But he didn't consider that seriously. The second ship represented a complication the Mundan colony might have been better without. There was no real question, however, of pretending now that it didn't exist. A whole lot of questions had to be answered.
The ship was low, and obviously someone was scanning the ground very carefully. Pertwee looked about him quickly. There was nothing but grass and brown soil for quite a distance round them, and against neither would they stand out.
"Your white ket, Toni," he said urgently. "Get it out."
Toni pulled open her knapsack and produced the white ket. Pertwee almost tore it from her. The ship was coming close. He stood erect and waved the white garment above his head. The next most conspicuous thing Toni could find was the red scarf she sometimes used as a sash. She stood some yards from Pertwee and waved it, pulling it through long loops in the air.
The lookout must have been good, for almost at once they were seen. The ship changed its course slightly and dipped to get a better look. Then it dropped still further. It landed only a hundred yards or so from Pertwee and Toni. They blinked in its vast shadow.
It was very like the Mundis, Pertwee saw, but bigger, considerably bigger. He turned to look at the blunt nose to see the name. Clades, it read. He frowned. Clades -- wasn't that the Latin for destruction, or disaster, or something like that? It was reasonable enough to call it that, perhaps, since it had left an Earth that was about to blow itself up. All the same, he couldn't regard it as a good omen.
The lock opened, and six men came bounding out. They ran to Pertwee and Toni like a team of guards retaking an escaped prisoner. When they reached them they formed up neatly in line.
"You're from the Mundis?" said the first man in line.
Pertwee offered his hand a little hesitantly.
"Yes, that's so," he said. "Glad to see you. You must have left Earth after us?"
The man took his hand in a firm grip. But he didn't offer any information. "Better talk to the commodore," he said.
The six men formed about them as an escort. Pertwee caught a bewildered glance from Toni. She had never seen a disciplined force before. She couldn't understand why these men, who looked otherwise like the men she knew, should stare straight in front of them without expression and make every move together and walk in a stiff, precise way she had never seen before. Pertwee wanted to tell her that people could be soldiers and still human, but there were two men between him and Toni.
The men wore a uniform that was not unlike the U.S. Air Force uniform, as Pertwee remembered it. Only it was green, of all colors -- green for Earth, perhaps. The most interesting thing about the uniforms, however, was that they appeared new. That meant . . .
At the lock, which was five feet above the ground as the ship had landed, the sergeant glanced at Toni and barked an order. One of the men put his hands on her waist, a little self-consciously, for she was wearing her blue ket and his hands were on bare skin. She smiled up at him; a lot of men had held her in one way or another. But he whirled her round, caught her again by the hips, and heaved. She sailed up easily and landed lightly in the lock.
They seemed to be waiting for Pertwee to jump up, without assistance, but he knew he couldn't do it. He pulled himself up with his hands instead. The men left behind retired about three steps, formed in line, and jumped up three at a time. Toni was waiting, still more puzzled. Pertwee would have had a chance for a word or two with her then, but he was as puzzled as she was.
There were small alterations in the layout of the ship, Pertwee saw -- inevitable modifications, the result of the experience gained in building the Mundis. Sometimes the workmanship seemed inferior, however, barer and rougher -- the Clades must have been built in more of a hurry than the Mundis. Some things were missing altogether.
He remembered, for the first time for years, now that he was on his way to see the commander of this ship, that he had been the captain of the Mundis. That was history, though; when they had stripped him of office years ago he had given up all idea of rule, of being a leader. He had done so with a certain relief. Unlike young Foley, he had never wanted power. But like Foley, he had always found it difficult to avoid being given positions of responsibility.
They reached the commodore's room. It was a big room. There were three men there already, the commodore and two of his officers.
The commodore came forward, smiling affably. "I'm Commodore Corey," he said. "These are Captain Sloan and Lieutenant Mathers. You're? . . . "
"John Pertwee. This is my wife Toni."
The commodore undoubtedly noticed how much younger than Pertwee Toni was, but he made no comment. Instead he turned to the escort, who had formed themselves into a squad by the door.
"Take your men away, sergeant," he said.
"Yes, sir." The sergeant had one last glance at Pertwee's shorts and Toni's ket to make sure that neither of them was concealing weapons, and marched his men out. Toni was relieved to see them go. The men in the cabin were in uniform, but not rigid and expressionless and machine-like. They were more like the men she was used to. Mathers, who was only about twenty-five, was looking at her in almost the frankly admiring way that might have been expected. But as she looked he seemed suddenly to realize that and became machine-like. She frowned. There was something odd about the way all these men looked at her.
Twenty-five! -- it struck Pertwee suddenly that this was the end of the Gap. The commodore was about the same age as he was, and some of the men had been forty, some thirty, some twenty.
He picked up the recording in his mind of what Corey had said, when it became obvious they were waiting for an answer.
Corey had asked where they had come from, where the main colony was. It was a perfectly natural question.
Pertwee moved slightly so that he caught Toni's eye, warning her. "From the north," he said casually, as if it didn't matter. It would be easy enough later to turn the lie into truth, but not so easy to turn the truth into a lie.
"Have you come far?" asked the commodore politely, then added quickly, "Oh, Mrs. Pertwee, you must be wondering if there are no women among us. Just a moment. He pressed a button on his desk. He had stumbled slightly over the designation "Mrs."
A woman appeared and saluted. Her tunic admitted reluctantly that she had a bosom, her trousers didn't absolutely deny hips; otherwise she was dressed exactly as Mathers was, in lieutenant's uniform.
"Lieutenant Fenham," said the commodore. "Show Mrs. Pertwee around, will you?"he said. He said the Mrs. quite confidently this time.
Toni was used to a community that spoke its mind. "But I want to stay here with Jack," she said. She glanced at Lieutenant Fenham with distaste she didn't manage to hide altogether. The women Toni knew didn't ape their menfolk. Uniform, worn by men, merely aroused her curiosity; worn by women it produced dislike. Besides, Fenham wasn't attractive. Her figure might be all right, quite possibly was, but she hid it as if it were hideous. And her face was hard and plain and altogether uninteresting. She was about forty.
"I would rather you went with Lieutenant Fenham," said the commodore gently.
"And I'd rather she stayed here," said Pertwee, just as quietly. "Are we under restraint, Commodore?"
"I wish you wouldn't put it like that," said the commodore. "Lieutenant Fenham!"
The woman took Toni's arm. From the look of surprise on Toni's face, she had found herself, for probably the first time in her life, in the grasp of a woman much stronger than herself.
"Don't say anything, Toni," said Pertwee rapidly. "Don't believe anything they tell you about me. Don't tell them -- "
"Never mind, Lieutenant," said the commodore regretfully. "No useful purpose would now be served. We might as well keep them together."
Beginning to understand a little about the Clades and her crew, Pertwee wished suddenly, passionately, that the Mundis had been the only interstellar ship built.
4
"Try to understand," said Commodore Corey patiently. "We're
not going to destroy your people, or torture them, or make them slaves. That isn't our purpose at all. We want to unify the human race again -- can't you understand that?"
In other circumstances, Pertwee thought, he and Corey might have got on quite well. It wasn't a question of good and evil; but there were two strong groups with very different ideas on what was good.
He had begun to guess what sort of ideas the Clades party was operating. Towards the end, on Earth, obviously if there were to be any sort of order a militarist attitude had to be taken up. Pertwee didn't follow it any further than that. He merely pictured, fleetingly, the grimness and determination of the work of building the Clades -- definitely the last performance this time -- and saw how grim, firm, determined, strong the crew picked for it would be.
"In fact," said Corey, "we must unite. You know and we know that we're not the only living things in the galaxy. If there are plants here, somewhere else there is an intelligent species. Earth destroyed itself. If we are not to he destroyed, we must be strong, united -- "
"I understand perfectly," said P. ertwee. "I disagree, that's all."
"If you understood," replied Corey patiently, "you could not disagree."
"That is precisely the attitude we're against. The idea that there is only one reality. You say you're right and we're wrong. We don't say we're right, you're wrong. We'd say we think we're right and though you may be too, we don't think so -- "
"Exactly," retorted Corey, losing patience a little. "Not 'I'll do this,' but 'I think perhaps possibly I might do this sometime, eventually, if nothing better occurs to me' -- inaction, indecision, procrastination, laissez-faire, indolence. It was your kind that brought Earth to destruction. You didn't believe it could happen. Now you've been given a second chance -- and you want to do the same thing again."
Toni was still there, standing, looking from Pertwee to Corey and back to Pertwee. No one had offered her a chair. The officers were waiting to be called into the discussion, or for the commodore to come to some decision. At any rate, only the two of them were doing any talking.
"I don't quite see that," said Pertwee mildly.
"Suppose we encountered another intelligent race now. We'd be split, disunited, unable to work together."
"I don't think that's a good argument. If we're separate, so much the better chance of one of the groups escaping or surviving. In any case, how much trouble does one usually take over a billion-to-one chance? Granted that a brick might fall on your head in a street back on Earth -- did you always go around wearing a steel helmet?"
"I was trying to make you understand so that you would cooperate peaceably," said Commodore Corey. "I see it was a vain hope. Pertwee, I want to know where your people are."
"We don't know,~' said Pertwee. "We're lost." He didn't expect Corey to believe his answers, but if the commodore was stupid enough to allow it, Pertwee could use his answers to instruct Toni.
"What have you done with the ship?"
"Hidden it."
"Where?"
"I don't know. Only some of us know. Not either of us."
"How many of you are there?"
Pertwee had no time to think. The situation, naturally, had found him completely unprepared. Perhaps he should have pretended that he and Toni were the only Mundans left, but now it was too late. Nor had he a chance to consider carefully whether it would be better for the commodore to think the Mundans were strong and numerous or to say they were few and weak, not worth bothering about.
Without hesitation he said: "There are very few of us. We were almost wiped out seventeen years ago by a plague native to this planet. And two years ago it broke out again. We've never been able to find any cure or even an adequate prevention. It seems to be a virus disease -- "
The officers moved uneasily, but the commodore's voice lashed out at them. "Fools! Can't you see these are just stupid, inconsistent lies designed to frighten us and mislead us? There is no sense in it. How could you hide a ship nearly as big as this and not know where to find it? Why hide it, anyway? Only a few of them, he says -- yet instead of being glad to see us, as a few lonely people would be, these two lie to us and argue with us . . . The others died seventeen years ago, he says -- yet see, their clothes are new, manufactured, and the garment the woman wears is obviously a fashion developed over a period in a large group on a safe, healthy planet . . . "
It was a good enough resum�Corey was clearly no fool. "And yet," Corey was musing, "some of it may be true. They might hide the ship, at that. For the first colonists were conditioned -- "
A light dawned on him: "That's why you won't co-operate," he said. "It's not us you're afraid of, it's atomic power. Pertwee, you early colonists were all conditioned against atomic power, so that you wouldn't use it, wouldn't teach your children anything about it. If you did hide your ship, that's why -- because you were rigidly conditioned never to use atomic power unless in a life-and-death emergency. You don't know it, but you were made not quite sane on that point. It was drummed into you night and day -- can you understand what I'm talking about?"
Pertwee could, up to a point. It needed thinking over, later.
"It's not that," he said. "It's -- "
"Hell!" exclaimed the commodore. "I'm wasting no more time. Pertwee, /where are your people?/"
"To the north," said Pertwee.
"I don't believe you," Corey retorted, "but we'll go where you say. It will only take a few minutes to prove or disprove."
That was the trouble. Stalling for time would do absolutely no good, since the people at Lemon probably didn't know of the existence of the ship. But it was the sort of thing one did, hopefully.
Pertwee turned toward Toni, but one of the lieutenants prodded him round again. They weren't going to be allowed to communicate with each other at all, apparently.
Corey spoke quietly to Mathers, who left the cabin. A few minutes later they felt the steel under them pulse and the sensation of movement.
"How far north?" asked Corey conversationally.
5
The young Mundans found when they spoke to the first people they met in Lemon that no one there had heard or seen anything of the ship. That was a pity. It meant explaining again and again what had been seen, because it was too big for people to believe easily. Some people sought confirmation from everyone who would give it; and though there were nearly two hundred young Mundans telling the same story, some people continued to refuse to believe it.
Rog went straight to the Bentleys. "The sister ship to the Mundis just passed on the way north," he said. Alice, beside him, nodded in confirmation.
That was all the Bentleys needed, in contrast to the people out in the streets who believed that this was some plot of Rog Foley's, part of a second coup, perhaps.
"Did they see us?" asked Bentley.
"No. Unless they decided to pretend they hadn't. But they're looking for us, all right."
"Did you signal?"
"I stopped someone who wanted to."
"Why?" asked Bentley.
Rog frowned. "I hoped you, of all people, wouldn't have to ask that."
"I don't. I agree with your action. But I still want to know what /your/ reasons were."
Rog gave them. "Are yours different?" he asked.
"A little. We know a little more than you could, of course. Which is why I'm particularly glad that, knowing as littie as you did, you still had the sense not to communicate with them before we'd considered the matter. But shall we leave discussion to the Council meeting? You want one now, I suppose?"
"No," said Rog. "Not the Council. This is important."
"So?"
"Leave out the people who won't have anything to contribute, among your people and mine. Robertson, Boyne, Hamburger, and -- sorry, Alice -- Fred Mitchell."
"They're duly elected representatives," murmured Bentley.
"If we want common sense, we'll hear more of it if they're not there. This is an emergency. I'm going to call a meeting, Mr. Bentley.
I'm asking you and Mary and Jessie Bendall and Brad Hulton, but I'm not asking Robertson and Boyne. What are you going to do about it?"
"I'm going to come," said Bentley agreeably.
The meeting lasted a long time. Scores of points of view were expressed; but the sole decision could have been prophesied by Rog or Bentley or half a dozen others.
Communication would not be sought with the second ship. The ship was too powerful, Lemon too defenseless. If the ship returned, Lemon would not call attention to itself; neither would any particular attempt at concealment be made.
The Mundans hadn't realized until that meeting how defenseless they were. Until that meeting they hadn't cared. The young people couldn't know -- they hadn't much experience of weapons, none at all of warfare. The founders had been glad to forget what they knew. Now they had to dig bits of recollection from reluctant memories.
There were people like Mary Bentley who didn't care that Lemon was defenseless. "I don't say we should seek contact with them," she said, "but if it comes, what can we have to fear from our own kind, with Earth gone? Surely our peaceful setup will be exactly what they want, what they must hope we have achieved?"
There were others like Mary's own daughter, who said that some of the weapons that could be made should be, just so that Lemon would be able to stand up for itself if necessary. But the third member of the family at the conference pointed out that it was like making candle snuffers to put out a moor fire. A crew with an atom-powered ship had control of such immense forces that it was hardly necessary to carry weapons. Anything loaded with some of that power was a deadly weapon.
Some, like Jessie Bendall, thought it was worth considering hiding from the second ship altogether. They said it might be worth while sacrificing the crops and breaking up the regular lines of the fields and hiding the cattle and camouflaging the houses. Everyone agreed that it was well worth considering hiding if it didn't entail much. But putting the colony back ten years was too drastic for most people.
And the only person to mention Pertwee and the possibility that the ship might contact him did him a severe injustice. It was Brad, who murmured that they were probably wasting their time. If the ship was searching the planet it would probably find Pertwee and Toni, who would not merely be glad to join the crew but would tell them where Lemon was whenever they were asked.
Worlds Apart Page 9
