The Earth commander turned to Tom Barron. “You want the woman to sing. Convince your friend to accept my terms.”
“Never,” Tom Barron said. “The Spacers are not about to surrender. Let the mauki sing first.”
“How do we know this is not a trap?” the Earth commander said. “We would have to stop blocking their radios in order to broadcast her message. How can we be sure that a message will not go out ordering the outlying fleet to attack Earth at once? How do we know that the woman won’t hypnotize us all with her words?”
“You can’t know,” Ben Trefon said. “You simply have to take the risk that our word will be good.”
The commander looked at him. “Then you must also be willing to take a risk.”
“Like what?”
“Like bringing the mauki out to this ship to sing.”
“Of course. She will gladly come.”
“And you will pilot one of our warships through the Maze to fetch her,” the Earth commander said.
Ben’s jaw sagged, and he realized with a sinking feeling that he was trapped. One warship, carrying one hydrogen warhead, and Asteroid Central could be destroyed. One blow, dealt in treachery, could be the final blow of the war, triggering mass retaliation from the Spacers’ outlying fleet.
“Well?” the Earth commander demanded. “What do you say?”
Ben turned to Tom and drew him aside. “What shall I do?” he said. “What can I tell him?”
“Tell him you accept,” Tom said. “Not a shell will be fired if he gives his word. I’m certain of it.”
“But you could be wrong.”
“If I’m wrong, then everything is lost.”
Ben Trefon took a deep breath and turned back to the Earth commander. If there was treachery, the blame would rest on his shoulders, but it could not be helped. Somewhere, sometime, there had to be a starting place for mutual trust and understanding. “All right,” he said. “I’ll take your warship through.”
• • •
Anyone born and raised in space was accustomed to danger, and Ben Trefon had made many perilous journeys before. But never before had he felt the peril so overwhelmingly as he did now as he nosed the great battle cruiser from the Earth fleet into the passage through the Maze heading for Asteroid Central and the mauki who was waiting there.
It had been agreed that Ben would pilot the ship, after he had convinced the Earth commander that experience and navigational skill were as critical to a safe passage as knowledge of the proper route to follow. He had chosen the passage that required the least speed and maneuverability, for the Earth ship was slow and clumsy in its reactions and his own unfamiliarity with the controls was an impediment. Tom Barron was at his side at the control panel, while Joyce waited back on the command ship, but the Earth commander had elected to accompany them, and the cruiser carried a full battle crew of twenty men.
Cautiously Ben eased the ship forward, waiting for the rift in the whirling asteroids to appear that would signal a safe entry into the Maze. He knew that radio silence had been broken long enough to beam a message straight at Asteroid Central’s main receivers: HOLD YOUR FIRE! A CONTACT SHIP IS COMING THROUGH! HOLD YOUR FIRE! Earlier he had personally talked for fifteen minutes to the commander on Asteroid Central, his voice carried on a tight beam to prevent Central from broadcasting beyond the blockade. But try as he would, he could not persuade the commander to promise no attack on the great Earth ship. Finally he had broken contact deliberately, hoping that time to reconsider might change his commander’s mind.
He could understand the commander’s viewpoint, of course. It would be suicide to allow an enemy battleship to penetrate the Maze without some kind of guarantee that Asteroid Central would not be fired upon. All of the Earth commander’s assurances that no shell would be fired without provocation would mean very little indeed if one shell were then launched in treachery. And now, try as he would to put them from his mind, he was remembering all the stories he had ever heard of the native inborn treachery and faithlessness of Earthmen when Spacers had been foolish enough to trust them.
However, now the time for trust had finally arrived. Promises would not mend the centuries of distrust between his people and the Earthmen. Sometimes someone had to make himself vulnerable, someone had to be willing to take the risk if there was to be any hope of bringing the Searchers’ message to Earthmen and Spacer alike. Ben noticed the tension on the faces of the cruiser’s men, and he relaxed a little. There was no sign of elation here, no sign of excitement of an impending victory. The Earth commander was pacing the cabin nervously, watching Ben’s every move as though his only concern was that the great missile tubes on Asteroid Central really hold their fire after all.
There was no doubt about it. The commander and crew were as nervous as he was. He edged the ship forward as the rift appeared, and abruptly the great ship was moving deep into the Maze.
It was a slow passage, requiring three complete orbits of Asteroid Central. Ben watched closely as the gaps in the pattern appeared, allowing him to nose the ship in closer and then closer again. He concentrated on the ship’s controls, trying to clear his mind of other things. Even trouble in the Maze could be disastrous; if anything should happen to the Earth ship during the passage, the Earth commander would be convinced that Ben had personally sabotaged it. But slowly the great asteroid drew closer, until the surface was clearly visible on the view screen.
Confused activity was everywhere. Two of the main landing ports had opened and the great scanning telescopes were peering up at the approaching ship. Tiny figures of men could be seen manning the fixed missile tubes that flanked the ports like bristling whiskers. Ben could identify the stepwise makeready for attack going on even following the movements at this distance.
Behind him the Earth commander walked to the intercom. “All right, men,” he said. “Battle stations. Man every gun and make ready.”
The men moved swiftly; one by one the battle stations reported themselves manned and ready. Ben hit the controls sharply, veering the ship out of collision course with a vagrant asteroid fragment and then ducking down into a larger gap that was opening up. Only a few more to go, he thought, and it’s up to them.
“Load tubes one and two,” the Earth commander said. Ben felt the hair prickle on the back of his neck, but he kept his attention glued to the controls. Of course they’re afraid, he kept telling himself. They’ve got to be ready, in case the silly fools down there open up on them. He moved the ship into the last gap in the Maze before it could break free for a landing pattern. Suddenly, it was hard for him to breathe. Sweat stood out on his forehead, and beside him he saw Tom Barron gripping the shock bar until his knuckles were white. Another shift, and the ship was free of the Maze.
‘Take it down,” the Earth commander said.
Below them the great asteroid loomed large, the main landing port gaping open like the jaws of a fantastic monster. There was utter silence in the ship’s cabin now; no one was breathing as Ben threw switches and dropped the nose of the cruiser down for the landing port.
At last, miraculously, the ship was down. There was a whir of grappling cables. Ben killed the power and sat back. Nothing happened.
He heard a tense breath expelled behind him, and the Earth commander said, “Now take me in.”
Flanked by Ben Trefon and Tom Barron, the Earthman marched up the ramp into the Spacer stronghold. The ramp was lined with Spacers standing with hand weapons ready, their faces tense, their eyes alert for any false move. Passing between them, Ben led the way down the corridor and into the meeting room where he and the Barrons had made their final plans with the mauki.
The Spacer commander and the mauki were waiting, and there was something of wonder on the commander’s face as he saw his Earth-born counterpart stop short, salute him, and turn to the woman with a stiff formal bow.
“It is our understanding,” the Earth commander said, “that this woman has a message of importance for us all to h
ear. We have agreed to suspend hostilities until that message has been heard, providing you also cease your fire and control your fleet.”
The Spacer commander nodded slowly, staring at Ben as if he could not believe his ears. “You have our pledge.”
“Then we request that the woman return with us,” the Earthman said. “In return for that concession, we will break our scrambler screen so that your people as well as ours can hear the message.”
Once again the Spacer commander nodded. “It is so agreed.”
Without another word, the Earth commander turned to the mauki. He took her arm in an oddly gentlemanly gesture, nodded to Ben and Tom, and turned back toward the Earth ship.
An hour later they returned through the Maze to the Earth command ship. Ten minutes after that the harsh static of the radio scramblers suddenly ceased, and a message went out from Asteroid Central to the outlying fleet ordering Tommy Whisk to stand by without action until further orders.
The message had hardly been acknowledged when silence fell in every Spacer shop and concourse, on every Earth ship, and in all the relay stations that were alerted to pick up the message and carry it back across the millions of miles of space to the powerful receivers on Earth herself.
And then, at last, the mauki began to sing.
EPILOGUE
OF ALL THE stories in Earth’s long history probably none was so strange, and none destined to be retold so often and in so many versions as the story of the woman’s voice that had ended the Earth-Spacer war and brought to a close the centuries of bitterness between men of the planet and men who dwelt in the outer reaches of the solar system.
Some said the woman sang in English, and others said in Russian. Some said she sang in the native dialect of the Indians of Mexico, or of the Greenland Eskimos; others insisted that her chant had been in the language of the Orient or of the great African nations. But whatever the language, there was agreement on one thing: that of all who heard her sing (and perhaps no message had ever been heard by so many people in so many places at the same time) not one had failed to understand the message she was conveying.
Later, of course, the words were written down in sundry languages for everyone to read and ponder and — ultimately — to understand. It was a story that touched everyone who heard it, for it was a story of the planet Earth, and of the exasperating race of intelligent people who had grown up on her surface, a race of curious and powerful creatures, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, groping through the centuries to learn how to use the intelligence they possessed. It was a story of enormous accomplishment and of enormous failure.
The mauki’s song told the story of the history of those men, sometimes weak, sometimes powerful, sometimes ambitious, sometimes lazy, sometimes subjecting themselves to tyrannical rulers and evil causes, but always ultimately throwing off the yoke in a fierce and relentless independence, always reaching upward and upward with the intelligence of their birthright. She sang of the march of kings and Caesars, of revolutions against tyranny and of the free societies that rose from the ashes of those revolutions. Through her song ran a relentless theme: the driving struggle between good and evil that men had always been engaged in, the struggle between freedom and slavery.
Her song recounted events of history that had long been forgotten as she led her listeners step by step through the Dark Ages and the Renaissance, through the great wars of the twentieth century and the rising tide of scientific advances that took men into space. Finally she sang of the mortal struggle that had arisen out of the Spacer conspiracy and now had reached its climax in this present war between Earthmen and Spacers.
And then the mauki sang of the future. In measured strains that could not be mistaken she sang of the crooked road that men had followed since the exile of the Spacers had begun and the direction in which it inevitably led: to certain destruction, to the crippling of the race and the wasting of its intelligence, perhaps to obliteration of life on the planet altogether. But she sang of another future that could be, in which men had ceased fighting each other and turned their energies toward the enormous achievements of which they were capable. No one who heard her could mistake the message of the Searchers which she passed on — the grim warning on the one hand, the promise of greatness on the other. As the last words of the mauki’s chant faded into silence, there was no one who heard her who could question the alternative to be chosen.
Of course the changes would not come about overnight. No one pretended to expect that. Old hatreds still flared. Old fears still paralyzed the thinking of many men. The end of suspicions that had festered for centuries would not be brought about by magic, and the wise ones both on Earth and in space acknowledged that decades and maybe centuries would be required to heal the wounds laid raw by human childishness.
But now, at least, there was a reason to try.
• • •
In the first days after the blockade was broken Ben Trefon returned to Earth with the two friends who had stood by his side when the mauki chant began. Before, he came as a raider. Now he came in peace, as an envoy from the Spacer Council, to help in the vast job of education and change that had to be done. Soon after their return Joyce Barron went back to her training in nursing in a Chicago hospital, but Ben and Tom continued their tour of the cities and nations of Earth, working as a team to build and reinforce the strength of the Searchers’ message.
But Ben Trefon was first and last a Spacer. Presently the oppressive atmosphere, the difference in gravity and the pressing crowds of people at every hand became more than he could bear, and he made ready to return to Asteroid Central.
He was not surprised to learn that Tom Barron was returning with him, one of the first Earthmen to be accepted for training in the school of space navigation on Asteroid Central.
“I hope you realize what you’re buying into,” Ben warned his friend on the night of their departure. “Life out there won’t be easy just because we have peace and free access to Earth. Space will always be a hard master, and men in space will still carry the flaw they have always carried. There are still no girls born in space.”
Tom Barron nodded. “I know. At least not now; some of our geneticists think that a solution can be found, and that soon there won’t even be that distinction between Earthmen and Spacers. And I’m not looking for an easy life, exactly.”
“But you had work to do down here.”
“There are plenty here to do it,” Tom replied. “Plenty and more than plenty. For me, I know as well as you do where the important work is waiting to be done.”
They stood on the wide upper concourse above the vast residential city where the Barrons’ quarters were located. Over their heads the sky was dark, and a night wind filtered across the city. Tom walked to the guard railing, staring at the sky. “It looks different here,” he said. “With the sky-glow and the thick atmosphere, you’d never dream the number of stars that are out there.”
“They’re there, all right,” Ben agreed.
“And some day fleets of ships will be going out. That will be where the real work begins, when the Searchers come back.”
“Maybe,” Ben Trefon said, but he knew Tom Barron was right. Some day the time would come. But for now, strangely enough, the Searchers had disappeared. Since the night the mauki had sung her song, Spacer and Earth ships together had combed the solar system in search of the small gray men with the misty-blue eyes, but no sign of them had been found. Whether they had really left the solar system altogether, or were simply hiding and watching as they had watched before, nobody knew. Some even questioned that they had ever been there at all, but Ben Trefon still wore the black web belt around his waist, with the shiny capsule lodged in its pocket. Now he touched the metallic surface lightly and felt the barely perceptible vibration that was there.
“They’ll be back,” he said confidently. “Some day, when the time is right, we’ll meet them again.”
Tom grinned at his Spacer friend. “Let’s be
honest. They’ll be back when we’re ready for them, and not a minute before. But who knows? That may be sooner than we think.”
Side by side they crossed the glittering concourse and started down the ramp toward the space port.
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Copyright © 1962 by Alan E. Nourse. Registration Renewed 1990.
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This is a work of fiction.
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Raiders From the Rings Page 19
