Against the Fall of Night (14 page)

“But the Invaders—?”

Theon pointed to the unending deserts below.

“Once we had an Empire. What have we now that they would covet?”

Alvin was a little surprised at this novel point of view.

“Do all your people think like this?”

“Only a minority. The average person doesn’t worry about it, but would probably say that if the Invaders really wanted to destroy Earth they’d have done it ages ago. Only a few people, like Mother, are still afraid of them.”

“Things are very different in Diaspar,” Alvin said. “My people are great cowards. But it’s unfortunate about your Mother—do you think she would stop you coming with me?”

“She most certainly would,” Theon replied with emphasis. That Alvin had taken his own assent for granted he scarcely noticed.

Alvin thought for a moment.

“By now she’ll have heard about this ship and will know what I intend to do. We mustn’t return to Airlee.”

“No: that wouldn’t be safe. But I have a better plan.”

THE LITTLE VILLAGE IN WHICH THEY LANDED WAS ONLY A
dozen miles from Airlee, but Alvin was surprised to see how greatly it differed in architecture and setting. The houses were several stories in height and had been built along the curve of a lake, looking out across the water. A large number of brightly colored vessels were floating at anchor along the shore: they fascinated Alvin who had never heard of such things and wondered what they were for.

He waited in the ship while Theon went to see his friends. It was amusing to watch the consternation and amazement of the people crowding round, unaware of the fact that he was observing them from inside the machine. Theon was gone only a few minutes and had some difficulty in reaching the air-lock through the inquisitive crowds. He breathed a sigh of relief as the door closed behind him.

“Mother will get the message in two or three minutes. I’ve not said where we’re going, but she’ll guess quickly enough. And I’ve got some news that will interest you.”

“What is it?”

“The Central Council is going to hold talks with Diaspar.”

“What!”

“It’s perfectly true, though the announcement hasn’t been made yet. That sort of thing can’t be kept secret.”

Alvin could appreciate this: he never understood how
anything
was ever kept secret in Lys.

“What are they discussing?”

“Probably ways in which they can stop us leaving. That’s why I came back in a hurry.”

Alvin smiled a little ruefully.

“So you think that fear may have succeeded where logic and persuasion failed?”

“Quite likely, though you made a real impression on the councillors last night. They were talking for a long time after you went to sleep.”

Whatever the cause of this move, Alvin felt very pleased. Diaspar and Lys had both been slow to react, but events were now moving swiftly to their climax. That the climax might have unpleasant consequences for him Alvin did not greatly mind.

They were very high when he gave the robot its final instructions. The ship had come almost to rest and the Earth was perhaps a thousand miles below, nearly filling the sky. It looked very uninviting: Alvin wondered how many ships in the past had hovered here for a little while and then continued on their way.

There was an appreciable pause, as if the robot was checking controls and circuits that had not been used for geological ages. Then came a very faint sound, the first that Alvin had ever heard from the machine. It was a tiny humming, which soared swiftly octave by octave until it was lost at the edge of hearing. There was no sense of change or motion, but suddenly he noticed that the stars were drifting across the screen. The Earth reappeared, and rolled past—then appeared again, in a slightly different position. The ship was “hunting,” swinging in space like a compass needle seeking the north. For minutes the skies turned and twisted around them, until at last the ship came to rest, a giant projectile aimed at the stars.

Centered in the screen the great ring of the Seven Suns lay in its rainbow-hued beauty. A little of Earth was still visible as a dark crescent edged with the gold and crimson of the sunset. Something was happening now, Alvin knew, beyond all his experience. He waited, gripping his seat, while the seconds drifted by and the Seven Suns glittered on the screen.

There was no sound, only a sudden wrench that seemed to blur the vision—but Earth had vanished as if a giant hand had whipped it away. They were alone in space, alone with the stars and a strangely shrunken sun. Earth was gone as though it had never been.

Again came that wrench, and with it now the faintest murmur of sound, as if for the first time the generators were exerting some appreciable fraction of their power. Yet for a moment it seemed that nothing had happened: then Alvin realized that the sun itself was gone and that the stars were creeping slowly past the ship. He looked back for an instant and saw—nothing. All the heavens behind had vanished utterly, obliterated by a hemisphere of night. Even as he watched, he could see the stars plunge into it, to disappear like sparks falling upon water. The ship was travelling far faster than light, and Alvin knew that the familiar space of Earth and Sun held him no more.

When that sudden, vertiginous wrench came for the third time, his heart almost stopped beating. The strange blurring of vision was unmistakable now: for a moment, his surroundings seemed distorted out of recognition. The meaning of that distortion came to him in a flash of insight he could not explain.
It was real, and no delusion of his eyes.
Somehow he was catching, as he passed through the thin film of the Present, a glimpse of the changes that were occurring in the space around him.

At the same instant the murmur of the generators rose to a roar that shook the ship—a sound doubly impressive for it was the first cry of protest that Alvin had ever heard from a machine. Then it was all over, and the sudden silence seemed to ring in his ears. The great generators had done their work: they would not be needed again until the end of the voyage. The stars ahead flared blue-white and vanished into the ultra-violet. Yet by some magic of Science or Nature the Seven Suns were still visible, though now their positions and colors were subtly changed. The ship was hurtling towards them along a tunnel of darkness, beyond the boundaries of space and time, at a velocity too enormous for the mind to contemplate.

It was hard to believe that they had now been flung out of the Solar System at a speed which unless it were checked would soon take them through the heart of the Galaxy and into the greater emptiness beyond. Neither Alvin nor Theon could conceive the real immensity of their journey: the great sagas of exploration had completely changed Man’s outlook towards the Universe and even now, millions of centuries later, the ancient traditions had not wholly died. There had once been a ship, legend whispered, that had circumnavigated the Cosmos between the rising and the setting of the sun. The billions of miles between the stars meant nothing before such speeds. To Alvin this voyage was very little greater, and perhaps less dangerous, than his first journey to Lys.

It was Theon who voiced both their thoughts as the Seven Suns slowly brightened ahead.

“Alvin,” he remarked, “that formation can’t possibly be natural.”

The other nodded.

“I’ve thought that for years, but it still seems fantastic.”

“The system may not have been built by Man,” agreed Theon, “but intelligence must have created it. Nature could never have formed that perfect circle of stars, one for each of the primary colors, all equally brilliant. And there’s nothing else in the visible Universe like the Central Sun.”

“Why should such a thing have been made, then?”

“Oh, I can think of many reasons. Perhaps it’s a signal, so that any strange ship entering the Universe will know where to look for life. Perhaps it marks the centre of galactic administration. Or perhaps—and somehow I feel that this is the real explanation—it’s simply the greatest of all works of art. But it’s foolish to speculate now. In a little while we’ll know the truth.”

So they waited, lost in their own dreams, while hour by hour the Seven Suns drifted apart until they had filled that strange tunnel of night in which the ship was riding. Then, one by one, the six outer stars vanished at the brink of darkness and at last only the Central Sun was left. Though it could no longer be fully in their space, it still shone with the pearly light that marked it out from all other stars. Minute by minute its brilliance increased, until presently it was no longer a point but a tiny disc. And now the disc was beginning to expand before them—

There was the briefest of warnings: for a moment a deep, bell-like note vibrated through the room. Alvin clenched the arms of his chair, though it was a futile enough gesture.

Once again the great generators exploded into life, and with an abruptness that was almost blinding, the stars reappeared. The ship had dropped back into space, back into the Universe of suns and planets, the natural world where nothing could move more swiftly than light.

They were already within the system of the Seven Suns, for the great ring of colored globes now dominated the sky. And what a sky it was! All the stars they had known, all the familiar constellations, had gone. The Milky Way was no longer a faint band of mist far to one side of the heavens: they were now at the centre of creation, and its great circle divided the Universe in twain.

The ship was still moving very swiftly towards the Central Sun, and the six remaining stars of the system were colored beacons ranged around the sky. Not far from the nearest of them were the tiny sparks of circling planets, worlds that must have been of enormous size to be visible over such a distance. It was a sight grander than anything Nature had ever built, and Alvin knew that Theon had been correct. This superb symmetry was a deliberate challenge to the stars scattered aimlessly around it.

The cause of the Central Sun’s nacreous light was now clearly visible. The great star, surely one of the most brilliant in the whole Universe, was shrouded in an envelope of gas which softened its radiation and gave it its characteristic color. The surrounding nebula could be seen only indirectly, and it was twisted into strange shapes that eluded the eye. But it was there, and the longer one stared the more extensive it seemed to be.

Alvin wondered where the robot was taking them. Was it following some ancient memory, or were there guiding signals in the space around them? He had left their destination entirely to the machine, and presently he noticed the pale spark of light towards which they were travelling. It was almost lost in the glare of the Central Sun, and around it were the yet fainter gleams of other worlds. Their enormous journey was coming to its end.

The planet was now only a few million miles away, a beautiful sphere of multicolored light. There could be no darkness anywhere upon its surface, for as it turned beneath the Central Sun, the other stars would march one by one across its skies. Alvin now saw very clearly the meaning of the Master’s dying words: “It is lovely to watch the colored shadows on the planets of eternal light.”

Now they were so close that they could see continents and oceans and a faint haze of atmosphere. Yet there was something puzzling about its markings, and presently they realized that the divisions between land and water were curiously regular. This planet’s continents were not as Nature had left them—but how small a task the shaping of a world must have been to those who built its suns!

“Those aren’t oceans at all!” Theon exclaimed suddenly. “Look—you can see markings in them!”

Not until the planet was nearer could Alvin see clearly what his friend meant. Then he noticed faint bands and lines along the continental borders, well inside what he had taken to be the limits of the sea. The sight filled him with a sudden doubt, for he knew too well the meaning of those lines. He had see them once before in the desert beyond Diaspar, and they told him that his journey had been in vain.

“This planet is as dry as Eearth,” he said dully. “It’s water has all gone—those markings are the salt-beds where the seas have evaporated.”

“They would never have let that happen,” replied Theon. “I think that, after all, we are too late.”

His disappointment was so bitter that Alvin did not trust himself to speak again but stared silently at the great world ahead. With impressive slowness the planet turned beneath the ship, and its surface rose majestically to meet them. Now they could see buildings—minute white crustations everywhere save on the ocean beds themselves.

Once this world had been the centre of the Universe. Now it was still, the air was empty and on the ground were none of the scurrying dots that spoke of life. Yet the ship was still sliding purposefully over the frozen sea of stone—a sea which here and there had gathered itself into great waves that challenged the sky.

Presently the ship came to rest, as if the robot had at last traced its memories to their source. Below them was a column of snow-white stone springing from the center of an immense marble amphitheater. Alvin waited for a little while: then, as the machine remained motionless, he directed it to land at the foot of the pillar.

Even until now, Alvin had half hoped to find life on this planet. That hope vanished instantly as he left the air-lock. Never before in his life, even in the desolation of Shalmirane, had he been in utter silence. On Earth there was always the murmur of voices, the stir of living creatures, or the sighing of the wind. Here were none of these, nor ever would be again.

Why the machine had brought them to this place there was no way of telling, but Alvin knew that the choice made little difference. The great column of white stone was perhaps twenty times the height of a man, and was set in a circle of metal slightly raised above the level of the plain. It was featureless and of its purpose there was no hint. They might guess, but they would never know, that it had once marked the zero point of all astronomical measurements.

So this, thought Alvin sadly, was the end of all his searching. He knew that it would be useless to visit the other worlds of the Seven Suns. Even if there was still intelligence in the Universe, where could he seek it now? He had seen the stars scattered like dust across the heavens, and he knew that what was left of Time was not enough to explore them all.