Scanned by Highroller Proofed by an unsung hero v2.0 The Anything Tree John Rackham CONTENTS ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN ELEVEN TWELVE THIRTEEN FOURTEEN FIFTEEN SIXTEEN SEVENTEEN EIGHTEEN NINETEEN AFTERWORD Copyright © 1970 by John Rackham an Ace Book ONE ^ » Selena Ash was whistling to herself. It was not a tune, but just the soft sibilance of preoccupation as she carefully stripped herself of artifice and pretense. Away into storage went her shimmer-silk absurdity of a dress, the jewel-studded shoes and the expensive but pointless knicknacks; tissues and pin-prick tweaking cleaned away the hectic bloom of cosmetics and false hair; she used cream to eradicate the last traces, and it was all done without any thought. Her mind was elsewhere. Around her, the versatile little space-coupe pursued its set course. There was no hurry; she had more than four days. The mad rush of butterfly brainlessness which spelled out fun for the idle rich on the paradise continent Shangri-La of the playground planet of Tau Ceti III dwindled into her past. She buttoned herself into a white papertex coverall, put her feet into sandals, and went back up the ladder to the control room, not because there was anything to control—the auto mechanisms handled that—but simply because it was where she felt organized. And she might need the services of the computer to help her with a problem or two. She settled into her seat, cast a routine eye over the dials assembled—blinked—and looked again. She felt an icy chill at her stomach. There was something wrong, something so blatantly wrong that, for a moment, she couldn't accept it. The read-out figure for time of arrival stood at a few minutes over four hours, which was monstrous! She spent a second going over her take-off procedure. Lift-off had been automatic and all clear. In that interval she had preprogrammed for her destination and set the relay switch to kick in the warp as soon as she was clear of the planetary field. That had all happened. Her program had been for Luna Base, well over a week's journey even at this light-bending speed. She had been flying this little space-coupe or one like it for the past five of her twenty-five years, and it was just not possible that she could have made such a mistake. There were other things wrong, too. She drew a deep and steadying breath and did the first thing one must always do in doubt—stop everything and take stock. She hit the manual dewarp, shivered through the instant of nausea, then eyed the glowing screens which gave her several pictures of vast expanses spotted with stars. "Now, then," she murmured, and started by pushing down on the interlock. It was already hard down, as it should be. The interlock is the last button one pushes, when everything is set up and smoothly rolling. Then, should anything fail, the interlock throws everything out and screams for attention. It wasn't that. But there is, also, an interlock cancel button, and that, too, was down—which in theory was impossible. She peered closely at it and tugged. It rose sluggishly, leaving a thin layer of some kind of cement. "Oh, very tricky!" she congratulated someone as yet unknown. Stick a layer of gum on the cancel, press it home, and there you are. No matter what someone else does, no matter what goes wrong, there will be no alarm—neat, simple and deadly. A cold fury began to stir in her mind. Blaming herself was just part of it. She had found it necessary to play the part of an empty-headed social butterfly, and one couldn't do that and openly own a ship that was stiff with crafty protective devices and unorthodox equipment. She had set her watchdogs in abeyance; she deserved this sabotage, or whatever it was. But who was responsible? Belatedly she remembered that she hadn't eliminated all her guards. There was one, a spy-eye. She touched certain switches on the computer, and a side-screen lit up to give her a picture of a young man about her own age, a handsome —perhaps overhandsome—fair young man with a forelock of bright yellow hair, laughing eyes, and very white teeth. She knew him. It was Pierre Lacoste, only son of a wealthy manufacturer of domestic robot equipment. She wondered whether he would know enough to be able to gimmick her ship. Before she could decide, the spy-record stuttered and shifted to another picture, this time of a taller man of the same age. He was lean and satirical, dark-haired, and self-consciously tough, and she knew him also. The man was Robin Delmar, the current hero and star of the jet-boat set, winner of just about every event in the known Galaxy that involved rockets or jets. "Well, now," she breathed, halting her electronic stool-pigeon. "There's something, by God!" She took her time reviewing what she knew of the two people involved. Together they might just possibly possess enough knowledge to monkey with the ship. Both of them owned and flew their own ships, superficially the same as this one. It was possible but unlikely unless she could think of some reason why. Pierre and Robin and she had been a merry-making trio for some time. Both men had made the expected and routine passes at her and missed. It was part of her art that she could fend off such men without offending them; and they were friendly rivals. But it was nothing more than that, she would swear. She would stake her life that neither man believed her to be anything more than the gay daredevil daughter of Conway Ash—a somebody in reflected glory, for Conway Ash, as chief scientific advisor to the United Planets Office of Technological Strategy, was a force in his own right—but in herself just another rich playgirl. Stake my life, she mused over her own thought. She might have to do just that, if either of them had found out what she really was, and why. She put the thought away, determined to come back to it only if driven. Assume, then, that Pierre and Robin had gimmicked her ship somehow—for what? The immediate and appropriate answer came back—a joke—and it fitted. If that pair had anything at all in common it was a hilarious (they thought) sense of the absurd. She shook her head wryly, her fury abating somewhat. She spent another moment fitting herself into their viewpoint, then touched another control on her computer, which was not the standard model it appeared to be, but had refinements known only to her and the experts who had installed it. "Definition," she stated. "Tracer. For your purpose a tracer is any contrivance or device which can be lodged in or on a ship of person such that it will generate a signal detectable at a distance and thus enable its location to be pinpointed by some other appropriate device. Understood?" The blink signal came up instantly, and she shifted to another button. "Inspect this ship now—thoroughly, inside and out—and contents, including me, for signs of a tracer, and then report." The answer was thirty-five seconds in coming, which surprised her. The answer itself surprised her even more. "Four extraneous objects," the computer reported, "match the given definition. All are broadcasting powerful and continuous signals on the uhf waveband. One has been incorporated into the ship radio console, the others are attached to the hull on the outside. Locations—" "Never mind, well get to that later." She cut the report off and shook her head. "Four? My, my, that doesn't sound like Pierre and Robin. The plan is fine: monkey with my course computer, strand me somewhere, then come dashing to the rescue—the fools! But four separate tracers?" She gave up that thought and went back to her spy-eye to try again, more from curiosity than anything else. She got another shock—more faces. The first one was gross and barely human—a fleshy gargoyle of a man with a nose and chin to batter down any obstacle, a craggy brow overshadowing two black eyes, and a mouth that had no lips at all. The next was as different as could be imagined. It was a mature and controlled woman with a face like an underworld madonna—sculptured and flawless—and jet-black hair framed by a glossy helmet. That face could charm away a man's senses—like a snake. Selena ran those two again. "Those I have never seen before," she breathed. "I couldn't possibly forget a pair like that. God knows how they come to be in cahoots with Pierre and Robin, but the four tracers now begin to make a little more sense. Still, they surely weren't so naïf as to believe that they could toss me light-years into the unknown and then find me on the tail of a uhf tracer!" The answer to that one was obvious, once she saw it. One of them had preprogrammed a rendezvous, and then gimmicked the course computer so that her program was void. But there had to be more. "I get to where they have planned and dewarp; that's all right. But then I take a fast look around, realize something has gone wrong, and—so, they must have fixed something else, to stop me from doing just that. Let's see just what, shall we?" She swung her chair out of the way, grasped at quick-twist bolt-heads, loosened them, and swung out the entire front casing of the course computer. Her anger was seeping back, not at the joke which had been played on her, but at the posture she would now have to adopt because of it. If she went ahead and used her skills to get out of their childish trap, bang went her false front as Selena Ash, brainless butterfly. And it had cost her time and trouble to set up. On the other hand, if she stayed in character and just sat there, helpless and afraid, waiting to be picked up—but what about those two vultures she had seen who were also in on it? She pulled open a drawer and fished for tools, clicked on a tiny pencil-torch, peered within at the works—and felt another chill. There were the neat rows of second-order relays. Seven of them were tip-tilted to various settings and neatly disconnected from the panel controls so that they couldn't be altered. The pattern was not immediately obvious but she could discover it later. What chilled her right now was a small aluminum capsule that was patch-wired into the warp-out relays. That innocent-looking tube had markings on it, but even without those she would have recognized it for what it was, because she had seen things like it before. The picture burned in her mind. The course computer would run to its completed setting, relays would close, others would open—and that small but deadly destruct module would explode—and that would be the last useful work that computer, or that ship, would ever do. She felt cold sweat break out on her when she realized that if she had not dewarped on the emergency manual control, she would be dead now. She looked at it for a long while, making herself think. Less and less did this feel like Pierre and Robin. Fools they might be, but this kind of senseless and dangerous destruction was not in their picture. Perhaps it fitted the other pair, though, and that only made the mystery more confusing. At length she backed away and returned to the drawer for more tools. She took long bits and blades and very delicately cut loose the little bomb. With that done, she thought a bit more. The false front was finished, that much was obvious. Sexy Selena would never have been able to find that bomb or recognize it, much less remove it. But it couldn't be allowed to rest there. Whatever the score was, she had to find out just what was going on. The obvious way to do that was to go wherever it was they had planned her to go, and see what was laid on. That called for a little preparation and thought. First she made a careful note of the relay settings, and, with spider tongs, adjusted the board from below until she could reconnect and make everything good. Then she closed the console again, put away her tools, checked that everything was in order, hit the warp switch and held her breath. Apart from the customary instant of nausea as the ship leaped into its interrupted path, nothing happened. She breathed again, buttoned down the interlock, and then applied herself once more to the computer's special circuitry. "First," she said, "you will check right through the ship, looking for anything—any other extraneous devices or anomalies—anything!" That drew a highly reassuring blank. "Now," she said more easily, "extrapolate from the course settings and identify destination. Read it out for me." The shimmering blue figures came up almost at once and didn't mean a thing. She scowled, shaking her head. "Halfway to nowhere. Celestial reference chart, please!" The tabulated data dissolved, gave way to a schematic star map with a small blue winker to indicate the spot she was headed for. She eyed it, shook her head again. "Any further data?" The picture stayed steady. "That's it," she sighed. "And what a waste of time that was. Way out in the wilds—uncharted space at least thirty lights away from Tau Ceti, and more than twice that from anywhere known." She cancelled the display, glanced at the ETA figure, saw just under four hours, and nodded. There was a glint in her gray eyes that would have astonished her recent cronies. "Time for a meal," she said, "and a nap. And then I set up a few odd things on my own hook. If somebody really is trying to kill me, I want to know who, and why, and maybe to register an objection or two." TWO « ^ » She awoke with fifteen minutes to spare before her deadline, just long enough to sweep the fog from her thoughts and be ready as the passing seconds counted down. Her instructions were all keyed in and ready. The arrival warning bonged sonorously, there came that instant inside-out feeling, star-fields lit the screens, and in the same second her computer was gobbling a mass of data, processing it, and getting ready to go. She read the situation with grim delight. Luck! There was a small sun and planetary system no more than four-tenths of a light. away. And there was one small, solid, metal, power-emitting object much closer than that—as she had expected. She saw this all in one fast survey, then, as fast as her fingers could move, she aimed for that insignificant sun-system and buttoned for a hop. Sliced seconds later there was a raving glow in her forward screens, and it called for hasty but sure adjustments while she spun into orbit about it. That done she sat back. "All right, whoever you are," she challenged. "Let's see how long it takes you to sort your tracers from this mush. Try and find me, if you can!" She felt sure they would, but not immediately, and that was as much as she had hoped for. She now had a breathing space in which to dig a better hiding place. She got busy with scanner and analysis; her radio was on to listen to the blanketing wash of static from the unnamed sun. Whoever was in that ship was hardly likely to broadcast his presence yet. Before anything else, he was going to have to think up some reason why she was not just hung there helpless. And that might make him pause a little. Meanwhile she went over the data on this sun's planets in the hope of finding somewhere to stop. She did not fancy being attacked in space. Her ship was special, and versatile far beyond its routine appearance, but it wasn't that good. On the ground she could even the odds quite a bit. And she was lucky again. One of the slow-circling planets, the second out, looked promising. Indeed, as she went over the data again, it was more than that. "Very nice!" She approved. "Sub-tropical primitive, slightly smaller than Earth, acceptable atmosphere and temperatures—might have been made to order." She got busy again, but not rashly. Distant figures and analyses give only a part of the picture. A lushly welcoming planet might turn out to be anything but that on closer acquaintance, and this place was completely off the charts. She slid into a thousand-mile orbit and gave the detection complexes another workout. The acceptability still stood up, so she studied the surface and selected her spot with care and an eye to the questions of cover and defense. There were many minor landmasses, and one enormous one lying athwart the equator. At its northern tip was a beaky promontory, a long flat plain backed by rugged mountains, with dense forest on either side of them. "That," she decided, "will do me very well. Down among the trees, with the plain in front, the mountains at my back, sea on either side, and let them come and get me—if they can!" She went down, using the ship's extra-powerful grav-fields to check her fall right up to the last minute, and then settled stern-first among the trees with the absolute minimum of scorching and burning to leave marks for others to notice. And then, with a sigh, she was able to sit back once more. She had an hour in which the sensitive sniffing systems would subject every indrawn molecule to severe scrutiny and assess it for danger. That particular analytical plant, too, was not standard on a ship like this, but Selena by now had abandoned all shadow of pretense of being standard. Whoever it was who had initiated this round of fun-and-games would soon find that he had taken on more than he realized. She reviewed her strategy. They had been laying for her, that much was proven. She had no idea why, but that could wait. Her evasion had been fast, but she was not kidding herself that she had escaped without detection. They had seen her arrive. The ship's bulk itself, even without their tracers, would have rung that bell. But she had warped out again, and that might throw them for a while, especially as they had every right to assume that she would be helpless. She pondered it. They would have to assume that the bomb damage was not as total as they had planned—but that she was damaged, partly crippled. Therefore, in logic, she would have to find landfall somewhere close—which she had done. They would come to look; but she had time to listen to the thousand and one small noises of the surrounding forest reestablishing itself after her arrival. There was time to admire the view in her screens. The forward cameras had two pictures: on one there was a waving mass of tree-tops, and beyond those a mountain range, purple with distance and, in one or two instances, white-crested with snow; on the other she saw more treetops, a glimpse of a silvery yellow beach, and the rolling sea. The stern viewers showed her a quiet wilderness of tree trunks and a profusion of tangled bushes and creepers heavy with multicolored blooms. "This is quite a place," she declared. "If the life systems check out—and that is quite a big if, of course—this is quite a find! Might even be worth laying claim to!" The idea amused her for a while. Because of a number of nasty legal hassles over rights to the first few desirable planets that had been discovered, there were several ironclad statutes on the books, one of which effectively stopped any whole-planet claims by individuals or minorities. The first person to locate, establish and record the existence of a new planet had an inalienable right to claim one square mile of its surface—any square mile—as his property, to dispose of as he saw fit. But that was all. That line of speculation filled the time until the life systems yielded up their verdict. She studied the data carefully. Everything was in the green, except for two items which were underlined for her attention. One was an inconclusive harmless measurement of longwave electromagnetic radiation of unknown origin. The other was an activation analysis of certain complex organic molecules common to the local botanical spectrum; it was not harmful either, but unusual and unexplained. She frowned, went back to the longwave electromagnetic radiation, then clicked her tongue in chagrin. One might as well try to measure the temperature with a foot rule! Of course one wouldn't expect a chemical analysis to recognize radio! But why was it on the longwave band? It had to be local, from the surface. Longwaves could not push through the ionosphere. Maybe that was the reason—so that no one outside would get them! She turned on her radio, which was still yielding hushed static, and there it was, on the tell-tale—a winking green neon that said something was coming in. She made adjustments and tuned down, and suddenly there was a drawly male voice in the middle of a sentence. "—liked that. I did, too. Here's another one you're going to like, by a feller named Strauss. It's called Morning Papers, which can't mean a thing to you, because you never saw a morning paper—nor yet an evening one, for that matter—but who cares about that? Here it comes, now," and the slow voice, an outrageous caricature of hillbilly drawl, went away and on came the classic Strauss waltz. Selena felt the first faint twinge of unreality. She stared at her radio in frank unbelief, and tapped it just to make sure. Rational explanation eluded