The Edmond Hamilton Megapack: 16 Classic Science Fiction Tales (41 page)

He glimpsed a vast landscape whose dominant colors were quite unearthly. Cruel, lofty mountains of purple-black rock rose grandly beyond broad blue plains. Then the rushing ship swept over a great expanse of vivid yellow—a golden ocean that flashed back Vega’s brilliance blindingly. And then a city. A white, towering continent of a city that, even viewed from the stratosphere, was enough to take Kenniston’s breath away. There was a huge starship port near it, and the Thanis was dropping smoothly through tangled shipping traffic toward it, making worldfall in its waiting dock with the softest of jars.

Vega Four. He was here. And he could not believe it, not even now.

Gorr Holl unfastened his straps. The Capellan was almost as tense as Kenniston himself.

“Jon Arnol should be here waiting for us,” he said rapidly. “His workshop is on the other side of this planet. Gome along, Kenniston!”

Jon Arnol? Kenniston had almost forgotten about him, in the grip of this strange arrival. In the shivering fascination of being here, he found it hard to keep his mind on why he was here.

He went down with Gorr Holl to the big vestibule inside the entrance port. The lock was open, and strange blue sunlight struck the metal floor, strange air, laden with faintly alien scents, drifted to his nostrils.

Lund and Varn Allan were there, and the woman said to him, “Your quarters will be in Government Center. I can take you there.”

Gorr Holl, looking out at a dark, lean man who was hurrying across the concrete apron toward the Thanis, said hastily, “No, you needn’t bother. We’ll take Kenniston along to his quarters.”

The lean, dark man was coming up the stairs to the lock. He was perhaps ten years older than Kenniston, with a worn face and the eyes of a dreamer, and the unsteady hands of a man who is laboring under great excitement.

Varn Allan’s eyes rested on him, and she said, “I see. Jon Arnol. I thought that’s what you had in mind. But it won’t succeed, Gorr.”

“Maybe it will, this time,” rumbled the Capellan.

Norden Lund, looking at Arnol as he entered, laughed, and then without saying anything went out. Varn Allan looked as though she were going to speak to Kenniston, but didn’t.

She said, “Then you are responsible for his appearance tomorrow, Gorr,” and she left.

Kenniston, looking after her, wished she had not spoken. And he wished that Lund had not laughed quite so smugly. He was worried enough as it was.

Arnol had reached them, was greeting Lal’lor as an old friend, smiling at Magro and Gorr Holl. His smile, his movements, were quick and sharp and only half finished, as though the tense nerves of the body were acting independently of the brain.

“I think we’ve got a chance this time, Lal’lor!” he said eagerly. “By God, I think we do! This Earth business may be just what we’ve waited for, the chance to ram the Arnol process down their throats whether they like it or not! It’s a lucky break!” Gorr Holl told him, “This is Kenniston, of Earth.” Jon Arnol looked a little ashamed as he turned to Kenniston. “I’m sorry if I sounded selfish. I know you’ve got your own terrible problem. But if you knew how long I’ve sweated and waited and hoped! I’m a scientist, nothing else is important to me, and I’ve seen my whole life’s work and achievement held back by politics—”

Gorr Holl interrupted. “Now listen, this is no place to talk! Let’s get on to Government Center. We can talk in Kenniston’s quarters, and we’ve got plenty of planning to do before tomorrow!”

Kenniston went down the steps with them, onto the concrete apron, and for a moment the whole problem of Earth seemed impossibly far away.

He stood on an alien world, under an alien Sun, and all around him was the rush and clangor of the starport, where the great ships came and went across the galaxy. Somehow here, more than in space, he caught the reality of that incredible commerce that plied between the farthest Suns, that knew the shining trails among the nebulae and the deadly currents of the stardrifts, and the infinite numbers of ports on infinite nameless worlds. Something in him rose up in mingled awe and pride, remembering that men of Earth had first voyaged across the unknown seas to these star-fringed shores of the universe.

The deep bass thrumming of the great ships shook the ground beneath him and the atomic forges beat, hammering the plates for bow and keel, and the black hulls lifted majestically against the sky, scarred and pitted with the dusts and atmospheres of a galaxy, and Kenniston would have stood forever watching if Gorr Holl had not led him away with them.

Jon Arnol had a car waiting, a car that bore small relation to the ones that Kenniston had known except that it went along the ground. It was sleek and low, and he knew that it must be very swift, but speed seemed to be controlled along the incredible network of ramps and roads and flying bridges that spanned the city. They went fast, but not so fast that he could not see.

He looked at this city, splendid in the light of setting Vega, and he felt like an ignorant barbarian come down from the hills to Babylon. It was more a nation than a city, too huge and awesome to comprehend. Already the dusk was gathering in its deep ways, soft lights were glowing forth and the traffic and the crowd flowed there in murmuring rivers. And along such a river sped their car, the others so little impressed that they were talking eagerly still of the morrow, of the hearing, of the great chance.

Kenniston looked at the thronged and glowing streets, the strange thousands who went its ways, and it was borne in upon him with crushing impact that this was the center of the galaxy, the capital of a thousand thousand worlds. Man and woman and humanoid, silken clothing and furry hides and backs humped with wings, voices human and nonhuman, alien music that jarred his nerves, throb of hidden machines, and over all the deep humming from the sky that told of more and more starships dropping down through the deepening dusk.

As though from a remote distance he heard Gorr Holl speaking to him, pointing ahead toward a range of titan buildings that rose like white Cordilleras, their tops raking the sky. It came to his numbed mind presently that that was Government Center, the place to which they were bound, the place where he must presently stand up alone and speak for faraway Earth to these strangers of the stars.

Kenniston clenched his hands under the table of gleaming plastic and clung hard to his sanity.

This is true, he told himself fiercely. It is happening, and I am not mad. I am John Kenniston. Only a few weeks ago I was in Middletown. Now I am in a place called Vega Center. I am still John Kenniston. Only the world has changed.

But he knew that it was not so. He knew that Vega Center and the marble amphitheatre in which he sat were only shadows in a shifting nightmare from which he could not wake.

Unsteadily he looked upward. They sat silently, row upon row of them, tier upon tier, full circle around the vast echoing space, reaching up into the shadowy vault, watching him with the crushing thousands of their eyes, human and unhuman, curious, intent.

The hosts of the Federation of Stars. The Board of Governors, in full session.

These countless hundreds who came from the far-flung worlds of a galaxy—to them, he must seem equally unreal. It would seem impossible to them that they looked down upon a man of the forgotten past.

Varn Allan’s quiet, earnest voice broke in upon his reeling thoughts. She was finishing her report on Middletown.

“This is a complex situation. In finding a solution for it, I would ask you to remember that these people are a special case, for which there is no precedent. In my belief, they are entitled to special consideration.

“Therefore, my recommendation is as follows: that the proposed evacuation be delayed until these people can be psychologically conditioned to the idea of world-change. Such conditioning, in my belief, would enable this evacuation to be carried out without difficulty.”

She glanced at Norden Lund, who sat next her at the table. “Perhaps Sub-Administrator Lund has something to add to that report.”

Lund smiled. “No. I will reserve my right to speak until later.” His eyes held a gleam of anticipation.

There was a moment of silence. And Kenniston could hear the soft gigantic rustling, the breathing and small stirring of the ranked thousands of the Governors.

The Spokesman, a small alert man who was the voice of the Board, the questioner, and who sat with them at the table, said, “The Board of Governors recognizes Kenniston, of Sol Three.”

The rulers of the galaxy were waiting for him to speak.

Others were waiting, too. They were waiting in the dusk and cold of Sol Three, the little world whose ancient name of Earth had been all but forgotten in these halls of government. The millhands, the housewives, the rich men and the poor, the folk of Middletown.

Varn Allan looked at him and smiled.

He took a deep breath. He forced himself to speak. He forced the words to come out of the tight dark corridors of fear.

“We did not ask to come into your time. Having come, we are under Federation law, and we do not defy your authority as such. We do not wish to make trouble. Our problem is a psychological one…”

He tried to explain to these men of the Federation something of what life had been like before that fateful morning in June. He tried to make them understand how his people were bound to their world and why they must cling to it so desperately.

“I understand the technological problems of supporting life on a world such as ours. But we have known privation and suffering before. We are not afraid of them. And we believe that, given time, we can solve those problems.

“We don’t even ask you for help, though we would be grateful if you cared to give it. All we ask of you is to be let alone, to work out our own salvation!”

He stopped. The silence, the thousands of watching eyes, bore down upon him with a crushing weight.

Kenniston struggled for a final word. There was so much he had not said—so much that could never be put into words.

How do you phrase the history of the race of men, the pride and sorrow of their beginning?

He said, “Earth is the mother that bore you. You should not let her die!”

It was done. For good or ill, it was done and over.

Jon Arnol leaned from where he sat beside him at the table. “Magnificent,” he whispered. And again, “Magnificent!”

The Spokesman asked, “Is it through the application of Jon Arnol’s theories that you hope to bring back life to Sol Three?”

Before Kenniston could answer, Arnol himself cried out, “On that point, I ask leave to speak!”

The Spokesman nodded.

Arnol rose. The fierce energy that drove him could not be contained for long in any chair. He seemed to face the entire Board of Governors at once, turning his dark, challenging gaze upon them.

“You have denied me another chance to test my process—in spite of the fact that no reputable scientist can challenge my equations. You have denied me that chance, because of political considerations which are known to everyone here. The same considerations which deliberately made my first test fail, by choosing for it a world too small for the energy-blast released in its core!

“But Earth is not such a world. The experiment will succeed, there. I demand that you let it be done! Remember, this process will solve not only the immediate problem before you but also the whole future problem of dying worlds. You think that evacuation, transfer of populations, is a better solution. But you can’t go on moving populations forever!”

He paused. Then his voice rang out sternly. “Neither can you, for a preconceived political philosophy, forever hold back scientific progress. I say that you have no right to deny to the peoples of the Federation the incalculable good that this process can do them. And therefore, I ask permission to prove my process, using the planet Sol Three as the subject!”

He sat down. There was much whispering in the ranks of the Governors, a nodding together of heads. Kenniston stared hungrily at their faces. Impossible to tell…

“I think,” Jon Arnol whispered, “we may have done it!” The Spokesman lifted his gavel, about to signal the beginning of the vote.

Norden Lund said, “I now claim my right to speak.” It was granted. And Kenniston felt his heart stop beating. Lund’s voice rang through the amphitheatre. “There is one fact concerning these so-called Middletowners that has not been mentioned—one that my superior did not even discover! A fact which was learned from records in their own old town, deciphered by the linguistic and historical expert of our party.”

Kenniston grew tense. So it was coming now, whatever it was that Lund had found out through Piers Eglin.

“You have been told that these Middletowners are a kindly, harmless folk. You are asked to be sorry for them, to give them special indulgences, to overlook their little violences. And why? Because they are pathetic creatures, innocent victims of a freak of chance that threw them forward along their world-line.”

Lund’s face hardened. His voice thundered wrathfully.

“It was no freak of chance that brought them into our time. It was an act of war!”

He paused, to let them understand that. Kenniston saw Varn Allan’s face. She was looking at Lund in amazement.

Lund went on. “Let Kenniston deny this if he can! It was the explosion of a hostile atomic bomb that ruptured the continuum and hurled his city through. These people are the children of war, born and bred in an age of wars.