“Wasn’t that Mikhail’s point, namely that if we keep a low profile, there is a good chance they will overlook us?” Laura Dresser asked.
“Oh, I agree that we should hide from the Broa,” Mark said as a wild surge of hope jolted through his veins like a powerful drug. “But I don’t advocate keeping a low profile. I propose that we use our anonymity as a weapon. We work secretly to destabilize and destroy the Sovereignty. By the time they figure out that we exist, it will be too late. They will have too many problems at home to come looking for us.”
“Now I know you have gone insane,” Vasloff exclaimed. “We can no more fight a million stars than we can fight a supernova!”
“You can fight a supernova by being somewhere else when it goes off,” Mark retorted. “And we don’t have to fight a million stars. At best, we only have to fight a single planet, and at worst, a dozen planets.”
“I am sorry, but I missed something there,” Raoul Bendagar said.
“Look,” Mark said, “the Broa have problems already. Otherwise, their factions would not be sneaking around, ambushing each other in stargates. We all know that they are not the most prolific species in the universe. If they bred like rabbits, or even human beings, it would not be a decade or more between Broan visits to Klys’kra’t. They must have a home world, or at most a few worlds, where the bulk of them live. We seek out those worlds and target them.”
“You mean we attack the Broan home world?”
“Sure, why not? Cut off the head of the snake and the tail won’t bother you again.”
“Won’t that just infuriate them and ensure they exterminate us? After all, there will be a lot of Broa who survive any attack we make on their home planet.”
“Then we give them something to keep their minds busy. We destroy their hold over the subservient species. In fact, if we do that well enough, we won’t have to attack their home world. What is their power base?
“Their monopoly over the stargates, of course. What if a large number of stargates were simultaneously put out of action? With our own starships able to move at will among the Broan stars, we could destroy their economy and social system over large parts of their domain before they could figure out who was responsible. Better yet, think of the confusion if several key species suddenly started building ships with our kind of stardrives!”
“The Broa would go ape,” Lisa said with a smile, obviously unaware of the unintentional pun.
“You are suggesting that we start a revolution in the Sovereignty?” Vasloff asked.
“Why not? They are ripe for it. The Sovereignty is a pyramid with trillions of workers at the bottom and a few masters at the top. It is the sort of oligarchy that even Hitler and Stalin could not have thought up in their wildest dreams. Destroy enough stargates, disrupt their economy, hand out the secret of the stardrive wholesale, and the whole top-heavy structure will collapse of its own weight. I would bet my life on it.”
“That is precisely what you would be doing,” Vasloff replied. “Your life and the lives of every other human being in the galaxy.”
“An interesting idea,” Bendagar replied. “It will need a great deal of fleshing out before it becomes a plan, however.”
“Of course it needs fleshing out,” Mark said with a laugh. “I just thought it up over breakfast. It is not even an idea. It is a feeling. But unlike what Mikhail is advocating, it feels right.”
“That’s all you have? A feeling?” Vasloff screamed.
If Mark’s outburst had angered Vasloff, it had clearly intrigued the rest of his companions.
“Just how would we go about this plan of yours? What is our first step?” Laura Dresser asked.
“You will like it. Our first step is to leave this system via the stargate. We are going to need both stardrive and stargate if we are to pull this off. What better time to begin learning the technology than now?”
“What do we need stargates for?” Bendagar asked.
“If we are going to take on the Broa, we can’t spend a year in transit between their domain and our own. We’ll need to set ourselves up in bases along the periphery of the Sovereignty, bases like we have on Brinks.”
Ever since Mark had begun explaining his idea, Lisa’s mind had been awhirl with the possibilities. Like most good ideas, this one was breathtakingly simple in concept, but would be maddeningly complex to execute. His excitement was contagious. “Mark is right,” she said. “We will need stargates of our own if we are to challenge the Broa, and not only to establish forward bases. We will need them to set up an insurance policy, in case we lose.”
“Insurance policy?”
Lisa nodded. “Despite our cleverness, the Broa may somehow find Earth. On that day, we will face a cruel choice. We can either surrender — and likely be exterminated when they figure out who and what we are — or we can fight, and likely be exterminated when they overwhelm us.”
“Not much of a choice,” an obviously disgusted Vasloff muttered. What had begun as a quiet breakfast had turned into a nightmare. Mark Rykand had sucked the others into his fantasy and the Russian could see no way to pull them back.
“There is always a choice, Mikhail. I admit that it would be a shame to lose dear, old Earth; but the possibility is real whether we oppose the Broa or knuckle under to them. Obviously, if we are to follow Mark’s plan, we need to take steps to ensure the survival of the species. To do that, we need stargates.”
“How so?”
“Far from pulling back and giving up our interstellar colonies, we need to search for Earthlike worlds far from the Sovereignty. Once we find such worlds, we have to keep their location a carefully guarded secret while we colonize them. We will be able to move millions of people through the gates with all of their equipment in the same time we could only move thousands via starship. It will not be cheap and it will not be efficient, but we need to make these ‘lifeboat’ colonies self-sufficient as quickly as possible. That way, if the Broa destroy Earth, they won’t wipe out our entire species.”
“You speak rather blithely of the destruction of the Earth,” Laura Dresser said.
Lisa shrugged. “I am with Mark on this one. If we give in to our fears, we have no hope for the future. As it is, we toss the dice and take our chances. However, even if we lose, so long as a single unmolested human colony survives, we win. That is true whether we fight or whether we hide.”
Mark nodded. “I hadn’t thought of that, but you are right. My idea of using Brinks Base is also too limited. We are going to need at least a planet, and possibly several. That way we will not have to mount our operations directly from Earth. We can build shipyards and factories on our bases on the fringes of the Sovereignty. That way, even if they track us back to base, the home world will be protected.”
“A breathtaking plan,” Laura Dresser said. “But is it truly practical? Think of the cost.”
“Think of the cost if we do nothing,” he retorted. “No, it won’t be easy. It will require every erg of energy the human race has, but what other choice have we? We have the armor of our anonymity for defense. For offense, we have something far better than coastal batteries. We have the stardrive. Once we establish our bases on the Sovereignty’s perimeter, we will be able to move at will through their space. Our ships can drop sublight at the edges of their systems and spy on the Broa with impunity. While our war fleet is building, we can search out their points of weakness. We can secretly gain allies and spread sedition in the form of stardrive technology. Once we find their home worlds, we attack with overwhelming force and surprise on our side, and with as many allies as we can muster. We’ll keep them too busy defending their own home worlds to have time to look for ours.”
Mark was out of breath as he finished detailing his plan for turning Earth into the galaxy's Rock of Gibraltar. He could tell by the others' looks that they are intrigued. Only Mikhail Vasloff looked unhappy.
However, Captain Landon had been correct the previous day when he said that there was no
way for a few specialists aboard the Ruptured Whale could make such a weighty decision. Whether humanity would choose to hide or fight was something for the First Coordinator and Parliament to decide, and ultimately, for the ten billion people of Earth. It was their task to alert the public to the danger and to give them alternatives. No doubt, Mikhail Vasloff and the other members of Terra Nostra would see to it that their own view was well publicized. It would be interesting to see which course of action the public would choose; or indeed, if they would choose either.
“Well, it has the virtue of being audacious,” Laura Dresser said. “Let’s go find the captain and see what he thinks of it, especially the part about leaving this system through the stargate.”
#
Mark Rykand and Lisa Arden sat side by side in the darkened Astronomy cubicle and watched the approach to the Klys’kra’t stargate while they listened to the interplay on the bridge. They were currently in freefall, although the ship had undergone short bursts of acceleration for most of the past hour. The stargate, which had been invisible for most of the approach, had just come into view on the long-range scanners. The gate, which was half-lit by Orpheus’s rays, stood out in stark relief against the blackness of the void. It was a simple toroid, a thin featureless ring that looked as though it had slipped off some giant’s finger. The Ruptured Whale had shed most of its hyperbolic velocity during the approach. It was now moving slower than an aircar in the lower traffic lanes. In a few minutes, it would enter the gate and don seven-league boots. The next step they took would be to another star.
Nanda was a large, reddish beacon that was clearly visible beyond the gate. Although it is difficult for the human eye to judge things in space, the axis of the gate seemed aimed at the star. Mark wondered if that was a coincidence. Maybe a stargate had to be aimed at its target like a rifle. That was a disturbing thought. It meant that when the Broan Avenger had thrown itself and the Hraal into the New Eden system by firing on the stargate, that it had done so along a predictable line. If the Broa ever realized that Hraal and Wanderer were the same ship, it would give them a vector toward human space.
“How did Sar-Say take the news?” Mark asked as he listened to the captain authorizing them to make their final approach to the gate.
“Better than I expected,” Lisa replied. “He seemed stoic about it. Sometimes I wonder if I truly understand him, or he, us.”
“I thought he had a pretty good idea of what makes humans tick.”
“Perhaps,” Lisa replied. “Still, you would have thought he would have predicted our reaction to his offer that we sell ourselves and our species voluntarily into slavery.”
Mark chuckled.
“What’s so funny?”
“Sar-Say,” he said. “He reminds me of a dog I once had. He was a big dog, a Great Dane. He used to drive my mother crazy by placing his butt on the couch and sitting like a people. My mother used to say all the time: ‘That dog thinks he is a human being!’ What she did not realize was that the dog did not think he was a human being at all. He thought we were dogs, and that was the way dogs were supposed to sit on the couch!”
Lisa laughed. It was good to hear the sound again after her depression. “What has that to do with Sar-Say?”
“Well, deep down I suspect that he feels we are just funny looking Broa. I know that we have a tendency to think of him as human. As a result, we react to one another as though we were members of the same species, never quite understanding that inside that other brain, there are some truly alien thoughts. Perhaps the Broa have a fatalistic streak in which they give up in face of overwhelming odds. He probably finds it shocking that we react to the same stimulus by fighting harder. You will have to watch him, you know. When it sinks in, he may try to harm himself.”
She nodded. “The captain has increased the security monitoring, if that seems possible. Now they will have a pair of eyes watching him every second. They’ve even put a camera in the bathroom!”
“So, use the facilities in our cabin before you go to see Sar-Say every day, or when you get back. Look, we are nearly there …”
The stargate had grown more quickly than they had realized, until it nearly filled the screen at minimum magnification. Up close, it looked no different than it had far away. It was a featureless silver ring floating in space. Whatever power source it used or control mechanisms must be inside because nothing marred the mechanism’s skin. Mark wondered if the featureless surface was necessary to the operation of the gate, or merely conformed to the Broan idea of beauty.
“All hands, stand by! We jump in two minutes.”
As the echoes of the general announcement died away around them, Mark reached out and took Lisa’s hand. He squeezed it as they watched the key to humanity’s future grow still larger on the viewscreen. If Earth were to become a space-based Rock of Gibraltar, an unassailable fortress from which would pour forth ships and men to do battle; then they would have to master this new technology. Master it they could and master it they would. All they needed was time and knowledge.
“Hopefully, we will be able to provide humanity with both,” Mark muttered.
“What?” Lisa asked.
“Beg your pardon?”
“You just said something.”
“Did I? Sorry, I must have forgotten to disengage my mouth. It was nothing.”
“You’re sure?”
He nodded as he watched one section of the gate touch the edge of the screen and disappear from view. Now it was not a ring in space, but rather an arch. A sudden force tugged him forward in his seat, indicating that they were slowing still further. On the intercom, the voice of the chief engineer was issuing orders to bring the Broan jump generators online.
This was where it could get dangerous. No one had ever tested the jump generators, not since the battle with the Broa. By themselves, of course, they were merely inert metal. When coupled with the field the gate put out, they would force the Ruptured Whale somewhere else for an instant, and then back into the real universe at a point a dozen light-years distant.
The chief sensor operator’s voice announced that all instruments were at high gain and recording. Whatever physical forces and energy patterns they encountered in the next few minutes, they would capture it in their computers.
“Well, here we go …” Lisa said.
There was a catch in her voice that told him that she, too, was frightened of the coming jump. Intellectually, he knew it was safe, but his racing heart was not listening to his intellect. If something went wrong, there would be Columbus and Magellan to carry the news home. Still, he did not want to be the second Rykand to die in space.
He had a mental flash of Jani’s smiling face framed in wild, red hair. He wondered how much of her memory had gone into fomenting the wild-eyed scheme that he had blurted out at breakfast three days ago. Whatever else Mark knew, he knew that it would be wrong to hide from the monsters that had killed Jani. In a dangerous universe, death is inevitable; but a pointless death is a tragedy. He could not bring Jani back, but he could do his best to avenge her, and that was the course on which they were about to embark.
Mikhail Vasloff was right about one thing. His Gibraltar Earth plan did not suffer from an excess of caution. He believed that it was necessary to ensure the long-term survival of the species, but that did not make it any less dangerous in the short term. In fact, it would subject the human race to the greatest risk it had ever known.
On the other hand, when had that not been so? The first men to venture forth from the caves to confront the saber tooth tigers had risked all. So, too, had the veterans of ten thousand wars, from the charioteers of Egypt, to the legionaries of Rome, to the combatants of four world wars. In an uncaring universe, everyone's life is at risk every moment. The dinosaurs had lived for hundreds of millions of years, only to be snuffed out in less than a single year when an errant rock fell out of the sky. The sun could go nova at any second. The Ruptured Whale could run into a pea-size meteorite and be vapor
ized faster than thought. Or, his heart could give up its pounding inside his chest.
No, to be alive was to be at risk. Mark’s ancestors had never shrunk from the challenge; nor, he was sure, would the current generation. It was not in the nature of human beings to cower in a hole to await inevitable discovery. Human beings do not cower, even when it would be smart to do so!
The Broa did not know it yet, but they had just acquired a competitor. Human beings from Gibraltar Earth would someday sweep outward to free the galaxy.
God help the overlords when they did!
#
The End
Author’s Biography
Michael McCollum was born in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1946, and is a graduate of Arizona State University, where he majored in aerospace propulsion and minored in nuclear engineering. He is employed at Honeywell in Tempe, Arizona, where he is Chief Engineer in the valve product line. In his career, Mr. McCollum has worked on the precursor to the Space Shuttle Main Engine, a nuclear valve to replace the one that failed at Three Mile Island, several guided missiles, Space Station Freedom, and virtually every aircraft in production today. He was involved in an effort to create a joint venture company with a major Russian aerospace engine manufacturer and traveled extensively to Russia in the last decade.
In addition to his engineering, Mr. McCollum is a successful professional writer in the field of science fiction. He is the author of a dozen pieces of short fiction and has appeared in magazines such as Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Amazing, and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. His novels (originally published by Ballantine-Del Rey) include A Greater Infinity, , Procyon’s Promise, Antares Dawn, Antares Passage, The Clouds of Saturn, and The Sails of Tau Ceti, His novel, Thunderstrike!, was optioned by a Hollywood production company for a possible movie. Several of these books have subsequently been translated into Japanese, German, Russian, and the Queen’s version of English.
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