But the fleet of Ades rendezvoused at Ades, and again put out into space. They divided now and attacked the subjugated planets. They had no weapons save the devices which every government in the Galaxy used.
It was as if they fought a war with the nightsticks of policemen. But the Disciplinary Circuit which made governments absolute, by the most trivial of modifications became a device by which men were barred from cities, and therefore from government. All government ceased.
Active warfare by the Empire of Sinab became impossible. Space-yards, armories, spaceships grounded and spaceships as they landed from the void—every facility for war or rule in an empire of twenty planets became useless without the killing of a single man and without the least hope of resistance.
Only—a long while since, a squadron of Sinabian warships had headed out for Ades as a part of the program of expansion of the Empire. It had lifted from Sinab Two—then the thriving, comfortable capital of the Empire—and gone into overdrive on its mission.
The distance to be covered was something like thirty light-years. Overdrive gave a speed two hundred times that of light, which was very high speed indeed, and had sufficed for the conquest of a galaxy, in the days when the human race was rising.
But every thirty light-years at that rate required six weeks of journeying in the stressed space of overdrive. During those six weeks, of course, there could be no communication with home base.
So the squadron bound for Ades had sped on all unknowing and unconscious, while Khiv Five was beamed and all its men killed and while the Starshine had essayed a return journey from the Second Galaxy and then sped crazily to universes beyond men's imagining and returned, and while the midget fleet of Ades wrecked the Empire in whose service the travelers set out to do murder.
The journeying squadron—every ship wrapped in the utter inapproachability of faster-than-light travel—was oblivious to all that had occurred. Its separate ships came out of overdrive some forty million miles from the solitary planet Ades, lonesomely circling its remote small sun.
The warships of Sinab had an easier task in keeping together on overdrive than ships of the Starshine class on transmitter-drive, but even so they went back to normal space forty million miles from their destination—two seconds’ journey on overdrive—to group and take final counsel.
Kim Rendell in the Starshine flashed back from the last of the twenty planets of Sinab as six monster ships emerged from seeming nothingness. The Starshine's detectors flicked over to the “Danger” signal-strength.
Alarm-gongs clanged violently. The little ship hurtled past a monster at a bare two-hundred miles distance, and there was another giant a thousand miles off, and two others and a fifth and sixth....
The six ships drew together into battle formation. Their detectors, too, showed the Starshine. More, as other midgets flicked into being, returning from their raid upon the Empire, they also registered upon the detector-screens of the battle-fleet.
The fighting-beams of the ships flared into deadliness. They were astounded, no doubt, by the existence of other spacecraft than those of Sinab. But as the little ships flung at them furiously, the fighting-beams raged among them.
Small, agile craft vanished utterly as the death-beams hit—thrown into transmitter-drive before their crews could die. But the Sinabians could not know that. They drove on. Grandly. Ruthlessly. This planet alone possessed spacecraft and offered resistance.
It had appeared only normal that all the men on Ades should die. Now it became essential. The murder-fleet destroyed—apparently—the tiny things which flung themselves recklessly and went on splendidly to bathe the little planet in death.
The midgets performed prodigies of valor. They flung themselves at the giants, with the small hard objects that had destroyed an empire held loosely to the outside of their hulls.
When the death-beams struck and they vanished, the small hard objects went hurtling on.
They could have been missiles. They traveled at miles per second. But meteor-repellers flung them contemptuously aside, once they were no longer part of spacecraft with drive in action.
The little ships tried to ram, and that was impossible. They could do nothing but make threatening dashes. And the giants went on toward Ades.
From forty million miles to thirty million the enemy squadron drove on with its tiny antagonists darting despairingly about it. At thirty million, Kim commanded his followers to flee ahead to Ades, give warning, and take on board what refugees they could.
But there were nineteen million souls on Ades—at most a million had crowded through to Terranova in the Second Galaxy—and they could do next to nothing.
At twenty millions of miles, some of the midgets were back with cases of chemical explosive. They strewed them in the paths of the juggernaut ships. With no velocity of their own—almost stationary in space—someone had thought they might not activate the Sinabian repellers.
But that thought was futile. The repeller-beams stabbed at them with the force of collisions. The chemical explosives flashed luridly in emptiness and made swift expanding clouds of vapor, of the tenuity of comets’ tails. The enemy ships came on.
At ten million miles two unmanned ships, guided by remote control, flashed furiously toward the leading war-craft. They, at least, should be able to ram.
Repeller-beams which focused upon them were neutralized by the space-torpedoes’ drives. They drove in frenziedly. But as they drew closer the power of the repeller-beams rose to incredible heights and overwhelmed the power of the little ships’ engines and shorted the field-generating coils and blew out the motors—and the guided missiles were hurled away, broken hulks.
The fleet reached a mere five million miles from the planet Ades. Its separate members had come to realize their invincibility against all the assaults that could be made against them by the defending forces—unexpected as they were—of this small world.
The fleet divided, to take up appropriate stations above the planet and direct their projectors of annihilation downward. They would wipe out every living male upon the planet's surface. They would do it coldly, remorselessly, without emotion.
Presently the planet would become part of an empire which, in fact, had ceased to function. The action of the fleet would not only be horrible—it would be futile. But its personnel could not know that.
The giant ships took position and began to descend.
Odd little blue-white glows appeared in the atmosphere far below. They seemed quite useless, those blue-white glows. The only effect that could at once be ascribed to them was the sudden vanishing of a dozen little ships preparing to make, for the hundredth time, despairing dashes at the monsters. Those little ships winked out of existence—gone into transmitter-drive.
And then the big ships wavered in their flight. Automatic controls seemed to take hold. They checked in their descent, and presently were motionless....
A roar of triumph came to Kim Rendell's ears from the space-phone speaker in the Starshine's control room. The Mayor of Steadheim bellowed in exultation.
“We got ‘em, by Space! We got ‘em!"
“Something's happened to them,” said Kim. “What?"
“I'm sending up a couple of shiploads of women,” rumbled the Mayor of Steadheim zestfully. “Women from Khiv Five. They'll take over! Remember you had us go to ground to salvage the two ships that crashed there?
“They bounced when they landed. They shook themselves apart and spilled themselves in little pieces instead of smashing to powder. We picked up half a dozen projectors that could be repaired—all neatly tuned to kill men and leave women unharmed.
“We brought ‘em back to Ades and mounted ‘em—brought ‘em here with wives for my four sons and a promise of vengeance for the other women whose men were murdered. We just gave these devils a dose of the medicine they had for us!
“Those ships are coffins, Kim Rendell! Every man in the crews is dead! But no man can go aboard until their beams are cut off! I'll
send up the women from Khiv Five to board ‘em. They'll attend to things! If any man's alive they'll slit his throat for him!"
* * *
9
HOMECOMING
A considerable time later, Kim Rendell eased the Starshine down through the light of the two Terranovan moons to the matted lawn outside his homestead in the Second Galaxy. A figure started up from the terrace and hurried down to greet him as he opened the exit-port and helped Dona to the ground.
“Who's this?” asked Kim, blinking in the darkness after the lighted interior of the Starshine. “Who—"
“It's me, Kim Rendell,” said the Colony Organizer for Terranova. He sounded unhappy and full of forebodings. “We've been doing all we can to take care of the crowds who come through the matter-transmitter, but it was a difficult task—a difficult task!
“Now the crowd of new colonists has dropped to a bare trickle. Everyone has a different story. I was told, though, that you were coming back in the Starshine and could advise me. I need your advice, Kim Rendell! The situation may be terrible!"
Kim led the way to the terrace of his house.
“I wouldn't say it will be terrible,” he said cheerfully enough. “It's good to be back home. Dona—"
“I want to look inside,” said Dona firmly.
She went within, to satisfy the instinct of every woman who has been away from home to examine all her dwelling jealously on her return. Kim stretched himself out in a chair.
The stars—unnamed, unexplored, and infinitely promising—of all the Second Galaxy twinkled overhead. Terranova's two moons floated serenely across the sky, and the strange soft scents of the night came to his nostrils. Kim sniffed luxuriously.
“Ah, this is good!” he said zestfully.
“But what happened?” demanded the Colony Organizer anxiously. “In three weeks we had four hundred thousand new arrivals through the transmitter. Most of them were children and boys. Then the flood stopped—like that! What are we to do about them? Did you get fuel for your ship? I understand the danger from Sinab is over, but we find it hard to get information from Ades. Everyone there—"
“Everybody there is busy,” said Kim comfortably. “You see, we smashed the Empire without killing more than a very few men. On Sinab Two where the Empire was started, we chased the men out of the cities and put them at the mercy of the women.
“So many men had emigrated to the planets whose men had been killed off, that there was a big disproportion even on Sinab. And the women were not pleased. They'd been badly treated too. We didn't approve of the men, though.
“We gave them their choice of emigrating to a brand new world, with only such women as chose to go with them, or of being wiped out. They chose to emigrate. So half the technical men on Ades have been busy supervising their emigration."
“Not to here?” asked the Colony Organizer in alarm. “We can't feed ourselves, yet!"
“No, not to here,” said Kim dryly. “They went to a place we scouted accidentally in the Starshine. They're not likely to come back. I left a matter-receiver there, and when they've all gone through it—all the men from twenty planets, with what women want to go with them—we'll smash the receiver and they'll be on their own.
“They're quite a long way off. Three hundred billion light-years, more or less. They're not likely to come in contact with our descendants for several million years yet. By that time they'll either be civilized or else."
The Colony Organizer asked questions in a worried tone. Kim answered them.
“But twenty-one planets with no men on them,” said the Organizer worriedly. “These women will all want to come here!"
“Not quite all. There were ten men on Ades for every woman. A lot of them will settle on the twenty planets where the proportion is reversed. A surprising lot will want to move on to the Second Galaxy, though."
“But—"
“We'll be ready for them,” said Kim. “We've spaceships enough for exploration now. The Mayor of Steadheim wants a planet for each of his four sons to colonize. They picked up wives on Khiv Five and want to get away from the old chap and indulge in at little domesticity.
“And there'll be plenty of others.” He added, “We've some big war-craft to bring over too, in case there's any dangerous animals or—entities here."
“But—” said the Colony Organizer again.
“We're sending ships through the First Galaxy, too,” said Kim, “to do a little missionary work. After all, twenty-one planets are without men!
“So the Starshine's sister-ships will drop down secretly on one planet after another to start whisperings that a man who's sent to Ades is a pretty lucky man. If he has courage and brains and he's better off than living as a human sheep under kings or technarchs who'll clap the Disciplinary Circuit on him if he thinks for himself.
“There'll be more criminals and rebels than usual from now on. The flow of men who are not quite sheep will increase. With three hundred million planets to draw from and the way whispers pass from world to world, the adventurous spirits will start getting themselves sent to Ades.
“There'll be planets for them to move to and women to marry and a leaven of hardy souls to teach them that being a free man is pretty good fun. We won't make an empire of those twenty-one planets—just a refuge for every man with backbone in all the Galaxy."
The Colony Organizer looked worried.
“But there are Terranova and the Second Galaxy waiting to be explored and colonized. Maybe they'll be satisfied to stay there."
Kim laughed. When he ceased to laugh he chuckled.
“I'm here! I've got a wife. Do you suppose that any woman will want her husband to stay on one of those twenty-one planets for years to come? Where women outnumber men? Where—well—a man with a roving eye sees plenty of women about for his eyes to rove to?"
The Colony Organizer still worried, nevertheless, until Dona came out from the inside of the house. She had assured herself that everything was intact and her mind was at rest. She brought refreshments for Kim and their guest.
“I was just saying,” said Kim, “that I thought there would still be plenty of people coming from Ades and the twenty-one planets to Terranova and to settle on the new worlds as they're opened up."
“Of course,” said Dona. “I wouldn't live there! Any normal woman, when she has a husband, will want to move where he'll be safe."
And she might have been referring to the holocausts on those planets caused by the death-beams of the dead Sinabian Empire. But even the Colony Organizer did not think so.
* * *
PART THREE
THE BOOMERANG CIRCUIT
* * *
1
DAMAGED TRANSITTER
Kim Rendell had almost forgotten that he was ever a matter-transmitter technician. But then the matter-transmitter on Terranova ceased to operate and they called on him.
It happened just like that. One instant the wavering, silvery film seemed to stretch across the arch in the public square of the principal but still small settlement on the first planet to be colonized in the Second Galaxy. The film bulged, and momentarily seemed to form the outline of a human figure as a totally-reflecting, pulsating cocoon about a moving object. Then it broke like a bubble-film and a walking figure stepped unconcernedly out. Instantly the silvery film was formed again behind it and another shape developed on the film's surface.
Only seconds before, these people and these objects had been on another planet in another island universe, across unthinkable parsecs of space. Now they were here. Bales and bundles and parcels of merchandise. Huge containers of foodstuffs—the colony on Terranova was still not completely self-sustaining—and drums of fuel for the spaceships busy mapping the new galaxy for the use of men, and more people, and a huge tank of viscous, opalescent plastic.
Then came a pretty girl, smiling brightly on her first appearance on a new planet in a new universe, and crates of castings for more spaceships, and a family group with a pet zorag on a
leash behind them, and a batch of cryptic pieces of machinery, and a man.
Then nothing. Without fuss, the silvery film ceased to be. One could look completely through the archway which was the matter-transmitter. One could see what was on the other side instead of a wavering, pulsating reflection of objects nearby. The last man to come through spoke unconcernedly over his shoulder, to someone he evidently believed just behind, but who was actually now separated from him by the abyss between island universes and some thousands of parsecs beyond.
Nobody paid any attention to matter-transmitters ordinarily. They had been in use for ten thousand years. All the commerce of the First Galaxy now moved through them. Spaceships had become obsolete, and the little Starshine—which was the first handiwork of Man to cross the gulf to the Second Galaxy—had been a museum exhibit for nearly two hundred years before Kim Rendell smashed out of the museum in it, with Dona, and the two of them went roaming helplessly among the ancient, decaying civilizations of man's first home in quest of a world in which they could live in freedom.
But the matter-transmitter had ceased to operate. Five millions of human beings in the Second Galaxy were isolated from the First. Ades was the only planet in the home galaxy on which all men were criminals by definition, and hence were friendly to the people of the new settlements. Every single other planet—save the bewildered and almost manless planets which had been subject to Sinab—was a tyranny of one brutal variety or another.
Every other planet regarded the men of Ades as outlaws, rebels, and criminals. The people of Terranova, therefore, were not cut off from the immigrants and supplies from the rest of the human race. And then, besides that, there were sixteen millions of people left on Ades, cut off from the hope that Terranova represented.
Kim Rendell was called on immediately. The Colony Organizer of Terranova, himself, went in person to confer and to bewail.
Kim Rendell was peacefully puttering with an unimportant small gadget when the Colony Organizer arrived. The house was something of a gem of polished plastic—Dona had designed it—and it stood on a hill with a view which faced the morning sun and the rising twin moons of Terranova.
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