Hundreds of years ago, on Nansal, there had lived a wise and brilliant
teacher named Norus. He had developed an ideal, a philosophy of life, a
code of ethics. He had taught the principles of nobility without
arrogance, pride without stubbornness, and humility without servility.
About him had gathered a group of men who began to develop and spread
his ideals. As the new philosophy spread across the planet, more and
more Nansalians adopted it and began to raise their children according
to its tenets.
But no philosophy, however workable, however noble, can hope to convert
everyone. There always remains a hard core of men who feel that "the old
way is the best way". In this case, it was the men whose lives had been
based on cunning, deceit, and treachery.
One of these men, a brilliant, but warped genius, named Sator, had built
the first spaceship, and he and his men had fled Nansal to set up their
own government and free themselves from the persecution they believed
they suffered at the hands of the believers of Norus.
They fled to the second planet, where the ship crashed and the builder,
Sator, was killed. For hundreds of years, nothing was heard of the
emigrants, and the people of Nansal believed them dead. Nansal was at
peace.
But the Satorians managed to live on the alien world, and they built a
civilization there, a civilization based on an entirely different
system. It was a system of cunning. To them, cunning was right. The man
who could plot most cunningly, gain his ends by deceiving his friends
best, was the man who most deserved to live. There were a few
restrictions; they had loyalty, for one thing--loyalty to their country
and their world.
In time, the Satorians rediscovered the space drive, but by this time,
living on the new planet had changed them physically. They were somewhat
smaller than the Nansalians, and lighter in color, for their world was
always sunless. The warm rays of the sun had tanned the skins of the
Nansalians to a darker color.
When the Satorians first came to Nansal, it was presumably in peace.
After so many hundreds of years without war, the Nansalians accepted
them, and trade treaties were signed. For years, the Satorians traded
peacefully.
In the meantime, Satorian spies were working to find the strengths and
weaknesses of Nansal, searching to discover their secret weapons and
processes, if any. And they rigorously guarded their own secrets. They
refused to disclose the secrets of the magnetic beam and the magnetic
space drive.
Finally, there were a few of the more suspicious Nansalians who realized
the danger in such a situation. There were three men, students in one of
the great scientific schools of Nansal, who realized that the situation
should be studied. There was no law prohibiting the men of Nansal from
going to Sator, but it seemed that Nature had raised a more impenetrable
barrier.
All Nansalians who went to Sator died of a mysterious disease. A method
was found whereby a man's body could be sterilized, bacteriologically
speaking, so he could not spread the disease, and this was used on all
Satorians entering Nansal. But you can't sterilize a whole planet.
Nansalians could not go to Sator.
But these three men had a different idea. They carefully studied the
speech and the mannerisms and customs of the Satorians. They learned to
imitate the slang and idioms. They went even further; they picked three
Satorian spaceship navigators and studied them minutely every time they
got a chance, in order to learn their habits and their speech patterns.
The three Satorians were exceptionally large men, almost perfect doubles
of the three Nansalians--and, one by one, the Nansalians replaced them.
They had bleached their faces, and surgeons, working from photographs,
changed their features so that the three Nansalians were exact doubles
of the three astrogators. Then they acted. On three trips, one of the
men that went back as navigator was a Nansalian.
It was six years before they returned to Nansal, but when they finally
did, they had learned two things.
In the first place, the 'disease' which had killed Nansalians who had
come in contact with Satorians on Nansal was nothing but a poison which
acted on contact with the skin. The Nansalians who had gone to Sator had
simply been murdered. There was no disease; it had simply been a
Satorian plot to keep Nansalians from going to Sator.
The second thing they had learned was the secret of the Satorian
magnetic space drive.
It was common knowledge on Sator that their commander would soon lead
them across space to conquer Nansal and settle on a world of clear air
and cloudless skies, where they could see the stars of space at night.
They were waiting only until they could build up a larger fleet and
learned all they could from the Nansalians.
They attacked three years after the three Nansalian spies returned with
their information.
During those three years, Nansal had secretly succeeded in building up a
fleet of the magnetic ships, but it went down quickly before the vastly
greater fleet of the Satorians. Their magnetic rays were deadly, killing
everyone they struck. They could lift the iron-boned Nansalians high
into the air, then drop them hundreds of feet to their death.
The buildings, with their steel and iron frames, went down, crushing
hundreds of others. They practically depopulated the whole planet.
But the warnings of the three spies had been in time. They had enlarged
some of the great natural caverns and dug others out of solid rock. Here
they had built laboratories, factories, and dwelling places far
underground, where the Satorians could never find them.
Enough men reached the caverns before the disaster struck to carry on.
They had been chosen from the strongest, healthiest, and most
intelligent that Nansal had. They lived there for over a century, while
the planet was overrun by the conquerors and the cities were rebuilt by
the Satorians.
During this century, the magnetic ray shield was developed by the hidden
Nansalians. Daring at last to face their conquerors, they built a city
on the surface and protected it with the magnetic force screen.
By the time the Satorians found the city, it was too late. A battle
fleet was mobilized and rushed to the spot, but the city was
impregnable. The great domed power stations were already in operation,
and they were made of nonmagnetic materials, so they could not be pulled
from the ground. The magnetic beams were neutralized by the shield, and
no ship could pass through it without killing every man aboard.
That first city was a giant munitions plant. The Nansalians built
factories there and laughed while the armies of Sator raged impotently
at the magnetic barrier. They tried sending missiles through, but the
induction heating in every metal part of the bombs either caused them to
explode instantly or to drop harmlessly and burn.
In the meantime, the men of Nansal were building their fleet. The
Satorians stepped up production, too, but the Nansalians had developed a
method of projecting the magnetic screen. Any approaching Satorian ship
had its magnetic support cut from under it, and it crashed to the
ground.
It took nearly thirty years of hard work and harder fighting for the
Nansalians to convince the people of Sator that Nansal and the
philosophy of Norus had not only not been wiped out, but was capable of
wiping out the Satorians.
With their screened and protected fleet, the followers of Norus smashed
the Satorian cities, and drove their enemy back to Sator.
There were only three enemy cities left on Nansal when, somehow, they
managed to learn the secret of the magnetic screen.
By this time, the forces of Nansal had increased tremendously, and they
developed the next surprise for the Satorians. One after another, the
three remaining cities were destroyed by a barrage of poison gas.
The fleet of Sator tried to retaliate, but the Nansalians were prepared
for them. Every building had been sealed and filters had been built into
the air conditioning systems.
Shortly, the men of Nansal were again in control of their planet, and
the fleet stood guard over the planet.
The Satorians, beaten technologically, were still not ready to give up.
Falling back on their peculiar philosophy of life, they pulled a trick
the Nansalians would never have thought of. They sued for peace.
The government of Nansal was willing; they had had enough of bloodshed.
They permitted a delegation to arrive. The ship was escorted into the
city and the parleying began.
The Satorian delegation asked for absolutely unreasonable terms. They
demanded fleet bases on Nansal; they demanded an unreasonable rate of
exchange between the two powers, one which would be highly favorable to
Sator; they wanted to impose fantastic restrictions on Nansalian travel
and none whatsoever on their own.
Month followed month and months became years as the diplomats of Nansal
tried, patiently and logically, to show the Satorians how unreasonable
their demands were.
Not once did they suspect that the Satorians had no intention of trying
to get the conditions they asked for. Their sole purpose was to drag the
parleying on and on, bickering, quarreling, demanding, and conceding
just enough to give the Nansalians hope that a treaty might eventually
be consummated.
And during all that time, the factories of Sator were working furiously
to build the greatest fleet that had ever crossed the space between the
two planets!
When they were ready to attack, the Satorian delegation told Nansal
frankly that they would not treaty with them. The day the delegation
left, the Satorian fleet swept down upon Nansal!
The Nansalians were again beaten back into their cities, safe behind
their magnetic screens, but unable to attack. But the forces of Sator
had not won easily--they had, in fact, not won at all. Their supply line
was too long and their fleet had suffered greatly at the hands of the
defenders of Nansal.
For a long while, the balance of power was so nearly equal that neither
side dared attack.
Then the balance again swung toward Nansal. A Nansalian scientist
discovered a compact method of storing power. Oddly enough, it was
similar to the method Dr. Richard Arcot had discovered a hundred
thousand light centuries away! It did not store nearly the power, and
was inefficient, but it was a great improvement over their older method
of generating energy in the ship itself.
The Nansalian ships could be made smaller, and lighter, and more
maneuverable, and at the same time could be equipped with heavier, more
powerful magnetic beam generators.
Very shortly, the Satorians were again at the mercy of Nansal. They
could not fight the faster, more powerful ships of the Nansalians, and
again they went down in defeat.
And again they sued for peace.
This time, Nansal knew better; they went right on developing their fleet
while the diplomats of Sator argued.
But the Satorians weren't fools; they didn't expect Nansal to swallow
the same bait a second time. Sator had another ace up her sleeve.
Ten days after they arrived, every diplomat and courier of the Satorian
delegation committed suicide!
Puzzled, the government of Nansal reported the deaths to Sator at once,
expecting an immediate renewal of hostilities; they were quite sure that
Sator assumed they had been murdered. Nansal was totally unprepared for
what happened; Sator acknowledged the message with respects and said
they would send a new commission.
Two days later, Nansal realized it had been tricked again. A horrible
disease broke out and spread like wildfire. The incubation period was
twelve days; during that time it gave no sign. Then the flesh began to
rot away, and the victim died within hours. No wonder the ambassadors
had committed suicide!
Millions died, including Torlos' own father, during the raging epidemic
that followed. But, purely by lucky accident, the Nansalian medical
research teams came up with a cure and a preventive inoculation before
the disease had spread over the whole planet.
Sator's delegation had inoculated themselves with the disease and, at
the sacrifice of their own lives, had spread it on Nansal. Although the
Satorians had developed the horribly virulent strain of virus, they had
not found a cure; the diplomats knew they were going to die.
Having managed to stop the disease before it swept the planet, the
Nansalians decided to pull a trick of their own. Radio communication
with Sator was cut off in such a way as to lead the Satorian government
to believe that Nansal was dying of the disease.
The scientists of Sator knew that the virus was virulent; in fact, too
virulent for its own good. It killed the host every time, and the virus
could not live outside a living cell. They knew that shortly after every
Nansalian died, the virus, too, would be dead.
Their fleet started for Nansal six months after radio contact had broken
off. Expecting to find Nansal a dead planet, they were totally
unprepared to find them alive and ready for the attack. The Satorian
fleet, vastly surprised to find a living, vigorous enemy, was totally
wiped out.
Since that time, both planets had remained in a state of armed truce.
Neither had developed any weapon which would enable them to gain an
advantage over their enemy. Each was so spy-infested that no move could
pass undiscovered.
Stalemate.