Address: Centauri by F. L. Wallace (most read book in the world .TXT) 📖

his head. "That wasn't in the bargain. You can have all the power the existing lines will take. But we can't spare men to install new lines. The technicians we have are busy elsewhere."

"It's such a little thing," she coaxed. "The machine's not a sledge hammer that smashes molecules apart and then crushes them into a new chemical alignment. It's a keen instrument, an ultramicrosize knife that slits delicately here and there and then slides the separated atoms together to form a different molecule."

"I'm not arguing about power," he said adamantly. "I said you can have it and you can. Trained men you can't. I'll see if I can spare them after what they're working on is finished."

She stopped as if she'd stumbled into a taut wire she hadn't noticed. She looked at him thoughtfully and strolled back to the synthesizer, under the light that shone down and provocatively through the smock. She wore other clothing but that too seemed almost to vanish. "For me, won't you? Just a few men for a few days. It means a lot to Maureen."

"I can't let you have technicians now," he said obstinately.

She glanced at him curiously, sauntering closer as if to get a better look. "I forgot. Cameron has Nona, hasn't he? They're going to get married as soon as he can figure out a simple ceremony. And now you hate women, don't you? That's why you won't give Maureen the same chance you'd give a man."

He rocked back under the cold hatred. He had no idea she was capable of such venom. "You're reading into my emotions something that was never there. I'm glad Nona found someone she can respond to. But why are you so concerned with Maureen? You never liked her."

"What rationalization," she said bitterly. "It makes no difference what I thought about her. She's going to die if I don't help her, and I will. I'd expect the same from anyone else."

"Jeriann," he said but she was gone, tearing the smock off and thrusting it on a hook, leaving him alone beside a machine that alternately hummed and purred in oily accents. He stared at it with complete lack of interest as the cycle changed. The synthesizer grunted with satisfied pride and three drops of a colorless fluid were discharged into a retort.

If there was no other way they could save Maureen by contacting the expedition behind them. They had the supplies Jeriann was trying vainly to duplicate. But that was surrender and the only alternative was to go ahead as planned.

Docchi left the laboratory, taking the long way around to avoid the doctor's office. Cameron wouldn't put the same pressure on him that Jeriann had—no one could. Why did she have to think he was responsible?

13

The dimensions of the place were fear, panic and loneliness. It was no-time or all-time, the endless instant of survival—or less. It was light or it wasn't, the illumination of the closed mind, the intellect turned in on itself, perception curled backward while it reached for the outside world. It was a universe which neither existed nor would ever quite vanish.

And there wasn't a sound. To the distorted senses, wavering and uncertain, sounds could be masculine. "Yes?" said Maureen poutingly. "Where are you now?" But she couldn't hear what she said. So she stopped speaking.

It was forbidden.

The bloodstream left her heart and had no path but to return deviously. It travelled darkly with many branches, pounding, flushed with oxygen from the lung machines. The mind was turned inward. The body was turned inward. Life had no place to go. It was out of balance.

Her feet touched the floor and she got out of bed. The flesh was heavy. The tube in her chest whistled with exertion. There was oxygen, too much of it, but there was no substitute for the regulative substances her body didn't have. She was falling apart, pulled apart by the wild dissimilar tendencies of all her cells.

She kept on walking until she lunged against a wall. Her nose splayed to one side but her veins weren't ready to bleed. There was nothing to tell them to let out the red drops. She fell down and got up, walking on, banging against the wall.

She could never find anyone she knew. After a while she realized the person she missed most was herself.

Why was it light without being light and dark with no darkness? Her eyes had forgotten they were supposed to see. She sat down in the middle of the floor and began plucking at the hospital gown, pulling it apart thread by thread. Her mind said she didn't feel what she touched but she didn't believe everything. She practiced playing tricks on her thoughts. There were so many tricks to play and such few thoughts.

She sat there, pretending to listen to something that nobody said. She waved her fingers languidly and closed her eyes with deep regret, lips curved for the kiss that wasn't given.

Cameron came in and hurried out after one glimpse, calling for Jeriann. The deterioration was proceeding more rapidly than he expected. There were not three weeks left. It might be less than three days.

Webber nodded and went on working, aware that Anti was watching the coordination of his dissimilar arms and legs. It didn't disturb the rhythm of his movements. Anti moved to the other side to get a better view of what he was doing and as she did so remembered what she'd come for.

"So that's why I couldn't get a book. What's wrong?"

"Nothing. We're tearing it down to move it."

"Why move it? This is where the books are."

He bent over the mechanism, disconnecting it. "I don't know. You'll have to ask Docchi."

He knew but was too engrossed to stop. Jordan could tell her but he wasn't here. She wandered through the library but found no one who could or would give her information. What made it worse was, with the librarian torn apart, there wasn't a book available.

She was curiously perturbed. She knew where she could find Docchi, at gravity center where he had taken over the quarters formerly occupied by Vogel. More and more the asteroid was beginning to resemble a ship and if there was a definite control area it was located in gravity center.

The first thing she saw when she entered the low structure—most of the gravity installation was underground—was the scanner. It had changed; the last trace of the makeshift origin had disappeared. It was metal encased and dials and switches replaced connections formerly made by hand. These alterations were Nona's but bringing it here was Docchi's idea. Anti frowned contemplatively; it wasn't far in straight distances from where Nona had originally constructed it, but the labor involved in carrying it through miles of tunnels and then overland to where it was now standing—that was considerable effort. It didn't square with what Jeriann had told her.

She found Docchi a few stories below the entrance level, somewhere near the actual gravity computers. He looked up and then wriggled his head out of the harness. "Have you come to help, Anti?"

"Nope. I've got a complaint."

His smile wasn't appreciative. "The headquarters for that are in the other division."

She ignored the reference to Jeriann. "I'd help if I could but I'm ignorant. And you're keeping me from learning."

"The library?"

"Of course. I can't get a single book."

He looked at the design he'd been working on and then reluctantly stepped out of the machine which enabled him to put his ideas on paper.

"Don't stop drawing because of me," said Anti.

"It was nearly done. Jordan can carry on from there." He sat down while Anti remained standing, balancing an imaginary basket of fruit on her head. The years in the tank had ruined her posture.

"I'm sorry we had to take the librarian but you can still get books. I've figured out a formula."

"First I have to be a mathematician and then I've got to crawl back in the stacks? There must be places no one can get to, especially tapes and music."

"That's the way it is. We'll have to go over the whole setup, relocate the stacks and train human librarians."

"Seems like a waste when what we had was working perfectly."

"We had to do it if we want to get to Centauri before they do." He jerked his head to indicate out there.

"But what good is it? The librarian is just a——" She closed her mouth.

"Just a memory system? That's what we need to duplicate the drive they have. Of course the librarian remembers the wrong thing but we're changing that."

"Can't we do it in some other way?"

"Not in time with the facilities we have. Maybe Nona could but the rest of us are just humans."

"Well, what's wrong with her?"

"Nothing. If you can get her interested in building a control unit I'll step aside."

"Why build it? She is the control."

"Now she is, but there are a number of reasons why a mechanical control is better. For one thing we don't know how much of her attention it requires. The drive may not function at all when she isn't consciously thinking about it."

"But the gravity never stops."

"True, but does it apply to acceleration? We can't measure that."

"You're working on a lot of suppositions—it may do this—it may not do that."

"We don't have to guess at one thing, Anti. The expedition is gaining on us. And they are using a mechanical control."

Anti looked over at the drawing Docchi had made. A bunch of squiggles. "You know more about it than I do. If it's your opinion that this is what we should have, then we ought to. To me it seems that another kind of control won't make much difference."

"Review what we have. A nuclear pile that supplies all the power, a set of gravity coils, and three computers. One computer figures the gravity for the asteroid. Another calculates the propulsive force. The third, we think, actuates the scanner. Nona may rotate the duties among the computers and the unit we're building will do the same.

"But this is what we can do that Nona doesn't: we'll cut everything to a minimum except the drive. Gravity, light, heat, all the personal conveniences will be cut to the least we can stand."

Anti rose a few inches and thought herself back to the floor. "This is what you'll do if it works the way you imagine."

"It will, Anti." Docchi's face was set. "Nona's too considerate. As long as she has it she won't impose the sacrifices we're glad to make ourselves. We're taking it out of her hands."

If they needed somebody to make hard decisions, Docchi was the man. It was a crusade with him and he was willing to drive everyone the same as himself. Anti looked at his face and decided against the question she'd come to ask. "Sounds grim, but you're right. We're willing if there's a chance we'll get there first. What can I do to help?"

"Reorganize the library. Get assistants to reach in the places too small for you. Collect the medical texts first. Cameron may need them."

"A thankless job," muttered Anti. "I started out to read a book."

Docchi smiled. "I thought you had enough of sedentary life."

"I have, but not enough of books. Picture and music tapes were easy to get in the tank but they didn't make acid proof books. Limited demand, I suppose."

"Here's the formula I've worked out. Books are selected according to subject and author, filed according to size and date received." He went over the procedure until she had it straight.

"I guess I can do it," she said dubiously. "But why not start at one end and go through to the other side of the stacks?"

"You've got to segregate the medical references first."

Belated compensation because he had refused Jeriann? Perhaps, but he was not that simple. If anything it was just recognition of what came first in importance. "A tedious job," she grumbled as she started to leave.

"It is. But, except for what we are as persons and what we create in the future, it's the total of our human heritage. It's the last we'll get."

"Sometimes I believe——" said Anti. "Oh, never mind what a huge old woman thinks." She went out the door and when she came back seconds later Docchi was again drawing.

"Yes, Anti?"

"You can start cutting down on me. I won't mind."

"When it's necessary I'll take you up on it. I don't think it will be. It doesn't take much power to run the computers and they're always functioning anyway. And when we drop to quarter gravity, which is the minimum we'll go, you won't actually need your gadget. You see, you're not holding us back."

"Just the same if it will help I'll stay in the tank."

His face glittered and his eyes strayed back to