The Guardians

by Irving E. Cox

remotely harmful to human life. Atmosphericsamples produce the same negative results. On the other hand, we havedirect evidence that no animal life has ever evolved on Rythar; the lifecycle is exclusively botanical."

  The soil samples, Mryna realized, would be the vials of Earth which theEarth-god had requested so often. Were the Earthmen planning to movetheir hospital down to Rythar? That idea disturbed her. Mryna did notwant her garden world cluttered up with a lot of sick, old men discardedby Earth.

  She turned to the second page of the report. "The original colonysurvived for a year. The Sickness in the Old Village developed onlyafter the first harvest of Rytharian-grown food. It is more and moreevident that the botanical cycle of Rythar must be examined before wefind the answer. To do that adequately, we shall have to send surveyteams to the surface; that requires much larger appropriations forresearch than we have had in the past. The metal immunization suits,which must, of course, be destroyed after each expedition--"

  "And what, may I ask, is the meaning of this?"

  Mryna dropped the report and swung toward the door. She saw a womanstanding there--another hard-faced Earthwoman, with a starched, whitecap perched on her graying hair.

  "I must have come to the wrong room," Mryna said in a small voice.

  "Indeed! Everyone knows this is command headquarters. Who are you?" Thewoman put her hand on Mryna's arm, and the fingers bit through theuniform into Mryna's flesh.

  Mryna pulled away, drawing her shoulders back proudly. Why should shefeel afraid? She stood a head taller than this dried up stranger; sheknew the Earthwoman's strength would be no match for hers.

  "My name is Mryna Brill," she said quietly. "I came up in a god-car fromRythar."

  "Rythar?" The woman's mouth fell open. She whispered the word as if itwere profanity. Suddenly she turned and ran down the rim corridor,screaming in terror.

  _She's afraid of me_! Mryna thought. And that made no sense at all.

  Mryna knew she had to get back to the god-car quickly. Since theEarthmen had built up the taboos in order to get their sacrifice oresfrom Rythar, they would do everything they could to prevent her return.She ran toward an intersecting spoke corridor. An alarm bell began toclang, and the sound vibrated against the metal walls. An armed mansprang from a side room and fired his weapon at Mryna. The dischargeburned a deep groove in the wall.

  So they would even kill her--these men who pretended to be gods!

  Before the man could fire again, Mryna swung down a side corridor, andat once the sensation of weightlessness overtook her. She could not movequickly. She saw the armed man at the mouth of the corridor. Franticallyshe pushed open the door of a room, which was crowded with consoles oftransmission machines. Three men were seated in front of the speakers.They jumped and came toward her, clumsily fighting the weightlessness.

  Mryna caught at the door jamb and swung herself toward the ceiling. Atthe same time the armed man fired. The discharge missed her and washedagainst the transmission machinery. Blue fire exploded from the room.The three men screamed in agony. Concussion threw Mryna helplesslytoward the rim again.

  And the Guardian Wheel was plunged into darkness. Mryna's head swam; hershoulder seethed with pain where she had banged into the wall. She triedto creep toward the circular room, but she had lost her sense ofdirection and she found herself back on the rim.

  The clanging bell had stopped when the lights went out, but Mryna heardthe panic of frightened voices. Far away someone was screaming. Runningfeet clattered toward her. Mryna flattened herself against the outerwall. An indistinct body of men shot past her.

  "From Rythar," one of them was saying. "A woman from Rythar!"

  "And we've blasted the communication center. We've no way of sending thewarning back to Earth--"

  They were gone.

  Mryna moved back into the spoke corridor. She felt her way silentlytoward the circular hub room and the god-car. Suddenly very close sheheard voices which she recognized--the man and the woman who had beentalking in the supply room.

  "You're still all right, Dick," the woman said. "She hasn't been herelong enough to--"

  "We don't know that. We don't know how it spreads or how quickly. Wecan't take the chance."

  "Then ... then we've no choice?" Her voice was a small whisper, chokedwith terror.

  "None. These have been standing emergency orders for twenty years. Wealways faced the possibility that one of them would escape. If we'd beenallowed to use a different policy of education--but the politicianswouldn't permit that. The Wheel has to be destroyed, and we must diewith it."

  "Couldn't we wait and make sure?"

  "It works too fast. None of us would be able to do the job--afterward."

  The voices moved away. Mryna floated toward the hub room. She found theair lock and pulled herself into the god-car. The metal lock hissedclosed and light came on. Then she knew she had made a mistake. Thisship was not the one she had used when she came up from Rythar. The tinycabin was fitted with a sleeping lounge, a food cabinet and a file ofreading films. Above the lounge a mica viewplate gave her a broad viewof the sky.

  Mryna remembered that the man in the supply room had said he was waitingfor an auto-pickup; he was on his way back to Earth. Mryna had taken hisship instead of her own. In panic she tried to open the door again, butshe found no way to do it. Machinery beneath her feet began to hum. Shefelt a slight lurch as the pickup left the hub of the Guardian Wheel.

  It swung in a wide arc. Through the viewplate she saw the enormous Wheelgrowing small behind her, silhouetted against the mist of Rythar.Suddenly the wheel glowed red with a soundless explosion. Its flamingfragments died in the void.

  Mryna dropped weakly on the lounge. Nausea spun through her mind. Theman had said they would destroy themselves. Because Mryna had comeaboard? But why were they afraid of her? What possible harm could she dothem? Mryna had left Rythar to discover the truth, and the truth wasinsanity. Was truth always like this--a bitter disillusionment, an emptyhorror?

  She had something else to say to the people of Rythar now: not that thegods were men, but that men were mad. Believe in the taboos; send up thesacrificial ores. It was a small price to pay to keep that madness awayfrom Rythar.

  And Mryna knew she could not go back. With the Wheel gone, she couldnever return to Rythar; the auto-pickup was carrying her inexorablytoward Earth. The scream of the machinery slowly turned shrill,hammering against her eardrums. The stars visible in the viewplateblurred and winked out. Mryna felt a twist of vertigo as the shuttleshifted from conventional speed into a time warp. And then the soundwas gone. The ship was floating in an impenetrable blackness.

  Mryna had no idea how much time passed subjectively. When she becamehungry, she took food from the cabinet. She slept when she was tired. Topass the time, she turned the reading films through the projector.

  Most of the film stored in the shuttle covered material Mryna alreadyknew. The Earthmen, clearly, had not denied any information to Rythar.Only one thing had been restricted--astronomy. And that would have madeno difference, if Mryna had not found the text in the ruins of the OldVillage. The people on Rythar never saw the stars; they had no way ofknowing--or caring--what lay above the rain mist.

  Mryna was more interested in the history of Earth, which she had neverknown before. She studied the pictures of the great industrial centersand the crowded countryside. She was awed by the mobs in the citystreets and the towering buildings. Yet she liked her own worldmore--the forests and the clear-running brooks; the vast, uncrowded,open spaces.

  It puzzled her that the people of Earth would give the Rytharianparadise to a handful of children, when their own world was soovercrowded. Was this another form of the madness that had driven thepeople in the Wheel to destroy themselves? That made a convenientexplanation, yet Mryna's mind was too logical to accept it.

  One film referred to the founding of the original colony on Rythar, aplanet in the Sirian System which had been named for its discoverer.Rythar, according to the fi
lm, was one of a score of coloniesestablished by Earth. It was unbelievably rich in deposits of uranium.

  That, Mryna surmised, was the name of the sacrificial ore they sent upin the god-cars.

  The atmosphere and gravity of Rythar duplicated that of Earth; Rytharshould have become the largest colony in the system. The government ofEarth had originally planned a migration of ten million persons.

  "But after twelve months the survey colony was destroyed by aninfection," Mryna read on the projection screen, "which has never beenidentified. It is called simply the Sickness. The origin of this plagueis unknown. No adult in the survey colony survived; children born onRythar are themselves immune, but are carriers of the Sickness. Thefirst rescue team sent to save them died within eight hours. No humanbeing, aside from these native-born children, has ever survived theSickness."

  Now