Dean R. Koontz - Star Quest

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Dean Koontz – Star Quest

[This is his first book]

[Released as “Ace double” with Emil Petaja – Doom of the green Planet (Not

included here)]

[Scanned by BuddyDk – May 15 2003]

[Original typos hasn’t been corrected]

DIVIDED COSMOS

In a universe that had been ravaged by a thousand years of interplanetary warfare between the

star-shatter-ing Romaghins and the equally voracious Setessins, there seemed now but one thing that

might bring the destruc-tion to an end.

That would be the right catalyst in the hands of the right people.

The right catalyst could well be the individualist rebel, Tohm . . . he who had once been a simple peasant

and who had been forcibly changed into a fearfully armored instrument of mechanical warfare—the

man-tank Jumbo Ten.

But the right people? Could they possibly be the hated driftwood of biological warfare—those monsters

of a cosmic no-man's land—the Muties?

Turn this book over for

second complete novel

ACE BOOKS, INC.

1120 Avenue of the Americas

New York, N.Y. 10036

STAR QUEST

Cover by Gray Morrow

DOOM OF THE GREEN PLANET

Printed in U.S.A.

PART ONE

“THE QUEST”

Jumbo ten was pulling out of the ranks.

“J-10, LOCK ON YOUR TIER: SWING TO ZERO STRESS. FALL IN, J-10!”

Jumbo Ten swung farther out of the advancing line, whirled and looked to the rear. He had been in

the se-cond wave moving toward the battle-scarred plain be-low. The third was crushing the very stones

as it roared down the hill, an irresistible force, ten thousand tons of alloyed steel careening madly on to

meet with the im-movable object of the enemy front.

“J-10, ARE YOU DAMAGED? CHECK YOUR SYS-TEMS AND MAKE REPORT

SOONEST!”

He had to get away. For the moment, they thought he was simply malfunctioning. Before the truth

seeped through their thick skulls, he would have to act. At most, he had only seconds to reach some level

area and cant back, bringing his rockets into proper position. Escape was essential, for he had suddenly

realized he was not a machine.

“J-10, REPORT!”

The tumult below made the plain a bad bet. Laser cannon erupted like acid-stomached giants,

belching forth corrosive froth that even the alloy hulls could not withstand for any appreciable length of

time. Forty Jum-bos were clashing already—twenty on each side—and a hundred and twenty would be

lobbing shells and ex-changing beams within minutes. A compressed gas bomb sloughed into the earth a

thousand feet ahead, exploded, tilting the Jumbos of the third wave, toppling three onto their backs

where they lay spinning tread like helpless turtles. That opened a gap in the ranks. If he could move

through the breach before the Generals real-ized he was not just damaged, he could make the top of the

ridge and cant on the level brink for a blast-off.

He could feel the remote control fingers of the Gen-erals probing his circuits to discover why he was

not reporting.

But he knew who he was! And what he wasn't. He wasn't a machine. He wasn't a Jumbo, one of

those all-purpose, highly sophisticated weapons systems. He was a man. They had taken away his body

and left him only his brain—but that was still a human brain, an individual.

“RENEGADE! JUMBO TEN IS RENEGADE!” the probing officer shouted.

So, the seconds had dwindled into nothingness. He shifted his huge bulk into high gear, his

atomic-powered engines roaring with only a fraction of the power they could deliver. Five hundred tons

of alloyed steal whined and choked, surging suddenly forward and up.

“THIRD TIER CLOSE ON JUMBO TEN. CLOSE AND OBSTRUCT!”

He swiveled his cannon about in a hundred and eighty degree arc, fanning the third tier with his

heaviest beam. Fomp-fompa-fomp! went his launch tubes as he fired smoke grenades to cover his

retreat. The rocks crumbled to dust beneath him, his tread grinding the earth, ripping and gouging at the

hill as it plunged him onward. The smoke was now a great blanket over all.

There was a movement to his left. Jumbo 34 came out of the fog. The red gem eyes of the radar

swiveled about, locked on him and began glowing even brighter. A laser cannon came up. Jumbo Ten

threw up a shield, struck out with an energy net and overheated J-34 until little wires melted inside the

cannon, leaving it without a trigger mechanism. It would take J-34 some time to re-machine the needed

parts from the twisted, useless ones and replace them. He rolled quickly on.

At the top of the ridge, he came out of his own smoke cover, bucked over the lip, crashing onto flat

ground. Below, the panorama of combat was impressive indeed. Giant organic brain directed fighting

robos tore at each other with a vengeance. Instead of blood, there was mol-ten metal and shattered

transistors. The Setessins had attacked the Romaghin home planet, landing with their Jumbos in the

Hellfire Desert. Over the last eighteen hours, they had pushed into the plains, but they would not go any

farther. Already, the tide of battle was chang-ing.

But, he reminded himself, he didn't care any longer. He wasn't a fighting machine in the Great Cause

of the Romaghin worlds. He was a man. A man from the village of the Giant Trees who had been

shanghaied and deprived of his body. And of his love.

He canted the huge machine with its hydraulic blast-ing legs, extended the glistening, polished tubes of

the rockets, and shut down all other systems but the radar-negative shield that would protect him against

Romaghin missiles when he reached the upper strata of the atmos-phere.

Three Jumbos lifted over the edge of the ridge, whir-ring, swung their head blocks one way, then the

other, searching for him. There was a shrill whistle of recogni-tion from one of them just as he flipped the

rockets to full thrust and burned the hill away in takeoff.

Past the missile danger zone, he deactivated the shield and slammed everything into the rockets. He

wanted out fast. Very fast. His mind was suddenly overwhelmed with the events of the recent past and

with his present position. He was a man without a body. The power of that swept at him like a great dark

wave. Reluctantly, he allowed the wave to swallow him. He dreamed:

Once upon a fateful time, there was a village beneath trees whose leaves were as large as a man, dull

red, hid-ing clusters of luscious yellow fruits that were globular and semi-transparent, misty and sweet

and cool. To the left of this village, the clump of trees ended at the edge of a broad grassland that

stretched almost out of sight to the foothills of the fabulous purple mountains (which were, naturally,

worshiped) where the forests took over. Beyond the mountains were more mountains. Then more

forests. Then additional plains. It was a primi-tive world. But that is not to say an unhappy one. To the

right of the village was a beach which dropped gently to a crystal blue ocean. That great mirror of water

sank toward the horizon and sparkled every evening with the oranges and pinks, the greens and blues of

the sunset.

Once upon a fateful time, there were people living in this village. They ate of the fruit of the red-leafed

tree and of the fishes of the ocean. Now and then, a great god-ship would come from the skies and leave

them other and stranger foods. This ship had odd words painted on its side: Science League Ship No.

454/For The Preservation Of Primitive Cultures. That was the only intrusion by the outside world into this

Eden, and it was accepted by the simple people of the village as a mani-festation of the God of Heavens

and nothing else. These people were dark with straight, black hair and eyes like ebony chips that glowed

with an inner light Nature had given them. Their skins were bronze, their bodies per-fect. The men were

muscular and agile, the women gentle and graceful.

Then came the screaming dragons from the sky, viola-ting the halcyon world.

Moaning, spitting flame . . .

Scorching the plains, blackening the beaches, smash-ing the trees . . .

And bringing the men, the pale, chubby, worm-com-plexioned men in the strange breeches and the

ruffled, starched shirts with plumed helmets and jeweled chin straps.

And guns . . .

Flames . . .

Pain . . .

Roaring as of gods in death throes . . .

And when the dragons, coughing, sped away, there was an empty village behind.

They had taken and would use everyone. But worst of all, they had taken a certain two: Tohm, the

most handsome man in the village, the boy-man with dreams at the tips of his fingers and flashing lights in

the words that he spoke; and Tarnilee, his love, his only, his sweet-est. Tarnilee of the soft form. Tarnilee

of the eyes like the velvet of the night and the hair like spun darkness. Tarnilee with the body of pleasure

and the soul of the earth, of the flowers, of the moons . . .

And even worse than that, they took these two and sep-arated them . . .

He had not seen his Tarnilee since. He was “frozen” and taken to a sunless chamber where he waited

until one morning they put him to sleep and he died. For all purposes, he had died, for he woke without

memory of having ever lived. He woke as Jumbo Ten, that weird metal entity that fought for the

Romaghin cause after being educated (in a manner that was really propagan-dizement) and imbued with a

hatred for Setessins.

But the Fates, those fickle ladies, will often change their minds and lend a hand to those they have so

cal-lously crushed before. His web of life had been spun by Clotho who immediately washed her hands

of it and moved on to another loom. Lachesis, who measured the length of his strand, decided to fray it

down slowly to whittle it to near nothingness. But now, just as Atropos was coming forth with her golden

shears to snip it com-pletely, Clotho had a change of heart. Perhaps, she was unemployed and restless

that day, looking for something, anything to do. In any event, she stopped Atropos with a kind word and

a cold stare, and began spinning again more thread, a tougher filament for the man named Tohm.

In a giant machine that killed, a vial of narcotics began to run dry before its time . . .

An imprisoned brain began to divest itself of drug claws that had latched firmly to it . . .

Drip-dripity . . . dry . . .

A slow reawakening . . .

He lay quiet a moment after he regained conscious-ness, straining his aching mind to think. Tohm was

his name, but Jumbo Ten was his form. That didn't matter. Jumbo Ten was a small city in itself, a huge,

complex structure with micro-miniature components that allowed him to machine, create, build anything.

Including a new body. Below decks, chemical tanks rested in a small room, their contents sloshing ever

so slightly in the vacuum, waiting for the right seed to be planted before the various elements could come

together to form a human body. Next to that room, intricate robo-surgeons were con-cealed in the walls,

ready to transplant a human brain in-to the tank-grown corpse if the Jumbo ever crashed in enemy

territory and the operator needed to escape. Even if the machine were immovable, a man with a sound

body could do damage behind the enemy lines. Without further thought, he set the tanks to heating,

planted the necessary catalyst, and notified the inhuman surgeons to prepare themselves. He would have

a body again, even if it were not his own.

Opening the exterior lens, he searched all portions of space, staring for minutes through each of the

seven cameras mounted in the turret on top of the head block. Blackness was everywhere and through

everything. The heart of God?

He had absolutely no idea where he was. He, of course, had been given no stellar maps by the

Generals, for this was not intended to be a space operation, merely a de-fense against invading Setessin

forces. Now he was lost in the confusing starlanes, more alone than he had ever been in his lifetime,

drifting aimlessly, thinking con-stantly about Tarnilee. They were to have undergone ritual joining in

another month, after they had loved and proven the goodness of themselves to each other. He would find

her, he vowed to himself. He would rescue her. Was she too the brain of a fighting machine? Had they

hacked away her physical, beautiful, graceful self and stuffed her gray matter into an electronic mon-ster?

She would be confused, afraid. He remembered how, although laced with sedatives, he had been

afraid as the Romaghins educated him prior to placing him in the robot. His primitive mind had been

picked up and shaken violently by the facts that went against all he thought he knew, by the simple

understanding that there were hundreds of worlds with billions of people throughout the galaxy. Tarnilee

would be in need of comforting. As he slid through the slick emptiness, he decided he would most

assuredly get his bearings and then his re-venge. Somehow, in some way, he would find her and the men

who had taken her.

He was still brooding about it when the radar screen flashed and spat out a tiny Bleep! Searching the

screen with an interior “eye,” he located the small, green dot. It was closing fast. It was better than five

times his size. He armed all weapons and prepared himself for the shock of the killing. Although he had

killed before, it was under the effects of drugs and beyond his under-standing. This would be decidedly

different. But, since the dragons had come from the sky to the village under the trees, no one had dealt

him mercy, and he had decided to trade like for like.

Winking on and off as if in warning, the green pickup grew larger and closer.

Calmly, he fixed the laser cannon solidly on the center of the oncoming bulk, flicked the magnetic

heating shields into readiness, and waited. He had seven armed missiles lying in his belly. He would wait

one more minute until a few hundred miles of the gap between them had been closed. He wanted to be

certain.

“Ho there!” a voice snapped through the radio receiver in his guts.

He started.

“Ho there, I say! This is Floating Library No. 7. Do you wish any information, reading materials, or

news?”

He swallowed imaginary saliva and relaxed a bit. Low-ering his defenses, he said, “Where am I?”

“You don't know where you are?” the voice said un-believingly.

“No.”

“Dear friend, you must come aboard for that informa-tion, star charts and all. We can converse more

easily in person.”

“I can't disembark. I'm a fighting machine—a brain encased in this hunk of metal.”

“Oh dear,” the library said. Silence for a moment.

“So could we talk by radio?”

“Look,” the library said, “I have an empty stock room. I'll open the portal and let you in.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, trying to imagine the dimen-sions of the library that could swallow a

Jumbo so easily. He was slightly astounded.

“You are a runaway?”

“I—”

“Well, there are three radar blips approaching from your rear. Before they pick you up, I suggest you

conceal yourself.”

He swallowed again—as figuratively as the first time— and jetted gently to the giant cube that

sparkled like polished brass. The portals swung open like the jaws of a massive alligator, revealing a

warm, blue-lighted interior. He cut all engines and coasted in on the built-up thrust, breaking now and

then with chemical retro-rockets. He cleared the sill and sides of the door easily. When all of J-10 was in

and had grated noisily against the floor plates of the storage room, the mouth he had entered closed,

gobbling up the last traces of him.

“Romaghin, I see,” the library said.

“Not by birth!”

“Of course not. Oh goodness, no. They wouldn't use their own people for something like that. Tell

me, how did you come to realize what you were—rather, who?”

“I found, since my discovery, an empty vial and a useless system of narcotic baths. From the looks of

it, my vial ran out ahead of schedule.”

“I see. Oh, this is good. Very good!”

“Yeah, well, I just want to find Tarnilee.”

“Tarnilee?”

Visions of sugary fantasies . . .

“Yeah. My woman.”

“Oh my. Very grand. Heroic quest and all. Marvelous, marvelous.”

“So I thought you might tell me how to find her.”

“Well, I wouldn't know about this particular young lady. But you could study up on Romaghin culture,

learn something of the truth about them. I imagine you come from a primitive world, for that's how they

get most of their Jumbo brains—to the consternation of the Science League. You'll need a great deal of

educating to understand what might have happened to this Tarni-lou-”

“Tarnilee.”

“Yes, Tarnilee. You'll need a great deal of educating, nonetheless, to understand what might have

happened to her and what avenues of action might be open to you. Read the books on Romaghin culture,

the History of the the Century, volumes six through twelve, and the daily papes for the past month.”

“Lead me to them.”

“You'll be interested in the latest escapades of the Muties. Papes are full of it. Exciting stuff. They say

the Fringe is actually beginning to wave negative under Mutie pressure and the shell molecule is rupturing

in many cases, though total success has yet been denied them.”

“What?” That had sounded like nothing so much as doubletalk, trickspeak, or some such ruse.

The library was silent a moment. “Oh, I guess you wouldn't be interested. You wouldn't know about

the Muties and all.”

“Muties?”

“We'll educate you. That's it. You'll learn all the won-ders of this galaxy. I—” the giant cube said,

slipping into a soft, confidential tone, “am secretly in favor of what the Muties are doing.”

“Yeah, well, if I could find out about Tarni—”

“REPORT!” a familiar voice snapped, shaking the hull.

“Oh dear,” the library said. “I think we have guests outside.”

“What are they going to do?”

“Leave this to me,” the library said. He thought it giggled.

“YOU, FLOATING LIB SEVEN, REPORT!”

“Yes, sirs,” the library said reverently. “Can I help you? Reading material, research, news?”

“INFORMATION!”

“Yes, sirs?”

“WE WERE MONITORING A JUMBO, A RENE-GADE FROM ROMAGHIN. HE

DISAPPEARED FROM OUR SCOPES IN THIS AREA.”

“Yes, sirs. Witnessed that, I did. Said to myself, said, now that looks like a bit of chicanery. Doesn't

look good, I says.”

“WHAT DIDN'T LOOK GOOD?”

“A Setessin freighter scooped him up. Came in behind me, shielding itself from you gentlemen, and

took him.”

There was a moment of silence while the three Jumbos conferred among themselves and with the

Generals back home. “WHICH WAY DID THIS FREIGHTER GO?” one of them asked at length.

“It seemed to plot off toward that quadrant contain-ing ypsilon Sagittarii.”

“YOU CAN'T BE MORE SPECIFIC?”

“No, sir. I was much too alarmed by the fleet of battle cruisers hanging farther out, waiting for the

freigh-ter to return.”

“BATTLE CRUISERS?” the voice said.

“Faint dots. Standing pretty far off. Maybe a dozen.”

“UH, WELL—” the voice said haltingly. It was ob-viously manned by a Romaghin who was

preempting the primitive brain and controlling the machine.

“I knew you would want to search out the blackguards and teach them a lesson,” the library went on.

“WELL, WE'RE A LITTLE TOO BUSY AT THE MOMENT,” the Romaghin replied, picturing the

dozen cruisers with their hundreds of guns and impenetrable shells. Then they were evidently recalled, for

the blast of their rockets echoed dully inside the cube for a brief second.

He unplugged himself from the portable robo-link the library information bank had extended to him.

“Find anything?”

“They sell the women as concubines,” Tohm said sourly. “On the world of Basa II, they have a slave

market where the fairest girls are taken.”

“And I imagine she was fair.”

Tohm didn't answer.

“Well,” the library said, “what did you think of the Muties' latest adventures? Exciting, huh?”

“I didn't understand a word of it,” Tohm snapped. “What is the Fringe? And for that matter, what the

devil is wave pattern negative or a shell molecule?”

“You mean you don't know?”

“I wouldn't ask if I did.”

“Oh, dear. Well, let me start at the beginning. All the worlds of the galaxy were settled by men from

the planet Earth. Most planets were peaceful and joined in mutual trade agreements which resulted in the

Federa-tion. The planets settled by the ancient political faction known as the RadRi became known as

the Romaghin worlds, in honor of their first president, and were kicked out of the Federation because

they refused to join in the disarmament plan. The exact same thing happened to the planets settled by the

RadLef, which, for many years and through the last several centuries, was and has been the mortal enemy

of the RadRi. These two factions built huge armies and navies and entered into a series of wars which

have been in progress for eight hundred years. The entire galaxy has never known peace in that time. The

Federation, unarmed as it was in the beginning and overwhelmed by the might of both combatants, has

never been able to halt the battle. Thirdly, there are worlds like your own where exploration parties

reverted and set up primitive tribes over the generations. These the Science League of the Federation is

trying to pre-serve. Both war parties, however, raid these primitive worlds for brains.”

Tohm sighed. “I understand that much.”

“That's background. Now, these first wars were fought strictly with nuclear weapons. Fallout was

tremendous. Naturally, mutated births began to occur. Both sides, however, instead of facing up to the

responsibilities of this new horror, began killing the mutants at birth. Several groups of sympathetic

normals, clergymen, and scholars, formed an underground that kidnapped mu-tants nearly upon birth.

Over the centuries, a respectable colony of un-normals existed throughout the galaxy. Several times, the

Romaghins and Setessins have launched campaigns to wipe out these semi-people. But they have never

quite succeeded. Today, less than ten thousand Muties are living, but they are a vital group. They have

discovered a way to rid the galaxy of the two warlike peoples. They have certain psi-talents (every

mutant seems to be born with some) that enable them to envision a daring plan. The Romaghins and

Setessins are afraid, for they realize the feasibility of the plan. The Muties are now under the greatest

attack in their history. They are fighting for their lives.”

“But how? I know the history, it is the method of oblit-erating the war mongers that confuses me.”

“Well, the Fringe is the single molecule which is the barrier of quasi-reality between the realities that

lay in infinite number. When the energy nets—”

Tohm sighed, interrupting. “What is a quasi-reality?”

“Oh. Well, a quasi-reality exists but doesn't exist. It's a sort of no-man's land with the Truths on either

side. Understand?”

“No.”

The library flustered to itself for a while. “I never thought of the complexities involved when

attempting to explain the twenty-ninth century to a twenty-second century man.”

“Hey, I'm educated, you know!”

“Certainly, but you were given only the scientific understanding of the twenty-second century. The

only thing you know after that is history. You know what has happened in the last eight hundred years,

but not how or why. You're years behind in concepts.”

“What would you know about anything,” Tohm stormed, the pride of his people surging within him.

“Before I died, I was,” the library said, “Chairman of the Department of Literature at Floating

University One.”

Tohm felt his pride sinking in a quagmire of shame. He had never seen a university, much less taught

at one.

“The name is Triggy Gop.”

“Not really?”

“If you were a student, and if I had my old body, I'd flip you on your back and beat the tar out of

you.”

“Sorry.”

“Forgiven. But you see, I do know something about modern concepts of life. I lived a full life of my

own. My wife died in childbirth, and I was dying myself. In order to see my child as it grew, I

volunteered my brain to the Federation, thus gaining near immortality. I've been a library now for

twenty-two years.”

Tohm heaved another sigh. “I really have to go. I have star charts now. I know where my Tarnilee is,

and I have calculated that she will appear on the slave market within a week,”

“Well, if you must go—”

“Perhaps we'll meet again,” Tohm said. He felt an odd kinship with the professor-machine-library.

“Perhaps in some lonely cabaret,

some black night, some bright day

with snow upon the ground or grass

turned yellow with days gone past.”

“Huh?”

“Poetry. Mine. Not much to do after you read the papes and the new books. I never sleep, you

know. Just like you. Weariness is electronically sucked off and the brain is rested a full eight hours in only

ten seconds. So, I write my verse.”

“I take my leave of Triggy,

I say goodbye.

He seems a little wiggy

but nice guy.”

“Hey! Hey, limericks,” Triggy said.

The doors opened behind, and the blackness of space glistened impossibly dark. “Goodbye, Triggy

Gop,” Tohm called.

“Goodbye, Jason. May you find your fleece that is the maiden Tarnilee.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Just, good luck.”

“You too,” he answered, drifting out from the hulk-ing cube. The portal closed behind.

III

He swathed himself in negative patterns to protect against every sort of radar and coasted in toward

the bulbous fruit that was Basa II. He had researched to find why the “two” was hung after the name, but

he found no reason. There never had been a Basa I.

Scoping the land masses through the cloud breakage, he found he was on the correct side of the giant

lemon (the seas were yellow, and the clouds were an amber hue). The continent of Bromida Basa lay

below. The capital city, Romaghin Cap Five, was on the edge of a peninsula that stretched into the great

sea. Population: three million plus. Main business: trading of stolen mer-chandise, slave marketing, sin. He

tried not to think about Tarnilee. He did not know how long it had been since they had parted or how

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DeanKoontz–StarQuest[Thisishisfirstbook][Releasedas“Acedouble”withEmilPetaja–DoomofthegreenPlanet(Notincludedhere)][ScannedbyBuddyDk–May152003][Originaltyposhasn’tbeencorrected]DIVIDEDCOSMOSInauniversethathadbeenravagedbyathousandyearsofinterplanetarywarfarebetweenthestar-shatteringRomaghinsandthee...

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Dean R. Koontz - Star Quest

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