by Ayn Rand
Bart struggled to his feet, and found that when he was upright he felt better. “Wow!” he muttered, then clamped his mouth shut. He was supposed to be an experienced man, a Lhari hardened to space. He said woozily, “How long was I out?”
“The usual time,” Ringg said briskly, “about three seconds—just while we hit peak warp-drive. Feels longer, so they tell me, sometimes—time’s funny, beyond light-speeds. The medic says it’s purely psychological. I’m not so sure. I itch, blast it!”
He moved his shoulders in a squirming way, then bent over Rugel, who was moaning, half insensible. “Catch hold of his feet, Bartol. Here—ease him out of his chair. No sense bothering the medics this time. Think you can manage to help me carry him down to the deck?”
“Sure,” Bart said, finding his feet and his voice. He felt better as they moved along the hallway, the limp, muttering form of the old Lhari insensible in their arms. They reached the officer’s deck, got Rugel into his cabin and into his bunk, hauled off his cloak and boots. Ringg stood shaking his head.
“And they say Captain Vorongil’s so tough!”
Bart made a questioning noise.
“Why, just look,” said Ringg. “He knows it would make poor old Rugel feel as if he wasn’t good for much—to order him into his bunk and make him take dope like a Mentorian for every warp-shift. So we have this to go through at every jump!” He sounded cross and disgusted, but there was a rough, boyish gentleness as he hauled the blanket over the bald old Lhari. He looked up, almost shyly.
“Thanks for helping me with Old Baldy. We usually try to get him out before Vorongil officially takes notice. Of course, he sort of keeps his back turned,” Ringg said, and they laughed together as they turned back to the drive room. Bart found himself thinking, Ringg’s a good kid, before he pulled himself up, in sudden shock.
He had lived through warp-drive! Then, indeed, the Lhari had been lying all along, the vicious lie that maintained their stranglehold monopoly of star-travel. He was their enemy again, the spy within their gates, like Briscoe, to be hunted down and killed, but to bring the message, loud and clear, to everyone: The Lhari lied! The stars can belong to us all!
When he got back to the drive room, he saw through the viewport that the blur had vanished, the star-trails were clear, distinct again, their comet-tails shortening by the moment, their colors more distinct.
The Lhari were waiting, a few poised over their instruments, a few more standing at the quartz window watching the star-trails, some squirming and scratching and grousing about “space fleas"—the characteristic itching reaction that seemed to be deep down inside the bones.
Bart checked his panels, noted the time when they were due to snap back into normal space, and went to stand by the viewport. The stars were reappearing, seeming to steady and blaze out in cloudy splendor through the bright dust. They burned in great streamers of flame, and for the moment he forgot his mission again, lost in the beauty of the fiery lights. He drew a deep, shaking gasp. It was worth it all, to see this! He turned and saw Ringg, silent, at his shoulder.
“Me, too,” Ringg said, almost in a whisper. “I think every man on board feels that way, a little, only he won’t admit it.” His slanted gray eyes looked quickly at Bart and away.
“I guess we’re almost down to L-point. Better check the panel and report nulls, so medic can wake up the Mentorians.”
* * *
The Swiftwing moved on between the stars. Aldebaran loomed, then faded in the viewports; another shift jumped them to a star whose human name Bart did not know. Shift followed shift, spaceport followed spaceport, sun followed sun; men lived on most of these worlds, and on each of them a Lhari spaceport rose, alien and arrogant. And on each world men looked at Lhari with resentful eyes, cursing the race who kept the stars for their own.
Cargo amassed in the holds of the Swiftwing, from worlds beyond all dreams of strangeness. Bart grew, not bored, but hardened to the incredible. For days at a time, no word of human speech crossed his mind.
The blackout at peak of each warp-shift persisted. Vorongil had given him permission to report off duty, but since the blackouts did not impair his efficiency, Bart had refused. Rugel told him that this was the moment of equilibrium, the peak of the faster-than-light motion.
“Perhaps a true limiting speed beyond which nothing will ever go,” Vorongil said, touching the charts with a varnished claw. Rugel’s scarred old mouth spread in a thin smile.
“Maybe there’s no such thing as a limiting speed. Someday we’ll reach true simultaneity—enter warp, and come out just where we want to be, at the same time. Just a split-second interval. That will be real transmission.”
Ringg scoffed, “And suppose you get even better—and come out of warp before you go into it? What then, Honorable Bald One?”
Rugel chuckled, and did not answer. Bart turned away. It was not easy to keep on hating the Lhari.
There came a day when he came on watch to see drawn, worried faces; and when Ringg came into the drive room they threw their levers on automatic and crowded around him, their crests bobbing in question and dismay. Vorongil seemed to emit sparks as he barked at Ringg, “You found it?”
“I found it. Inside the hull lining.”
Vorongil swore, and Ringg held up a hand in protest. “I only locate metals fatigue, sir—I don’t make it!”
“No help for it then,” Vorongil said. “We’ll have to put down for repairs. How much time do we have, Ringg?”
“I give it thirty hours,” Ringg said briefly, and Vorongil gave a long shrill whistle. “Bartol, what’s the closest listed spaceport?”
Bart dived for handbooks, manuals, comparative tables of position, and started programming information. The crew drifted toward him, and by the time he finished feeding in the coded information, a row three-deep of Lhari surrounded him, including all the officers. Vorongil was right at his shoulder when Bart slipped on his earphones and started decoding the punched strips that fed out the answers from the computer.
“Nearest port is Cottman Four. It’s almost exactly thirty hours away.”
“I don’t like to run it that close.” Vorongil’s face was bitten deep with lines. He turned to Ramillis, head of Maintenance. “Do we need spare parts? Or just general repairs?”
“Just repairs, sir. We have plenty of shielding metal. It’s a long job to get through the hulls, but there’s nothing we can’t fix.”
Vorongil flexed his clawed hands nervously, stretching and retracting them. “Ringg, you’re the fatigue expert. I’ll take your word for it. Can we make thirty hours?”
Ringg looked pale and there was none of his usual boyish nonsense when he said, “Captain, I swear I wouldn’t risk Cottman. You know what crystallization’s like, sir. We can’t get through that hull lining to repair it in space, if it does go before we land. We wouldn’t have the chance of a hydrogen atom in a tank of halogens.”
Vorongil’s slanted eyebrows made a single unbroken line. “That’s the word then. Bartol, find us the closest star with a planet—spaceport or not.”
Bart’s hands were shaking with sudden fear. He checked each digit of their present position, fed it into the computer, waited, finally wet his lips and plunged, taking the strip from a computer.
“This small star, called Meristem. It’s a—” he bit his lip, hard; he had almost said green—"type Q, two planets with atmosphere within tolerable limits, not classified as inhabited.”
“Who owns it?”
“I don’t have that information on the banks, sir.”
Vorongil beckoned the Mentorian assistant. So apart were Lhari and Mentorian on these ships that Bart did not even know his name. He said, “Look up a star called Meristem for us.” The Mentorian hurried away, came back after a moment with the information that it belonged to the Second Galaxy Federation, but was listed as unexplored.
Vorongil scowled. “Well, we can claim necessity,” he said. “It’s only eight hours away, and Cottman’s thirty.
Bartol, plot us a warp-drive shift that will land us in that system, and on the inner of the two planets, within nine hours. If it’s a type Q star, that means dim illumination, and no spaceport mercury-vapor installations. We’ll need as much sunlight as we can get.”
It was the first time that Bart, unaided, had had the responsibility of plotting a warp-drive shift. He checked the coordinates of the small green star three times before passing them along to Vorongil. Even so, when they went into Acceleration Two, he felt stinging fear. If I plotted wrong, we could shift into that crazy space and come out billions of miles away....
But when the stars steadied and took on their own colors, the blaze of a small green sun was steady in the viewport.
“Meristem,” Vorongil said, taking the controls himself. “Let’s hope the place is really uninhabited and that catalogue’s up to date, lads. It wouldn’t be any fun to burn up some harmless village, or get shot at by barbarians—and we’re setting down with no control-tower signals and no spaceport repair crews. So let’s hope our luck holds out for a while yet.”
Bart, feeling the minute, unsteady trembling somewhere in the ship—Imagination, he told himself, you can’t feel metal-fatigue somewhere in the hull lining—echoed the wish. He did not know that he had already had the best luck of his unique voyage, or realize the fantastic luck that had brought him to the small green star Meristem.
CHAPTER NINE
The crews of repairmen were working down in the hull, and the Swiftwing was a hell of clanging noise and shuddering heat. Maintenance was working overtime, but the rest of the crew, with nothing to do, stood around in the recreation rooms, tried to play games, cursed the heat and the dreary dimness through the viewports, and twitched at the boiler-factory racket from the holds.
Toward the end of the third day, the biologist reported air, water and gravity well within tolerable limits, and Captain Vorongil issued permission for anyone who liked, to go outside and have a look around.
Bart had a sort of ship-induced claustrophobia. It was good to feel solid ground under his feet and the rays of a sun, even a green sun, on his back. Even more, it was good to get away from the constant presence of his shipmates. During this enforced idleness, their presence oppressed him unendurably—so many tall forms, gray skins, feathery crests. He was always alone; for a change, he felt that he’d like to be alone without Lhari all around him.
But as he moved away from the ship, Ringg dropped out of the hatchway and hailed him. “Where are you going?”
“Just for a walk.”
Ringg drew a deep breath of weariness. “That sounds good. Mind if I come along?”
Bart did, but all he could say was, “If you like.”
“How about let’s get some food from the rations clerk, and do some exploring?”
The sun overhead was a clear greenish-gold, the sky strewn with soft pale clouds that cast racing shadows on the soft grass underfoot, fragrant pinkish-yellow stuff strewn with bright vermilion puff-balls. Bart wished he were alone to enjoy it.
“How are the repairs coming?”
“Pretty well. But Karol got his hand half scorched off, poor fellow. Just luck the same thing didn’t happen to me.” Ringg added. “You know that Mentorian—the young one, the medic’s assistant?”
“I’ve seen her. Her name’s Meta, I think.” Suddenly, Bart wished the Mentorian girl were with him here. It would be nice to hear a human voice.
“Oh, is it a female? Mentorians all look alike to me,” Ringg said, while Bart controlled his face with an effort. “Be that as it may, she saved me from having the same thing happen. I was just going to lean against a strip of sheet metal when she screamed at me. Do you think they can really see heat vibrations? She called it red-hot.”
They had reached a line of tall cliffs, where a steep rock-fall divided off the plain from the edge of the mountains. A few slender, drooping, gold-leaved trees bent graceful branches over a pool. Bart stood fascinated by the play of green sunlight on the emerald ripples, but Ringg flung himself down full length on the soft grass and sighed comfortably. “Feels good.”
“Too comfortable to eat?”
They munched in companionable silence. “Look,” said Ringg at last, pointing toward the cliffs, “Holes in the rocks. Caves. I’d like to explore them, wouldn’t you?”
“They look pretty gloomy to me. Probably full of monsters.”
Ringg patted the hilt of his energon-ray. “This will handle anything short of an armor-plated saurian.”
Bart shuddered. As part of uniform, he, too, had been issued one of the energon-rays; but he had never used it and didn’t intend to. “Just the same, I’d rather stay out here in the sun.”
“It’s better than vitamin lamps,” Ringg admitted, “even if it’s not very bright.”
Bart wondered, suddenly and worriedly, about the effects of green sunburn on his chemically altered skin tone.
“Well, let’s enjoy it while we can,” Ringg said, “because it seems to be clouding over. I wouldn’t be surprised if it rained.” He yawned. “I’m getting bored with this voyage. And yet I don’t want it to end, because then I’ll have to fight it out all over again with my family. My father owns a hotel, and he wants me in the family business, not five hundred light-years away. None of our family have ever been spacemen before,” he explained, “and they don’t understand that living on one planet would drive me out of my mind.” He sighed. “How did you explain it to your people—that you couldn’t be happy in the mud? Or are you a career man?”
“I guess so. I never thought about doing anything else,” Bart said slowly, Ringg’s story had touched him; he had never realized quite so fully how much alike the two races were, how human the Lhari problems and dreams could seem. Why, of course, the Lhari aren’t all spacemen. They have hotel keepers and garbage men and dentists just as we do. Funny, you never think of them except in space.
“My mother died when I was very young,” Bart said, choosing his words very carefully. “My father owned a fleet of interplanetary ships.”
“But you wanted the real thing, deep space, the stars,” Ringg said. “How did he feel about that?”
“He would have understood,” Bart said, unable to keep emotion out of his voice, “but he’s dead now. He died, not long ago.”
Ringg’s eyes were bright with sympathy. “While you were off on the drift? Bad luck,” he said gently. He was silent, and when he spoke again it was in a very different tone.
“But some of the older generation—I had a professor in training school, funny old chap, bald as the hull of the Swiftwing. Taught us cosmic-ray analysis, and what he didn’t know about spiral nebulae could be engraved on my fifth toe-claw, and he’d never been off the face of the planet. Not even to one of the moons! He was the supervisor of my student lodge, and oh, was he a—” The phrase Ringg used meant, literally, a soft piece of cake.
“His feet may have been buried in mud, but his head was off in the Great Nebula. We had some wild times,” Ringg reminisced. “We’d slip away to the city—strictly against rules, it was an old-style school—and draw lots for one of us to stay home and sign in for all twelve. You see, he’d sit there reading, and when one of us came in, just shove the wax at us, with his nose in a text on cosmic dust, never looking up. So the one who stayed home would scrawl a name on it, walk out the back door, come around and sign in again. When there were twelve signed in, of course, the old chap would go up to bed, and late that night the one who stayed in would sneak down and let us in.”
Ringg sat up suddenly, touching his cheek. “Was that a drop of rain? And the sun’s gone. I suppose we ought to start back, though I hate to leave those caves unexplored.”
Bart bent to gather up the debris of their meal. He flinched as something hard struck his arm. “Ouch! What was that?”
Ringg cried out in pain. “It’s hail!”
Sharp pieces of ice were suddenly pelting, raining down all around them, splattering the ground with a harsh, bo
uncing clatter. Ringg yelled, “Come on—it’s big enough to flatten you!”
It looked to Bart as if it were at least golf-ball size, and seemed to be getting bigger by the moment. Lightning flashed around them in sudden glare. They ducked their heads and ran.
“Get in under the lee of the cliffs. We couldn’t possibly make it back to the Swift—” Ringg’s voice broke off in a cry of pain; he slumped forward, pitched to his knees, then slid down and lay still.
“What’s the matter?” Bart, arm curved to protect his skull, bent over the fallen Lhari, but Ringg, his forehead bleeding, lay insensible. Bart felt sharp pain in his arm, felt the hail hard as thrown stones raining on his head. Ringg was out cold. If they stayed in this, Bart thought despairingly, they’d both be dead!
Crouching, trying to duck his head between his shoulders, Bart got his arms under Ringg’s armpits and half-carried, half-dragged him under the lee of the cliffs. He slipped and slid on the thickening layer of ice underfoot, lost his footing, and came down, hard, one arm twisted between himself and the cliff. He cried out in pain, uncontrollably, and let Ringg slip from his grasp. The Lhari boy lay like the dead.
Bart bent over him, breathing hard, trying to get his breath back. The hail was still pelting down, showing no signs of lessening. About five feet away, one of the dark gaps in the cliff showed wide and menacing, but at least, Bart thought, the hail couldn’t come in there. He stooped and got hold of Ringg again. A pain like fire went through the wrist he had smashed against the rock. He set his teeth, wondering if it had broken. The effort made him see stars, but he managed somehow to hoist Ringg up again and haul him through the pelting hail toward the yawning gap. It darkened around them, and, blessedly, the battering, bruising hail could not reach them. Only an occasional light splinter of ice blew with the bitter wind into the mouth of the cave.
Bart laid Ringg down on the floor, under the shelter of the rock ceiling. He knelt beside him, and spoke his name, but Ringg just moaned. His forehead was covered with blood.
