The Reefs of Space Read online

  Ryeland, half supporting Oporto, looked out into the corridor. No one was in sight. He sighed; he had hoped that they might find a passerby. Oporto babbled: "Steve, what are you doing? Led me alone. We can't go oud here —the colonel warned us!"

  "We have to get you to a doctor, remember?" Ryeland scanned the corridor. At the intersections were curious canopied devices like the sun-shelter over a mogul's how-dah. Perhaps they were the radar traps; at least, Ryeland couldn't imagine what else they might be. But there was one back the way they had come, and surely there had been no trap there... .

  No. Ryeland thought it out carefully. The fact that they had been allowed to get to Compartment 93 didn't prove anything at all; quite possibly the traps had been turned off to allow them to pass. In fact, thinking it over, it seemed certain that the one route that would be prohibited would be the corridor going back to the entrance port.

  "Oporto," he said, "do you see those doors? I think we can go into one of them."

  "You do, Steve? What mages you think so?" the little man asked sardonically.

  "Because there's nothing better to try," Ryeland snapped, and dragged the little man with him.

  Around his neck the iron collar weighed heavier than ever. If only he were a superman, like that Donderevo whose name stuck half-forgotten in his mind ... whose fate, somehow, was linked with Ryeland's own.

  Who was Donderevo, exactly? The therapists had questioned him so persistently about the man that there had to be some strong reason. Did Ryeland know him? When had he last seen him? When had he received a message from him? What was the message about?

  Donderevo was the son of an explorer and trader who had gathered a fortune from the asteroids and the moons of the outer planets, and had built a commercial empire outside the Plan of Man. Ron Donderevo had come to Earth as a student of space medicine at the great technological institute where Ryeland's father was a mathematics professor. While he was there, the Plan had annexed the last reluctant asteroids and moons which had remained outside. Donderevo's father had been defeated in a space fight, resisting the annexation. Donderevo himself had been placed in an iron collar, as a result of a student demonstration. Then one day he had disappeared. The legends said that he had somehow removed the collar, and escaped into space beyond the power of the Plan.

  Ryeland remembered meeting him only once, in his own father's study. Ryeland was an eight-year-old Technicub. Donderevo was a grown man, a graduate student, romantic and mysterious with his knowledge of far planets and unknown space. But was that enough to account for the questions?

  Ryeland had denied receiving any message from him, but the therapists were unconvinced.

  In any event, whatever Donderevo might have been, Ryeland wasn't; his collar was on for good, or until the Machine relented.

  Ryeland wondered crazily if he would hear the tiny click of the relay before the decapitation charge went off. Would there be any warning? Would he know?

  Or would it all be over, literally, before he knew what was happening?

  The only way to find out was to open a door and walk through it.

  He pushed a door open, selecting it at random from the half-dozen in the corridor. Oporto broke away from him and, surprisingly spry, ran a few paces down the corridor, whirled and watched him with a face of tense anticipation.

  Ryeland didn't stop to think it over, he walked in the door; and nothing happened.

  Grinning, embarrassed, Oporto trailed after. "That one was all right, huh, Steve?"

  Ryeland nodded; but there was no point in recrimination, although there were a lot of things he had in mind to say to the man who had urged him to take a chance— and then ducked out of the way of the possible consequences. But of more immediate interest was the room they were in.

  It was about the size of Compartment 93 and empty. It was quietly furnished: A narrow bed, a table with a few flowers, a large mirror, an array of cabinets. A girl's room, Ryeland guessed, but from the relative modesty of its furnishings, not the room of a girl who was part of the higher brass on this deluxe subtrain. Possibly a secretary's room; perhaps a maid's. Whoever she was, she wasn't in.

  But there was another door, leading to a flight of steps.

  This time Ryeland didn't wait for Oporto. He caught his breath and held it, and when he had passed through and established once again that that particular door was not radar-trapped, he tasted salt and acid on his lip. He had bitten hard enough to draw blood.

  But he was through.

  The stairs were steep, but it was easy enough to help Oporto up them, with the plunging of the car taking pounds off their weight. They came out into another room, also empty and small.

  But this one was sumptuously furnished. It seemed to be a woman's dressing room. It was white and gold, with ivory-backed brushes and combs on a little vanity table, before a gold-rimmed ova! mirror. The stairs, Ryeland guessed, were for the use of the personal maid to whoever used this room.

  And he heard someone singing,Ryeland took a deep breath and called out: "Hello there! Do you hear me? I'm looking for a doctor!"

  There wasn't any answer. The singing went on, a girl's voice, clear and attractive; she was singing for her own amusement. Every once in a while she would go back and repeat a phrase, pause, then start again aimlessly. And under the singing was a sort of musical cooing accompaniment

  Ryeland looked at Oporto, shrugged and pushed the door open.

  They looked into a room that was green and silver. Its walls swam with fading, shifting green light. In the center was a round silver tub, six feet across, partly recessed into the floor. From the mouths of carved crystal dolphins tiny jets of perfumed warm water leaped and splashed, in a foam of bubbles, into the tub.

  And above the thick blanket of foam protruded one knee, the head and the arms of the most beautiful girl Ryeland had ever seen.

  "I—I beg your pardon," he said, awkward and disturbed.

  She turned her head and looked at him calmly. On her wet, white shoulders were perched a pair of—birds? No. They were shaped like birds, like doves, but they were made of metal; their feathers were fine silver scales; their eyes were red-lit jewels. The metal things moved restlessly, as the little eyes poked hotly at Ryeland and Oporto. They cooed soft threats, and the rustle of their wings was like thin whispering bells.

  Oporto opened his eyes, stared and emitted a strangling sound. "She—She—" He swallowed and clutched at Rye-land. "Steve, it's the Planner's daughter!" he gasped, and flung himself to the floor. "Please!" he begged, writhing toward her. "Please, we didn't mean to bother you!"

  But the approach must have alarmed her. Not very much; for she didn't raise her voice; but she stopped singing in the middle of a note and said, quite softly: "Guards."

  There must have been a microphone to pick up her words, for there was a sudden commotion outside. But more than that, she had defenders nearer still. The doves on her shoulders leaped into the air and flung themselves at the prostrate little man. Sharp beaks tore, wingtips like knives beat at him. The door opened and four tall women in the blue of the Planner's guard raced in.

  Chapter 2

  Death had not been far from Steve Ryeland for these three years. It had worn the neat white smock of Dr. Thrale, the fat, bald, oily man who had been his chief therapist. It had whispered in the soft, asthmatic voice of Dr. Thrale, warning him a thousand times that he stood in danger of the Body Bank, unless he could recall a message from Ron Donderevo, unless he could find the right answers to nonsense questions about a string of words and names that meant nothing to him—spaceling, reefs of space, Donderevo, jetless drive.

  Death had taken other forms. The concealed trigger of a radar trap, the menacing horns of a radar-headset, the more subtle and more worrisome peril of orders to the Body Bank; these were the deaths he had known and learned to live with. These women, though, carried projectile weapons, not radar. Queer, thought Ryeland, even in that moment, for if carried through the thought indicated that ther
e were some dangers to the person of the Planner's daughter that did not come from classified Risks like himself. Could ordinary citizens—cleared citizens—be dangerous to the Plan?

  But there was no answer to that question just then. Oporto was screaming under the attack of the silvery doves, the woman guards were bearing down on them.

  The girl stopped them all with a single word. "Wait." She swept a mound of bubbles away from her face to see better, exposing a throat of alabaster. Her eyes were green-gray and serene. She looked very lovely and very young.

  She caught Ryeland completely undefended.

  In the isolation camp there had been no women—not even a pin-up picture; and here he was in the presence of a most beautiful woman, in what should have been the privacy of her bath. Apart from everything else, she could hardly have been unaware of the shattering effect she had on him. But she seemed completely at ease. She said, in a voice more polite than curious: "What do you want?"

  Ryeland coughed. "This man needs a doctor," he said hoarsely, looking away.

  The first of the female guards laughed sharply. She was tall, brunette; a heroic figure of what might have been a lovely girl, if reduced ten per cent in all dimensions. She said in a voice that just missed being baritone: "Come on, Risk! We'll take care of you and your friend too!"

  But the girl in the tub shifted position lazily. She waved an arm through the foam, watched the bubbles billow in slow concentric waves and said: "Never mind, Sergeant. Take the sick man to a doctor, if that's what he wants. Leave the other one here."

  "But, Madam! The Planner—"

  "Sergeant," said the gentle voice, not raised at all; the sergeant turned almost white. She gestured at the others; they half carried Oporto out. The door closed behind them, cutting hi twain a look of pure hatred and contempt that passed from the sergeant to Ryeland.

  The doves, which had been describing precise circles in the air, shook themselves and returned to the girl's shoulders. Their hot small eyes never left Ryeland, but after a moment they began to coo again.

  "You're an iron-collar man, aren't you?" the girl asked suddenly.

  Ryeland nodded. "A risk. Yes."

  "I've never spoken to an iron-collar man," she said thoughtfully. "Do you mind if we talk? I'm Donna Creery. My father is the Planner."

  "I know." Suddenly Ryeland was aware of his rumpled denims, of the fact that he was an intruder on this girl's bath. He coughed. "Don't you think your father—I mean, I don't mind if we talk, but—"

  "Good," said the girl, nodding gravely. She shifted position to get a better look at him. The bubbles rippled wildly. "I was afraid you might be sensitive about it," she told him. "I'm glad you're not. What's your name?"

  Ryeland raised his chin and spread the collar of his denim shirt to display the iron band.

  "Steven Ryeland," she read, squinting to make out the glowing scarlet letters with his name and number. "Why, I think I know that name. A doctor? No. A rocket pilot?"

  "I am a mathematician, Miss Creery."

  She cried: "Oh, of course! Your folder is on my father's desk. I saw it this morning, when we were leaving Copenhagen."

  An anxious eagerness took his breath. For three years he had been trying to learn the charges against him. The therapists had refused to give him information. Their questions had been carefully phrased to tell him nothing— they had asked him a thousand times what the word spaceling meant, and punished him more than once for guessing that it meant an inhabitant of space.

  "Did the folder tell—" He gulped. "Did it specify any charges against me?"

  Her greenish eyes surveyed him, unalarmed.

  "You displayed unplanned interests."

  "Huh? What does that mean?"

  "You possessed a secret collection of books and manuscripts, which had not been approved by the machine."

  "No, I didn't." A cold breath touched the back of his neck. "There has been some terrible mistake—"

  "The Planning Machine permits no mistakes," she reminded him gravely. "The titles of the forbidden books were listed in the folder. The authors were scientists of the wicked times before the Plan. Einstein. Gamow. Hoyle—"

  "Oh!" He gasped. "Then those were just my father's books—a few that I saved. You see, when I was a kid I used to dream of going to space. I've met Ron Donderevo. I wanted to pilot a spaceship, and discover new planets. The Machine killed that dream."

  He sighed.

  "It transferred me out of the Technicorps and reclassified me as a research mathematician. It assigned me to an installation somewhere underground—I don't know where it was; we were not allowed even to guess whether we were under dry land or the ocean floor or the polar ice. I don't remember, even, if I ever guessed. My memory has ... holes in it. I had two helpers—a teletype girl and a little man named Oporto, who is a sort of human computing machine. The Machine sent us problems, like the problem of hysterisis loss in the subtrain tunnels. They were problems the Machine couldn't answer, I suppose— even it doesn't know quite everything. Anyhow, we solved the problems.

  "Of course I wasn't supposed to see reference books, because I could ask the Machine for any fact I wanted. But for the sake of efficiency it had let me keep a few handbooks, and I had brought those books of my father's among them."

  He smiled at her hopefully.

  "You see, for a man who had set his heart on space, life in a tunnel isn't very exciting. For a sort of hobby, I read those books about space. They were full of old theories about the nature of the universe. Using modern mathematics, I worked out a new set of equations to describe the expanding universe and the continuous creation of matter in the space between the galaxies—"

  Her frown checked him. This was not quite the sort of talk for a young girl in her bath!

  "But that was not unplanned," he finished desperately. "It was just a harmless hobby. In fact, it was useful to the Plan. The equations that I used in improving the helical field units were derived from the equations that describe the continuous creation of matter and space."

  "And that's what made you a risk?" She looked at him thoughtfully and frowned. "You don't look dangerous."

  He could find no answer to that. He waited while she waved a hand absent-mindedly. One of the doves left her shoulder to fly, tinkling, to the crystal dolphin. It pecked precisely at a fin-shaped lever on the dolphin's back, and obediently the spray of perfumed water dwindled away. Ryeland watched, more than half lulled by the scent of lilac and the strangeness of his surroundings. The room was warm but not steamy; invisible ducts must be sucking the moisture out, "Are you dangerous?" the girl asked suddenly.

  Ryeland said: "No, Miss Creery." He hesitated, wondering how to explain it to this child. "The collar isn't a punishment. It's a precaution,"

  "Precaution?"

  He said steadily: "The Machine has reason to believe that under certain circumstances I might work against the Plan of Man. I have never done anything, you must understand that. But the Machine can't take chances, and so— the collar."

  She said wonderingly: "But you sound as though you approve of it!"

  "I'm loyal to the Plan!"

  She thought that over. Then: "Well, aren't we all? But the rest of us don't wear iron collars."

  He shook his head. "I never did anything that was against Security."

  "But perhaps you did something that wasn't—quite?"

  Ryeland grinned. She was amazingly easy to get along with, he thought; the grin became a smile—a real one, and the first one he had worn in some time. "Yes," he admitted, "I did something that wasn't. There was a girl."

  "Steven, Steven!" Donna Creery shook her head mock-ruefully. "Always a girl. I thought that was only in stories."

  "In real life too, Miss Creery." He was almost relaxed ... Then, abruptly, her mood changed.

  "Your folder contains another specification," she rapped out. "You are charged with concealing information about a device which is dangerous to the security of the Plan of Man."
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br />   "But I'm not!" he protested desperately. "Somebody has made a mistake—in spite of the Machine. For three years the therapists in the maximum-security camp have been working me over, trying to extract information that I don't have."

  Her eyes widened, with a calm concern.

  "What kind of information?"

  ."I'm not sure." He winced, with remembered pain. “They were careful not to give me hints, and they punished me for guessing.

  "They questioned me about a list of words," he said. "They strapped me down, with electrodes clamped all over me, recording every reaction. They repeated the words a million times. Spaceling. Reefs of space. Fusorian, Pyropod. Jetless drive. And two names—Ron Donderevo and Daniel Horrock.

  "Putting all those words and names and other clues together, I guessed that the therapists thought that Horrock had brought me a message from Donderevo. A message from space, about things called reefs and spacelings and fusorians. Particularly, about something called a jetless drive. That was what they were trying to dig out of me—how to build a jetless drive."

  She frowned.

  "What is a jetless drive?"

  "There isn't any," he said. "Because a jetless drive would be a system of reactionless propulsion. Crackpots for three hundred years have been trying to invent such a system, but everybody knows it would be a violation of the Third Law of Motion. It's as impossible as pushing a rowboat forward without pushing the water back."

  "I see." She was nodding gravely. "Impossible as creating new atoms and new space between the galaxies."

  He looked at her sharply. "But I couldn't have bad a message from Horrock—or anybody else," he insisted desperately. "Not when they seem to think I did. On the Friday it happened, Oddball Oporto and the teletype girl had been with me all day. We were working late, finishing the specifications for the new helical unit. I let Oddball go about eighteen hundred hours, because he was getting a headache. The teletype girl went out with him, to bring coffee and sandwiches for us. They hadn't been gone half an hour, when somebody knocked on the door. I thought it was the girl—but it was the Plan Police."