STARSHIP OF FOOLS - (C) 1986 Jerry Kindall and Rex Crossley

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

"All Cretans are liars."
                                                - Epimenides, a Cretan

     We arrived on the bridge just in time to see the last splinters of
Jordann's exploded battleship fade to black.
     Melvin cheered.  Chester cheered.  Rhye cheered.  Zot nodded his
approval.  Snort sneezed.  Zordoff bellowed in glee.  Xorn shook
everyone's hand.  I jumped up and down and screamed like an idiot.
     Rhye suddenly came up behind me.
     "LOOK!!" she screamed in my ear.
     "At what?" I screeched in surprise.
     She looked at me like I was stupid and shook her arm to indicate to
me that she was trying to point at something.
     I followed her arm and looked out into space, but I didn't see
anything.  Maybe the static electricity had fried her brain.  "What?"
     "THAT!!" she screamed.  "RIGHT THERE!!"
     I looked closer.  And closer.  Soon I had my nose right up against
the viewport.  And then I saw it.
     "LOOK!!" I screamed.
     "Whut?" screeched Melvin, who had moved to stand beside me.
     "THAT!!" I yelled.
     "Oh, that," replied Melvin, deafened.  "Uh... what is it?"
     "I was hoping you'd know," I answered.
     "It is a psuedohumanoid immortal lifeform," answered FILBERT,
"matching the lifeform readings of Donald Whimperwort."
     "Donald!" I exclaimed.
     Suddenly I was pressed to the viewport by a large group of people
who had decided to look through it.  "Uhhhllllmm," I gasped.
     FILBERT said, "You had better get down to the teleport room before
he... uh, sorry, I forgot he was an Eternal.  I guess there's not really
any hurry."
     By the time FILBERT finished speaking the bridge was empty.

                                 * * *

     "Oh no," said Chester.  "The teleporter's busted."
     Zot's formula would be of no use to us now; we had no readily
available source of static electricity.  Even if we all scuffed our feet
at once we couldn't generate enough current to run the primary fusion
circuit.  We had exhausted Rhye's static, and the Glorkwinkle's
high-tech liquid plasma display screens did not generate static.
     "Hmmmmmmm," mused Zot.  "That would seem to be a problem.  I must
cogitate on this for a while."  He cogitated for a while.  "The Orb is a
source of power, is it not?"
     "I guess so," I admitted cautiously.
     "Therefore we can use it to power the teleporter!" exclaimed Zot
triumphantly.
     "Well, I don't think it's that kind of power," I said.
     "What does it matter?  Power is power."
     "I don't think it'll work," I persisted.  "I think magic power is
different from the other kinds of power."
     Zot was confused.  "Why would it be different?"
     "Never mind."  I tossed the Orb to him.  Or rather threw it at him.
     It hit him on the back of the head.  Zot, not at all stunned by the
blow, looked around calmly and said "Ouch."  Then he turned to the
console.

                                 * * *

     Bhujm was well on his way to making his escape with a molecular
disintegrator that he had stashed in one of his pockets.  At first, he
had tried to use it on the force-field door, but that hadn't worked very
well.  Every time he'd managed to disintegrate a piece of the force
field, another bit of force had taken its place.
     So he had decided to go through the wall instead of the door.  He
had no idea how thick the wall was, but there was no other way to
escape.
     All at once he broke through.  With a little more work here and
there, the rathole was large enough to squeeze through.  Finding himself
in the hallway by the escape pods, he hopped into one and jettisoned it,
heading toward Jordann's ship.
     Jordann's ship was gone.
     That presented a minor problem.  Bhujm circled the Glorkwinkle and
discovered Xorn's ship, totally deserted.  He couldn't believe his luck.
     He leaned back as the escape pod's engine casually throbbed into
life.

                                 * * *

     Zot was working on a complicated hookup between the Orb of Oorlon
and the teleporter controls.  A small box converted the magic energy
that the Orb supplied into the electrical energy that the transporter
required.  Or so Zot told us.
     "I don't think it'll work," I kept insisting.
     "Shut up," said Zot, in uncharacteristic rudeness.  "Do I look like
a moron to you?"
     I looked at Zot's three eyes and his weird fingers and decided that
he didn't look at all like a moron.  "No," I said.  "You look more like
a total idiot."
     Zot's middle eye glared at me while the other two concentrated on
his work.  "There.  I am finished," he announced.  He turned dials and
flipped switches, setting the coordinates for Donald's transport. 
Finally he pressed the TRANSPORT button.
     The Orb glowed, spitted sparks, and spun madly.  A screaming noise
filled the air.  I covered my ears in panic.
     "Wow," said Rhye, deeply impressed.
     Gradually the lights on the console brightened and digits flickered
across the scanning readout.
     "You see, the energy of the fundamental..."  The Orb increased its
volume, drowning out his explanation.
     The Orb glowed more and more brightly until it hurt my eyes to look
at it.  I heard a crackle of energy behind me and turned to see that
someone was materializing in the teleport booth.
     "IT'S WORKING!" screamed Zot, partly because he was pleased, and
partly to be heard above the noise of the Orb.
     With a final crackle, Donald's form appeared in the booth.  The
Orb's light and noise stopped suddenly and the teleport console went
dark.
     Donald opened his eyes.
     "It's not fair!" he said vehemently.
     The others ignored his outburst and promptly carried him up to the
bridge to celebrate, singing "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow" to the
accompaniment of Snort's bagpipes.  I stayed behind, looking at what was
left of the Orb.
     The Orb of Oorlon, which had once been the magnificent size of a
fully-grown golf ball, was now no larger than a pea.  Cautiously, I
removed it from Zot's apparatus and stared at it incredulously.
     All that work had taken something out of it.  Literally.
     Would it still work?
     I held it in my hand and raised it above my head, closing my eyes
in concentration as I had during the duel between Zordoff and Condra. 
This time, instead of imagining a beam of energy, I imagined a large
pepperoni pizza.  (All right, so I was hungry.)  The Orb glowed
slightly.  I concentrated harder.  A sudden release of energy sparked
the air, and there on the console in front of me appeared a lonely piece
of pepperoni.  I picked it up, inspected it carefully, and popped it
into my mouth.
     It tasted like cardboard.
     I lowered the Orb in disappointment.  I tossed it aside, noticing
that it did not even attempt to return to me as it had before.
     I remembered the shock I had received when I had volunteered to be
the ground connection.  But no ground connection was used this time.  So
where had the energy gone this time?  Was it still in the console?
     I picked up the makeshift device that Zot had used to convert the
Orb's magic energy to the electrical energy.  Was it possible, I
wondered, to use it in reverse, to convert the electricity back to magic
energy, regenerating the Orb?  There was nothing to gain if I didn't try
it.
     I put the Orb back into Zot's apparatus.  Then I located the ground
lead, held it by the insulation, and connected it to the wire leading to
Zot's energy converter in place of the power input wire.  Then I stood
back and waited.
     Nothing happened.
     I waited.
     Nothing happened again.
     When it had become clear to me that nothing was happening, and that
it was not likely that anything would happen, I crept closer to the
teleporter controls.  One switch was marked "RELEASE ENERGY TO GROUND,"
and I quickly decided that must be the problem.  I turned it on
cautiously.
     I jumped back in alarm as the Orb started to make the screaming
sound it had made before.  No, it was a lot like the other sound, except
this time it was backward.  It was spinning madly in reverse, drawing in
sparks, and absorbing light instead of glowing.  I covered my ears and
closed my eyes.
     After several minutes the sound died down.  I looked at the
regenerated Orb, now back to its normal size, waving aside the cloud of
smoke which had gathered.
     I pocketed the Orb, feeling a sense of satisfaction, and headed
toward the bridge to join the festivities.

