In the silence that fell then, we watched a dark hole open in the clifflike wall that faced us. Into this cavern, I directed our ship.
The rear-view plate showed that the cave entrance was closing. Ahead of us lights flashed on, and focused on a door. As I eased our craft to the metal floor, a face flickered onto our radio plate.
“Cassellahat! ” Blake whispered in my ear. “The only chap who’s talked direct to me so far.”
It was a distinguished, a scholarly looking head and face that peered at us. Cassellahat smiled, and said:
“You may leave your ship, and go through the door you see.”
I had a sense of empty spaces around us, as we climbed gingerly out into the vast receptor chamber. Interplanetary spaceship hangars were like that, I reminded myself. Only this one had an alien quality that—
“Nerves!” I thought sharply.
But I could see that Blake felt it, too. A silent duo, we filed through the doorway into a hallway, that opened into a very large, luxurious room.
It was such a room as a king or a movie actress on set might have walked into without blinking. It was all hung with gorgeous tapestries—that is, for a moment, I thought they were tapestries; then I saw they weren’t. They were—I couldn’t decide.
I had seen expensive furniture in some of the apartments Renfrew maintained. But these settees, chairs, and tables glittered at us, as if they were made of a matching design of differently colored fires. No, that was wrong; they didn’t glitter at all. They—
Once more I couldn’t decide.
I had no time for more detailed examination. For a man arrayed very much as we were, was rising from one of the chairs. I recognized Cassellahat.
He came forward, smiling. Then he slowed, his nose wrinkling. A moment later, he hastily shook our hands, then swiftly retreated to a chair ten feet away, and sat down rather primly.
It was an astoundingly ungracious performance. But I was glad that he had drawn back that way. Because, as he shook my hand so briefly, I had caught a faint whiff of perfume from him. It was a vaguely unpleasant odor; and, besides—a man using perfume in quantities!
I shuddered. What kind of foppish nonsense had the human race gone in for?
He was motioning us to sit down. I did so, wondering: Was this our reception? The erstwhile radio operator began:
“About your friend, I must caution you. He is a schizoid type, and our psychologists will be able to effect a temporary recovery only for the moment. A permanent cure will require a longer period, and your fullest co-operation. Fall in readily with all Mr. Renfrew’s plans, unless, of course, he takes a dangerous turn.
“But now”—he squirted us a smile—“permit me to welcome you to the four planets of Centauri. It is a great moment for me, personally. From early childhood, I have been trained for the sole purpose of being your mentor and guide; and naturally I am overjoyed that the time has come when my exhaustive studies of the middle period American language and customs can be put to the practical use for which they were intended.”
He didn’t look overjoyed. He was wrinkling his nose in that funny way I had already noticed; and there was a generally pained expression on his face. But it was his words that shocked me.
“What do you mean,” I asked, “studies in American? Don’t people speak the universal language any more?”
“Of course”—he smiled—“but the language has developed to a point where—I might as well be frank— you would have difficulty understanding such a simple word as ‘yeih.’ ”
“Yeih?” Blake echoed.
“Meaning ‘yes.’ ”
“Oh!”
We sat silent, Blake chewing his lower Up. It was Blake who finally said:
“What kind of places are the Centauri planets? You said something on the radio about the population centers having reverted to the city structure again.”
“I shall be happy,” said Cassellahat, “to show you as many of our great cities as you care to see. You are our guests, and several million credits have been placed to your separate accounts for you to use as you see fit.”
“Gee!” said Blake.
“I must, however,” Cassellahat went on, “give you a warning. It is important that you do not disillusion our peoples about yourselves. Therefore, you must never wander around the streets, or mingle with the crowds in any way. Always, your contact should be via newsreels, radio, or from the inside of a closed machine. If you have any plan to marry, you must now finally give up the idea.”
“I don’t get it!” Blake said wonderingly; and he spoke for us both.
Cassellahat finished firmly: “It is important that no one becomes aware that you have an offensive physical odor. It might damage your financial prospects considerably.
“And now”—he stood up—“for the time being, I shall leave you. I hope you don’t mind if I wear a mask in the future in your presence. I wish you well, gentlemen, and—”
He pushed, glanced past us, said: “Ah, here is your friend.”
I whirled, and I could see Blake twisting, staring—
“Hi, there, fellows,” Renfrew said cheerfully from the door, then wryly: “Have we ever been a bunch of suckers?”
I felt choked. I raced up to him, caught his hand, hugged him. Blake was trying to do the same.
When we finally released Renfrew, and looked around, Cassellahat was gone.
Which was just as well. I had been wanting to punch him in the nose for his final remarks.
“Well, here goes!” Renfrew said.
He looked at Blake and me, grinned, rubbed his hands together gleefully, and added:
“For a week I’ve been watching, thinking up questions to ask this cluck and—”
He faced Cassellahat. “What,” he began, “makes the speed of light constant?”
Cassellahat did not even blink. “Velocity equals the cube of the cube root of gd,” he said, “d being the depth of the space time continuum, g the total tolerance or gravity, as you would say, of all the matter in that continuum.”
“How are planets formed?”
“A sun must balance itself in the space that it is in. It throws out matter as a sea vessel does anchors. That’s a very rough description. I could give it to you in mathematical formula, but I’d have to write it down. After all, I’m not a scientist. These are merely facts that I’ve known from childhood, or so it seems.”
“Just a minute,” said Renfrew, puzzled. “A sun throws this matter out without any pressure other than its—desire—to balance itself?”
Cassellahat stared at him. “Of course not. The reason, the pressure involved, is very potent, I assure you. Without such a balance, the sun would fall out of this space. Only a few bachelor suns have learned how to maintain stability without planets.”
“A few what?” echoed Renfrew.
I could see that he had been jarred into forgetting the questions he had been intending to ask one by swift one. Cassellahat’s words cut across my thought; he said:
“A bachelor sun is a very old, cooled class M star. The hottest one known has a temperature of one hundred ninety degrees F., the coldest forty-eight. Literally, a bachelor is a rogue, crotchety with age. Its main feature is that it permits no matter, no planets, not even gases in its vicinity.”
Renfrew sat silent, frowning, thoughtful. I seized the opportunity to carry on a train of idea.
“This business,” I said, “of knowing all this stuff without being a scientist, interests me. For instance, back home every kid understood the atomic-rocket principle practically from the day he was born. Boys of eight and ten rode around in specially made toys, took them apart and put them together again. They thought rocket-atomic, and any new development in the field was just pie for them to absorb.
“Now, here’s what I’d like to know: what is the parallel here to that particular angle?”
“The adeledicnander force,” said Cassellahat. “I’ve already tried to explain it to Mr. Renfrew, but his mind
seems to balk at some of the most simple aspects.” Renfrew roused himself, grimaced. “He’s been trying to tell me that electrons think; and I won’t swallow it.”
Cassellahat shook his head. “Not think; they don’t think. But they have a psychology.”
“Electronic psychology!” I said.
“Simply adeledicnander,” Cassellahat replied. “Any child—”
Renfrew groaned: “I know. Any child of six could tell me.”
He turned to us. “That’s why I lined up a lot of questions. I figured that if we got a good intermediate grounding, we might be able to slip into this adeledicnander stuff the way their kids do.”
He faced Cassellahat. “Next question,” he said. “What—”
Cassellahat had been looking at his watch. “I’m afraid, Mr. Renfrew,” he interrupted, “that if you and I are going to be on the ferry to the Pelham planet, we’d better leave now. You can ask your questions on the way.”
“What’s all this?” I chimed in.
Renfrew explained: “He’s taking me to the great engineering laboratories in the European mountains of Pelham. Want to come along?”
“Not me,” I said.
Blake shrugged. “I don’t fancy getting into one of those suits Cassellahat has provided for us, designed to keep our odor in, but not theirs out.”
He finished: “Bill and I will stay here and play poker for some of that five million credits worth of dough we’ve got in the State bank.”
Cassellahat turned at the door; there was a distinct frown on the flesh mask he wore. “You treat our government gift very lightly.”
“Yeih!” said Blake.
“So we stink,” said Blake.
It was nine days since Cassellahat had taken Renfrew to the planet Pelham; and our only contact had been a radio telephone call from Renfrew on the third day, telling us not to worry.
Blake was standing at the window of our penthouse apartment in the city of Newmerica; and I was on my back on a couch, in my mind a mixture of thoughts involving Renfrew’s potential insanity and all the things I had heard and seen about the history of the past five hundred years.
I roused myself. “Quit it,” I said. “We’re faced with a change in the metabolism of the human body, probably due to the many different foods from remote stars that they eat. They must be able to smell better, too, because just being near us is agony to Cassellahat, whereas we only notice an unpleasantness from him. It’s a case of three of us against billions of them. Frankly, I don’t see an early victory over the problem, so let’s just take it quietly.”
There was no answer; so I returned to my reverie. My first radio message to Earth had been picked up; and so, when the interstellar drive was invented in 2320 A. D., less than one hundred forty years after our departure, it was realized what would eventually happen.
In our honor, the four habitable planets of the Alpha A and B suns were called Renfrew, Pelham, Blake, and
Endicott. Since 2320, the populations of the four planets had become so dense that a total of nineteen billion people now dwelt on their narrowing land spaces. This in spite of migrations to the planets of more distant stars.
The space liner I had seen burning in 2511 A. D. was the only ship ever lost on the Earth-Centauri lane. Traveling at full speed, its screens must have reacted against our spaceship. All the automatics would instantly have flashed on; and, as those defenses were not able at that time to stop a ship that had gone Minus Infinity, every recoil engine aboard had probably blown up.
Such a thing could not happen again. So enormous had been the progress in the adeledicnander field of power, that the greatest liners could stop dead in the full fury of midflight.
We had been told not to feel any sense of blame for that one disaster, as many of the most important advances in adeledicnander electronic psychology had been made as the result of theoretical analyses of that great catastrophe.
I grew aware that Blake had flung himself disgustedly into a nearby chair.
“Boy, oh, boy,” he said, “this is going to be some life for us. We can all anticipate about fifty more years of being pariahs in a civilization where we can’t even understand how the simplest machines work.”
I stirred uneasily. I had had similar thoughts. But I said nothing. Blake went on:
“I must admit, after I first discovered the Centauri planets had been colonized, I had pictures of myself bowling over some dame, and marrying her.” Involuntarily my mind leaped to the memory of a pair of lips lifting up to mine. I shook myself. I said: “I wonder how Renfrew is taking all this. He—”
A familiar voice from the door cut off my words. “Renfrew,” it said, “is taking things beautifully now that the first shock has yielded to resignation, and resignation to purpose.”
We had turned to face him by the time he finished. Renfrew walked slowly toward us, grinning. Watching him, I felt uncertain as to just how to take his built-up sanity.
He was at his best. His dark, wavy hair was perfectly combed. His startlingly blue eyes made his whole face come alive. He was a natural physical wonder; and at his normal he had all the shine and swagger of an actor in a carefully tailored picture.
He wore that shine and swagger now. He said:
“I’ve bought a spaceship, fellows. Took all my money and part of yours, too. But I knew you’d back me up. Am I right?”
“Why, sure,” Blake and I echoed.
Blake went on alone: “What’s the idea?”
“I get it,” I chimed in. “We’ll cruise all over the universe, live our life span exploring new worlds. Jim, you’ve got something there. Blake and I were just going to enter a suicide pact.”
Renfrew was smiling, “We’ll cruise for a while anyway.”
Two days later, Cassellahat having offered no objection and no advice about Renfrew, we were in space.
It was a curious three months that followed. For a while I felt a sense of awe at the vastness of the cosmos. Silent planets swung into our viewing plates, and faded into remoteness behind us, leaving nostalgic memory of uninhabited, windlashed forests and plains, deserted, swollen seas and nameless suns.
The sight and the remembrance brought loneliness like an ache, and the knowledge, the slow knowledge, that this journeying was not lifting the weight of strangeness that had settled upon us ever since our arrival at Alpha Centauri.
There was nothing here for our souls to feed on, nothing that would satisfactorily fill one year of our life, let alone fifty.
I watched the realization grow on Blake, and I waited for a sign from Renfrew that he felt it, too. The sign didn’t come. That of itself worried me; then I grew aware of something else. Renfrew was watching us. Watching us with a hint in his manner of secret knowledge, a suggestion of secret purpose.
My alarm grew; and Renfrew’s perpetual cheerfulness didn’t help any. I was lying on my bunk at the end of the third month, thinking uneasily about the whole unsatisfactory situation, when my door opened and Renfrew came in.
He carried a paralyzer gun and a rope. He pointed the gun at me and said:
“Sorry, Bill. Cassellahat told me to take no chances, so just lie quiet while I tie you up.”
“Blake!” I bellowed.
Renfrew shook his head gently. “No use,” he said. “I was in his room first.”
The gun was steady in his fingers, his blue eyes were steely. All I could do was tense my muscles against the ropes as he tied me, and trust to the fact that I was twice as strong, at least, as he was.
I thought in dismay: Surely I could prevent him from tying me too tightly.
He stepped back finally, said again. “Sorry, Bill.” He added: “I hate to tell you this, but both of you went off the deep end mentally when we arrived at Centauri; and this is the cure prescribed by the psychologists whom Cassellahat consulted. You’re supposed to get a shock as big as the one that knocked you for a loop.”
The first time I’d paid no attention to his mention of Cassellahat’s nam
e. Now my mind flared with understanding.
Incredibly, Renfrew had been told that Blake and I were mad. All these months he had been held steady by a sense of responsibility toward us. It was a beautiful psychological scheme. The only thing was: what shock was going to be administered?
Renfrew’s voice cut off my thought. He said:
“It won’t be long now. We’re already entering the field of the bachelor sun.”
“Bachelor sun!” I yelled.
He made no reply. The instant the door closed behind him, I began to work on my bonds; all the time I was thinking:
What was it Cassellahat had said? Bachelor suns maintained themselves in this space by a precarious balancing.
In this space! The sweat poured down my face, as I pictured ourselves being precipitated into another plane of the space-time continuum—I could feel the ship falling when I finally worked my hands free of the rope.
I hadn’t been tied long enough for the cords to interfere with my circulation. I headed for Blake’s room. In two minutes we were on our way to the control cabin.
Renfrew didn’t see us till we had him. Blake grabbed his gun; I hauled him out of the control chair with one mighty heave and dumped him onto the floor.
He lay there, unresisting, grinning up - at us. “Too late,” he taunted. “We’re approaching the first point of intolerance, and there’s nothing you can do except prepare for the shock.”
I scarcely heard him. I plumped myself into the chair, and glared into the viewing plates. Nothing showed. That stumped me for a second. Then I saw the recorder instruments. They were trembling furiously, registering a body of INFINITE size.
For a long moment I stared crazily at those incredible figures. Then I plunged the decelerator far over. Before that pressure of full-driven adeledicnander, the machine grew rigid; I had a sudden fantastic picture of two irresistible forces in full collision. Gasping, I jerked the power out of gear.
We were still falling.
“An orbit,” Blake was saying. “Get us into an orbit.” With shaking fingers, I pounded one out on the keyboard basing my figures on a sun of Sol-ish size, gravity, and mass.
The bachelor wouldn’t let us have it.
Great Stories of Space Travel Page 10