the colors of sunlight. Between the patches was a black that matched the black of surrounding space; and this black, too, was filled with stars. The black of space seemed to encroach on continents of sunlight.
“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” said Teela, with tears in her voice. And Louis, who had seen many things, was inclined to agree.
“Incredible,” said Speaker-To-Animals. “I hardly dared believe it. You took your worlds with you.”
“Puppeteers don’t trust spacecraft,” Louis said absently. There was a touch of cold in the thought that he might have missed this; that the puppeteer might have chosen someone in his place. He might have died without seeing the puppeteer rosette…
“But how?”
“I had explained,” said Nessus, “that our civilization was dying in its own waste heat. Total conversion of energy had rid us of all waste products of civilization, save that one. We had no choice but to move our world outward from its primary.”
“Was that not dangerous?”
“Very. Then was much madness that year. For that reason it is famous in our history. But we had purchased a reactionless, inertialess drive from the Outsiders. You may guess their price. We are still paying in installments. We had moved two agricultural worlds; we had experimented with other, useless worlds of our system, using the Outsider drive.
“In any case, we did it. We moved our world.
“In later millennia our numbers reached a full trillion. The dearth of natural sunlight had made it necessary to light our streets during the day, producing more heat. Our sun was misbehaving.
“In short, we found that a sun was a liability rather than an asset. We moved our world to a tenth of a light year’s distance, keeping the primary only as an anchor. We needed the farming worlds and it would have been dangerous to let our world wander randomly through space. Otherwise we would not have needed a sun at all.”
“So,” said Louis Wu. “That’s why nobody ever found the puppeteer world.”
“That was part of the reason.”
“We searched every yellow dwarf sun in known space, and a number outside it. Wait a minute, Nessus. Somebody would have found the farming planets. In a Kemplerer rosette.”
“Louis, they were searching the wrong suns.”
“What? You’re obviously from a yellow dwarf.”
“We evolved under a yellow dwarf star somewhat like Procyon. You may know that in half a million years Procyon will expand into the red giant stage.”
“Finagles heavy hands. Did your sun blow up into a red giant?”
“Yes. Shortly after we finished moving our world, our sun began the period of expansion. Your fathers were still using the upper thigh bone of an antelope to crack skulls. When you began to wonder where our world was, you were searching the wrong orbits, about the wrong Suns.
“We had brought suitable worlds from nearby systems, increasing our agricultural worlds to four and setting them in a Kemplerer rosette. It was necessary to move them all when the sun began to expand, and to supply them with sources of ultraviolet to compensate for the reddened radiation. You will understand that when the time came to abandon the galaxy, two hundred years ago, we were well prepared. We had had practice in moving worlds.”
The rosette of worlds had been expanding for some time. Now the puppeteer world glowed beneath their feet, rising, rising to engulf them. Scattered stars in the black seas had expanded, to become scares of small islands. The continents burned like sunfire.
Long ago, Louis Wu had stood at the void edge of Mount Lookitthat. The Long Fall River, on that world, ends in the tallest waterfall in known space. Louis’s eyes had followed it down as far as they could penetrate the void mist. The featureless white of the void itself had grasped at his mind, and Louis Wu, half hypnotized, had sworn to live forever. How else could he see all there was to see?
Now he reaffirmed that decision. And the puppeteer world rose about him.
“I am daunted,” said Speaker-To-Animals. His naked pink tail lashed in agitation, though his furry face and burry voice carried no emotion. “Your lack of courage had deserved our contempt, Nessus, but our contempt has blinded us. Truly you are dangerous. Had you feared us enough, you would have ended our race. Your power is terrible. We could not have stopped you.”
“Surely a kzin cannot fear an herbivore.”
Nessus had not spoken mockingly; but Speaker reacted with rage. “What sapient being would not fear such power?”
“You distress me. Fear is the brother of hate.