Free Cluster by Piers Anthony Page A

Shaman hadn't mentioned such details. Even so, it must be deadly dull, and unless the girl were Honeybloom, Flint wouldn't care for it. Which meant he'd better be guessing right.
    Vega. Flint visualized his sphere map. Vega was roughly in line with Etamin, about a quarter of the way out. It was exactly the planetary system an ignorant savage would head for. “I'll take it.”
    â€œWhere's your ID?”
    Uh-oh. Outworld didn't use such things. A man was known by his face and skills, a woman by her face and body.
    â€œNo bonus without turning over your ID. Too many take the money and skip.”
    Oh. “I'll go now. I don't need money.” Maybe the average enlistee blew his bonus in a night's binge, his last fling on Earth, but Flint was trying to make a point, not money. It really was time for the Imps to show up, if they were going to. If he stalled too long, they would know he didn't mean it.
    â€œYou're pretty eager. Got a record?”
    A record? Flint didn't know what that was, so he bypassed it. “My business is private.” The Imps said that a lot on Outworld, as if anything there were private. It was one of the things that made them unpopular. Sometimes an Imp would approach a native girl, and she would mock him by saying “My privates is business.”
    A figure appeared in the doorway. Flint whirled, certain the Ministers had caught up with him. He moved quickly, but not as quickly as he could when really threatened, putting up his left forearm as though to shove the intruder aside, making his show. He might get stunned by a paralyzing beam, but he was pretty sure they would not hurt him. Nobody simply wiped out a two trillion dollar investment.
    But this was no Minister. It was a stranger in white. And with the light touch of arm against arm, something happened. There was a strange, almost electric aura about the man that affected Flint profoundly. Suddenly he didn't want to fight or flee, even in pretense; he just wanted to know about this stranger.
    â€œI am Pnotl of Sphere Knyfh,” the man said, and the words assumed tremendous importance. “I am an alien sapient in human guise. I have come to ask you to help save our galaxy from destruction.”
    The words were simple, but the aura was compelling. Only one other person had ever affected Flint so strongly, though in a different way. That was the Shaman. This Pnotl, who claimed to be an alien creature, was far from being repulsive; he was magnetic, almost godlike.
    â€œI don't know what it is about you–”
    â€œIt is my Kirlian aura,” Pnotl said, and Flint had a vision of a hand radiating like a galaxy: yes, there was something of that in this creature's touch. “It is eighty times as intense as the sentient norm. I feel it in you, too, most strongly.”
    â€œI don't know what you jokers are up to,” the man at the desk snapped. “But either sign up for Vega or get out of my office.”
    Vega suddenly seemed to be so close as to be negligible, compared to the reaches of far-distant Spheres. Flint glanced at the deskman curiously “He doesn't feel it.”
    â€œOnly those who possess it feel it, as a rule,” Pnotl explained, guiding him outside onto the plain of the spaceport. A small hovercraft rested there. “You have not before been aware of your gift.”
    â€œThe Ministers–”
    â€œUnaware.”
    â€œBut they told me–”
    â€œTheir machines give them readings, their computers give them readouts. They think by their analysis of holographic photographs of the Kirlian aura they understand when it is important. They reduce it to statistics. But in themselves, they are unaware, as is an entity who has never experienced love.”
    â€œThey're blind,” Flint said, amazed.
    â€œBlind, deaf, senseless. Yet they do what they must.”
    â€œWhy don't you revolt me? I am an alienophobe, and I can't stand illness.”
    â€œThe intense