Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus by Brian Herbert Read Free Book Online Page A

effect around the edges. He noted a slight change of pressure around him, too, as if a door into another dimension had opened for an instant, and something altogether different was entering.
    Podship.
    The opacity glowed bright green for a moment, then flickered. A blimp-shaped object took form and made its way toward a faint, barely visible pod station, floating nearby in the airless vacuum of space. The mottled, gray-and-black podship had a row of portholes on the side facing Thinker, with pale green light visible inside the passenger compartment. From his data banks the robot drew a comparison. The sentient creature was reminiscent of a whale of Earth, but without a tail or facial features, and cast off into space.
    The pod station, after fading from view during the entry of the podship, solidified its appearance. A globular, rough-hewn docking facility, it was nearly as mysterious as the podships themselves. For tens of thousands of years the sentient podships—hunks of living cosmic material—had been traveling at faster-than-light speeds through the galaxy, on regular routes. The ships were of unknown origin, and so too were the orbiting pod stations at which they docked—utilitarian facilities positioned all over the galaxy, usually orbiting the major planets. Some of the galactic races said that the podships and their infrastructure were linked with the creation of the galaxy, and there were numerous legends concerning this. One, attributed to the Humans of ancient Earth, held that the podships would come one day and transport religious and political leaders to the Supreme Being, where all of the great secrets would be revealed.
    Thinker signaled for a sliding door to open, and then strode into the lobby of the inn on his stiff metal legs. There he encountered Ipsy and Hakko, who had been waiting for him, as he’d suspected. “Later,” he told them. “For once, handle something on your own.”
    “We need to plan next month’s sales convention,” Hakko said, “so that the necessities can be ordered.”
    “Yes,” Ipsy agreed. “There is a great deal of printing to be done—announcement cards, menus. You know the trouble we had at the last convention when we tried to serve Blippiq food to Adurians.”
    “Well, take care of it then,” Thinker said, with mock impatience, since it was like playing a game with them.
    He continued on his way, and entered a lift that took him down to the lowest level of the inn. There, through a thick glax floor, he could see the dark gray pod station floating perhaps a thousand meters away, and the sentient ship that had just entered one of its docking bays.
    Presently he saw a shuttle emerge from the pod station, burning a blue exhaust flame as it closed the gap between the station and the orbital ring. The little craft locked onto a berthing slot, and Thinker saw men step out. He counted twenty-two.
    His first impression was that they were Humans, a group of tourists. Unlike other galactic races, Humans did that sort of thing. They just went places to be there, to experience them. To most galactic races it seemed a waste of time, but Thinker understood. Like the Human technicians who created him, he had a sense of curiosity and wonder about the cosmos.
    But the new arrivals were not Human. As they walked across a deck toward the main entrance to the Inn of the White Sun, he noted subtle differences that only a highly trained observer such as himself could detect. The bodily motions were slightly different. Oh, they were very close to authentic, but not quite right. They moved like what they really were.
    What are Mutatis doing here?
    In order to contemplate without distraction, Thinker folded his dull-gray body closed in a clatter of metal, tucking his head neatly inside. To an observer he might look like a metal box now, just sitting silently on the deck. Inside, though, he was deep in concentration, organizing the vast amount of information in his data banks, trying to