“We’re in this for the long haul,” Terry said, “and all my life I’ve wanted to explore uncharted worlds. So let’s leave the option open.”
Meanwhile, Alison and Gwen stripped Bonanza’s cabin of everything not fastened down. When they had carried out all they could, they remained in Estel while Terry sealed the joined airlocks, turned off the artificial gravity, and took the heavier equipment, along with the loose oxygen tanks and extra spacesuits, through the rear hatch into the hold for transfer. The ship was soon an empty shell.
They gathered around the table in Estel’s lounge to rest and quench their thirst before proceeding. He and Jon should sleep for awhile, Terry thought; they had done so only briefly and they had a difficult job ahead of them. There was no real need to hurry now that they were far from Ciencia. But he was too restless to delay, and he knew Jon wanted to get the painful part over with.
“Friends,” he said seriously, “this is the point of no return. Until Bonanza is destroyed you three are still where you’re legally entitled to be, and if you were to go back you might find the police weren’t chasing us after all. You don’t need to be concerned about my safety now that I’m aboard my starship. So if anyone’s having second thoughts, now is the time to speak up.”
“Of course we wouldn’t go back, even if we hadn’t been pursued,” Alison said.
“I’m where I belong, police or no police,” Jon declared, “and where I’m honored to think I’m needed. But Gwen—” He looked at her with concern. “I still don’t feel right about your not having had a choice.”
“You needn’t worry,” she told him. “If I’d been offered a chance to work on Estel I’d have given up everything else for it without any hesitation.”
“Okay,” Terry said. “I’m going to approach the asteroid, but not too close because orbiting an asteroid is tricky and Estel won’t have a pilot aboard while I’m down there.” He went to set course for the coordinates Jon had given him.
Alone on the bridge, he thought of the Elders who had silently guarded the ship during the days he’d been gone. They would have departed when they observed the rendezvous with Bonanza; they’d bent their strict policy of noninterference by keeping watch for him, and they would not protect him in the future. He would never have any contact with them again. Yet his life had been shaped by the two past contacts, and though during his exile on Ciencia he’d suppressed his longing to know more about their vast alien civilization, since meeting them for the second time it had begun to emerge. How many worlds—shielded, he’d been told, from detection by human technology—did their Federation encompass? What was it like to live in a culture more advanced than Earth’s, one where mind-powers even greater than those of the Maclairnans were universal? He alone knew the stakes in the effort to achieve acceptance of such powers by society. It was going to be hard not to reveal those stakes to the three people who had agreed to share his commitment.
When they were as close as Terry dared go to the asteroid, Jon took the controls of Bonanza for the last time and made a successful landing at his usual site. To minimize the time when Estel would be pilotless, Terry did not follow in the shuttle until the explosives were in place. It would be unwise to be involved in their deployment anyway; Jon was experienced with them while he was not, and inept handing would endanger them both. Worse, what would become of Alison and Gwen if he never returned?
Setting the shuttle down on the rocky surface, he was surprised by the intense emotions that surged through him. Memories of the many asteroids he’d landed on in the past were overwhelmed by the last one, where after deliberately crashing he’d crawled out of the ship to die. The terrain of this asteroid was similar. Above its nearby horizon, he saw the stars just as he had then, and was awed once again by the miracle of his unlooked-for survival. He could not doubt that there had been meaning in it. From this day forward, he would dedicate his life to working toward the future the Elders foresaw for humankind.
Working quickly, they retrieved the rest of the mining equipment and stowed it in the shuttle’s hold. Then, after a last wistful look at Bonanza, Jon climbed aboard. “That ship’s been the same as family to me,” he said. “If I’d guessed when I got out of bed this morning that by the time the night was over I’d be blowing it to space dust, I’d have thought I’d lost my mind. Well, let’s get it over with.”
“We’re your family from now on,” Terry assured him. But he knew it wouldn’t be the same, because Estel was his ship, not Jon’s, and its mission was his no matter how strongly Jon supported it.
The detonator would work from above the surface, so he lifted off and hovered as Jon removed it from the case strapped to his belt. “Want me to push the button?” he asked quietly.
“No,” Jon declared. Without further discussion he pressed it himself, and a cloud of rock and dust rose from Bonanza, not settling enough to give them a clear look at the remaining shell. As the asteroid had no atmosphere there was, of course, no sound. There was no drama in the explosion, only a pang of regret mixed with the thrill of the journeys to come.
~ 10 ~
“So, how soon do we jump?” Gwen asked when they were back aboard the starship.
“We have to get farther away from the sun,” Jon told her. “How much farther, Terry?”
“About nine hours,” Terry replied. “But there’s something else I have to do first. I’m going back to orbit Ciencia.”
All three of them stared at him in astonishment. “Whatever for?” Alison exclaimed.
Terry had expected that they would protest against what he was about to tell them. They would probably consider his plan rash. But he was captain, and a ship in flight was not a democracy.
“There are a lot of people on Ciencia who’ve been putting themselves at risk because of what I said at my trial,” he said. “They need inspiration to go on trying to change the censorship laws. They need more supporters. And they need to believe in the ideal of Estel—if we’re going to make it into a symbol elsewhere, we have to ensure that it remains a symbol here. That may not happen if they think the Captain of Estel is permanently out of the picture. To have hope, they need to know that I escaped.”
“What are you saying?” Alison burst out. “We’ve just gotten away; you can’t go back and tell anybody—”
“No farther back than high orbit. We’ll be in no danger there; we’re in a starship now and the Ciencian police can’t touch a starship unless it descends lower. In any case, they’ll have no idea that Jon is aboard.”
“But if you speak as Captain of Estel, they’ll know you are.”
“You’d be crazy to take the risk,” Jon declared. “Sure, they have no legal authority over starships, since officially the ones in orbit don’t exist. But since when has Ciencia’s government obeyed its own laws?”
“There are starships in high orbit half the time—El Dorado is there now. Have the police ever interfered with them?”
“How about when they arrested you at Freerunner?”
“It was docked with Bonanza. They wouldn’t have approached it otherwise.”
“Do you know that? They don’t bother the smugglers’ starships because they’re profiting from the transactions locals make with them and they don’t want to discourage them from coming. The only potential profit from Estel would be in capturing you again.”
“If they can’t touch you when you’re aboard a starship, why didn’t you just stay in Freerunner and get away?” Gwen asked.
“I thought about it. But I knew Jon would be imprisoned if I did.”
“Even a friendly captain like Freerunner’s wouldn’t have given you sanctuary,” Jon said. “If people could leave aboard free traders I’d have gone years ago. But no amount of money could persuade an interstellar smuggler to take a Ciencian along, because afterward his ship could never trade here again. The local ships wouldn’t be allowed to reach it.”
Alison reasoned, “The police believe Estel is just a myth. So won’t they assume yo
u’re in some other ship—and if starships don’t give sanctuary, mightn’t they suspect it’s a stolen one that isn’t even a starship? Quaid won’t have told anyone that he took you aboard Venture, after all.”
“They could tell this one isn’t local once they sighted it,” Terry pointed out, not admitting to himself that in the case of an escaped convict in a stolen ship, they might fire from a distance to kill. “Anyway, they couldn’t board if they tried; we’re better armed than the police ships. But I have no intention of getting into a fight. I’ll make one broadcast over the comm and be gone before they can see us.”
Alison and Gwen sat silent, torn between fear for Terry and admiration for his daring. “Terry,” Jon said, “either you think you’re living on borrowed time since that crash or you believe your survival of it means you’re leading a charmed life, I’m not sure which.”
Was that true? Terry wondered. Underneath perhaps there was a little of both. But mainly he felt that bold action was his only hope of succeeding in the task he had set for himself—and the sooner he got started, the better.
“I warned you that we’d face danger,” he said.
“Yes, but we haven’t even smuggled anything yet—and your opponents on Earth don’t know you’re alive. Why rush into it before you have to?”
“Will people who hear your broadcast believe it’s really you?” Alison asked.
“Of course they will,” Gwen said. “Those who don’t recognize his voice from the trial recording will have the evidence from comparison with the new one. And it will make a big difference to recruiting—If I were still there I’d be so fired up that I’d draw a crowd of demonstrators.”
“I guess so.” Hesitantly, Alison continued, “Terry, are you sure that revealing your escape won’t lead to your supporters being suspected of helping you? After all the trouble we took to make it look like the rest of us didn’t know about it—”
“I’ll make plain that they weren’t involved,” Terry assured her. “There’s no way anyone outside the prison could have aided me, and the police know it. The danger was that if the authorities were aware that you left Ciencia with me, they’d assume that I’d been in contact with the underground after I got out. I’ll give them a reason not to think that.” It was best not to be specific before the broadcast, Terry decided. Jon would be sure to declare that what he intended to say was foolhardy.
He met their eyes, one person at a time. “Will you trust me on this?” he asked soberly. “I’ve got to do it, and I’d like your backing.”
Jon nodded. “Any spacer knows that there’s no worse place to be than aboard a ship whose crew doesn’t trust the captain’s judgment,” he said. “If I doubted yours, I wouldn’t have agreed to serve under you. So let’s get on with it.”
During the hours it took to get back to orbital distance, Terry sent his crew to their staterooms to arrange their belongings and rest. He himself stayed on watch, pondering what he was going to say. It was hard to express; at the trial his words had come naturally, impelled by the urgency of the moment, and he would have to rely on that happening again. He recalled with chagrin that the effectiveness of his courtroom speech had been enhanced by his telepathic connection with the listeners; not until then had he perceived the power of telepathy to stir a crowd. Mass telepathy would not work from orbit. The Ciencians would pick up what he said aloud, and nothing more.
The others joined him on the bridge once orbit had been established. He couldn’t afford any delay, Terry knew, if only because merely being there made everyone edgy. He fought a sudden surge of doubt. Was he doing the right thing, or was he endangering his friends pointlessly?
Resolutely, he grasped the comm’s microphone. “Ciencia control, this is HS Estel, outbound to Centauri, the captain speaking. Stand by to record.”
“Estel?” The voice that came over the comm was incredulous; they had, after all, been searching in vain for the mythical Estel since long before Terry’s arrest. “If this is some kind of prank, can it!” said a second voice sharply. “Identify yourself!”
The ship’s transponder should identify it, as did those of the smugglers’ ships, Terry realized suddenly—and if so there could be no doubt he was aboard a starship. But it had been registered only a few days ago and Ciencia’s files might not be up to date.
“This is the Captain of Estel,” he repeated. “My name is unimportant since the one you know me by is not my real one. You can verify my identity from my voiceprint. Make sure you are recording, because I will say this only once.
“People of Ciencia, remember the words hidden on the Net, the words passed from one to another among those of you who haven’t personally seen them: ‘There is a ship, and its name is Estel, which means hope. Its captain came from the stars and his heart is there, but at times his ship descends to bring the knowledge that’s rightfully ours. And someday this knowledge will no longer be hidden.’
“I am that captain, and I tell you that those words are true. You believe that I am in prison, for you saw me sentenced at my trial. The government has told you that Estel is only a myth. But it is not, for I am aboard it now. They could not keep me in prison any more than they can keep you from reading the books and stories that are your rightful heritage. My friends and I brought those books to your world and many of you know where on the Net to find them. I will not be bringing more; I am going now to give hope to other worlds. You need me no longer, for you are freeing yourselves from the tyranny of your government’s false view of humankind.
“You now know that your own minds are far more powerful than your government would have you believe. You have become aware that human beings have abilities that science does not yet acknowledge. Those who don’t wish to acknowledge it are your oppressors. They hope to keep you in ignorance because, were you to learn how to use the full power of the human mind, they could no longer control what you think and what you do. And in fact they too prefer to remain ignorant of these things—they are imprisoned by the fear of discovering that their beliefs are wrong.
“Just as beyond the clouds that cover this planet there is sunlight bright enough to dazzle those never before exposed to it, beyond the facts known to science there is a reality that would overwhelm those who want to think that those facts explain everything. People of Ciencia, are you satisfied to live with the dark cloudy sky under which your laws confine you, or would you rather see the sun?”
Terry drew breath, realizing that although he was only broadcasting and could feel no response from his intended audience, he was nevertheless being elevated by a surging telepathic current. It came from his own crew, their latent psi capability enhanced by his projection of conviction that they shared. Gwen sat watching him, rapt; Jon’s worried frown had faded; and Alison’s eyes were bright with tears of emotion.
“Your government can no more hold you to those laws than it could hold me in prison,” he went on, “for human destiny lies in freedom to travel between the stars, as your ancestors did, and as I will do when this broadcast ends. Now some of you may be thinking that it is not possible for a man to escape from prison unaided, and that somehow my underground friends must have contrived to help me. But the prison authorities know that this is not possible either; there is no way anyone could have gotten in, let alone out again. It was fate that freed me from those steel walls, because I was destined to return to the stars in Estel.
“And so I say to the authorities, don’t waste your time hunting for accomplices you know cannot exist. Look instead to one of your own, and ask him what he was paid for the enterprise that required him to set me free. He is not my friend. He merely used me in secret for his evil ends, so as to avoid splitting a very large sum of money among colleagues who might feel entitled to share it. You will know who you are when I tell you his name is Quaid.
“I am leaving Ciencia now for good; Estel will not come here again. But the hope it has offered you these past years will remain with you, and in time, perhaps I will meet some of yo
u on the worlds of other stars.”
Terry switched off the comm and sank back into the pilot’s seat, shaking with released tension. He was not sure just what he’d said; he’d spoken without conscious deliberation. But he knew it had come from deep within him.
“My God, Terry!” Jon exploded. “What were you thinking? Get us out of here fast, before Quaid hears the recording.”
“He won’t have time to think about Estel if his cronies hear it before he does,” Terry declared with satisfaction. “And they’ll be too busy making him pay up to worry about looking for Estelan conspirators.”
“Maybe so. Still, if they don’t kill him he’ll come after us.”
“He can’t. We’re faster than any local ship, and Ciencia has no starships.”
“But he has connections. You know he does—he arranged in advance to sell to offworlders, after all. That means he has access to the government ansible and he knows how to contact your enemies on Earth.”
“I suppose so,” Terry admitted. “But I’m betting that he’ll be neutralized before he gets a chance. At the very least he’ll lose his position and be prosecuted for letting me go—perhaps be put in prison himself. I want him to pay, Jon! Not just in money but suffering for what he aimed to do to innocent people.”
“And to you,” Jon agreed. “It’s natural to want revenge—”
“Just what did this guy Quaid do, aside from freeing you?” Gwen inquired.
“He was Terry’s interrogator,” Alison said with a shudder. “He tortured him.”
“That was nothing,” Terry said. “As you know from my work as a healer, Gwen, I can protect myself from physical pain. I did hate him while he was trying to break me, mostly because of his derision of everything I believe in. But that’s not what he deserves to suffer for. Later, he sold a biochemical weapon to terrorists that would have wiped out a whole colony and tricked me into piloting the ship that was supposed to deliver it.”
The Rising Flame: Box Set: Defender of the Flame + Herald of the Flame Page 51