Sutton_Jean_Sutton_Jeff_-_Lord_Of_The_Stars Read online

  “Zandro…” The name came from her like a feathery whisper.

  “But I talk with the Tommies when Zandro’s not in my mind,” he rushed on, fearful she would think he was like the Ikus. “I talk with them just like I’m talking with you.”

  “What does Zandro want to know?” she asked tautly.

  “All about Gylan, the people, their work, and about the aircars and spaceport. Just things in general.”

  “But he’s an alien,” she exclaimed.

  “Alien?” He let the word form in his mind, grasping its meaning from the way she had used it. “I guess so,” he finally admitted.

  “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “In what way?” He felt a sudden dread.

  “Telling him all about us. Why does he want to know those things?”

  The question left Danny appalled. But one race could rule the Universe - - his race! Zandro had said that, and then he’d tried to wipe the memory from Danny’s mind. He’d tried to wipe out lots of memories, like those of the Ikus and Subcommander Gobit.

  Danny struggled with his thoughts. “He’s been awfully kind to me,” he said finally.

  “I wouldn’t tell him a thing,” she declared.

  “But he might get angry, cut me off from the Tommies,” he cried. “If he did, we wouldn’t be able to talk to each other.”

  “Couldn’t you fool him, tell him harmless things?”

  “Not if he’s in my mind at the time,” he protested. “Even if I didn’t tell him, he’d know. He’d hear the echo in my mind, the same way you heard me talking with Tommy One.”

  “How could he cut us off?”

  “How?” He debated it. “I don’t know.”

  “Even if he did, I could still call you through the Tommies.”

  “That’s right,” he answered excitedly.

  “Except that I wouldn’t know when Zandro was there.”

  “We’ll figure a way,” he promised. He felt suddenly uneasy, then became aware of the sense of presence. Zandro! He instinctively closed his mind, breaking the contact.

  The silence of nothingness rushed back.

  Now, remembering the conversation, he felt an elation that was greater than his fear. He wouldn’t let Zandro stop him from talking to her. Never! Fiercely he made the vow. Besides, what could Zandro do? He was nothing.

  Nothing but a mind.

  Samul Smith was threading his aircar toward a landing atop the Space Administration Building when his visiphone beeped. He punched a button and watched Sol Houston’s face come to life. The tight set of the mouth and jaw alerted him.

  “Get over to Medical Administration immediately,” the Overlord barked peremptorily. “Contact Chief Medician Paulker.”

  Samul swung his aircar into a new traffic pattern while asking, “What’s the trouble?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you, Samul.”

  “The aliens,” he murmured.

  “This might be the break we need.” The Overlord’s image abruptly faded from the screen. So they had come! Samul peered up into the pinkish-gray sky, pondering who “they” were. Whence had they come? An infinite Universe presented infinite possibilities; the prospects were not encouraging. He pushed the thought aside as the twin spires of Medical Administration rushed toward him.

  Chief Medician Paulker, the sector’s foremost neurologist as well as administrator of its medical facilities, greeted him nervously. His usually saturnine face wore a puzzled, irritated expression. But there was also something akin to fear; Samul glimpsed it in his eyes.

  “What’s the story?” he asked.

  “Follow me,” Paulker instructed obliquely. He escorted Samul down a lift to the basement morgue and gestured toward a slab. Samul saw what appeared to be the body of a youth in the early teens.

  “So?” He glanced at Paulker.

  “It’s not human.” The medician’s voice was strained and wondering.

  “Not human?” Samul suppressed a start, returning his eyes to the naked figure. Tall, slender, yellow-haired, it appeared human enough. The face held a rigid, stoic look, suggestive of deep introspection.

  “It’s synthetic, a robot, an android — call it what you will, but it’s not human,” Paulker repeated. “But it looks so human it scares you, right down to the last surface detail.”

  Samul asked softly, “How did it get here?”

  Paulker moistened his lips. “It was struck by a surface vehicle while illegally crossing a freight lane. The impact would have totally destroyed a human body, but as you can see…”

  “Android,” he murmured. So that was what the alien ship had brought.

  “The skin, muscle tone, eye color, hair — everything looks normal.” The medician spoke professionally. “It appeared normal in every respect, right down to the breathing rate and heartbeat. It even possesses finger and retinal prints.”

  “Is that possible…in an android?”

  “Scientifically unbelievable but true. It even has a name.”

  “Which is?”

  “Tommy Six.” Paulker’s eyes grew puzzled. “It was still alive, or perhaps I should say functioning, on arrival. It gave that name in the receiving ward.”

  “Did it give any other information?”

  “Nothing. It stopped functioning immediately afterward.”

  “An android that speaks,” Samul mused. “Did it have any identification?”

  “None whatever.”

  “It had to live somewhere.”

  “Did it?” Paulker grimaced. “Does a thing like that eat or sleep?”

  “Probably not,” he agreed.

  “It was stoic, almost sullen, gave no indication of pain,” the medician stated. “It was dressed in a space suit.”

  “Oh, what kind?”

  “Like they wear in the Survey Service,” Paulker explained. “It even had the star burst on the shoulder patch. Of course, that’s not unusual. That was quite a fad among the younger set a few years ago.”

  “I remember,” he answered absently. For some reason his thoughts reverted to the Golden Ram and the boy named Danny June. The age appeared about right. But the Golden Ram hadn’t been a survey ship.

  “Despite the impact, the outward damage was so slight that an autopsy was commenced to discover the cause of death,” Paulker said. “That was when the medician discovered the nature of the, uh, thing.”

  “What did he find?”

  “Well, nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Samul raised an eyebrow.

  Paulker eyed him reluctantly. “When Garron — he’s the autopsy specialist — discovered it was an automaton, he halted the proceeding immediately.”

  “Why?” he demanded quizzically.

  “His license is limited to human practice.”

  “In a situation like this?” he exploded.

  “Regulations,” Paulker returned primly. He saw the ire in Samul’s eyes and added hurriedly, “However, I’ve called in several top automation engineers. The work will proceed immediately.”

  Samul asked coldly, “When will the records be available?”

  “Within a few hours, I hope. Of course, they will be tentative.”

  “I’m speaking of the complete report.”

  “The engineers undoubtedly will have to make lab tests, analyses of materials, hold consultations, things like that,” Paulker replied. He drew himself up and stated more firmly, “After all, we are on alien ground. We don’t know what factors might be encountered.”

  “I realize that.” Samul held his eyes. “I want the retinal pattern, fingerprints and photographs — front, side, and back views.”

  “Yes, certainly.”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “We can have those within the hour,” Paulker promised.

  “I also want to know its potential, its capabilities. Did it exhibit human emotions? Could it feel, sense? We have to determine that.”

  “I’m afraid an automation engineer…”

 
“I know, there’s a regulation against it,” Samul cut in wearily, “but we need the answers. Could a human corpse yield information about the victim’s emotional potential before death?” He eyed the medician sharply.

  “Perhaps from a study of the endocrine structure,” Paulker ventured.

  “I also want to know if it could transmit and receive.”

  “You believe that it did?” Paulker looked startled.

  “I feel certain that it did.” Samul let his anger subside. “Does a telepath’s brain differ from that of a normal?”

  “There’s no biochemical or cellular difference, no.”

  “Is there any way of telling whether Tommy Six — we’ll call it that — was telepathic?”

  “I can’t see how.”

  “If Tommy Six duplicates the human body as closely as you believe it might, you should be able to match systems.”

  “I’m not sure that I follow you.”

  “Suppose you found extra systems?”

  “You are speaking of the automation engineers, of course.”

  “Yes, certainly.”

  “I should imagine that they would investigate them.”

  “They’d better,” Samul said grimly. “Incidentally, this must be kept absolutely secret.”

  “Secret?” Paulker frowned. “Are you asking us to violate the antisecrecy act? We can’t do that. The right of the public to know…”

  “Just keep it quiet,” he urged.

  “A thing like this? An android that talks and passes itself off as a human? Someone certainly will want to do a paper on it. And there most certainly will be an official investigation for any infringements of patent rights.”

  “Any information detrimental to the government can be withheld from the public for thirty days,” Samul rebutted sternly. “That’s written into the regulation.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “This is extremely dangerous.” He underscored the words.

  Paulker eyed him searchingly. “This thing didn’t come from any human world,” he said slowly. “Perhaps not even from this galaxy.”

  “That’s possible,” Samul admitted.

  “What is it?”

  “The android? A machine.”

  “But so human,” Paulker breathed.

  “In looks, yes, but there’s more to the human body than that. There’s the soul.”

  Paulker shook his head. “What is the soul? It doesn’t have a physical basis. None whatever.”

  “Does a thing have to be measurable to exist?” he countered. “I believe not.”

  “Life is biochemistry,” the medician declared. “Life is the interaction of things that are measurable. It is the flow of blood, the action of enzymes, the response of nerves…”

  “Low animals answer that description,” Samul interrupted. “Do they have souls?”

  “The variable is intelligence,” Paulker declared.

  “Is it?” He gestured toward the figure on the slab. “There was intelligence to an unknown degree and systems that probably match all those of the human body, but it has no soul; that’s the difference.”

  “But what of its builders?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Paulker switched his gaze to Tommy Six. “Its construction might be utterly beyond our comprehension. You can’t expect too much.”

  “Do what you can.” Sensing the other’s predicament, he spoke more kindly. Paulker was a good man, perhaps the best in his field. But his orientation was on the human body — muscle, bone, nerve trunks, vascular systems. Protoplasm was his domain. His extensive knowledge of psychology was founded in human structures — the cortex and endocrine system. Action and reaction — the psychomedicians had never quite broken away from the concept of man as a mechanism of response to the stimulus field in which he dwelt. The inner life was governed by the outer. The human mind itself was inert until acted upon by exterior forces. Even the processes of creation were fueled through the sense organs. In that respect, the mind was a parasite feeding on the stimulus ocean surrounding it.

  Samul didn’t entirely believe that. Man responded, yes, but he was more than response. The greatness of life was more than a measure of protoplasm, more than a bombardment of stimuli. The mind itself was a creator, awesome in its potential. He saw the question in the medician’s eyes and waited.

  “Where did they get their model?” Paulker demanded. His voice had become hoarse and strained. “The…beings who sent them?”

  “That’s what I’m attempting to discover.”

  “But who or what are they?”

  “Another form of life,” he replied. “An intelligent one.”

  “They had to have some knowledge of our world — its geography, sociology, cultural artifacts. And of our language. It talked! It talked!”

  “At least enough to identify itself.” Recognizing the note of hysteria that had crept into the medician’s voice, he spoke placatingly.

  “Tommy Six…” Paulker spoke the name wonderingly. “Why such a strange name? What could it mean?”

  “It might mean there are at least five more of them,” he answered.

  “You believe so?” The medician’s head jerked up.

  “Or five hundred or five thousand.”

  “Do you really believe…”

  “I have no basis for belief,” Samul cut in. “All I know is that we have an android who lived and talked and died.”

  “And came from the stars,” Paulker whispered.

  “Yes, it came from the stars.” As the medician led him from the room, Samul turned back at the door to look at the slender figure on the slab. It came from the stars, yes, but who were its masters? That was the question.

  Who were its masters?

  Tommy Six was Danny June!

  Samul stared at the matching retinal prints. Not Danny June, he corrected, but a duplicate of Danny June, the young son of Gordell and Wenda June whose ship, the Golden Ram, had been destroyed years before in the vicinity of Aura Rawn, the emerald star.

  So there had been survivors! At least one. If Tommy Six were an exact duplicate of Danny June, as the retinal patterns indicated, then Danny had lived at least until the age of fourteen or fifteen — perhaps still lived. Samul felt a tremor of excitement. Somewhere beyond the Ebon Deeps…Knowing the futility of the speculation, he shook it from his mind.

  But the Golden Ram had been a colonist ship; ergo, the aliens must have gotten their concept of dress from the uniforms of the lost survey crews. That explained the fate of the Nomad and other vessels which, over the years, had vanished in that vast emptiness across the deeps.

  Had any of their crewmen survived? He thought not, for otherwise the aliens more likely would have duplicated an adult rather than a boy. Or would they? Debating the question, he thought that a definitive answer wasn’t possible. Not yet.

  Following the same line of reasoning, it seemed highly probable that no other members of the Golden Ram’s crew or passengers had survived, otherwise the aliens most certainly would have patterned the android’s clothes after those of the colonists. By that logic Danny June, alone, had fallen into alien hands.

  Samul speculated on his deductions. If he were correct, then any other androids landed in Gylan — he felt certain that at least five others existed, else why the name “Six” — would be replicas of the first one. All garbed in the uniform of the survey crews! They should be easy to locate.

  But how did the Tommies — plural? — get their information back to their masters? He had suggested transmitters to Paulker; now he realized its implausibility. Transmissions to or from an alien vessel orbiting Makal would have been detected. Neither could the aliens hope to land and pick up the androids as blithely as they had landed them. That, unlikely as it seemed, left telepathy.

  There was no other way, he concluded. But telepaths who could span the

  stars! He shuddered, feeling small and insignificant. The empire with its 6,800 sun systems diminished in his mind until it was bu
t a mote in space.

  But that was foolish! He pulled himself together. They were facing a race of undoubtedly greater science, at least in the manufacture of androids. But that didn’t mean they were invincible. Hostile, yes. The wanton destruction of the survey ships proved that. But they were still feeling their way, almost cautiously. Instead of terror bolts, they were sending androids to report on human strengths and weaknesses.

  The empire was weak, all right. He contemplated it musingly. But it was the weakness of opulence, of lack of challenge, of too many centuries in which man had lived by the clock, by regulation, secure in his eminence. In the process, personal initiative had been all but stifled.

  But it was also strong. History had proved that a thousand times since the first men had sent their frail craft careening among the stars. There had been long eras of somnolence; but the giant had always awakened. Each generation had bred men like Sol Houston; they were the sinews behind the fat.

  The reflection made him feel better.

  7

  “Tommy Three — Arla to Danny.”

  With the nightshades closing over the meadow, the voice tinkled in Danny’s mind. He started fearfully, for Zandro only moments before had withdrawn. Tensely he concentrated, relieved when he felt no sense of presence. Zandro was gone!

  “Tommy Three — Arla to Danny” — the message came again.

  “Danny June, I hear you, Tommy Three.” He let the message flow outward. “Come in, Arla, come in.”

  “Danny…” Her voice came as a breathless whisper in his mind.

  “I hear you, I hear you.”

  “Are you alone?”

  He hesitated, testing for the sense of presence again and finding none. “I was talking with Zandro, but he’s gone.” The thought was husky in his mind.

  “I heard you talking with Tommy Five.”

  “Zandro was with me,” he replied guardedly.

  “I know. You were asking about the starships at the military port.”

  “He wanted to know.” The admission brought a rush of guilt.

  “Do you think that wise…telling him things like that?”

  “I don’t know.” Her evident disapproval made him squirm. “I guess not,” he finally admitted.