Gant Nerley was impressed with Dusty's swagger and self-confidence.
So were the rest of the men in the room, with the exception of the
representatives of the two shipping companies, and they had chips on
their shoulders. So Gant Nerley looked around from face to face and
then said, in an official tone:
"It would appear that Terra is of a level of development that mitigates
against immediate action. Therefore we shall declare a recess, during
which time we shall study the Terran people. If Terra measures up,
other steps must be taken."
There was a chorus of "Aye!" and the sound of chairs being pushed back
and the noise of feet on the floor. The babble of voices arose as the
members broke into little groups and began discussing the problem.
But Dusty did not hear them. The self-confidence had oozed out of him
and he slumped in his chair, staring at some shine on a bit of the
table silver, trying to think of something other than the horrible
certainty. For while Dusty Britton had bluffed the Marandanians, he
knew without a shadow of a doubt that his bluff was being called
and it would not stand up. All it would take was the Marandanian
Investigating Committee scouring Terra to find one single man who had
one shred of reason to believe that matter could exceed the velocity
of light. Oh, there were such people. But the man who professed such
opinions believed it because he wanted to believe it; because he hoped
someday that it might be accomplished. He was the man who shrugged
off experiments that followed the rules and acted according to the
equations. He was the man who had faith but no proof.
* * * * *
Beyond a doubt, the report of any such committee would recommend that
Terra be bundled into its barytrine field with no delay, and that Sol
be nudged into the three-day variable needed for the beacon on this
particular dogleg of the journey across the galaxy.
Dusty had succeeded in his own way, but now he knew that it was not
enough. He, himself, had convinced them that Terra was worthy of
notice. The rest of Terra would let him down. Still lost in his own
unhappy thoughts, he became vaguely aware that the babble of discussion
was stopping and that one man was raising his voice to get an audience.
It was the Transgalactic representative. He was standing by his place
at the table, talking in the tone of voice used by a professional
lecturer hammering home an unpleasant fact:
"--obvious by the animal ferocity of this Terran, his threats and his
willingness to plunge into physical combat, that he and his kind cannot
be of high culture. I am asked whether or not we may judge an entire
race of people by one man, and I agree that we cannot. But then view
the reaction of his companion who flares up in a fit of red, raw anger,
taking offense at being properly catalogued. I ask you, gentlemen, is
there any excuse for this? Am I not a native male of Marandis? Is she
not a native female of Terra?
"And so by their actions, both violent in nature and unpredictable in
direction, they have shown themselves to be uncouth. Who knows what
offense they will take next? Does a man among us dare to speak freely
with either man or woman of Terra alone and unprotected? No, because
no one can ever know beforehand what peculiarity of their own limited
semantics will be rubbed the wrong way, setting them into a violent
fury. Dusty Britton has boasted that he can take any of us out and wipe
up the street with us. This cannot be denied. But what does it prove?
Only that his shoulders are broad and his back strong and his fists
hard. And that he has been trained in violence.
"Now, gentlemen, consider this next argument: What has Terra to lose?
No more than a familiar night sky, really. The time under the barytrine
field will pass without their notice. As for the time lost in respect
to the rest of the galaxy, since they have had no contact with it, they
cannot be affected by the loss. They prate about losing a thousand
years of advancement. Consider how soon they would be taking to space
if we had not found them. Might it not be yet a thousand years before
contact with the galaxy took place? Yet as it stands now, this man and
this woman will live to see galactic commerce, whereas they would be
dead and gone without ever knowing of the galaxy if Marandis had not
found them. And having been granted that, they still show the ignorant
rebellion of children.
"They have not the foresight to understand that so far as they are
concerned, less than a week of their apparent time will pass before the
ships and men of Marandis will land on Terra in its new surroundings,
to treat with them, to lead them, to educate them, to bring to
Terra all of the glories and benefits of galactic civilization--no,
gentlemen, _to return to Terra its galactic heritage, lost so long ago.
Its birthright returned!_
"And yet what response do we get? Objection and rebellion and threats
of violence. So I ask you, are we to be frightened by this small
primitive world that lies like a barrier across our path? Are we to be
cowed by a show of force? Are we? And if we are, shall we run in fear
from a race of men who bear missile-propelling weapons?
"Look at Dusty Britton and his companion. They sit there angry,
possibly planning their own form of revenge to take place if we have
the temerity to proceed. Then let me ask you, supposing they do object?
Suppose they do resent our meddling in their small lives? Are we to
be frightened of bomb and gun--we who can put them back into their
barytrine field and keep them there until they are willing to agree?
_And without the loss of a life?_ Gentlemen, this whole meeting reminds
me far too much of parents who try to argue logically with children
over bedtime instead of packing the infant off. Who knows what is best?
Child or parent?"
* * * * *
The man from Transgalactic paused a moment to let this point sink
in. Then he said, "Gant Nerley, I object to your proposal. We need
no more investigation. We know what these Terrans are and how they
react. They offer little to Marandis at present. They are no more than
a responsibility to us and as such they owe us our superior rights.
Therefore, unless I am ordered at this moment to cease and desist, I am
going to proceed. Do I hear such an order?"
A babble of voices rose.
"Gentlemen," said Transgalactic, suavely, "I offer you a short and
quick route to the Spiral Cluster."
He stood there for fully a minute listening to the clamor of individual
discussions going on in the smaller groups around the table. Then he
hit the table with his fist, bowed sardonically to Dusty and Barbara,
and strode out.
Dusty looked at Gant. "Can't we do something about this? Can that guy
go do as he pleases?"
Gant shrugged. "We are a government that guides but does not rule,
suggests but does not demand, recommends but goes not force. I can and
will put a stop to his activity providing that you show direct evidence
that Terra and Sol are of importance in their present location, that
Terra has something to offer Marandis, that you are not what he claims.
However, if what he said is true, then what he is about to do is
acceptable."
"But we--" and Dusty stopped short. He had no argument strong enough to
convince this Marandanian that Terra would lose anything but its own
jealous prestige.
Dusty stood up slowly. "Come on, Barbara, let's go home. At least we
can be among friends. I'd hate to be marooned here while Terra was
smothered in the barytrine field."
Barbara stood up and leaned against his side. "Yes, Dusty," she said in
a throaty contralto.
Gant smiled wanly. "I'll see that you get home," he said. "Forgive us,
Dusty. You'll really lose little and gain much. I--"
Dusty looked at Gant. Then he looked down at Barbara. Then up at Gant
again.
"So I've failed," he said in a low voice. "I've tried and failed. And
I am aware of the fact that Terra will not lose much. That isn't the
point. It's just that I, Dusty Britton, am a personal failure. I should
like to be able to say that I don't give a damn what other people
think, but I can't. I care a lot what other people think, because for
the next forty or fifty years or more I've got a living to make, and
making a living is a lot easier if the entire world is not convinced
that I am a no-goodnik. But then, who am I to stand in the way of
galactic progress."
"Dusty, I regret that the rest of your people will not be able to see
the thing I am going to show you. Maybe you can describe it when you
return. Come with me."
Gant led them from the hall, then to a moving walk that hurled them out
and across one of the flamboyant arches between buildings. Here Gant
stopped to display his credentials to a man in uniform, and to sign a
register that also listed Dusty and Barbara and their home planet Terra.
They went along a corridor that curved gently; through a heavy metal
door that opened on response to a signal sequence delivered against a
button.
The room inside was vast, truly vast. It was a vertical cylinder and
it must have been more than a thousand feet in diameter and three or
four hundred feet tall. They stood inside of the door on a narrow metal
catwalk that ran completely around the circle, its far side lost in the
distance and the dimness, for the room was not lighted from above, but
from below.
It was a pleasant glow, a flat, hazy, wispy glow from a gas-like cloud
that floated in the room a hundred feet below the catwalk ... a scale
model of the galaxy.
* * * * *
It looked like any photographs of one of the galaxies taken through a
telescope except that this model was dotted here and there with winking
pinpoints and stringed through and through with thin lines that glowed
in many colors, some solid colors and some in two-color spirals,
like coded wire cable. Here and there were faintly glowing spherical
volumes containing many stars, or rectangular volumes confined by
planes of faint color-glow. Certain of these clusters were linked with
other clusters by the zigzag lines that wound and interwove around and
through in a tangled skein.
Gant Nerley picked up a small cylinder from a rack on the railing of
the catwalk. A narrow pencil of light pointed out, and he aimed it
towards the center, some five hundred feet out to the middle of the
hall. "Marandis," he said. Then he brought the pointer-light across
towards them slowly, to stop a hundred feet from their position.
"Sol," he said. "The lines are courses surveyed and registered by
the various companies, you can gather that the colored stars are our
inhabited systems and the volumes register certain clusters. That faint
greenish-yellow course that ends out there by Sol is the Transgalactic
course set up to reach from Marandis to the Spiral Cluster which lies
almost at our feet."
The magnificence of the spectacle was enhanced by the silence in the
room. The galaxy, it seemed, lay at their feet and with no irreverence,
and only awe, the viewer felt as though he were standing by the side of
God, looking down at his Work.
In a hushed voice, Dusty asked, "Is this where they survey the courses?
Couldn't figure out a way around Sol?"
Gant laughed sympathetically, breaking the hushed awe. "Look at it and
think, Dusty Britton."
Dusty looked, and Barbara looked, both in awed silence as Gant Nerley
went on:
"In that model, which looks like a wisp of gas, there are fifteen
billion individual pinpoints. Think, Dusty. One-five, comma,
zero-zero-zero, comma, zero-zero-zero, comma, zero-zero-zero stars
in one galaxy. Across the breadth of this room it lies, scaled down
to represent the hundred thousand light-years of its diameter at the
rate of a hundred light-years to the foot. Eight and one third light
years per inch, Dusty Britton, so your Sol and your Sirius lie about
an inch apart. Now, Dusty, in order to make the stars visible, they
must be above a certain intrinsic size, and in the size of the stars
the scale of the model is violated. Each tiny glowing point is about
one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter. That makes the scalar size of the
stars about a half light year in diameter. The diameter of the colored
lines that represent courses is of the same magnitude, so as we go into
the model--as we may--we will find that the courses touch, intersect,
and lie tangent to stars that are actually far from the flight in real
space.
"What I am saying, of course, is only a new concept of something that
you already know, but pertaining to another subject with which you have
every right to be more familiar. Take a globe of your Terra. It is
excellent for locating areas, finding cities, lakes, oceans, mountain
ranges; anything gross enough to find physical size upon the map. But
you cannot use it for a road map to direct you to the home of a friend,
because the details of such a trip are much too fine. So we use it for
large-scale mapping, but could not possibly use it for the delicate
business of course mapping."
"But if you enlarged a section?"
Gant Nerley nodded. "It has been tried. No good. You see, Dusty, this
was made by going deep into space and making stereograms from all
angles. The transparencies are used in projectors all around the hall.
But as you may know, the finest photogram loses definition when it is
enlarged too much. As for delicate operations, Dusty, just to prove our
point we are going to enter the model."
Gant led them to a control panel in the railing and from a sheet of
paper in his hand he set the dials.
* * * * *
The vast circular runway lowered all around the hall and the
galaxy-model rose, giving the appearance of turning upward past them.
"We are coming down toward and below the plane of our galaxy at the
scalar rate of about a hundred thousand light-years per minute," said
Gant. Then a segment of the catwalk detached from the wall and went
forward on a long girder.
The bright pinpoints leaped out at them, giving Dusty the same feeling
as he had had in the space flight, except that the model lacked the
waves of heat as the little pinpoints passed. He looked at Barbara
and watched the tiny points plunge into her skin to disappear, then
reappear behind her, as if they passed through her body harmlessly.
He looked at his hand as the points streamed through, and he waggled
his fingers around a cluster and watched them twinkle. They penetrated
clusters and dark-cloud areas, placed where fifty stars occupied a
volume of less than a couple of cubic inches, spots where dusky,
shapeless masses represented globs of fifty light-years in diameter.
Rusty caught on. Thoughtfully he looked at Barbara and made a rough
computation that he and she were a couple of hundred light-years apart.
His eyes, he thought, must be about thirty light-years apart, and the
diameter of his head, at eight-and-a-third light-years per inch--
Dusty began to feel light-headed.
Through and through the model ran the colored lines, tangled and
skeined and then they were facing the point where the greenish-yellow
course-line ended.
Above the control panel was a faintly glowing sphere about two inches
in diameter.
"Sol?" asked Gant.