Free The World of Ptavvs by Larry Niven Page A

Or had he landed here? Or-- was the spawn of a ptavv making a leisurely inspection of his new property?
    He told Masney, "The guard has told us to go ahead. Take the car over to that honeymoon special."
    The car skimmed across the concrete.
    ***
    Garner shook his head, let it fall back into place. His mind was as the mind of a sleeping child. Across that mind flitted thoughts as ephemeral as dreams. They could not stay. Gamer had been ordered not to think. I must look terribly senile, he thought once. The idea slipped away. and returned. Senile. I'm old but not senile. No? There is drool on my chin.
    He shook his head, hard. He slapped his face with one hand. Garner was beginning to think again, but not fast enough to suit him. He fumbled at the controls of his chair, and it lurched over to the coffee faucet. When he poured a cup his hand shook so that hot coffee spilled on his hand and wrist. Enraged, he hurled the cup at the wall.
    His mind went back to white dullness.
    A few minutes later Judy Greenberg wobbled through the door. She looked dazed, but her mind was functioning again. She saw Garner slumped in his travel chair wearing the face of a decrepit moron, and she poured cold water over his head until he came to life.
    "Where is he?" Garner demanded.
    "I don't know," Judy told him. "I saw him walk out, but it didn't seem to matter to me. Chief Masney was with him. What happened to us?"
    "Something I should have expected." Garner was no longer a decrepit old man, but an angry Jehovah. "It means things have gone from worse to terrible. That alien statue-- I knew there was something wrong with it the moment I saw it, but I couldn't see what it was. Oh, nuts.
    "It had both arms out, like it was turning chicken halfway through a swan dive. I saw a little projection on his chest, too. Look. The alien put himself into a freeze field to avoid some disaster. After that the button that turned on the field was in the field, and so was the alien's finger pushing it in. So the button wouldn't need a catch to hold it in. It wouldn't have one.
    "But the alien had both arms out when I saw it. When Jansky put his own field around the statue, the alien dropped Greenberg's 'digging instrument' and the button too. The button must have popped out. Why he didn't come to life right then I don't know, unless the freeze field has inertia like hysteresis in an electric current. But he's alive now, and that was him we heard."
    "Well, it's quite a monster," said Judy. "Is that what Larry thinks he is?"
    "Right." Garner's chair rose and made a wind in the room The chair slid out the door, picking up speed. Judy stared after it.
    "Then if he sees that he isn't who he thinks he is." she began hopefully. Then she gave it up.
    One of the policemen got to his feet, moving like a sleepwalker.
    ***
    Kzanol took the guards with him on his tour of the spaceport. He also took all the repairmen, dispatchers, spacemen, and even passengers he happened to meet while moving around. The man who owned the Cadillac seemed to regard even a trip to Mars as a hazardous journey! If that was the state of Earth's space technology, Kzanol wanted a bundleful of expert opinions.
    A couple of dispatchers were sent back to the office to try to find F124 on the star maps. The rest of the group came with Kzanol, growing as it moved. Just two men had the sense to hide when they saw the mob coming. By the time he reached the passenger liner Kzanol was towing everyone at the spaceport but Masney, Kzanol/Greenberg, and those two cautious men.
    He had already chosen the Lazy Eight III, the only interstellar ship on the field. While he was getting the
    rescue switch on his back repaired, slaves could finish building and orbiting the ship's drive and fuel tanks. It would be at least a year before he was ready to leave Earth.
    Then he would take a large crew and pass the journey in stasis, with his slaves to wake him whenever a new child became old enough to take orders. Their