Starfarers (71 page)

“Something destroyed them, and it wasn’t simply a war,” Regor said. “We need to know what. It may not have affected any other world. But maybe it did.”

Maybe Earth lay as empty, Jong thought, not for the first time.

The
Golden Flyer
had paused here to refit before venturing back into man’s old domain. Captain Ilmaray had chosen an F9 star arbitrarily, three hundred light-years from Sol’s calculated present position. They detected no whisper of the energies used by civilized races, who might have posed a threat. The third planet seemed a paradise, Earth-mass but with its land scattered in islands around a global ocean, warm from pole to pole. Mons Rainart was surprised that the carbon dioxide equilibrium was maintained with so little exposed rock. Then he observed weed mats everywhere on the waters, many of them hundreds of square kilometers in area, and decided that their photosynthesis was active enough to produce a Terrestrial-type atmosphere.

The shock had been to observe from orbit the ruined cities. Not that colonization could not have reached this far, and beyond, during twenty thousand years. But the venture had been terminated; why?

That evening it was Jong’s turn to hold a personal conversation with those in the mother ship. He got his parents, via intercom, to tell them how he fared. The heart jumped in his breast when Sorya Rainart’s voice joined theirs. “Oh yes,” the girl said, with an uneven little laugh, “I’m right here in the apartment. Dropped in for a visit, by chance.”

Her brother chuckled at Jong’s back. The young man flushed and wished hotly for privacy. But of course Sorya would have known he’d call tonight. … If the Kith still lived, there could be nothing between him and her. You brought your wife home from another ship. It was spaceman’s law, exogamy aiding a survival that was precarious at best. If, though, the last Kith ship but theirs drifted dead among the stars; or the few hundred aboard the
Golden Flyer
and the four on this world whose name was lost were the final remnants of the human race—she was bright and gentle and swayed sweetly when she walked.

“I—” He untangled his tongue. “I’m glad you did. How are you?”

“Lonely and frightened,” she confided. Cosmic interference seethed around her words. The fire spat sparks loudly into the darkness overhead. “If you don’t learn what went wrong here. … I don’t know if I can stand wondering the rest of my life.”

“Cut that!” he said sharply. The rusting of morale had destroyed more than one ship in the past. Although—“No, I’m sorry.” He knew she did not lack courage. The fear was alive in him too that he would be haunted forever by what he had seen here. Death in itself was an old familiar of the Kith. But this time they were returning from a past more ancient than the glaciers and the mammoths had been on Earth when they left. They needed knowledge as much as they needed air, to make sense of the universe. And their first stop in that spiral arm of the Galaxy which had once been home had confronted them with a riddle that looked unanswerable. So deep in history were the roots of the Kith that Jong could recall the symbol of the Sphinx; and suddenly he saw how gruesome it was.

“We’ll find out,” he promised Sorya. “If not here, then when we arrive at Earth.” Inwardly he was unsure. He made small talk and even achieved a joke or two. But afterward, laid out in his sleeping bag, he thought he heard the horn winding in the north.

The expedition rose at dawn, bolted breakfast, and stowed their gear in the spaceboat. It purred from the city on aerodynamic drive, leveled off, flew at low speed not far above ground. The sea tumbled and flashed on the right, the land climbed steeply on the left. No herds of large animals could be seen there. Probably none existed, with such scant room to develop in. But the ocean swarmed. From above Jong could look down into transparent waters, see shadows that were schools of fish numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Further off he observed a herd of grazers, piscine but big as whales, plowing slowly through a weed mat. The colonists must have gotten most of their living from the sea.

Regor set the boat down on a cliff overlooking the bay he had described. The escarpment ringed a curved beach of enormous length and breadth, its sands strewn with rocks and boulders. Kilometers away, the arc closed in on itself, leaving only a strait passage to the ocean. The bay was placid, clear bluish-green beneath the early sun, but not stagnant. The tides of the one big moon must raise and lower it two or three meters in a day, and a river ran in from the southern highlands. Afar Jong could see how shells littered the sand below high-water mark, proof of abundant life. It seemed bitterly unfair to him that the colonists had had to trade so much beauty for darkness.

Regor’s lean face turned from one man to the next. “Equipment check,” he said, and went down the list: fulgurator, communication bracelet, energy compass, medikit—“My God,” said Neri, “you’d think we were off on a year’s trek, and separately at that.”

“We’ll disperse, looking for traces,” Regor said, “and those rocks will often hide us from each other.” He left the rest unspoken: that that which had been the death of the colony might still exist.

They emerged into cool, flowing air with the salt and iodine and clean decay smell of coasts on every Earthlike world, and made their way down the scarp. “Let’s radiate from this point,” Regor said, “and if nobody has found anything, we’ll meet back here in four hours for lunch.”

Jong’s path slanted farthest north. He walked briskly at first, enjoying the motion of his muscles, the scrunch of sand and rattle of pebbles beneath his boots, the whistle of the many birds overhead. But presently he must pick his way across drifts of stone and among dark boulders, some as big as houses, which cut him off from the wind and his fellows; and he remembered Sorya’s aloneness.

Oh no, not that. Haven’t we paid enough?
he thought. And, for a moment’s defiance:
We didn’t do the thing. We condemned the traitors ourselves, and threw them into space, as soon as we learned. Why should we be punished?

But the Kith had been too long isolated, themselves against the universe, not to hold that the sin and sorrow of one belonged to all. And Tomakan and his coconspirators had done what they did unselfishly, to save the ship. In those last vicious years of the Star Empire, when Earthmen made the Kithfolk scapegoats for their wretchedness until every crew fled to await better times, the
Golden Flyer’s
captured people would have died horribly—had Tomakan not bought their freedom by betraying to the persecutors that asteroid where two other Kith vessels lay, readying to leave the Solar System. How could they afterward meet the eyes of their kindred, in the Council that met at Tau Ceti?

The sentence was just: to go exploring to the fringes of the galactic nucleus. Perhaps they would find the Elder Races that must dwell somewhere; perhaps they could bring back the knowledge and wisdom that could heal man’s inborn lunacies. Well, they hadn’t; but the voyage was something in itself, sufficient to give the
Golden Flyer
back her honor. No doubt everyone who had sat in Council was now dust. Still, their descendants—

Jong stopped in midstride. His shout went ringing among the rocks.

“What is it? Who called? Anything wrong?” The questions flew from his bracelet like anxious bees.

He stooped over a little heap and touched it with fingers that wouldn’t hold steady. “Worked flints,” he breathed. “Flakes, broken spearheads … shaped wood … something—” He scrabbled in the sand. Sunlight struck off a piece of metal, rudely hammered into a dagger. It had been, it must have been fashioned from some of the ageless alloy in the city—long ago, for the blade was worn so thin that it had snapped across. He crouched over the shards and babbled.

And shortly Mons’ deep tones cut through: “Here’s another site! An animal skull, could only have been split with a sharp stone, a thong—Wait, wait, I see something carved in this block, maybe a symbol—”

Then suddenly he roared, and made a queer choked gurgle, and his voice came to an end.

Jong leaped erect. The communicator jabbered with calls from Neri and Regor. He ignored them. There was no time for dismay. He tuned his energy compass. Each bracelet emitted a characteristic frequency besides its carrier wave, for location purposes, and—The needle swung about. His free hand un-holstered his fulgurator, and he went bounding over the rocks.

As he broke out onto the open stretch of sand the wind hit him full in the face. Momentarily through its shrillness he heard the horn, louder than before, off beyond the cliffs. A part of him remembered fleetingly how one day on a frontier world he had seen a band of huntsmen gallop in pursuit of a wounded animal that wept as it ran, and how the chief had raised a crooked bugle to his lips and blown just such a call.

The note died away. Jong’s glance swept the beach. Far down its length he saw several figures emerge from a huddle of boulders. Two of them carried a human shape. He yelled and sprinted to intercept them. The compass dropped from his grasp.

They saw him and paused. When he neared, Jong made out that the form they bore was Mons Rainart’s. He swung ghastly limp between his carriers. Blood dripped from his back and over his breast.

Jong’s stare went to the six murderers. They were chillingly manlike, half a meter taller than him, magnificently thewed beneath the naked white skin, but altogether hairless, with long webbed feet and fingers, a high dorsal fin, and smaller fins at heels and elbows and on the domed heads. The features were bony, with great sunken eyes and no external ears. A flap of skin drooped from pinched nose to wide mouth. Two carried flint-tipped wooden spears, two had tridents forged from metal—the tines of one were red and wet—and those who bore the body had knives slung at their waists.

“Stop!” Jong shrieked. “Let him go!”

He plowed to a halt not far off, and menaced them with his gun. The biggest uttered a gruff bark and advanced, trident poised. Jong retreated a step. Whatever they had done, he hated to—

An energy beam winked, followed by its thunderclap. The one who carried Mons’ shoulders crumpled, first at the knees, then down into the sand. The blood from the hole burned through him mingled with the spaceman’s, equally crimson.

They whirled. Neri Avelair pounded down the beach from the opposite side. His fulgurator spoke again. The shimmering wet sand reflected the blast. It missed, but quartz fused where it struck near the feet of the creatures, and hot droplets spattered them.

The leader waved his trident and shouted. They lumbered toward the water. The one who had Mons’ ankles did not let go. The body flapped arms and head as it dragged. Neri shot a third time. Jolted by his own speed, he missed anew. Jong’s finger remained frozen on the trigger.

The five giants entered the bay. Its floor shelved rapidly. In a minute they were able to dive below the surface. Neri reached Jong’s side and fired, bolt after bolt, till a steam cloud rose into the wind. Tears whipped down his cheeks. “Why didn’t you kill them, you bastard?” he screamed. “You could have gunned them down where you were!”

“I don’t know.” Jong stared at his weapon. It felt oddly heavy.

“They drowned Mons!”

“No … he was dead already. I could see. Must have been pierced through the heart. I suppose they ambushed him in those rocks—”

“M-m-maybe. But his body, God damn you, we could’a saved that at least!” Senselessly, Neri put a blast through the finned corpse.

“Stop that,” commanded Regor. He threw himself down, gasping for breath. Dimly, Jong noticed gray streaks in the leader’s hair. It seemed a matter of pity and terror that Regor Lannis the unbendable should be whittled away by the years.

What am I thinking? Mons is killed. Sorya’s brother.

Neri holstered his fulgurator, covered his face with both hands, and sobbed.

After a long while Regor shook himself, rose, knelt again to examine the dead swimmer. “So there were natives here,” he muttered. “The colonists must not have known. Or maybe they underestimated what savages could do.”

His hands ran over the glabrous hide. “Still warm,” he said, almost to himself. “Air-breathing; a true mammal, no doubt, though this male lacks vestigial nipples; real nails on the digits, even if they have grown as thick and sharp as claws.” He peeled back the lips and examined the teeth. “Omnivore evolving toward carnivore, I’d guess. The molars are still pretty flat, but the rest are bigger than ours, and rather pointed.” He peered into the dimmed eyes. “Human-type vision, probably less acute. You can’t see so far underwater. We’ll need extensive study to determine the color-sensitivity curve, if any. Not to mention the other adaptations. I daresay they can stay below for many minutes at a stretch. Doubtless not as long as cetaceans, however. They haven’t evolved that far from their land ancestors. You can tell by the fins. Of some use in swimming, but not really an efficient size or shape as yet.”

“You can speculate about that while Mons is being carried away?” Neri choked.

Regor got up and tried in a bemused fashion to brush the sand off his clothes. “Oh no,” he said. His face worked, and he blinked several times. “We’ve got to do something about him, of course.” He looked skyward. The air was full of wings, as the sea birds sensed meat and wheeled insolently close. Their piping overrode the wind. “Let’s get back to the boat. We’ll take this carcass along for the scientists.”

Neri cursed at the delay, but took one end of the object. Jong had the other. The weight felt monstrous, and seemed to grow while they stumbled toward the cliffs. Breath rasped in their throats. Their shirts clung to the sweat on them, which they could smell through every sea odor.

Jong looked down at the ugly countenance beneath his hands. In spite of everything, in spite of Mons being dead—oh, never to hear his big laugh again, never to move a chessman or hoist a glass or stand on the thrumming decks with him!—he wondered if a female dwelt somewhere out in the ocean who had thought this face was beautiful.

“We weren’t doing them any harm,” said Neri between wheezes.