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

by Mission to the Stars

  That, also, was not amusing. He had a pretty shrewd idea that Hunston would make particularly certain that no information came to the hidden city on the nameless planet. Just how he was going to obtain information was another matter.

  Suddenly he felt, completely cast out. Like a pariah, he left the stage. The noise faded behind him.

  The days passed; and the puzzling thing to Maltby was that he heard nothing about the Star Cluster. For a month of hours, he went aimlessly from city to city; and the only news that came through was of the success of the Mixed Men. Highly colored news it was. Everywhere, the conquerors must have seized radio control; and glowing accounts came of how the inhabitants of the Fifty Suns were wildly acclaiming their new rulers as leaders in the fight against the ship from Imperial Earth. Against the humans whose ancestors, fifteen thousand years before, had massacred all robots they could find, forcing the survivors to flee to this remote cloud of stars.

  Over and over, the theme repeated. No “robot”—the word was used—could trust a human being after what had happened in the past. The Mixed Men would save the “robot” world from the untrustworthy human beings and their battleship.

  A very unsettling and chilling note of triumph entered the account every time the battleship was mentioned. Maltby frowned over that, not for the first time, as he ate his lunch in an open-air restaurant on the thirty-first day. Soft, though vibrant music, poured over his head from the public announcer system. It was almost literally over his head, because he was too intent to be more than dimly aware of outside sound.

  One question dominated his thought: What had happened to the Star Cluster? Where could it be?

  Gloria had said: “We shall take immediate action. Earth recognizes no governments by minorities. The Mixed Men will be given democratic privileges and equality, not dominance. That is final.”

  It was also, Maltby realized, reasonable IF human beings had really gotten over their prejudice against so-called robots. It was a big if; and their prompt unloading of him from the ship proved that it wasn’t a settled problem by any means.

  The thought ended, as, above him, the music faded out on a high pitched note. The brief silence was broken by the unmistakable voice of Hunston:

  “To all people of the Fifty Suns, I make this important announcement: The Earth battleship is a danger no more. It has been captured by a skillful trick of the Mixed Men and it is at Cassidor, where it is even now yielding its many secrets to the technical experts of the Mixed Men. People of the Fifty Suns, the days of strain and uncertainty are over. Your affairs will in future be administered by your kin and protectors, the Mixed Men. As their leader and your leader, I herewith dedicate the thirty billion inhabitants of our seventy planets to the task of preparing for future visitations from the main galaxy, and of insuring that no warship will ever again venture far into the Greater Magellanic Cloud, which we now solemnly proclaim to be our living space, sacred and inviolable forever.

  “But that is for the future. For the moment, we the people of the Fifty Suns have successfully circumvented the most hideous danger of our history. A three day celebration is accordingly declared. I decree music, feasting and laughter—”

  At first there seemed nothing to think. Maltby walked along a boulevard of trees and flowers and fine homes; and, after a while, his mind tried to form a picture of an invincible battleship captured with all on board—if they were still alive. How had it been done? By all the blackness in space, how?

  Mixed Men, with their hypnotically powerful double minds, if allowed aboard in sufficient numbers to seize mental control of all high officers, could have done it.

  But who would be mad enough to let that first group get into the ship? Until a month ago, the Star Cluster had had two protections at least against such a disastrous finale to its long voyage. The first was the ship’s able psychologist, Lieutenant Neslor, who would unhesitatingly pry into the brain of every person who entered the ship. The second safeguard was Captain Peter Maltby, whose double brain would instantly recognize the presence of another Mixed Man.

  Only, Maltby was not on the ship, but walking along this quiet, magnificent street, consuming himself with amazement and dismay. He was here because—He sighed with sudden immense understanding. So that was why the light-globe had appeared to him, and why Hunston had been so plausible. The man’s words had had nothing to do with his intentions. The whole act had been designed to force off the ship the one man who would instantly sense the presence of a Mixed Man. It was difficult to know what he would have done if he had discovered them. To betray one’s kin to death for the love of an alien woman, was almost unthinkable. Yet he couldn’t have allowed her to be captured. Perhaps his course would have been to warn the would-be conquerors to keep away. The choice, forced upon him at the flash moment of attack, would have taxed the logic capacity of his brain.

  It didn’t matter now. The events had fallen their chance ways without reference to him. He couldn’t change the larger aspect of them. The political seizure of the Fifty Suns government, the capture of a mighty battleship, all these were beyond the influence of a man who had been proved wrong by events, and who could now be killed without anybody, even his former supporters, worrying too much about him. It wouldn’t do to contact the hidden city in this hour of Hunston’s triumph.

  There remained a fact that he had to do something about. If it were a fact that the Star Cluster had been captured, then so had the Right Honorable Gloria Cecily. And the Lady Laurr of Noble Laurr was in addition to all her great titles, Mrs. Peter Maltby. That was the reality. Out of it grew the first purely personal purpose of his lonely life.

  Chapter

  Eighteen

  THE naval yard spread before him. Maltby paused on the side-walk a hundred feet from the main officers’ entrance, and casually lighted a cigarette. Smoking was primarily a non-Dellian habit; and he had never contracted it. But a man who wanted to get from planet IV of the Atmion sun, to Cassidor VII without going by regular ship needed a flexible pattern of small actions to cover such moments as this.

  He lit the cigarette while his gaze took in the gate and the officer in charge of the guard. He walked forward finally with the easy stride of a person with clear conscience. He stood, puffing, while the man, a Dellian, examined his perfectly honest credentials. The casualness was a mask. He was thinking, in a mental sweat: It would be a Dellian. With such a man, hypnotism, except under certain conditions of surprise, would be impossible.

  The officer broke the silence. “Step over to the postern, captain,” he said, “I want to talk to you.”

  Maltby’s primary mind sagged, but his secondary brain grew as alert as steel suddenly subjected to strain. Was this discovery? On the verge of slashing forth with his minds, he hesitated. Wait! he warned himself. Time enough to act if an attempt was made to sound an alarm. He must test to the limit his theory that Hunston wouldn’t have had time to close all the gates against him.

  He glanced sharply at the other’s face. But the typically handsome countenance of a Dellian was typically impassive. If this were discovery, it was already too late for his special brand of hypnotism.

  The Dellian began in a low voice, without preamble: “We have orders to pick you up, captain.”

  He paused and stared curiously at Maltby, who probed cautiously with his minds, met an invincible barrier, and withdrew, defeated but nonplussed. So far, there was nothing menacing.

  Maltby studied the fellow closely. “Yes?” he said cautiously.

  “If I let you in,” the Dellian said, “and something happened, say, a ship disappeared, I’d be held responsible. But if I don’t let you in, and you just walk away, no one will guess that you’ve been here.” He shrugged and smiled. “Simple, eh?”

  Maltby stared at the man gloomily. “Thanks,” he said. “But what’s the idea?”

  “We’re undecided.”

  “About what?”

  “About the Mixed Men. This business of their taking over the
government is all very well. But the Fifty Suns navy does not forswear, or swear, allegiance in ten minutes. Besides, we’re not sure that Earth’s offer was not an honest one.”

  “Why are you telling me this? After all, I am physically a Mixed Man.”

  The other smiled. “You’ve been thoroughly discussed in the mess-halls, captain. We haven’t forgotten that you were one of us for fifteen years. Though you may not have noticed it, we put you through many tests during that period.”

  “I noticed,” said Maltby, his face dark with memory. “I had the impression that I must have failed the tests.” “You didn’t.”

  There was silence. But Maltby felt a stirring of excitement. He had been so intent on his own troubles that the reaction of the people of the Fifty Suns to cataclysmic political change had scarcely touched him. Come to think of it, he had noticed among civilians the same uncertainty as this officer was expressing.

  There seemed little doubt, the Mixed Men had seized control at a beautifully timed psychological moment. But their victory wasn’t final. There was still opportunity here for the purposes of others. Maltby said simply, “I want to get to Cassidor to find out what has happened to my wife. How can I manage it?”

  “The grand captain of the Star Cluster is really your wife! That wasn’t propaganda?”

  Maltby nodded. “She’s really my wife.”

  “And she married you knowing you were a robot?” “I spent weeks in the battleship’s library,” Maltby said, “looking up Earth’s version of the massacre of the robots, which took place fifteen thousand years ago. Their explanation was that it was a brief revival in the mass of the people, of old-time race prejudices which as you know, were rooted in fear of the alien and, of course, in pure elemental antipathy. The Dellian was such a superbly handsome being, and with his curious physical and mental powers seemed to be superior to naturally born men that, in one jump, the fear became a panicky hate, and the lynchings began.”

  “What about the non-Dellian?” the officer asked, “who made possible the escape, and yet about whom so little is known?”

  Maltby laughed grimly. “That is the cream of the jest. Listen—”

  When he had finished his explanation, the officer said blankly, “And do the people of the Star Cluster know this?”

  “I told them,” Maltby said. “They were intending to make the announcement just before the ship went back to Earth.”

  There was silence. Finally the Dellian said, “What do you think of this business of Mixed Men seizing our government and organizing for war?”

  “I’m undecided.”

  “Like the rest of us.”

  “What troubles me,” said Maltby, “is that there are bound to be other Earth battleships arriving, and some of them at least will not be captured by trickery.”

  “Yes,” said the Dellian, “we’ve thought of that.”

  The silence settled, and lasted longer this time before

  Maltby brought out his request. “Is there any way that I can get to Cassidor?”

  The Dellian stood with closed eyes, hesitating. At last he sighed. “There’s a ship leaving in two hours. I doubt if Captain Terda Laird will object to your presence aboard. If you will follow me, captain.”

  Maltby went through the gate, and into the shadows of the great hangars beyond. There was an odd relaxedness inside him, and he was in space before he realized what it meant. His taut feeling of being alone in a universe of aliens was gone.

  Chapter

  Nineteen

  THE darkness beyond the port-holes was soothing to his creative brain. He sat staring into the black ink with its glinting brightnesses that were stars; and felt a oneness. Nostalgic memory came of all the hours he had spent like this when he was a meteorologist in the Fifty Suns navy. Then he had thought himself friendless, cut off from these Dellian and non-Dellian robots by an unbridgeable suspicion.

  The truth, perhaps, was that he had grown so aloof that no one had dared to try to close the gap. Now, he knew the suspicion had long dimmed almost to vanishing. Somehow that made the whole Fifty Suns problem his again. He thought; a different approach to the rescue of Gloria was in order. A few hours before the landing, he sent his card to Captain Laird and asked for an interview.

  The commanding officer was a non-Dellian, lean and gray and dignified. And he agreed to every word, every detail of Maltby’s plan.

  “This whole matter,” he said, “was threshed out weeks ago, shortly after the Mixed Men seized power. In estimating the total number of a warcraft available to Imperial Earth, we arrived at a figure that was almost meaningless, it was so large.

  “It wouldn’t be surprising,” the officer continued earnestly, “if Earth could detach a warship for every man, woman and child in the Fifty Suns, and not perceptibly weaken the defenses of the main galaxy. We of the navy have been waiting anxiously for Hunston to make a statement either privately or publicly about that. His failure to do so is alarming, particularly as there is some logic

  in the argument that the first penetration of a new star system like our Greater Magellanic Cloud, would be undertaken on the orders of the central executive.” “It’s an Imperial mission,” said Maltby, “working on a directive from the Emperor’s council.”

  “Madness!” the Captain muttered. “Our new leaders are madmen.” He straightened, shaking his head, as if to clear it of darkness and confusion. He continued in a resonant voice, “Captain Maltby, I think I can guarantee you the full support of the navy in your effort to rescue your wife if . . . if she is still alive.”

  As he fell through the darkness an hour later, down and down and down, Maltby forced the warming effects of that promise to dim the grim import of the final words. Once, his old sardonicism surged like a stirred fire; and he thought ironically; almost incredible that only a few months had passed since circumstances had made it necessary for Lieutenant Neslor, the Star Cluster’s psychologist, to force on him an intense emotional attachment for Gloria. The attachment, which, ever since, had been the ruling passion of his life.

  She, on the other hand, had fallen in love with him naturally. Which was one of the reasons why their relationship was so precious to him.

  The planet below was brighter, larger. A crescent sitting comfortably in space, its dark side sparkling with the silver flashing lights of tens of thousands of towns and cities. That was where he headed, toward the twinkling dark side. He landed in a grove of trees, and he was burying his spacesuit beside a carefully marked tree, when the total blackness struck him.

  Maltby felt himself falling over. He hit the ground with a sharp impact, distinctly aware of his consciousness fading out of his mind.

  He woke up, amazed; and looked around him. It was still dark. Two of the three moons of Cassidor were well above the horizon, and they hadn’t even been in sight when he landed. Their light shed vaguely over the small glade.

  It was the same grove of trees. He moved his hands— and they moved; they were not tied. He sat up, then stood up. He was alone.

  There was not a sound, except the faint whispering of wind through the trees. He stood, eyes narrowed, suspicious; then, slowly, he relaxed. He had heard, he remembered suddenly, of unconsciousness like this overwhelming non-Dellians after a long fall through space. Dellians were not affected; and until this instant he had thought Mixed Men were also immune. They weren’t. There was no doubt about that. He shrugged, and forgot it. It took about ten minutes to walk to the nearest air stop. Ten minutes later he was in an air center. He knew his way now. He paused in one of the forty entrances and probing briefly with his two minds, satisfied himself that there were no Mixed Men among the masses of people surging toward the various escalators. It was a tiny satisfaction at best. Tiny because he had known Hunston couldn’t possibly spare the men for complicated patrol duty. The leader of the Mixed Men could talk as glibly as he pleased about his armies. But Maltby smiled darkly—there was no such force.

  The coup d’état that had won Hu
nston control of the Fifty Suns was a far bolder, more risky accomplishment than was readily apparent. It must have been undertaken with less than a hundred thousand men—and the danger to Peter Maltby would be at the point of disembarkation at the mighty city of Della, Capital of the Fifty Suns.

  He had just bought his ticket and was striding toward a fourth level escalator when the woman touched his arm. In a single flash, Maltby had her mind, then as swiftly he relaxed. He found himself staring at Lieutenant Neslor, chief psychologist of the Star Cluster.

  Maltby set down his cup and stared unsmilingly across the table at the woman psychologist.

  “Frankly,” he said, “I am not interested in any plan you may have for recapturing the ship. I am in a position where I cannot conscientiously take sides on the larger measures.” He paused and studied her curiously, but without any real thought. The emotional life of the middle-aged woman had puzzled him at times. In the past he had wondered if she had used the machines in her laboratories to condition herself against all human feeling. The memory of that thought touched his brain as he sat there. The memory faded. It was information he wanted, not addenda on her character. He said, more coldly, “To my mind, you are responsible for the ignominious capture of the Star Cluster, first because it was you, in your scientific wisdom, who had me, a protective force, put off the ship; second, because it was your duty to explore the minds of those who were permitted aboard. I still can’t understand how you could have failed.”

  The woman was silent. Thin and graying at the temples, handsome in a mature fashion, she sat sipping her drink. She met his gaze finally, and said, “I am not going to offer any explanations. Defeat speaks for itself.” She broke off, flashed, “You think our noble lady will fall into your arms with gratitude when you rescue her. You forget that she has been conditioned out of love with you, and that only her ship matters to her.”