Selected Stories (8 page)

They drew together before the door and watched the chase and slaughter around them as it subsided toward its usual balance of hunting and killing, eating and dying. Their hands began to remember the weapons they held, their minds began to reach for reality.

“They were angels,” April said, so softly that no one but Tod heard her. Tod watched her lips tremble and part, and knew that she was about to speak the thing he had almost grasped, but then Teague spoke again, and Tod could see the comprehension fade from her and be gone. “Look! Look there!” said Teague, and moved down the wall to the corner.

What had been an inner compartment of their ship was now an isolated cube, and from its back corner, out of sight until now, stretched another long wall. At regular intervals were doors, each fastened by a simple outside latch of parametal.

Teague stepped to the first door, the others crowding close. Teague listened intently, then stepped back and threw the door open.

Inside was a windowless room, blazing with light. Around the sides, machines were set. Tod instantly recognized their air-cracker, the water-purifiers, the protein-converter and one of the auxiliary power-plants. In the center was a generator coupled to a light-metal fusion motor. The output buses were neatly insulated, coupled through fuseboxes and resistance controls to a “Christmas tree” multiple outlet. Cables ran through the wall to the Coffin compartment and to the line of unexplored rooms to their left.

“They’ve left us power, at any rate,” said Teague. “Let’s look down the line.”

Fish,
Tod snarled silently.
Dead man! After what you’ve just seen you should be on your knees with the weight of it, you should put out your eyes to remember better. But all you can do is take inventory of your nuts and bolts.

Tod looked at the others, at their strained faces and their continual upward glances, as if the bright memory had magnetism for them. He could see the dream fading under Teague’s untimely urgency.
You couldn’t let us live with it quietly, even for a moment.
Then another inward voice explained to him,
But you see, they killed Alma.

Resentfully he followed Teague.

Their ship had been dismantled, strung out along the hilltop like a row of shacks. They were interconnected, wired up, restacked, ready and reeking with efficiency—the lab, the library, six chambers full of mixed cargo, then—then the noise Teague made was as near to a shout of glee as Tod had ever heard from the man. The door he had just opened showed their instruments inside, all the reference tapes and tools and manuals. There was even a dome in the roof, and the refractor was mounted and waiting.

“April?” Tod looked, looked again. She was gone. “April!”

She emerged from the library, three doors back. “Teague!”

Teague pulled himself away from the array of instruments and went to her. “Teague,” she said, “every one of the reels has been read.”

“How do you know?”

“None of them are rewound.”

Teague looked up and down the row of doors. “That doesn’t sound like the way they—” The unfinished sentence was enough. Whoever had built this from their ship’s substance worked according to function and with a fine efficiency.

Teague entered the library and picked a tape-reel from its rack. He inserted the free end of film into a slot and pressed a button. The reel spun and the film disappeared inside the cabinet.

Teague looked up and back. Every single reel was inside out on the clips. “They could have rewound them,” said Teague, irritated.

“Maybe they wanted us to know that they’d read them,” said Moira.

“Maybe they did,” Teague murmured. He picked up a reel, looked at it, picked up another and another. “Music. A play. And here’s our personal stuff—behavior film, training records, everything.”

Carl said, “Whoever read through all this knows a lot about us.”

Teague frowned. “Just us?”

“Who else?”

“Earth,” said Teague. “All of it.”

“You mean we were captured and analyzed so that whoever they are could get a line on Earth? You think they’re going to attack Earth?”

“‘You mean … You think …’” Teague mimicked coldly. “I mean nothing and I think nothing! Tod, would you be good enough to explain to this impulsive young man what you learned from me earlier? That we need concern ourselves only with evidence?”

Tod shuffled his feet, wishing not to be made an example for anyone, especially Carl, to follow. Carl flushed and tried to smile. Moira took his hand secretly and squeezed it. Tod heard a slight exhalation beside him and looked quickly at April. She was angry. There were times when he wished she would not be angry.

She pointed. “Would you call
that
evidence, Teague?”

They followed her gesture. One of the tape-readers stood open. On its reelshelf stood the counterpart of the strange object they had seen twice before—once, in miniature, found in Alma’s Coffin; once again, huge in the sky. This was another of the miniatures.

Teague stared at it, then put out his hand. As his fingers touched it, the pilot-jewel on the tape-reader flashed on, and a soft, clear voice filled the room.

Tod’s eyes stung. He had thought he would never hear that voice again. As he listened, he held to the lifeline of April’s presence, and felt his lifeline tremble.

Alma’s voice said:

“They made some adjustments yesterday with the needle-clusters
i
n my Coffin, so I think they will put me back into it … Teague, oh, Teague, I’m going to die!

“They brought me the recorder just now. I don’t know whether it’s for their records or for you. If it’s for you, then I must tell you … how can I tell you?

“I’ve watched them all this time … how long? Months … I don’t know. I conceived when I awoke, and the babies are coming very soon now; it’s been long enough for that; and yet—how can I tell you?

“They boarded us, I don’t know how, I don’t know why, nor where … outside, space is strange, wrong. It’s all misty, without stars, crawling with blurs and patches of light.

“They understand me; I’m sure of that—what I say, what I think. I can’t understand them at all. They radiate feelings—sorrow, curiosity, confidence, respect. When I began to realize I would die, they gave me a kind of regret. When I broke and cried and said I wanted to be with you, Teague, they reassured me, they said I would. I’m sure that’s what they said. But how could that be?

“They are completely dedicated in what they are doing. Their work is a religion to them, and we are part of it. They … value us, Teague. They didn’t just find us. They chose us. It’s as if we were the best part of something even they consider great.

“The best …! Among them I feel like an amoeba. They’re beautiful, Teague. Important. Very sure of what they are doing. It’s that certainty that makes me believe what I have to believe; I am going to die, and you will live, and you and I will be together. How can that be? How can that be?

“Yet it is true, so believe it with me, Teague. But—find out how!

“Teague, every day they have put a machine on me, radiating. It has to do with the babies. It isn’t done to harm them. I’m sure of that. I’m their mother and I’m sure of it. They won’t die.

“I will. I can feel their sorrow.

“And I will be with you, and they are joyous about that. …

“Teague—find out how!”

Tod closed his eyes so that he would not look at Teague, and wished with all his heart that Teague had been alone to hear that ghostly voice. As to what it had said, the words stood as a frame for a picture he could not see, showing him only where it was, not what it meant. Alma’s voice had been tremulous and unsure, but he knew it well enough to know that joy and certitude had lived with her as she spoke. There was wonderment, but no fear.

Knowing that it might be her only message to them, should she not have told them more—facts, figures, measurements?

Then an old, old tale flashed into his mind, an early thing from the ancient Amerenglish, by Hynlen (Henlyne, was it? no matter) about a man who tried to convey to humanity a description of the superbeings who had captured him, with only his body as a tablet and his nails as a stylus. Perhaps he was mad by the time he finished, but his message was clear at least to him:
“Creation took eight days.”
How would he, Tod, describe an association with the ones he had seen in the sky outside, if he had been with them for nearly three hundred days?

April tugged gently at his arm. He turned toward her, still avoiding the sight of Teague. April inclined her shining white head to the door. Moira and Carl already stood outside. They joined them, and waited wordlessly until Teague came out.

When he did, he was grateful, and he need not say so. He came out, a great calm in his face and voice, passed them and let them follow him to his methodical examination of the other compartments, to finish his inventory.

Food stores, cable and conduit, metal and parametal rod and sheet stock, tools and tool-making matrices and dies. A hangar, in which lay their lifeboat, fully equipped.

But there was no long-range communication device, and no parts for one.

And there was no heavy space-drive mechanism, nor tools to make one, nor fuel if they should make the tools.

Back in the instrument room, Carl grunted. “Somebody means for us to stick around.”

“The boat—”

Teague said, “I don’t think they’d have left us the boat if Earth was in range.”

“We’ll build a beacon,” Tod said suddenly. “We’ll get a rescue ship out to us.”

“Out where?” asked Teague drily.

They followed his gaze. Bland and silent, merciless, the decay chronometer stared back at them. Built around a standard radioactive, it had two dials—one which measured the amount of energy radiated by the material, and one which measured the lost mass. When they checked, the reading was correct. They checked, and the reading was 64.

“Sixty-four years,” said Teague. “Assuming we averaged as much as one-half light speed, which isn’t likely, we must be thirty light-years away from Earth. Thirty years to get a light-beam there, sixty or more to get a ship back, plus time to make the beacon and time for Earth to understand the signal and prepare a ship. …” He shook his head.

“Plus the fact,” Tod said in a strained voice, “that there is no habitable planet in a thirty-year radius from Sol. Except Prime.”

Shocked, they gaped silently at this well-known fact. A thousand years of scrupulous search with the best instruments could not have missed a planet like this at such a distance.

“Then the chronometer’s wrong!”

“I’m afraid not,” said Teague. “It’s sixty-four years since we left Earth, and that’s that.”

“And this planet doesn’t exist,” said Carl with a sour smile, “and I suppose that is also that.”

“Yes, Teague,” said Tod. “One of these two facts can’t exist with the other.”

“They can because they do,” said Teague. “There’s a missing factor. Can a man breathe under water, Tod?”

“If he has a diving-helmet.”

Teague spread his hands. “It took sixty-four years to get to this planet
if.
We have to find the figurative diving-helmet.” He paused. “The evidence in favor of the planet’s existence is fairly impressive,” he said wryly. “Let’s check the other fact.”

“How?”

“The observatory.”

They ran to it. They sky glowed its shimmering green, but through it the stars had begun to twinkle. Carl got to the telescope first, put a big hand on the swing-controls, and said, “Where first?” He tugged at the instrument. “Hey!” He tugged again.

“Don’t!” said Teague sharply. Carl let go and backed away. Teague switched on the lights and examined the instrument. “It’s already connected to the compensators,” he said. “Hmp! Our hosts are most helpful.” He looked at the setting of the small motors which moved the instrument to cancel diurnal rotation effects. “Twenty-eight hours, thirteen minutes plus. Well, if that’s correct for this planet, it’s proof that this isn’t Earth or Prime—if we needed proof.” He touched the controls lightly. “Carl, what’s the matter here?”

Carl bent to look. There were dabs of dull silver on the threads of the adjusting screws. He touched them. “Parametal,” he said. “Unflashed, but it has adhered enough to jam the threads. Take a couple days to get it off without jarring it. Look here—they’ve done the same thing with the objective screws!”

“We look at what they want us to see, and like it,” said Tod.

“Maybe it’s something we want to see,” said April gently.

Only half-teasing, Tod said, “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

Teague put his eye to the instrument. His hands, by habit, strayed to the focusing adjustment, but found it locked the same way as the others. “Is there a Galactic Atlas?”

“Not in the rack,” said Moira a moment later.

“Here,” said April from the chart table. Awed, she added, “Open.”

Tensely they waited while Teague took his observation and referred to the atlas and to the catalog they found lying under it. When at last he lifted his face from the calculations, it bore the strangest expression Tod had ever seen there.

“Our diving-helmet,” he said at last, very slowly, too evenly, “—that is, the factor which rationalizes our two mutually exclusive facts—is simply that our captors have a faster-than-light drive.”

“But according to theory—”

“According to our telescope,” Teague interrupted, “through which I have just seen Sol, and these references so thoughtfully laid out for us …” Shockingly, his voice broke. He took two deep breaths, and said, “Sol is two-hundred and seventeen light-years away. That sun which set a few minutes ago is Beta Librae.” He studied their shocked faces, one by one. “I don’t know what we shall eventually call this place,” he said with difficulty, “but we had better get used to calling it home.”

They called the planet Viridis (“the greenest name I can think of,” Moira said) because none among them had ever seen such a green. It was more than the green of growing, for the sunlight was green-tinged and at night the whole sky glowed green, a green as bright as the brightest silver of Earth’s moon, as water molecules, cracked by the star’s intense ultraviolet, celebrated their nocturnal reunion.