you do arouse their curiosity, explain it as magic."
"Their cultural level is that low? I thought I was to be sent to the central region of their civilization."
"It is, after all, a Class 6 world, emissary," the Coran reminded him. But RyRelee was more aware of that than the Coran could guess.
"There is another critical matter that you must attend to," the Coran continued. "An extremely critical matter. We do not know whether the phile is male or female. You must make the necessary surgical identification once you have destroyed it. You know what happened on Doronin. . . ."
RyRelee knew the story all too well, but the Coran supplied him the images of what had taken place on Doronin—all the more to impress upon the emissary the importance of his mission.
An entrepreneur on Doronin had imported a variety of exotics for blood sports staged in defiance of Coran—of Federation—law. There had been a pair of philes, both males it had been believed, but one turned out to have been a gravid female. Because of their deadly environment, philes mated only once—after which the female continued to produce fertile eggs at regular intervals throughout life. While one gravid female had the potential to produce thousands of offspring, on their homeworld only a few chicks would manage to survive to reproduce. But that was on Zuyle, and Doronin was a placid world—or once had been.
The images were of what had been a city before it became an abattoir. RyRelee did not need the voice whispering ". . . Doronin . . ." to identify the scene. The viewpoint shifted, shuddered—blinked to a view from a thousand feet in the air of an armored antigravity raft that had been drifting down a boulevard just below the height of the tallest buildings alongside it. The raft was bucking like a fish with hooks set in its guts. When the armored vehicle yawed and overturned abruptly, the cause became clear. On the raft's belly plates was a smudge of blue which the focus sharpened instantly into a phile. The beast was gripping minute projections on the metal surface with three of its clawed limbs. With the full length of its remaining arm, it was reaching into the interior through an inspection plate that it had ripped off. Out of control, the raft clipped the side of a building and plummeted into the street.
The armor would have protected the raft's crew against the philes, except that the force of the craft's impact was enough to start seams all across the domed surface.
They poured from every building in sight, philes of every size. Some of them leaped aboard the raft even as momentum carried it cartwheeling down the street. Their timing was as flawless as that of the phile that had first leaped onto a grip on the survey craft's underside. Their numbers were staggering. Even without the chicks clinging to the backs of some of the females—of most of the females—there were thousands of the blue-scaled killers in view.
Tracks of dazzling orange began to tear pavement apart and rake the philes that leaped across its length. A phile whose legs and haunches had been vaporized continued to crawl on its elbows toward the disabled raft. The expression on its dying face could only have been delight.
Covering fire from the other survey craft could not slow the tidal motion of the philes. Waves of activity were visible in the far distance, surging toward the first chance of prey in days, weeks. And the downed craft already boiled with ravenous life even if no more philes arrived to fight for a purchase among their frenzied fellows.
Fragments of armor plate glittered in the air. The philes were tearing it away so violently that the raft seemed to have exploded. The orange energy-beams ripped a brilliant, useless circle just beyond the fallen craft. Beasts shriveled away like insects in a flame, but if they survived at all, they survived to tear deeper into the vessel.
One of the crewmen was dragged out to dissolve in seconds among the claws and teeth of countless starving philes. It had been a bristly octopod like the one who led RyRelee to the Coran's chamber.
The survey craft disintegrated in an orange flash. The point of view rocketed upward with a suddenness that might have been simple reality instead of a result of editing the transmission. The city gleamed for a moment, purified by distance of the unchecked hordes of starving philes that now were its sole population. In another instant the exploding thermonuclear device transformed the distant city into a gorgeous pearl, expanding across the surface of the planet.
The next image was from farther away still. It took a moment for RyRelee to realize the scale. The small sun glowing against blackness had been a planet. It had been Doronin before the Cora cleansed it once and for all.
"That could be Earth in a hundred years or less," said the Coran. "You must track down the phile and destroy it, emissary. And you must act very quickly now. Should this phile be a male, then once it is destroyed our concern regarding this world will be allayed. However, should this be a gravid female like the one that got loose on Doronin. . . . Then, if there is any indication—any suspicion at all—that she may have produced a brood, our only recourse will be to sterilize the entire land mass and hope that other cultures will develop from other regions of this planet.
"So you understand, RyRelee, the extreme importance of your mission on Earth."
"Yes . . ." said the emissary very softly, his thoughts already totally absorbed in his mission.
But he was thinking that fate plays strange tricks and that it was fortunate the Cora themselves lacked telepathic ability. An agent in this dangerous profession often reaped wealth from clandestine operations of his own, and there were fortunes to be made through smuggling beasts for blood sports, if one had all the right connections. The starship that had crashed on Earth had been acting under RyRelee's orders before the disaster, and RyRelee knew with certainty that the escaped phile was a gravid female.
His real mission would be to make equally certain that it was kept alive without the knowledge of the Cora. Earth would prove a perfect breeding ground, and fate had given RyRelee the chance to make good on a scheme that had almost fatally miscarried.