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  “I’ll tell you later.” Retief motioned the diplomats toward the deflated Groaci gasbag now draped limply across the rocks. “There’s no time to dally, I’m afraid. All aboard.”

  “But—it’s punctured!” Smartfinger protested. “It certainly won’t fly, man!”

  “It will when our new allies finish,” Retief diligently reassured the colonel.

  The Zooners were already busy, bustling about the ersatz cloud, stuffing fistfuls of seed-pods inside. A comer of it stirred lazily, lifted to flap gently in the breeze. One side curled upward, tugging gently.

  “You know what to do,” Retief called to Qoj. “Don’t waste any time following me down.” He jumped into the air, thumbed the jet control wide open, and headed for the next stop at flank speed.

  Two thirds of the way down the sheer wall of the coral reef, a small figure caught Retiefs eye, perched disconsolately in a crevice on the rock. He swung closer, saw the spindly shanks and five-eyed visage of a Groaci, his once-splendid raiment in tatters.

  “Well, Field Marshal Shish,” he called. “What’s the matter, conditions down below not to your liking?”

  “Ambassador Shish, if you please,” the castaway hissed in sorrowful Groaci. “To leave me in solitude, soft one; to have suffered enough.”

  “Not nearly enough,” Retief contradicted. “However, all is not yet lost. I take it your valiant troops have encountered some sort of difficulty below?”

  “The spawn of the pits fell upon us while I was in my bath!” the Groaci whispered, speaking Terran now. “They snapped up a dozen of my chaps before I could spring from the tub of hot sand in which I had been luxuriating! I was fortunate to escape with my life! And then your shoddy Terran-made harness failed and dropped me here. Alack! Gone are the dreams of a procurators hip.”

  “Maybe not.” Retief maneuvered in close, held out a hand. “I’ll give you a piggy back and explain how matters stand. Maybe you can still salvage something from the wreckage.”

  Shish canted his eye-stalks. “Piggyback? Are you insane, Retief? Why, there’s nothing holding you up! How can it hold two of us?”

  “Take it or leave it, Mr. Ambassador,” Retief said. “I have a tight schedule.”

  “I’ll take it.” Shish gingerly swung his scrawny frame out and scrambled to a perch on Retiefs back, four of his eyes sphinctered tight shut. “But if I hadn’t already been contemplating suicide, nothing would have coaxed me to it”

  VII

  Five minutes later, Retief heard a hail. He dropped down, settled onto a narrow ledge beside the slight figure of Ambassador Oldtrick.

  The senior diplomat had lost his natty beret, and there was a scratch on his cheek. His flight harness, its gasbag flat, hung on a point of rock behind him.

  “What’s this? Who’s captured whom? Retief, are you . . .?”

  “Everything’s fine, your excellency,” Retief said soothingly. “I’ll just leave his Groacian excellency here with you. I’ve had a little talk with him, and he has something he wants to tell you. The staff will be along in a moment, to help out.”

  “But—you can’t—” Oldtrick broke off as a dark shadow flitted across the rock. “Duck! It’s that confounded cloud back again!”

  “It’s all right,” Retief called as he launched himself into space. “It’s on our side now.”

  At the long table in the main dining room aboard the heavy Corps transport which had been called in to assist in the repatriation of the Groaci Youth Scouts marooned on Zoon after the local fauna had devoured their ship and supplies, Magnan nudged Retief.

  “Rather a surprising about-face on the part of Ambassador Shish,” he muttered. “When that fake cloud dumped us off on the rock ledge with him, I feared the worst”

  “I think he’d had a spiritual experience down below that made him see the light,” Retief suggested.

  “Quite an equitable division of spheres of influence the ambassadors agreed on,” Magnan went on. “The Groaci seem quite pleased with the idea of erecting blast-proof barriers to restrain those ferocious little eaters to one half the planet, and acting as herdsmen over them, in return for the privilege of collecting their hair when they moult.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t sneak out a few pelts beforehand.” Colonel Smartfinger leaned to contribute. “Still, the Zooners don’t seem to mind, eh, Ornx?”

  “No problem,” the Zooner said airily. “We’re glad to wink at a few little violations in return for free access to our own real estate.”

  There was a sharp dinging as Ambassador Oldtrick rose and tapped his glass with a fork.

  “Gentlemen—gentlebeings, I should say.” He smirked at the Groaci and Zooners seated along the board “It’s my pleasure to announce the signing of the Terran-Zoon accord, under the terms of which we’ve been ceded all rights in the coral reef of our choice on which to place our chancery, well out of reach of those nasty little—that is, the untutored—I mean, er, playfully inclined . . .” He quailed under the combined glares of a dozen rows of pink eyes.

  “If he brings those abominations into the conversation again, I’m walking out,” Qoj said loudly.

  “So we’re going to be relegated to the top of that dreadful skyscraper?” Magnan groaned. “We’ll be commuting by patent gasbag.”

  “Ah!” Oldtrick brightened, glad of a change of subject. “I couldn’t help overhearing your remark, Magnan. And I’m pleased to announce that I have just this afternoon developed a startling new improvement to my flight harness. Observe!” All eyes were on the ambassador as he rose gently into the air, hung, beaming from a height of six feet.

  “I should mention that I had some assistance from Mr. Retief in, ah, working out some of the technicalities,” he murmured as the Terrans crowded around, competing for the privilege of offering their congratulations.

  “Heavens! And he’s not even wearing a balloon!” Magnan gasped. “How do you suppose he does it?”

  “Easy,” Qoj grunted. “He’s got a pocketful of prize-quality Zooner spore-pods.”

  Beside him, Ambassador Shish gave an annoyed hiss.

  “Somehow, I can’t escape the conviction that we Groaci have been had again.” He rose, leaving the room.

  “Hmph,” Magnan sniffed. “He got what he wanted, didn’t help.”

  “True,” Retief said, rising. “But it’s some people’s ill luck to always want the wrong thing.”

  AT THE CORE

  by Larry Niven

  I

  I couldn’t decide whether to call it a painting, a relief mural, a sculpture or a hash; but it was the prize exhibit in the Art Section of the Institute of Knowledge on Jinx. The Kdatlyno must have strange eyes, I thought. My own were watering. The longer I looked at “FTL-SPACE,” the more blurred it got

  I’d tentatively decided that it was supposed to look blurred when a set of toothy jaws clamped gently on my arm. I jumped a foot in the air. A soft, thrilling contralto voice said, “Beowulf Shaeffer, you are a spendthrift.”

  That voice would have made a singer’s fortune. And I thought I recognized it—but it couldn’t be; that one was on We Made It, light-years distant I turned.

  The puppeteer had released my arm. It went on: “And what do you think of Hrodenu?”

  “He’s ruining my eyes.”

  “Naturally. The Kdatlyno are blind to all but radar. ‘FTL-SPACE’ is meant not to be seen but to be touched. Run your tongue over it.”

  “My tongue? No, thanks.” I tried running my hand over it. If you want to know what it felt like, hop a ship for Jinx; the thing’s still there. I flatly refuse to describe the sensation.

  The puppeteer cocked its heads dubiously. “I’m sure your tongue is more sensitive. No guards are near.”

  “Forget it. You know, you sound just like the regional president of General Products on We Made It.”

  “It was he who sent me your dossier, Beowulf Shaeffer. No doubt we had the same English teacher. I am the regional president on Jin
x, as you no doubt recognized from my mane.”

  Well, not quite. A puppeteer is best described as a three legged centaur with two flat, brainless heads mounted on long, sinuous necks. The mouths also function as hands, and very well, too. The mane, which runs from the tail forward to become an auburn mop over the brain case between the necks, is supposed to show caste once you learn to discount variations of mere style. To do that you have to be a puppeteer. Instead of admitting my ignorance, I asked, “Did that dossier say I was a spendthrift?”

  “You have spent more than a million stars in the past four years.”

  “And loved it.”

  “Yes. You will shortly be in debt again. Have you thought of doing more writing? I admired your article on the neutron star BVS-1. ‘The pointy bottom of a gravity well’ . . . ‘blue starlight fell on me like intangible sleet’ . . . lovely.”

  “Thanks. It paid well, too. But I’m mainly a spaceship pilot”

  “It is fortunate, our meeting here. I had thought of having you found. Do you wish a job?”

  That was a loaded question. The last and only time I took a job from a puppeteer, the puppeteer blackmailed me into it, knowing it would probably kill me. It almost did. I didn’t hold that against the regional president of We Made It. In fact, I blackmailed him back when he let it slip that the puppeteer home planet has no moon. The puppeteers, constitutional cowards all, go to great lengths to keep the galaxy-at-large from finding that world. But to let them have another crack at me—? “I’ll give you a conditional Maybe. Do you have the idea I’m a professional suicide pilot?”

  “Not at all. If I show details, do you agree that the information shall be confidential?”

  “I do,” I said formally, knowing it would commit me. A verbal contract is as binding as the tape it’s recorded on.

  “Good. Come.” He pranced toward a transfer booth.

  The transfer booth let us out somewhere in Jinx’s vacuum regions. It was night. High in the sky, Sirius B was a painfully bright pinpoint casting vivid blue moonlight on a ragged lunar landscape. I looked up and didn’t see Binary, Jinx’s bloated orange companion planet, so we must have been in the Farside End.

  But there was something hanging over us.

  A #4 General Products hull is a transparent sphere a thousand-odd feet in diameter. No bigger ship has been built anywhere in the known galaxy. It takes a government to buy one, and they are used for colonization projects only. But this one could never have been so used. It was all machinery. Our transfer booth stood between two of the landing legs, so that the swelling flank of the ship looked down on us as an owl looks down at a mouse. An access tube ran through vacuum from the booth to the airlock.

  I said, “Does General Products build complete spacecraft nowadays?”

  “We are thinking of branching out. But there are problems.”

  From the viewpoint of the puppeteer-owned company, it must have seemed high time. General Products makes the hulls for ninety-five per cent of all ships in space, mainly because nobody else knows how to build an indestructible hull. But they’d made a bad start with this ship. The only room I could see for crew, cargo or passengers was a few cubic yards of empty space right at the bottom, just above the airlock. And it seemed to be just big enough for a pilot “You’d have a hard time selling that,” I said.

  “True. Do you notice anything else?”

  “Well . . .” The hardware which filled the transparent hull was very tightly packed The effect was as if a race of ten-mile-tall giants had striven to achieve miniaturization. I saw no sign of access tubes; hence there could be no in-space repairs. Four reaction motors poked their appropriately huge nostrils through the hull, angled outward from the bottom. No small attitude jets; hence, oversized gyros inside. Otherwise . . . “Most of it looks like hyper-drive motors. But that’s silly. Unless you’ve thought of a good reason for moving moons around?”

  “At one time you were a commercial pilot for Nakamura Lines. How long was the run from Jinx to We Made It?”

  “Twelve days if nothing broke down.” Just long enough to get to know the prettiest passenger aboard, while the autopilot did everything for me but wear my uniform.

  “Sirius to Procyon is a distance of four light-years. Our ship would be able to make the trip in five minutes.”

  “You’ve lost your mind,”

  “No.”

  But—that was almost a light-year per minute! I couldn’t visualize it. Then suddenly I did visualize it, and my mouth fell open, for what I saw was the galaxy opening before me. We know so little beyond our own small neighborhood of the galaxy. But with a ship like that—!

  “That’s goddam fast.”

  “As you say. But the equipment is bulky, as you nota It cost seven billion stars to build that ship, discounting centuries of research, but it will only move one man. As is, the ship is a failure. Shall we go inside and take a look?”

  II

  The lifesystem was two circular rooms, one above the other, with a small airlock to one side. The lower room was the control room, with banks of switches and dials and blinking lights dominated by a huge spherical mass pointer. The upper room was bare walls, transparent, through which I could see air-and food-producing equipment.

  “This will be the relaxroom,” said the puppeteer. “We decided to let the pilot decorate it himself.”

  “Why me?”

  “Let me further explain the problem.” The puppeteer began to pace the floor. I hunkered down against the wall and watched. Watching a puppeteer move is a pleasure. Even in Jinx’s gravity the deerlike body seemed weightless, the tiny hooves tapping the floor at random. “The human sphere of colonization is some thirty light-years across, is it not?”

  “Maximum. It’s not exactly a sphere—”

  “The puppeteer region is much smaller. The Kdatlyno sphere is half the size of yours, and the Kzinti is fractionally larger. These are the important space-traveling species. We must discount the Outsiders since they do not use ships. Some spheres coincide, naturally. Travel from one sphere to another is nearly nil except for ourselves, since our sphere of influence extends to all who buy our hulls. But add all these regions, and you have a region sixty light-years across. This ship could cross it in seventy-five minutes. Allow six hours for takeoff and six for landing, assuming no traffic snarls near the world of destination, and we have a ship which can go anywhere in thirteen hours but nowhere in less than twelve, carrying one pilot and no cargo, costing seven billion stars.”

  “How about exploration?”

  “We puppeteers have no taste for abstract knowledge. And how should we explore?” Meaning that whatever race flew the ship would gain the advantages thereby. A puppeteer wouldn’t risk his necks by flying it himself. “What we need is a great deal of money and a gathering of intelligences, to design something which may go slower but must be less bulky. General Products does not wish to spend so much on something that may fail. We will require the best minds of each sentient species and the richest investors. Beowulf Shaeffer, we need to attract attention.”

  “A publicity stunt?”

  “Yes. We wish to send a pilot to the center of the galaxy and back.”

  “Ye . . . gods! Will it go that fast?”

  “It would require some twenty-five days to reach the center and an equal time to return. You can see the reasoning behind—”

  “It’s perfect You don’t need to spell it out Why me?”

  “We wish you to make the trip and then write of it.

  I have a list of pilots who write. Those I have approached have been reluctant. They say that writing on the ground is safer than testing unknown ships. I follow their reasoning.”

  “Me too.”

  “Will you go?”

  “What am I offered?”

  “One hundred thousand stars for die trip. Fifty thousand to write the story, in addition to what you sell it for.”

  “Sold.”

  From then on, my only worry was that my
new boss would find out that someone had ghostwritten that neutron star article.

  Oh, I wondered at first why General Products was willing to trust me. The first time I forked for them I tried to steal their ship, for reasons which seemed good at the time. But the ship I now called Long Shot really wasn’t worth stealing. Any potential buyer would know it was hot; and what good would it be to him? Long Shot could have explored a globular cluster; but her only other use was publicity.

  Sending her to the Core was a masterpiece of promotion.

  Look: it was twelve days from We Made It to Jinx by conventional craft, and twelve hours by Long Shot. What’s the difference? You spent twelve years saving for the trip. But the Corel Ignoring refueling and reprovisioning problems, my old ship could have reached the galaxy’s Core in three hundred years. No known species had ever seen the Corel It hid behind layer on layer of tenuous gas and dust clouds. You can find libraries of literature on those central stars, but they all consist of generalities and educated guesses based on observation of other galaxies, like Andromeda.

  Three centuries dropped to less than a month! There’s something anyone can grasp. And with pictures!

  The lifesystem was finished in a couple of weeks. I had them leave the control room walls transparent and paint the relaxroom solid blue, no windows. When they finished I had entertainment tapes and everything it takes to keep a man sane for seven weeks in a room the size of a large closet.

  On the last day the puppeteer and I spoke the final version of my contract. I had four months to reach the galaxy’s center and return. The outside cameras would run constantly; I was not to interfere with them. If the ship suffered a mechanical failure I could return before reaching the center, otherwise, no. There were penalties. I took a copy of the tape to leave with a lawyer.