World Of Ptavvs   ::   Нивен Ларри

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Nonsense! The battery had a tremendous potential, even after a hyperspace jump it must still have enough energy to aim the ship at some civilized planet. Why would the brain…?

Then he understood. The ship had power, probably, to reach several worlds, but not to slow him down to the speed of any known world. Well, that was all right. In his stasis field Kzanol wouldn't care how hard he hit. He typed: "Do not consider decrease of velocity upon arrival. Plot course for any civilized planet. Minimize trip time."

The answer took only a few seconds. "Trip time to Awtprun 72 Thrintun years 100.48 days."

Awtprun. Well, it didn't matter where he landed; he could hop a ship for Thrintun as soon as they turned oil his field generator. Would some other prospector find Racarliwun in seventy-two years? Probably.

Spirit of the Power! Hurriedly he typed: "Cancel course to Awtprun." Then he sagged back in his chair, appalled at his narrow escape.

If he had hit Awtprun at more than nine-tenths light, he could have killed upward of a million people. That was assuming he hit an ocean! The shock wave would knock every flying thing out of the air for a thousand miles around and scour the land clean, sink islands, tear down buildings half around the world.

For a blunder like that, he'd draw death after a year of torture. Torture in the hands of a telepathic, highly scientific society was a horrible thing. Biology students would watch, scribbling furiously, while members of the Penalty Board carefully traced his nervous system with stimulators.

Gradually his predicament became clear to him. He couldn't land on a civilized planet. All right. But he couldn't land on a slave planet either; he'd be certain to knock down a few overseers' palaces, as well as killing billions of commercials' worth of slaves.

Perhaps he could aim to go through a system, hoping that the enlarged mass of his ship would be noticed? But he dared not do that. To stay in space was literally unthinkable. Why, he might go right out of the galaxy! He saw himself lost forever between the island universes, the ship disintegrating around him, the rescue button being worn down to a small shiny spot by interstellar dust… No!

Gently he rubbed his closed eyes with an eating tendril. Could he land on a moon? If he hit a moon hard enough, the flash might be seen. But the brain wasn't good enough to get him there, not at such a distance. A moon's orbit is a twisty thing, and he'd have to hit the moon of a civilized planet. Awtprun was the closest, and Awtprun was much too far.

And to top it off, he realized, he was sucking his lpt gnal. He sat there feeling sorry for himself until it was gone, then began to pace the floor.

Of course!

He stood stock still in the middle of the cabin, thinking out his inspiration, looking for the flaw. He couldn't find one. Hurriedly he tapped at the brain board: "Compute course for a food planet minimizing trip time. Ship need not slow on arrival. Give details."

His eating tendrils hung limp, relaxed. It's going to be all right, he thought, and meant it.

For protoplasmic life forms, there are not many habitable planets in the galaxy. Nature makes an unreasonable number of conditions. To insure the right composition of atmosphere, the planet must be exactly the right distance from a G type sun, must be exactly the right size, and must have a freakishly oversized moon in its sky. The purpose of the moon is to strip away most of the planet's atmosphere, generally around 99 percent of it. Without its moon a habitable world becomes shockingly uninhabitable; its air acquires crushing weight, and its temperature becomes that of a «hot» oven.

Of the 219 habitable worlds found by Thrintun, 64 had life. Seventeen had intelligent life; 18 if you were broad minded. The 155 barren worlds would not be ready for Thrintun occupancy until after a long seeding process. Meanwhile, they had their uses.

They could be seeded with a tnuctipun-developed food yeast. After a few centuries the yeast generally mutated, but until then the world was a food planet, with all its oceans full of the cheapest food in the galaxy. Of course, only a slave would eat it; but there were plenty of slaves.

All over the galaxy there were food planets to feed the slave planets. The caretaker's palace was always on the moon. Who would want to live on a world with barren land and scummy seas? Not to mention the danger of bacteria contaminating the yeast. So from the moons a careful watch was kept on the food planets.

After the yeast had mutated to the point where it was no longer edible, even to a slave, the world was seeded with yeast-eating whitefood herds. Whitefoods ate anything, and were a good source of meat. The watch was continued.

At his present speed Kzanol would hit such a planet hard enough to produce a blazing plume of incandescent gas. The exploded rock would rise flaming into space, vivid and startling and unmistakable even to a watcher on the moon. The orange glow of the crater would last for days.

Chances were that Kzanol would end underground, but not far underground. The incandescent air and rock which move ahead of a meteorite usually blow the meteorite itself back into the air, to rain down over a wide area. Kzanol, wrapped safely in his stasis field; would go right back out his own hole, and would not dig himself very deep on the second fall. The caretaker could find him instantly with any kind of rock-penetrating instrument. A stasis field is the only perfect reflector.

The brain interrupted his planning. "Nearest available food planet is F124. Estimated trip time 202 years 91.4 days."

Kzanol typed: "Show me F124 and system."

The screen showed specks of light. One by one, the major planets and their moon systems were enlarged. F124 was a steamy, quick-spinning ball: a typical food planet, even its moon's rotation was almost nil. The moon seemed overlarge, but also overdistant. An outer planet made Kzanol gasp in admiration. It was ringed! Gorgeously ringed. Kzanol waited until all the major worlds had been shown. When the asteroids began to appear in order of size he typed: "Enough. Follow course to F124."

He'd left his helmet off. Other than that he was fully dressed for the long sleep. He felt the ship accelerating, a throb in the metal from the motors. The cabin's acceleration field canceled the gees. He picked up his helmet and set it on his neck ring, changed his mind and took it off. He went to the wall and tore off his star map, rolled it up and stuck it through the neck ring into the bosom of his suit. He had the helmet ready to tog down when he started to wonder.

His rescuer could claim a large sum for the altruistic act of rescuing him.