They went. They went fast and silent. And I knew where they were going.
Not to Salaman. O'Hara would have taken one look at that machine and be
half way to United Galaxy Center before he had stopped seeing it. I felt
like taking that trip myself. But I had agreed to look and I would look.
If we were lucky we would have forty-eight hours to look and run.
I fell in what was left of my Company behind the men that had saved us.
More Company uniforms than I had ever seen in one place. They said
nothing. Just walked into a hole in that mountain. Into a cave. And in
the cave, at the far end, a door opened. An elevator. We followed the
tall old man into the elevator and it began to descend. The elevator car
went down for a long time. At last I could see a faint glow far below.
The glow grew brighter and the car stopped. Far below the glow was still
brighter. We all stepped out into a long corridor cut from solid rock. I
estimated that we were at least two hundred miles down and the glow was
hundreds of miles deeper. We went through three sealed doors and emerged
into a vast room. A room bright with light and filled with more men in
Company uniforms, civilians, even women. At least a thousand. And I saw
it. The thousand refugees, all of them. Gathered from all the Companies,
from wherever they had been in the Galaxies. Gathered here in a room
two hundred miles into the heart of their dead planet. A room filled
with giant machines. Ionic machines. Highly advanced ionic power
reactors.
The old man stood in front of his people and spoke. "I am Jason
Portario, I thank you for coming."
I broke in, "Ionic power is an execution offense. You know that. How the
hell did you get all this ..."
"I know the offense, Commander," Portario said, "and I know you. You're
a fair man. You're a brave man. It doesn't matter where we got the
power, many men are dead to get it, but we have it, and we will keep it.
We have a job to do."
I said, "After that stunt out there you've about as much chance as a
snowball in hell. O'Hara's half way to Galaxy Center. Look, with a
little luck we get you out to Salaman. If you leave all this equipment I
might be able to hide you until it blows over."
* * * * *
The old man shrugged. "I would have preferred not to show our hand, but
we had to save you. I was aware that the Council would find us out
sooner or later, they missed the ionic material a month ago. But that is
unimportant. The important matter is will you take our job? All we need
is another two days, perhaps three. Can you hold off an attack for that
long?"
"Why?" I asked.
Portario smiled. "All right, Commander, you should know all we plan. Sit
down, and let me finish before you speak."
I sat. Rajay-Ben sat. The agitation of his colored lights showed that he
was as disturbed as I was. The thousand Nova-Mauranians stood there in
the room and watched us. Yuan Saltario stood with his friends. I could
feel his eyes on me. Hot eyes. As if something inside that lost man was
burning again. Portario lighted a pipe. I had not seen a pipe since I
was a child. The habit was classified as ancient usage in the United
Galaxies. Portario saw me staring. He held his pipe and looked at it.
"In a way, Commander," the old man said, "this pipe is my story. On
Nova-Maurania we liked a pipe. We liked a lot of the old habits. Maybe
we should have died with all the others. You know, I was the one who
found the error. Sometimes I'm not at all sure my friends here thank me
for it. Our planet is dead, Commander, and so are we. We're dead inside.
But we have a dream. We want to live again. And to live again our planet
must live again." The old man paused as if trying to be sure of telling
it right. "We mean no harm to anyone. All we want is our life back. We
don't want to live forever like lumps of ice circling around a dead
heart. What we plan may kill us all, but we feel it is worth the risk.
We have thousands of ionic power reactors. We have blasted out Venturi
tubes. We found life still deep in the center of this planet. It is all
ready now. With all the power we have we will break the hold of our dead
sun and send this planet off into space! We ..."