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Whoever he was, however he did what he did, he was a terrible danger to the
Plan of Man. Gann could almost hear the instructions of his briefing officer
back on Pluto if he had been able to report Hickson's existence to him, and
if the briefing officer could issue an order: Sub-feet
Hickson is a negative factor. His uncatalogued knowledge must be retrived for
the Plan. Then each organ of his uriautomated body must be obliterated ...
But how to get him back into the jurisdiction of the Planning Machine?
There had to be a way. There would be a way. Machine Major Boysie Gann was
sure of it. All it required was that he be patient then, when his chance came,
be ready.
Gann said, "If you mean it, then let's take your gun and signal right now. I'm
ready to move on."
Harry Hickson led Gann to a point of red-scaled rock, 177
puffing and wheezing. On his bald scalp the fledgling py-ropod wheeled and
slithered, keeping its bright red eyes on Boysie Gann.
"See up there?" called Hickson over his shoulder. "That star there next to
Vega ..."
Boysie Gann followed his pointing finger. "You mean Theta Lyrae?"
The hermit turned and looked at him, mildly surprised. "That's right, Boysie.
You fellows learn a lot in that spy school. Too bad you don't . . . Well,
never mind that. One I mean, it's just below
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Theta Lyrae. The faint red one. Forget the name, but that one right there.
That way's Freehaven."
Gann felt his blood pound. "Freehaven? Fve heard of it. A colony of reef
rats."
"Aw, Boysie, don't say it like that. They're free men
that's all. That's the biggest place in the Reefs, Free-haven is. Like a ...
well, what would you call it? A kind of a town only it's one whole cluster of
Reefs, maybe a hundred thousand miles across. And maybe half a billion miles
from here."
"I see," said Gann, thinking with exultation and pride, What a prize to bring
back to Pluto! A
whole city to be planned and returned to the brotherhood of the Machinef He
could almost see the glowing jet trails of the Plan cruisers vectoring in on
the cluster ...
"Don't get your hopes up," Hickson said dryly. "You ain't there yet, Boysie,
and maybe even when you get there you won't find it too easy to pick up a
phone and call the Machine. Now hush a minute while I send for your ride out
there."
He picked up the clumsy old laser gun he had taken
" of its greasy rag wrappings back in the cave, checked
nit
^ power settings, raised it, and aimed carefully at the stant red spark that
was the line-of-sight to Freehaven.
hree times he snapped the trigger, then lowered the gun ad turned to Gann.
"That all there is to it. Take 'em a while to get here. Might as well go back
to the cave."
But he paused, glancing at Boysie Gann as if he was mildly embarrassed about
something. Then he seemed to come to a decision.
He turned back to the stars, set down the laser pistol, and stretched out his
arms. His lips moved, but Gann could hear no sound. On his bald pate the
pyropod hissed
178
and slithered. The hermit's whole body seemed stretched, yearning,
toward toward what?
Gann could not tell. Toward Freehaven, perhaps. Toward the faint red star that
marked its position or toward Theta Lyrae nearby or toward the great bright
giants of the Summer Triangle that marked that part of the sky, Vega, Altair,
and Deneb ...
Then Harry Hickson relaxed and the pyropod scuttled down from his scalp onto
his shoulder as the hermit raised one arm and made a sinuous, undulating
motion. Like the wriggle of a snake, Gann thought. Or the looping movement of
a swan's neck.
Swan? Some faint old memory stirred hi Boysie Gann's mind. Something about a
swan and a star...
But it would not come clear, and he followed Harry Hickson back to the cave.
Harry Hickson's little reefiet was one drifting island in an expanding
infinity of matter and space. The doctrine of the Neo-Hoyle Hypothesis was
clear: The universe was Kmitless, in space, in time and in matter. New mass
was forming everywhere in the form of newly created hydrogen atoms as the old
complexes of matter the stars and the planets, the dust clouds and the
galaxies were spinning slowly apart
Hickson's reefiet was an infant among bodies of organized matter, probably
only a few millions of years in age, in size no more than a dust mote. Yet it
was like most of the universe in that; for most matter is young. The spiraling
growth in rate of creation of new matter makes that sure. Some galaxies, and
even some of the reefs between them, are old beyond computation and
imagination, because the steady-state universe has neither beginning nor end.
And life is the oldest phenomenon of all. Older than the oldest stars but yet
young, though those scattered and forgotten stars are black and dead.
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Life in space has lived literally forever.
Every possible biology has been evolved, through every conceivable
evolutionary test.
Watching Harry Hickson play with his pet pyropod, Boysie Gann reflected that
the strangest life form he knew was man. For here was the pudgy, balding
hermit unplanned and deviant, a deadly danger by every standard of the
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