Lucifer Comet (2464 CE) Read online

  Sari crisped: “It might help if you could interpose the Orion-lines between stars, to show how Orion is distorted here.”

  “This request I anticipated,” the director crowed. Interstellar lines and star names leaped into light-being on the dome: now it all looked like an Orion mashed into shapelessness by some cosmic juggernaut-car.

  They gazed at the weirdity…»

  “Please remove the lines.” It was the voice of Lieutenant Zorbin. All turned to him as the lines vanished.

  Zorbin added: “Doctor, this may be too much to ask—but would it be possible for you to introduce new stellar lines as I may direct?”

  “Quite feasible,” the director answered. “But it would help, sir, if you would join me at the console here and show me where you want the connections placed.”

  Zorbin went down. With absorption the task force watched the small dome as, one by one, pairs of stars were joined by lines. And presently, all stars were line-linked….

  Someone ejaculated, “Well!” It was a constellation, certainly; but what sort of thing the figure might represent, only Zorbin and Methuen, having seen Dorita’s drawing, had the experience to comprehend.

  Zorbin told them, manipulating the arrow: “If Dora is a planet of the star Saiph, then you are seeing what people on Dora would see as their brightest stars. Quarfar said that the Dorians saw this constellation as a mizdorf plunging headlong upon Dora, flung out of the sky by a demon. A mizdorf is a batwinged humanoid like Narfar of the comet; all of you have seen photos of him. I have a feeling that Narfar himself may have given this legend to his people, and that the demon is supposed to be Quarfar.

  “Bright Hatsya is the burning demon, watching the fall from above; Hatsya is the brightest of all stars from the Dorian viewpoint.

  “Fancy that we are looking at the back of the falling mizdorf. Betelgeuse, here, is the orange-red head, aimed at Saiph or Dora, which do not appear. The right wing is Bellatrix, M-43, M-42, Rigel and small stars; the left is Heka, 2024 and small stars. The arms are neglected, constellations do get simplified. We then trace the body upward to the crotch, a small star, from which extend two legs: the right leg marked by Tabit and a small star, the left composed of Alnilam, Alnitak, and Mintaka. In my own mind, without question this constellation could be understood by primitive

  people on Dora as a semi-divine creature whom they well knew: namely, a mizdorf—like Narfar, their king-god.

  “I want to show you some independent support; please wait a moment.” Zorbin spoke with the director, and the stars changed to become once more Orion in planar projection as seen from Erth.

  “Quarfar told us that Narfar chose to go to Dora from Erth because its sun was the head of a constellation which reminded Narfar of a mizdorf. Sir, will you please kill the Orion star-connections?” The lines vanished; only stars remained.

  Said Zorbin: “Regard this configuration, but alter your thought of it. Imagine that what we see as arms, Narfar saw as legs; and Saiph as head, not foot; and what we see as a head, gender-proud Narfar saw as a phallus. Watch.” New connecting lines produced a new pattern.

  “Mr. Chairman,” said Zorbin, “if I as a consultant may presume on the patience of this task force, it is my opinion that the projections we have here strengthen enormously, indeed almost definitively, the hypothetical web of Dr. Sari. The home constellation of the planet Dora is, I believe, the one called by us Orion, and by the Dorians called Mizdorf. And Dora is a planet of the star which does not appear in the Dorian constellation, and through which the five-forty-six gradient passes directly: the hot blue-white helium star which we call Saiph.

  “And if we assume that the planet Dora is an Erth-like planet with a mean temperature about like that of Erth, remembering the high heat of the star Saiph, then we can provisionally expect to find Dora on a mean orbit of something like two billion, nine hundred million kilometers out from Saiph—which is about like the mean distance of Uranus from Sol.”

  The task force, and very particularly Sita Sari, now had also the measure of Zorbin.

  16

  The captain and the lieutenant arrived home just before 0800, both men meditative and weary, saddened by the death of Quarfar (it was particularly poignant that the titan could not be with them at the planetarium to recognize the Dora-constellation Mizdorf); tending to be elated by the successful locating of Dora; frustrated because the death of Quarfar and the earlier loss of Narfar prevented the task force from moving effectively into the other aspects of its mission. Methuen felt somehow comfortable about the performance of that always sharp and sometimes charming Sita Sari; but just now he wanted to share his feelings with Dorita, to be comforted by her, to comfort her (since Quarfar’s loss was most hurtful to her). Paradoxically, before the brooding night would be out, he and Dorita might have love, and they might prove to be in love. Zorbin, too, looked forward to being with Dorita, although he did not love her; and he wondered whether tonight Dorita would quit the sofa and claim the bedroom vacated by Quarfar—with or without B .J.

  They found the salon unoccupied. Methuen, feeling delicate about calling out for her, went looking for her, while Zorbin hit the kitchenette to make drinks. Methuen began by stealing silently into Quarfar’s bedroom, suspecting that Dora out of sentiment might be resting on the titan’s bed….

  He was in there for a while, presumably having found her. Zorbin finished making two strong bourbons with water and one whiskey sour, brought them into the salon on a little tray, set the tray on a large circular coffee table strategically grouped with the sofa and two easy chairs, took his own drink to one of the chairs, sat sipping and meditating.

  Methuen stood before him, frowning profoundly, offering him a note. Setting down his drink, Zorbin took it and read it. Dorita’s handwritten scrawl:

  Good friend B. J.,

  I’m pinning this to Quarfar’s pillow, you’re sure to look for me here and find it. I’m leaving with Narfar; don’t look for us, we will be unfindable, and we won’t be on Erth or anywhere else in this time-slot. This could be the grand goal of my life. You’re a good guy, B. J., and a wonderful Astrofleet captain. And it was great with you, first night and everything else. My kind regards to that good Lieutenant Zorbin. Maybe you’ll want to give this apartment back to the family I conned out of it; the landlady can help.

  D.

  P. S.: The window was broken out by Narfar, last night; I had him aroused, a little.

  Zorbin looked up; Methuen, still standing, had picked up his bourbon, ignoring the sour which had been for Dorita. He glugged about a third of the drink and queried: “What proportions?”

  “Two bourbon, one water, lots of ice.”

  “Right now, I think it ought to be stronger—” Zorbin twisted around to watch while Methuen went to the kitchen, poured off half the remaining two-thirds of his drink, filled the glass with bourbon without adding ice, meticulously stirred with a swizzle-stick cadged from a posh restaurant on the planet Vash, returned, sat, sipped.

  Silently Zorbin returned the note. Methuen, now jacketless with tie removed and collar open, took the note without looking at it, folded it crudely with one hand, thrust it into his shirt pocket, sipped.

  Zorbin waited.

  Having sipped some more, Methuen queried: “How many drinks can you handle before dinner?”

  “As many as you, I imagine. Maybe more, if you stay with that strength.”

  “What sort of dinner is best for a drunken sailor?”

  “A very large very hot pizza with everything imaginable.” “Please be sure to dial it when your imagination hits maximum and before it fades. But put a hold on the pizza. ’Scuse, I want to make a call while I’m sober—”

  The only visiphone was at the little desk; this apartment was not perfectly modern. Methuen punched a number with a private associated code. Meanwhile Zorbin, using a checkoff list, dialed two pizzas; his imagination was never all that great, but in the course of pizza-years he had developed a system: one of th
e ingredients was kosher pastrami. He put the order on will-call. When he turned to the desk, the face of short-blond-haired Rear Admiral Manx filled the visi-screen, collar open; and Methuen was saying, “Sorry to ring you at home, Dave, but this is rather peremptory.”

  “Go ahead, B. J.,” said Manx. They were old friends in Astrofleet.

  “You’re familiar with my task force.”

  “Of course.”

  “Did you know that our prime subject Quarfar died today?”

  “I caught it on the 0700 kenner. Bad luck, my friend.” “Well, Dave: the thing is, that today the task force identified the planet Dora, the home planet which Narfar was defending against Quarfar, as an unknown satellite of the star Saiph in the constellation Orion.”

  “No!”

  “No question at all, Dave, the evidence is beautiful. Well, as you know, my task force is interdisciplinary. And with Quarfar no longer available for information about the planet, I am betting twelve to seven or higher that tomorrow they will want to go to Dora and investigate.”

  The eyes of Admiral Manx went toward his own ceiling. “There is also,” Methuen added, “a potential threat to Erth, of some sort.” Inhibiting reference to the prevoyant dreams, he explained: “Quarfar’s words about that were, quote: ‘Whether and how that threat may be realized will depend on—factors which I am not ready to disclose.’ End quote.” The captain was falsifying the end of the quote: for the admiral, mention of Dorita would be a red herring, as the dreams would have been.

  Said Manx thoughtfully. ‘Twenty-one hundred light years.” “Right.”

  “Would a frigate do it?”

  “I think so, suitably fitted out.”

  “With VIP accommodations and some technical stuff.” “Right. I had seven members today, and the total potential is ten plus myself.”

  “You’d be commanding?”

  “I think that might be best.”

  “Who pays the bill?”

  “Either Norwestia or Erthworld, that will have to be worked out.”

  “Any preferences as your exec?”

  “Zorbin, but promote him.” Zorbin re-hit the dinner dial, having thought of a new ingredient for the pizzas.

  “That part sounds feasible. Any other crew preferences?” “Not off the Ventura, they aren’t used to hot ships. Give me an experienced frigate crew.”

  “Then why Zorbin?”

  “Believe me, he’s ready.”

  “B.J., you know I can’t promise anything, I’ll have to wait for orders from somebody.”

  “Right, but I thought you might want to know, so you can be readying a frigate just in case.”

  “You are a bastard.”

  “You are an admiral. It takes one to know one.”

  Over the masterful pizzas, which were being washed down with bourbon-laced Chianti: “BJ.—”

  “Saul?”

  “You going to lead the task force that way?”

  “I don’t think I’ll have to.”

  “But one way or another, it’s going to go that way.”

  “Yo.”

  “Jealousy?”

  “Mm?”

  “You in love with Dorita?”

  “Ouch. Wait till I rip off a juicy slice.”

  “B.J.—”

  “Saul?”

  “She said, don’t follow.”

  “She doesn’t command me.”

  “She said you’d never find her. She’d be in a different time-slot, she said.”

  “That’s a problem.”

  “You can navigate in time?”

  “Can you, Saul?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Neither can I. But I get a strong impression that Dorita can.”

  “With Narfar.”

  “Yo.”

  “Think she loves him, B.J.?”

  “Not a chance. Fascination, not love.”

  “Think she loves you?”

  “I think she used me. I think she’s using this Narfar.”

  “What for?”

  “God knows.”

  “You want to solve the problem of Dorita.”

  “At least that. There’s more, believe me, but don’t ask. Hit me with the spiked Chianti, I need to dip my fingers in it.”

  “Do you think she plans taking him back fifty thousand years to his own era?”

  “Could be.”

  “If you can’t follow her back there, what’s the value for you of visiting the planet?”

  Methuen gazed at Zorbin; Methuen’s mouth was twisted, and his eyes glittered. “Maybe I just want to inspect the late-on remains of the mess that I think she will have made, back there in the old time.”

  17

  At Quarfar’s hospital bedside:

  Quarfar— Dorita!

  That’s right, Quarfar, do not speak, just think at me, I’m entirely with you, talking would weaken you— The body is already weakened beyond use, Dorita; but the mindsoul is unimpaired, which means that I am unimpaired. But I have to think talk quickly with you now, because afterward I will not be able to get through to you.

  Go ahead, dear Quarfar.

  First, I want to say that you have been good for me.

  And you have been good for me.

  Good, now to the business. / was not entirely asleep last night. I knew when Narfar was standing beside me, trying to decide whether he should kill me. And I mind-heard you and Narfar afterward.

  Oboy.

  And I know your mind rather well, Dorita. I know what you want. You want whatever anybody else has not done and could not do and should not do.

  Ah.

  That is why you involved yourself with Methuen to help investigate us two unprecedented space-time-comet creatures. And that is why you want to go to Dora with Narfar. Partly why; because in one way you would prefer to go with me, but there is a certain primitive charisma about Narfar. Besides, him you can control.

  Quafar, you are wearing yourself— Quiet, Dorita, listen: I am my own best judge. And I wish it were possible for me to believe that my brother Narfar is his own best judge; but Narfar is—limited.

  True.

  It was I who made it possible for him to go to Dora.

  You mean the five-forty-six gradient?

  Exactly. His transmission to Dora was instantaneous, and that created the space-trail. And I did not erase the trail afterward; still it lingers; but for a bulky thing like a star-ship or a comet, it will only accelerate the thing, it will not provide anything like instantaneous transmission.

  But Quarfar, that was much more than fifty thousand years ago; all the positions of the stars have changed. How would it continue to link Dora with Erth?

  It is a question of relative positions, Dorita. Saiph and Sol inhabit the same armtip of our spiral galaxy, their distance apart is a small fraction of our galaxy’s diameter. Within our sector, the relative positions of most stars have not changed significantly. The main thing that changes is our seasonal and equatorial view of the stars; and that is merely because Erth wobbles on its axis, it is called precession; every twenty-five thousand years, one precession is completed, and the stars are all back where they were before. But even if Erth did not precess, our end of the gradient would vary diurnally. Right now, this end of the gradient is describing a wave-girdle around Erth; it has kept right on linking Erth with Dora, except when the sun or some planet has cut it.

  You are telling me that I can find the gradient?

  I only need to know when you will be starting out for it and how long it will take you to get there.

  How fast can Narfar fly?

  At full speed, probably a thousand kilometers per hour.

  Quarfar, would a calculation be too much for you?

  I still can hack it, Dorita.

  Suppose I were to depart Manhattan on Narfar wings at 1500 this afternoon. From what you have told me, at his full speed it would take us twenty hours to go halfway around Erth. When would we pick up the gradient?

  You would not have
to depart Manhattan. Actually the gradient swept through our apartment yesterday afternoon, I smelled its traces when we returned, it passed through my bedroom. I would expect it to pass through the salon today at 1500, right across your sofa. You and Narfar could simply sit there; let him do the activation.

  Right through the ceiling—and two ceilings above it?

  No problem for Narfar; but if it is a problem for you, Dorita, why then, simply go to the roof and stand directly about your sofa. Can you get to the roof?

  Yes; but once up there, can I locate the sofa position?

  That I leave to you; but a small error won’t matter if you let Narfar know what you are doing, he’ll be on the smell for the gradient, he’ll catch it and wing with it—holding you, I’d imagine. And if you miss today, you can easily con Methuen into calculating tomorrow’s position.

  I won’t miss today. Do I hold my breath in outer space, or what?

  You’ll be on Dora in a breath, Narfar will keep you from smashing down. Dorita, I have to leave this now, there’s another thing— Quarfar?

  I respect my brother Narfar. We’ve had no reason for love, but I respect him. But only for what he is; and what he is is limited.

  I know.

  He messed up humans here on Erth, he gave too much power to beasts. I had to come to the rescue. He was doing better on Dora, but finally I could see that he had dangerously drained off one essential ingredient from the souls of his humans. The drain-off has helped Narfar to generate a splendid soft docile culture which had beasts at a friendly stand-off. But without that special ingredient, if his people should lose Narfar, their culture would quickly perish, they would become inferior beasts.

  And what is this ingredient?