Guy Maynard would have to remain on Ertene. Therefore in either case
it would serve him best to become as Ertinian as possible. He did not
believe that they would exile him--that would be dangerous. Nor did he
believe that death would accompany his failure to convince Ertene of
their place around Sol. The obvious course in case of failure would
be to permit him the freedom of the planet; to become in effect, an
Ertinian.
He'd be under watch, of course. Escape would prove dangerous for their
integrity. Imprisonment was not impossible, but he hoped that his
failure to convince would not be so sorry as to have them suspect him.
Of course, an opportunity to escape would be taken, unless he gave his
word of honor. Yet, he had sworn the oath of an officer in Terra's
space fleet, and that oath compelled him to serve Terra in spite of
danger, death, or dishonor to self. He must not give his parole--
Guy fought himself over that problem for days and days. It led him in
circular thinking, the outlet to which would be evident only when he
found out the Ertinian reaction. Too much depended on that trend; there
were too many _if's_ standing between him and any plan for the future.
He forgot his mental whirl in study. He investigated Ertinian science
and tucked a number of items away in his memory. He visited the
observatory and after a number of visits he plotted Ertene in the
celestial sphere within a few hundred thousand miles. That, too, he
filed away in his memory along with the course of the wanderer.
He learned that his place of convalescence was no hospital, but
Thomakein's estate. It staggered him. Thomakein was--must be--a
veritable dynamo of energetic mentality to have the variety of
interests as reflected in the trappings about the estate. The huge
library, the observatory, the laboratories. How many of the things he
saw and studied were Thomakein's personal property he would never know;
though he did know that some of them came from museums and institutes
across the planet.
He wondered about Thomakein. He had never seen his saviour since his
mind had come back. He recalled vague things, but nothing cogent. He
asked Charalas about Thomakein.
"Thomakein's main problem is Sol," explained Charalas. "A problem which
you have made easy for him. However, he is on the derelict, studying
the findings there. A warship is a most interesting museum of the
present, you know. Often things of less than perfect operation are
there; things that will eventually become perfected and established
into private use. It is almost a museum of the future. Thomakein will
learn much there and he has been commissioned to remain on the derelict
until he has catalogued every item on it."
"Lone life, isn't it?" asked Guy.
"He has friends. Last I heard from him, he had sealed the usable
portion of the derelict against the void, and was turning the course
to bring it toward Ertene. Eventually the wreck will circle Ertene.
Perhaps we may attempt to land it here."
"It'll be a nice museum piece," said Guy, "but it will not endear you
to those of Mars."
"I know. Of course if we accept Sol's offer, we will destroy it
completely."
"Keep it," said Guy, shrugging his shoulders. "Ertene will find little
in common with Mars. It will be Terra and Ertene; together we will form
the nucleus of Solar power."
"So?"
"Naturally. Ertene and Terra are the most alike, even to the flora and
fauna."
"I see."
Charalas let the matter drop as he did before. Guy tried to open the
line of thought again, but met with no success. It was not a matter of
indifference to Guy's arguments, but more a complete disinclination
to make any sort of statement prior to the decision of the Council of
Ertene. Realizing that this decision was one of the single-try variety,
Guy studied hard during the next few days. There would be no appeal
even though he tried to get another hearing during the rest of his life.
He wondered how soon it would be.
* * * * *
Charalas landed on Thomakein's estate in a small flier and asked Guy if
he would like to see the famous Hall of History. They flew a quarter
of the way around the planet, and during the trip, Charalas pointed
out scenes of interest. It was enlightening to Guy, who hadn't seen
anything beyond a few miles of Thomakein's estate. There were farms
laid out on the production-line scale while the cities and towns that
housed the farmers were sprawling, rustic villages of simple beauty.
The larger cities had evolved from the square-block and rubber-stamp
home kind to specialized aggregations in which the central, business
sections were close-knit while the residences were widespread and well
apart, giving each family adequate breathing room.
"The railroad," smiled Charalas, "is still with us. It will never
leave, because shipments of heavy machinery of low necessity can be
transported cheaper that way. Like the barges that ply the rivers with
coal, ore, and grain, they are powered with adaptations of the space
drive, but they are none the less barges or trains."
"They've found that, too," laughed Guy. "There is little economic value
in trying to ship a million tons of coal by flier."
"Normally, you should say. The slowest conveyor system is rapid if the
conveyor is always filled and the material is not perishable. Coal and
ore have been here for eons. Therefore it is no hardship to wait for
six weeks while a given ton of ore gets across the continent, provided
that the user can remove a ton of ore from the conveying system
simultaneously with the placement of another ton that will not get
there for six weeks."
"Sounds correct, though I've never thought of it in that manner," said
Guy thoughtfully. "But that must be why it is done. We hull ore across
space untended, and in pre-calculated orbits, picking it up at Terra
from Pluto, for instance. The driverless and crewless hull is packed
with ore, towed into space by a space tug and set into its orbit, the
tug then returning to the shipping area to await the next hull. The
hull may take a couple of years to get to Terra, but when it does, it
begins to emit a finder-signal and Terran space tugs pick the hull
up and lower it to Terra. The hulls are returned with unperishable
supplies to the Plutonian miners."
"We hadn't the necessity of applying that thought to space shipping,"
answered Charalas. "Tonis, the larger moon, is so close that special
shipping methods are not needed. We have but a few colonists there,
most of which are members of the laboratory staff."
"You've found moon laboratories essential in space work, too?" asked
Guy.
"Naturally. Tonis is airless and upon it is the Ertinian astronomical
laboratory."
"Moons--even sterile moons--are good for that," said Guy. "They--Say,
Charalas, what is that collection of buildings below here? They look
like something extra-special."
"They are. That is the place we're going to see."
* * * * *
Charalas put the flier into a steep dive and landed in the open space
between the buildings. They entered the long, low building at the end
opposite the most ornate building of the seven that surrounded the
landing area and Charalas told the receptionist that they were expected.
The long hall was excellently illuminated, and on either side of the
corridor were murals; great twelve-foot panels of rare color and of
photographic detail. Upon close examination they proved to be paintings.
The first panel showed an impression of the formation of Ertene, along
with the other eleven planets of Ertene's parent sun. It was colorful,
and impressionistic in character rather than an attempt to portray
the actual cataclysm that formed the planets. The next few panels
were of geologic interest, giving the impressions of Ertene through
the long, geologic periods. There were dinosaur-picturizations next,
and the panels brought them forward in irregular steps through the
carboniferous; through the glacial ages; through the dawn ages; and
finally into the coming of man to power.
The next fourteen panels were used in the rise of man on Ertene from
the early ages to full, efficient civilization. They were similar to a
possible attempt to portray a similar period on Terra, showing wars,
life in the cities of power during the community-power ages, and the
fall of several powerful cities.
Then the rise of widespread government came with its more closely-knit
society made possible by better means of communication and
transportation. This went on and on until the facility of the combining
factors made separate governments on Ertene untenable, and there were
seven great, fiery panels of mighty, widespread wars.
"Up to here, it is similar to ours," commented Guy.
"And here it changes," said Charalas. "For the next panels show the
impending doom of Ertene's parent sun. The problem of space had been
conquered but the other planets were of little interest to Ertene. We
fought about four interplanetary wars as you see here, all against
alien races. Then came trouble. The odd chance of a run-away star
coming near Ertene did happen, and we faced the decision of living near
an unstable sun for centuries, for our astronomers calculated that the
two stars would pass close enough to cause upheavals in the suns that
would result in instability for thousands, perhaps millions of years."
"Instability might not have been so bad," said Guy thoughtfully, "if
it could be predicted. No, I'm not speaking in riddles," he laughed.
"I may sound peculiar, saying that it would be possible to predict
instability. But a regular variable of the cepheid type is predictable
instability."
"True. But we had no basis for prediction. After all, it would have
been taking a chance. Suppose that the instability had caused a nova?
Epitaphs are nice but none the less final. We left hundreds of years
before the solar proximity. Now we know that we might have survived,
but as you know, we can not swerve Ertene's course readily and though
we are slowly turning, the race may have died out and gone for a
galactic eon before we could return. Once the race dies out--or the
interest in returning to a certain sun back there in the depths of the
galaxy dies--we will cease to turn. We may find a haven somewhere,
before then."
"You were speaking of years," said Guy. "Was that a loose reference or
were you approximating my conception of a year?"
"A _year_ is a loose term indeed, no matter by whom it is used," said
Charalas. "To you, it is three hundred and sixty-five, and about a
quarter, days. A day is one revolution of Terra. From Mars, say, a
Terran year is something else entirely. Mars, of course, is not too
good an example for its sidereal day is very close to Terra's. But
your Venus, with its eighteen hour day--eighteen Terran hours--sees
Terra's year as four hundred eighty-six, plus, days. On Ertene, we
have no year. We had one, once. It was composed of four hundred twelve
point seven zero four two two nine three one days, sidereal. Now, our
day is different, since the length of the solar day depends upon the
progression of the planet about its luminary. Our luminary behaves
as a moon with a high ecliptic-angle as I have explained. No, Guy,
I have been mentally converting my _year_ to your year, by crude
approximation."
The next panel was an ornate painting of the Ertinian system,
showing--out of scale for artistic purpose--the planets and sun, with
Ertene drawing away in a long spiral.
"For many years we pursued that spiral, withdrawing from the sun by
slow degrees. Then we broke free." Charalas indicated the panel which
showed Ertene in the foreground while the clustered system was far
behind.
They passed from panel to panel, all of which were interesting to Guy
Maynard. There was a series of the first star contacted by Ertene. It
was a small system, cold and forbidding, or hot and equally forbidding.
The outer planets were in the grip of frozen air, and the inner planets
bubbled in moltenness "This system was too far out of line to turn. It
was our first star, and we might have stayed in youthfulness. Now, we
know better."
The next panel showed a dimly-lighted landscape; a portrayal of
Ertene without its synthetic sun. The luminous sky was beautiful in
a nocturnal sort of way; to Guy it was slightly nostalgic for some
unknown reason, at any rate it was the soul of sadness, that landscape.
Charalas shook his head and then smiled. He led Guy to the next panel,
and there was a portrait of an elderly man, quite a bit older than
Charalas though the neuro-surgeon was no young man. "Timalas," said
Charalas proudly. "He gave us the next panel."
The following panel was a similar scene to the dismal one, but now
the same trees and buildings and hills and sky were illuminated by a
sun. It was a cheerful, uplifting scene compared to the soul-clouding
darkness.
* * * * *
Ertene was a small sphere encircled by a band of peaceful black in
a raving sky of fire and flame. Three planets fought in the death
throes, using every conceivable weapon. Space was riven with blasting
beams of energy and segregated into square areas by far-flung cutting
planes. Raging energy consumed spots on each of the planets and the
corners of the panel were tangled masses of broken machinery and
burning wreckage, and the hapless images of trapped men. But Ertene
passed through this holocaust unseen because of Timalas' light-shield.
"He saved us that, too," said Charalas reverently. "We could not have
hoped to survive in this. Our science was not up to theirs, though the
aid of a derelict or two gave us most of their science of war. I doubt
that Terra herself could have survived. We passed unseen, though we
worried for a hundred years lest they find us."
A race of spiders overran four of the planets of the next panel. They
were unintelligent, there was a questioning air to the panel, as though
posing the query as to how this race of spiders had crossed the void.
And the picture of an Ertinian dying because contact with one of the
spiders indicated their reason for not remaining.
The next panel showed a whole system with ammoniated atmosphere. "It
was before the last panel," said Charalas, "that Ertene became of age
as far as the wanderlust went. We knew that we could survive. We wanted
no system wherein Ertene would be alone. Of what use to civilization
would a culture be if its people could never leave the home planet?"
"No," agreed Guy. "Once a race has conquered space, they must use it.
It would restrict the knowledge of a race not to use space."
"So we decided never to accept a system wherein we could not travel
freely to other planets. Who knows, but the pathway to the planets may
be but the first, faltering step to the stars?"
"We'd never have reached the planets if we'd never flown on the air,"
agreed Guy.
"We prefer company, too," smiled Charalas, pointing out the next
panels. One was of a normal system but in which the life was not
quite ready for the fundamentals of science and therefore likely to
become slave-subject to the Ertinian mastery. The next was a system
in which the intelligent life had overrun the system and had evolved
to a high degree--and Ertene might have been subject to them if they
had remained. "Unfortunately we could learn nothing from them," said
the Ertinian. "It was similar to an ignorant savage trying to learn
something from us."
Then they came to a panel in which there were ten planets. It was a
strange collection of opposites all side by side. There were several
races, some fighting others, some friendly with others. Plenty and
poverty sat hand in hand, and in one place a minority controlled the
lives of the majority while professing to be ruled by majority-rule.
Men strived to perfect medicine and increase life-expectancy and
other men fought and killed by the hundreds of thousands. A cold
and forbidding planet was rich in essential ore, and populated by a
semi-intelligent race of cold-blooded creatures. The protectors of
these poor creatures were the denizens of a high civilization, who
used them to fight their petty fights for them, under the name of
unity. For their trouble, they took the essential ores to their home
planet and exchanged items of dubious worth. The trespass of a human
by the natives of a slightly populated moon caused the decimation of
the natives, while the humans used them by the hundreds in vivisection
since their anatomy was quite similar to the human's.
"Where is Ertene?" asked Guy.
"Ertene is not yet placed," said Charalas.
"No?" asked Guy in wonder.
"No," said Charalas with a queer smile. "Ertene is still not sure of
her position. You see, Guy, that system is Sol."
* * * * *
Guy Maynard stood silent, thinking. It was a blow to him, this
picturization of the worlds of Sol as seen through the eyes of a
totally alien race. His own feelings he analyzed briefly, and he
knew that in his own heart, he was willing to shade any decisions
concerning the civilization of Ertene in the Ertinian favor; had any
dispute between Ertene and a mythical dissenter, Guy would have had his
decision weighted in favor of the wanderer for one reason alone.
Ertinians were human to the last classification!
Guy smiled inwardly. "Blood is thicker than water," he thought to
himself, and he knew that while the old platitude was meant to cover
blood-relations who clung together in spite of close bonds with friends
not of blood relationship, it could very well be expanded to cover this
situation. Obviously he as a Terran would tend to support a _human_
race against a merely _humanoid_ race. He would fight the Martians for
Ertene just as he would fight them for Terra.
Fighting Ertene itself was unthinkable. They were too human; Ertene
was too Terran to think of strife between the two worlds. Being of
like anatomy, they would and should cling together against the whole
universe of alien bodies.