Fiction Complete, page 4
Marko said, “What about Lois?”
“She’ll go with you, of course.”
The Terran stood up. He was quiet for a very long time. Then he said: “All right. It’s a deal. I’ll pilot your kids to Centauri.”
WITHIN a week, Terran time, all preparations had been made. Marko had inspected the Jovian Colonist and found her spaceworthy, if crude. The hundred teen-age Jovians, representing all the healthy, mentally fit youngsters on their world, had been herded aboard and briefed on their long mission. Provisions of all types, including a huge supply of food concentrates, had been stored and the interstellar ship given her last-minute touches and check-ups.
Marko had spent the time charting their course to the star that was now so near, checking and rechecking his figures. Lois had seemed to thaw toward him somewhat, although she was still aloof, and at times nervous. Marko wondered often what future was ahead of them and whether or not she would ever come to really care for him.
But he was busy most of the time, and there was little chance to dwell on probabilities. Star maps showed that Alpha Centauri supported at least three planets, all of them small and comfortable near their sun. Pluto-based astronomers had been studying the nearby system for years with an eye to someday voyaging there, and although much of their knowledge was known to the Five Hundred, the Jovians’ had not learned how to apply it.
Finally Marko chose the outermost planet, primarily for reasons of safety. He knew little about stellarium, and he reasoned that an attempt to land on the farthest world would cut down their chances of plunging on into the sun.
Naturally, he thought, the Five Hundred would stay behind. He had not fooled himself as to their motives. It would take this first ship over four years to reach its destination, and that made all the colonists expendable. In that time, if this first expedition failed, a new generation would be ready for another try, and the Jovian leaders would still be safe in their bubble city.
But he had made his decision, and he was not going to back down. In fact, he seemed almost overly anxious to leave. Largely due to his own efforts, blast-off time had been shortened by more than a week.
He often wondered why Lois was not happier now that the plans of her people were about to be realized. Once when he spoke to her about it, she said: “Of course I am, Marko. It was my assignment to condition you for your last interview, to give you something of our side of the story. Evidently, I did my job well. It didn’t take too much to convince you.”
“Can a man be blamed for wanting to better himself?” he asked. “If Jupiter gives me a chance to head the first expedition to another star, shouldn’t I take it?”
“For your personal glory?” Lois asked pointedly.
“What of it? Why else is your own world monopolizing stellarium? Sometimes you sound almost as if you didn’t approve of your own government.”
She did not reply, but turned back to her kitchen.
THERE WAS neither fanfare nor cheering. There was no shouting as there would have been on Terra, and not a parent was there to bid his offspring bon voyage. The cold emotionless nature of the Jovians extended even to their own children, Marko decided, and he wondered how such a world ever hoped to control the universe. The same ideologies had been tried so many times in the history of his own world, and they had never succeeded.
So it was with only a few words of fanatical good cheer from Klessinger and the rest of the Five Hundred’s top leaders that the Jovian Colonist blasted off from Jovopolis when that side of the planet was facing away from the sun and streaked into the heavens.
In the control cabin that would be their home for nearly five years, Marko and Lois watched on the vision screen while the huge world gradually grew smaller behind them. Five of the planet’s moons were visible, and along with them appeared a brilliant red and yellow dot moving rapidly toward Jupiter in the upper right corner of the screen.
Lois pointed to it excitedly. “A comet,” she said, and as Marko nodded unconcernedly, she asked: “Lexell’s Comet, by any chance?”
Marko laughed. “So you knew about my ‘mission’ ?”
“Of course I knew. Is that really Lexell’s Comet?”
“Jupiter has a family of comets that are always around,” the Terran said. “We’ll probably spot several more before long. No one knows the course of Lexell’s Comet. It’s too erratic.” He had turned and was checking the gauges on the Jovian Colonist’s control panel. “All I know about it is what I read in my astrogation courses.”
“YOU’RE A liar, Marko,” Lois said evenly. Startled by the change in her voice, Marko spun around. The woman had a blaster leveled at his chest. There was an expression on her face that he had never seen there before.
“A liar and a coward,” she said, “A chicken-hearted traitor.”
“What are you—” Marko began, but Lois cut him short.
“For weeks I’ve lived with you,” she said, “hating you every minute of the time, but still trying to understand you. And before that—for the last five years—I’ve had that damned propaganda fed to me in steady doses. ‘Jovians are the master race. Jupiter will inherit the stars.’ ” If she had been a man, Marko believed she would have spat. Instead her eyes narrowed and her hand tightened on the blaster.
“And I’ve hated it all,” she said, “My people weren’t exiled outlaws. My father was a Federation mineralogist, stationed at one of the mines when stellarium was discovered. Klessinger’s men killed him because he put up a fight, but they had no way of knowing if everyone was a native Jovian or not, and I had lived there three-quarters of my life. They didn’t suppose there could be one among them who didn’t feel as they did.” While she talked he had adjusted the vision screen’s dials, bringing the shrinking Jovian system back close to them. The comet was a tiny red dot at the head of a pencil-line of fire, growing steadily larger. Lois edged closer.
“Turn this ship around, Marko, or I’ll start blasting you a little at a time until you do. For years I’ve waited for a chance to do my part for my native planet. I’d intended to take over this ship and take it back to Terra, but now I see a better way.”
“We have no arms, no audio,” Marko said. “A Terran ship would blast us out of space.”
She ignored him. “First I’ll burn your legs, one at a time.” she said. “Then, if you don’t turn this ship around, you’ll get it in the arm. I’ll leave you alive and screaming until you do as I say.”
MARKO LEAPED, knocking the gun aside just as she fired. The beam plowed a molten furrow in the control cabin’s overhead, and Marko shuddered. He twisted the gun out of her hand and threw it.
He slapped her hard across the face with his open hand. She staggered back against the bulkhead, her hand to her cheek, suddenly a woman again instead of a wild thing. She was sobbing. Her moment was over.
“Now listen,” Marko said. “You want me to follow that comet into Jupiter’s atmosphere and try to ram it into Jovopolis, simply because it and the city face each other. It would be easier to smash a flea on an elephant’s hide by tossing a pebble. We don’t even know if the comet is going to enter the atmosphere. If we turned back, the Jovians would think we were deserting to Terra and blast us out of existence. Even if we got through and sacrificed ourselves and this shipload of kids—even if the comet did hit the planet—there’d be no chance of destroying the world. Jupiter’s too big. It’s an impossibility.”
Lois was quiet now, listening to him closely. “When the Five Hundred questioned me,” Marko went on, “I had to think of a lie big enough for them to swallow. Not to save my own hide, but to keep them from using narcosyns on me and finding out the XJ-2’s real mission. I played on their ignorance of physics and astronomy, and it worked. The idea of smashing a comet into Jupiter was so preposterous that they believed it. The real plan was fantastic, but not so fantastic that it wouldn’t work. And if you and I had stayed on Jupiter a few more days, we’d be so dead there wouldn’t even be pieces of us left.
“Our mission was accomplished before they got me. We had already been to Callisto and were on our way back when we ran into that patrol. Right now, on that little moon”—he pointed to a tiny dot near Jupiter’s surface—“there is cached Terra’s only, supply of stellarium, at the bottom of a mile-long, steelite-lined tunnel that I helped to bore.
“It’s capped with a time-fuse, and it’s going to explode and shoot that moon like a huge cannonball as soon as it and Jupiter are in juxtaposition. When they meet, it’ll look like half the Universe is exploding, and we’ll be safe out here—just watching. Then all Terra will have to do is go through a new belt of asteroids and pick up the pieces in order to get all the stellarium they are likely to need.”
HE STOPPED, out of breath. Lois was looking at him half-believingly. “But—but if you’re telling the truth, why hasn’t it happened already? You’ve been on Jupiter for four Terran months now.”
“Not quite,” Marko said. “We had to give our units nearby enough time to withdraw, a few at a time, so as not to arouse suspicion. It was our only chance of ending the war, and we didn’t want to take the slightest risk of the Jovians catching on to any sudden retreat. During the weeks since I was captured, every Terran ship has gradually left the area, withdrawing just far enough to watch the fireworks. Now, when that fuse goes off, we’ll see Jupiter destroyed.”
Lois sat down, shocked and exhausted. She looked up at Marko’s strained face and said: “I believe you. But, my God—you would have been killed, too, if you had stayed. And I called you a coward!”
After a moment, she asked: “So now do we go back to Terra?”
Slowly, Marko shook his head. “There’s nothing for me at home except a medal and a few kind words,” he said. He pointed forward. “Out there is Alpha Centauri, and if that system shouldn’t be habitable there are others. We’ve got a shipload of kids back there, and almost five years in which to re-educate them to the right way of. thinking. We’ve got enough provisions to last for two generations, damned near enough stellarium to take us around the galaxy, and a stock pile of robots to do the heavy work. When Terra finds us at Alpha Centauri a few years from now, she’ll find her first interstellar colony all ready and flourishing—and flying the Federation flag.”
He put his arms tenderly about his woman and she smiled up at him, a new light in her eyes.
“Not back to Terra, Lois,” he said. “To the stars.”
THE END
1
KERI STIFLED a yawn. After listening to Vanda’s nagging, every? nay for a week, he was becoming a trifle bored. Of course, he reflected, this world’s weeks weren’t nearly so long as those back home on Doriala, and mentally he thanked Center for that. “I’m Captain of the ship, Vanda,” he explained for the hundredth time, “but I’ve no authority in a case like this.”
“He was nothing,” Vanda said bitterly. “Nobody. A child. I taught him everything he knows. Many’s the time I felt like taking a cue from one of the barbarian worlds we’ve visited and drumming things into his head with my fists. I covered up his mistakes, corrected his charts, made him the best damned astrogator on any expedition. And now—this.”
“I’m neutral,” Keri insisted, “both because I have to be, and because I want to. I’m nothing more than a coordinator. This is a problem the whole crew will have to thresh out together—or with Rorn.”
“He has to come back to the ship,” Vanda replied. “One person can’t run the atomos, chart our courses and map the planets. We need Rorn; we have to get him back—by force, if necessary.”
“And lower ourselves to the level of these savages? I hardly think anyone will agree to that.”
“Then you believe with the rest of them that we can spare Rorn? Nonsense; every member of the expedition is nonexpendable.”
Such reasoning, Keri knew, was false. Aeons before, a man would have shrugged his shoulders at an illogical woman and evaded the issue as best he could, but Keri had never studied ancient psychology. The theory of female inferiority was unknown to his people; so, being a true Dorjalan, Keri attempted to reason with his Engineer.
“I didn’t say that,” he explained. “I told you I was forced to remain neutral. My position as Captain extends only to the actual operation of the ship. The crew members are reasoning human beings; they’ll have to decide among themselves.”
“And soon,” Vanda glowered. “We’ve already wasted too much time on this miserable planet.”
Keri glanced out the spaceship’s port at the world outside. Insignificant, a minute speck in the heavens that was nine-tenths water and unknown until now to the Empire, it whirled close around its inferior sun, Raalkaar, the smallest inhabited planet ever recorded, was holding up an exploring-expedition from a civilization so far advanced from its own as to be incomparable.
“I’ll call a meeting tonight,” Keri
assured the woman. “We’ll come to a final decision. Whatever it is, I agree that it will have to be decided immediately; we’ve wasted too much time already. Raalkaar is unimportant . . .”
Appeased, but still angry, Vanda left the Captain’s cabin and walked to her own. She threw herself down on the soft bunk, hands behind her head. For a long time she stared up at the overhead before she finally fell into a restless sleep.
l
TORNAN, swearing at the multitude of stickers and burrs that had gathered on his tunic, knocked resoundingly on the door of the hut. Hald, the expedition’s Semanticist, standing calmly beside him, irritated the doctor with his poise. Nerves, Tornan reflected, were becoming frayed by this delay.
A yawning, perspiring Rorn opened the rickety door. He rubbed his hands on his loin cloth, the only garment he wore, and swept his lengthening blond hair back from his forehead.
Tornan sniffed in disgust. “Very unsanitary,” he said, and it was difficult to tell whether he meant the hut or its occupant.
“Expected you sooner,” Rorn said, “it’s been almost a week.”
“A week exactly,” Hald reminded him.
Rorn yawned again. “Oh? Well, time doesn’t mean very much to us Raalkaarians.” He grinned insolently, stepping back and motioning for them to enter.
Tornan, glancing about the hut, sniffed again. “Where,” he asked, “is your woman?”
Rorn flopped down on a pile of skins. He picked up a piece of dida bark from a clay bowl and munched on it. The doctor, knowing the slight narcotic content of the wood, was horrified.
“Evidently,” Rorn said, “you haven’t read Clerid’s report. He could tell you that the Raalkaarians are an extremely moral people—more so than most of the worlds we’ve charted. Fara and I aren’t living together; we won’t until the expedition has blasted off and we have been duly united in tribal ceremony.”
“Tribal ceremony!” Hald snorted. “You may have regressed, Rorn, but not that far.”
“Perhaps I used the wrong phrase,” Rorn said. “It’s merely a custom—the same as our own legal joining of a man and a woman.”
“Which is done to insure that the race will survive at an established level,” the Semanticist stated. “I wouldn’t be surprised if these—these savages didn’t mate every few months!”
Rorn grinned. “Now I know you haven’t read our esteemed Psychologists report on this world.”
There was silence for several moments while each of them pondered the problem. Finally Tornan asked, “You know, of course, that we’ve come here to ask you to change your mind?”
“Naturally.”
The Dorjalans had not expected so candid an answer. Tornan, finding himself a loss for words, turned helplessly to the Semanticist.
“Atavism,” Hald said “is not a state of being expected from a Dorjalan; it’s merely a word we apply to backward races we encounter.”
“This may surprise you, but I’ve discovered that happiness is much the same thing,” Rorn countered.
“It so happens,” the young man went on, “that I’ve found happiness here on Raalkaar. True, I never showed dissatisfaction or atavistic tendencies in any of my psychotests. It’s something that just happened—that came over me when I came to this world. I like it here; I love Fara; I’m going to stay.”
“Love!” Tornan spat. “I know nothing of such things. Is ‘love’ the promiscuous relationship that these pagans practice? If so, I much prefer to remain in ignorance.”
“Their ways are utterly opposed to ours,” Hald said. “How can you a member of the only civilized race in the Universe, feel a kinship to these people?”
Rorn shrugged. “I like it here,” he repeated. “That’s all I can tell you.”
l
TORNAN finished, “. . . and that’s all there is; he absolutely refuses to return to the ship.”
“Disgusting,” Vanda murmured, bitterly.
Fein, the expedition’s Botanist, said: “Absolutely without precedent. I suggest we leave as soon as possible and let the man shift for himself on this abominable world.”
“That would imperil the expedition,” Vanda objected; “I can’t handle both our duties.”
“I can give you some help,” Keri told her. “When we return to Dorjala next year we can pick up another Assistant Engineer. Until then, we can manage all right—if you’ll only try.”
Vanda sank back in her chair, brooding.
“Actually,” Keri continued, “I disagree with Fein. I don’t think this is such an ‘abominable’ world at all. It’s one of the most beautiful we’ve charted. Of course the natives . . .”
Tornan leaned forward. “Now don’t tell me . . .”
“Don’t misunderstand; Raalkaar means nothing to me. I realize we can’t be concerned with the pleasantness or unpleasantness of the planets we visit. This business had put us a week behind schedule already; if we can’t convince Rorn that he should return, then we may as well forget about him and blast off.”
“Give me a little more time, Keri,” Vanda pleaded, “a few more days. We can’t leave him here; it would be desertion.”
