"Bourbon."
"Bourbon. Tastes like an excellent liquor. Thank you. Now--" Scyth sat
down on the edge of the deck with his feet hanging into the cockpit
and settled himself for a session. "Dusty, we are here because we are
creating a beacon for our galactic spacelanes."
"Beacon?"
Scyth nodded. "You have the insular viewpoint," he remarked. "You can
stand at night and point out your destination. But you cannot even see
Marandis from here, even with the finest telescope ever built. Stars
lie in the way, huge gas fields and nebular clouds block fast direct
passage. To chart our course safely past such stellar menaces, we
establish beacons at the ends of certain free passages. For instance,
Sol lies at the end of a fifteen hundred light year straightaway from
the last beacon we set up. Here at Sol a slight turn in the course
is made and there is another straightaway for a thousand light-years
toward the Spiral Cluster. We--my friends and I--are charting the
course through a rather interesting rift from Marandis to the Spiral
Cluster. This rift, along which you lie, has been hidden from us for
thousands of years. When it is finished it will cut hours from our
travel-time."
"And maybe so. But what is a beacon and how do you establish it?"
"Dusty, when a spacecraft is running at fifteen hundred light-years
per hour, a three-day-variable star winks in the sky ahead like a
blinker-light." Scyth chopped his left palm rapidly with the edge
of his right hand. "Wink-wink-wink it goes. And the pilot puts his
spacecraft point-of-drive on the beacon and holds it there until he
passes it and aims to the next. You--"
"Variable star!" blurted Dusty.
"Yes. The three-day variables are used for course markers; the longer
variables are used to denote gas fields, nebular dust, and the like,
and the still-longer beacons are used to denote places where various
well-travelled starlanes meet, cross or merge. It is--"
"Three day variable--" breathed Dusty.
"Yes. In three days Sol will rise ten times its present brightness and
fall again to less than one tenth of the present brightness. This is
accomplished by creating an atomic instab--"
"My God! How can any race live under such conditions?"
"They cannot. Not unless properly prepared, well taken care of, aware
and ready for it."
"Look," snapped Dusty. "Why not go out and use some other star for your
damned beacon?"
Scyth shook his head. "If we were gods," he said quietly, "we could
park the Galaxy on our desk, pick up a broom-straw and by fitting and
trying we could locate the best course through the star-fields. But--"
"If you were gods," grunted Dusty bitterly, "you could reach in and
move a few stars aside and run your damned channel on a dead line from
one end to the other. So why do you use Sol?"
"Because the two straightaway lanes that meet at Sol do not meet at
some other star. In one or two cases along this rift the original
surveyors provided alternates in case we ran into trouble. But not on
this one. No, Dusty, we cannot change our plans."
"But see here--"
"Dusty, you wouldn't stand in the way of Galactic Civilization, would
you?"
"You're damn well tootin' I would if it's going to mow me down if I
don't."
Scyth said soothingly, "Doubtless you have cases on your Earth where a
state highway is surveyed right through someone's home. Tell me, Dusty,
what happens then?"
"We buy the property at a fair price so that the family can find
another home of the same value."
"So you don't stand like a barrier in the way of advancement."
"No we don't. But where are we--" Dusty eyed Scyth with a frown.
"You're not going to tell me that your gang will migrate the people of
Earth to another solar system, lock, stock and barrel?"
"That would be impossible, of course."
Dusty grunted. "So we gotta alternately cook and freeze just so your
outfit can run a goddamned traffic pattern through our living room?"
"Well, now, it's not that bad," said Scyth placatingly.
* * * * *
Dusty did not hear the Marandanian. He was thinking of Los Angeles
suffering under the effects of a variable star. Or, rather, he was
trying to visualize such a condition. His imagination provided
alternating scenes of icy blast and deadly heat, but Dusty's overall
technical knowledge was far too meager to offer him even a slight
glimpse of the real truth. To merely consider Sol varying about one
hundred to one in brightness and warmth every three days was as far as
Dusty could go. What would happen to the weather, the general climate,
agriculture, and all of the rest were far beyond Dusty.
Even so, the sketchy picture provided Dusty with enough data to say,
"Why, we couldn't go on living on Earth at all!"
"Right. Which is why I'm here."
"But you said--"
Scyth smiled confidently. "I'm not here to preside over the death of
your part of our human race," he said. "I--"
"Our part of your human race--?" exploded Dusty.
"Of course," said Scyth in a matter-of-fact tone. "So far as we know,
human life was first spawned on Marandis. About thirty thousand years
ago we became galactic in scope, spreading out, colonizing, expanding,
exploring. Many expeditions left home and were lost. But I'll not
belabor this any more, just accept my word for the following: nowhere
in this galaxy have we found intelligent life that did not spring as an
offshoot of misplaced Marandanian culture."
"How can you be so damned certain?"
"The easiest way is to check the cross fertility. It has always worked,
to date at least," said Scyth, inadvertently letting his eyes slide up
and down the very pleasant sight of Barbara Crandall's body. Barbara
knew Scyth's contemplative look and she reacted as any uninhibited
woman does when some man is measuring her. The deep high breath raised
her breasts and flattened her stomach even though she had no great yen
toward wanton promiscuity.
"I gather, then, that you and your gang are going to do something about
us?" she asked.
"Of course. We have a program for cases like this. Since you cannot
live on a planet rotating about a variable star, we'll move Earth to
another star of the same classification."
"But--" objected Dusty.
Scyth went on as though he had not been interrupted. "We'll set up a
barytrine field around Earth which serves to do two things. A barytrine
field cuts the force of gravity that holds Earth to Sol. It also
produces a complete stoppage of objective and subjective time within
the field. Then with machinus force-fields we'll put Earth in motion
towards another star of Sol's general size. In a thousand years you'll
come out of the barytrine field and resume your daily lives under the
light of a brand-new sun. It's as simple as that."
Dusty eyed Scyth sourly. "Maybe I've got this wrong," he said. "Maybe
you think we live a hell of a lot longer than we do. Maybe you live a
thousand years and more but we--"
Scyth held up a hand. It was the hand that held the glass, which was
empty. Dusty, reacting as he always did to the sight of an empty glass,
filled it despite the fact that he felt that Scyth Radnor was a long
way from being a friend.
* * * * *
The visitor from space smiled indulgently. "You miss the point,
Dusty," said Scyth, nodding his thanks for the drink. "I said that
the barytrine field produces a complete stasis in time. It will snap
on ... a thousand years will pass ... it will snap off. To us, we will
live and die and never see you again. But for you and yours, if you
drop a marble before the field goes on, time will cease for you until
the field goes off, and your marble will hit the floor a thousand years
from now. You will feel nothing. There will be a tiny flick of light.
If you are watching the sun it will probably blink and return slightly
off-center because we never can be that precise. If you are watching
the stars at night, they will wink out and wink on, and be in a new
pattern. You will feel nothing."
"Yes, but, look here, we--"
Scyth smiled again. "Oh, you'll be repaid. We'll raise you from your
present primitive level--"
"Primitive?"
Scyth nodded. "Primitive," he said. "You're as primitive to us as your
savages are to you."
"But--"
"Look, Dusty, thirty thousand years ago, Marandis was still ahead of
your present state of development. I can say this because your people
at the present time still have no inkling as to the inconsistencies
in the theory of general relativity. Someday soon you will discover
that general relativity does not fit all the cases. Then you will
propose the machinus theory of space-time. The machinus theory works
where relativity does not. Then," glowed Scyth, "you will discover
the phanoband carriers which operate in a way as to completely deny
relativity in every concept. From there you find the barytrine field
forces. But you're still primitive, Dusty."
Dusty eyed the Marandanian sourly.
Scyth continued, "You'd find little in common with us," he said. "You'd
find that you would have to re-educate yourself before you could even
understand us. Why, there are people in our culture who would take
advantage of your ignorance."
Dusty nodded. His hazy knowledge of history presented him with a
costume drama of Sir Walter Raleigh handing over a ten, two fives, and
four ones to Chief Sitting Bull and receiving in return an engraved
bill of sale for the Island of Manhattan. This negotiation was sealed
with a slug of liquor out of a bottle labeled 'Bourbon, Bottled in
Kentucky.' (Pocahontas, standing to one side, received a string of
beads.)
Scyth went on:
"The big problem, Dusty, so far as you are concerned is the preparation
of your people. We cannot be precise about the position of the new
sun. We could not possibly hope to keep any semblance of your stellar
geography. When the barytrine field goes on, it will produce an effect
similar to reaching the splice in a reel of film. With no warning,
no pain, strain, nor furor the sun will snap slightly aside to its
new position. On the night-side the stars will flick instantly to a
new pattern. This sort of change would cause great hysteria and fear.
Unless the people are prepared for the sudden change. So, Dusty, you
as a high official in your Space Patrol must carry our message to your
people."