The Last Spaceship

by Murray Leinster

  There was a sun in view to the left. It was a blue-white giant which even at a distance which reduced its disk to the size of a water-drop, gave off a blistering heat. To the right, within a matter of a very few millions of miles, there was a cloud-veiled planet.

  “At least we traveled,” Kim said. “And a long way, too. Cosmography's hardly a living science since exploration stopped, but that star surely wasn't in the cluster we came from."

  He cut off the alarms and the meteor-repeller beams which strove to sheer the Starshine away from the planet, as they had once driven it backward away from Alphin III. He touched a stud which activated the relay which would turn on overdrive should a fighting-beam touch its human occupants.

  He waited, expectant, tense. The spaceship was no more than ten million miles from the surface of the cloud-wreathed world. If there were an alarm-system at work, detectors on the planet should be setting up a terrific clamor, now, and a fighter-beam should be stabbing out at any instant to destroy the two occupants of the Starshine. Kim found himself almost cringing from anticipation of the unspeakable agony which only an instant's exposure to the pain-beam involved.

  But nothing happened. They watched the clouds. Dona trained the electron-telescope upon them. They were not continuous. There were rifts through which solidity could be glimpsed, sometimes clearly, and sometimes as through mist.

  She put in an infra-red filter and stepped up the illumination. The surface of the planet came into view on the telescope-screen. They saw cities. They saw patches of vegetation of unvarying texture, which could only be cultivated areas providing raw material for the food-synthesizers. They saw one city of truly colossal size.

  “We'll go in on planetary drive,” Kim said quietly. “We must have gone beyond news of us, or they'd have stabbed at us before now. But we'll be careful. I think we'd better sneak in on the night-side. We'll turn on the communicator, by the way. We may get some idea of the identity of this sun."

  He put the little ship into a power-orbit, slanting steeply inward in a curve which would make contact with the planet's atmosphere just beyond the sunset-line. He watched the hull-thermometers for their indications.

  They touched air very high up, and went down and down, fumbling and cautious. The vision-screens were blank for a long time, but the instruments told of solidity two hundred miles below, then one hundred, then fifty, twenty-five, ten—

  Suddenly the communicator-speaker spoke in a gabble of confusing voices. Dona turned it down to one. All the Galaxy spoke the same language, of course, but this dialect was strangely accented. Presently they grew accustomed and could understand.

  “We all take pride in the perfection of our life,” the voice said unctuously. “Ten thousand years ago perfection was attained upon this planet, and it is for us to maintain that perfection. Unquestioningly, we obey our rulers, because obedience is a part of perfection. Sometimes our rulers give us orders which, to all appearances, are severe. It is not always easy to obey. But the more difficult obedience may be, the more necessary it is for perfection. The Disciplinary Circuit is a reminder of that need as it touches us once each day to spur us to perfection. The destruction of a family, even to first and second cousins, for the disobedience of a single member, is necessary that every seed of imperfection shall be eliminated from our life."

  Kim and Dona looked at each other. Dona turned to another of the voices.

  “People of Uvan!” The tones were harsh and arrogant. “I am your new lord. These are your orders. Your taxes are increased by one-tenth. I require absolute obedience not only to myself, but to my guards. If any man, woman or child shall so much as think a protest against my lightest command, he or she shall writhe in agony in a public place until death comes, and it will not come quickly! Before my guards you will kneel. Before my personal attendants you will prostrate yourselves, not daring to lift your eyes. That is all for the present."

  Dona cut if off quickly. A dry, crisp voice came in on a higher wavelength.

  “This is Matix speaking. You will arrange at once to procure from Khamil Four a shipment of fighting animals for the Lord Sohn's festival four days hence. Fliers will arrive at the matter-transmitter to take them on board tomorrow afternoon two hours before sunset. Lord Sohn was most pleased with the gheets in the last shipment. They do not fight well against men, but against women they are fairly deadly. In addition—"

  “Somehow, I don't think we'll land, Dona,” Kim said very quietly. “But turn back to the first voice."

  Her hand shook, but she obeyed. The unctuous voice had somehow the air of ending its speech.

  “Before going on, I repeat we are grateful for perfection of our way of life, and we resolve firmly that so long as our planet shall circle Altair, in no wise will we depart from it."

  Kim turned the nose of the Starshine upward. The stars of the Galaxy seemed strangely bright and monstrously indifferent. They little spaceship drove back into the heavens.

  After a pause, Kim turned to Dona.

  “Look up Altair,” he said. “We came a very long way indeed."

  There was silence save for the rustling of the index-volume as Dona searched for Altair in the sun-index. Presently she read off the space-coordinates. Kim calculated, ruefully.

  “That wasn't space-travel,” he said dryly. “That was matter-transmission. The Starshine is a matter-transmitter, Dona, transmitting itself and us. I wasn't aware of any interval between the time I pressed the stud and the time the altered field shut off. But we came almost a quarter across the Galaxy."

  “It was—horrible,” Dona said, shivering. “I thought Alphin Three was bad, but the tyranny here is ghastly."

  “Alphin Three is a new planet,” Kim told her grimly. “This one below us is old. Alphin Three has been occupied for barely two hundred years. Its people have relatively the vigor and the sturdy independence of pioneers, and still they're sheep! We're in an older part of the Galaxy now and the race back here has grown old and stupid and cruel. And I imagine it's ready to die."

  He bent forward and made a careful adjustment of the light-operated distance-gauge. He cut it down enormously.

  “We'll try again,” he said. He pressed the stud....

  * * *

  6

  HAVEN AT LAST

  An increasing sense of futility and depression crept over Kim and Dona during the next few days.

  They visited four solar-systems, separated by distances which would have seemed unthinkable before the alteration of the overdrive.

  There was no longer any sensation of travel, because no distance required any appreciable period of time. Once, indeed, Kim commented curtly on the danger that would exist if they went too close to the Galaxy's edge. With only the amount of received light to work the cut-out switch, under other circumstances they might have plunged completely out of the Galaxy and to unimaginable distances before the switch could have acted.

  “I'm going to have to put a limiting device of some sort on this thing,” he observed. “With a limiting device, the transmitter-drive can't stay on longer than a few micro-seconds. If we don't, we might find ourselves lost from our own Galaxy and unable to find it again. Not that it would seem to matter so much."

  His skepticism seemed justified. The Starshine was the only vessel now plying among the stars. It had been of the last and best type, though by no means the largest, ever constructed, and by three small changes in its overdrive mechanism Kim had made it into something of which other men had never dreamed.

  For the first time in the history of the human race, other galaxies were open to the exploration and the colonization of men. It was probably possible for the cosmos itself to be circumnavigated in the Starshine. But its crew of two humans could find no planet of their own race on which they dared to land.

  They approached Voorten II, and found a great planet seemingly empty of human beings. There were roads and cities, but the roads were empty and the cities full of human skeletons. Kim and Don saw only thre
e living beings of human form, and they were skin and bones and shook clenched fists and gibbered at the slim spacecraft as if hovered overhead. The Starshine soared away.

  It hovered over Makab VI, and there were towers which had been powerhouses rusting into ruins, and human beings naked and chained, pulling ploughs while other human beings flourished whips behind them. The great metropolis where the matter-transmitter should have been was ruins. Unquestionably the matter-transmitter here had been destroyed and the planet was cut off from the rest of civilization.

  They came fearfully to rest above the planet center upon Moteh VII and saw decay. The people reveled in the streets, but listlessly, and the communicator brought only barbarous, sensual music and howled songs of beastliness that were impossible to describe.

  The vessel actually touched ground upon Xanin V. Kim and Dona actually talked to two citizens. But those folks were blank-faced and dull. Yet what they told Kim and Dona, apathetically, in response to questioning, was so disheartening that Dona impulsively offered to take them away. But the two citizens were frightened at the idea. They fled when Dona would have urged them.

  Out in clear space again, on interplanetary drive, Kim looked at Dona with brooding eyes.

  “It looks as if we can't find a home, Dona,” he said quietly. “The human race is finished. We completed a job, we humans. We conquered a galaxy and we occupied it, and the job was done. Then we went downhill. You and I, we came from the newest planet of all, and we didn't fit. We're criminals there. But the older planets, like these, are incredibly horrible.” He stopped, and asked wryly. “What shall we do, Dona? I'd have liked a wedding ceremony. But what are we going to do?"

  Dona smiled at him.

  “There's one place yet. The Prime Board called us criminals. Let's look up the criminals on Ades. Maybe—and it's just possible—people who have mustered energy and independence enough to commit political crimes would be bearable. If we don't find anything there, why, we'll go to another galaxy, choose a planet and settle down. And I promise I won't be sorry, Kim!"

  Kim made his computations and swung the Starshine carefully. He was able to center the course of the spaceship with absolute precision upon the sun around which Ades circled slowly in lonely majesty. He pressed the matter-transmission stud, and the alarm-bells rang stridently, and there was the sun and the planet Ades barely half a million miles from their starting-point.

  It was not a large planet, and there was much ice and snow. The electron-telescope showed no monster cities, either, but there were settlements of a size that could be picked out. Kim sent the Starshine toward it.

  * * * *

  “Of course, I'm only head of this small city,” said the man with the bearskin hat. “And my powers are limited here, but I think we'll find plenty to join us. I'll go, of course, if you'll take me."

  Kim nodded in an odd grim satisfaction.

  “We'll set up matter-transmitters,” he suggested. “Then there'll be complete and continuous communication with this planet from the start."

  “Right,” said the man with the bearskin hat. He added candidly: “We've brains on Ades, my friend. We've got every technical device the rest of the Galaxy has, except the Disciplinary Circuit, and we won't allow that! If this is a scheme of some damned despot to add another planet to his empire, it won't work. There are three empires already started, you know, all taken by matter-transmitter. But that won't work here!"

  “If you build the transmitters yourself, you'll know there's nothing tricky about the circuits,” Kim said. “My offer is to take a transmitter and an exploring party to the next nearest galaxy and pick out a planet there to start on. Ades isn't ideal."

  “No,” agreed the man in the bearskin hat. “It's too cold, and we're overcrowded. There are twenty million of us and more keep coming out of the transmitter every day. The Galaxy seems to be combing out all its brains and sending them all here. We're short of minerals, though—metals, especially. So we'll pick some good sound planets to start on over in a second galaxy. Hm! Come to the communicator and we'll talk to the other men we need to reach."

  They went out of the small building which was the center of government of the quite small city. There was nothing impressive about it, anywhere. It was not even systematically planned. Each citizen, it appeared, had built as he chose. Each seemed to dress as he pleased, too.

  To Kim and Dona there was a startling novelty in the faces they saw about them. On Alphin III almost everybody had looked alike. At any rate their faces had worn the same expression of bovine contentment.

  On other planets contentment had not been the prevailing sentiment. On some, despair had seemed to be universal.

  But these people, these criminals, were individuals. Their manner was not the elaborate, cringing politeness of Alphin III. It was free and natural.

  The communicator-station was rough and ready. It was not a work of art, but a building put up by people who needed a building and built one for that purpose only. The vision-screens lighted up one by one and faces appeared, as variegated as the costumes beneath them. They had a common look of aliveness which was heartening to Kim.

  The conference lasted for a long time. There was enthusiasm and there was reserve. The Starshine would carry a matter-transmitter to the next galaxy and open a way for migration of the criminals of Ades to a new island universe for conquest.

  Kim would turn over the construction-records of the spaceship so that others could be built. He would give the details of the matter-transmitter alterations. No spaceships had been attempted by the inhabitants of Ades, because fighting-beams would soon have been mounted on useful planets against them, and all useful planets contained only enemies.

  “What do you want?” asked a figure in one vision-plate. “We don't do things for nothing, here, and we don't take things without paying for them, either."

  “Dona and I want only a place to live and a people to live among who are free,” Kim answered sharply.

  “You've got that,” the man in the bearskin hat said. “All right? We'll all call public meetings and confirm these arrangements?"

  The heads of other cities nodded.

  “We'll pass on the news to other cities at once,” another man said. He was one of those who had nodded. “Everybody will wish to come in on it, of course. If not now, then later."

  “Wait!” Kim said suddenly. “How about the planets around us? Are we going to leave them enslaved?"

  “Nobody can free a slave,” a whiskered man in a vision-plate said dryly. “We could only release prisoners. In time we may have to take them over, I suppose, but on the planet I come from there aren't a dozen men who'd know how to be free if we emancipated them. They don't want to be free. They're satisfied as they are. If any of them want to be free, they'll be sent here, eventually."

  “I am reluctant to desert them,” Kim answered slowly.

  “Count, man,” the man in the bearskin hat cried. “There are three hundred million inhabited planets! All of them but Ades are ruled by Disciplinary Circuits. If we set out to liberate them, it would take one thousand years, and there are only twenty million of us. Designate just one of us to stay on each planet to teach the people to be free again. Otherwise we wouldn't do a tenth of the job and we'd destroy ourselves by scattering. But, hand it all, we'd be tyrants! No! We go on and start a new galaxy. That's a job worth doing. We'll keep a group of watchers here to receive the new ones who come here into exile and forward them. Some day, maybe, we'll come back and take over the old Galaxy if it seems worthwhile. But we've got a job to do. How many galaxies are there, anyhow, for us and our children and our children's children to take over?"

  “It's a job that will never be finished,” another voice said. “That's good!"

  There were trees visible from the window of the house that had been offered by a citizen for Kim's and Dona's use. The sun went down beyond the trees, and a glowing of many colors in the foliage. Kim had never watched a sunset before except upon the tow
ers and pinnacles of a city. He had never noted quite this sharp tang in the air, either, which he learned was the smell of fresh growing things.

  “I think I'm going to like living like this,” he said to Dona. “Have you noticed the way people act? They don't behave as if I were important at all, in one way. They seem to think I'm commonplace. But I've never before felt so definitely that I matter."

  “You do, Kim, darling,” Dona said, wisely. She stood close beside him, watching the sunset, too. She looked up at him. “You matter enormously, and they know it. But to themselves they matter, too, and when they listen to you and agree with you it's because they mean it, instead of just citizen-like politeness. If is good. I think it might be a part of what we've been looking for. It's a part of freedom, I suppose."

  “And you,” Kim said. “Do you feel important too?"

  She laughed at him and pressed close.

  “My dear!” she said. “Could I help it? Can any woman help feeling important on her wedding day? Do you realize that we've been married two whole hours?"

  * * *

  PART TWO

  THE MANLESS WORLDS

  * * *

  1

  EMPIRES IN THE MAKING

  The speaker inside the house spoke softly.

  “Guests for Kim Rendell, asking permission to land."

  Kim stared up at the unfamiliar stars of the Second Galaxy and picked out a tiny winking light with his eyes. He moved to a speaker-disk.

  “Land and be welcomed.” To Dona he added, “It's a flier. I've been expecting something like this. We need fuel for the Starshine if we're not to be stuck on this one planet forever. My guess is that somebody has come through the matter-transmitter from Ades to argue about it."

  He moved to the edge of the terrace to watch the landing. Dona came and stood beside him, her hand twisting into his. The night was very dark, and the two small moons of Terranova cast no more than enough light to outline nearby objects. The house behind Kim and Dona was low and sprawling and, on its polished outer surface, unnamed Second Galaxy constellations glinted faintly.