Earth's Last Fortress

by A. E. van Vogt

  Garson’s mind wrenched itself from thought of Darrel. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  Mairphy laughed mirthlessly. “We’re the skeptics who, in a general way, know where we are. The great majority of recruits don’t know anything except that it’s a strange place. For psychological reasons, they’ve got to feel that they’re in perfectly rational surroundings. Their own superstitions provide the solutions. An army of ancient Greeks think they’re fighting on the side of Jupiter in the battle of the gods. Religious folk from about four hundred different ages think for reasons of their own that everything is as it should be. The Lerdite Moralists from the thirtieth century believe this is the war of the Great Machine to control its dissident elements. And the Nelorian Dissenters of the year 7643 to 7699—what’s the matter?”

  Garson couldn’t help it. The shock was physical rather than mental. He hadn’t, somehow, thought of it when Derrel talked of the Wizards of Bor, but now he was shaking. His nerves quivered from that casual, stunning array of words. He said finally, “Don’t mind me. It’s those dates you’ve been handing out. I suppose it’s really silly to think of time as being a past and a future. It’s all these, spread out, six hundred billion Earths and universes created every minute.”

  He drew a deep breath. Damn it, he’d stalled long enough. Any minute, Derrel would be coming back. He said stiffly, “What about the Wizards of Bor? I heard somebody use the phrase, and it intrigued me.”

  “Interesting race,” Mairphy commented, and Garson sighed with relief. The man suspected no ulterior motive. He waited tensely as Mairphy went on: “The Wizards discovered some connection between sex and the mind which gave them super-intellect, including mental telepathy. Ruled the Earth for about three hundred years, just before the age of Endless Peace set in. Power politics and all that; violence, great on mechanics, built the first true spaceship which, according to description, was as good as any that has ever existed since. Most of their secrets were lost. Those that weren’t became the property of a Special priest clique whose final destruction is a long story.”

  He paused, frowning thoughtfully, while Garson wondered bleakly how he ought to be taking all this. So far, Derrel’s story was substantiated practically word for word. Mairphy’s voice cut into his indecision. “There’s a pretty story about how the spaceship was invented. In their final struggle for power, a defeated leader, mad with anxiety about his beautiful wife who had been taken as a mistress by the conqueror, disappeared, returned with the ship, got his wife and his power back; and the Derrel dynasty ruled for a hundred years after that.”

  “Derrel!” Garson said. “The Derrel dynasty!”

  The echo of the shock yielded to time and familiarity, and died. They talked about it in low tones; and their hushed baritones formed a queer, deep-throated background to the measured beat of Garson’s thoughts.

  He stepped back, finally, as Mairphy eagerly called other men. With bleak detachment, he listened while Mairphy’s voice recast itself over and over into the same shape, the same story, though the words and even the tone varied with each telling. Always, however, the reaction of the men was the same—joy! Joy at the certainty of victory! And what did it matter what age they went to afterward?

  Garson grew abruptly aware that Mairphy was staring at him sharply. Mairphy said, “What’s the matter?”

  He felt the weight of other eyes on him as he shrugged and said, “All this offers little hope for me. History records that we won this ship. But I have still to confront the captain, and history is silent as to whether I lived or died. Frankly, I consider the message that I received in the Glorious depersonalizing machine more important than ever, and accordingly my life is of more importance than that of anyone else on this ship. I repeat, our only certainty is that Derrel escaped with the spaceship. But who else lived, we don’t know. Derrel—”

  “Yes?” said the calm voice of Derrel behind him. “Yes, Professor Garson?”

  Garson turned slowly. He had no fixed plan; there was the vaguest intention to undermine Derrel’s position, and that made him stress the uncertainty of any of the men escaping. But it wasn’t a plan, because there was the unalterable fact that the ship had gotten away. Derrel had won.

  No plan. The only factors in his situation were his own tremendous necessities and the inimical environment in which they existed. For a long moment, he stared at the gangling body, studied the faint triumph that gleamed in the abnormally long yet distinctive face of the Wizard man. Garson said, “You can read minds. So it’s unnecessary to tell you what’s going on. What are your intentions?”

  Derrel smiled, the glowing, magnetic smile that Garson had already seen. His agate eyes shone as he surveyed the circle of men; then he began to speak in a strong, resonant voice. There was command in that voice, and a rich, powerful personality behind it, the voice of a man who had won.

  “My first intention is to tell everyone here that we are going to an age that is a treasure house of spoils for bold men. Women, palaces, wealth, power for every man who follows me to the death. You know yourself what a damned barren world we’re in now. No women, never anything for us but the prospect of facing death fighting the Glorious still entrenched on Venus or Earth. And a damned bunch of moralists fighting a war to the finish over some queer idea that men ought or ought not to have birth control. Are you with me?”

  It was a stirring, a ringing appeal to basic impulses, and the answer could not have been more satisfactory. A roar of voices, cheers; and finally, “What are we waiting for? Let’s get going!”

  The faint triumph deepened on Derrel’s face as he turned back to Garson. He said softly, “I’m sorry I lied to you, Professor, but it never occurred to me that Mairphy or anybody aboard would know my history. I told you what I did because I had read in your mind some of the purposes that moved your actions. Naturally, I applied the first law of persuasion, and encouraged your hopes and desires.”

  Garson smiled grimly. The little speech Derrel had just given to the men was a supreme example of the encouragement of hopes and desires, obviously opportunistic, insincere and reliable only if it served the other’s future purposes.

  He saw that Derrel was staring at him, and he said, “You know what’s in my mind. Perhaps you can give me some of that easy encouragement you dispense. But remember, it’s got to be based on logic. That includes convincing me that, if I go to the captain, it is to your self-interest to set me down near a Planetarian stronghold, and that furthermore—”

  The words, all the air in his lungs, hissed out of his body. There was a hideous sense of pressure. He was jerked off his feet, and he had the flashing, uncomprehending version of two beds passing by beneath him. Then he was falling.

  Instinctively, he put out his hand, and took the desperate blow of the crash onto a third bed. He sprawled there, stunned, dismayed, but unhurt and safe.

  Safe from what? He clawed himself erect, and stood’ swaying, watching other men pick themselves up, becoming aware for the first time of groans and cries of pain. A voice exploded into the room from some unseen source:

  “Control room speaking! Derrel—the damnedest thing has happened. A minute ago, we were thirty million miles from Venus. Now, the planet’s just ahead, less then two million miles, plainly visible. What’s happened?”

  Garson saw Derrel then. The man was lying on his back on the floor, his eyes open, an intent expression on his face. The Wizard man waved aside his extended hands.

  “Wait!” Derrel said sharply^ “The tentacle aboard this ship has just reported to the Observer on Venus, and is receiving a reply, an explanation of what happened. I’m trying to get it.”

  His voice changed, became a monotone. “The seventeenth X space and time manipulations…taking place somewhere in the future…several years from now. Your spaceship either by accident or design caught in the eddying current in the resulting time storm. Still no clue to the origin of the mighty powers being exercised. That is all…except that battleships are on t
he way from Venus to help you.”

  Derrel stood up; he said quietly, “About what you were saying, Garson, there is no method by which I can prove that I will do anything for you. History records that I lived out my full span of life. Therefore, no self-interest, no danger to the universe, can affect my existence in the past. You’ll have to act on the chance that the opportunity offers for us to give you assistance later,-and there’s no other guarantee I can give.”

  That was at least straightforward. Of course, to an opportunist, even truth was but a means to an end, a means of lulling suspicion. There remained the hard fact that he must take the risks. He said, “Give me five minutes to think it over. You believe,-! can see, that I will go.”

  Derrel nodded. “Your mind is beginning to accept the idea.”

  There was no premonition in Garson of the fantastic thing that was going to happen. He thought, a gray, cold thought: So he was going! In five minutes.

  12

  He stood finally at the wall visiplate, staring out at the burnished immensity of Venus. The planet, already vast, was expanding visibly, like a balloon being blown up? Only it didn’t stop expanding, and, unlike an overgrown balloon, it didn’t burst.

  The tight silence was broken by the tallest of the three handsome Ganellians. The man’s words echoed, not Garson’s thoughts, but the tenor, the dark mood of them. “So much beauty proves once again that war is the most completely futile act of this ’future,’ there are people who know who won this war; and they’re doing nothing—damn them!”

  Garson’s impulse was to say something, to add once more his own few facts to that fascinating subject. But instead he held his thought hard on the reality of what he must do in a minute.

  Besides, Mairphy had described the Ganellians as emotional weaklings who had concentrated on beauty, and with whom it was useless to discuss anything. It was true, of course, that he himself had given quite a few passable displays of emotionalism.

  The thought ended as Mairphy said impatiently, “We’ve discussed all that before, and we’re’ agreed that either the people of the future do not exist at all—which means the universe was blown up in due course by the Glorious energy barrier—or, if the people of the future exist, they’re simply older versions of the million-year-old bodies of the Planetarians or Glorious. If they exist, then the universe was not destroyed, so why should they interfere in the war?

  “Finally, were agreed that it’s impossible that the people of the future, whatever their form, are responsible for the message that came through to Professor Garson. If they can get through a message at all, why pick Garson? Why not contact the Planetarians direct? Or even warn the Glorious of the danger!”

  Garson said, “Derrel, what is your plan of attack?”

  The reply was cool. “I’m not going to tell you that. Reason: at close range a tentacle can read any unwary mind. I want you to concentrate on the thought that your purpose is above-board; don’t even think of an attack in connection with it. Wait—don’t reply! I’m going to speak to Captain Lanadin!”

  “What…Garson began, and stopped.

  The Wizard man’s eyes were closed, his body rigid. He said, half to Garson, half to the others, “A lot of this stuff here works by mind control.” His voice changed. “Captain Lanadin!”

  There was a tense silence; then a hard voice literally spat into the room, “Yes!”

  Derrel said, “We have an important communication to make. Professor Garson, one of the men who was unconscious when—”

  “I know the one you mean,” interrupted that curt voice. “Get on with your communication.”

  Derrel said, “Professor Garson has just become conscious and he has the answer to the phenomena that carried this spaceship thirty million miles on thirty seconds. He feels that he must see you immediately and communicate his message to the Planetarians at once.”

  There was a burst of cold laughter. “What fools we’d be to let any of you come here until after the battleships arrive! And that’s my answer: He’ll have to wait till the battleships arrive.”

  “His message,” said Derrel, “cannot wait. He’s coming down now, alone.”

  “He will be shot on sight.”

  “I can well imagine,” Derrel said scathingly, “what the Planetarians will do to you if he is shot. This has nothing to do with the rest of us. He’s coming because he must deliver that message. That is all.”

  Before Garson could speak, Mairphy, said in a distinct voice, “I’m opposed to it. I admit I accepted the plan earlier, but I couldn’t favor it under such circumstances.”

  The Wizard man whirled on him. His voice was a vibrant force as he raged, “That was a stab in the back to all of us. Here is a man trying to make up his mind on a dangerous mission, and you project a weakening thought. You have said that you come from the stormy period following the thirteen thousand years of Endless Peace. That was after my time, and I know nothing about the age, but it is evident that the softness of the peace period still corroded your people. As a cripple, a weakling who is not going to do any of the fighting, you will kindly refrain from giving further advice!”

  It could have been devastating, but Mairphy simply shrugged, smiled gently, unaffectedly at Garson, and said, “I withdraw from the conversation.” He finished, “Good luck, friend!”

  Derrel, steely-eyed and cold-voiced, said to Garson, “I want to point out one thing. History says we conquered this ship. The only plan we have left revolves around you. Therefore, you went to see the captain.”

  To Garson, to whom logic was the great prime mover, that thought had already come. Besides, his mind had been made up for five minutes.

  The second corridor was empty too, and that strained Garson’s tightening nerves to the breaking point. He paused stiffly, and wiped the thin line of perspiration from his brow. And still he had no premonition of the incredible ending that was coming. There was nothing but the deadly actuality of his penetration into the depths of a ship that seemed of endless length, and seemed larger with each step that he took.

  A door yielded to his touch. He peered into a great storeroom, piled with freight, thousands of tons, silent and lifeless as the corridors ahead. He walked on, his mind blanker now, held steadily away from the thought of Derrel’s intended attack. He thought vaguely: If Norma could keep from Dr. Lell her action of writing a letter to me, then I can keep my thoughts from anyone or anything.

  He was so intent that he didn’t see the side corridor until the men burst from it, and they had him before he could think of fighting. Not that he intended to fight.

  “Bring him in here!” said a hard, familiar voice; and after a moment of peering into the shadows of the receding corridor, he saw a slender man in uniform standing beside a tentacle!

  The hard, young-sounding voice said, “To hell with the Observer. We can always execute. Bring him in here!”

  A door opened, and light splashed out. The door closed behind him. Garson saw that the room was no more than a small anteroom to some vaster, darkened room beyond- He scarcely noticed that. He was thinking with a stinging shock of fury: The logical Observer advising execution without a hearing. Why, that isn’t reasonable. Damn the stupid Observer!

  His fury faded into vast surprise as he stared at the captain. His first impression had been that the other was a young man, but at this closer view he looked years older, immeasurably more mature. And somehow, in his keyed-up state, the observation astonished him. His amazement ended as his mind registered the blazing question in Captain Lanadin’s eyes. Quickly, Garson launched into his story.

  When he had finished, the commander turned his hard face to the tentacle, “Well?” he said.

  The tentacle’s voice came instantly, coldly. “The Observer recalls to your memory its earlier analysis of this entire situation: The destruction of Tentacles 1601, 2 and 3 and the neutralization of electron molds could only have been accomplished with the assistance of a mind reader. Accordingly, unknown to us, a mind reader
is aboard. Four races in history solved the secret of the training essential to mental telepathy. Of these, only the Wizards of Bor possessed surpassing mechanical ability—”

  It was the eeriness that held his whole mind at first, the fantastic reality of this thing talking and reasoning like a human being. The Observer Machine of the Glorious that he had seen was simply a large machine, too big to grasp mentally; like some gigantic number, it was there, and that was all. But this long tubular monstrosity with its human voice was alien.

  The eerie feeling ended in hard, dismaying realization that a creature that could analyze Derrel’s identity might actually prove that death was his own logical lot, and that all else was illusion. The dispassionate voice went on:

  “Wizard men are bold, cunning and remorseless, and they take no action in an emergency that is not related to their purpose. Therefore, this man’s appearance is part of a plot. Destroy him and withdraw from the ship. The battleship will take all necessary action later, without further loss of life.”

  Garson saw, with a sudden, desperate fear, that Captain Larradin was hesitating. The commander said unhappily, “Damn it, I hate to admit defeat.”

  “Don’t be tedious!” said the tentacle. “Your forces might win, but the battleship will win.”

  Decision came abruptly. “Very well,” said the captain curtly. “Willant, de-energize this prisoner and—”

  Garson said in a voice that he scarcely recognized, an abnormally steady voice, “What about my story?”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Your story,” the tentacle said finally—and Garson’s mind jumped at the realization that it was the tentacle, and not the captain, who answered—“your story is rejected by the Observer as illogical. It is impossible that anything went wrong with a Glorious depersonalizing machine. The fact that you were repersonalized after the usual manner on reaching our lines is evidence of your condition, because the re-personalizing machine reported nothing unusual in your case.