Empire

by Clifford D. Simak

  _CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE_

  Chambers lit his cigar and leaned back in his chair.

  "I wish you could see it my way, Manning," he said. "There's no placefor me on Earth, no place for me in the Solar System. You see, I triedand failed. I'm just a has-been back there."

  He laughed quietly. "Somehow, I can't imagine myself coming back in therole of the defeated tribal leader, chained to your chariot, so tospeak."

  "But it wouldn't be that way," protested Greg. "Your company is gone,true, and your stocks are worthless, but you haven't lost everything.You still have a fleet of ships. With our new power, the Solar Systemwill especially need ships. Lots of ships. For the spacelanes will befilled with commerce. You'd be coming back to a new deal, a new SolarSystem, a place that has been transformed almost overnight by powerthat's practically free."

  "Yes, yes, I know all that," said Chambers. "But I climbed too high. Igot too big. I can't come back now as something small, a failure."

  "You have things we need," said Greg. "The screen that blankets out ourtelevision and tele-transport, for example. We need your screen as asafeguard against the very thing we have created. Think of what criminaluses could be made of the tele-transport. No vault, no net of chargedwires, nothing, could stop a thief from taking anything he wanted.Prisons would cease to be prisons. Criminals could reach in and pick uptheir friends, no matter how many guards there were. Prisons and bankvaults and national treasuries could be cleaned out in a single day."

  "Then there's the super-saturated space fields," added Russ, ruefully."Those almost got us. If I hadn't thought of moving the televisorthrough time, we would have had to pull stakes and run for it."

  "No, you wouldn't," pointed out Craven. "You could have wiped us out ina moment. You can disintegrate matter. Send it up in a puff of smoke ...rip every electron apart and send it hurtling away."

  "Of course we could have, Craven," said Greg, "but we wouldn't."

  Chambers laughed softly. "Not quite mad enough at us to do that, eh?"

  Greg looked at him. "I guess that must have been it."

  "But I'm curious about the green space fields," persisted Russ.

  "Simple," said Craven. "They were just fields that had more energypacked into a certain portion of space than space could take. Spacefields that had far more than their share of energy, more than theycould hold. A super-saturated solution will crystalize almostimmediately onto the tiniest crystal put into it. Those fields acted thesame way. They crystalized instantly into hyper-space the moment theycame into contact with other energy, whether as photons of radiation,matter or other space fields. Your anti-entropy didn't stand a chanceunder those conditions. When they crystalized, they took a chunk of thefield along with them, a small chunk, but one after another they ate ahole right through your screen."

  * * * * *

  "Something like that would have a commercial value," said Greg. "Usefulin war, too, and now that mankind has taken to space, now that we'respreading out, we must think of possible attack. There must be life onother planets throughout the Galaxy. Someday they'll come. If theydon't, someday we'll go to them. And we may need every type of armamentwe can get our hands on."

  Chambers knocked the ash off his cigar and was staring out the visionport. The ship had swung so that through the port could be seen thedistant star toward which the _Interplanetarian_ had been driving.

  "For my part," said Chambers, slowly, measuring each word, "you can havethose findings of ours. We'll give them to you, knowing you will usethem as they should be used. Craven can tell you how they work. That is,if Craven wants to. He is the man who developed them."

  "Certainly," said Craven. "They'll be something to remember us by."

  * * * * *

  "But you are coming back with us, aren't you?" asked Greg.

  Craven shook his head. "No, I'm going with Chambers. I don't know whathe's thinking of, but whatever it is, it's all right with me. We've beentogether too long. I'd miss someone to fight with."

  Chambers was still staring out the vision port. He was talking, but hedid not seem to be talking to them.

  "I had a dream, you see. I saw the people struggling against theinefficiency and stupidity of popular government. I saw the periodicrise of bad leaders. I saw them lead the people into blunders. I readhistory and I saw that since the time man had risen from the ape, thishad been going on. So I proposed to give the people scientificgovernment ... a business administration. An administration that wouldhave run the government exactly as a successful businessman runs hisbusiness. The people would have resented it if I had told them theydidn't know how to run their affairs. There was only one way to doit ... gain control and force it down their throats."

  Chambers was no longer a beaten man, no longer a man with a whitebandage around his head and his power stripped from him. Once again hewas the fighting financier who had sat back at the desk in theInterplanetary building on Earth and issued orders ... orders that spedacross millions of miles of space.

  He shrugged his shoulders. "They didn't want it. Man doesn't want tolive under scientific government. He doesn't want to be protectedagainst blunders. He wants what he calls freedom. The right to do thethings he wants to do, even if it means making a damn fool of himself.The right to rise to great heights and tumble to equally low depths.That's human nature and I ruled it out. But you can't rule out humannature."

  They sat in silence, no one speaking. Russ cupped his pipe bowl in hishand and watched Chambers. Chambers leaned back and slowly puffed atthe cigar. Greg just sat, his face unchanging.

  Craven finally broke the silence. "Just what are you planning to do?"

  Chambers flicked his hand toward the distant sun that gleamed throughthe vision port.

  "There's a new solar system out there," he said. "New worlds, a new sun.A place to start over again. You and I discovered it. It's ours by rightof discovery. We'll go there and stake out our claim."

  "But there may be nothing there," protested Greg. "That sun is youngerthan our Sun. The planets may not have cooled as yet. Life may not havedeveloped."

  "In such a case," said Chambers, "we shall find another planetary systemaround another sun. A system that has cooled, where there is life."

  Russ gasped. Here was something important, something that should set aprecedent. The first men to roam from star to star seeking new worlds.The first men to turn their backs on the old solar system and strike outin search of new worlds swinging in their paths around distant suns.

  Greg was saying, "All right, if that's the way you want it. I was hopingyou'd come back with us. But we'll help you repair your ship. We'll giveyou all the supplies we can spare."

  Russ rose to his feet. "That," he said, "calls for a little drink."

  He opened a cabinet and took out bottles and glasses.

  "Only three," said Chambers. "Craven doesn't drink."

  Craven interrupted. "Pour one for me, too, Page."

  Chambers looked at the scientist, astounded. "I never knew you to take adrink in your life."

  Craven twisted his face into a grin. "This is a special occasion."

  * * * * *

  The _Invincible_ was nearing Mars, heading for Earth, which was still agreenish sphere far to one side of the flaming Sun.

  Russ watched the little green globe, thinking.

  Earth was home. To him it always would be home. But that would bechanged soon. Just a few more generations, and, to millions uponmillions of human beings, Earth no longer would be home.

  With the new material energy engines, life on every planet would bepossible now, even easy. The cost of manufacture, mining, shippingacross the vast distances between the planets would be only a fractionof what it had been when man had been forced to rely upon the unwieldy,expensive accumulator system of supplying life-giving power.

  Now Mars would have power of her own. Even Pluto could generate her own.And power was ...
well, it was power. The power to live, the power towork, to establish and maintain commerce, to adjust gravity to Earthstandard or to any standard. The power to remake and reshape and rebuildplanetary conditions to suit man exactly.

  Earthmen and Earthwomen would be moving out en masse now to the new andvirgin fields of endeavor--to the farms of Venus, to the manufacturingcenters that were springing up on Mars, to the mines of the Jovianworlds, to the great laboratory plants that would spring up on Titan andon Pluto and on the other colder worlds.

  The migration of races had started long ago. In the Old Stone Age, theCro-Magnon had swept out of nowhere to oust the Neanderthal. Centurieslater the barbarians of the north, in another of those restlessmigrations, had overwhelmed and swept away the Roman Empire. And manycenturies later, migration had turned from Europe to a new world acrossthe sea, and fighting Americans had battled their way from east to west,conquering a continent.

  And now another great migration was on--man was leaving the Earth,moving into space. He was leaving behind him the world that had rearedand fostered him. He was striking out and out. First the planets wouldbe overrun, and then man would leap from the planets to the stars!

  * * * * *

  For years after America had become a country, had built a tradition ofher own, Europe was regarded by millions as the homeland. But as theyears swept by, this had ceased to be and the Americas were a world untothemselves, owing nothing to Europe.

  And that was the way it would be with Earth. For centuries, forthousands of years, Earth would be the Mother Planet, the homeland forall the millions of roaming men and women who dared the gulfs of spaceand the strangeness of new worlds. There would be trips back to theEarth for sentimental reasons ... to see the place where one's ancestorswere born and had lived, to goggle at the monument which marked thepoint from which the first spaceship had taken off for the Moon, tovisit old museums and see old cities and breathe the air that men andwomen had breathed for thousands of years before they found the power totake them anywhere.

  In the end, Earth would be just a worn-out planet. Even now herminerals were rapidly being exhausted; her oil wells were dry and allher coal was mined; her industry stabilized and filled; her businessesinterlocking and highly competitive. A world that was too full, that hadtoo many things, too many activities, too many people. A world thatdidn't need men and women. A world where even genius was kept fromrising to the top.

  And this was what was driving mankind away from the Earth. Thecompetition, the crowded conditions, in business and industrial fields,the lack of opportunity for new development, the everlasting struggle toget ahead, fighting for a place to live when millions of others werefighting for the same thing. But not entirely that, not that alone.There was something else--that old adventuresome spirit, the drivingurge to face new dangers, to step over old frontiers, to do and dare, tomake a damn fool of one's self, or to surpass the greatestaccomplishments of history.

  But Earth would never die, for there was a part of Earth in every manand woman who would go forth into space, part of Earth's courage, partof Earth's ideals, part of Earth's dreams. The habits and the virtuesand the faults that Earth had spawned and fostered ... these were thingsthat would never die. Old Earth would live forever. Even when she wasdrifting dust and the Sun was a dead, cold star, Earth would live on inthe courage and the dreams that by that time would be spreading to thefar corners of the Galaxy.

  Russ dug the pipe out of his pocket, searched for the pouch, found it onthe desk behind him. It was empty.

  "Hell," he said, "my tobacco's all gone."

  Greg grinned. "You won't have to wait long. We'll be back on Earth in afew more hours."

  Russ put the stem between his teeth, bit down on it savagely. "I guessthat's right. I can dry smoke her until we get there."

  Earth was larger now. Mars had swung astern.

  Suddenly a winking light stabbed out into space from the night side ofEarth. Signaling ... signaling ... clearing the spacelanes for a greaterfuture than any human prophet had ever predicted.

  The End