Star quest

slow reawakening…
    He lay quiet a moment after he regained consciousness, 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 concealed in the walls, ready to transplant a human brain into 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 defense 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 constantly 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 monster?
    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. Tamilee 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 revenge. 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 understanding. This would be decidedly different. But, since I he 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 I" 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. Lowering his defenses, he said, "Where am I?"
    "You don't know where you are?" the voice said unbelievingly. "No."
    "Dear friend, you must come aboard for that information, 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 dimensions of the library that could swallow a Jumbo so easily. He was slightly astounded. "You are