Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "Larue estimated fourteen days at best."

  Y'Nor tapped his thick fingers on his desk, scowling thoughtfully. "As little as seven extra days might force Vogar to accept the Alkorian peace terms because of lack of fuel--the natives can work twice as hard as they expected to. Tell old Brenn they will be given exactly seven days from sunrise tomorrow.

  "And summon Dalon and Graver. I want them to make use of every man on the ship for a twenty-four hour guard-and-inspection system in the plant. The natives will get no opportunities for stalling or sabotage."

  * * * * *

  Brenn was writing at his book-laden table when Kane went into his cottage the next morning.

  "These are called edicts," Brenn said, after greeting him, "but I possess no law-making powers and they are really only suggestions."

  Brenn shoved the paper to one side. The script was somewhat different from that of Vogar.

  The Vogarian inspection and guard system is no more than an expected precaution against sabotage. The Vogarians must be regarded as potential friends who now treat us with suspicion and arrogance only because they do not yet realize the sincerity of our desire to help them to any extent short of surrender--

  Kane looked up from the uncompleted, surprisingly humble, edict and Brenn asked:

  "Your commander, sir--he is now pleased with our actions?"

  "Not exactly. He will disintegrate a town seven days from sunrise this morning if all the fuel isn't produced by then."

  "Seven--only seven days?" There was startled disbelief on Brenn's face. "But how can he expect us to produce so much fuel in so short a time?"

  "I don't know. I'm sorry--it's something I would have argued against if I hadn't had too much sense to try."

  "Seven days--" Brenn said again. "We can only pray that God will let it be time enough."

  * * * * *

  Kane walked on to the plant. The hilltop where he had met the girl was deserted and he felt a vague disappointment.

  The plant was hot without the air-conditioner, especially in the vicinity of the electronic roasters. The girls looked flushed and uncomfortable, but for the redhead who still wore her scanty sunsuit. The armed Vogarians looked incongruously out of place among the girls and were sweating profusely. Kane made a mental note to have them ordered into tropical uniforms.

  He found Dalon prowling like a wolf among his guards.

  "It's inconceivable that these women could ever be a menace," Dalon said, "but I'm taking no chances."

  He saw Graver, the cruiser's Chief Technician; a thin, dry man who seemed to be as emotionless as the machines and electronic circuits that were his life.

  "They're doing everything with astonishing competence," Graver said. "My technicians are watching like hawks, though."

  Larue was not in his office. His secretary, a brown-eyed woman of strikingly intelligent appearance, said, "I'm sorry, sir--Dr. Larue had to go back to town for a few minutes. May I give him your message?"

  "No, thanks," he said. "Father Brenn is probably performing that unpleasant chore right now."

  * * * * *

  Since Dalon and Graver seemed to have the situation at the plant well in hand, Kane decided to make a tour of the outer provinces where the ores were being mined. An efficient plant would be worthless if it did not receive sufficient ore.

  He spent four days on the inspection tour; much longer than he had expected to be gone but made necessary by the fact that the small Elusium mines were widely scattered in rugged, roadless areas and he had to walk most of the distance. The single helicopter on Sanctuary was being used to fly the ore out but it was operating on a schedule that caused him to miss it each time.

  Each mine was being worked by full day-and-night crews; in fact, by more men than necessary. The reason for that, and for the way the men silently withheld their hostility, was made apparent in a bit of conversation between two miners that he overheard one day:

  "... So why all of us here when not this many are needed?"

  "They say Father Brenn wanted to get all the men out of town, away from the cruiser, so there would be no trouble--and you know there would have been if we had stayed. He wants to get the cruiser on its way back to Vogar, they say, so we can get busy producing weapons to fight the Occupation force...."

  He returned on the fifth evening of the allotted seven days and stopped by Brenn's cottage before going on to the ship. The old man was working in his garden, his trembling hands trying to tie up a red-flowered vine.

  Kane tied it for him and he said, "Thank you, sir. Did you find the mining to be as I had said?"

  "I found more than that. You know, don't you, that Y'Nor will return with the Occupation force a hundred days after leaving here?"

  "Yes--I know that that is his intention."

  "I understand that you're going to try to build weapons while he's gone. Don't, if you think anything of your people, let them do it. Nothing you could build in a hundred days would last a minute against a cruiser's disintegrators."

  "I know," Brenn said. "We are supposed to choose between bloody, hopeless resistance and eternal slavery, aren't we? But why should either fate befall a peaceful race?"

  Kane asked the logical question: "Why shouldn't it?"

  "The laws of God have always been laws of justice and mercy. Not even the Vogarian State can change them."

  He thought of the way the State had changed the Lost Islands in one bloody, violent afternoon. Brenn, watching his face, said:

  "You are skeptical and bitter, my son--but you will learn that a harmless old man can speak with wisdom."

  "No," he said. "There is neither justice nor mercy in the universe. I know from experience. A man can only choose between the lesser of two evils--and almost anything is less evil than Y'Nor when he's mad."

  * * * * *

  He went to the plant the next morning. Inside, wherever he looked, he saw girls in shorts and halters. The place seemed to be alive with partially clad women. He went to the nearest bulletin board and read Brenn's edict of four days before:

  Since the excessively warm temperature of the plant causes much discomfort and thereby impairs the efficiency of all workers, and since maximum efficiency will be required to produce the fuel in the extremely short time permitted us, it is suggested that the cool sunsuits of the Beachville girls become the standard work uniform until further notice. These may be obtained for the asking in Department 5-A.

  The next day's edict read:

  Some have hesitated to follow yesterday's edict through a sense of modesty. This is most commendable. However, the situation is very critical, our lives depend upon the highest degree of efficiency we can attain, and a hot, miserable worker is not efficient. Your bodies are God's handwork--do not be ashamed of them.

  The edict for the next day read simply, warningly:

  THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY.

  * * * * *

  The Vogarian guards and inspectors, now in tropical uniforms, still looked out of place with their holstered weapons but their former cold arrogance was gone and the attitude of the girls had changed from polite reserve to laughing, chattering friendliness.

  He found Dalon in a far corner; cornered, literally, by the red-haired personnel supervisor who was spitting like a cat as she said:

  "... Then tell your commander how one of your men tried to make one of my girls and got hit with a wrench for it! Ask him whether he wants us to produce fuel or make love! Go ahead--ask him! Or let me--I'll ask him!"

  "You'll have to see to it that your girls don't lead my men on." Dalon ran his finger around his collar, worry on his face. "Florence, are you trying to get me ruined?"

  "Then inform your men that there is a certain commandment we all believe in and anything beyond our willingness to be friends calls for marriage first."

  "Marriage?" Dalon spluttered the word, recovered his poise with an effort, and said stiffly, "My men are soldiers, not suitors. I want them respected as such."

  He str
ode away without seeing Kane. The girl stared after him, fuming, and Kane went in search of Graver.

  Graver and the brown-eyed secretary were in Larue's office, their heads together over a flow sheet of some kind. The secretary excused herself and when she was gone, Kane asked:

  "Where's Larue?"

  "Checking the catalytic processors, I think, sir." Graver answered, almost vaguely. "Mar ... his secretary was just showing me how they improvised so much of their equipment so quickly." There was a strange light in Graver's usually expressionless eyes. "It's incredible!"

  "Well--the commander gave them no time to waste, you know."

  "Sir? Oh ... I was referring to her intelligence, sir. It's amazing that a woman should have such a thorough knowledge of such a complex process."

  Kane felt the birth pains of the first dark premonition.

  "If you don't want a thorough knowledge of the interior of State prison," he said in grim warning, "you'd better get that silly look off your face and concentrate on your duties. Tell Dalon the same order applies to him. And tell Larue that the commander reminds him they now have less than forty hours to finish the job."

  * * * * *

  He decided, again, to walk back to the ship. There was now a multitude of paths through the grass were girls had been walking to and from work. Two groups from the last shift-change were a short distance ahead of him, several of Dalon's guards and Graver's technicians among them, all of them talking and laughing.

  In that area they could not be spied upon by Y'Nor with the ship's view-screen scanners and even as he watched, a tall, dark young guard put his arm around the girl walking close beside him. She twisted away from him and ran on to the next group, there to look back with a teasing toss of her head.

  Kane watched both groups disappear over the hill, then followed, muttering thoughtfully. He felt he could safely assume--if anything could be said to be safe about the situation--that the lack of discipline he had just witnessed was typical of all the men. They were all young and healthy and for sixteen hours out of each day they were side by side with the almost nude, provocatively feminine, Sanctuary girls.

  Their weakness was understandable. It was also very dangerous. Heads would roll if Y'Nor ever learned what was going on and it required no psychic ability to guess whose head would roll the fastest and farthest.

  He would have to have it stopped, at once.

  He took a short cut to Brenn's cottage, by a sleepy, shady street he had never been down before. Halfway along it was an open-air eating place of some kind, with tables placed about under the trees. There seemed to be no customers at the moment but he stopped, anyway, to take a closer look for errant guards.

  A tawny head lifted at a table half hidden by a nearby tree and he looked into the surprised face of the mountain girl, Barbara.

  "Well!" she said. "Come on over and let me offer you a glass of cyanide."

  He walked over to her table. She was wearing a blouse and skirt similar to that of the day he had met her but the pistol was gone.

  "I thought I told you to go back to your hills," he said.

  "I decided it would be more fun to work in the plant and sabotage things."

  "Let Y'Nor learn you said that and you'll be in a fix I can't help you out of."

  "Should a Vogarian care?" But the jeering was gone as she said, "When you gave my pistol back to me--I thought it was a trick of some kind."

  "I told you I wasn't your enemy."

  "I know ... but it's hard for a Saint to believe any Vogarian could ever be anything else."

  "It doesn't seem to be very hard for the girls in the plant," he observed glumly.

  "Oh ... that's different." She made a gesture of light dismissal. "Those soldiers and technicians are good boys at heart--they haven't been brain-washed like you officers."

  "That's interesting to know, I'm sure. I suppose--"

  He stopped as a gray-haired woman came and set down a tray containing a sandwich and a mug. From the foamy top of the mug came the unmistakable aroma of beer.

  "Do you Saints drink?" he asked incredulously.

  "Sure. Why?"

  "But your church--"

  "Earth churches used to ban alcohol as sinful because it would cause a mean person to show his true character. My church is more sensible and works to change the person's character, instead."

  She took a bite of the sandwich. "Cliff bear steak--it and beer go perfectly together. Shall I order you some?"

  "No," he said, thinking of Y'Nor's fury if Y'Nor should learn he had had a friendly lunch with a native girl. "About your church--what kind of a church is it, anyway?"

  "What its name implies. Heaven isn't for sale at the pulpit--everybody has to qualify for it by his own actions. We have to practice our belief--just looking pious and saying that we believe doesn't count."

  He revised his opinion of the Saints, then asked, "But were you practicing your Golden Rule when you came to this town with a gun to shoot Vogarians?"

  "For Vogarians we have a special Golden Rule that reads: Do unto Vogarians as they have come to do unto you. And you came here to enslave or kill us--remember?"

  It could not be denied. When he did not answer she smiled at him; a smile surprisingly gentle and understanding.

  "You honestly would like to be our friend, wouldn't you? The State psychiatrists didn't do a good job of brainwashing you, after all."

  It was the first time since he was sixteen that anyone had spoken to him with genuine kindness. It gave him a strange feeling, a lonely sense of something rising up out of the past to mock him, and he changed the subject:

  "Are the Azure Mountains the edge of your frontier?"

  She nodded. "Beyond is the Emerald Plain, a great, wide plain, and beyond it are mountain ranges that have never been named or explored. I'm going into them some day and--"

  * * * * *

  Time passed with astonishing speed as he talked with the girl and it was late in the afternoon when he continued on to Brenn's cottage. He put the thoughts of her from his mind and told Brenn of the too-warm association between the girls and the Vogarians.

  "But it is only friendship," Brenn said soothingly. "You can assure your commander that nothing immoral is being done."

  "If he knew what was going on, it would be my neck. It has to be stopped. Write an edict--do anything that will stop it at once."

  Brenn stroked his white beard thoughtfully. "I'm sorry this unforeseen situation has occurred, sir. Will you have strict orders to the same effect given your men?"

  "There's a severe penalty for unauthorized fraternization. I'll see that they're well reminded of it."

  "I'll write another edict, at once, forbidding the girls to speak to your men, sir."

  * * * * *

  Y'Nor was pacing the floor when Kane went to the ship, his face black and ugly with anger.

  "Have you been blind?" he demanded.

  Kane tried to swallow a sinking feeling, wondering just how much Y'Nor had seen, and said, "Sir?"

  "My guards--my so-called guards--how long have they been strolling back from the plant in company with the native women?"

  "Oh," he said, feeling a great relief that Y'Nor had not seen the true situation, "it's only that some of the out-going shifts coincide, sir, and--"

  "You know, don't you, that military men march to and from duty in military formation?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "You are aware of the importance of discipline?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "You are further aware of the fact that you, Dalon, and Graver, will be guilty of treason if this lack of discipline imperils my plans in any way?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "You have heard of the punishment for treason?"

  "Yes, sir."

  * * * * *

  He went below when the unpleasant business with Y'Nor was finally over. It was the beginning of the eight-hour sleep period for Dalon and Graver but they were still up, sitting on their bunks and staring dreamily in
to space. It was only belatedly, almost fuzzily, that they became aware of his glowering presence in the doorway.

  "I bring you glad tidings," he said, "from the commander's own lips. The multiple-gallows at State prison is still in perfect working order, especially the first three trapdoors--"

  The last day dawned, bright and sunny, and he went to see Brenn.

  "I had the new edict posted immediately," Brenn said. "I hope it will undo the damage."

  "Let's see it," Kane requested and Brenn handed him the handwritten original. It was:

  Despite our affection for the Vogarians among us, we must not endanger them by any longer talking to them. A Vogarian military rule is now being enforced which forbids Vogarians to speak to Sanctuary girls except in the line of duty. There is a severe penalty for those who disobey this rule.

  It must also be pointed out, sternly to the Sanctuary girls and respectfully to the Vogarians, that flight into the uninhabited Sanctuary mountains would result in execution for the fleeing couples if Commander Y'Nor should ever find them.

  "What's this?" Kane demanded, pointing to the last paragraph.

  "Why--a warning, sir."

  "Warning ... it's a suggestion!"

  "A suggestion?" Brenn lifted his hands in shocked protest. "But, sir, how could anyone think--"

  "I, personally, wouldn't give a damn if the entire crew was too love-sick to eat. But the commander does and my future welfare, including the privilege of breathing, depends upon my retaining what passes for his good will."

  "Good heavens--I shall have this edict removed from the bulletin boards at once!"

  "A great idea. It should fix up everything to lock the stable door now that the horse is stolen."

  * * * * *

  He went to the plant and felt the air of resentment as soon as he stepped inside. Dalon was patrolling among his men, his haggard face becoming more haggard each time the red-haired personnel supervisor went by with her hips swinging and her head held high in hurt, aloof silence. The guards were pacing their beats in wordless quiet, Graver's technicians were speaking only in the line of duty. The girls were not talking even to one another but in the soft, melting glances they gave the Vogarians they said We understand in a manner more eloquent than any words.