The Guesser had been fighting the Misfits for twenty years, and hating
them for as long as he could remember. The idea that he could ever
become one of them had simply never occurred to him. Even the idea of
going to one of the Misfit Worlds was so alien that the very suggestion
of it was shocking to his mind.
And yet, the suggestion that the Sixer woman had made did require a
little thinking over before he accepted or rejected it.
The Misfits. What did he really know about them, anyway?
They didn't call themselves Misfits, of course; that was a derogatory
name used by the Aristarchy. But the Guesser couldn't remember off hand
just what they _did_ call themselves. Their form of government was a
near-anarchic form of ochlocracy, he knew--mob rule of some sort, as
might be expected among such people. They were the outgrowth of an
ancient policy that had been used centuries ago for populating the
planets of the galaxy.
There are some people who simply do not, will not, and can not fit in
with any kind of social organization--except the very flimsiest,
perhaps. Depending on the society in which they exist and the extent of
their own antisocial activities, they have been called, over the
centuries, everything from "criminals" to "pioneers." It was a matter of
whether they fought the unwelcome control of the society in power or
fled from it.
The Guesser's knowledge of history was close to nonexistent, but he had
heard that the expansion to the stars from Earth--a planet he had never
been within a thousand parsecs of--had been accomplished by the
expedient of combining volunteers with condemned criminals and shipping
them off to newly-found Earth-type planets. After a generation had
passed, others came in--the civilizing types--and settled the planets,
making them part of the Aristarchy proper.
(Or was the Aristarchy that old? The Guesser had a feeling that the
government at that time had been of a different sort, but he couldn't
for the life of him remember what it was. Perhaps it had been the
prototype of the Aristarchy, for certainly the present system of society
had existed for four or five centuries--perhaps more. The Guesser
realized that his knowledge of ancient history was as confused as
anyone's; after all, it wasn't his specialty. He remembered that when he
was a boy, he'd heard a Teacher Exec talk about the Geological Ages of
Earth and the Teacher had said that "cave men were _not_ contemporary
with the dinosaur." He hadn't known what it meant at the time, since he
wasn't supposed to be listening, anyway, to an Exec class, but he had
realized that the histories of times past often became mixed up with
each other.)
At any rate, the process had gone along smoothly, even as the present
process of using Class Sevens and Declassified citizens did. But in the
early days there had not been the organization that existed in the
present Aristarchy; planets had become lost for generations at a time.
(The Guesser vaguely remembered that there had been wars of some kind
during that time, and that the wars had contributed to those losses.)
Some planets had civilized themselves without the intervention of the
Earth government, and, when the Earth government had come along, they
had fought integration with everything they could summon to help them.
Most of the recalcitrant planets had eventually been subdued, but there
were still many "hidden planets" which were organized as separate
governments under a loose confederation. These were the Misfits.
Because of the numerical superiority of the Aristarchy, and because it
operated in the open instead of skulking in the darkness of space, the
Misfits knew where Aristarchy planets were located, while the Aristarchy
was unable to search out every planet in the multimyriads of star
systems that formed the galaxy.
Thus the Misfits had become pirates, preying on the merchantships of the
Aristarchy. Why? No one knew. (Or, at least, The Guesser corrected
himself, _he_ didn't know.) Such a non-sane culture would have non-sane
reasons.
The Aristarchy occupied nearly all the planets of the galaxy that could
be inhabited by Man; that much The Guesser had been told. Just why
Earth-type planets should occur only within five thousand light-years of
the Galactic Center was a mystery to him, but, then, he was no
astrophysicist.
But the Sixer woman said she had heard that the Aristarchy was holding
back facts; that there were planets clear out to the Periphery, all
occupied by Misfits; that the legendary Earth was one of those planets;
that--
A thousand things. All wrong, as The Guesser knew. But she was firmly
convinced that if anyone could get to a Misfit planet, they would be
welcomed. There were no Classes among the Misfits, she said. (The
Guesser dismissed that completely; a Classless society was ridiculous on
the face of it.)
The Guesser had asked the woman why--if her statements were true--the
Misfits had not conquered the Aristarchy long ago. After all, if they
held the galaxy clear out to the Periphery, they had the Aristarchy
surrounded, didn't they?
She had had no answer.
And it had only been later that The Guesser realized that _he_ had an
answer. Indeed, that he himself, was a small, but significant part of
that answer.
The Misfits had no Guessers. That was a fact that The Guesser knew from
personal experience. He had been in space battles with Misfit fleets,
and he had brought the _Naipor_ through those battles unscathed while
wreaking havoc and destruction among the massed ships of the Misfits.
They had no Guessers. (Or no _trained_ Guessers, he amended. The
potential might be there, but certainly the actuality was not.)
And it occurred to him that the Misfits might have another kind of
trained talent. They seemed to be able to search out and find a single
Aristarchy ship, while it was impossible to even detect a Misfit fleet
until it came within attacking distance. Well, that, again, was not his
business.
* * * * *
But none of these considerations were important in the long run; none of
them were more than minor. The thing that made up The Guesser's mind,
that spurred him into action, was the woman's admission that she had a
plan for actually reaching Misfit planets.
It was quite simple, really; they were to be taken prisoners.
"They spaceships got no people inside, see you," she said, just as
though she knew what she were talking about. "They just want to catch
our ships, not kill 'em. So they send out a bunch of little ships on
they own, just to ... uh ... cripple our ships. It don't matter, they
little ships get hit, because they no one in them, see you. They trying
to get our ships in good shape, and people in them and stuff, that's
all."
"Yes, yes," The Guesser had said impatiently, "but what's that to do
with us?"
She waved a hand, as though she were a little flustered by his
peremptory tone. She wasn't, after all, used to talking with Class
Threes as equals, even though she knew that in this case the Three was
helpless.
"I _tell_ you! I _tell_ you!" She paused to reorganize her thoughts.
"But I ask you: if we get on a ship, you can keep it from shooting the
Misfit ships?"
The Guesser saw what she was driving at. It didn't make much sense yet,
but there was a glimmer of something there.
"You mean," he said, "that you want to know whether it would be possible
for me to partially disable the fire-control system of a spaceship
enough to allow it to be captured by Misfit ships?"