Already, the rain was beginning to fall, all over the Earth, with unbelievable fury. The rain would last for months, perhaps for years. It would rain until the Pacific regained the waters it had given up; until the great polar icecaps reformed. All over the Earth the rain fell and would continue to fall.
And it was a rain of death.
It was a rain permeated with radioactive isotopes of cobalt, sodium, carbon and dozens of other elements. It was a planet-wide bath of radioactivity from which there could be no escape. It would continue for months; it would drench every square inch of the planet with radioactive death. Nothing organic could survive and nothing organic would be able to exist on the planet for a thousand years.
Earth was dead.
Only slowly could that enormity burn its way into Palmer’s consciousness. Earth was dead. Man’s home planet was no more.
There was no way to comprehend it. It was the end of everything. It was as if he had lost his father, his mother, his family unto its ultimate ancestors, everything he had ever loved or cared for in one gross and terrible instant. It was that, and it was more.
It was the death of a religion, a hope, a Promise. It was the death of all Man had ever fought for and the triumph of evil incarnate. It was the death that could not be—the death of the human race itself.
It was the midnight of the soul.
Palmer was dimly aware that his body was wracked with sobs. The tiny fragment of his mind that still bothered to think noted without comment that tears were streaming down his cheeks, the first tears that he had shed in two and a half decades.
Earth was dead. He stared transfixed at the steaming ball of destruction, floating like the decomposing corpse it was in the viewscreen. Earth was dead, and something within him had died with it—hope, meaning, the future, all that made life matter. It was over…everything was over….
He forced his eyes away from that terrible sight and looked at the Solarians.
They stared stonily at the spectacle, but their cheeks were wet with tears.
With the last bit of rage left within him, with the waning dregs of his caring, he shouted at the Solarians:
“Monsters! Fiends! Beasts! Madmen! You did this! You killed the human race! You….”
“Shut up!” Lingo roared, with unbelievable fury, with the full power of his trained voice of command. “Shut up!“
Such was the power in that terrible voice that Palmer instantly fell silent, the last measure of defiance, of caring leached from him.
Like a man in some nightmare, who emotionlessly observes a wall about to fall on him, Palmer was incuriously aware that the Duglaari Fleet, filled to overflowing with its triumph, was breaking orbit.
Slowly, majestically, as if savoring each moment to the fullest the Duglaari Fleet left the scene of carnage and made its way Solward once more, going forth to complete the destruction of the Sol system, to wipe out what pitiful remnants might remain on Venus and Mercury.
Without taking his eyes from the viewscreen, Ortega switched cameras to a tell-tale just beyond the orbit of Venus. From this point of view, the corpse of Earth was only a bright blue star, the same bright blue star it had been for billions of years. The heavens would not erec monument to Earth’s passing.
And then a great cloud of black ships appeared on the viewscreen. The Duglaari Fleet was approaching Venus.
But what does it matter? Palmer thought, staring numbly at the viewscreen, which now showed Venus, the Doogs, and the flaming ball of gas that was Sol itself. What does anything matter?
The Duglaari Fleet arced arrogantly towards Venus.
Woodenly, Palmer glanced away from the viewscreen at the hateful figures of the Solarians. Suddenly he noticed, in uncomprehending confusion, that the Solarians were watching neither the Duglaari Fleet nor Venus.
They were staring stonily and tight-lipped at Sol itself. And their faces were not softened by despair, but hardened into granite as if with some terrible triumph.
He followed their gaze, and at first he was puzzled. There was nothing to see save the globe of incandescent gas that was Sol, seen through the heavy filter of the tell-tale camera.
Then a curious optical illusion seemed to occur. The image of Sol in the viewscreen seemed to shimmer momentarily, as if something had jarred the tell-tale camera out of focus. Then, incredibly, Sol seemed to contract, to shrink for an instant, to fall in on itself, reducing its diameter by a noticeable fraction.
As it happened, Palmer suddenly realized what was happening; and as he realized, he began to understand.
And as he understood, he and the universe were transformed….
For another moment, Sol continued to contract. Then some kind of equilibrium point seemed to be reached.
But the equilibrium lasted less than a second. Suddenly monstrous prominences of flaming gas and plasma shot spaceward from the entire surface of Sol. The whole surface of Sol seemed to suck up into the forest of prominences, and in moments, the prominences were the surface, expanding spaceward with terrible speed and force.
That too happened in instants. Then, suddenly, finally, in one incredible, unimaginable, soundless explosion, Sol shed its surface like the skin of a bursting balloon. Trillions of tons of flaming holocaust, travelling at incredible speed, roared off into space, an ever-expanding globe of destruction….
Sol went nova.
Mercury was engulfed in seconds and vaporized like a snowflake in a blast furnace. Venus was vaporized moments later, and still the globular wave front of destruction, monstrous and hot beyond comprehension, grew and expanded like an opening into hell.
And as it grew, the full, total truth grew in Palmer, with that strange, manic calmness that turns seconds into hours—The War had turned around at the moment of that titanic explosion.
For the Duglaari Fleet was trapped.
The holocaust that had been Sol expanded outward towards the huge Duglaari Fleet far faster than their Fleet Resolution Field could possibly propel them. Only by going into Stasis-Space could the four thousand Duglaari warships flee fast enough to save themselves.
But they could not go into Stasis-Space. They were far too close to the nova that had been Sol. Their Stasis-Field generators would explode, leaving the fragments that would be all that would be left of the Doog ships trapped in the nothingness of Stasis-Space forever.
The four thousand Duglaari warships were doomed. The only choice open to the Doogs was which terrible death they would die.
In one instant of massive destruction whose echoes would resound for a thousand years, the human race had been saved. Now it was Man who had the superiority in ships; now it was the Doogs who faced inexorable extermination.
Even as the realization that The War had just been won dawned on Palmer, the wave front of the stellar explosion vaporized the Duglaari Fleet like a swarm of moths caught in a flamethrower.
Man was saved; man was saved, but the price was incredible.
The price was Man’s home solar system. The price was the planet that had given him birth. The price was Fortress Sol itself.
And five billion lives.
Palmer could not pull his eyes away from the terrible spectacle in the viewscreen, a solar system consuming itself, Sol the source of all life transforming into a flaming, irresistible pyre of death.
More was being consumed in that awful funeral pyre than five billion human beings or four thousand Duglaari warships. As he watched, transfixed, he remembered, with terrible immediacy, the music-odor composition that Robin had called the Song of Earth. The Composer must’ve known, Palmer suddenly realized. He must’ve known this was going to happen.
For now Palmer completely understood the meaning of the composition. It had spoken for the Solarians then; it spoke for all men everywhere now. It spoke of a loss so great that it would take centuries for its full extent to become fully known. It spoke of a million cities, rich to bursting with history and memories, a thousand cultures seething for millenia in fecund ferme
nt, incandescent gas now, and lost forever.
The human race had been saved from the greatest menace in all its history, but the price was equal to the prize. Man would survive, but his primal home, the greater part of his history and culture, his most basic and fundamental roots, and the last and greatest of his sustaining myths, Fortress Sol, had been torn from him.
The price of survival, Palmer thought grimly, is always the loss of illusions. The human race has left its childhood things behind it. We are now on our own.
And now he understood, he understood so much. This was the secret weapon Lingo had spoken of. “Fortress Sol itself…” he had said, but who could’ve thought he had meant it so literally?
And this was why Lingo had refused to tell him anything in advance, this was why Lingo had so desperately wanted to be judged. But who am I, Palmer thought, to judge him? How does one weigh five billion lives and the youth of a race against survival itself?
He was ashamed of how glad he felt that no part of such a decision had been his. Now he understood the final dimension of the humanness that the Solarians had tried to explain to him with mere words. Such was the humanity of the Solarians that they could weigh the life of Fortress Sol against the fate of the human race, come to the right decision, and yet still care enough about one human being to spare him the awful guilt of sharing, however remotely and indirectly, in it.
Now Palmer knew that the Solarians had kept the secret from him, not to tantalize him, but to spare him.
How can I judge these people? Palmer thought. No one has a right to judge them! No one will judge them, if I have anything to say about it!
Quite suddenly, and with no surprise, Palmer realized that at that moment, he had really joined the Solarian Group. He was one of them, with no doubts, no reservations.
If they would have him.
Chapter XIII
FOR LONG silent silent moments the seven of them stared at the expanding globular maelstrom of gas that had been Sol—from the point of view of a tell-tale camera far outside the Solar System, for the Solar System was now no more.
Finally, Palmer turned away from the hypnotic spectacle and looked at the Solarians. Robin and Fran and Linda were crying soundlessly, almost tearlessly. Max was staring woodenly at the viewscreen as if turned to stone. Ortega was grinding his teeth and pummeling his left palm with his right fist.
Lingo’s face was set in a grim, impassive, controlled mask. Only the corners of his mouth, twitching downward, convulsively, displayed any emotion. Then he realized that Palmer was looking at him.
He turned to stare directly at Palmer. His large green eyes seemed like openings into some bottomless abyss. He grinned at Palmer mirthlessly. “Now you know, Jay….” he said softly, “now you know.”
Palmer stared back at Lingo. “Now I know, Dirk,” he said. “Now I really know. The whole thing, every step of the way, was just to lead up to this. The greatest trap in all history. But…just how was it sprung, anyway?”
Lingo sighlobular mavily. “That was the simplest part,” he said. “The only simple part. The station on Mercury was nothing but a Stasis-Field Generator with a proximity fuse. The code word ‘phoenix’ armed the fuse so that the next time any ship approached the orbit of Venus….” He let the sentence hang, there was no need to complete it.
“We built a better mousetrap, that’s all…” Ortega said, with bitter, exaggerated harshness. “Biggest and best damned mousetrap in all history.”
“With the most valuable bait!” Palmer said.
“Jay, there’s one thing you’re just going to have to accept,” Lingo snapped. “One thing we’re all going to have to accept. One way or another, Fortress Sol had to die. Sooner or later, Doogs or no Doogs. The future of the human race is out there, in the Galaxy, not in the past, not in the womb. The Confederation is the future of the human race, or rather what the Confederation is now free to become. Fortress Sol…The Promise…all legends…once they did serve a purpose, once the human race did need comfortable illusions, mythical outside forces, just to keep going. But we’re not children any more. We’re winning The War, and we’re going to expand out into an entire Galaxy and there’s no place in a future like that for myths. Man must finally get it through his thick skull that there is only one thing in the Universe that will ever be worthy of his belief—himself. For unless Man learns to put his faith in his own greatness, we will remain children forever. The myth of Fortress Sol, like all the other myths, was a fairy story for children, something to scare away bogey men. It had to go if Man was ever to grow up. We haven’t lost the past; we’ve gained the future.”
“That’s a very pretty speech, Dirk,” Palmer said quietly. “Who are you trying to convince—me or yourself?”
Lingo forced a smile. “Again I underestimate you, Jay,” he said. “When you make a decision like this, between two terrible alternatives, no matter how right you know you have been, you can never quite convince yourself…. Jay, did I ever tell you how Douglas MacDay finally died, years after he had made his terrible decision, the decision to plunge Sol into chaos, the most important and the rightest decision a man ever made?”
“No.”
Lingo turned to stare once more at the holocaust in the viewscreen. “Even though he knew he was right,” Lingo said, not looking at Palmer, “even though he knew that he had given the human race the only chance it could have, he couldn’t live with it. He killed himself, Jay, he finally killed himself.”
“What do you want from me, Dirk?” Palmer said quietly.
Lingo turned to face him, his eyes hollow and burning. “What do I want, Jay? I want you to tell me something. Tell me we were right, or tell me that we were wrong. I want to know, Jay. I suppose I want to be judged.”
“This is why you refused to tell me what was going to happen, isn’t it, Dirk?” Palmer said. “You didn’t want me to have to live with what you’re living with now.”
“Yes. Of course. The fewer heads a thing like this is on, the better all around.”
“I can’t judge you, Dirk,” Palmer said. “I can’t judge you because I can’t imagine what I would’ve done in your place. No one can judge you. No one has the right. But I respect you, Dirk, the way you respect MacDay. That should be enough for anyone.”
Lingo smiled grimly. “You’re right, Jay,” he said. “That’s all we can ever expect, and all that we should ever want. Thanks.”
“One thing that can be said for sure,” Ortega said, glancing at the viewscreen. “We had better get out of here fast, before that wavefront hits.”
Lingo sat down in the pilot’s seat. “Take a good look at what’s left of Sol,” he said. “It’s the last anyone will ever see of it.”
Then he pressed the button, and they were in Stasis-Space.
Palmer had been lying on his bunk for hours, trying to digest what had been, what would be. Three centuries of history had been turned around in an instant, three centuries of history and three decades of his life.
Man was master now. Though they did not know it yet, though the blaze of light that was the only monument Man’s home system would ever have would not reach the worlds of the Confederation for decades, the people of the Confederation had inherited the Galaxy. And inherited was the right word.
For it had taken a great death to destroy the power of the Duglaari Empire—the death of Sol and the death of five billion Solarians. The price of life was, as always, death.
Despite anything he had told Lingo, Jay Palmer felt the weight of those deaths. For it was up to him, and men like him, to give them meaning, to see to it that they were not in vain.
Fortress Sol had met the test of history. Now it was up to the rest of the human race to justify that greatest of all sacrifices. Fortress Sol was dead, and now the Confederation too must die a death of a kind. It must give way to a new order, an order where men ruled themselves and were not ruled by machines, an order where men gloried in their humanness and did not deny it out of fear.
“This too shall pass away,” was the only universal truth of history. But a corollary must now be added to that ancient law: This too shall pass away, but Man shall prevail.
There were no more Solarians, and there must be no more men of the Confederation, either. Only Man.
There….font>
“Come on up to the control room,” said Robin Morel, sticking her head into his cabin. “We’re coming out of Stasis-Space.”
They were still in Stasis-Space when Palmer reached the control room. Everyone else was already there.
“Why are we coming out of Stasis-Space now?” Palmer asked. “We’ve only been in for a few hours. This is the middle of nowhere.”
“So it is,” Lingo replied, with much of the old jauntiness returned to his voice, “so it is.” The rest of the Solarians seemed to have recovered also, and seemed to be almost grinning to each other.
Yet hours before, five billion people had died.
Fran Shannon nodded to Lingo, and Lingo turned off the Stasis-Field Generator. The chaotic maelstrom of Stasis-Space flickered and was gone. The stars came out. They were in normal space, in the vast, lightless dead space between the suns, almost midway between Sol and Centaurus. There was nothing here, nothing at all. Even nova Sol was not visible—for the image of that terrible event was travelling outward only at the speed of light, and would not reach this point in space for another two years. Sol was just another point of light among the thousands of anonymous stars speckling the empty blackness.
Palmer stared out into the endless darkness. Why did they come out of Stasis-Space here? he wondered. There was something about the very nowhereness of this empty void that chilled him to the core of his being. Why…. ?
“Over there,” Fran Shannon said, throwing a red indicator circle around a cluster of five specks of light that just barely showed discs.
But that’s impossible! Palmer thought. Nothing can be showing a disc out here!
For they were two light years from Sol, and Sol was the nearest star. There could be nothing close enough, out here in the space between the stars, to show a disc! There couldn’t be! Yet there were five discs clearly visible within the indicator circle on the viewscreen.
The Solarians Page 20
