The Space Guardian

Max Daniels

THRILLING ADVENTURE! FANTASTICAL ACTION!

Lahks, Stoat, and Shom crouched behind the rocks, watching the monster make its way toward them.

It was brontosaurus, lean and agile-looking with a horrible allosaurus head perched atop a thickened, yet still sinuous, neck.

Neck thrust out, black-pitted heat sensors wide, it was seemingly blind. That was good and not so good. As the monster came closer, even Lahks’ practiced eye could not determine whether it would walk right into them or go by a hairsbreadth to the left.

Five hundred meters, three hundred, one hundred.

All of a sudden Shoat jumped out.

“Shoot it in the mouth, Shom!” he yelled. “When it opens its mouth only. Right in the mouth!”

THERE IS ONE

POWER BEYOND ALL POWERS!

The search for the legendary heartstone is on— and Lahks Mhoss, officer of the Guardian Institute, is on her way.

Using her gifts as a Changeling to mold her physical shape info any form imaginable, Lahks—with her gallant comrades, Stoat and Shom— tackles the horrors of the unknown in a never-ending quest.

Through ferocious battles with fire-eating dragons and amazing encounters with the galaxy’s beast o burden— the two-humped drom— to the happy discovery of the “Laughing City of the Changeling,” the dauntless trio is determined not to fail. For once they possess the magnificent stone, Lahks alone will hold the power to alter the entire universe!

Another Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

 POCKET BOOKS, a Simon & Schuster division of GULF & WESTERN CORPORATION 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020

Copyright © 1978 by Roberta Gellis

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020

ISBN: 0-671-81888-0

First Pocket Books printing August, 1978

Trademarks registered in the United States and other countries.

Printed in the U.S.A.

THE SPACE

GUARDIAN

“Very well, Mhoss, the jest has gone far enough. Rumors buzz. The staff wonders. Even your most accustomed companions are shocked. Now thumb the cancellation of your withdrawal from the Institute.”

Twelve cold gray eyes of the Guardian Institute’s Director glared into the mild brown ones of a very attractive humanoid female. That glare, shining out of the coal-black gleaming face, had been known to throw strong beings into convulsions, but it had no more effect on Lahks Mhoss than to start a twinkle in her eyes. Nonetheless, her face remained grave and her voice was even a little sad as she replied.

“It is no jest. I have said so over and over. It is my right to withdraw at any time up to the final imprinting. I choose to withdraw, Director.”

“Why? You state no reason.”

“The form gives reason as optional. I prefer not to state mine.”

“People who do things without reason can be considered irrational and psyched.”

Lahks shook her head; her long, straight black hair swung gently, caressing coffee-satin cheeks. “You have my psych reports. They are of public record. To refuse to state a reason is not the same as not having one.” The twinkle in her eyes deepened and the corners of a generous mouth twitched a little, as if they were tired of unnatural gravity and sought their normal smiling shape. “Besides, you would not want it known that an irrational individual could proceed so far in the Institute’s course—would you?”

Neither the glare nor the expression of the Director changed, but a faceted ring on his many-fingered left hand glittered suddenly, indicating an infinitesimal movement. He did not see the flicker of Lahks’ eyes pick up the sign, but he knew she had seen. She missed nothing; in fact, she was one of the finest products of the Institute—except for her warped sense of humor, her passion for practical jokes, and an apparent desire to keep everyone in a constant state of turmoil. The Director was swept with an emotion he had not felt since his own children (now grandfathers) had been very small; that jerk of the hand had been the vestigial remains of a strong impulse to deliver a spanking. In fact, if it had not been for the psych reports Lahks had just mentioned, her penchant for nonsense would have catapulted her out of the Institute in the first few weeks.

Those reports indicated that the principles of the Guardians that needed to be painfully instilled into others were a deep-seated instinct in Lahks Mhoss. She was so suitable for the purposes of the Institute that faults for which others would have been expelled were punished in Lahks by disciplinary measures. Had that been a mistake, the Director wondered? Of course, there was also the fact that she was Ghrey Mhoss’ daughter. Then, picking up the conversation without apparent pause, he spoke with cold deliberation.

“And your father, what will he think of this extraordinary behavior?”

Red flickered briefly behind the brown of Lahks’ eyes. She shrugged shapely shoulders. “He will think that I had an excellent purpose.”

For the first time since she had entered the room, all the Director’s eyes moved away from her face. “What do you know about your father, Mhoss?”

“I know that he still is,” she snapped, her voice as brittle as untempered glass, “which is more than you know.”

“How do you know?”

“I am my mother’s daughter.”

And when the Director looked up from his brief contemplation of the single jewel he wore, he was gazing at a pallid albino. Only the faint pink of eyes and lips gave color to skin and hair of translucent whiteness.

“So!” Not a single eye flickered.

First round to me, second to you
, Lahks thought.

“Your reasons are easy enough to perceive,” he continued, “but your logic is at fault. Do you think it will be easier to find Ghrey yourself than with the full strength of the Guardians behind you?”

Abandoning any effort at sobriety, Lahks laughed. The warm chortle was so intimate and carried so strong an invitation to share amusement that the discipline of a lifetime was strained to preserve the Director’s gravity. His hand twitched again.

“Certainly,” Lahks replied in a delighted gurgle. “Safer, too.” Pert silver curls bobbed against her forehead. Her mood changed abruptly and she leaned forward, saying earnestly, “That is literal truth. Even if you did not send me on some harebrained cosmic wild-goose chase as soon as I was imprinted—which I would lay heartstones against hair-rings you would—as long as I do not have the final imprinting, no key information can be obtained from me, nor am I conditioned to death-by-will. If I should be trapped and taken, they can drug me to the ears, brain-probe me—anything. I cannot be a danger to the Guardians because I do not know anything important. I will be safer because both drug and machine will proclaim my ignorance.”

“You think such alternatives preferable to death?”

“Anything is preferable to death. An emptied mind can be refilled. A damaged brain can be repaired. Besides, I do not intend to be caught.”

“By whom?”

The question was most casually asked, but Lahks did not fall into the trap. Her laughter gurgled out again while she shook her head.

“I do not know. If I knew, I would tell you—in all truth, I would. This much I promise—if I find where he is and who holds him and it is possible to inform the Institute, I will do so. I like to laugh, but I am not a fool. For rescue missions a strong concerted attack is best. For the seeking of information, one alone is most efficient.”

“It is a large universe,” the Director said dryly. “If you do not know where to look, where will you begin? Lahks, do you think we have not
been
seeking Ghrey?”

“I will look there.” Unerringly, as if drawn by wires, the silver head turned, and the pink eyes stared out toward the rim of the galaxy.

“The rim? Intergalactic space? Another galaxy?”

“I tell you, I do not know.” For the first time a hint of impatience shadowed the girl’s voice. “I have told you everything I know myself.”

“Very well, Lahks. Remember the promise you made. I cannot stop you. We will grant a leave of absence for personal business before final imprinting. Now”—the many-fingered hands folded softly together, belying their strong impulse to wring the pretty neck—“will you tell me why you did not ask for a leave of absence in the first place instead of sending through this withdrawal?”

The warm chortle filled the room again and Lahks leaned forward to plant a resounding kiss above the rows of eyes. “Because it would have been granted and I would not have seen you to say good-bye.”

There was a long breath-held silence; all the glowing eyes of the black face closed tight. “That will be ten demerits and a full-period pay loss,” the Director said very, very softly. “Remember,” he added, in a slightly more natural voice, “that you are a member of the Guardians, and conduct yourself accordingly.”

A spurious expression of deep reverence appeared immediately on Lahks’ expressive countenance. Once more the Director closed all his eyes and struggled for control. He came of a long-lived race, and in more time than he cared to remember no one had filled him with an equal desire to laugh and commit mayhem at the same time. Eyes still closed, he lifted his hand and pointed the jeweled digit at the door. Lahks giggled, but she turned to go. If she intended to make the shuttle, she had little time to waste.

Grinning broadly, she considered the Director’s remark. The years of training in every sophisticated form of physical violence, sedition, and treachery, every method of twisting fact to one’s own purpose, in the procedures of bribery, corruption, blackmail, extortion, and mental torture passed through her mind. She wondered mildly as she reached for the door what limits being a member of the Guardians could place on her actions.

Between the time the door hid her from the Director’s view and the latch clicked so that the secretary looked up, Lahks had converted hair, skin, and eyes to their original form. Few knew of her mother’s people at all; fewer had any real information about them; and if no one at all—except the Director, whom she did not really consider—connected her with those legendary folk, she would be safest of all.

Lahks’ goodbyes were already said, and her scanty belongings were in a locker at the port; there was nothing to do but up ship and out. As the acceleration chair gently enfolded her in resilient foam, she thought of the next step. The Institute shuttle would set her down at a major transshipment port. From there she had her choice of hundreds of systems all in the general direction she had to go. Of these, Lahks had chosen the fourth planet of a G-type star called Wumeera. Although it had been colonized by mammalian humanoids early in their star-travel history, it had never developed an elaborate urban civilization because of its inhospitality. The climate alternated between searing deserts and freezing mountains; it offered little in the way of arable land or mineral wealth; there were dust storms that could strip the flesh from the bones and blizzards that could bury one in minutes; and there were dangerous, although unintelligent, natural denizens. Anyone who stayed alive on Wumeera was tough.

Yet, in addition to an indigenous population that had learned to live in its manic conditions, Wumeera attracted a wide range of adventurers. Those who were greedy enough, sly enough, strong enough—or lucky enough—could steal, win, or find a heartstone.

The foam folded back, but Lahks did not move. Other passengers curious to see the stars twist and dance as real space coiled into a new form according to the irresistible logic of mathematics went to the lounge. There viewscreens exposed distance curling into a knot at the command of intelligence. Terra-descended humanoids called the rules, which had bent a straight line into a tight coil that a spaceship could climb like the rungs of a ladder, Carroll’s equations. Other races of star jumpers attached different names to the formulas. Regardless of the trivialities of mortal creatures, the equations performed their functions with sublime indifference to the names given them.

Lahks had seen the stars dance often enough, however, to forgo the pleasure in order to pursue her thoughts. The heartstone—it was so much in her mind that she had slipped and mentioned it to the Director. She pushed knowledge of the slip away. He would not interfere with her, but should she delay her prime purpose to obtain one? There were as many legends about the heartstone as about her mother’s people, and—Lahks’ expressive brows lifted—she did not know the truth about one any more than she knew the truth about the other.

It was possible, Lahks thought, that her mother had never been meant to bear a human child, but she so ordered her body that it performed the feat. Perhaps the sustained strain was too great and she died—but Lahks did not think so. It was more likely that, in spite of her love for Ghrey, Zuhema had gone back to her own people. In any case, before Lahks was old enough to understand the nature of her dual heritage, Zuhema was no longer there to teach her. What Ghrey knew, he kept to himself. Lahks learned from him only that it was necessary always to conceal her inborn abilities. What use she had of them she had learned by private experimentation, and this was what drew her to the heartstone.

One legend among many linked the Changelings to the heartstone. When these two came together, it was rumored, their combined force could alter the universe. Lahks’ lips curved up. She did not believe that, but it was possible that possession of the heartstone would unlock the latent powers she knew were in her. Partly she desired that. Power for its own sake meant nothing. But to know you have abilities you cannot use is frustrating. Lahks felt like a cripple who, with mechanical aids, did not need his limbs, but, because walking was his inborn right, desired use of them. If she had a birthright, she wanted use of it.

What the Changelings could do beyond molding their own flesh into any semblance, Lahks did not know. Even in that direction her ability was limited by her human part. She could not change the shape or form of her body except in appearance. She guessed the Changelings, like many other races of the galaxy, had psych power of some kind. Her mother—she remembered that much—had known where she was and what she was doing even when a considerable distance away, and Zuhema could make her presence and desires known to Lahks from afar. What other powers the Changelings had and how these abilities would be altered by her human heritage were questionable.

Lahks was a weak telepathic receiver, but that was not surprising because Ghrey was a Shomir, and telepathy was natural to many of them. And, although Ghrey had no record of telepathic power in his dossier, Lahks had “felt” him after Zuhema was gone. When he was away on the business of the Guardians, a presence, warm and reassuring, kept her from a terrifying sense of aloneness. Even after Ghrey had been declared missing, Lahks remained sure of his existence and sure of his safety. Only in recent months had the sense of presence changed. It had taken on physical direction and a summoning character. There was no urgency in the summoning. Lahks was in no fear as to Ghrey’s immediate need, and she had the utmost confidence in the signal—whatever it was. She must come, but there was no hurry. She had time to seek a heartstone if she could use one.

That was the crux of Lahks’ immediate problem. She had chosen Wumeera for the type of men who dared its dangers and for its proximity. But the heartstone was there. Ranging in size from a pea to a small egg, the stone had defied analysis by the most sensitive devices. Its chemical composition had, of course, been determined, but that meant as little as saying that man was made up of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, with traces of other elements. Instruments that could detect the energy reflected by starlight from the absorptive surface of a dead sun did not react to the heartstone; yet it changed its temperature in one’s hand, now warm, now cold. Films sensitive to every range of the visible, infrared, and ultraviolet scales recorded nothing when used to photograph the heartstone—nothing.

Although to the eyes the round or oval stone, dazzling pink to deep red, showed regularly pulsating, coruscating bursts of silver, gold, electric blue, and shocking green within its depth and sometimes rippling over its surface, cameras recorded nothing. No pictorial representation of a heartstone had ever been obtained by mechanical means. Neither the shape of the stone in silhouette nor the background, as if the object were transparent, showed. At all ranges of all radiation, a blurred, irregular blotch with the background dim and distorted was recorded on the film.

So much factual information was stored in the InfoBank; however, it was not the end of the tale. Lahks had scanned what seemed miles of legend, fiction, and personal recounting of experience concerning the heartstone. There were stories of the stones moving by themselves, of their eating away, dissolving, or vaporizing their containers or the surfaces on which they rested—except living organic matter, flesh was never harmed. Indeed, there were legends of heartstones healing wounds and curing illnesses.

The most persistent stories, however, were of symbiotic psychic relationship—at least it was assumed to be symbiotic, because the heartstone’s bursts of color became more brilliant, its pulses quicker, its color brighter. What power it conferred on its intelligent symbiont was much in doubt even in legend. And here there was no longer any record of personal experience. Anyone who had entered such a relationship with a heartstone was either totally vague or totally silent. Nonetheless, friends, relatives, and various other onlookers had much to say. Unfortunately, it was very contradictory. One said the heartstone had changed a saint to a monster, another marveled at the alteration of a moody man of barely normal intelligence into a cheerful genius; still another bewailed the slippage of a brilliant, active thinker into a state so dreamy and detached that it was little to be distinguished from idiocy or insanity; finally, there were those who claimed all such tales to be fabrications because they had seen and handled the stones with no response at all.

Lahks stirred restlessly in her seat. Decision could, of course, be delayed until she reached Wumeera and estimated the difficulties and advantages more closely. No sooner had she made the trite observation than she laughed aloud. What a lot of bother to rationalize to herself something she intended from the beginning. No sooner had Wumeera and the heartstone come together in her mind with the legends about her people than she knew she had to have one.

The decision formalized, Lahks leaned back and closed her eyes, trying to open herself wide, to listen with that strange receptor that was neither ears nor mind for her father’s sending. It was there, where it always was, emitting alternate or sometimes combined waves of reassurance and beckoning. There was no change, no indication that the decision she had made had been communicated. Unconsciously, Lahks turned her head in the direction of the call. With all the force in her, she tried to send a message back until, after a few moments, she felt the flagging of her energy. Then she listened again.

Almost immediately, certainly in no longer than it would take a person to listen to, consider, and digest an important statement, the answer came: stronger reassurance, which arrived first in a wave that seemed to promise support, then something negative. Lahks tried to reach toward the sending, tried to open her receptivity still further. Disapproval. . . . No, not that— anxiety; her father was concerned about the dangers she, might face, was urging caution, but there was no sense of forbidding. A sensation of loss, a passionate desire to hear Ghrey’s voice, swept over Lahks. She sent once more with a burst of energy that drained blood from her face.

“Where are you, Papa? Where?”

And then it seemed to Lahks that she had opened out her very skin into a receiver in her desire to obtain a reply. It came— puzzlement, sorrow, reassurance, beckoning—and on its heels a faint roar, quickly deepening in intensity. For a startled moment Lahks fastened her attention on that sound that was no sound. In the time-space between two heartbeats, she was seized, wrenched a million different ways by the prayers, dreams, hopes of swarms of intelligences.