Cities in Flight

by James Blish

He stared up at the exploded scar on the side of the building, outlined in orange heat swiftly dimming. He felt a little sick.

  “TDX again,” he said softly. “Consistent to the last, the poor sick idiots.”

  “Mr. Mayor?”

  “Here.”

  “This is the proxy room. There’s a regular stampede going on in the jungle. The cities are streaming away from the red star as fast as they can tune up. No discernible order—just a mob, and a panicky mob, too. No signs of anything being done for the wounded cities; and it looks to me like they’re just being left for Lerner to break up as soon as he gets up enough courage.”

  Amalfi nodded to himself. “All right, O’Brian, launch the big drone now. I want that drone to go with those cities and stick with them all the way. Pilot it personally; it’s highly detectable, and there’ll probably be several attempts to destroy it, so be ready to dodge.”

  “I will, sir. Mr. Hazleton just launched her a moment ago; I’m giving her the gun right now.”

  For some reason this did not improve Amalfi’s temper in the least.

  The Okies set to work rapidly, dismounting the dead city’s spin-dizzies from their bases and shipping them into storage on board their own city. The one which had been overdriven in that last futile defense had to be left behind, of course; like the Twenty-third Street machine, it was hot and could not be approached, except by a graving dock. The rest went over as whole units. Hazleton looked more and more puzzled as the big machines came aboard, but he seemed resolved to ask no questions.

  Carrel, however, suffered under no such self-imposed restraints. “What are we going to do with all these dismounted drivers?” he said. All three men stood in a sally port at the perimeter of their city, watching the ungainly bulks being floated across.

  “We’re going to fly another planet,” Hazleton said flatly.

  “You bet we are,” Amalfi agreed. “And pray to your star gods that we’re in time, Mark.”

  Hazleton didn’t answer.

  Carrel said, “In time for what?”

  “That I won’t say until I have it right under my nose on a screen. It’s a hunch, and I think it’s a good one. In the meantime, take my word for it that we’re in a hurry, like we’ve never been in a hurry before. What’s the word on that mass chromatography apparatus, Hazleton?”

  “It’s a reverse-English on the zone-melting process for refining germanium, boss. You take a big column of metal—which metal doesn’t matter, as long as it’s pure—and contaminate one end of it with the stuff you want to separate out. Then you run a disc-shaped electric field up the column from the contaminated end, and the contaminants are carried along by resistance heating and separate out at various points along the bar. To get pure fractions, you cut the bar apart with a power saw.”

  “But does it work?”

  “Nah,” Hazleton said. “It’s just what we’ve seen a thousand times before. Looks good in theory, but not even the guys who owned this city could make it go.”

  “Another Lyran invisibility machine—or no-fuel drive,” the mayor said, nodding. “Too bad; a process like that would be useful. Is the equipment massive?”

  “Enormous. The area it occupies is twelve city blocks on a side.”

  “Leave it there,” Amalfi decided at once. “Obviously this outfit was bragging from desperation when it offered the technique for the Acolyte woman’s job. If she’d taken them up on it, they wouldn’t have been able to deliver—and I don’t care to lead us into any such temptation.”

  “In this case the knowledge is as good as the equipment,” Hazleton said. “Their City Fathers will have all the information we could possibly worry out of the apparatus itself.”

  “Would somebody give me the pitch on this exodus of cities from the jungle?” Carrel put in. “I wasn’t along on your trip to the King’s city, and I still think the whole idea of a March on Earth is crazy.”

  Amalfi remained silent. After a moment, Hazleton said, “It is and it isn’t. The jungle doesn’t dare stand up to a real Earth force and slug it out, and everybody knows now that there’s an Earth force on its way here. The cities want to be somewhere else in a hurry. But they still have some hope of getting Earth protection from the Acolyte cops and similar local organizations if they can put their case before the authorities outside of a trouble area.”

  “That,” Carrel said, “is just what I don’t see. What hope do they have of getting a fair shuffle? And why don’t they just contact Earth on the Dirac, as Lerner did, instead of making this long trip? It’s sixty-three hundred or so light years from here to Earth, and they aren’t organized well enough to make such a long haul without a lot of hardship.”

  “And they’ll do all their talking with Earth over the Dirac even after they get there,” Amalfi added. “Partly, of course, this march is sheer theatricalism. The King hopes that such a big display of cities will make an impression on the people he’ll be talking to. Don’t forget that Earth is a quiet, rather idyllic world these days—a skyful of ragged cities will create a lot of alarm there.

  “As for getting a square shuffle: the King is relying on a tradition of at least moderately fair dealing that goes back many centuries. Don’t forget, Carrel, that for the last thousand years the Okie cities have been the major unifying force in our entire galactic culture.”

  “That’s news to me,” Carrel said, a little dubiously.

  “But it’s quite true. Do you know what a bee is? Well, it’s a little Earth insect that sucks nectar from flowers. While it’s about it, it picks up pollen and carries it about; it’s a prime factor in cross-fertilization of plants. Most habitable planets have similar insects. The bee doesn’t know that he’s essential to the ecology of his world—all he’s out to do is collect as much honey as he can—but that doesn’t make him any less essential.

  “The cities have been like the bee for a long time. The governments of the advanced planets, Earth in particular, know it, even if the cities generally don’t. The planets distrust the cities, but they also know that they’re vital and must be protected. The planets are tough on bindlestiffs for the same reason. The bindlestiffs are diseased bees; the taint that they carry gets fastened upon innocent cities, cities that are needed to keep new techniques and other essential information on the move from planet to planet. Obviously, cities and planets alike have to protect themselves from criminal outfits, but there’s the culture as a whole to be considered, as well as the safety of an individual unit; and to maintain that culture, the free passage of legitimate Okies throughout the galaxy has to be maintained.”

  “The King knows this?” Carrel said.

  “Of course he does. He’s eight hundred years old; how could he help but know it? He wouldn’t put it like this, but all the same, it’s the essence of what he’s depending upon to carry through his March on Earth.”

  “It still sounds risky to me,” Carrel said dubiously. “We’ve all been conditioned almost from birth to distrust Earth, and Earth cops especially—”

  “Only because the cops distrust us. That means that the cops are conditioned to be strict with cities about the smallest violations; so, since small violations of local laws are inevitable in a nomadic life, it’s smart for an Okie to steer clear of cops. But for all the real hatred that exists between Okies and cops, we’re both on the same side. We always have been.”

  On the underside of the city, just within the cone of vision of the three men, the big doors to the main hold swung slowly shut.

  “That’s the last one,” Hazleton said. “Now I suppose we go back to where we left the all-purpose city we stole from Murphy, and relieve it of its drivers, too.”

  “Yes, we do,” Amalfi said. “And after that, Mark, we go on to Hern Six. Carrel, ready a couple of small fission bombs for the Acolyte garrison there—it can’t be large enough to make us much trouble, but we’ve no time left to play patty-cake.”

  “Is Hern Six the planet we’re going to fly?” Carrel said.

&n
bsp; “It has to be,” Amalfi said, with a trace of impatience. “It’s the only one available. Furthermore, this time we’re going to have to control the flight, not just let the planet scoot off anywhere its natural converted rotation wants it to go. Being carried clean out of the galaxy once is once too often for me.”

  “Then I’d better put a crack team to work on the control problem with the City Fathers,” Hazleton said. “Since we didn’t have them to consult with on He, we’ll have to screen every scrap of pertinent information they have in stock. No wonder you’ve been so hot on this project for corralling knowledge from other cities. I only wish we could have gotten started on integrating it sooner.”

  “I haven’t had this in mind quite that long,” Amalfi said. “But, believe me, I’m not sorry now that it turned out this way.”

  Carrel said, “Where are we going?”

  Amalfi turned away toward the airlock. He had heard the question before, from Dee, but this was the first time that he had had an answer.

  “Home,” he said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Hern VI

  MOUNTING Hern VI—as desolate and damned a slab of rock as Amalfi had ever set down upon—for guided spindizzy flight was incredibly tedious work. Drivers had to be spotted accurately at every major compass point, and locked solidly to the center of gravity of the planetoid; and then each and every machine had to be tuned and put into balance with every other. And there were not enough spindizzies to set up a drive for the planet as a whole which would be fully dirigible when the day of flight came. The flight of Hern VI, when all the work was finally done, promised to be giddy and erratic.

  But at least it would go approximately where the master space stick directed it to go. That much responsiveness, Amalfi thought, was all that was really necessary—or all that he hoped would be necessary.

  Periodically, O’Brian, the proxy pilot, reported on the progress of the March on Earth. The mob had lost quite a few stragglers along the way as it passed attractive-looking systems where work might be found, but the main body was still streaming doggedly toward the mother planet. Though the outsize drone was as obvious a body as a minor moon, so far not a single Okie had taken a pot shot at it. O’Brian had kept it darting through and about the marchers in a double-sine curve in three dimensions, at its top speed and with progressive modulations of the orbit. If the partial traces which it made on any individual city’s radar screen were not mistaken for meteor tracks, predicting its course closely enough to lay a gun on it would keep any ordinary computer occupied full time.

  It was a superb job of piloting. Amalfi made a mental note to see to it that the task of piloting the city itself was split off from the city manager’s job when Hazleton stepped down. Carrel was not a born pilot, and O’Brian was obviously the man Carrel would need.

  At the beginning of the Hern VI conversion, the City Fathers had placed E-Day—the day of arrival of the marchers within optical telescope distance of Earth—at one hundred fifty-five years, four months, twenty days. Each report which came in from the big drone’s pilot cut this co-ordinate-set back toward the flying present as the migrating jungle lost its laggards and became more and more compact, more and more able to put on speed as a unit. Amalfi consumed cigars faster and drove his men and machines harder every time the new computation was delivered to his desk.

  But a full year had gone by since installation had started on Hern VI before O’Brian sent up the report he had been dreading and yet counting upon to arrive sooner or later.

  “The march has lost two more cities to greener pastures, Mr. Amalfi,” the proxy pilot said. “But that’s routine. We’ve gained a city, too.”

  “Gained one?” Amalfi said tensely. “Where’d it come from?”

  “I don’t know. The course I’ve got the drone on doesn’t allow me to look in any one direction more than about twenty-five seconds at a time. I have to take a census every time I pass her through the pack. The last time I went around, there was this outfit on the screen, just as if it had been there all the time. But that isn’t all. It’s the damnedest looking city I’ve ever seen, and I can’t find anything like it in the files, either.”

  “Describe it.”

  “For one thing, it’s enormous. I’m not going to have to worry about anybody spotting my drone for a while. This outfit must have every detector in the jungle screaming blue bloody murder. Besides, it’s closed up.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “It’s got a smooth hull all around, Mr. Mayor. It isn’t the usual platform with buildings on it and a spindizzy screen around both. It’s more like a proper spaceship, except for its size.”

  “Any communication between it and the pack?”

  “About what you’d expect. Wants to join the march; the King gave it the okay. I think he was pleased; it’s the very first answer he’s had to his call for a general mobilization of Okies, and this one really looks like a top-notch city. It calls itself Lincoln-Nevada.”

  “It would,” Amalfi said grimly. He mopped his face. “Give me a look at it, O’Brian.”

  The screen lit up. Amalfi mopped his face again.

  “All right. Back your drone off a good distance from the march and keep that thing in sight from now on. Get ‘Lincoln-Nevada’ between you and the pack. It won’t shoot at your drone; it doesn’t know it doesn’t belong there.”

  Without waiting for O’Brian’s acknowledgment, Amalfi switched over to the City Fathers. “How much longer is this job going to take?” he demanded.

  “ANOTHER SIX YEARS, MR. MAYOR.”

  “Cut it to four at a minimum. And give me a course from here to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, one that crosses Earth’s orbit.”

  “MR. MAYOR, THE LESSER MAGELLANIC CLOUD IS TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY THOUSAND LIGHT YEARS AWAY FROM THE ACOLYTE CLUSTER!”

  “Thank you,” Amalfi said sardonically. “I have no intention of going there, I assure you. All I want is a course with those three points on it.”

  “VERY WELL. COMPUTED.”

  “When would we have to spin, to cross Earth’s orbit on E-Day?”

  “FROM FIVE SECONDS TO FIFTEEN DAYS FROM TODAY, FIGURING FROM THE CENTER OF THE CLOUD TO EITHER EDGE.”

  “No good. We can’t start within those limits. Give me a perfectly flat trajectory from here to there.”

  “THAT ARC INVOLVES NINE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-EIGHT DIRECT COLLISIONS AND FOUR HUNDRED ELEVEN THOUSAND AND TWO GRAZES AND NEAR-MISSES.”

  “Use it.”

  The City Fathers were silent. Amalfi wondered if it were possible for machinery to be stunned. He knew that the City Fathers would never use the crow-flight arc, since it conflicted with their most ineluctable basic directive: Preserve the city first. This was all right with the mayor. He had given that instruction with an eye to the tempo of building on Hern VI; he had a strong hunch that it would go considerably faster after that stunner.

  And as a matter of fact, it was just fourteen months later when Amalfi’s hand closed on the master space stick for Hern VI, and he said:

  “Spin!”

  The career of Hem VI from its native Acolyte cluster across the center of the galaxy made history—particularly in the field of instrumentation. Hern VI was a tiny world, considerably smaller than Mercury, but nevertheless it was the most monstrous mass ever kicked past the speed of light within the limits of the inhabited galaxy. Except for the planet of He, which had left the galaxy from its periphery and was now well on its way toward Messier 31 in Andromeda, no such body had ever before been flown under spindizzy or any other drive. Its passage left permanent scars in the recording banks of every detecting instrument within range, and the memories of it graven into the brains of sentient observers were no less drastic.

  Theoretically, Hern VI was following the long arc laid out for it by Amalfi’s City Fathers, an arc leading from the fringe of the Acolyte cluster all the way across the face of the galaxy to the center of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. (Its mass center, of course; both clou
ds had emerged too recently from the galaxy as a whole to have developed the definite orbital dead centers characteristic of “spiral” nebulae.) The mean motion of the flying planet followed that arc scrupulously.

  But at the speed at which Hern VI was traveling—a velocity which could not be expressed comfortably even in multiples of C, the old arbitrary velocity of light—the slightest variation from that orbit became a careening side jaunt of horrifying proportions before even the micro-second reactions of the City Fathers could effect the proper corrections.

  Like other starmen, Amalfi was accustomed enough to traveling at transphotic speeds—in space, a medium ordinarily without enough landmarks to make real velocity very apparent. And, like all Okies, he had traveled on planets in creeping ground vehicles which seemed to be making dangerous speed simply because there were so many nearby reference points to make that speed seem great. Now he was finding out what it was like to move among the stars at a comparable velocity.

  For at the velocity of Hern VI, the stars became almost as closely spaced as the girders beside a subway track—with the added hazard that the track frequently swerved enough to place two or three girders in a row between the rails. More than once Amalfi stood frozen on the balcony in the belfry of City Hall, watching a star that had been invisible half a second before cannoning directly at his head, swelling to fill the whole sky with glare—

  Blackness.

  Amalfi felt irrationally that there should have been an audible whoosh as Hern VI passed that star. His face still tingled with the single blast of its radiation which had bathed him, despite the planet’s hard-driven and nearly cross-polarized spindizzy screen, at that momentary perihelion.

  There was nothing the matter, of course, with the orbit corrections of the City Fathers. The difficulty was simply that Hern VI was not a responsive enough space craft to benefit by really quick orbital corrections. It took long seconds for the City Fathers’ orders to be translated into enough vector thrust to affect the flight of the dead planet over parsecs of its shambling, paretic stride. And there was another, major reason: when all of Hern VI’s axial rotation had been converted to orbital motion, all of a considerable axial liberation had also been converted, and there was nothing that could be done about the kinks this put in the planet’s course.