A Maze of Stars

by John Brunner

  “I never heard anything so horrible,” mourned Vanganury. “So what’s happening now?” Holdernesh demanded. “Nothing very much. She’s dead.”

  There was a vacant pause. Distantly Holdernesh grew aware that the news agencies were converging. A flight of camera hovers was circling over the college. He distracted himself for a moment by drawing Porch’s attention to them. The policeman nodded and uttered a crisp order. Though they could not be excluded, this being the venue of a major news story, they could be baffled. Within moments the police’s loudspeakers were, not exactly by chance, being directed at the hovers so that the volume of sound would overload their audio circuits. It was no guarantee of privacy, but better than nothing.

  And, at last, he was able to husk, “Dead?”

  “It happened while you were on your way here,” Vanganury moaned. “As soon as the students came to grips with what had been done to them, they attacked her. Like a horde of beasts. I haven’t seen it on video, but to judge from her screams …” His voice failed him.

  “To judge from her screams,” Porch said heavily, “they must have tom her limb from limb. And to judge from the accompanying shouts … Master Holdernesh, I wish it hadn’t fallen to me to tell you this.”

  A dreadful sense of cold, bitter as the chill of space, occupied the void in Holdernesh’s chest where he was used to feeling his heart. He waited for the rest of Porch’s statement like a condemned criminal awaiting sentence.

  “According to the automatic voice-identification system,” the policeman said after what seemed like half eternity, “it was your son who led the attack.”

  “What,” Holdernesh said when he regained control of his lips and tongue, “are you doing now?”

  “Maintaining the lecture room at slightly below normal pressure,” Vanganury answered. “The air inside is swarming with foreign bacteria and other organisms that we have no name for, but what we have to draw out is heat-processed and sterilized. We’ve placed emergency requisitions for data with the spaceport medical center and every university biological laboratory that’s ever worked on foreign life-forms, but—”

  “But every planet has so many, it’s going to be a brute of a job to identify them. Yes, I understand.”

  What I can’t understand is why I’m suddenly so calm.

  “And what chance do they have of survival? A fair one is my guess. After all, if Aimel lived long enough to come here, start her talk, act so normally at first that—”

  “But it made her insane,” Porch cut in. “If she’d really wanted to put her teaching across, she’d have— Hold it! I think Principal Vanganury is unwell.”

  Indeed, the sad-eyed man was swaying. But he waved aside offers of support—not that there were many, for the members of his staff who had been standing around shied away as the implications sank in.

  “I greeted her on arrival,” he whispered. “I talked to her. She must have been spraying germs into the air all the time. You’re going to have to quarantine me as well, and everyone else she’s been close to since she was given medical clearance after landing.”

  What was that about our running the planetary economy at full blast?

  There isn’t going to be a long-range starship, is there? At any rate, not in my lifetime. Thanks to one of my own people, the Sumbalans have beaten us.

  A rapid order from Porch. By now a police medical team was in attendance. Two of its members, fully suited, rushed up and flung a transparent bag over Vanganury. He submitted limply to being enclosed in it and laid on a mechanical stretcher. Eyes shut, he neither moved nor spoke as the medics coupled up the bag’s air filters.

  “You too, Master Holdernesh,” said Porch. “And me. And everyone who’s been exposed to her or Vanganury. All my people will have to be tested, everyone who was in the vicinity when she arrived … Space and time! There must be hundreds, maybe thousands! All the hospitals on Yellick won’t have room enough!”

  And of course there won’t be any more starflights until the panic dies down. If it ever does …

  “Excuse me, sir,” said another masked and suited medic, presenting a bag like the one in which Vanganury lay. The constable-major was already being cocooned.

  “Very well,” Holdernesh said. “But I want to send a message to my son.”

  Indistinctly because of the bag now sealed around him, Porch said, tapping the communicator he still wore, “I can arrange that. I can contact your wife, too. What do you want to say?”

  I want to tell them …

  What?

  Suddenly words seemed useless, pointless, empty. He was doomed to be cut off for days, for weeks, perhaps for good, from all that had ever meant anything to him. No doubt the Holdernesh Group would continue to operate after a fashion, for he had inherited a highly competent team from his father and added handpicked personnel himself. But it would lack whatever it was he personally brought to it—flair? Originality? A sense of adventure? Regardless of what name was offered, it remained the talent that people of Hetto Kidge’s stamp did not possess. Already, though, news of what Aimel had done must be spreading, and people who previously had been inclined to support his plan and open contact with new planets would cease wavering and come down firmly on the side of Hetto’s kind, too cowardly to take an honest risk.

  “Sir?” Porch prompted.

  The Sumbalans … I wish I knew how they managed to put ships like theirs into the sky before I had the chance!

  Jark Holdernesh, enclosed now in his quarantine bag, spread his hands as best he could.

  “Nothing,” he whispered. “I have nothing to say. Not anymore.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SHIP

  WHEN THE VISION OF YELLICK FADED AND SHIP WAS MAKING its departure:

  “I’ve never watched anything so fascinating,” Menlee exclaimed. “The way you could show us everything that was going on practically as though we were standing beside Holder-nesh and seeing him in the flesh … And to hear what they were saying, too! I did notice, though, that sometimes the words didn’t match the lip movements—”

  In a more practical mood, Annica cut him short. “It was being edited, wasn’t it? The language here isn’t quite the same. Inshar’s foreign students all speak with an accent. But what I want to know … Ship!”

  “At your service,” came the prompt reply.

  “Ship, does what we’ve seen imply that Sumbala is going to obtain a monopoly of starflight in this volume?”

  There was a brief, barely noticeable hesitation. “Not a true monopoly, but it will take a long time for Yellick to recover from the setback.”

  “So Holdernesh’s long-range ships won’t be built in the near future?”

  “One may safely estimate: not in his lifetime.”

  “Hmm!” Annica and Menlee were sitting on the couch now regularly provided for them; as was her habit when pondering, she lifted her bare feet to the seat and embraced her knees. “You know, I’m amazed Sumbala has never contacted Shreng. It must be a fantastically rich world.”

  “Not especially rich,” Ship murmured.

  The two of them exchanged startled glances. Menlee said, “But their ships! Such a long range, such power and mass! Shreng can’t afford to build starships yet, and I’ve always believed ours is a tolerably affluent planet.”

  “Besides,” Annica chimed in, “if they’re that much ahead of Yellick’s, they can’t be first-generation, surely—not unless they’ve simply copied an old model from the parent galaxy. Have they?”

  “Annica,” Menlee objected, “even copying a starship from a previous design isn’t easy, let alone cheap. Back home we have all the necessary data, but when you think of the millions of separate items that have to become available before … My dear, you’re crying! What’s wrong?” He leaned toward her.

  “Sorry,” she snuffled, brushing away tears. “It’s just that you said ‘back home.’ And it isn’t home anymore. We don’t have a home now, do we?”

  “But we will one day,” h
e countered with feigned confidence. “With hundreds of planets to choose from, including lots used to starflight so they won’t mind foreigners—”

  “Wouldn’t you have thought that Yellick didn’t mind foreigners?” she cut in. “Until what we just saw, I imagined it was the sort of world where people came and went at least as freely as they do on Shreng, probably more so. Instead we find a society as xenophobic as—as Trevithra!”

  They had interrogated Ship about all the worlds it had so far visited during the present sweep, though it had politely declined to give more than vague descriptions of those yet to come, on the usual grounds that its acquaintance with them was still in the future.

  Recovering, she returned to her former point.

  “So if Sumbala isn’t a wealthy planet, how did it come by such amazing ships? Is theirs an obsessive society like Klepsit’s, where everything has been sacrificed to a single goal?”

  “The Sumbalans don’t build them,” Ship replied. “They buy them.”

  Menlee was about to say something. Annica was quicker, dropping her feet to the floor again.

  “Then the Veiled World does exist!”

  Menlee blinked. “So?” he countered.

  “Oh, come on!” Annica stamped impatience—soundlessly, thanks to the resilience of the floor. “Haven’t you ever talked to any of the foreign students back home?”

  For a long moment Menlee simply gazed at her without expression. Briefly puzzled, she suddenly caught on.

  “I said it this time, didn’t I? I’m sorry … But half a dozen of them, at least, must have told me about a system a long way down the Arm from which they’ve detected massive tachyonic activity. Holdernesh mentioned it, too!”

  Menlee’s jaw dropped. “Of course!” he exclaimed. “I must admit I never took what they told me seriously—I imagined, like most people, that if they existed, such powerful signals could only relate to the Ship. This Ship. Delayed for some reason so it couldn’t come back … I haven’t thought about it for ages, not even when Ship proved to be returning in secret. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

  “But you do know what I mean?” Annica pressed.

  “Sure. Assuming it might be the focus of a colossal starfleet, they turned their most powerful telescopes on the source. But all they could see was a blur at every wavelength. That’s how the nickname arose, the Veiled World … Ship, does it exist?”

  “What is known as the Veiled World has a counterpart in what you would recognize as reality.”

  Menlee looked blank. “You’ll have to clarify that,” he muttered after a moment.

  Annica butted in. “What it means is that there really is a massive source of tachyonic energy in the area but it doesn’t have anything to do with a starfleet. Right?” Not waiting for an answer: “So what is it? Have aliens invented starflight? I’ve always wondered why, even in the parent galaxy, we never ran across a more technically advanced species, and I can’t accept the idea that we are naturally superior to all other life-forms. In fact we’re a pretty inferior bunch, aren’t we? It was only by the skin of our teeth that we avoided mining the birthworld!”

  “May I know,” Ship murmured, “which of those overt and implied questions you’d like me to tackle first?”

  “We started with Sumbala,” Menlee said hastily. “You said the Sumbalans don’t build their ships, they buy them. From— well, from what we call the Veiled World?”

  “Yes.”

  Annica clenched her fists. “Is that an obsessive culture, dedicating itself to nothing but building starships?”

  “To some degree you could call it obsessive, yes.”

  “So what kind of a planet is it?”

  “It isn’t a planet.”

  That brought baffled looks to both their faces. Eventually Menlee said, “Are we talking about people who’ve abandoned groundside existence to live permanently in space? I remember hearing about cultures that did that, millennia ago, but I thought they became psychologically unstable and died out.”

  “You are quite correct. The experiment was undertaken hundreds of times and never succeeded. There is a genetic limit to the length of time human beings can retain their sanity without adequate mass underfoot and an open sky above. This was among the reasons why my builders chose to design me as they did.”

  Annica frowned, then brightened. “Oh, I see what you mean! One enormous ship with lots of space for lots of people rather than a great many smaller ones that might have done the job faster but would have felt too cramped?”

  “In effect.”

  “And that’s also why you have such efficient simulated gravity and such wonderful illusion generators?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm! Very interesting … But you made it sound as though this Veiled World is the exception.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Because it’s not a world?” Menlee hazarded. Annica rounded on him, framing an obvious question: If not, then what is it? Ship forestalled her.

  “Not in the ordinary sense, no.”

  Eyes widening, Annica put the second part of her question into words.

  “It’s the result of a remarkable and transient phenomenon,” Ship said. The statement sounded reluctant, though why it should permit the fact to be revealed was beyond both its listeners. “Transient, in this sense, means that it will last at best a few thousand years. Behind the ‘veil,’ which is a dense cloud of dust—as no doubt you guessed—there lies a protostar. It shines in the visible red and emits sufficient heat to warm the three planets circling it, all sharing the same orbit.”

  “Three?” Menlee burst out.

  “I told you it’s a remarkable phenomenon. It is indeed unique so far as my knowledge extends.”

  “Show it to us!” Annica cried.

  “I can’t.”

  “What?”

  “As you already know, there are certain limits to what I can tell you. I find I can offer a description, but I’m forbidden to project any visual images. This may have to do with the fact that they would come from your future.”

  “As well as impatience,” Annica sighed, “you must have learned early on about frustration… All right, what more can you tell us?”

  “I appreciate your sympathy,” Ship said. And resumed.

  “The cloud of dust, which of course is being gradually drawn to the protostar, proved to incorporate the residue from a supernova. The proportion of heavy elements is exceptional. Possibly this is why three good-sized planets coalesced in such an improbable configuration. Yet more improbable, however, was the fact that their atmospheres turned out to be oxygen-rich from volcanic activity.”

  “Oxygen-rich?” and “From vulcanism?” they exploded as one.

  “On all of them, as was established within a few hours of my arrival, it was possible for a human being to walk in the open. And there were no infectious organisms because there was no life.”

  “I don’t believe it!” Menlee declared, and Annica shook her head.

  “Walk? For how long? There can’t have been any water vapor, to begin with. Dehydration must have set in right away. And what about the reactive elements that must have filled the air—sulfur, to start with?”

  “I said ‘walk in the open,’ Annica. I didn’t specify ‘naked and unprotected.’ The oxygen level was around two percent, so survival called for filter suits fitted with concentrators and, of course, hydrators. But the ambient temperature is comfortable for humans. As for the reactive elements, they, of course, could be turned into plants.”

  “What—?” Annica bit her lip.

  “I get it!” Menlee said, jumping to his feet and starting to pace up and down. “You left them there with enough modified spores, and more drifting in from space, and in a few years … No, it still doesn’t make sense.”

  “Indeed it doesn’t,” Annica confirmed. “Ship, you’ve got to show us. You’re not forbidden to display the images you stored on the very first sweep, surely. They don’t come from our future!”


  “I …”

  And silence. The starfield around them, with Yellick and its sun shrinking at the center, wavered noticeably. They looked at each other in alarm. Had the order provoked some sort of management crisis in Ship’s circuitry? Such things were known to occur in simpler machines; it seemed credible that just as insanity was more likely to occur in highly evolved creatures, so complex a system—

  But within seconds everything returned to normal.

  “Excuse me,” Ship said in a wry tone. “What you said made such perfect sense I attempted to comply with your request. Unfortunately I was right the first time. It is forbidden for me to show images of the worlds I haven’t yet visited during the present sweep.”

  “But that’s ridiculous,” Annica exclaimed. “I mean, if we asked for views of Shreng as it was before we settled it, you could display them, couldn’t you?”

  “Hey!” Menlee interrupted. “That’s a great idea! Why didn’t we ask for it before?”

  “Because there’ve been too many other things to inquire about,” was Annica’s caustic retort. “Besides, we all get shown pictures of that kind in history class, remember?”

  Before the gibe could start to rankle, she went on. “Well?”

  “Yes, indeed. But you’re familiar with most of the material already, as you rightly pointed out. There seems to be a significant difference.”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know. I can only say: either there’s a fault in my damaged zone that I haven’t previously noticed, or it was the kind of difference my designers regarded as important.”

  “And you can’t decide which?” Annica shook her head. “I was right about you learning frustration, wasn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  EVENTUALLY THE TWO OF THEM RETURNED TO THE COUCH BY unspoken mutual agreement.

  “Go on about the Veiled World,” Annica proposed. “There is still a fair while before you have to put us to sleep, isn’t there?”