Star quest

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 Tamilee is, and I have calculated that she will appear on the slave market within a week."
    "Well, if you must go—"
    "Perhaps well 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 Tamilee."
    "What?"
    "Nothing. Nothing. Just, good luck."
    "You too," he answered, drifting out from the hulking cube. The portal closed behind.

Chapter Three
    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, lie 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 merchandise, 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 long it would be until she was totally beyond his grasp. Stretching his mind and studying everything Triggy Gop had to offer, he thought, perhaps, the month long period between capture and sale of a slave would be up this week. He hoped he wasn't just being optimistic. If she did come onto the platform to be sold, he knew it wouldn't take long. Not for a girl like Tarnilee.
    Breaking orbit, he plunged down through the denser and denser layers of atmosphere, hull heating, eyes out for any missiles from anyone who might have broken the radar-negative shield and picked him up. The shield had been known to fail.
    The clouds appeared to rush at him, up and up and up, though it was actually himself dropping down and down and down. He hit the clouds expecting a jolt and was plunging through toward the earth below. He splashed out analyzer waves and discovered the land below was composed mostly of loose sand. There was desert at the back of the peninsula. The sand was a hundred and two feet deep before it gave way to solid rock. He braked for a short moment, cutting his speed in half, and smashed head first into the sand, sinking immediately out of sight like a pebble tossed in a pond. He left a momentary whirlpool in the sand which eventually settled itself and lay quiet. Eighty-three feet below the surface, he slid to a halt and lay very still indeed. Minutes passed without result No missiles. No warheads. Nothing. He eased up on his nerves, allowed them to unbunch themselves, and sighed.
    He was on the planet of Basa II—
in
it, really.
    He was only a dozen miles from the fringes of the city that held his Tamilee. Tamilee of the soft lips… Tarnilee of the sweet eyes… Tamilee of the flower soul with the delicate laugh and the feet like crystal structures…
    He searched into his bowels where the shock-proof chemical tanks and laboratories were working diligently. The body seemed perfect. It was tall, muscular, blond, and handsome. The process had been suspended until he was ready to have his brain deposited in the skull via cellular welding which would connect it to the nerves and life systems of the humanoid floating in the brackish fluid.
    He was ready.
    Clipping the limited semi-brain of the computer into the controls, he set everything on automatic, ready to respond to his call for help but inert and unfunctioning unless