Rei: "Lady, before this conference began, Fleet Overlord Bertt reported to me that construction is at a halt on the three hundred star ships nearing completion, and new starts have been postponed indefinitely. The fact is that we’re running out of materials. Although some exploration continues in the asteroid belt, for all practical purposes the belt has been mined empty. Our prime source for the needed metal is now First Planet, and conditions there, so near the sun, are, to say the least, bad. Our engineers are working on methods to mine the sunside of the planet, but such efforts are not expected to produce returns for another five years or more. Meanwhile, the further explorations for metals on Five produce nothing. Five is a gutted planet. The mines of New World, Outworld, and the small area where mining is permitted on The World are spent, produce only low grade ores which do not meet the demand. The star ships drafted into temporary duty as mining ships, traveling to the three arid planets of the star Seberian, require months for a round trip. Nevertheless, they are providing us with our main bulk of useable metals. There is a severe shortage of diamond drills, and I would respectfully request the Mother to issue a statement asking all citizens to make available for industrial use their private jewels."
Mother Miaree: "Noted and done."
Rei: "Although we have not, as yet, experienced food shortages, an agricultural crisis is imminent. Arable land has been used to build factories and dwellings. Ninety-five percent of our basic foodstuff is now being dredged from the seas, and the heavy use of shallow water growth for synthetics threatens to unbalance the growth cycle of the salt water agricultural areas. I would think that consideration of food rationing should be undertaken by the Council during the next session."
Mother Miaree: "I will talk with Council leaders."
Bertt: "Lady Mother. I have watched my chosen world be stripped of its resources and its beauty. Although this saddens me, I do not regret it, for will not my Five be consumed, seared, destroyed, when the Fires reach us? And is it not true that all our old worlds will meet their ends in the Fires? I agree, of course, that The World must be preserved until the exodus to insure the continuation of our race. However, with a present capacity to move only sixty percent of our combined populations, and the future grim, as far as raw materials are concerned, would it not be wise to lift the exploitation limitations of the two planets which still offer prospects of production? I refer, of course, to New World and Outworld."
Belle, Overlady of Outworld: "Our garden world is already spoiled beyond hope. Would you put mining shafts in the last remaining
parklands? Would you ship ore in huge rollers down the streets of our cities?"
Bertt: "Would you have millions burn in the Fires, sitting happily in the last remaining parklands atop the metals which could have saved them?"
Mother Miaree: "Your point is well taken, Bertt, but such decisions are a matter for the Council. If you will prepare your proposals I will present them."
Jenee, Overlady of the City of Nirrar: "Lady, it is a small matter, perhaps, since we are faced with problems of cosmic size, but would you express an opinion on the desirability of posting members of the guard at strategic locations throughout the city? As you may know, the exuberant spirits of the Delanian young sometimes take a destructive course. The problem is not a major one, but their activities have been known to interfere with the administration of the city, which is, as you know, vastly overcrowded. Destruction of property and forced merge are merely two of the symptoms."
Mother Miaree: "Perhaps the President of the Delanians has a comment?"
Argun: "Lady, give me as many guards as you can. I will augment their number with enough Delanians to stop such outrageous activities."
Mother Miaree: "Done, Argun. Thank you for your help. We Artonuee have not faced such problems in the past and would scarcely know how to handle them. Now, it has been a long and tiring day. My office will be open to any of you, but now I suggest that we all seek our dwellings, since the hour is late."
Chapter Nineteen
Five’s nightside sparkled with the lights of industry. The atmosphere, artificially thickened to produce a greenhouse effect, caused the glow to be diffused, hid the equatorial low lands, behind their huge dikes, under swirls of cloud. Incoming from New World and Mother Miaree’s first
top-level conference, Bertt swung his flyer into dayside, called Fivegate for landing clearance, and then, waiting, let his eyes feast on the inspiring sight of a million star ships, lined up like great beasts of black space in a holding orbit.
The construction area, just past Fivegate, was visible as he landed. Cargo shuttles crowded the gate, idle. Bertt walked rapidly to the control center. A star ship from the ore planets of Seberian was within communications range. Soon the smelters would glow again and work could continue on the hundreds of ships in various stages of completion.
In spite of the hectic events of the past twenty years, Bertt was still uncomfortable in closed spaces. Although it was gratifying to be able to man a powered flyer, he was not a space nut. And the closed atmosphere of the gate was heavy in his mind. He boarded a shuttle as quickly as possible, and already anticipating a few hours of luxurious freedom from responsibility, began to draw, for perhaps the millionth-plus time, the circuits of a mires expander in his mind.
Once he had seen the release of unbelievable power.
Once, with his Delanian friend, Untell, he had been on the verge of the greatest discovery of all.
Delanian power was an improvement. And the combination of the converters and the Delanian power had reduced the shuttle ride to planetside to minutes. Great strides had been taken in space travel. Still, the two cooperating races faced an uncertain future of star-roving in that ponderous fleet which was being assembled in orbit around Five.
He was thinking of the prospect of finishing out his allotted time in a closed atmosphere. Huge as the star ships were, he, lover of spaces and the lost solitude of his old world, did not relish the idea of a lifetime of imprisonment in a star ship.
Because of his position and his need for privacy, he had been allowed to keep his old dwelling. It was small, but it sat in the midst of an acre of undisturbed land. And adjoining it was the old workshop where he had designed and built the finest flyers ever to ride the solar winds. He ate the tasteful synthetics, sipped synthetic jenk, dozed in his chair to recover from the shock of planet change, but his mind would not be idle.
The dream was always with him.
They had been so close.
A year and they would have had it. Working with Untell, he, Bertt, would have created a source of power so vast that the universe would have been opened to exploration.
Sighing, he rose and stretched tiredly. He shrugged into a work garment and trudged into the shop. He mused before his bench for long minutes, his eyes following the convolutions of the incredibly complicated circuitry of the altered expander which had once released the energies of the electrons in two tiny cubes of soft metal. Once, twice, three times he had watched with the same results. A significant and measurable channeling of the force and then disintegration.
Where had they gone wrong?
He had traced the theory in its complications thousands of times. He traced it once again. In the mind, on duppaper, it worked. What was the hidden fault?
When his assistant came in search of him next morning, Bertt was discovered sleeping, his head on the workbench. The assistant smiled sadly. The old man was still playing with his toy.
Chapter Twenty
Argun, President of the Delanian People in Exile, was a virile man in the prime of his life. Although he carried a heavy responsibility, he lived with an elan that kept his outlook youthful and optimistic. As a youth, he had helped to tame a world which had presented more problems than the little ice ball the Artonuee had loved so much before Delanian vitality had made the place liveable. His genes were the finest, and even before leaving the home worlds, he had been allowed four offspring with four different chosen wom
en. Two of his sons were among those selected to live. And Argun had sired a daughter and a son since coming to the Artonuee system. His seed would be preserved and preserved well. He took great
pride in that.
At his headquarters in the Government Quad in Nirrar City, adjacent to the Mother’s building, he maintained two Artonuee mistresses and was not averse to spreading that particular form of Delanian joy to others, casual acquaintances longing for a dose of the Delanian drug.
For his personal staff, he had selected the strongest and wisest, both men and women. He was a man with a purpose, and he worked toward that purpose with untiring vigor. He had seen enough death. Those who had not been on the home worlds at the end could not possibly understand.
Seated with Argun was young Rei, who warmed the Mother’s bed.
"You have completed the assignment?" Argun asked.
"It is confirmed." Rei said. He sipped the Artonuee liquor, for which he had acquired a taste, while Argun drank heartily from a mug of synthetic Delanian grog.
"Quite a dish, no?" Argun asked.
"She was a good specimen," Rei said.
"Indeed," Argun said. "I know. I envy you the fob of knocking her up. Would have done it myself, but I don’t want it said that I take undue advantage of my position."
"Your fairness to our people has never been in doubt." Rei said.
"But not the Artonuee, huh?" Argun said, laughing. "My boy, you’re too soft."
"I was the first to land on an Artonuee world," Rei said softly. "I have worked closely with them for twenty years. They are an admirable people."
"Ah, that Artonuee cunt," Argun said. "Now that is admirable." He drained his mug and set it down with a clank. "But I have six billion people to worry about."
Sir—
"Six billion," Argun said. "And I watched twenty-four billion die. I saw it, damn it. I was there. I heard my own son cry when he was told that he had not been selected. I had to deny his last minute plea. I gave the orders which brought instant death to thousands in the port riots. I saw my men turn their weapons on their own people, brothers, sisters, lovers. Have you ever seen flesh after it’s hit with a burner? It stinks. It’s the color of dirt. And when the ray hits, the flesh crawls and jumps and moves even after the brain is dead. And I had to say, "open fire!" I had to give the order."
"It was a tragedy, sir," Rei said.
"Tragedy? Damn, man, it was horror. Can you comprehend the death of twenty-four billion people? No one can. It staggers the imagination. We can understand the death of a man, or a few men. You helped in the post-mortem of the first expedition, didn’t you? I thought so. You saw the way the limbs were torn from bodies. Did it affect you?"
"It affected me," Rei said.
"Think of two billion more bodies. Think of them dying slowly from radiation and then being seared by flame. Is that a pleasant picture?"
"No, it is not. But neither—"
"There is no alternative," Argun said, standing. "Of course, if you should volunteer to stay—" He grinned as Rei shifted uneasily. "Goodnight, then, my boy. It is not pleasant for any of us. We must do as we think best for all of our people. In the meantime, we drink, no?"
"We drink," Rei said, gulping the jenk.
"And our geneticist wants another chip off the old Rei block," Argun said, showing his teeth suggestively. "Up to another session tonight?"
"I think not, sir."
"Soon, then. She’s a knockout. A farm girl from old Tagour. Knockers out to here. Huh?"
"Yes," Rei said. "Soon."
Later, fanned by Miaree’s ecstatically fluttering wings, hearing her love
Chapter Twenty-One
You read well, my dear. Thank you. We have covered much ground today, and there is little time. I hope that all of you have been thinking ahead toward the paper which I told you I would ask you to write giving your conclusions and your feelings toward the fable. Now. In form, the section of the fable we have covered today is somewhat episodic. By slaps and starts, it covered a period of how many years, Tomax?
Twenty, sir.
Are there any among you who have not been stimulated to the point of being forced to finish the final portion? Ah? Elizabeth? LaConius. But LaConius knows, eh, LaConius?
Sir?
Elizabeth, no curiosity?
Sir, I was dying to finish it, to find out what happens, but the dorm matron forced me to observe lights-out, and the charger in my privacy light has failed, so I could not read under the sheets.
Then we will allow you to read the conclusion tomorrow. Now, in the brief time remaining before we partake of sauteed olix steak, fresh in from Alaxender's home on Trojan, I would like you to consider this passage, or this series of excerpts, from a paper done by our sleepy LaConius. For which, incidentally, he has earned the honors in this particular project. LaConius has handed me the paper, a project undertaken in his astrophysics class, with a request for proofreading. I fear that our LaConius is a rather atrocious speller. Nonetheless, the paper is of some interest. The subject is the Q.S.S. phenomenon. Q.S.S. or Quasi-stellar Radio Sources, are rather puzzling astronomical objects located—as determined by the calculations of the red shift—some one billion light years away from our galaxy in the general direction of the constellation Cygnus.
But let me quote young LaConius: 'Radio generation in the Q.S.S's, broadcast on every frequency known to man, is thought to be the result of acceleration of ultra-high-speed electrons moving in a powerful magnetic field. Although a thorough and lengthy study of the Q.S.S's has failed to provide a range of answers, it is believed by authorities in the field that the electrons were freed in some cataclysmic explosion. The release of energy is not a strange happening in a universe built on the explosive energy of the hydrogen atom, but the amount of energy radiating from a Q.S.S. has led astrophysicists to believe that the energy originated from an entirely new type of energy source. The power generated by a typical Q.S.S. is measured in the area of 4 X10 to the 46th power ergs per second, or ten times the amount of energy radiated by the largest known galaxy.
"The bafflng thing about the Q.S.S. is that a typical diameter measures only fifty light years. When we consider that our own galaxy is eighty thousand light years in diameter, the amount of power emanating from the relatively tiny Q.S.S. becomes even more astounding. Estimating mass from the observed size of a typical Q.S.S., the amount of energy released totals more than the energy in all of the available electrons. If a small galaxy were exploded by thermonuclear processes, the energy released would not equal that of a Q.S.S. Spectrography indicates that the Q.S.S.'s are moving away from our galaxy at a uniform speed. Emission lines in the optical spectrum indicate the presence of hydrogen, magnesium, ionized neon, oxygen, and other gases."
There is more, but I think that much will give you the idea. Questions? Alexender?
I can only conclude, sir, that a Q.S.S. cannot possibly exist, and yet it does.
Yes. Ah. The dining hall signals its readiness.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Miaree, First Lady of five worlds, had a tendency to calculate time from
the arrival of Rei. The calendar systems of both races were bulky and unwieldy, both measuring years, as they did, into six figures, seven in the case of the Delanians. There were shortened forms of writing a date, of course, but it was convenient to think in simple terms. Rei plus twenty.
Rei plus twenty-five.
In the year of Rei, twenty-five, the Mother of the Artonuee received a request from an old friend, Bertt the builder, Star Fleet Overlord.
"Feeling the approach of my time," Bertt wrote, "it is with much regret that I request to be relieved of my duties."
Sadly, she sent her permission. "It would be a great honor, my dear Bertt, to have you stay in my dwelling on your way home."
Since the jobs were so interconnected, it seemed logical to appoint her consort Rei to fill Bertt’s position. This meant, of course, that they were often apart, and separation
s were agony for her. It was a time of sacrifice, however, for the distant astronomical observatories in space sent daily reports of the swelling explosions in the constellation of Delan, The Delanian scientists had been accurate to within twenty percent in their predictions of the multiplication effects of the violent coming together of the two giant clusters. Their margin of error was on the conservative side. In the path of the expanding jets of energy, stars, fed by the debris, joined in the paroxysm. The night time sky was a thing of harsh and terrible beauty.
These were, then, the last days.
On The World, giant machines burrowed under the deep roots of the juplee trees, lifted tree and earth to waiting cargo drivers. In orbit around the Artonuee home world, a hundred star ships waited, holds prepared, to become the home in space for a virgin forest. The World was being sacked that the Artonuee might live. And as the forests were moved, miners followed, destroying all in their path, for there was no longer need to preserve a world which was facing doom.
For those Artonuee who worked on The World, it was a traumatic experience.
The shortage of raw materials was an ever-present irritation. Rei chafed, shouted at his subordinates, drove the miners who were at last
allowed to gut the home world. The twenty-percent error in prediction of the time left meant uncertainty and terror. Even the crash program of utilizing all available materials would fall short.
The drivers which had once worked the asteroid belt, a vast fleet, were being melted down for their metals. Nothing was spared. The Evacuation Committee, headed by Argun, President of the Delanians, was assembling the land and air vehicles necessary to transport the population to the waiting star ships, and all vehicles not needed in that effort were expendable.
In Nirrar, the decorative metal fronts of government buildings were being pulled down. Monuments to past Artonuee greatness toppled from their pedestals and joined private flyers, rollers, all scrap metals in the melting vats.
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