The next day I got on my feet again, weak but recovered. I wandered
aimlessly around the base, waiting for Barbara to get through work,
listening to people talk. It was ugly, the fear and tension and wolfish
watchfulness. _Whom can we trust? Who is the enemy?_
Mostly, they thought the Luronians were guilty. After all, those were
the only beings on the planet who had not had to pass a rigorous
investigation and psychological examination. But nobody was sure.
Levinsohn spoke over the televisor. His gaunt, lined face had grown
very tired, yet there was metal in his voice. The new situation
necessitated a change of plans, but the time of assault would, if
anything, be moved ahead. "Be of good heart. Stand by your comrades.
We'll still be free!"
I went to Barbara's apartment and we sat up very late. But even in this
private record I do not wish to say what we talked about.
* * * * *
And the next day the Empire came.
There was one Supernova ship with light escort, but that was enough.
Such vessels have the mass of a large asteroid, and one of them can
sterilize a planet; two or three can take it apart. Theoretically, a
task force comprising twenty Nova-class battleships with escorts can
reduce one of those monsters if it is willing to lose most of its
units. But nothing less can even do significant damage, and the rebel
base did not have that much. Nor could they get even what they had into
full action.
The ships rushed out of interstellar space, flashing the recognition
signals I had given. Before the picket vessels suspected what was
wrong, the Valgolians were on them. One managed to bleat a call to base
and the alarm screamed again, men rushed to battle stations. Then the
Imperials blanketed all communications with a snarl of interference
through which nothing the rebels had could drive.
So naturally they were thought to have been annihilated in a few swift
blazes of fire and steel, a quick clean death and forgetfulness of
defeat. But only the drivers were crippled, and then the Supernova
yanked the vessels to its titan flanks and held them in unbreakable
gravity beams. The crews would be taken later, with narcotic gas or
paralyzer beams--alive.
For the Empire needs its rebels.
I knew the uselessness of going to battle stations, so I hung behind,
seeking out Barbara, whose place was with the missile computer bank. I
met her and Kane in the hallway. The boy's face was white, and there
were tears running down his cheeks.
"This is the end," he said. "They've found us out, and there's nothing
left but to die. Good by, Barbara." He kissed her, wildly, and ran for
his ship. Moodily, I watched him go. He expected death, and he would
get only capture, and afterward--
"What are you doing here, Con?" asked Barbara.
"I'm too shaky to be any good in the artillery. Let me go with you, I
can punch a computer."
She nodded silently, and we went off together.
* * * * *
The floor shook under us, and a crash of rock roared down the halls.
The heavy weapons on the Supernova were bloodlessly reducing our ground
installations and our ships not yet in action to smashed rubble. They
would kill not a single one of us, except by uncontrollable accident,
and save many Valgolian and Earth lives that way, but it wasn't
pleasant to be slugged. The girl and I staggered ahead. When the lights
went out, I stopped and held her.
"It's no use," I said. "They've got us."
"Let me go!" she cried.
I hung on, and suddenly she collapsed against me, crying and shaking.
We stood there with the city rumbling and shivering around us, waiting.
Presently the Valgolian commander released the interference and
contacted Levinsohn, offering terms of surrender. It seemed to
Levinsohn, and it was meant to seem, that further resistance would be
useless butchery. His ships were gone and his foes need only bombard
him to ruin. He capitulated, and one by one we laid down our arms and
filed to meet the victors.
The terms, as announced by messengers--the intercom was out of
action--were generous. Leading rebels and those judged potentially
"dangerous" would go to penal colonies on various Earthlike planets.
Except that they weren't penal colonies at all, but, of course, the
Earthlings wouldn't know this. They were indoctrination centers, and,
with all my bitterness, I still longed to observe a man like Levinsohn
after five years in one of the centers. He'd see things in a different
perspective. He'd see the Empire for what it was--even if I sometimes
had a little trouble seeing that now--and he'd be a better rebel for it.
Someday Levinsohn and his kind would be back on Earth, the new leaders
ready to lead the way to a new tomorrow. And I would be with them.
I'd be back with Levinsohn and the rest, and with Barbara, too, and
we'd try to pave the way to the peace and friendship. But meanwhile
there'd be other revolutions--striving and hoping and breaking their
hearts daring what they thought would be death to win what they called
freedom and what we hoped would be evolution.
It was the fire to temper a new civilization.
We walked down the hall, Barbara and I, hand in hand, alone in spite
of all the people who were shuffling the same way. Most of them were
weeping. But Barbara's head was high now.
"What will happen to us?" she asked.
"I don't know," I said. "But, Barbara, whatever happens after this,
remember that I love you. Remember that I'll always love you."
"I love you too," she smiled, and kissed me. "We'll be together, Con.
That's all that matters. We'll be together."
That was important--and it made me feel good. Yes, we'd be together;
I'd see to that. But for a while Barbara would hate me through all
the long years of the indoctrination. Someday, perhaps, she would
understand ... the indoctrination could do it, and I could help. But by
the gods of space, how would it be to take that hate all that while?
* * * * *
We came out into the central chamber where the prisoners were gathering
to be herded up to the ships. Armed Valgolian guards stood under the
glare of improvised lights. Other Imperials were going through the
city, flushing out those who might be hiding and removing whatever our
armed forces could use. The equipment would do no one any good here,
and Boreas would be left to its darkness.
It was cold in the vast shadowy room. The heating plant had broken down
and the ancient cold of Boreas was seeping in. Barbara shivered and I
held her close to me. Nat Hawkins moved over to join us, wordlessly.
I was questioned in a locked room by one of the big Valgolian officers.
He looked at a stereograph in his hand and he took me aside, but it was
not unusual. Many of the starbound prisoners were being questioned by
their guards, and I was merely one of them.
"Colonel Halgan?" the officer asked with an eagerness close to
hero-worship. He was obviously fresh from school and military
terminology came from his lips as if it really meant something to a
Valgolian. The colonel, of course, meant that in a titular sense I had
been elevated for my work. Funny, if you use the language enough, you
get to believe it yourself.
"Sir," the young officer continued, "this is one of the greatest pieces
of work I've ever seen. I am to extend the official congratulations
of--"
I let him talk for a while and then I raised my hand peremptorily and I
told him that the girl with the Earthling Hawkins was to go along for
indoctrination, despite the fact that her name did not appear on his
lists. He nodded, and I went back to Barbara, but half a dozen men had
come between us.
Levinsohn and five guards. The man's carriage was still erect, the old
unbreakable pride and courage were still in him. Someone among the
prisoners broke loose and rushed at him, cursing, till the Valgolians
thrust him back into line.
"Levinsohn!" screamed the man. "Levinsohn, you dirty Jew, you sold us
out!"
There you see why this rebellion had to be crushed. Earth still had a
long way to go. The Levinsohns, the Barbaras, the more promising of
the anarchs would be educated and returned and the civilizing process
would go on. Earth's best and bravest would unite and fight us, and
with each defeat they would learn something of what we had to teach
them, that all races, however divergent, must respect each other and
work together, learn it with an intensity which the merely intellectual
teaching of schools and propaganda could not achieve alone--or, at any
rate, soon enough.
Valgolia is the great and lonely enemy, the self-appointed Devil since
none of us can be angels. It is the source of challenge and adversity
such as has always driven intelligence onward and upward, in spite of
itself.
Sooner or later, generations hence, perhaps, all the subject worlds
will have attained internal unity, forgetting their very species in
a common bond of intelligence. And on that day Valgolia's work will
be done. She and her few friends, her _donagangors_, will seemingly
capitulate without a fight and become simply part of a union of free
and truly civilized planets.
And such a union will be firmer and more enduring than all the
tyrant empires of the past. It will have the strength of a thousand
or more races, working together in the harmony which they achieved in
struggling against us.
* * * * *
That is the goal, but it is a long way ahead; there may be centuries
needed, and meanwhile Valgolia is alone.
Barbara would understand. In time she would understand what she as yet
did not even know. But first would be the hatred, the cold stark hatred
that must come of knowing who and what I really am. I could only wait
for that hatred to come after she learned, and then wait for it to go,
slowly, slowly....
Lines of the Earthlings were filing forward, and, with Nat Hawkins,
Barbara waited for me. I walked to her and took her hand. Her head was
high, as high as Levinsohn's. She expected all of us to die, but she'd
meet the relatives and friends she thought were dead.
It would be a great, a crushing humiliation, to know one's martyrs were
alive and being well treated and intensively educated by the foe, who
was supporting and encouraging one's supposedly dangerous revolution.
"It won't be so bad as long as we're together, darling," I said.
She smiled, misunderstanding, and kissed me defiantly before our
Valgolian guards.