by Earl
Yes, why? Kaine’s mind turned it over. Why should a million colony worlds be forced to pay that expensive tribute? Why should Tharkya bleed the Galaxy of its crystallized energy, the rarest thing known? Why should all this rest in their strongholds, making them the most powerful race in the Milky Way?
MacLean, his face twisted, grabbed for the vial.
“Don’t be a fool!” Kaine hissed. “We have to deliver it. Otherwise Earth will suffer.”
But MacLean came on, with deadly intent. “I’ll throw it out into space,” he ground out. “To hell with Tharkya—”
They struggled. Suddenly the ship lurched. It began to swing. Just a little—a very little. But at their prodigious velocity, now thousands of times that of light, it threw them against the wall and flattened them there.
“The automatic pilot is changing course,” Kaine panted. “For the next three days it’ll do that, zig-zagging us through the Galaxy. When we arrive at Tharkya, we won’t know how we came.”
“Pretty clever, aren’t they?” MacLean puffed out. “Making sure we’ll never know where Tharkya lies.”
No one in the Galaxy knew where Tharkya lay—except the Tharkyans.
A HUNDRED billion stars, big and small, dim and fierce, alone and binary, composed the Milky Way Galaxy. Shaped like a flattened disk, it wheeled through the cosmos, separated from other galaxies, or island universes, by unthinkable stretches of barren empty space.
Most of the stars were without planets. Collisions producing planets were rare. But dotted here and there throughout the host, one out of 100,000 was circled by a family of worlds. Half-way between the hub and rim lay Sol and Earth. Somewhere near the hub itself lay Tharkya, like a spider at the center of a web.
Hovering clouds of dust, or Dark Nebulae, existed here and there, sometimes hiding the stars behind. Tharkya lay in the heart of a Dark Nebula, camouflaged completely from the eye.
Driving through the cloud, it gradually thinned. Suddenly a tiny light gleamed, growing. It became huge, but never bright. Thark, one of the oldest suns in the Galaxy, had burned to an ember. It was, in Earth’s astronomical terms, a red giant.
Around it lumbered a single gigantic planet—Tharkya, home of the master race of the Milky Way.
“What a monster planet!” MacLean said with a low whistle. “If a thousand Jupiters fell on it, they’d be like mere hail!”
His voice was rather weak. For three days the ship had lurched, side-slipped, and arced through space, keeping their stomachs upset and their minds sleepless. It had been a trying experience, this zigzagging through space under the inexorable hand of the automatic pilot. Sometimes for hours they had been flattened against a wall, senses swimming.
“We’re here—but where?” Kaine murmured. “Wish I could take star observations, but this damned Dark Nebula—”
He shuddered, looking around through the port windows. Not another star was visible. They seemed sealed off from the entire universe, in a bubble of darkness. Only Thark and its one huge planet met the eye.
The automatic pilot clicked loudly, presently, and then a bell rang. Its mechanical duties were over. MacLean leaped to the hand controls.
“We’ll head for outer space and take star observations now,” he muttered. “We’ll expose Tharkya’s hidden position. They’re probably afraid of attack.”
He wrenched at the drive lever, but Kaine wrenched it back.
“Don’t be a fool, Lon,” he snapped. “It would take us a week to feel our way out. We’re on schedule. Delayed, they would send out their Space Patrol, to track us down. We can’t do a thing except deliver the energon Tax.”
“Which belongs to Earth,” MacLean said bitterly. “All right, lad, but it isn’t right.”
“Perhaps it isn’t,” Kaine said. “But you can’t change a thing like that overnight.”
“Perhaps it isn’t right!” echoed MacLean with infinite scorn. He glared at the younger man. There was bad feeling between them that hurt them both.
“Look, Lon,” Kaine said firmly, “I’m not a revolutionary—not in the face of absolute power. You have to make the best of things.”
“Faugh!”
Nothing more was said between them as the ship neared Tharkya. MacLean broke the strained silence in impersonal tones.
“Where do we land?”
“There’s a line of ships spiraling down,” Kaine pointed. “Follow them. Probably other tax-bearers, from other worlds.”
IV
MACLEAN fell in line. The caravan of ships were of all different sizes, shapes and structure. Tharkyan engines were standard, but ship hulls were all laid down on the various worlds, according to their individual specifications. The ship ahead was a long cylinder with wide fins for handling in a thin atmosphere. Further ahead was a tiny five-foot disk ship, perhaps piloted by some race of small, intelligent insects. Another was so huge that its pilots must be large as dinosaurs.
“The crossroads of space!” Kaine mused. “A million and thirteen different beings of intellect paying tribute here, year after year.”
“And not a one like us,” MacLean grunted. “I saw a picture once of the Intergalactic Camera Club, meeting on some world in Sector C-14. Anything from five-eyed lobsters to double-headed elephants. The one Earthman representative looked like a man surrounded by jungle beasts. But everyone had a camera in his hands, or talons, or claws, or tentacles. Guess the mind counts, not the body it’s in.”
The line of ships spiraled down toward a huge drome, on the surface of Tharkya. MacLean landed. They looked out. Beyond the space port stretched the planet’s surface, seemingly forever. The curvature of horizon was so slight that vision went on for hundreds of miles—and still there was more surface!
Kaine stared till he noticed the sweat pouring from their foreheads. They were standing in a bone-crushing gravity five times that of Earth, every muscle strained to the limit. He quickly spun the grav-dial. The ship’s grav-system relieved the terrible pressure.
Each ship rolled forward on its landing carriage, and was stopped at the portal of the drome’s entrance. Tharkyan inspectors were busily checking them in. The line moved slowly.
“You’d think, after a million years of this,” growled MacLean, “they’d have some efficiency. Instead, it’s as slow and pokey as a bread-line on Earth during war time.”
At last, weary hours later, their ship rolled to the portal. They slipped into their seal-suits, adjusted air and gravity to Earth-normal, and stepped out. Save for the protective suits, they would die instantly, either from intense cold, poisonous atmosphere, or crushing gravity.
The Tharkyan inspector, at home in those extreme conditions, began his routine questioning. Mutual voice-machines translated automatically.
“Sun?”
“Sol,” MacLean replied.
“Never heard of it,” snapped the Tharkyan.
“Sol, and the planet Earth,” MacLean elaborated stiffly.
“Wert?” echoed the blue alien. “Listen, out of a million worlds, do you think I know yours by name? What space-sector are you from, you fool?”
“Keep a civil tongue in your head,” MacLean spluttered. “Well, maybe you never heard of Earth at that. But by God, you needn’t act as if it’s an insignificant world. It’s as good as yours, by heaven, and—”
“Easy, Lon!” Kaine had to grin, as he put a restraining hand on the Scot’s arm. MacLean’s face was red with indignation.
“What space sector?” demanded the Tharkyan impatiently. “I haven’t all day.”
“Sector N-99,” Kaine supplied.
The Tharkyan turned and consulted a chart. It was a three-dimensional schematic design of the Milky Way Galaxy, hung within a frame fifty feet high. Every star was indicated, with lines and squares marking off the sectors.
“Way out in the sticks somewhere,” the Tharkyan murmured in idiom that translated through telepathy. He ran his eyes over the gigantic model. “What star is it near?”
“Sol,�
� MacLean grunted. “I told you once.”
“Some important star,” the Tharkyan snorted.
Kaine answered, while MacLean mouthed outraged curses.
“Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti, Barnard’s Star, Sirius—”
“Sirius!” interrupted the Tharkyan. “I’ve heard of that. Now let’s see—”
He turned back suddenly. “Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” he said irritably. “You’re at the wrong gate!”
“Wrong gate?” MacLean gasped.
“Certainly. There are a hundred gates, each handling a certain portion of the Galaxy. Why didn’t you stop at Information first, instead of wasting my time? These hicks—”
The Tharkyan shook his head annoyedly and waved them away.
BACK in the ship, MacLean lowered his visor and cursed fluently. “Damned arrogant little blue-skinned monkeys! For two cents I’d have cracked him right on the button.”
Still grinning, Kaine rolled the ship back along the line till he saw a tremendous sign emblazoned with one word—INFORMATION—in the patois of space trade. Stopping there, he asked for his gate. Two other puzzled Bearers were there, just leaving. One, through its visor, had the face of a fox. The other face was indescribable—ten eyes on stalks, petal-like ears and lips, corn-silk hair. Perhaps a plant-being.
“Sol—Earth—sector N-99—near Sirius—50,000 light-years—um—oh, yes, here it is. Gate 29. Two gates down, five to the right.”
“Thanks,” Kaine said, turning away. “Come on, Lon.”
But the engineer was standing like a frozen statue, staring at a figure approaching. Kaine followed his eye, and gasped.
The figure’s suit was of utterly transparent material—apparently flexible glass. Within it was a being more startling than any they had seen yet.
“Do you see what I see?” MacLean whispered.
“I can’t believe it!” Kaine muttered.
“What’s an Earth girl doing here?” MacLean demanded. “We’re the official Bearers of the Tax for Earth. She can’t be here on that mission.”
Earth girl it was, with blue eyes, flaxen hair, and an ivory complexion. Her form, plainly revealed in the transparent suit, was slender, lithe, clothed in shimmering silk. Oddly, one arm and one leg were bare, the others swathed, in some style Kaine could not place geographically on Earth.
She had spied them now. Her eyes went impersonally over their opaque seal-suits, then widened with surprise, reaching their faces through the glassine visors. But her surprise seemed only momentary. She brushed past.
“Pardon me, miss,” MacLean said, grabbing her arm. “You’re from Earth, aren’t you? What in the wide universe are you doing on Tharkya?”
Her face stiffened at the brusque questions. She seemed about to snub them indignantly.
“Forgive us,” Kaine said quickly. “But it isn’t often that Earth people meet on Tharkya, is it?”
She turned frozen-faced to him, but suddenly thawed. Even in the dim light of smoldering Thark, she was incredibly lovely.
“You’re Earth people?” her voice came melodiously. The voice-machines faithfully reproduced tone, if not actual syllables. “But of course! I’ve seen pictures of you.”
She stared with interest now.
“Pictures of us!” MacLean spluttered. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been on Earth?”
“Naturally not,” she returned, smiling.
“You mean you were born and raised here on Tharkya?” Kaine guessed, bewildered.
She shook her head, laughing.
“I’m not an Earth woman at all. I’m Veloa, of the planet Dymoor, sector D-5. Haven’t you ever heard of us? By chance, evolution on our two separate worlds produced identical beings. It is well known on Dymoor that 200,000 light-years away lies a world inhabited by beings like us.”
“We’re rather new in the Galaxy,” Kaine explained. “It’s a surprise to us. But a pleasant one. You look almost exactly like an Earth girl.”
Almost, but not quite. There were shades of difference. Veloa’s flaxen hair had a faint greenish texture. Her forehead was slightly broader than normal. Her fingers were exceptionally long, her feet incredibly slender. Her features were indefinably sensitive, as though all the heritage of a brute past were far behind. The Dymoorans were probably an age further advanced from anthropoid ancestors than Earth people.
“An extremely lovely Earth girl,” MacLean added.
The Dymooran girl blushed, quite in an Earthlike manner. “I—I must go now. I’m the Bearer of the Tax for my world.”
Information sent her to Gate 76. With a last flashing smile at them, she skipped to her ship.
MACLEAN barreled into the air, maneuvered skilfully past the traffic of other ships, and “arrowed down the line of gates. They proved to be widely spaced—hundreds of miles in fact. It took them an hour, at a safe speed, to go down two and five to the right. Everything on Tharkya seemed built on a huge scale.
And all the space between was city. One vast, humming, planet-wide city, covering the ground completely. Buildings, structures, houses, bridges, and more enigmatic items sprawled over every visible inch.
“I’d heard this, but didn’t realize it could be true,” Kaine breathed. “The surface of Tharkya, through their million years of civilization, is one giant city!” They saw more of it, after checking in at the right gate and officially delivering the energon Tax.
“You are invited to tour Tharkya for one day,” the inspector said routinely. “Before you must return to your home world. Park your ship in the drome. A guide will conduct you around, in parties. See Tharkya, the magnificent center of the universe!”
It was more a command than a request.
Kaine looked around eagerly, as they joined a group of other seal-suited figures of assorted shapes and sizes. Was it just possible?
“There she is,” MacLean grunted, pointing. “And I still insist she isn’t human. Oranges and tangerines look alike, too.”
“Genes and chromosomes are the important things,” Kaine repeated for the tenth time. “If they match the human pattern, she’s as good a homo as you are.”
They approached the alien girl. She was in animated conversation with a spider-being four feet tall. She turned.
“Ah, the Earthmen! This is ZlkZee of Klak. We’ve been discussing the relative merits of life under a bright or dim sun.”
The spider-man acknowledged the introduction in a clacking speech, then left. Somehow, he had an air of delicate tact that seemed at odds with his hairy, ugly body.
Veloa saw MacLean’s slight shudder.
“You Earthmen are new, I see, to intercourse with other-world beings. We, of Dymoor have long since come to ignore outward form. All the races of the Galaxy have the common ground of intelligence.” She smiled a little mischievously. “You look as ugly to him as he does to you, you know!”
“Ouch!” MacLean grinned. “Yes, there’s the common ground of mind. And one more common denominator—we’re all under the thumb of Tharkya!”
“Hsst!” the girl whispered fiercely. “Watch your tongue, in the enemy’s stronghold. Such talk is only for private councils, behind sealed guarded doors far from here—”
She broke off, as if having said too much.
“The Legion of Freedom?” MacLean whispered back eagerly. “You belong to it?”
The girl paled, drawing back a little. Kaine stared. Was she part of that mysterious underground movement, only a whisper of which had reached Earth?
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said carelessly. “Look, we’re moving.”
The tour started. Moving platforms carried the tour party along, first high, then low, through selected portions of the endless city. An amplified voice from the front of the train of platforms pointed out sights and landmarks.
“Citizens of the empire! On the right you see the statue of Kazzi. He first conquered space, for Tharkya. It was then, an age ago, that our race swept out into the Galaxy, colonizing, bettering, uplifting!
“On the left, the preserved hulks of a dozen space ships, all that remained of a foolhardy rebellion of 500,000 years ago, universal scale. There have been a thousand misguided rebellions since then. Not one succeeded. Tharkya is supreme!
“Ahead now, you see the ramparts of our energon vault. Buried there, miles deep, are vast stores of energon. We have enough to equip millions of fighting ships, against which no force in the universe can stand!”
That was the main text of the tour. Tharkya’s history and might. Tharkya’s upliftment of civilization. Tharkya’s supreme right to rule.
“Trying to impress us,” Veloa murmured, as if to herself. “Browbeating us with propaganda.”
Later, the moving seats passed through centers of the amorphous Tharkyan city. Sheer magnificence dazzled the eye. Gleaming golden towers, richly adorned homes and patios, floating palaces of entertainment and recreation.
The Babylon of the universe.
The Tharkyans were all opulently clothed, leisurely sauntering through artificial parks of stunning beauty. Children played with toys of gold, platinum and all the precious metals, studded with flaming jewels. Restaurant menus advertised the epicurean delicacies of the million different worlds.
“Ours—all ours!” the Dymooran girl was breathing half-audibly. “All the wealth of the Galaxy, its best foods—here. Tharkyans enjoying age-long prosperity and luxury. Parasites! Consuming but not producing. And they have our energon, with which to crush us if we revolt.”
For the first time, Kaine felt doubt. Sweeping tides of it. Had Tharkya done enough good in the Galaxy to overbalance this self-gain? Or had Tharkya bled the Galaxy white, throwing back a sop of small benefits?
MacLean had caught the girl’s murmur, too, leaning close to her.
“You’re a girl after my own heart!” he whispered. “The Legion of Freedom! Tell me—”
INTERRUPTION came.
The moving platforms came to a jerking stop. The announcer’s voice clipped short. The figure nearest them turned, throwing off its hood. It was a Tharkyan!
