“Greeting, your majesty. Greeting, your highness. Greeting, men out of time, and welcome!”
Telepathy—direct telepathy—so that was how it felt!
“Thank you … sir.” Somehow, the thing rated the title, rated an awed respect to match his own grave formality. “But I thought you were in a trance of concentration till now. How did you know—” Saunders's voice trailed off and he flushed with sudden distaste.
“No, traveler, I did not read your mind as you think. The Vro-Hi always respected privacy and did not read any thoughts save those contained in speech addressed solely to them. But my induction was obvious.”
“What were you thinking about in the last trance?” asked Vargor. His voice was sharp with strain. “Did you reach any plan?”
“No, your highness,” vibrated the Dreamer. “As long as the factors involved remain constant, we cannot logically do otherwise than we are doing. When new data appear, I will reconsider immedi ate necessities. No, I was working further on the philosophical basis which the Second Empire must have.”
“What Second Empire?” sneered Vorgar bitterly.
“The one which will come—some day,” answered Taury quietly.
The Dreamer's wise eyes rested on Saunders and Belgotai. “With your permission,” he thought, “I would like to scan your complete memory patterns, conscious, subconscious, and cellular. We know so little of your age.” As they hesitated: “I assure you, sirs, that a nonhuman being half a million years old can keep secrets, and certainly does not pass moral judgments. And the scanning will be necessary anyway if I am to teach you the present language.”
Saunders braced himself. “Go ahead,” he said distastefully.
For a moment he felt dizzy. A haze passed over his eyes and there was an eerie thrill along every nerve of him. Taury laid an arm about his waist, bracing him.
It passed. Saunders shook his head, puzzled. “Is that all?”
“Aye, sir. A Vro-Hi brain can scan an indefinite number of units simultaneously.” With a faint hint of a chuckle: “But did you notice what tongue you just spoke in?”
“I—eh—huh?” Saunders looked wildly at Taury's smiling face. The hard, open-voweled syllables barked from his mouth: “I—by the gods—I can speak Stellarian now!”
“Aye,” thought the Dreamer. “The language centers are pecu liarly receptive; it is easy to impress a pattern on them. The method of instruction will not work so well for information involving other faculties, but you must admit it is a convenient and efficient way to learn speech.”
“Blast off wit me, den,” said Belgoti cheerfully. “Ih allays was a dumkoff at languages.”
When the Dreamer was through, he thought: “You will not take it amiss if I tell all that I what I saw in both your minds was good—brave and honest, under the little neuroses which all beings at your level of evolution cannot help accumulating. I will he pleased to remove those for you, if you wish.”
“No, thanks,” said Belgotai. “I like my little neuroses.”
“I see that you are debating staying here,” went on the Dreamer. “You will be valuable, but you should be fully warned of the desper ate position we actually are in. This is not a pleasant age in which to live.”
“From what I've seen,” answered Saunders slowly, “golden ages are only superficially better. They may be easier on the surface, but there's death in them. To travel hopefully, believe me, is better than to arrive.”
“That has been true in all past ages, aye. It was the great mistake of the Vro-Hi. We should have known better, with ten million years of civilization behind us.” There was a deep and tragic note in the rolling thought-pulse. “But we thought that since we had achieved a static physical state in which the new frontiers and challenges lay within our own minds, all beings at all levels of evolution could and should have developed in them the same idea.
“With our help, and with the use of scientific psychodynamics and the great cybernetic engines, the coordination of a bil lion planets became possible. It was perfection, in a way—but perfection is death to imperfect beings, and even the Vro-Hi had many shortcomings. I cannot explain all the philosophy to you; it involves concepts you could not fully grasp, but you have seen the workings of the great laws in the rise and fall of cultures. I have proved rigorously that permanence is a self-contradictory concept. There can be no goal to reach, not ever.”
“Then the Second Empire will have no better hope than decay and chaos again?” Saunders grinned humorlessly. “Why the devil do you want one?”
Vargor's harsh laugh shattered the brooding silence. “What indeed does it matter?” he cried. “What use to plan the future of the universe, when we are outlaws on a forgotten planet? The Anvardi are coming!” He sobered, and there was a set to his jaw that Saunders liked. “They're coming, and there's little we can do to stop it,” said Vargor. “But we'll give them a fight. We'll give them such a fight as the poor old galaxy never saw before!”
“Ohno—oh no—oh no”
The murmur came unnoticed from Vargor's lips, a broken cry of pain as he stared at the image that flickered and wavered on the great interstellar communiscreen. And there was horror in the eyes of Taury, grimness to the set of Hunda's mighty jaws, a sadness of many hopeless centuries in the golden gaze of the Dreamer.
After weeks of preparation and waiting, Saunders realized mat ters were at last coming to a head.
“Aye, your majesty,” said the man in the screen. He was haggard, exhausted, worn out by strain and struggle and defeat. “Aye, fifty-four ship-loads of us, and the Anvardian fleet in pursuit.”
“How far behind?” rapped Hunda.
“About half a light-year, sir, and coming up slowly. We'll be close to Sol before they can overhaul us.”
“Can you fight them?” rapped Hunda.
“No, sir,” said the man. “We're loaded with refugees, women and children, and unarmed peasants, hardly a gun on a ship—Can't you help us?” It was a cry, torn by the ripping static that filled the interstellar void. “Can't you help us, your majesty? They'll sell us for slaves!”
“How did it happen?” asked Taury wearily.
“I don't know, your majesty. We heard you were at Sol through your agents, and secretly gathered ships. We don't want to be under the Anvardi, Empress; they tax the life from us and conscript our men and take our women and children … We only communicated by ultrawave; it can't be traced, and we only used the code your agents gave us. But as we passed Canopus, they called on us to surrender in the name of their king—and they have a whole war fleet after us!”
“How long before they get here?” asked Hunda.
“At this rate, sir, perhaps a week,” answered the captain of the ship. Static snarled through his words.
“Well, keep on coming this way,” said Taury wearily. “We'll send ships against them. You may get away during the battle. Don't go to Sol, of course, we'll have to evacuate that. Our men will try to contact you later.”
“We aren't worth it, your majesty. Save all your ships.”
“We're coming,” said Taury flatly, and broke the circuit.
She turned to the others, and her red head was still lifted. “Most of our people can get away,” she said. “They can flee into the Arlath cluster; the enemy won't be able to fmd them in that wilderness.” She smiled, a tired little smile that tugged at one corner of her mouth. “We all know what to do, we've planned against this day. Munidor, Falz, Mico, start readying for evacuation. Hunda, you and I will have to plan our assault. We'll want to make it as effective as possible, but use a minimum of ships.”
“Why sacrifice fighting strength uselessly?” asked Belgotai.
“It won't be useless. We'll delay the Anvardi, and give those refugees a chance to escape.”
“If we had weapons,” rumbled Hunda. His huge fists clenched. “By the gods, if we had decent weapons!”
The Dreamer stiffened. And before he could vibrate it, the same thought had leaped into Saund
ers's brain, and they stared at each other, man and Vro-Hian, with a sudden wild hope …
Space glittered and flared with a million stars, thronging against the tremendous dark, the Milky Way foamed around the sky in a rush of cold silver, and it was shattering to a human in its utter immensity. Saunders felt the loneliness of it as he had never felt it on the trip to Venus—for Sol was dwindling behind them, they were rushing out into the void between the stars.
There had only been time to install the new weapon on the dreadnought, time and facilities were so cruelly short, there had been no chance even to test it in maneuvers. They might, perhaps, have leaped back into time again and again, gaining weeks, but the shops of Terra could only turn out so much material in the one week they did have.
So it was necessary to risk the whole fleet and the entire fighting strength of Sol on this one desperate gamble. If the old Vengeance could do her part, the outnumbered Imperials would have their chance. But if they failed …
Saunders stood on the bridge, looking out at the stellar host, trying to discern the Anvardian fleet. The detectors were far over scale, the enemy was close, but you couldn't visually detect something that outran its own image.
Hunda was at the control central, bent over the cracked old dials and spinning the corroded signal wheels, trying to coax another centimeter per second from a ship more ancient than the Pyramids had been in Saunders’ day. The Dreamer stood quietly in a corner, staring raptly out at the Galaxy. The others at the court were each in charge of a squadron, Saunders had talked to them over the inter-ship visiscreen—Vargor white-lipped and tense, Belgotai blasphemously cheerful, the rest showing only cool reserve.
“In a few minutes,” said Taury quietly.
“In just a few minutes, Martin.” She paced back from the viewport, lithe and restless as a tigress. The cold white starlight glittered in her eyes. A red cloak swirled about the strong, deep curves of her body, a Sunburst helmet sat proudly on her bronze-bright hair Saunders thought how beautiful she was—by all the gods, how beautiful!
She smiled at him. “It is your doing, Martin,” she said. “You came from the past just to bring us hope. It's enough to make one believe in destiny.” She took his hand. “But of course it's not the hope you wanted. This won't get you back home.”
“It doesn't matter,” he said.
“It does, Martin. But—may I say it? I'm still glad of it. Not only for the sake of the empire, but—”
A voice rattled over the bridge communicator: “Ultrawave to bridge. The enemy is sending us a message, your majesty. Shall I send it up to you?”
“Of course.” Taury switched on the bridge screen.
A face leaped into it, strong and proud and ruthless, the Sun burst shining in the green hair. “Greeting, Taury of Sol,” said the Anvardian. “I am Ruulthan, Emperor of the Galaxy.”
“I know who you are,” said Taury thinly, “but I don't recognize your assumed title.”
“Our detectors report your approach with a fleet approximately one-tenth the size of ours. You have one Supernova ship, of course, but so do we. Unless you wish to come to terms, it will mean annihilation.”
“What are your terms?”
“Surrender, execution of the criminals who led the attacks on Anvardian planets, and your own pledge of allegiance to me as Galactic Emperor.” The voice was clipped, steel-hard.
Taury turned away in disgust. Saunders told Ruulthan in explicit language what to do with his terms, and then cut off the screen.
Taury gestured to the newly installed time-drive controls. “Take them, Martin,” she said. “They're yours, really.” She put her hands in his and looked at him with serious gray eyes. “And if we should fail in this—goodbye, Martin.”
“Goodbye,” he said thickly.
He wrenched himself over the panel and sat down before its few dials. Here goes nothing!
He waved one hand, and Hunda cut off the hyperdrive. At low intrinsic velocity, the Vengeance hung in space while the invisible ships of her fleet flushed past toward the oncoming Anvardi.
Slowly then, Saunders brought down the time-drive switch. And the ship roared with power, atomic energy flowed into the mighty circuits which they had built to carry her huge mass through time—the lights dimmed, the giant machine throbbed and pulsed, and a featureless grayness swirled beyond the ports.
He took her back three days. They lay in empty space, the Anvardi were still fantastic distances away. His eyes strayed to the brilliant yellow spark of Sol. Right there, this minute, he was sweating his heart out installing the time projector that had just carried him back.
But no, that was meaningless, simultaneity was arbitrary. And there was a job to do right now.
The chief astrogator's voice came with a torrent of figures. They had to find the exact position in which the Anvardian flagship would be in precisely seventy-two hours. Hunda rang the signals to the robots in the engine room, and slowly, ponderously, the Vengeance slid across five million miles of space.
“All set,” said Hunda. “Let's go!”
Saunders smiled, a mirthless skinning of teeth, and threw his main switch in reverse. Three days forward in time …
To lie alongside the Anvardian dreadnought!
Frantically Hunda threw the hyperdrive back in, matching translight velocities. They could see the ship now; it loomed like a metal mountain against the stars. And every gun in the Vengeance cut loose!
Vortex cannon—blasters—atomic shell and torpedoes—gravity snatchers—all the hell which had ever been brewed in the tortured centuries of history vomited against the screens of the Anvardian flag-ship.
Under that monstrous barrage, filling space with raving energy till it seemed its very structure must boil, the screens went down, a flare of light searing like another nova. And through the solid matter of her hull those weapons bored, cutting, blasting, disintegrating. Steel boiled into vapor, into atoms, into pure devouring energy that turned on the remaining solid material. Through and through the hull that fury raged, a waste of flame that left not every ash in its track.
And now the rest of the Imperial fleet drove against the Anvardi. Assaulted from outside, with a devouring monster in its very midst, the Anvardian fleet lost the offensive, recoiled and broke up into desperately fighting units. War snarled between the silent white stars.
Still the Anvardi fought, hurling themselves against the ranks of the Imperials, wrecking ships and slaughtering men even as they went down. They still had the numbers, if not the organization, and they had the same weapons and the same bitter courage, as their foes.
The bridge of the Vengeance shook and roared with the shock of battle. The lights darkened, flickered back, dimmed again. The riven air was sharp with ozone, and the intolerable energies loosed made her interior a furnace. Reports clattered over the communicator: “—Number Three screen down—Compartment Number Five doesn't answer–Vortex turret Five Hundred Thirty Seven out of action—”
Still she fought, still she fought, hurling metal and energy in an unending storm, raging and rampaging among the ships of the Anvardi. Saunders found himself manning a gun, shooting out at vessels he couldn't see, getting his aim by sweat-blinded glances at the instruments—and the hours dragged away in flame and smoke and racking thunder …”
“They're fleeing!”
The exuberant shout rang through every remaining compartment of the huge old ship. Victory, victory, victory—She had not heard such cheering for five thousand weary years.
Saunders staggered drunkenly back onto the bridge. He could see the scattered units of the Anvardi now that he was behind them, exploding out into the galaxy in wild search of refuge, hounded and harried by the vengeful Imperial fleet.
And now the Dreamer stood up, and suddenly he was not a stump-legged little monster but a living god whose awful thought leaped across space, faster than light, to bound and roar through the skulls of the barbarians. Saunders fell to the floor under the impact of that mighty sh
out, he lay numbly staring at the impassive stars while the great command rang in his shuddering brain:
“Soldiers of the Anvardi, your false emperor is dead and Taury the Red, Empress of the Galaxy, has the victory. You have seen her power. Do not resist it longer, for it is unstoppable.
“Lay down your arms. Surrender to the mercy of the Imperium. We pledge you amnesty and safe-conduct. And bear this word back to your planets:
“Taury the Red calls on all the chiefs of the Anvardian Confederacy to pledge fealty to her and aid her in restoring the Galactic Empire!”
They stood on a balcony of Brontothor and looked again at old Earth for the first time in almost a year and the last time, perhaps, in their lives.
It was strange to Saunders, this standing again on the planet that had borne him after those months in the many and alien worlds of a galaxy huger than he could really imagine. There was an odd little tug at his heart, for all the bright hope of the future. He was saying goodbye to Eve's world.
But Eve was gone. She was part of a past forty-eight thousand years dead, and he had seen those years rise and die; his one year of personal time was filled and stretched by the vision of history until
Eve was a remote, lovely dream. God keep her, wherever her soul had wandered in these millennia—God grant she had had a happy life—but as for him, he had his own life to live, and a mightier task at hand than he had ever conceived.
The last months rose in his mind, a bewilderment of memory. After the surrender of the Anvardian fleet, the Imperials had gone under their escort directly to Canopus and thence through the Anvardian empire. And chief after chief, now that Ruulthan was dead and Taury had shown she could win a greater mystery than his, pledged allegiance to her.
Hunda was still out there with Belgotai, fighting a stubborn Anvardian earl. The Dreamer was in the great Polarian System toiling at readjustment. It would be necessary, of course, for the Imperial capital to move from isolated Sol to central Polaris, and Taury did not think she would ever have time or opportunity visit Earth again.
The End Of The World Page 35
