A. E. Van Vogt - Novel 18 - Mission to the Stars

by Mission to the Stars

  It was not that anything was missing, though Dellians were always afterward slow at creative work. But in some respects something seemed to have been added.

  The Dellian proved to be less subject to nervous strain. His physical strength far exceeded anything ever dreamed of by human beings. He could build himself up to superhuman effort by a curious process of internal stepping up of muscular tension.

  Naturally—the librarian was ironic when she came to that part—they were called robots by the more alarmed of human beings. The name did not disturb the Dellians, but it excited humans to a height of hatred that was not immediately suspected by the authorities.

  There was a period when mobs raged along the streets lynching Dellians. Human friends of the Dellians persuaded the government to let them migrate. Until now, no one had ever known where they had gone to.

  The Right Honorable Gloria Cecily sat thoughtful for a while after the account was completed. She said finally: “You haven’t been really helpful. I knew all that, except for a couple of minor details.”

  She was aware of the older woman studying her with shrewd blue eyes. “Gloria, what are you after? When you talk like that, you’re usually trying to prove a theory of your own.”

  The remark hit home. The Grand Captain saw that it might be dangerous for her to admit such a thing. People who tried to force facts to fit their own private theories were unscientific. She had frequently been very sharp with officers who uttered vague opinions. She said slowly: “I simply want all the information we can get. It’s obvious that when a mutation like the Dellian is off somewhere for a hundred and fifty centuries all the possible eventualities will have taken place. My attitude is, we can’t afford to miss a single point that is available.”

  The librarian nodded. Watching her, Lady Laurr decided that the explanation had proved satisfactory; and that the momentary insight had faded from the forefront of the other’s mind.

  She stood up. She couldn’t take the chance of any further revelations. The second one might not be so easy to dismiss. She said good night casually, and returned to her quarters. After a few minutes of thought, she called “Biology,” and asked as her first question: “Doctor, I have previously sent you information on the Dellian and non-Dellian peoples of the Fifty Suns. In your opinion, would it be possible for a Dellian and non-Dellian—married to each other—to have children?”

  The biologist was a slow-thinking man, who drawled when he spoke. “History says no,” he said.

  “What do you say?”

  “I could do it.”

  “That,” said Grand Captain Laurr triumphantly, “is what I wanted to hear.”

  The stimulation the information brought her did not fade until she crept into bed hours later. She turned out the light, then, and lay for a while staring out into space.

  The great night was slightly changed. The points of light were differently arranged, but, without magnification, she had no visual evidence that she was actually in the Greater Magellanic Cloud. Not more than a hundred individual stars showed as separate units. Here and there was a fuzziness of light that indicated the presence of hundreds of thousands of stars, perhaps millions.

  On impulse, she reached toward the vision control, and turned the magnification to full.

  Splendor.

  A billion stars blazed at her. She saw the near brilliance of innumerable stars in the Cloud, and the vast spiral wheel of the main galaxy, impregnated now with more light-points than could ever be counted. And all that she could see was a mere speck in the cosmic scheme of things. Where had it come from? Tens of thousands of generations of human beings had lived and died, and there was still not even the beginning of a satisfactory answer.

  She reduced magnification to zero, and brought the universe back to the level of her own senses. Wide-eyed, she thought: “Suppose they did produce a cross-breed of the Dellian and non-Dellian? How could that affect me in two weeks?”

  She couldn’t imagine. She slept restlessly.

  Morning . . . As she ate her lean breakfast, it struck her that only thirteen days remained. The impact of that hit her suddenly. She got up from the table, gloomily conscious that she was living in a dream world. Unless she took positive action, the entire enterprise upon which she had launched the great ship would collapse. She headed decisively for the control bridge, and called Communication. “Captain,” she said to the officer who answered, “are we in upper resonance contact with the Fifty Suns’ ship that is trailing us?”

  “No, madam.”

  That was disappointing. Now that she had made up her mind, any delay was irritating. She hesitated, finally sighed her acceptance of the reality, and said, “The moment contact is made, communicate to Weapons.” “Very well, madam.”

  She broke connection, and called Weapons. The proud-faced officer commanding that department swallowed as she explained her purpose. He protested finally, “But, madam, this would reveal our greatest weapon. Suppose—” “Suppose nothing!” Her fury was instant. “At this stage we have nothing to lose. We have failed to lure the Fifty Suns fleet. I order you to capture that one vessel. All the Navigation officers aboard will probably be ordered to commit suicide, but we’ll get around that.” The officer frowned thoughtfully, then nodded. “The danger is that someone outside the field will detect it, and analyze it. But if you feel we should take that risk—” The Right Honorable Gloria turned presently to other tasks, but a part of her mind never quite let go of the command she had given. She grew restless finally when no further call came, and again contacted Communication. But there was nothing. The Fifty Suns ship was not in range.

  A day went by, then another. And still no contact.

  By the fourth day, the Grand Captain of the Star Cluster was a very difficult person to get along with. And that day also went by without incident.

  Chapter

  Five

  “PLANET below!” said Vice-admiral Dreehan.

  Maltby, who had been cat-napping, woke with a start, climbed to his feet, and went to the controls.

  Under his direction, the ship moved rapidly from ten thousand miles above the surface to a thousand, and then to less than a hundred miles. Through magnification, he examined the terrain; and presently, though he had never seen it before, his memory brought up photographic maps he had been shown in the past.

  Rapidly, now, the Atmion headed towards the largest of the cave entrances that led down to the hidden capitol of the Mixed Men. As a final precaution, he checked once more to make sure that junior officers were not able to watch what was happening in their viewplates—all fourteen senior key men were under his control—and then boldly he nosed the ship into the opening.

  He watched tensely. He had radioed the leaders who supported him that he was coming. They had called back to say that all would be in readiness. But it was possible for a slip-up to occur. And here at the entrance a ship would be at the mercy of ground defenses.

  The darkness of the cave closed around them. He sat with fingers on the searchlight switch, watching the night ahead. Suddenly, a light flickered far below. Maltby waited to make sure that it would not go out and then flicked the switch.

  Instantly, the searchlights glared, lighting up the cave from ceiling to floor and into the distance ahead. The ship cruised forward, and gradually downward. An hour went by; and still there was no indication that the end of the journey was near.

  The cave curved and twisted, downward and sideways and upwards. Several times he had the feeling that they were going back the way they had come. He could have kept track on an automatic graph, but he had been asked even before the Atmion neared the planet not to do so. It was said that no living person knew exactly where under the planet’s crust the capitol was located. Other Mixed Men cities on still other planets were hidden in the same way.

  Twelve hours passed. Twice Maltby had turned the control over to the vice-admiral while he slept. Now, he was in charge while the officer dozed peacefully on the cot in the corner
.

  Thirty hours! Physically worn out, and amazed, Maltby wakened Dreehan, and lay down. He had scarcely closed his eyes when the officer said:

  “Buildings ahead, captain. Lights.”

  Maltby made a leap for the controls; and a few minutes later was guiding the ship over a city of about eighty thousand population. He had been told that no vessel of its size had ever been in the caves; and therefore at this moment it would be the object of attention by all individuals and groups. He switched on ordinary radio and turned the dial till he heard a voice. He heard: “. . . and Peter Maltby, our hereditary leader, has temporarily taken over the battleship Atmion, in order that he might personally reason with those who—”

  Maltby clicked it off. The people were learning that he was here. In the plate, he searched the city below for Hunston’s headquarters. He recognized the building from the description he had been radioed, and stopped the Atmion directly over it.

  He focussed an energy screen on the center of the street a block away. Then, swiftly, he laid down other screens till the area was completely blocked off. People could enter the screen area without noticing that they were coming into a trap, but they could not leave it. Invisible from the outside, the screen had a purplish tint when seen from inside. It gave anyone who touched it from the inner section a powerful electric shock.

  Since Hunston lived at his headquarters, it seemed likely that he was now unable to escape. Maltby did not delude himself that the action would be decisive. This was a struggle for political control, which might be influenced by force, but would not be resolved on that basis alone. In that struggle, his very method of arrival had given his enemies a powerful argument against him. “Look,” they would undoubtedly say, “one Mixed Man was able to take over a battleship—proof of our superiority.” That was heady stuff for people whose ambition had been starved for a quarter of a century.

  In the viewplate he saw that small craft were approaching. He contacted them by radio, identified those aboard as leaders who supported him, and presently watched as his officer-controls personally admitted them to the airlock. Minutes later he was shaking hands with men he had never before seen in person.

  Tactical and strategical discussions began almost immediately. Several men who came aboard felt that Hunston should be executed. A majority believed that he should be imprisoned. Maltby listened uneasily to both groups, conscious that in a sense the men on the scene were the best judges. On the other hand, their very closeness to the danger had made them tense. It was even possible that he, who had watched this scene from afar, might have a more detached, and, therefore, sounder attitude. That was a guess only, and he did not give too much weight to it. Nevertheless, he had begun to regard himself as being in the role of an arbiter when, abruptly, both groups began to question him.

  “Can we be sure that the Fifty Suns will remain firm in their refusal to establish contact with the Earth ship?”

  “Was there any sign of weakening from what you saw and heard?”

  “Why was the second ultimatum withheld from the people?”

  “Is the battleship Atmion the only ship assigned to follow the Star Cluster?”

  “Is there perhaps some secret purpose behind such a following move?”

  “What would our position be if, suddenly, the Fifty Suns surrendered their location?”

  For a little while, Maltby felt overwhelmed. And then, as he saw that the questions followed a pattern, and that behind them was a false implication, he held up his hand and said: “Gentlemen, you seem to be laboring under the theory that, if the other governments should change their minds, we might still rush in and gain an advantage. This is not so. Our position is that we stand solidly with the Fifty Suns whatever their decision. We act as one with the group. We do not maneuver for special advantage other than within the frame of the offer that has been made to us.” He finished in a more personal, less severe tone: “I can see you have all been under immense pressure. Believe me, I appreciate your position, as a group and as individuals. But we’ve got to maintain our integrity. We cannot be opportunistic in this crisis.”

  The men looked at each other. Some, particularly the younger men, seemed unhappy, as if they were being asked to swallow a bitter pill. But in the end they all agreed to support the plan for the time being.

  Then came the crucial question: “What about Hunston?”

  Maltby said coolly: “I’d like to talk to him.”

  Collings, the oldest personal friend of Maltby’s father, studied Maltby’s face for several seconds and then walked into the radio room. He was pale when he came back. “He refuses to come up here. He says if you want to see him you can come down. Peter, this is outrageous.”

  “Tell him,” said Maltby steadily, “that I’ll be right down.”

  He smiled at their dour faces. “Gentlemen,” he said in a ringing tone, “this man is playing into our hands. Broadcast that I’m going down for the sake of amity in a great crisis. Don’t overdo it, but put just a hint of doubt into your announcement, indicating that possibly violence will be done me.”

  He finished matter-of-factly: “Obviously, nothing will happen, with this ship floating here in a dominant position. However, if I’m not back in an hour and a half, try to contact me. Then, step by step, beginning with threats, reach the point where you start shooting.”

  Despite his confidence, he had a curious feeling of emptiness and aloneness as his lifeboat settled down on the roof of Hunston’s headquarters.

  Hunston was a tall, sardonic-looking man in his middle thirties. As Maltby entered his private office, he stood up, came forward, and shook hands. He said in a quiet, pleasant voice: “I wanted to get you away from those wet hens who rule the roost down here. No lese majesty was intended. I want to talk to you. I think I can convince you.”

  He made the attempt in a low, cultured but very alive voice. His arguments were the stale arguments of the basic superiority of the Mixed Men. He obviously believed his own premises, and in the end Maltby could not escape the conviction that the man’s main fault was lack of general and specific information about the world outside. He had lived too long in this narrow environment of the Mixed Men cities, spent too many years talking and thinking without reference to larger realities. Despite his brilliance, Hunston was provincially minded.

  The rebel leader completed his monologue, and asked a question: “Do you believe that the Fifty Suns will be able to remain hidden from Earth civilization?”

  “No,” said Maltby truthfully. “I believe eventual discovery is inevitable.”

  “Yet you support their deluded attempt to remain secret?”

  “I support unity in dealing with the situation. I believe it is wise to be cautious in accepting contact. It is even possible that we could hold off discovery for a hundred years, perhaps longer.”

  Hunston was silent. There was a scowl on his handsome face. “I can see,” he said at last, “that we hold opposite views.”

  Watching the man, Maltby said slowly: “Perhaps our longrun intentions are the same. Perhaps we merely have different plans for arriving at the same goal.”

  Hunston’s face lighted; his eyes widened slightly. He said eagerly: “Your excellency, if I could believe that.” He broke off, his eyes narrowing abruptly: “I’d like to hear your opinion of the future role of the Mixed Men in civilization.”

  “Given the opportunity, using legal methods,” said Maltby quietly, “they will inevitably gravitate towards positions of top leadership. Without taking unfair advantage of their ability to control others mentally, they will first dominate the Fifty Suns, and then the main galaxy. If at any time in their rise to power, they use force, they will be destroyed to the last man, woman and child.”

  Hunston’s eyes were bright. “And how long do you think it will take?” he asked.

  “It can begin in your lifetime and mine. It will require at least a thousand years, depending on how rapidly Dellians and human beings intermarry—as of now, child
ren are forbidden in such marriages, as you know—”

  Hunston nodded scowling; then he said: “I have been misinformed about your attitude. You are one of us.” “No!” Maltby spoke firmly. “Please do not confuse a long-run with a short-term attitude. It’s the difference in this case between life and death. Even to mention that we expect in the end to gain domination would alarm people who have now been prepared by their governments to be cautiously friendly. If we show our unity regarding this issue, we can make a beginning. If we are opportunistic, then this little race of supermen of which you and I are members will sooner or later be destroyed.” Hunston was on his feet. “Your excellency, I’ll accept that. I’ll go along with you. We’ll await developments.” It was an unexpected victory for him who had come prepared to use force. Despite his belief, however, that Hunston was sincere, he had no intention of merely taking the other’s word. The man might change his mind as soon as the threat of the Atmion was removed. He said so, frankly, and finished: “Under the circumstances, I’ll have to ask you to submit to a six months term of imprisonment at some point where you cannot be in touch with your supporters. It will be merely a form of house arrest. You can take your wife. You will receive every courtesy; and will be freed immediately if contact is established in the meantime between the Earth ship and the Fifty Suns. Your position will be that of hostage rather than prisoner. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to think it over.”

  No attempt was made to stop him as he returned to his lifeboat, and so back to the warship.

  Hunston surrendered himself at the end of the 24-hour period. He specified one condition: the terms of his house arrest must be broadcast.

  And so the Fifty Suns were safe from immediate discovery, it being obvious that one ship could not without aid find even one planet of so well-hidden a civilization. Maltby was convinced of it. There remained the problem of the inevitable discovery when other ships came from the main galaxy a few years hence. Curiously, now that the main danger was over, that began to worry him. As he guided the Fifty Suns’ battleship Atmion back up its original course, Maltby considered just what he might do to insure further the safety of the people of the Greater Magellanic Cloud.