Collected Short Fiction, page 601
“Why is he here?”
“There’s something in your past.” Penwright chuckled discreetly. “Some tampering with official records. Somebody discovered that you were inadequately conditioned for your mission here. The regional director sent Thornwall to replace you.”
SCARLET stood staring blankly, speechless, with all his new resolutions shattering into panic. Following too close to the limiting velocity of light, his past had overtaken him. His gesture of help toward the people of Earth had cost him everything.
“Thornwall is an old school friend of mine.” Penwright glowed with reminiscent pleasure. “Once I saved his life, when we were sundiving after the flying lights and he had got himself trapped in one of their magnetic nests. I think I can trust him to approve the blinker project.”
“Perhaps he will,” Scarlet rasped. “When he arrives!”
Still robed defiantly in his judicial light, he abandoned the bench and darted down to Mark Whitherly, who sat like a white and silent mummy wrapped in chill gray dust, alive only in his bright and bitter eyes.
“Where is Coral?” Scarlet shouted. “Where did she go?”
“Do you know what you have done?” The fading wisp of Whitherly ignored his own hoarse demand. “With your unconditioned blindness, you have killed my great chance to observe a contact crisis. You have killed me.
I am asking for euthanasia.”
“I’ll approve it gladly,” Scarlet snarled. “But what became of Coral Fell?”
“You will find her with Flintledge,” Whitherly whispered through the frosty dust. “If you find her at all!”
Feeling as cold and futile as the dying scientist, Scarlet rushed from the dome to the surface level. When he burst out of the lock tower in a space belt, Sol was already rising over the bleak moonscape.
But how could it be Sol?
Bewilderment froze him.
That blinding point of hot blue light was too small for Sol, rising too far north and three days early. Perhaps it was another star!
But he had no time for riddles now. Setting the belt to filter out its burning glare, he ran on to search for his neutrionic flyer.
Perhaps, he supposed, Newbolt had been panicked into an unduly violent interception of the rocket from Earth. Perhaps Tom Scoggins’s fusion missiles had been detonated. But then, if that were true, the fire in space should have been fading.
Instead, it was visibly growing. He had to turn his filters up again. Although the savage blaze hid the constellations, he thought it must be in the direction of Denebola. It must be—
An artificial nova!
That jolted him. Even since he knew Penwright, the demolition of a star seemed incredible insolence. But he caught his breath and hurried on.
Which star had the signalmen chosen to burn for the first intergalactic flash?
VIII
He found the Vegan banker unhappily surveying a gray crater of deflated camouflage fabric around the empty pad where the neutrionic flyer had stood. Shivering with a sense of chill desolation, he whispered hoarsely: “Coral? Have you seen her?”
“Gone with Flintledge.” The banker waved stiffly at the blazing sky. “Gone out where you yourself were planning to go.” Scarlet recovered his breath and buried his dreams. He offered mechanically at last to surrender the documents that had made him legal owner of the flyer.
“Worthless waste tape!” The banker laughed. “Riding the neutrionic wind from that new nova, the flyer will come close enough to the speed of light. Flintledge and Coral can’t be overtaken. They can choose their own worlds to civilize, out on the galactic frontier—wherever it is when they overtake it.”
“I can’t understand it.” Scarlet stood scowling with a puzzled indignation. “What had Coral in common with that monster?”
“Enough.” The banker grinned. “They were both searching for more primitive creatures to exploit, each in his own way. They found each other. But I believe Your Equity has more urgent problems now.” A raw edge of malice cut through the Vegan’s well-conditioned courtesy. “Although I am in no position to press any charges against you, I was pleased to learn that Commander Newbolt has ordered your arrest.”
“I’m immune from arrest,” Scarlet muttered desperately. “So long as I wear my light of office.”
“You won’t wear it long,” the banker promised unpleasantly. “Warden Thornwall will soon be landing, with all the unfortunate facts you thought you had buried on Denebola IV.”
STILL clinging grimly to the pale halo of his authority, Scarlet was waiting with Newbolt and Penwright and the banker when the arriving quarantine flyer came down out of the savage glare of the nova. Newbolt marched quickly to meet Thornwall at the lock.
“Here’s your man, sir.” He nodded contemptuously toward Scarlet. “I attempted to arrest him. But he has the face to claim judicial immunity.”
“Hello, Wain!” Thornwall looked older, his dark beauty oddly dulled, as if the long light-years had somehow overtaken him. Yet his worn smile seemed strangely benign. He walked past Newbolt, in order to grasp Scarlet’s hand.
“Forgive my bringing up your past sins.” Oddly, he was grinning. “When I sent the message, I understood from Newbolt that you were about to make a more serious sort of blunder. Fortunately, your ruling on the crisis here was a magnificent vindication.”
“What’s all this?” Newbolt followed from the lock, glaring furiously. “Warden Thornwall, aren’t you going to nullify the decisions of this criminal?”
“On the contrary.” A stern smile flickered through the shadow on Thornwall’s face. “Commander, I am afraid that you have forgotten one of the first traditions of the service. We allow our people to learn from their mistakes. Although Scarlet was not aware of it, his unconditioned behavior back on Denebola IV was observed and reported at the time. The regional director offered me a bet that he would make the right decision, before we sent him here.”
Scarlet blinked his yellow eyes.
“But if—if you know what I have done, aren’t you going to break me?”
“Don’t be an utterly unconditioned fool!” Thornwall clapped him warmly on the back. “I refused to accept that bet. We’re few of us perfect. And those few are seldom successful in the service, because they share too little with the people we guard. Wain, I’m going to recommend you for promotion.”
Scarlet gulped and tried to wet his quivering lips.
“But he ought to be cashiered!” Newbolt stormed. “I can prove that he accepted a bribe. His decision to extend the quarantine ignored competent evidence that Earth is not human. I will advise the signal service to appeal!”
“Your advice will carry little weight,” Thornwall softly interrupted him. “Because you have been relieved of your duties here. You are being reassigned to the signal service—which is now facing an extraordinary emergency.”
Ignoring Newbolt’s indignant roar, Thornwall turned briskly back to Scarlet.
“Wain, you are replacing Newbolt as commander of the station here. For the next few centuries, you will be shepherding the people of Earth along toward truly human status. That will be a difficult and lonely task, which you can hope to accomplish only by making the best use of subordinates who are no better conditioned than you are.”
Newbolt had moved apart, muttering with Penwright.
“We won’t take this!” he shouted suddenly. “The blinker project must be accelerated now, to integrate this natural nova into our intergalactic signal. The condemnation of the planets of Sol was supported by adequate evidence, which Scarlet chose to ignore. The signal service is going to appeal to your regional headquarters on Denebola IV!”
Thornwall’s worn smile checked him.
“We no longer have any headquarters on Denebola IV.” He nodded soberly toward that terrible new luminary blazing over the blue moonscape. “Because that nova is Denebola.”
“Denebola—a nova?”
“But not a natural nova.”
NEWBOLT gasped and stared ’ at Penwright.
“It can’t—” Violently, the signal officer shook his head. “It can’t be artificial! Sol was to be the first. Denebola is no part of our signal project.”
“Not of yours,” Thornwall said. “But there is another.”
“Whose—?”
“Interpreting the signal will be part of your duty now.” Thornwall smiled bleakly. “I had my first hint of the thing years ago, when I was sun-diving in Denebola, investigating the radiations of the energy complexes that we used to call the flying lights. On several occasions, I detected neutrionic components in their emissions.
“Since, I have been gathering the reports of other expeditions into other stars. Several divers have detected focused neutrionic beams, of the same type that you meant to use to ignite your own supernovas. A mass flight of the lights from the surface of Denebola, which I observed not long before I left, led me to suspect that our galactic civilization is just reaching contact with another culture more highly advanced than we can easily imagine.”
Thornwall chuckled at Penwright’s pale amazement.
“I should imagine that your blinker project will have to be abandoned now.” The flicker of amusement faded from his voice.
“Because these electronic beings have apparently selected the suns for their signal project with no more regard for us than you had for the anthropoids of Earth. I doubt that Denebola will be the last of their synthetic supernovas—unless you can persuade them to grant us status in their culture.”
“How—how can we hope to do that?”
“It’s your crisis now.”
Scarlet turned slowly away from Penwright’s hoarse consternation. He glanced into the burning sky, wondering which direction Coral and the trader had taken.
Then his mind came quickly back to the more important problem. He would have to return Major Tom Scoggins to Earth with a warning for the natives—tell them that the radiation from the nova would force a halt to all their plans for the exploration of space.
Then—to shepherd its people through the years of growth—until Earth could rejoin its proud, prodigal children!
1963
The Reefs of Space
Every man, every living thing hi the world was joined In the great Plan of Man—the Plan that had redonbled its efforts because it had lost its goal!
I
The major snapped: “Check in, you Risks! What’s the matter with you?” His radar horns made him look like Satan—a sleepy young Satan with an underslung jaw, but dangerous.
“Yes, sir,” said Steve Ryeland, peering around. This was Reykjavik—a new world to Ryeland, who had just come from a maximum-security labor camp inside the rim of the Arctic Circle. Ryeland blinked at the buildings, a thousand feet high, and at the jets and rockets scattered across the air field. The little man next to Ryeland sneezed and nudged him. “All right,” Ryeland said, and went into the bare little Security lounge. On the teletype that stood in the corner of the room—in the corner of every room—he tapped out:
Information. Steven Ryeland, Risk, AWC-38440, and 0. B. Oporto, Risk, XYZ-99942, arrived at—
He took the code letters from the identification plate on the machine.
—Station 3-Radius 4-261, Reykjavik, Iceland. Query. What are personal orders?
In a moment the answer came from the Planning Machine, a single typed letter “R”. The Machine had received and understood the message and adjusted its records. The orders would follow.
A Togetherness girl glanced into the lounge, saw the collars on Ryeland and the little man. Her lips had started to curve in the smile of her trade, but they clamped into a thin line. Risks. She nodded to the major and turned away.
The teletype bell rang, and the Machine tapped out:
Action. Proceed to Train 667, Track 6, Compartment 93.
Ryeland acknowledged the message. The major, leaning over his shoulder, grinned. “A one-way ticket to the Body Bank if you want my guess.”
“Yes, sir.” Ryeland was not going to get into a discussion. He couldn’t win. No Risk could win an argument with a man who wore the major’s radar horns.
“Well,” get going,” the major grumbled. “Oh, and Ryeland—”
“Yes, sir?”
The major winked. “Thanks for the chess games. I’ll be seeing you, I guess. Parts of you!” He laughed raucously as he strode away. “No side trips, remember,” he warned.
“I’ll remember,” said Steve Ryeland softly, touching the collar he wore.
Oporto sneezed again. “Come on,” he grumbled.
“All right. What was that number?”
The little dark man grinned. “Train 667, Track 6, Compartment 93. That’s an easy one—ahchoo! Dabbit,” he complained, “I’m catching cold. Let’s get out of this draft.”
Ryeland led off. They walked unescorted across the pavement to a cab rank and got in. All around them, travelers, air field workers and others glanced at them, saw the iron collars—and at once, on each face a curtain descended. No one spoke to them. Ryeland punched the code numbers for their destination, and the car raced through broad boulevards to a huge marble structure on the other side of the city.
Over its wide entrance were the carved letters:
THE PLAN OF MAN
SUBTRAIN STATION
They made their way through a wide concourse, noisy and crowded; but everyone gave them plenty of room. Ryeland grinned sourly to himself. No side trips! Of course not—and for the same reason. It wasn’t healthy for a man who wore the collar to step out of line. And it wasn’t healthy for anyone else to be in his immediate neighborhood if he did.
“Track Six, was it?”
“Train 667, Compartment 93.
Can’t you remember anything?” Oporto demanded.
“There’s Track Six.” Ryeland led the way. Track Six was a freight platform. They went down a flight of motionless moving stairs and emerged beside the cradle track of the subtrains.
Since the subtrains spanned the world, there was no clue as to where they were going. From Iceland they could be going to Canada, to Brazil, even to South Africa; the monstrous atomic drills of the Plan had burrowed perfectly straight shafts from everywhere to everywhere. The subtrains rocketed through air-exhausted tunnels, swung between hoops of electrostatic force. Without friction, their speed compared with the velocity of interplanetary travel.
“Where is it?” Oporto grumbled, looking around. A harsh light flooded the grimy platforms, glittering on the huge aluminum balloons that lay in their cradles outside the vacuum locks. Men with trucks and cranes were loading a long row of freightspheres in the platform next to theirs; a little cluster of passengers began to appear down the moving stairs of a platform a hundred yards away. Oporto said abruptly: “I’ll give you six to five the next train in is ours.”
“No bet.” Ryeland knew better than to take him up. But he hoped the little man was right. It was cold on the platform. Chill air roared around them from the ventilators; Oporto, already chilled, sneezed and began to sniffle. Ryeland himself was shivering in his thin maximum-security denims.
At the camp, when their travel orders came through, regulations demanded a thorough medical examination before they left. That was the rule under the Plan, and the examination included a steaming shower. “They want nice clean meat at the Body Bank,” the guard guffawed; but Ryeland paid no attention. He couldn’t afford to.
A man who wore the iron collar around his neck could only afford a limited look into the future. He could think about the day when the collar came off, and nothing else.
A warning horn shrieked into the pit. Ryeland jumped; Oporto turned more slowly, as though he had been expecting it. Which he had.
Red signals flickered from the enormous gates of the vacuum lock on Track Six. Air valves gasped. The gates swung slowly open and a tractor emerged towing a cradle with the special car they were waiting for. “You would have lost,” Oporto commented and Ryeland nodded; of course he would have.
The car stopped. Equalizer valves snorted again, and then its tall door flopped out from the top, forming a ramp to the platform. Escalators began to crawl along it.
Oporto said anxiously: “Steve, I don’t like the looks of this!” Out of the opening door of the car two men in uniform came running. They ran up the escalators, raced onto the platform and up the stairs. They didn’t look at Ryeland or Oporto; they were in a hurry. They were bearing thick leather dispatch cases the same color as their uniforms.
Bright blue uniforms!
Why, that was the uniform of the special guard of—
Ryeland lifted his eyes to look, unbelieving. At the roof of the shed, amid the ugly web of ducts and pipes and cables, a brilliant light burst forth, shining down on the sphere. And across its top, forty feet above the platform, there was a gleaming blue star and under it, etched in crystalline white, the legend:
THE PLAN OF MAN
OFFICE OF THE PLANNER
The special car they had been waiting for was the private car of the Planner himself!
The first thought that crossed Steve Ryeland’s mind was: Now I can present my case to the Planner! But the second thought canceled it. The Planner, like every other human on Earth or the planets, was only an instrument of the Planning Machine. If clearance ever came to Ryeland—if the collar came off his neck—it would be because the Machine had considered all the evidence and reached a proper decision. Human argument would not affect it.
With an effort, Ryeland put the thought out of his mind; but all the same, he couldn’t help feeling a touch better, a degree stronger. At least it was almost certain that their destination would not be the Body Bank!
“What was that compartment number?”
Oporto sighed. “93. Can’t you remember anything? Train 667—the product of the two primes, 23 and 29. Track 6, their difference. Compartment 93, their last digits in reverse order. That’s an easy one—” But Ryeland was hardly listening. The intimate acquaintance that Oporto seemed to have with all numbers was no longer news to him, and he had more urgent things on his mind. He led the way up the ramp and into the Planner’s subtrain car. A woman in the blue uniform of the guard passed them, glanced at their collars and frowned. Before Ryeland could speak to her she had brushed past them busily and was gone. It said a lot for the efficiency of the collars, he thought wryly, that she didn’t bother to find out what two Risks were doing wandering freely around the Planner’s private car. There was no cause for worry; if they took a wrong turning, the collars would make it their last.
