Microbes we simply had to risk. We should be immune to all viruses, and odds were that no native bacteria or protozoa could make headway in our systems either. But you never knew for certain, and sometimes you lay awake wondering if the ache in your body was only weariness. Until we got our hut assembled, endless dim day and frequent rains made sleep hard to come by.
In spite of strain, or perhaps because of it, no quarrels flapped up at first—except once, when I told Bren and Galmer to make measurements. I wanted precise values for gravity, air pressure, humidity, magnetism, ionization, horizon distance, rotation period, solar spectrum lines, whatever could be found with a battery of instruments from the ship.
“Why now?” Rorn demanded. He was no more gaunt and dirty than the rest of us, as we sat in our shelter while another storm drummed on the roof. “We’ve hardly begun the heavy work like building a stockade.”
“Information-gathering is just as urgent,” I answered. “The sooner we know what kind of place we’re in, the sooner we can lay plans that make sense.”
“Why those two men, though?” Rorn’s mouth twisted uncontrollably. We hadn’t yet installed lights, and the single flash hanging overhead cast his eyes into thick shadow, as if already a skull looked at me. “We can take turns. Easy to sit and twiddle with a pendulum and clock.”
“Well,” Bren said mildly, “that sounds fair.”
“Veto,” I said. “You boys are trained in navigation and planetography. You can do the job quicker and better than anyone else.”
“Besides,” Valland pointed out, “they won’t sit continuously. Between sun shots, for instance, we’ll put ’em to some-thin’ real hard.” He grinned. “Like maybe findin’ some way to make the bloody plankton imitate steak.”
“Don’t remind me!” Rorn grated. “Aren’t we miserable enough?”
“What do you propose to do about our troubles?” I asked sharply. A gust of wind made the thin metal walls shake around us.
“What do you? How do we get off of here?”
“The most obvious way,” Urduga said, “is to fix a radio transmitter that can beam to Yonder.”
“If they use radio,” Rorn countered. “We don’t any more, except for special things like spacesuits. Why shouldn’t they space-jump electron patterns, the same as us? Then they’ll never detect our signal—if you actually can build an interplanetary ’caster with your bare hands!”
“Oh, we got tools and parts,” Valland said. “Or maybe we can fix one of the ferries. Got to take a close look into that possibility. Simmer down, Yo. Once I get a home brewery rigged, we’ll all feel better.”
“If you don’t want to work with us, Rorn,” Urduga added, “you have the freedom of this planet.”
“None of that!” I exclaimed. “Once we turn on each other, we’re done. How about a song, Hugh?”
“Well, if you can stand it.” Valland got his omnisonor and launched into another ballad he had translated from old times on Earth. No doubt it should have been something decorous about home and mother, or something heroically defiant. But our ragged, hungry, sweaty crew got more out of The Bastard King of England. Rorn alone didn’t laugh and join in the choruses; however, he kept his despair quiet.
Over a period of standard days, Bren and Galmer accumulated quite a bit of information. Though the red sun was still aloft, their photoscreen ’scope could pick out other galaxies for astronomical reference points. Their laser-beam transit and oscilloscope could accurately measure that sun’s creep down the sky. In calm weather they had a flat western horizon, out where the lake ran beyond vision. The short year enabled them to take a good sample of our orbit. And so on and so on. When added to what little the Yonderfolk had reported (they’d visited this world in the past, but were really no more interested in it than Earthmen in Sol I), and to general scientific principles, these data enabled us to make a fairly good sketch.
We were in the middle northern latitudes of a planet which had a diameter three percent greater than Earth’s. The size was no cause for astonishment. Dim stars haven’t enough radiation pressure to inhibit such masses from condensing close to them out of the original dust cloud. Nor were we surprised that weight was only 0.655 standard. The very old systems, formed in early generations, have little in the way of heavy elements like iron. This planet lacked a metallic core, must in fact be sima clear to the center. Hence the low mean specific gravity and the absence of a magnetic field.
Nor did it own any satellites. Solar gravitation had served to prevent that. This force had also, over billions of years, slowed rotation until one hemisphere faced inward. Then tides in water and atmosphere continued to act, until now the globe had a slow retrograde rotation. Combined with a sidereal year of ninety-four and a half Earth-days, this spin gave us a diurnal period of forty-four Earth-days on the surface: three weeks of lights, three weeks of dark.
Coreless, the; planet had no vertical tectonic and orogenic forces worth mentioning. Once the mountains formed by surface distortion had eroded away, no new ones got built. Nor were there great ocean basins. We were lucky to have come down by this wet land; we wouldn’t likely find anything much better anywhere, and most of the world must be submerged.
Though the total irradiation received was only slightly less than what Earth gets, it lay heavily in the red and infrared. The sun’s wavelength of maximum emission was, in fact, about 6600 ångströms, near the end of the human-visible spectrum. This accounted for the steamy heat we lived with. Scarcely any ultraviolet light was given off, and none of that penetrated to us; we needed artificial irradiation as much as our plankton did. Nor does a red dwarf spit out many energetic charged particles. Accordingly, while the planet was ancient indeed—fifteen billion years at a conservative guess—it still had plenty of water, and an atmosphere corresponding at sea level to a medium-high terrestrial mountaintop.
Given air, a hydrosphere, and an infrared oven in the sky, you don’t have to have actinic radiation (what we would call actinic, I mean) for nature’s primeval chemicals to become life. It simply takes longer. As we had noted, since we could breathe, there were photosynthetic plants. They probably utilized one of the low-level enzyme-chain processes which have been observed in similar cases within the galaxies. Likewise the animals. In spite of having less energetic biochemistries than we did, they seemed to be just about as active. Shooting and dissecting some, we found elaborate multiple hearts and huge, convoluted lungs, as well as organs whose purposes we couldn’t guess. Evolution eventually produces all possible capabilities.
Including intelligence. The sun was touching the lake’s rim when Urduga shouted us to him. From camp nobody could make out our ship very well, except through goggles. Those were uncomfortable to wear in this climate. Besides, the cells that powered their infrared conversion and photon multiplication wouldn’t last forever. So we left them off as much as possible. Now we slapped them on and stared out at the upward-thrusting nose of the Meteor.
There, in a fiery shimmer across the water, were four canoes. Long lean shapes with high prows, they were manned by a good dozen creatures apiece. We could barely see, against that sun-dazzle, that the crews were a little under human size, bipeds, powerfully legged and tailed. We launched our raft and paddled toward them, but they hastened off. Before long they had vanished into dusk.
I, who have met thousands of different races, still feel that each new one is a new epoch. Stars, planets, biological systems fall into categories; minds do not, and you never know what strangeness will confront you. Though this first glimpse of the Herd had so little result, I hate to tell of it casually.
But you can imagine what talking we did afterward in camp.
VII
THIS EVENING the galaxy rose directly after sunset. In spite of its angular diameter, twenty-two degrees along the major axis, our unaided eyes saw it ghostly pale across seventy thousand parsecs. By day it would be invisible. Except for what supergiants we could see as tiny sparks within it, we had no stars at
night, and little of that permanent aurora which gives the planets of more active suns a sky-glow. There was some zodiacal light, but that was scant help. We must depend on fluorescents, flashes, fire and goggles to carry on our work.
But then that work reached a crisis point. The generator was operating, the plankton tanks breeding food, the camp snugged down within a stockade of sharpened logs. We’d continued indefinitely manufacturing small comforts and conveniences for ourselves. But the question could no longer be shoved aside: what were we going to do to break free?
Would we? I knew the result if we didn’t. When our teeth wore down to the gums, and no biogenic apparatus was on hand to stimulate regrowth, we could make dental plates. When monotony got unendurable, we could build or explore or otherwise occupy ourselves. But whem at length there were too many unedited memory bits, we would gradually lose our reason.
Sleep evaded me. The shelter was hot and stank of man. The other cots crowded in on mine. Bren snored. My arm was healing with the speed of immortal flesh and bone, but on occasion still pained me. Finally I rose and walked outside.
The yard lights were off. No use inviting attention during a rest period. Between hut and stockade lay a well of blackness, relieved only by a bluish watery glow where irradiator coils energized our plankton. A wind boomed softly, warm and dank, full of swamp musks; the generator whirred in its shell; distantly came a beast’s hoot; lake water lapped among those rustling plants we called reeds.
And I heard another sound: Valland’s omnisonor. He was on watch. Tonight he didn’t sing, he stroked forth lilting notes that spoke; of peace. I groped my way to the crude skeleton tower on which he sat, light switches and a gun ready to hand.
He sensed me. “Who’s there?” he called.
“Me. Mind if I come join you for a little?”
“No. Glad of company. Sentry-squat gets a mite lonesome.”
I climbed up and sat on the platform’s bench beside him. Since I hadn’t taken my goggles, he was no more than another big shadow. The sky was clear, except for a few thin clouds reflecting the galaxy’s glow. It sheened on the lake, too; but shoreward, night drank down its light and I was blind.
Vast and beautiful, it had barely cleared the horizon, which made it seem yet more huge. I could just trace out the arms, curling from a lambent nucleus … yes, there was the coil whence man had come, though if I could see man by these photons he would still be a naked half-ape running the forests of Earth …. Otherwise I was only able to see three glitters which we now knew were planets.
“What was that tune you were playing?” I asked.
“Somethin’ by Carl Nielsen. Doubt if you’ve heard of him. He was a composer on Earth, before my time but popular yet when I was young.”
“After three millennia, you still remember such details?” I wondered.
“Well, I keep goin’ back there, you know, on account of Mary,” Valland said. “And Earth doesn’t change much any more. So I get reminded. My later memories are the ones I can dispense with.”
I realized that this must the reason he, with his abilities, was not commanding a ship. That would have had him star-hopping at somebody else’s orders. I didn’t know when I’d see Lute and Wenli again, for instance, if I got back into space. The company rotated personnel among home stations, so fifty years was an entirely possible gap. Valland must return home a good deal oftener.
“She seems to be quite a girl, yours,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” he whispered into the wind.
“You’re married?”
“No official contract.” Valland laughed. “Plain to see, skipper, you’re post-exodus. Mary’d follow the old custom and take my name if—” He broke off.
“You know,” I said, for I wanted to speak of such things in this foreign night, “you’ve never shown us her picture. And everybody else practically carries an album of his women around with him.”
“I don’t need any stereo animation,” he said curtly. “Got a better one in my head.” Relaxing, he laughed once more. “Besides, she said once—this was when breeks had hip pockets—she said it didn’t seem like a very sentimental gesture, carryin’ her picture next to my”—he paused—“heart.”
“You’ve got me curious, though. Dog my hatch for me if I’m prying, but what does she look like?”
“Shucks, I’m only too glad to talk about her. Trouble is, words’re such feeble little quacks. That’s why I made me a song. Adapted from an old Swedish one, to be honest”
“Swedish? I don’t recall any planet named Swede.”
“No, no, Sweden, Sverige, a country, back when Earth had countries. Nice people there, if a bit broody. I’m part Swede myself.”
Valland fell silent. The galaxy glimmered so coldly above the lake that I had to say something. “What about Mary?”
“Oh.” He started. “Yes. Well, she’s tall, and has a sort of rangy walk, and laughs a lot, and her hair catches the sunlight so— No, sorry, words just won’t fit her.”
“Well, I’d like to meet the lady,” I said, “if we reach Earth.”
“We will,” Valland answered. “Somehow.” His arm rose, pointing, a massive bar across the clouds. “That planet there, orange color. Must be Yonder. We don’t need to go any further than that.”
“Two hundred and thirty thousand light-years in no time,” I said bitterly, “and a few million kilometers are too much for us.”
“Well, it’s a big universe,” he said. “We don’t shrink it any by crossin’ it.”
After a moment he added: “We can make Yonder, though. The more I think and look at what’s available to us, the more I’m convinced that between two wrecked ferries and parts of a wrecked ship, we can put together one sound vessel. No use wishin’ we could do anything with the space jump apparatus. That’s so much scrap, and we’d never fix it even if we knew how. So we won’t be sendin’ the Yonderfolk any signals that way.”
“Frankly, I’m skeptical about our chances of simply building an interplanetary maser,” I confessed.
“Oh, we’ll do that, kind of incidentally,” Valland said. “Same as we’ll make conspicuous marks in the territory around here, in case somebody comes flyin’ by. But Yo was right, a while back. They aren’t likely to have the right kind of radio receivers on Yonder. And as for a rescue party, well, at best it’ll be an almighty long time before anybody figures out what could’ve happened to us, and I’ll make book that nobody does. Not with so scanty and confused a record to go on.
“So … I figure our sole decent chance is to flit to Yonder in person. We needn’t build a very fancy spaceboat, you realize. A one-man job for a one-way trip, with no special radiation screenin’ required. I’ve checked. Been an engineer myself, several kinds of engineer, now and then, so I know. One powerplant is almost intact. Repairman’s data in the microfiles aboard ship amount to a complete set of plans, which we can modify for our particular purposes. What machine tools we don’t now have, we can repair, or build from scratch.
“Sure, sure, a long, tough job. The precision aspects, like assemblin’ control panels or adjustin’ drive units, they’ll be worse than any sheer labor. But we can do it, given patience.”
“Hold on,” I objected. “The brute force problem alone is too much for us. Six men can’t juggle tons of metal around with their muscles. We’ll need cranes and—and make your own list. We’ll have to start this project down near the bottom of shipyard technology.
“Hugh, we haven’t got enough man-years. If we don’t go memory-crazy first, we’ll still be making bedplates when the supplementary chemicals for the food tanks give out. And I refuse to believe we can do anything about that.”
“Probably not,” Valland admitted. “I never claimed we could start a whole biomolecular industry. But you’re over-lookin’ somethin’, skipper. True, half a dozen men make too small a labor force to build a spaceship, even by cannibalizin’, in the time we have. However— Hey!”
He sprang to his feet.
/> “What is it?” I cried.
“Shhh. Somethin’ out there. Approaching’ real slow and careful. But two-legged, and carryin’ things. Let’s not scare ’em off. Valland stepped to the ladder and handed me his goggles. “Here, you stay put. Cover me as well as you can, but don’t switch on any lights. Our kind of light may well hurt their eyes. I’ll kindle a torch to see by. They must know fire.”
I stared and stared into murk. Shadow shapes in shadow land …. “Looks as if they’re armed,” I muttered.
“’Course they are. Wouldn’t you be? But I doubt they’ll slip a pigsticker into me on no provocation.” Valland laughed, most softly but like a boy. “You know,” he said, “I was just speakin’ of the devil, and what came by? A bigger pair of horns than Othello thought he had!”
I didn’t follow his mythological references, but his meaning was plain. My own heart jumped inside me.
There is an old game in which you show a picture of a nonhuman to your friends and ask them to describe the being. No xenological coordinates allowed; they must use words alone. The inexperienced player always falls back on analogy. Like Valland, simply to be jocular, remarking that the Azkashi resembled web-footed kangaroos, a bit shorter than men, with hands and hairless gray skins, bulldog muzzles, mule ears, and eyes as big as the Round Tower. Which means nothing to that ninety-nine percent of the human race who have never been on Earth and have never heard of animals many of which are extinct anyway.
World without Stars Page 4
