Adventures in the Far Future
Page 31
Drummond was round-eyed with awe. “Then … then I am the outpost command of a world beyond the Black Nebula, a world so gigantic that even a worm is thousands of kilometers long!”
“When I inspected the Black Nebula,” said Gedso gently, “I discovered that it was not a barrier in space, but a fold or some such thing. As I say, I don’t know. I only know the effect. Ships approaching the Crystal Mines undergo a sort of transformation. The reason so many never return is because they fail to reverse that transformation and so hurtle through the hundreds of light-years forever, no larger than microscopic bullets.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, according to what we found, a diminution of size takes place. The worm is just an ordinary worm on an ordinary leaf. And the ‘things’ are just ordinary phagocytes. If we proceed in the future to bum out the heart of the worms we mine, then we will have to do no fighting. Because of a changed time factor a dead worm will last for years. And if we watch certain manifestations in the spaceships, we can get them to keep penetrating the Black Nebula until they are again restored to size. I took a chart of the interior of these worms out of a text on entymology, once I had determined the kind of worm it was—”
“Then—then my command—”
“Why, yes,” said Gedso, “I think it is so. You need have no worries about your command. No more fighting, better conditions, more crystals mined—”
“But,” gagged Drummond, deflated and broken, “but my command … is just the liver of an ordinary worm … perhaps in a tree in some farmer’s yard—”
Stewie grinned as he steered across the plane to the wall of the Crystal Mines. He took another glance at the haggard General Drummond and pulled up at the wall.
When fifty thousand convicts, the following day, cheered themselves to a frenzy carrying Gedso Ion Brown, Technician, Extra-Territorial Scienticorps, to his waiting transport, General Drummond was not there. In the dimness of his quarters, amid his presentation pistols and battle trophies, he heard the racking waves of triumphant sound sweep the mines again and again for minutes at a time.
General Drummond sank into a chair and cupped his face in his hands.
Wearily he repeated, ‘The guts … of a worm.”