The Hub: Dangerous Territory by James H. Schmitz

She considered. “It doesn’t seem to mean much. Very advanced stuff, eh?”

“Depends on the viewpoint. The people I dealt with consider it basic. However, it’s difficult work. There’s seepage from other mind patterns about you, and if they’re established human ones they jar you out of what you’re doing. They’re too familiar. It’s totally disruptive. So until I become sufficiently stable in those practices, it’s necessary to reduce my contacts with humanity to the absolute minimum.”

Nile shrugged. “Well, that’s obviously out of my line. Still, I’d think . . . you can’t just go into a room somewhere and shut the doors?”

“No. Physical distance is required. Plenty of it.”

“How long is it going to be required?”

“The estimates I’ve had range from three to four years.”

“In the floatwood?”

“Yes. It’s to be both my work place and my source of materials. I can’t park myself in space somewhere and continue to do meaningful research. And I think that adequate preparations should reduce any risks I’ll encounter to an acceptable level. A reasonable degree of risk, as a matter of fact, will be all to the good.”

“In what way?”

“The threat of danger is a great awakener. The idea in this is to be thoroughly alert and alive—not shut away in a real or symbolical shell of some kind.”

Nile reflected. “That makes a sort of sense,” she agreed. She hesitated. “What’s your present physical condition? I’ll admit you look healthy enough. . . . ”

“I’m healthier now than I was ten years ago.”

“You don’t need medical supervision?”

“I haven’t needed it for several years. I’ve had one arterial replacement—the cultured product. That was quite a while ago. Otherwise, except for a few patches from around the same and earlier periods, my internal arrangements are my own. Nothing to worry about in that department.”

Nile sighed.

“Well—we’ll still have to convince Parrol it isn’t suicide. But you’re hired, Ticos. Make it a very high salary and nail down your terms, including your interests in anything that could classify as a longevity serum. After we’ve settled that, I’ll start briefing you on the kind of difficulties you’re likely to run into on your island. That can’t be done in a matter of days. It’s going to take weeks of cramming and on-the-spot demonstrations.”

Ticos winked at her. “That’s why I’m here.”

She made it a very stiff cramming course. And Ticos turned out to be as good a student as he’d been an instructor. He had an alert, curious mind, an extraordinarily retentive memory. Physically he proved to be tough and resilient. Nile kept uprating his survival outlook, though she didn’t mention it. Some things, of course, she couldn’t teach him. His gunmanship was only fair. He learned to use a climb-belt well enough to get around safely; but to develop anything resembling real proficiency with the device required long practice. She didn’t even attempt to instruct him in water skills. The less swimming he did around floatwood the better.

They moved about the Meral from one floatwood drift to another, finally selected a major island complex which seemed to meet all requirements. A shelter, combining Ticos’ living quarters, laboratory and storerooms, was constructed and his equipment moved in. A breeding group of eight-inch protohoms and cultures of gigacells would provide him with his principal test material; almost every known human reaction could be duplicated in them, usually with a vast advantage in elapsed time. The structure was completely camouflaged. Sledmen harvesting parties probably would be about the island from time to time, and Ticos didn’t want too many contacts with them. If he stayed inside until such visitors left again, he wouldn’t be noticed.

He had a communicator with a coded call symbol. Unless he got in touch with her, Nile was to drop by at eight week intervals to pick up what he had accumulated for the Giard lab and leave supplies. He wished to see no one else. Parrol shook his head at the arrangement; but Nile made no objections. She realized that by degrees she’d become fiercely partisan in the matter. If Ticos Cay wanted to take a swing at living forever, on his feet and looking around, instead of fading out or sliding off into longsleep, she’d back him up, however he went about it. Up to this point he hadn’t done badly.

And somewhat against general expectations then, he lasted. He made no serious mistakes in his adopted environment, seemed thoroughly satisfied with his life as a hermit, wholly immersed in his work. The home office purred over his bi-monthly reports. Assorted items went directly to the university colleagues who had taken over his longevity project there. They also purred. When Nile had seen him last, he’d been floating along the Meral for eighteen months, looked hale and hearty and ready to go on for at least the same length of time. His mind exercises, he informed Nile, were progressing well. . . .

Chapter 3

There were three men waiting in the central cabin of the Sotira sled to which Jath presently conducted Nile. She knew two of them from previous meetings, Fiam and Pelad. Both were Venn, members of the Fleet Venntar, the sledman center of authority: old men and former sled captains. Their wrinkled sun-blackened faces were placid; but they were in charge. On a sled a Venn’s word overrode that of the captain.

Doncar, the sled captain, was the third. Quite young for his rank, intense, with a look of controlled anger about him. Bone-tired at the moment. But controlling that too.

Jath drew the door shut behind Nile and the otter, took a seat near Doncar. She held a degree of authority not far below that of the others here, having spent four years at a Hub university, acquiring technical skills of value to her people. Few other sledmen ever had left Nandy-Cline. Their forebears had been independent space rovers who settled on the water world several generations before the first Federation colonists. By agreement with the Federation, they retained their independence and primary sea rights. But there had been open conflict between the fleets and mainland groups in the past, and the sleds remained traditionally suspicious of the mainland and its ways.

Impatience tingled in Nile, but she knew better than to hurry this group. She answered Pelad’s questions, repeating essentially what she had told Jath.

“You aren’t aware of Dr. Cay’s exact location?” Pelad inquired. Ticos had become a minor legend among the sled people who knew of his project.

Nile shook her head.

“I can’t say definitely that he’s within four hundred miles of us,” she said. “This is simply the most likely area to start looking for him. When I’m due to pay him a visit, I give him a call and he tells me what his current position is. But this time he hasn’t responded to his call symbol.”

She added, “Of course there’ve been intensive communication interferences all the way in to the mainland in recent weeks. But Dr. Cay still should have picked up my signal from time to time. I’ve been trying to get through to him for the past several days.”

Silence for a moment, then Pelad said, “Dr. Etland, does the mainland know what is causing the interferences?”

The question surprised, then puzzled her. The interferences were no novelty; their cause was known. The star type which tended to produce water worlds also produced such disturbances. On and about Nandy-Cline the communication systems otherwise in standard use throughout the Federation were rarely operable. Several completely new systems had been developed and combined to deal with the problem. Among them, only the limited close-contact band was almost entirely reliable.

Pelad and the others here were as aware of that as she. Nile said, “As far as I know, no special investigation has been made. Do the sleds see some unusual significance in the disturbances?”

“There are two views,” Jath told her quietly. “One of them is that some of the current communication blocks are gromgorru. Created deliberately by an unknown force. Possibly by an unnatural one. . . . ”

Pelad glanced at Jath, said to Nile, “The Venntar has decreed silence in this. But young mouths open easily. Perhaps too easily. We may have reason to believe there is something in the sea that hates men. There are those who hear voices in the turmoil that smothers our instruments. They say they hear a song of hate and fear.” He shrugged. “I won’t say what I think—as yet I don’t know what to think.” He looked at Fiam. “Silence might have been best, but it has been broken. Dr. Etland is a proven friend of the sleds.”

Fiam nodded. “Let the captain tell it to our guest.”

Doncar grinned briefly. “Tell it as I see it?”

“As you see it, Doncar. We know your views. We shall listen.”

“Very well.” Doncar turned to Nile. “Dr. Etland, so far you’ve been asked questions and given no explanation. Let me ask one more question. Could human beings cause such communication problems?”

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