by Jerry
“XN 3. Couldn’t that gun’s own shells be reflected back from the Frontier, then?”
“XN 2. Impossible. Now you are to try to reach that forward missile post by the surface—our tunnel is destroyed—at 15° 40’ East—you can just see the hump near the edge of the I/R viewer’s limit—with this message; and tell him verbally to treble output.”
The ragged hole was too small. H left by the forward port. He ran, on his “walker,” into a ribbon of landscape which became a thicket of fire, a porcupine of fire, a Nessus-shirt to the Earth, as in a dream. Into an unbelievable supercrescendo of sound, light, heat, pressure and impacts he ran, on and on up the now almost invisible slope . . .
1966
STARS, WON’T YOU HIDE ME?
Ben Bova
The pilot was doomed but couldn't die—his ship wouldn't let him!
O sinner-man, where are you going to run to?
O sinner-man, where are you going to run to?
O sinner-man, where are you going to run to
All on that day?
The ship was hurt, and Holman could feel its pain. He lay fetal-like in the contoured couch, his silvery uniform spider-webbed by dozens of contact and probe wires connecting him to the ship so thoroughly that it was hard to tell where his own nervous system ended and the electronic networks of the ship began.
Holman felt the throb of the ship’s mighty engines as his own pulse, and the gaping wounds in the generator section, where the enemy beams had struck, were searing his flesh. Breathing was difficult, labored, even though the ship was working hard to repair itself.
They were fleeing, he and the ship; hurtling through the star lanes to a refuge. But where?
The main computer flashed its lights to get his attention. Holman rubbed his eyes wearily and said:
“Okay, what is it?”
YOU HAVE NOT SELECTED A COURSE, the computer said aloud, while printing the words on its viewscreen at the same time.
Holman stared at the screen. “Just away from here,” he said at last. “Anyplace, as long as it’s far away.”
The computer blinked thoughtfully for a moment. SPECIFIC COURSE INSTRUCTION IS REQUIRED.
“What difference does it make?” Holman snapped. “It’s over. Everything finished. Leave me alone.”
IN LIEU OF SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS, IT IS NECESSARY TO TAP SUBCONSCIOUS SOURCES.
“Tap away.”
The computer did just that. And if it could have been surprised, it would have been at the wishes buried deep in Holman’s inner mind. But instead, it merely correlated those wishes to its singleminded purpose of the moment, and relayed a set of navigational instructions to the ship’s guidance system.
Run to the moon: O Moon, won’t you hide me?
The Lord said: O sinner-man, the moon’ll be a-bleeding
All on that day.
The Final Battle had been lost. On a million million planets across the galaxy-studded universe, mankind had been blasted into defeat and annihilation. The others had returned from across the edge of the observable world, just as man had always feared. They had returned and ruthlessly exterminated the race from Earth.
It had taken eons, but time twisted strangely in a civilization of light-speed ships. Holman himself, barely thirty years old subjectively, had seen both the beginning of the ultimate war and its tragic end. He had gone from school into the military. And fighting inside a ship that could span the known universe in a few decades while he slept in cryogenic suspension, he had aged only ten years during the billions of years that the universe had ticked off in its stately, objective time-flow.
The Final Battle, from which Holman was fleeing, had been fought near an exploded galaxy billions of light-years from the Milky Way and Earth. There, with the ghastly bluish glare of uncountable shattered stars as a backdrop, the once-mighty fleets of mankind had been arrayed. Mortals and Immortals alike, men drew themselves up to face the implacable Others.
The enemy won. Not easily, but completely. Mankind was crushed, totally. A few fleeing men in a few battered ships was all that remained. Even the Immortals, Holman thought wryly, had not escaped. The Others had taken special care to make certain that they were definitely killed.
So it was over.
Holman’s mind pictured the blood-soaked planets he had seen during his brief, ageless lifetime of violence. His thoughts drifted back to his own homeworld, his own family: gone long, long centuries ago. Crumbled into dust by geological time or blasted suddenly by the overpowering Others. Either way, the remorseless flow of time had covered them over completely, obliterated them, in the span of a few of Holman’s heartbeats.
All gone now. All the people he knew, all the planets he had seen through the ship’s electroptical eyes, all of mankind . . . extinct.
He could feel the drowsiness settling upon him. The ship was accelerating to lightspeed, and the cryogenic sleep was coming. But he didn’t want to fall into slumber with those thoughts of blood and terror and loss before him.
With a conscious effort, Holman focused his thoughts on the only other available subject: the outside world, the universe of galaxies. An infinitely black sky studded with islands of stars. Glowing shapes of light, spiral, ovoid, elliptical. Little smears of warmth in the hollow unending darkness; drabs of red and blue standing against the engulfing night.
One of them, he knew, was the Milky Way. Man’s original home. From this distance it looked the same. Unchanged by little annoyances like the annihilation of an intelligent race of star-roamers.
He drowsed.
The ship bore onward, preceded by an invisible net of force, thousands of kilometers in radius, that scooped in the rare atoms of hydrogen drifting between the galaxies and fed them into the ship’s wounded, aching generators.
Something . . . a thought. Holman stirred in the couch. A consciousness-vague, distant, alien—brushed his mind.
He opened his eyes and looked at the computer viewscreen. Blank.
“Who is it?” he asked.
A thought skittered away from him. He got the impression of other minds: simple, open, almost childish. Innocent and curious.
It’s a ship.
Where is it . . . oh, yes. I can sense it now. A beautiful ship.
Holman squinted with concentration.
It’s very far away. I can barely reach it.
And inside of the ship . . .
It’s a man. A humanl
He’s afraid.
He makes me feel afraid!
Holman called out, “Where are you?”
He’s trying to speak.
Don’t answer!
But . . .
He makes me afraid. Don’t answer him. We’ve heard about humans!
Holman asked, “Help me.”
Don’t answer him and he’ll go away. He’s already so far off that I can barely hear him.
But he asks for help.
Yes, because he knows what is following him. Don’t answer. Don’t answer!
Their thoughts slid away from his mind. Holman automatically focused the outside viewscreens, but here in the emptiness between galaxies he could find neither ship nor planet anywhere in sight. He listened again, so hard that his head started to ache. But no more voices. He was alone again, alone in the metal womb of the ship.
He knows what is following him. Their words echoed in his brain. Are the Others following me? Have they picked up my trail? They must have. They must be right behind me.
He could feel the cold perspiration start to trickle over him.
“But they can’t catch me as long as I keep moving,” he muttered. “Right?”
CORRECT, said the computer, flashing lights at him. AT A RELATIVISTIC VELOCITY, WITHIN LESS THAN ONE PERCENT OF LIGHTSPEED, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THIS SHIP TO BE OVERTAKEN.
“Nothing can catch me as long as I keep running.”
But his mind conjured up a thought of the Immortals. Nothing could kill them . . . except the Others.
Des
pite himself, Holman dropped into deepsleep. His body temperature plummeted to near-zero. His heartbeat nearly stopped. And as the ship streaked at almost lightspeed, a hardly visible blur to anyone looking for it, the outside world continued to live at its own pace. Stars coalesced from gas clouds, matured, and died in explosions that fed new clouds for newer stars. Planets formed and grew mantles of air. Life took root and multiplied, evolved, built a myriad of civilizations in just as many different forms, decayed and died away.
All while Holman slept.
Run to the sea: O sea, won’t you hide me?
The Lord said: O sinner-man, the sea’ll be a-sinking
All on that day.
The computer woke him gently with a series of soft chimes. APPROACHING THE SOLAR SYSTEM AND PLANET EARTH, AS INDICATED BY YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS COURSE INSTRUCTIONS.
Planet Earth, man’s original home world. Holman nodded. Yes, this was where he had wanted to go. He had never seen the Earth, never been on this side of the Milky Way galaxy. Now he would visit the teeming nucleus of man’s doomed civilization. He would bring the news of the awful defeat, and be on the site of mankind’s birth when the inexorable tide of extinction washed over the Earth.
He noticed, as he adjusted the outside viewscreens, that the pain had gone.
“The generators have repaired themselves,” he said.
WHILE YOU SLEPT. POWER GENERATION SYSTEM NOW OPERATING NORMALLY.
Holman smiled. But the smile faded as the ship swooped closer to the solar system. He turned from the outside viewscreens to the computer once again. “Are the ’scopes working all right?”
The computer hummed briefly, then replied. SUBSYSTEMS CHECK SATISFACTORY, COMPONENT CHECK SATISFACTORY. INTEGRATED EQUIPMENT CHECK POSITIVE. VIEWING EQUIPMENT FUNCTIONING NORMALLY.
Holman looked again. The sun was rushing up to meet his gaze, but something was wrong about it. He knew deep within him, even without having ever seen the sun this close before, that something was wrong. The sun was whitish and somehow stunted looking, not the full yellow orb he had seen in film-tapes. And the Earth . . .
The ship took up a parking orbit around a planet scoured clean of life: a blackened ball of rock, airless, waterless. Hovering over the empty, charred ground, Holman stared at the devastation with tears in his eyes. Nothing was left. Not a brick, not a blade of grass, not a drop of water.
“The Others,” he whispered. “They got here first.”
NEGATIVE, the computer replied. CHECK OF STELLAR POSITIONS FROM EARTH REFERENCE SHOWS THAT SEVERAL BILLION YEARS HAVE ELAPSED SINCE THE FINAL BATTLE.
“Seven billion . . .”
LOGIC CIRCUITS INDICATE THE SUN HAS GONE THROUGH A NOVA PHASE. A COMPLETELY NATURAL PHENOMENON UNRELATED TO ENEMY ACTION.
Holman pounded a fist on the unflinching armrest of his couch. “Why did I come here? I wasn’t born on Earth. I never saw Earth before . . .”
YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS INDICATES A SUBJECTIVE IMPULSE STIRRED BY . . .
“To hell with my subconscious!” He stared out at the dead world again. “All those people . . . the cities, all the millions of years of evolution, of life. Even the oceans are gone. I never saw an ocean. Did you know that? I’ve traveled over half the universe and never saw an ocean.”
OCEANS ARE A COMPARATIVELY RARE PHENOMENON EXISTING ON ONLY ONE OUT OF APPROXIMATELY THREE THOUSAND PLANETS.
The ship drifted outward from Earth, past a blackened Mars, a shrunken Jupiter, a ringless Saturn.
“Where do I go now?” Holman asked.
The computer stayed silent.
Run to the Lord: O Lord, won’t you hide me?
The Lord said: O sinner-man, you ought to been a praying
All on that day.
Holman sat blankly while the ship swung out past the orbit of Pluto and into the comet belt at the outermost reaches of the sun’s domain.
He was suddenly aware of someone watching him.
No cause for fear. I am not of the Others.
It was an utterly calm, placid voice speaking in his mind: almost gentle, except that it was completely devoid of emotion.
“Who are you?”
An observer. Nothing more.
“What are you doing out here? Where are you, I can’t see anything . . .”
I have been waiting for any stray survivor of the Final Battle to return to mankind’s first home. You are the only one to come this way, in all this time.
“Waiting? Why?”
Holman sensed a bemused shrug, and a giant spreading of vast wing.
I am an observer. I have watched mankind since the beginning. Several of my race even attempted to make contact with you from time to time. But the results were always the same—about as useful as your attempts to communicate with insects. We are too different from each other. We have evolved on different planes. There was no basis for understanding between us.
“But you watched us.”
Yes. Watched you grow strong and reach out to the stars, only to be smashed back by the Others: Watched you regain your strength, go back among the stars. But this time you were constantly on guard, wary, alert, waiting for the Others to strike once again. Watched you find civilizations that you could not comprehend, such as our own, bypass them as you spread through the galaxies. Watched you contact civilizations of your own level, that you could communicate with. You usually went to war with them.
“And all you did was watch?”
We tried to warn you from time to time. We tried to advise you. But the warnings, the contacts, the glimpses of the future that we gave you were always ignored or derided. So you boiled out into space for the second time, and met other societies at your own level of understanding—aggressive, proud, fearful. And like the children you are, you fought endlessly.
“But the Others . . . what about them?”
They are your punishment.
“Punishment? For what? Because we fought wars?”
No. For stealing immortality.
“Stealing immortality? We worked for it. We learned how to make humans immortal. Some sort of chemicals. We were going to immortalize the whole race . . . I could’ve become immortal. Immortal! But they couldn’t stand that . . . the Others. They attacked us.”
He sensed a disapproving shake of the head.
“It’s true,” Holman insisted. ‘They were afraid of how powerful we would become once we were all immortal. So they attacked us while they still could. Just as they had done a million years earlier. They destroyed Earth’s first interstellar civilization, and tried to finish us permanently. They even caused Ice Ages on Earth to make sure none of us would survive. But we lived through it and went back to the stars. So they hit us again. They wiped us out. Good God, for all I know I’m the last human being in the whole universe.”
Your knowledge of the truth is imperfect. Mankind could have achieved immortality in time. Most races evolve that way eventually. But you were impatient. You stole immortality.
“Because we did it artificially, with chemicals. That’s stealing it?”
Because the chemicals that gave you immortality came from the bodies of the race you called the Flower People. And to take the chemicals, it was necessary to kill individuals of that race.
Holman’s eyes widened. “What?”
For every human made immortal, one of the Flower Folk had to die.
“We killed them? Those harmless little . . .” His voice trailed off.
To achieve racial immortality for mankind, it would have been necessary to perform racial murder on the Flower Folk.
Holman heard the words, but his mind was numb, trying to shut down tight on itself and squeeze out reality.
That is why the Others struck. That is why they had attacked you earlier, during your first expansion among the stars. You had found another race, with the same chemical of immortality. You were taking them into your laboratories and methodically murdering them. The Others stopped you then. But they took pity on you, and let a few survivors remain on
Earth. They caused your Ice Ages as a kindness, to speed your development back to civilization, not to hinder you. They hoped you might evolve into a better species. But when the opportunity for immortality came your way once more, you seized it, regardless of the cost, heedless of your own ethical standards. It became necessary to extinguish you, the Others decided.
“And not a single nation in the whole universe would help us.”
Why should they?
“So it’s wrong for us to kill, but it’s perfectly all right for the Others to exterminate us.”
No one has spoken of right and wrong. I have only told you the truth.
“They’re going to kill every last one of us.”
There is only one of you remaining.
The words flashed through Holman. “I’m the only one . . . the last one?”
No answer.
He was alone now. Totally alone. Except for those who were following.
Run to Satan: O Satan, won’t you hide me?
Satan said: O sinner-man, step right in
All on that day.
Holman sat in shocked silence as the solar system shrank to a pinpoint of light and finally blended into the mighty panorama of stars that streamed across the eternal night of space. The ship raced away, sensing Holman’s guilt and misery in its electronic way.
Immortality through murder, Holman repeated to himself over and over. Racial immortality through racial murder. And he had been a part of it! He had defended it, even sought immortality as his reward. He had fought his whole lifetime for it, and killed—so that he would not have to face death.