05-A Gift From Earth Read Free

ramscoop itself.
    Eight point three light-years from Sol, almost directly between Sol and Tau Ceti, lie the twin red dwarf stars L726-8. Their main distinction is that they are the stars of smallest mass known to man. Yet they are heavy enough to have collected a faint envelope of gas. The ramrobot braked heavily as her ramscoop plowed through the fringes of that envelope.
    She continued braking. The universe stretched on again; the stars resumed their normal shapes and colors. Eleven point nine light-years from Sol, one hundred million miles above the star Tau Ceti, the machine came to an effective stop. Her ramscoop went permanently off. variety of senses began searching the sky. They stopped. Locked.
    Again she moved. She must reach her destination on the remaining fuel in her insystem tank.
    Tau Ceti is a G8 star, about four hundred degrees cooler than Sol and only 45 percent as strong as its output of light. The world of Mount Lookitthat orbits sixty-seven million miles away, a moonless world in a nearly circular path.
    The ramrobot moved in on Mount Lookitthat the world. She moved cautiously, for there were fail-safe factors in her computer program. Her senses probed.
    Surface temperature: 600 degrees Fahrenheit, with little variation. Atmosphere: opaque, dense, poisonous near the surface. Diameter: 7650 miles.
    Something came over the horizon. In visible light it seemed an island in a sea of fog. A topography like a flight of broad, very shallow steps, flat plateaus separated by sheer cliffs. But Ramrobot #143 sensed more than visible light. There was Earth-like temperature, breathable air at an Earthlike pressure.
    And there were two radio homing signals.
    The signals settled it. Ramrobot #143 didn't even have to decide which to answer, for they were coming from only a quarter of a mile apart. They came, in fact, from Mount Lookitthat's two slowboats, and the distance between them was bridged by the sprawling structure of the Hospital, so that the spacecraft were no longer spacecraft but odd-looking towers in a sort of bungalow-castle. But the ramrobot didn't know that and didn't need to.
    There were signals. Ramrobot #143 started down.

    The floor vibrated gently against the soles of his feet, and from all around came muted, steady thunder. Jesus Pietro Castro strode down the twisting, intermeshing, labyrinthine passages of the Hospital.
    Though he was in a tearing hurry, it never occurred to him to run. He was not in the gymnasium, after all. Instead he moved like an elephant, which cannot run but can walk fast enough to trample a running man. His head was down; his stride was as long as his legs could reach. His eyes looked ominously out from under prominent brow ridges and bushy white eyebrows. His bandit's moustache and his full head of hair were also white and bushy, forming a startling contrast to his swarthy skin. Implementation police sprang to attention as he passed, snapping out of his way with the speed of pedestrians dodging a bus. Was it his rank they feared or his massive, unstoppable bulk? Perhaps even they didn't know.
    At the great stone arch which was the main entrance to the Hospital, Jesus Pietro looked up to see a sparkling blue-white star overhead. Even as he found it, it winked out. Moments later the all-pervading thunder died away.
    A jeep was waiting for him. If he'd had to call for one, someone would have been very sorry. He got in, and the Implementation chauffeur took off at once, without waiting for orders. The Hospital fell behind, with its walls and its surrounding wasteland of defenses.
    The ramrobot package was floating down on its parachutes.
    Other cars were in flight, erratically shifting course as their drivers tried to guess where the white dot would come down. It would be near the Hospital of course. The ramrobot would have aimed for one or another of the ships; and the Hospital had grown like something living, like a growth of architectural coral, between the two former