The engineer shrugged. "Damn if I know. But I would expect a Kandemirian to do a better job of adjustment on his own machines. Mainly, though, I'd like to forestall any notion you guys may have gotten about heading straight for Kandemir and doing a kamikaze dive onto their main city."
"They don't have a main city." Bowman giggled again.
Goldspring glanced about. "I've just spotted several more objects approaching," he said. "They're still at the limits of detection, so I can't positively identify their type. But what else would they be except missiles?"
Donnan nodded. "The whole Solar System must be lousy with missiles in orbit."
"We cannot linger here, then," Ramri said. "To a certain extent, only a fortunate concatenation of initial vectors allowed us to stand off the first three, poorly self-guided though they were. The second attack, or the third, will surely destroy us." He considered the instrument readings. "However, we should certainly be able to reach the nearest interference fringe ahead of that flock. Once we go super-light, we will be safe."
From everything except ourselves, Donnan thought.
"Get going, then," Strathey rapped.
Ramri busied himself with computation and thereafter with piloting. The humans eased a trifle, lit cigarets, worked arms and legs to get some of the tension out. They were all shockingly haggard, Donnan observed; he wondered if he looked as corpse-like. But they were able to talk rationally.
"Did Kunz find what happened to our artificial Earth satellites?" he asked. "The observatories and moon relays and so on?"
"Gone," Strathey said. He gagged. "Also the Moon bases. A new crater where each base had been."
"Yeh, I reckon we had to expect that." Donnan sighed. McGee, assistant powerman at U.S.A.-Tycho, had been a particular friend of his. He remembered one evening when they got drunk and composed The Ballad of Superintendent Ball, whose scurrilous verses were presently being sung throughout the space service. And now McGee and Ball were both dead, and Donnan was signed on the Flying Dutchman. Well-a-day.
"Kunz and I tried to detect any trace of life," Goldspring said. "Not human . . . no such hope . . . but a ship or a base or anything of the enemy's—" His words faded out.
"No luck, eh? Wouldn't've expected it, myself," Donnan said. "Whoever murdered Earth had no reason to hang around. He'll let his missiles destroy anyone who comes snooping. Later on, at his leisure, he can come back here himself and do whatever he figures on."
Ramri turned around long enough to say harshly, "He would not wish his identity known. I tell you, no one has committed such an atrocity before. The whole galaxy will rise to crush Kandemir."
"If Kandemir is guilty," Donnan said. His shoulders slumped. "Anyhow, the whole galaxy will do no such thing. The whole galaxy will never hear about this incident. A few dozen planets in our local spiral arm may be shocked—but I wonder if they'll take action. What's Earth to them?"
"If nothing else," Ramri said, "they will wish to prevent any such thing being done to their own selves."
"How was it done, do you think?" Bowman asked wearily.
"Several multi-gigaton disruption bombs, fired simultaneously, would serve." Ramri's tone was the bleakest sound Donnan had ever heard. "The operation would require a small task force—each bomb is the size of a respectable asteroid—but still, the undertaking was not too big to be clandestine. The energy of the bombs would be released primarily as shock waves in crust and mantle, which in turn would become heat. There would be little residual radioactivity. . . . No, I beg you, I cannot talk further of this at present." As he faced back to the pilot board, he began keening, very low.
After a while Captain Strathey said, "We had better proceed to some habitable planet of a nearby star, such as Tau Ceti II. Any other surviving ships can join us there."
"How'd they know where to look?" Donnan asked. "There are hundreds of possibilities within easy range. And besides, for all they know, we'll've hightailed it to the opposite end of the galaxy."
"True. I thought at first we could pick some definite star to go to and place a radio transmitter, broadcasting a recording of our whereabouts, in orbit around Earth. Now that's obviously ruled out. Even if we could stop to make such a satellite, the missiles would destroy it."
"They'll also endanger any ship which returns here," Goldspring pointed out. "Our escape was indeed partly luck. The next people might not be so fortunate. We've got to do more than get word to the others where to find us. We've got to warn them not to return to the Solar System in the first place."
"Are there any others?" Bowman cried. "Maybe they've all come back and been wiped out. Maybe we're the last humans alive—" He clamped his jaws. His fingers twisted together.
"Maybe," said Donnan. "However, don't forget that several expeditions were a-planning at the time we left. We and the Russians had completed our big ships first, but China and the British Commonwealth had almost finished theirs and the Europeans expected to do so within another year. Of course, we don't know where any of 'em went. The Russkies and Chinese wouldn't say a meaningful word; the British and Europeans still hadn't made up their minds; and then some other countries like India might have gone ahead and started spacing too, that weren't figuring on it three years back. Sure, perhaps everybody else made short hops and got home before us and died with Earth. But I sort of doubt that. Humans had already visited a good deal of the local territory, as passengers on other planets' ships. There'd be small glory in repeating such a trip. Better go someplace new."
Like us, he thought, running headlong toward Sagittarius and the star clouds at galactic center. Doubtless we weren't the first. Among the millions of spacefaring races, we can't have been the first to look at the galaxy's heart, and curve up to look at the entire beautiful sight, and gather enough data to keep our scientists happy for the next hundred years. But none of our neighbor peoples had done so, even though they had spaceships before we did. They aren't that kind. They accepted space travel when it came to them, and traded and discovered and had adventures, and in the course of time they'd have gotten around to stunts like ours. But man had to go look first of all for God. And fail, naturally. Man is a nut from way back. The galaxy will miss a lot of fun, now he's gone.
He is not. I say he is not.
"Assume other Terrestrial ships are kicking around, then," Goldspring said with a humorless chuckle. "Assume, even, that they come home like us and escape again like us. Have we any idea where they will go?"
"Local, habitable planets," Strathey said. "That makes sense."
"Uh-uh." Donnan shook his head. "How do you know the enemy isn't there too? Or, at least, won't come hunting there for just such remnants as us?"
The idea rammed home and they stared at each other. Donnan went on: "Anyhow, we know already, from information given us by nonhumans and from expeditions of our own on chartered foreign ships . . . we know that the nearest terrestroid planets are pretty miserable places. At best you'll find yourself in a jungle, with gibbering stone-age natives for company. We aren't set up for that. Three hundred men would be so busy surviving they wouldn't have time to think."
"What do you propose instead?" None thought it strange that Strathey should ask the question.
"Well, I'd say go beyond this immediate vicinity, on to someplace civilized. Someplace with decent climate. Most especially, someplace where facilities are available. Why be second-rate Robinson Crusoes when we are first-rate technicians . . . and can get good jobs on the strength of that? Also, well be in a better position to hear any news of other ships like ours."
"Y-yes. Quite correct. I do think we should stop at Tau Ceti, perhaps one or two other local stars, and leave radio satellites. I admit the sheer number of such stars makes it improbable that any other survivors will come upon our message, but the time and effort we lose making the attempt will not be great. Thereafter, though . . . yes, I agree. One of the clusters of civilization, where numerous planets practice space travel."
"Which one?" Golds
pring asked. "I've seen the estimate that there are a million such in the entire galaxy."
"Our own, of course," Ramri said over his shoulder. "The cluster of Monwaing and its colonies, Vorlak, Yann, Xo—"
"And Kandemir and its empire," Strathey reminded.
"Not to Kandemir, certainly," Ramri said. "But you must go to a Monwaingi world. Where else? You will be made welcome in any of our cultures. My own Tanthai on Katkinu in particular—but Monwaing itself would also—"
"No," Bowman interrupted.
"What?" Ramri blinked at him. The throat pouch quivered.
"No," repeated Bowman. "Not Monwaing or its colonies. Not till we know Monwaing isn't the one that destroyed Earth!"
III
The horror of the human condition—any human condition—is that one soon grows used to it.
—Sanders
Tau Ceti II was no place for a stroll. Safe enough, but there was nothing to see except a few thornplants straggling across rusty dunes, under a glaring reddish sun. The air was hot and dry and so charged with carbon dioxide that it felt perpetually stuffy. This was in the subarctic Camp Jeffers region, of course, explored by Australians in a chartered Vorlakka ship ten years ago. The rest of the planet was worse.
Nevertheless, after forty-eight hours in camp, Donnan had to get away or go crazy. He and Arnold Goldspring loaded their packboards and started off. No use asking the captain's permission. Strathey was disintegrating as fast as his crew, and it was becoming a rabble.
"Makes no sense to land in the first place," Donnan had grumbled. "They talk about a rest after being cooped in the ship. Hell, they'll be more cooped in a bunch of tents down there, and a lot less comfortable. All we want to do is make an orbital satellite and leave a radio note in it . . . once we've decided where we want to go from here."
"I said as much to the crew's committee," the captain answered. He wouldn't meet the engineer's eyes. "They insisted. I can't risk mutiny."
"Huh? You're the skipper, aren't you?"
"I'm a Navy man, Mr. Donnan. The personnel aboard are seventy-five percent civilians."
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"That's enough!" Strathey said, raw-voiced. "Get out of here."
Donnan got. But from then on he carried his gun in a shoulder holster beneath his coverall.
Endless, hysterical debate reached no decision on what to say in the recording. Should the Franklin find some primitive world, a safe hiding place . . . safe, also, from discovery by any other humans that might still be alive and looking for their kindred? Go to a planet in this nucleus of civilization? If so, which planet—when any might be the secret enemy? (Ramri now had two marines as a permanent guard. They had already had to discourage a few men who said no filthy alien was fit to live. But they were his jailers as well; everyone understood that, even if no one came right out and said so.) Or ought the Franklin to go across thousands of light-years to an altogether different group of spacefaring peoples? That wouldn't be too long a trip for her. But the sheer number of such clusters and the thinness of contact between them would make it unlikely that other humans searching at random would ever come upon word of the Americans.
As the shrillness mounted, Donnan finally said to hell with it and left camp.
Goldspring would once have been a cheerful companion. He had been, throughout the past three years, on scores of worlds. (Including a certain uncharted one, lonely and beautiful, almost another Earth, which they had excitedly discussed as a future colony. But that was before they came home.) Now he was sunk in moodiness. He spent his abundant free time among books and papers, making esoteric calculations. The work was an escape for him, Donnan knew; the Goldsprings had been a close-knit family. But when he began shaking so badly that he spilled half his food at mess, Donnan decided something else was indicated. He persuaded Goldspring to come along on the hike.
Eventually, one night under two hurtling moons, Goldspring cracked open. What he said was mostly reminiscence, and no one else's business. Donnan helped him through the spell as best he could. Thereafter Goldspring felt better. They started walking back.
It was good to have someone to talk with again. "What's this project of yours, Arn?" Donnan asked conversationally. "All the figuring you've been doing?"
"A theoretical notion." Like most of the ship's personnel, Goldspring was a scientist rather than a career spaceman. His specialty was field physics, and his doubling in brass as detector officer was incidental.
He tilted back his hat to mop his forehead. The nearby sun glowered on them, two specks in a rolling red immensity. Puffs of dust marked every step they made. The air shimmered. Nothing else moved.
"Yeh?" Donnan hitched his pack to a more comfortable position. "Can you put it in words a plain M.E. can understand?"
"I don't know. How familiar are you, really, with the concept the superlight drive is based on? The mathematical depiction of space as having a structure equivalent to a set of standing waves in an n-dimensional continuum."
"Well, I've read some of the popular accounts. Let's see if I remember. Where these waves interfere, you can slip from one to another. Out between the stars, where there isn't much gravitational distortion, the interference fringes come so close together that instead of taking the entire straight-line distance, as light does, you can skip most of it. The whole business is the other side of the galactic-recession phenomenon. Galaxies recede from each other because space is generated between them. A ship in super-light brings the stars closer, in effect, by using those zones where space is being cancelled out. Have I got it straight?"
Goldspring winced. "Never mind. I'm sorry I asked." For a time there was only the scrunch of their boots in sand. Then he shrugged. "Let's just say the possibility occurred to me of inverting the effect. Instead of passing a material object through the fringes, keep the object still and make it generate fringes artificially. Oh, not on anything like the cosmic scale. We haven't the mass or energy to affect more than a few thousand kilometers of radius. However, the result should be measurable. So far, developing the idea, I haven't seen any holes in my reasoning. I'd like to make an experimental test as soon as possible."
"Don't bother," Donnan said. "Look up the results in some scientific journal. Surely, in the thousands of years that there's been space travel, somebody else thought of this."
"No doubt," said Goldspring. "But not any local scientists. And by local I don't mean just this immediate civilization cluster, but everything within ten thousand light-years. I've studied a lot of nonhuman texts, both in translation and—in Tantha and Uru, anyhow—in the original. M.I.T. had quite a file of such books and journals. Nowhere have I seen mention of any such phenomenon.
"Besides," he added, "the applications would be so revolutionary that if the effect were known (assuming it really exists, of course!), we'd be using a lot different machines for a lot different purposes."
"Whoa! Wait a minute," Donnan objected. "That doesn't make sense. The Monwaingi discovered Earth only twenty years ago. Three years back, the first Earth-built spaceships were finally completed. Monwaing itself was discovered something like a hundred and fifty years ago. And the ships that started up modern civilization there were from a planet that'd been exploring space for God knows how many centuries. D'you mean to tell me a bunch of newcomers like us can show the galaxy something it hasn't known since our ancestors were hunting mammoths?"
"I do," said Goldspring. "Don't confuse science with technology. Most intelligent species that man's encountered to date don't think along identical lines with man. Why should they? Different biology, different home environment, different culture and history. Look what happened on Earth whenever two societies met. The more backward one would try to modernize, but it never quite became a carbon copy of the other. Compare the different versions of Christianity that evolved as Christianity spread through Europe; think of the ingenious new wrinkles in science and industry that the Japanese developed after they decided to industri
alize. And that involved strictly human beings. The tendency toward parallel development is still weaker between wholly distinct species. Do you think we could ever . . . could ever have borrowed the Monwaingi concept of the nation as a mere framework for radically different civilizations to grow in? Or that we'd ever have had any reason, economic or otherwise, to develop pure biotechnics as far as them?"
"Okay, Arn, okay. But still—"
"No, let me finish. On Earth we seemed rather slow to assimilate the technology of galactic civilization. That's highly understandable. We had to find ways of attracting outworld traders, develop stuff they wanted, so that we in exchange could buy books and machines, get scholarships for our bright young men, rent spaceships for our own initial ventures. Our being divided into rival nations didn't help us, either. And the sheer job of tooling up required time. I'll give you an analogy. Suppose some imaginary time traveler from around the year you were born had gone back to . . . oh, say 1930 . . . and told the General Electric researchers of that time about transistors. It'd have taken those boys years to develop the necessary auxiliary machines, and develop the necessary skills, to use the information. They'd have to make up a quarter century of progress in a dozen allied arts. And—there wouldn't have been any initial demand for transistors. No apparatus in use in 1930 demanded such miniature electronic valves. The very need—the market—would have had to be slowly created."
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