He was dreaming of sunshine and sand and the soft crashing of the high, low-gravity waves of his native Cinruss when the idyllic scene was dissolved by the insistent sound of his com communicator and the voice of the captain.
“Doctor Prilicla,” said the captain. “Wake up, it’s show time.”
CHAPTER 17
This time Prilicla made the trip alone, with the pinnace being guided by Haslam to the entry point on remote control. If the robot crew member or, through its sensors, its superior noticed the miniature, eye-level repeater screen that had been added to the interior of Prilicla’s helmet, it was not considered a threat because nothing was done to impede his trip back to the control section. It wasn’t absolutely necessary that he have a picture of what would shortly be going on outside since Fletcher could have told him about it via his communicator, but words took time and good pictures were always faster, clearer, and less susceptible to misinterpretation.
When he was deep inside the control section he drifted as close as possible to the inner door that would give access to the least injured of the ship’s two organic survivors, a position where he could monitor the other’s emotional responses with optimum accuracy. The robot drifted passively less than a meter away. He knew that the tiny metal digits encircling its body were capable of ripping open his spacesuit in a matter of seconds, but he also knew or rather he felt fairly sure—that it would remain passive unless he tried to open the inner door. “Ready when you are, friend Fletcher,” he said.
A few seconds later an immediate change in the alien’s emotional radiation as well as the image on his helmet screen told him that, in the space between Rhabwar and the distressed alien ship, the show had begun.
“It sees the external image,” Prilicla reported excitedly “There are feelings of awareness, curiosity, and puzzlement.”
The captain didn’t reply but one of the other officers laughed softly and said in a voice not meant to be overheard, “I would feel puzzled, too, if somebody projected the image of a star field onto another star field.”
The projected star field remained unaltered for a few seconds, then slowly it began to shrink and condense so that more and more stars moved in from the edges of the three-dimensional projection until it took on the glittering, unmistakable, spiral shape of the Galaxy itself.
The survivor’s concentration was now total.
Gradually the fine detail of the image coarsened, the wisps and streamers of interstellar gas were erased, and the number of stars was reduced to a few hundred which became large enough to have been counted individually. One of them was highlighted inside a circle of bright green and the circle increased rapidly in size until a stylized representation of the star and its system of planets filled the projection volume for a few seconds before the image changed again.
The viewpoint zoomed in on that solar system’s inhabited planet, showing the swirling, tattered cloud formations that could not quite hide the continental outlines. As it swooped closer and lower it slowed until the viewpoint was giving panoramic views of the planetary surface, seascapes, ice fields, mountains, tropical greenery, and great, sprawling cities with their interconnecting road systems. Then the image was reduced suddenly in size and moved to one side so that it filled only half of the projection.
The other half displayed an equally detailed representation of the world’s dominant intelligent life-form.
It was the picture of an enormous, incredibly fragile flying insect with a tubular, exoskeletal body that supported six sucker tipped pencil-thin legs, four even more delicately fashioned and precise manipulators, and two sets of wide, iridescent, and almost transparent wings. The head was a convoluted eggshell so finely structured that the sensory organs, particularly the two large, lowing eyes projecting from it, seemed ready to fall off at the first sudden movement. The head, manipulators—some of them holding tools—and legs were bent or rotated to demonstrate their limits of movement while the wings wafted slowly up and down as they broke up and reflected iridescent highlights like mobile rainbows. It was the picture of a Cinrusskin, one of the race generally held to be the most beautiful and delicate life-forms known to the explored reaches of the galaxy.