Certainly, it’s admirable enough.
Space is no barrier to me now, neither is any material wall.
But its best feature is immortality.
“My new body is truly eternal, Bob.
It has mass and potential energy.
But its mass is in no form you know as matter, Bob, and its energy is beyond the comprehension of your physics.
Not even your mother’s weapon could destroy it.
“These deathless dwellings for intelligence are the supreme achievements of my new associates, Bob.
You had not guessed that they were artificial?
But the drivers of the comet once were beings of flesh.
Not far different, perhaps, from mankind.
But they became impatient with frailty, incapacity, death.
They called upon their high science for a means of transferring their minds to eternal constructs of specialized energy.
“The Cometeers agreed to make me one of their number, to secure themselves from your mother’s weapon—AKKA could destroy all their somewhat elaborate equipment and possessions of course, even though it could not directly annihilate their bodies.
“And now, Bob,” the gay voice mocked him. “I shall be forced to leave you.
Your parents, as I told you, are being brought into the comet.
I must go to welcome your mother.”
Stephen Oreo chuckled at the mute agony twisting Bob Star’s face.
“I wish to discuss with her the principle of AKKA.
There are points not clear from my own research.
And when our discussions are ended, Bob—
“If you wonder why we must feed the way we do—it’s because even these indestructible devices of life are incomplete.
They were designed to be eternal vehicles for intelligence, and they can preserve our minds forever, against all possible assaults.
Yet their very perfection becomes almost a flaw.
“Because they aren’t the bodies we used to own.
Their senses are superior, but not the same.
The mechanisms of emotion were largely omitted from their design, as useless heritages of the flesh.
The consequent penalty we must pay for our undying perfection is a periodic hunger for the emotions and sensations we have lost.
“With their usual ingenuity, however, my new friends have found a way to satisfy that hunger.
The vital energy of our immortal mechanisms requires occasional renewal, from the transmutation of ordinary matter.
By taking that matter from bodies like we used to own, in a way that stimulates the most intense emotion and sensation, we are able to satisfy both those recurrent appetites—the physical and the spiritual, so to speak—at the same time.
“Since our minds came from a number of vastly different races, we must each keep our own herds of the proper creatures.
I am arranging to maintain a human colony, Bob—you and your companions will presently see the arrangements.
“I’m planning, however, to make my first meal upon your mother.
I understand from my new friends that the close rapport of mind and emotion set up during the feeding process will enable me to pick her thoughts of all I want to know.
And then—”
The shining thing chuckled softly.
“Have you seen what is left, after one of us has eaten, Bob?
Can you see your mother, so?
Small as a child, shriveled and colorless, whimpering for death?
When you do see that, Bob, I’ve a question for you.
I’m going to ask you if the nameless castaway of space hasn’t matched the pampered darling of the Purple Hall.”
The sardonic voice had faded then, as green mists thickened to veil the Cometeer…
Bob Star moved uncertainly again, fighting the lingering stiffness of that paralysis, and Kay Nymidee helped him to sit up.
Blinking to clear his eyes, he saw that heatless purple sun hi the green sky again, and the slick blue flatness of the master planet.
The two improvised sledges lay close beside him.
Jay Kalam and Hal Samdu and Giles Habibula were unpacking them hastily, flinging aside the spare proton guns and extra cells they had carried.
“Ah, so,” he heard Giles Habibula wheeze mournfully.
“The monster ruined them, every one, the way that other did my precious geodynes aboard the Halcyon Bird.”
He saw Bob Star, and brightened.