But the fields were very bright and green in the sunshine…
* * * *
In Brent’s own cabin, Den Harlow, who was an Earth Commerce Commissioner but whose face was bruised and swollen and who had blood down the side of his face—Den Harlow said quietly, “What are you?”
Brent had an open traveling-bag on the bunk. It did not contain clothing. It was a tool-chest. But it contained a very curious assortment of tools and instruments. He chose with some care but more haste. He was stuffing his pockets.
“I’m a man in a hurry,” he observed. “Why do you ask?”
“I want to know,” said Kit’s father mildly. “Because either you are an extraordinary fool, or you are extraordinary in some other way.” He drew out a small medal, hanging on a chain about his neck. He twisted it oddly and showed it to Brent “Does this mean anything to you?”
Brent hesitated. Then he said, “Y-yes. But it doesn’t put me under your orders. I’m afraid I rank you.”
Den Harlow, who was a Very Important Person indeed, turned to his daughter and said drily:
“The Profession.” Then he looked at what Brent showed him and added to Kit, “I am ranked. I do take orders from him.”
“I’d like it,” said Brent, “if you would get this suicide-complex out of your daughter’s mind.”
Kit’s eyes were glowing. She drew in her breath sharply. The Profession, of course, was something wholly unofficial, and wholly unpaid, and it was usually considered fabulous. It was an activity that nobody admitted to exist, because it was contrary to all reason. Not one person in ten thousand had heard even a rumor of it on Earth. Elsewhere it was not even a rumor, but it was very much of a necessity.
There was not, though, any simple way to describe it. It was a loose association. Some of them had official position and rank, like Kit’s father. Some were quite inconspicuous individuals, like Brent. They did things which were often illegal and frequently preposterous, and they were never rewarded at all. Sometimes they were severely punished. But those who were of the Profession were very proud of their membership and their work.
It had started long, long ago. With tens of thousands of colonized planets in the galaxy, an Earth imperium was impossible as a practical matter. Even a planetary government, for so large a population as Earth had, was almost unworkable. There is a limit to the number of people who can actually be represented by any organization with authority. On Earth, the first planetary government proved unwieldy. No government could function efficiently over such great areas and over such masses of people. On Earth, the first planetary government had to subdivide into associated nations of practical size, and the top authority was now a Council with limited powers over individuals. It had to be that way! From the first it was realized that Earth could not rule its colonies. They had to be free in order to exist.
Earth’s colonial governments were ones of every conceivable complexion. But Earth could not interfere with them. It could not fight them without conquering them, it could not conquer them without ruling them, and it could not rule them. An interstellar government was simply not a practical matter if the welfare of the people it ruled, rather than the vanity of its rulers, were to be its prime objectives. And Earth had a quaint tradition that government was instituted for the people.
But there were madmen in the galaxy who wished to rule anyhow. If Earth claimed the right to stop them, it would claim empire itself, and that meant exactly the evil Earth deplored. So the Profession came gradually into being as a form of patriotism owing loyalty to a higher level than nationality or even one’s native planet. The Profession tried desperately—and sometimes with surprising success—to prevent the lunacies of warfare. Only one thing made warfare possible—the development of super weapons, and the Profession worked single-mindedly to prevent just that.
Brent, as a member of the Profession, had absolutely no legal status or authority save to ask for help from other members of the Profession. He had only the obligation—given him by his training—to move about the galaxy and try to make sure that no one world anywhere acquired new weapons it did not share immediately with its sister worlds. Perhaps it was absurdly idealistic, but—as history has shown since, and all too clearly—it was the way by which civilization endured.
As now…
He closed his tool-kit carefully and said: “I was working in the Cephis star cluster. They were building a big fleet of new-type spaceships there. I got into the construction-crew to make sure there were no new tricks being included that were kept secret. My papers are in order for that work. But I heard about Procus II—everyone on the fourth planet killed and its wealth looted by unknown enemies. I headed back to Earth through this section, trying to pick up rumors. On Khem IV, I’ll admit, I didn’t find a thing. It’s a beastly tyranny, of course, but if people stand for that sort of thing, they invite it. That wasn’t my business. But I didn’t find a whisper of evidence that a space-fleet could be built and armed on that planet, not one able of doing what has been done.”
Den Harlow said briefly: “It wasn’t built there. It wasn’t armed there. It couldn’t be! I made my Commerce Commissionership an excuse for traveling about—just as you manufactured an excuse. But Kit and I were served vistek at an official banquet. And I’ve tasted vistek before, over on the other side of the galaxy.”
Brent said: “I’ve heard it couldn’t be shipped, even frozen. When cosmic rays hit it, it goes bad. Even the seeds rot when cosmics get at them. So it’s only able to be eaten within a week’s space-journey from the planet where it grows normally.”
Den Harlow nodded. “It’s a wonderful fruit,” he said, with the ghost of a smile. “I enjoyed it heartily—even though when I tasted it I knew it hadn’t been brought across the galaxy by a spaceship. It was so inconceivably foolish to serve it to me, though, that I couldn’t believe the Khem IV planet ruler knew where it came from I thought it might have been given to him as a gift—something like that. So I asked. But he knew! He looked deadly. Later, I heard he had his cooks executed for serving it to me.”
“And then,” said Kit ruefully, “we knew that we’d be murdered so we couldn’t take word back that a fruit which can’t be shipped from the planet it grows on had been brought clear across the galaxy. We’ve been extremely careful. The only hope we had was that we could be so careful that our murders would look suspicious to the Profession. After all, my father’s official position made it awkward to murder us outright. That would have been suspicious!”
“Now, though,” he told her, “you two will try to stay alive.”
She nodded, her eyes bright.
“I’m going to see if I can do something practical,” he added.
“Yes… Be—careful, will you?”
He opened the cabin door and went out. He was halfway across the passengers’ lounge before he realized that it was not quite necessary for one person in the Profession to ask another to be careful. It wasn’t Professional. It was—well—personal. And she’d looked at him with bright eyes…
The bedlam in the bar was dying down, now, with Rudl no longer on hand to stimulate it. Badly beaten men wanted fresh drinks. Victors in battle wanted to celebrate. But there were some bodies lying on the floor. They might be sunk in drunken sleep, or they might not. A woman was dancing tipsily, casting sickeningly inviting glances about her.
He went into the dining salon. Into the kitchen. Both were empty. Presently they were empty even of him. He had returned to the empty spaces between the balls of metal-plate inside the Delilah’s skin. When he went out the airlock, he had a blaster ready in his hand.
Not quite an hour later, a simultaneous and unanimous gasp sounded in the passengers’ lounge. It was almost a cry, choked and incredulous, from every throat among the passengers.
Each of them had exactly the same experience. The cosmos had seemed to them to whirl dizzily in an expanding spiral. Then their stomachs turned over, twice.
The ship’s overdrive had come on
again. The passengers who’d seemed nearest to madness from terror and despair now seemed closest to going out of their minds with joy.
The Delilah was again moving through space in overdrive.
They did not realize that there was a great difference between this overdrive and the one that had been cut off.
CHAPTER VII
The message came in on a very tight beam, and it was a double-transmission. It could be received only on a very special instrument.
An answer went out. It would take time to reach its destination in emptiness. The answer was similarly complex in its transmission, but its meaning was quite simple. No, there were no ships due from anywhere. No, there was no reason for a space-fleet not to come in. Yes, the apparatus on the ground was quite ready.
Then, on the icecap, a huge framework began to come up out of what seemed a crevasse in a glacier. It rose and rose and rose. There was a square metal frame. It heaved up smoothly until it reared two hundred feet high in a waste of snow and ice. It was two hundred feet across. It was filled in, absolutely, by a shimmering silvery film which had the curious optical quality of an absolutely perfect reflector.
It waited.
Presently there were humming sounds in the sky. A wire-basket transmitter pointed skyward, sending a guiding beam. A dark shape appeared. It descended swiftly. It moved toward the square frame with the shimmering silvery film. It moved into that film. It vanished.
It did not come out on the far side of the framework. It went into the film and ceased to be. Another dark shape descended, and another, and another, and another…
In a somehow evil procession a space-fleet descended to atmosphere, and projected itself into the appearance of a silver bubble-film—and it was not. There were sixty vessels.
When the last had vanished, the square framework began to descend again. It sank down into what seemed to be a crevasse. Then there was nothing but a small and inconspicuous building on a snowcap, an ice-field, which reached for hundreds and hundreds of miles in every direction.
The space-fleet was not anywhere around. Not anywhere within a thousand light-years of the planet Khem IV…
* * * *
Now there was a vastly different atmosphere in the passengers’ lounge of the Delilah. The ship was back in overdrive! With returned spirits, they tried to forget the two dead men in a silent cabin. The passengers were sure that everything would be all right now. The Delilah was headed on for port. Oh, undoubtedly she was on her way to Loren II where she had been bound in the first place!
Meanwhile, there were injured to be cared for. There were too many of them. Those who had been only drunk were sleeping heavily. Some wept hysterically, remembering. Some—less self-conscious—turned from maniacal frenzy to a beaming, maudlin affection for all their supposed kind. Iposap did not make a man into a beast. It merely helped the beast within express itself. Now, relieved of terror and horror and dread and despair, they were like lambs. But still there were too many wounded men.
Kit looked at Brent with warm, admiring eyes. He had not only accomplished great things, but he was of the Profession. And that was a very great thing. Young Shannon came over to Brent, his wife following timidly behind him.
“There’s been nobody showing up,” he said in a low tone, “to tell us we’re back on overdrive. They should be coming in to explain that now they’ve fixed everything. Why haven’t they?”
Brent said: “They were pretending to be busy. Now they are busy!”
“Doing what?” asked Kit, watching his face.
“Trying to find out what I did to their overdrive—though they don’t know I did it. Also they’re trying to turn it off.”
“Can’t they?”
“Not unless they smash it,” Brent told her in grim amusement. “And I don’t think they’re that desperate yet. But they’re on the dizzy side! The overdrive shouldn’t work, and it does. They didn’t turn it on, but it’s on. And they can’t turn it off. But that’s not the worst of it, from their standpoint.”
He looked at Kit, but he felt a little pang of envy of the young bridegroom, whose wife touched his arm lightly and seemed perfectly confident and content. Brent had never had a girl act that way about him. He hadn’t wanted any to. But, looking at Kit, he knew that it would feel very satisfying.
“The worst of it,” he said drily; “is that it’s a different overdrive altogether. This is an old ship. It had a maximum speed of a light-year of distance in a week of time. But some tricks have been found out since she was built. One is a better set-up for the exciter-coils. It’s beautifully simple if you understand it, but it can’t be fooled with if you don’t. If you change the second-stage exciter just exactly right, the overdrive speed shoots away up. I made that change. The Delilah’s traveling a light-year every four hours now. It ought to show up in the control-room, and up there they should be starting to go crazy.”
If he knew spacemen, they would be.
* * * *
Just such inexplicable factors were enough to put the crew into a panic. With the Delilah running wild, out of all control and going forty-odd times faster than possible, the crew should be close to gibbering.
But the passengers were beautifully confident. Even Kit said relievedly: “You’ve made the ship go faster? Then we’ll soon be landing on Loren II!”
“We’ve passed it,” said Brent. “Some time ago. I could handle the ship, but the skipper can’t. He’d kill me if I tried to explain. He’ll never be able to land this ship by himself now.”
The last was true. If the skipper of an old-style Diesel ship suddenly found the speed of his craft multiplied by forty-odd—like the Delilah’s—and had only the feeblest of crawls—like the Delilah’s interplanetary engines—for low, he’d have trouble docking. Either he’d ram the dock before he could stop, or else he’d cut his engines so far offshore that he’d never attain it against wind and tide.
Den Harlow said: “Then where are we going, if not to Loren II?”
“I’ve no idea,” admitted Brent. “But I’m a lot less worried than our skipper. He really has something to worry about!”
In planetary drive, all the stars blazed. From a control-room there was light on every hand. Suns gleamed in a myriad colors. There was no spot where the eye could rest—when a ship was moving on interplanetary drive—where a bright or faint star did not glimmer.
In overdrive of the type built into the Delilah, there had always been stars straight ahead, which moved and writhed as the ship drove on. They seemed to streak away from the bow in every direction, moving more and more swiftly as they spread, but suddenly dimming to go out entirely. All about and behind the ship was blackness. It was a horrible, tangible blackness, and from the control room it had always seemed as if the Delilah fled madly to escape from a huge bag of pure darkness which forever pursued her.
The new overdrive was worse. There was just one tiny bright spot visible. It was straight ahead. It changed in brightness, and in color. Sometimes it almost went out. Always it flickered toward extinction and brightened again, but always it seemed that next instant it would go out entirely, and then the Delilah would be left alone in a monstrous emptiness in which nothing else existed at all—that it would be engulfed in a cosmos in which there was literally nothing but itself, and there could be no destination because nothing else was.
It would not be good for the nerves of an unprepared man to look out the bow-ports of the Delilah just now.
Kit continued to smile warmly at Brent. But her father protested: “But we must be going somewhere!”
“The trouble is that we may be headed anywhere,” said Brent. He explained awkwardly, “I thought I’d better install the new drive to jolt the crew a little. I was afraid they’d miss their engineer—and Rudl—and start investigating in the passengers’ quarters. I came to help in case they did. But they’re busy. I’ll go back and finish my job.”
Kit said hopefully: “May I come and help?`
“There may
be trouble,” said Brent. “They may be hunting for the engineer.”
“I’ve a blaster now,” she reminded him. “You gave it to me when you disarmed Rudl. I could watch while you work.”
Her father said matter-of-factly: “She’s a very good shot. And as for the danger, if anything happens to you, we’re all dead anyhow.”
“We’ll go through the kitchen,” he told her. “There’s a door to the rest of the ship from there.”
* * * *
There was a woman in the kitchen, though. She was unskilfully preparing food for a child who stayed close to her. The woman said fretfully, “After all the terrible things that have happened, I do think the officers would send the cooks back!”
“They’re probably all working to keep the overdrive going,” said Kit gravely.
The woman sat the child on a stool and began to feed it. They did not want her to see them disappear into the working section of the ship. Kit rummaged for food for the two of them. She brought Brent a half-warm lunch-pack.
“We should talk,” she suggested. “I’d like to know about you.”
“You know everything that’s important,” he said briefly. “You know how I think things tie in?”
She waited, watching him. He felt her admiration and liked it. But he pretended not to notice.
“There’s been theorizing,” he said in a low tone, “that even overdrive isn’t the limit in transportation. On the face of it, it’s happened. Vistek fruits can’t be shipped from the planet they grow on, because cosmic rays reduce them to an unpalatable pulp. Nobody’s ever been able to make a vistek seed grow away from the planet Malden—and that’s on the other side of the galaxy.”
Kit urged him to continue.
“There’s one way it could have gotten there,” Brent told her quietly. “A transmitter. A transmitter of matter. In theory that would be instantaneous. But so far as the Profession knows it’s never been done. But vistek on Khem IV proves it has been done.”
The Second Murray Leinster Megapack Page 70
