When Nad ran from his own quarters to escape the Navigator guards, he had in mind a certain destination known as V sector, where there were whole batteries of living units unassigned. Vaguely, he tried to formulate some plan of action as he ran, but he could not yet see his way clear beyond the mere possibility of hiding out for a very brief period in V sector.
Passengers in the corridors instantly made way for him as he ran, in spite of the warning cry of the Navigator guard over the sonophones. There was a sickly expression of incomprehension on most of their faces. They could not understand resistance or flight. Why resist or flee? Where could one go? It was easier to give up. Surrender to the Navigators if they want you. Death was a certainty. Life, at its best, was a monotonous, meaningless effort.
But Nad ran for his life, and he felt that he was running, too, for all their lives. This hopeful premonition gave him a new strength, courage and determination such as he had never known before. Something seemed to whisper: Now! The time has arrived! Make a break for it!
On deck eighteen, near V sector, the Navigators began to close in on him. Panting loudly, he ran down a passage and suddenly ducked into a deserted room. With narrowed eyes glaring like those of a wild animal at bay, he thought rapidly and with a new clarity and confidence that was in itself exhilarating to him. He knew, somehow, that he would make good his escape, for the simple reason that there was no room for failure now. A grim smile crept across his lips as a new plan began to take shape in his mind.
Cautiously, he stepped into the corridor and darted onward to a doorway farther along in the direction he had chosen. By this means he finally arrived at another intersection. Before entering it, he heard the running feet of several guards, and he pressed his back to the cold wall, waiting.
Just as the two guards dashed into view, Nad lunged across their path horizontally, and they tripped helplessly on their faces. With a lightning quick movement, Nad leaped into the air and came down with both heels squarely on the head of one of the guards, who went limp in the same instant. The other guard rolled over and lifted his Stun Ray just as Nad kicked him squarely in the face. In the next instant he had acquired their weapons.
With one guard slung over his shoulder, he darted along a new corridor, moving from door to door. Gradually, he neared his objective, which was the disposal room for V sector. As he entered the room, he paused a moment to listen for sounds of pursuit. He could hear the bedlam raised by the sonophones, but nothing else. Then he moved swiftly.
He went to the nearest dumping lock and opened it, dumping his limp burden inside. Then he paused again. His lips tightened as he looked down at the unconscious guard. This was the part of the plan he could little stomach, but it had to be carried out.
Grimly, he braced himself. Then, leaving the lock open, he pulled the disposal valve. There was a roar of escaping air as the guard’s body slipped into the vacuum of the disposal chute. The dumping lock door slammed, but did not shut, and air screeched through the remaining crack, making a sound that drowned out the sonophones.
Crawling on his belly against the air blast, Nad got through the doorway of the disposal room before automatic safety devices caused a metal hatch to slide into place, sealing the room hermetically. An alarm gong rang, which he assumed had been installed for such emergencies. He remembered having heard such alarms ring long ago when they said a galactite had pierced the walls. The gong was one of the things he had hoped for. It would bring them to the evidence, which he hoped they would interpret, at least temporarily, as suicide on his part. The other guard he had kicked was dead, so it would take them some time to figure out just who had gone out the disposal tube. He had deliberately left the dump lock door jammed, because a man committing suicide would not have been able to close it from inside. Careful inspection would prove that a human body had gone out the chute, he mused, remembering Gradon’s frozen blood on the outer surface of the door of the execution chamber.
“From here,” Nad said under his breath, “I’ve got to disappear.”
For hours, however, the Navigators continued their search. Evidently they wanted to find either him or the missing guard, to make the evidence conclusive. As he moved from hiding place to hiding place, he began to lose some of his confidence. The hide and seek could not go on indefinitely. Nor could he fight off a squad of Navigators, once they found him. They might even use the M-Ray on him.
Suddenly, he passed the doorway of a room that was unexpectedly occupied, and someone called out his name. He caught a brief glimpse of an old, gray-haired man with pale blue eyes and a leathery skin, the same who had been present at Gradon’s execution. His inclination was to run when he saw the strange weapon the other carried in his hand, but when he realized that the old man was no Navigator, he paused and looked back. The old man was in the doorway, beckoning to him.
“Come with me quickly!” he said.
Something told Nad to follow this stranger, and he did. As running feet neared them in the corridor, the old man extinguished the lights of the room and led Nad into the dimness of an inner apartment. There in the wall was a black hole just large enough to squeeze through. The old man went in first and Nad followed. He found himself on a metal catwalk between metal walls. He could feel cables and conduits running in all directions.
The old man closed the opening and fastened several bolts in place “This is called a maintenance hatch,” he explained. “They are very little used nowadays. Most of the Navigators have neglected their knowledge of real maintenance. You’ll be safe in here until they really start looking for you.
“Where are we?” said Nad. “And how did you know about this place? Who are you?”
“We are between the walls,” came the answer. “This is a vast maze of narrow passages of which the Passengers have no knowledge. I have always known about it because I never lost my memory. I am ‘X,’ my son, and you have come to me just in time.”
* * * *
So it was that a new phase of Nad’s existence actually began. The old man told him his name was Yiddir E-5172-P, but as time went on Nad began to suspect that this was an alias disguising a much more important identity than a mere Passenger. The man knew too much. In fact, as far as Nad was concerned, he was an oracle, willingly supplying him with all the knowledge he could absorb.
Yiddir led him, with amazing self-confidence and sure-footedness, through narrow, incomprehensible labyrinths and across dizzying catwalks below which gaped dark recesses the depths of which he could not guess. If what he had known before was a world unto itself, so was this. He seemed to be making a journey born of delirium, into the heart and veins and bowels of a monstrous, living creature.
Everywhere, Yiddir had reason to use new words to describe what he saw. There were “control relays” and “power cut-offs” and “master circuits” and “reactor shields,” and things incomprehensible without end, until Nad’s brain hurt.
Finally, they arrived at Yiddir’s destination, his private little citadel. It was an empty chemical tank into which he had diverted a tap from the ventilating system. There were small lockers for supplies of food and water and a few simple articles of furniture. A mattress, a small chair, a box that served as a table, and so on. But there were objects of a more technical nature that went beyond Nad’s understanding. He could understand the glow tubes Yiddir had rigged for lighting purposes, and the visiplate and sonophone and even their accompanying converter switches, but one whole end of the tank was a workshop containing a jumble of instruments and equipment that was totally foreign to him. He only grasped that in this secret chamber a very advanced person had lived and worked for perhaps many years of time. Here, at last, was the knowledge and the help he sought. This was the home of “X.”
When they had both rested somewhat, Yiddir began to talk to him in earnest, and for Nad the time for great revelations was at hand.
“Have you any concept of what a year of time is?” Yiddir asked.
“Only that it is a very lon
g period—part of a lifetime, I guess.”
“You could not conceive of a period of five hundred years, could you?”
“Perhaps six or seven lifetimes?” Nad suggested.
“Something like that,” Yiddir replied. “Well, five hundred years ago, we human beings lived on real worlds; indeed, even three hundred years ago. I’ll tell you later what those worlds were like, but suffice it to say, they were natural worlds incalculably larger than this ship you are now in. There were three worlds of principal importance, from which all Passengers and Navigators are descended. There were Venus, Earth and Mars, together with other less developed worlds, revolving each in its own elliptical path about a flaming ball of fire which gave us all the heat and energy necessary to life. This huge hall of fire men referred to as the sun. Actually, it was one of innumerable similar suns called stars which in turn composed what was the galaxy.
“Well, to make a long story short, hundreds of millions of people like you and me lived and prospered in a high form of civilization, and we were able to travel between Venus, Earth and Mars at will, for those distances were as nothing when compared with interstellar distances—that is—the distance between the stars.
“It was about five hundred years ago that men first knew that the solar system, of which Venus, Earth and Mars formed a part, was going to be destroyed by cataclysm. That is, a runaway star was moving rapidly toward our sun, and it was accurately calculated that within three hundred years the collision would definitely occur.
“This single fact bound our three worlds together with a single purpose in mind—to salvage the human race. To do this, it was considered necessary to invent a way of traversing the awful distance between the stars. Not only would it be necessary to go to the nearer stars but onward indefinitely, if necessary, searching for a life-giving sun in whose system of planets there was at least one world that would be suitable as a new starting place for our kind. It would be necessary to extract cosmic energy from space and convert it into all desirable forms of matter, synthesizing out of basic elements all the molecular compounds necessary to the continuation of life. In short, the ships that were to save humanity had to be worlds independent of all other sources of sustenance except cosmic energy, itself.
“The task seemed insurmountable at first, but the concentrated minds of thousands of our great scientists gradually evolved the required miracle, over the course of the next century and a half. Necessity forced upon Man a superman technology, and the great arks began to be built. As you may have guessed, you are a Passenger in one of them now. It took all the human resources of three worlds to build a hundred of these vessels in as many years. They are flying planets. They move at a speed greater than light, itself. This means that light trying to reach us from behind can never catch up as long as we maintain such a velocity, and light meeting us head on is shoved clear off the visible spectrum. The result is that behind us is blackness, ahead is blackness, and to either side of us is a halo-like grayness. We can only navigate by means of instruments, some of which employ energies referred to as second order phenomena, which function many times faster than light.
“Before certain events of which I shall inform you caused the fleet to divide, these arks of space travelled in a broad phalanx, each ship one light year distant from the other, which is equivalent to trillions of kilometers. The entire fleet of arks covered a space of one hundred light years, and even by using second order means of communication it sometimes took years thoroughly to relay messages to all ships. This will give you a small idea of the size of this great attempt on the part of human beings to preserve their species.
“So far, we have been under way for slightly more than two hundred years. We are already many generations descended from those who first started out, and we have traveled about six or seven hundred light years in search of a new home.”
“But why haven’t we found another world?” asked Nad. “And why have the Navigators deprived us of memory, and why are we executed for asking questions that few can resist asking? How did you, alone, escape the M-Ray, and what is this plan you have spoken of concerning liberation and a new way of life?”
Yiddir smiled, patiently. “One question at a time,” he said. “First, it was learned within the first fifty years of this great voyage that our sun and the worlds we lived on were very unique, or rather we were especially adapted to live only under the exact conditions set up for us by Nature in our solar system. Many other suns and planetary systems were examined only to be found unsuitable to our needs. Infrequently did we find those other worlds to be inhabited, and only once were we threatened by alien space ships, but the only weapon we found it necessary to use against them was our far superior velocity. They could not follow us into the great darkness that lies beyond the speed of light.
“Another fifty year period passed, and yet another, and still we had not found what we were looking for. So the situation was when I was a young man, and even later, when I became Chief Navigator on board this ship.”
“You!” cried Nad. “You were the Chief Navigator?” His mind reeled under this new shock of surprise.
“Yes,” said Yiddir. “My real name is Korlon E-3-N, but therein lies a tale which is the third and final phase of this brief history I am giving you. You see, the present Navigators are outlaws. They mutinied against me.”
“But don’t the other ships know that by now?” protested Nad. “How long ago did this happen?”
“Thirty years or more.”
“Thirty years! And you’ve remained hidden ever since?”
“Yes. But let me go on with my story. At times,” Yiddir continued, “there were discoveries or circumstances confronting us which led to considerable argument, either among the Navigators or between Navigators and Passengers. About forty years ago, this ship encountered a region of space that appeared to give very promising signs that our goal had been reached. Analysis of the composition of energy patterns, the quality of nuclear radiations and spectro-helioscopic studies showed us that we were in a group of suns that did not seem to be inimical to life. Only one solar system, a rather large one, was found, which contained several large planets, all heavily populated. The problems that arose were the following. First, the civilizations on the planets we discovered were in a state of advancement almost equivalent to our own, and preliminary communications with them indicated that they would not welcome the influx of an alien race. Therefore, to force a landing would have precipitated a war against far superior numbers of people who possessed weapons that were worthy of our respect. Secondly, the sun at the center of this solar system was not any too young and had long since passed into that stage of evolution which scientists refer to as the disintegrant stage. Of course, our kind of life could have flourished yet for thousands of years there, but at the cost of fighting the increasing deleterious effects of hard radiation.
“In spite of this, our whole fleet divided strongly into two factions, one of which was in favor of invasion whatever the cost. The other faction was in favor of continuing our journey in the hope of discovering a more favorable set of circumstances. As I worked my way up to the highest office on board this ship, I adhered to this latter faction, and I trained my son also to hold this perspective of our situation.
“The opposing faction had almost become resigned to their fate when, ten years beyond the controversial solar system, I made a grave mistake. That was thirty years ago.”
Yiddir paused, and his pale blue eyes sought Nad’s. He saw there an expression of wonderment and awe, as well as the signs of an utterly insatiable thirst for knowledge.
“I was like many of the higher officers in charge of the expedition, a research scientist, and my specialty was in the second order phenomena. Out of my research evolved a new weapon—the M-Ray. Under any normal circumstances, this would have been a boon to humanity, from a therapeutic point of view. That is, people suffering from mental strain or great sorrow at the loss of a loved one and so forth could be made to
forget either temporarily or permanently what was troubling them. But the M-Ray could also be used as a very formidable weapon. It could cause thousands or even millions of people to lose their memories and become as helpless as infants. Moreover, all alien energy shields we had encountered thus far were only of first order nature and therefore would not have been able to stop the M-Ray. In other words, here was a certain weapon against the inhabitable worlds we had contacted some years before.
“My mistake was to keep my weapon a secret, for the time being, for if I had taken it to the authorities on board our flagship they would now be in a position to cope with the terrible danger that threatens them and all the remaining ships that have not yet been taken over by the mutineers.”
Nad interrupted. “Do you mean to say that Sargon’s brand of Navigators have a foothold an other ships of the fleet?”
Yiddir nodded in bitter assent. “This has been going on for years,” he answered.
“But…”
“Let me continue. My further mistake was to take several other officers into my confidence, even against the advice of my son, who by now was a much more brilliant scientist than I, and who had contributed much to the development of the M-Ray.
“It so happened that one of my confidants was actually an opportunist and a sympathizer with the old opposition, but I did not know this at the time. It was this man who betrayed me and succeeded in producing M-Ray weapons superior to my own—and in effective quantity. The achievement went to his head and he gathered around him the most subversive forces among our number that he could find. He planned eventually to overthrow the government of the whole fleet and prepare for himself and his kind a small empire designed to his own tastes. Furthermore, his plan was to return to the inhabited planets in question and to subject all those races of people to M-Ray in preparation for occupation by his own forces. Even if it came to a matter of subjugating only a part of the fleet and turning back secretly, leaving the other portion to its own destinies, he was determined to carry the plan out.
The Ninth Science Fiction Megapack Page 60
