Swift as a bird for all its colossal weight, the space liner hurtled far above the master city of the world, the gravity nullifiers operating perfectly to counteract the tremendous drag of the acceleration. Efficient though they were they could not entirely negate that sense of smothering pressures which remained until the vessel was at last clear of the Earth’s atmosphere and with every second was beginning to lose the counteracting pull of Earth’s own mass.
Rigilus sat on at the controls glancing only occasionally at his supine colleagues. Thus he remained until at last the last traces of gravitational drag had disappeared and the vessel was sweeping onwards into space following the course that the now operative electronic brain had already devised for it. Once free of the Earth’s pull, the ship continued to accelerate steadily, and this, combined with the activation of the gravity-plates under the deck, combined to give the effect of an Earth-normal gravity to the travellers.
Rigilus checked the instruments and then got up from his chair, moving thoughtfully into the centre of the control room. He stood there debating whilst his comrades released themselves from their airbeds. One by one they came across to him and there was something in their expressions that he could not quite understand, particularly in the faces of the women.
“Something is troubling you, my friends,” he remarked, towering amongst them, “unfortunately we have plenty of time in which to debate whatever it might be. Perhaps you would care to tell me?”
“That is precisely our purpose. If you will be so good as to come into the lounge, Rigilus,” one of the men responded, “we will make clear what is in our minds.”
Rigilus gave a long, searching look, then with a shrug he complied leading the way down the long corridor into the enormous lounge through the window of which the great rim of the receding Earth loomed against the black void.
With his usual majestic movements Rigilus seated himself and then raised tufted eyebrows enquiringly. Like a debating society the men and women drew up chairs and settled themselves regarding him steadily. He could not escape the certain air of accusation that hung around.
“Rigilus,” one of the men said, at length, looking at him steadily, “you know me well enough to understand that I am well entitled to speak for the others?”
“Well of course, Randos,” Rigilus responded, smiling. “You have been my first in command for long enough. What is it that you wish to tell me?”
“Just this. We have been considering among ourselves the scheme of vengeance that you insist must be inculcated into whatever generations follow us. I am speaking for everybody here when I say that we are not in agreement with your suggestion.”
“Since when,” Rigilus asked calmly, “have you taken it upon yourselves to question my edicts? I have said what must be done, Randos, and done it shall be.”
“Not in this instance. You are forgetting, Rigilus, that you are no longer master of the world and ourselves the members of your immediate clique. You are simply the commander of a space machine on a one thousand year journey. Or, to reduce things to a more common denominator, you are one of us! Ten of us are against your decision and no power that you possess can make us change it!”
“All else apart,” Rigilus said, puzzled, “I’m quite at a loss to understand why you should be willing to bow to the so-called justice of Earth people and do absolutely nothing about it. Am I to understand that you consider the sentence passed upon us was entirely justified?”
“That,” Randos replied, “is neither here nor there. For one thing we can never live to see the result of this scheme of vengeance and therefore it has little or no attraction for us. You have only one supporter in your desire for revenge, Rigilus, and that is Merva Ansof.”
Randos nodded towards her, a slim, dark, intensely sophisticated woman, one who had been Rigilus’ right hand through the latter years of his Earthly campaign. She was still only young, but as cool, efficient, and as ruthless as an electronic brain itself.
“At least,” Rigilus remarked, glancing towards her and giving a slight inclination of his head, “it is pleasant to know that I have one supporter.”
“Two against ten,” Randos pointed out. “All the rest of us here are married couples, only you and Merva Ansof are not married. Obviously if the far flung destination of the Alpha Centauri is ever to be reached we must have children, and they in turn must have their children and so on and so on generation after generation until there finally comes that generation which will end the voyage. But we none of us propose to bring into this space machine children who will be brought up on nothing else but the gospel of vengeance.
“We prefer to look upon what has happened to us as something which is entirely connected with our generation and with that, let it die. Let our children’s children find a world on which to start again and not be clouded with the knowledge that they must return across this awful waste of space to deal with the successors of those who banished us.”
Rigilus mused, his massive face thrown half into shadow by the brilliance of sunlight on one side and the pale orange glow of the ceiling lights on the other. Merva Ansof stirred very slightly, her cold green eyes surveying the rest of the assembly with a shattering contempt.
“Fools, all of you,” she said at length, in her low contralto voice. “You are content to let these idiots of Earth do what they will to us and not exact any payment for it? I would be prepared to have children—yes, by Rigilus if need be and if he were willing—and into them I would inculcate day and night by every possible human and mechanical means, the need for revenge! I would educate them upon nothing else but revenge and the scientific powers necessary to accomplish that revenge. That all of you can so lightly set aside the monstrous injustice that has been done to us is something that I cannot understand!”
“One as soulless as you never will understand,” one of the women answered quietly.
“I am not soulless,” Merva answered, coolly. “I am merely efficient. But I am the last one to attempt to judge my own character. I will leave it to you, Rigilus, to say what kind of a woman I am.”
“Hard, my dear,” Rigilus smiled. arising from his deep meditations. “Hard as a diamond, yet just as brilliant. Like you, though, I am somewhat puzzled by this humane streak which has developed in the rest of our friends. And not for one moment do I accede. I have stated what must be done and as the commander of the ship I order that there be no diversion from that instruction. You will see to it that progeny are produced and that the necessary doctrine is inoculated in them.”
“No,” Randos said, shaking his head. “We are firmly resolved on that, and any attempt on your part to force the issue, Rigilus, will make things decidedly unpleasant all round.”
Merva Ansof sprang to her feet, a tall lioness of a woman, her fists clenched at her sides. Fiercely she looked round on her colleagues, her marble-white face set with the most ferocious determination.
“Do all of you dare suggest that we crawl out into the void like spineless amoeba, without intelligence, or without the capacity to inflict reprisal upon those who have condemned us to this fate?
“Can you, as men and women of the past regime, so completely forget that Rigilus gave us all the power of the solar system and yet now, when he asks you for the means to give strength back to the future generations, you refuse to comply? You should be ashamed of yourselves, every one of you!”
Rigilus had risen too, standing beside the incensed woman. His massive hand gently touched her arm.
“This is a matter which cannot be done by compulsion,” he said, quietly, “only by co-operation. The fact remains that if no progeny are produced our plan of vengeance is useless anyway, because we shall all die in this space machine long before the journey is completed and with our dying, the tale will have been told.
“Consider it another way, my friends,” he continued, looking on the serious faces around him. “Supposing you follow out the course which you wish—supposing children are born aboard this vessel. They
are bound, in course of time, to ask many questions, many of them awkward ones, especially as to why they are living aboard a space ship when they ought to be living on the surface of a planet.”
“They will never know that they should be living on the face of a planet unless we tell them so,” Randos pointed out.
Rigilus shook his head. “You know better than that, my friend. Inherent in every human being is the instinct of where he ought to live, and if he is not in the conditions which are normal to his environment, he is bound sooner or later to wonder why, and inevitably he will ask those whom he feels do know the answer. You will be forced to the point finally of admitting that you have been banished from the world where you ought to be and I hardly think I need add what your children’s reactions will be to that.
“They will have within them, knowing you as I do, the proud arrogance of those who have been masters, and they will not be inclined to lie down to the simple truth that their parents have been banished from a planet and nothing has been done about it. It is then that you will appreciate the wisdom of my doctrine. So I beg of you to forget this sentimentality—this archaic inclination to forgive your enemies—and bring into the world future men and women who can hand on to their children the knowledge of how to hit back. We have done nothing of which we need be ashamed. If that were so I would not be so insistent on this scheme of revenge. All that we did was build up the civilisations of Earth from the lowliest beginnings to the greatest of heights. For that we have been banished to the furthest deeps of the Universe and for that we rightly demand a price. Now my friends, make your choice!”
“It is not a case of making a choice, Rigilus,” one of the men responded, pondering. “If we refuse to accede to your demand there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Even if we have children after that, your doctrines need not necessarily be inculcated into them. We can stop that if we choose.”
“How?” Merva Ansof snapped. “You seem to have overlooked the fact that Rigilus I is the commander of the vessel and still your Ruler. There is nothing that you dare do to him!”
“Why not?” Randos asked pointedly. “He is flesh and blood the same as us. There are ten of us against him so we can destroy him if we wish and if the circumstances were sufficiently serious we would do. What you do not seem to appreciate is, that now we have cut adrift from Earth and all its associations and so-called civilised fabric, we want to live like normal human beings without the need to dominate others, to have our own children, to live together and to teach those children whatever we feel they should know. We don’t want to begin on the deadly basis that only vengeance is worth having.”
Rigilus sighed heavily and turned aside. He moved slowly across to the great window and stood looking down on the receding Earth. Already it was no more than a globe as the enormous space liner fled with an apparent complete lack of movement through space. Then Merva Ansof moved also, an epitome of feline grace as she swept across the floor, pausing at length at the Ruler’s side.
“You can’t let them get away with this, Rigilus,” she murmured, quietly, “you know you can’t!”
“Ten of them against me,” he said with a brief glance. “What am I supposed to do about that? A man can only enforce his will if he has a certain amount of co-operation and a certain amount of backing. I have only got you, apparently. Two of us against ten?” He shrugged his enormous shoulders. “We have to accept circumstances sometimes, Merva.”
“I never accept circumstances.” Merva looked down on the Earth for a few moments, her green eyes seeming even greener with the emerald reflections cast back from the Mother planet. Rigilus glanced towards her. She was an extraordinarily beautiful woman—that fact he had always known—but the repellent coldness of her and the merciless logic of her mind had always turned him against her from the emotional standpoint. Otherwise he and Merva Ansof would long ago have been joined in a union of world control.
“The solution,” Merva said, presently, her voice deep and quiet, “is far more simple than you think, Rigilus. Let these fools who were once all for us have their progeny. Even let these children be educated for several years as exactly as their parents wish. Let them think that they’re getting away with it…. Whenever necessary there is nothing to stop the removal of the parents!”
Rigilus gave a start. “You cleverly avoid the use of the word ‘murder’, my dear,” he commented.
“Murder is a silly, simple word, which dates back over a centuries. In these days murder is classed as elimination and that is not a matter of the passions: it is a matter of necessity. If anybody or anything stands in the way of achieving a certain objective, destroy it! That has always been my policy, Rigilus, and it has placed me beside you and there I have remained as long as I have been mature. Even as a child I eliminated the things that annoyed me. I sometimes think I am one of the few people who are gifted with a complete lack of conscience.”
With that, using a typical feminine cunning, Merva Ansof turned and walked to another window to survey the unholy prominences of the blinding sun. She knew she had left behind a very undecided ex-ruler. She had dropped into his mind the seed that she knew must flourish. Rigilus loved power every bit as much as she did, and his desire for vengeance was something he was prepared to bring to fruition no matter what the cost. And presently he turned. Majestic as an eagle, his keen eyes peering out from under the overhanging brows.
“I am inclined to think,” he said, slowly, “that perhaps you have a better grasp of the situation than I on this occasion, Randos.”
Randos gave a start of hope and glanced quickly at the others. Immediately every face turned towards Rigilus as he came forward once again into the centre of the lounge.
“Yes,” Rigilus continued, “have your children, by all means. I give you my word that I will make no attempt to indoctrinate them, but will give you absolute freedom to do as you wish with them, until they reach the age of maturity. When, however, they have reached the time when they are capable of assessing the situation for themselves I insist that it must be put to them whether or not reprisal should be sought upon those who have driven us into outer space.
“In that way they will not be influenced by me or by you, but will make their own decision. I do not for a single moment doubt what their decision will be, because as I said earlier they will have an inherited instinct concerning the situation and the sense of domination which they will inherit from you, will I think, make them determined to hand on to their own children the doctrine of which I have spoken.... But that is in the future. For the time being continue as you will. We cannot afford in this small circle here—for although you may not have realised it yet—each one of us is bound to be with the other until the day we die—any sign of friction whatever. The more we are compelled to be in each other’s company the more necessary it is that we keep things on an even keel.”
By the window as she looked out towards the Moon, Merva Ansof smiled to herself. Rigilus I had done exactly as she had anticipated he would.
CHAPTER TWO
PLAN FOR SURVIVAL
SO began the strange odyssey of the twelve from Earth. With resistless power the space machine soon passed from the orbit of Mars, and ere long even the red planet was forgotten as the orbits of Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn, Neptune and little Pluto were all passed in turn and the vessel travelled on into the true interstellar deeps and the inconceivably distant Alpha Centauri.
These relatively small distances across the Solar System were covered in a matter of a few months. Months in which the twelve spent their time orientating themselves to the new conditions. To a certain extent this was not a particularly difficult task since life was very little different from what it had been on Earth, the ship being a complete city within itself.
The only thing which was missing and which Merva Ansof felt, perhaps more than anybody, except perhaps Rigilus—was the need to control the progress and the behaviour of the masses. Here there was nothing to do but please themselves a
nd do whatever they wished whenever they wished. Even at this point with only a few months gone by Rigilus was brought home to realising the sinister truth behind the People’s Prosecutor’s statement when he said that banishment was the worst punishment that could possibly befall a man of so dominant a personality as Rigilus.
He had become moody and restless, finding little to interest him since everything aboard the ship was more or less automatic and made no demands upon the scientific ingenuity for which he was remarkable. What particularly appalled him was the thought that the doctrine upon which heart was so set could not possibly start to even be mooted for many years yet.
Then as he was in one of these moods of black depression there drifted to his side the subtly smiling Merva Ansof. As usual she was gowned exquisitely in a sheath-like garment of vermillion red. Such was the warmth of the great lounge, her alabaster white shoulders and arms were bare and the sunlight cast through the window upon the absolute maturity of her bosom. She was a woman voluptuous to a degree, not only in the matter of sex, but in the matter of mind and the matter of power. For Merva Ansof the loss of the control of the Earthly solar system meant little: she had the sort of mind that could grasp even at universal power, and if possible gain it.
“Is something troubling you, Rigilus?” Her soft husky voice broke upon him as he gazed with troubled eyes through the great window upon the depths of space, now dusted with a host of shining stars.
1,000-Year Voyage Page 2