World Of Ptavvs   ::   Нивен Ларри

He was on his side, more a lump of flesh than anything else, and he sucked his finger because he was hungry. He would always be hungry.

Something huge came in, blocking light. Mother? Father. His own arm moved, jerking the finger contemptuously away, scraping it painfully on the new teeth. He tried to put it back, but it wouldn't move. Something forceful and heavy told him never to do that again. He never did.

No mind shield there. Funny, how sharp that picture was, the memory of early frustration.

Some…

The room was full of guests. He was four Thrintun years old, and he was being allowed out for the first time. Shown proudly by his father. But the noise, the telepathic noise, was too loud. He was trying to think like everybody at once. It frightened him. Something terrible happened. A stream of dark brown semiliquid material shot out of his mouth and spread over the wall. He had defecated in public.

Rage, red and sharp. Suddenly he had no control over his limbs; he was running, stumbling toward the door. Rage from his father and shame from himself or from his father? He couldn't tell. But it hurt, and he fought it, closed his mind to it. Father went like a blown flame, and the guests too, and everybody was gone. He was all alone in an empty world. He stopped, frightened. The other minds came back.

His father was proud, proud! At the age of four little Kzanol already had the Power!

Larry grinned a predatory grin and got up. His vac suit-? In the lounge, on one of the seats. He got it and screwed it down and went out.

Kzanol tugged at the great bright bull until it came out of the ice. It looked like a great rippled goblin lying on its back.

The ice had packed the tunnel solidly behind him; air tight, in fact. That was fortunate. Kzanol had used compressed air from his own suit to pressurize his icy chamber. He frowned at the dials on his upper chest, then took his helmet off. The air was cold and thin. But now he needn't carry the amplifier helmet back to the ship. He could put it on here.

He looked down at the suit and realized that he'd want help getting it back. Kzanol turned his Attention to Larry Greenberg. He found a blank.

Greenberg was nowhere.

Had he died? No, surely Kzanol would have sensed that.

This wasn't good, not even a little bit good. Greenberg had warned him that he would try to stop him. The slave must be on his way now, with his mind shield in full working order. Fortunately the amplifier would stop him. It would control a full-grown thrint.

Kzanol reached down to turn the suit on its face. It was… not heavy, but massive… but it moved.

It was snowing. In the thin air the snow fell like gravel thrown by an explosion. It fell hard enough to kill an unprotected man. Where it hit it packed itself into a hard surface, just crunchy enough for good walking.

Luckily Greenberg didn't have to see. He could sense exactly where Kzanol was and he walked confidently in that direction. His suit wasn't as good as Kzanol's. The cold seeped gently through his gauntlets and boots. He'd suffered worse than this on skiing trips, and loved it.

Then the Power came lashing at his brain. His mind shield went up hard. The wave was gone in a moment. But now he couldn't find Kzanol. The thrint had put up his mind shield. Larry stopped, bewildered, then went on. He had a compass, so he would not walk in circles. But Kzanol must now know he was coming.

Gradually the afterimage pushed into his mind. In every sense, in eye and ears and touch and kinesthetic nerves, he felt what Kzanol had been doing when his Power lashed out.

He'd been bending over the second suit.

It was too late.

He couldn't run; the vac suit wasn't built for it. He looked around in a rising tide of desperation, and then, because there was no help for it, he walked on.

Walk. Knock the ice off your faceplate, and walk.

Walk until you're Told to stop.

Half an hour later, an hour after he'd left the ship, he began to see powdery snow. It was light and fluffy, very different from the falling icy bullets. It was the residue of Kzanol's digging. He could use it as a guide.

The powder snow grew deeper and deeper, until suddenly it reared as a towering mountain of packed snow. When he tried to climb it Larry kept slipping down the side in a flurry of snow. But he had to get up there! When Kzanol opened the suit it would be all over. He kept climbing.

He was halfway up, and nearly exhausted, when the top began to move. Snow shot out in a steady stream and fell in a slow fountain. Larry slid hastily down for fear of being buried alive.

The snow continued to pour out. Kzanol was digging his way back… but why wasn't he wearing the helmet?

The fountain rose higher. Particles of ice, frozen miles up in Pluto's burned and cooling atmosphere, pelted through the drifting fountain and plated itself on Larry's suit. He kept moving to keep his joints free. Now he wore a sheath of translucent ice, shattered and cracked at the joints.

And suddenly he guessed the answer. His lips pulled back in a smile of gentle happiness, and his dolphin sense of humor rose joyfully to the surface.

Kzanol climbed out of the tunnel, tugging the useless spare suit behind him. He'd had to use the disintegrator to clear away the snow in the tunnel, and he'd had to climb it at a thirty-degree rise, dragging a bulk as heavy as himself and wearing a space suit which weighed nearly as much. Kzanol was very tired. Had he been human, he would have wept.

The sight of the slope down was almost too much.

Plow his feet through that stuff? But he sighed and sent the spare suit rolling down the mountainside. He watched it hit the bottom and stay, half buried. And he followed it down.

The ice fell faster than ever, hundreds of thousands of tons of brand new water freezing and falling as the planet tried to regain its equilibrium state, forty degrees above absolute zero. Kzanol stumbled blind, putting one big chicken foot in front of the other and bracing for the jar as it fell, keeping his mind closed because he remembered that Greenberg was around somewhere. His mind was numb with fatigue and vicarious cold.

He was halfway down when the snow rose up and stood before him like a Thrintun giant. He gasped and stopped moving. The figure slapped one mitten against its faceplate and the thick ice shattered and fell. Greenberg! Kzanol raised the disintegrator.

Almost casually, with a smile that was purest dolphin, Larry reached out a stiff forefinger and planted it in Kzanol's chest.

For thirty-four hours the singleship had circled Pluto, and it was too long by far.