It had been night, and suddenly it was day.
There was no twilight zone, no period of transition. The craft shot out
of the Earth's shadow into the full blaze of the sun, and it was like
somebody turning on all the lights in the world in the middle of a dark
room.
Wyatt flinched and turned his head away. When he dared to look again
there was a filter lens over the port. Actually it must have slid into
place at once, or the raw glare would have blinded him. And now space
seemed to be brimming over with light, all the blackness hidden beyond
that golden blaze.
He could see Makvern's craft, still in position ahead and to one side,
its polished rim flashing and glittering. It seemed to skim through
the ocean of light like a fleeting shadow, and Wyatt found himself
mesmerized by the illusion that he, too, was being buoyed up and
whirled along, a chip on the floods of heaven.
Brinna hunched brooding over her controls and never gave it all a
second look. Wyatt realized that of course this was an old story to
her. She must have seen suns all over the galaxy and consider them no
more interesting than street lamps.
It was not an old story to Wyatt. He was still frightened to death
of being where he was, but even the fear was getting lost in the
overwhelming wonder and magnificence of it. He craned his neck around
to peer at the actual sun itself, but that was behind them and the
ports on that side of the cockpit were blacked out completely. All
he could see were shaking veils of fire that sprang out suddenly to
cover half his field of vision and then fell back, streaming in golden
streams. He thought these must be solar prominences, or part of the
corona. The golden flood of light spread out and out and he could not
see any end to it, though he knew there must be one. Rushing obliquely
ahead of the craft was a thin black knife-edged blade cutting sharp
across the radiance, and he knew that that was their own shadow.
There was the light, and Makvern's craft, and the shadow, and nothing
else. Then a white curved thing like a gnawed bone slid into view, and
he knew it was the edge of the Moon.
They headed toward it. For the first time Wyatt had something by which
to estimate their speed. Whatever it was in miles per hour, it was
too damned fast. The Moon fairly sprang at them. He could see craters
opening and weird jagged mountains shooting up, exactly like pictures
of growing plants taken with a strobe camera. The flinty peaks glinted
like rows of teeth. Wyatt's heart came up in his throat. He understood
that Makvern and Brinna must know what they were doing, and he was
determined not to yell, but he found himself trying to push his feet
through the floor in an involuntary gesture of putting on brakes.
The two craft tilted and swung across the face of the Moon--it was only
the airlessness of space and the brilliance of the reflecting sunlight,
Wyatt knew, that made the surface seem close enough to reach out and
pick up the perfectly defined chunks of broken pumice as they passed.
Plains, craters, pinnacles and ranges, blinding white or etched with
inky shadow, flashed beneath them and then they were on top of the
terminus and over it and it was night again, black, black, black and
hung with stars.
Wyatt shook himself, feeling dazed. It was like a plunge into deep
water, stunning. The filter shield slid automatically away from
the window. He looked out at the hind side of the Moon, glimmering
mysteriously in the eternal starshine, and was not very surprised to
see that it looked very much like the familiar face.
Once more the two craft tilted and swung, and Wyatt saw the ship.
* * * * *
It hung motionless between the Moon and the stars, an enormous
cylindrical shape catching dull glints on its flanks and its blunt
nose. He could only guess its size by the area of stars it blotted out,
and even that was only a guess. It was big. Big enough.
It was not showing any lights at first, but then one came on, laying a
hard white path across the empty blackness. Makvern's craft found the
path and raced along it, slowing as it went, and presently vanished.
"What is it?" asked Wyatt, and Brinna said,
"Scout tender. You didn't think we were going all the way to Alpha
Centauri in these skimmers, did you?"
Wyatt said, "I hadn't really thought about it, one way or the other."
Alpha Centauri, he thought. My God.
Brinna put the skimmer, as she called it, into the lighted guidepath.
"You're likely to have a fairly rough time of it," she said. "They will
question you. They're not brutes, but they're thorough. I won't be able
to do anything about that. But hang on, and I'll arrange your escape as
soon as I can."
"Thank _you_," said Wyatt bitterly.
"If," said Brinna with equal bitterness, "you hadn't been in such a
blazing hurry to make me go to Washington, you wouldn't be here. So
don't blame me for all your troubles."
The skimmer slowed, climbing up the beam of light.
A resurgence of panic took hold of Wyatt. "Why Alpha Centauri? Why do I
have to go there?"
"Two reasons. We work well ahead, always planning the next campaign
before we finish the last one. I told you they'll question you. In the
normal course of events you would be shown the Centauri campaign so
that you could get a clear idea of just how we work, and then you would
be used to persuade your people not to resist."
"But you'll arrange my escape before that."
"I'll do what I can," she snapped, "as long as you keep your mouth
shut. Now we're going in, and from here on you're just another captive."
Wyatt looked at her. He didn't trust her promise, not at all. He
thought he had better never trust this dark girl too far.
The skimmer rose up into a great hatch. Wyatt heard a thunderous click
transmitted through the air in the cockpit and felt a strong jar as
what he thought must be a magnetic grapple took hold. Beyond the
window now he saw a brightly lighted space that looked as big as Grand
Central, equipped with great incomprehensible pieces of machinery. None
of them looked like any propulsion or communication machines he knew.
How did a faster-than-light ship communicate, anyway? An idea came to
him.
Small figures moved out there. He recognized them as men wearing
spacesuits. The suits were astonishingly like those being tested by the
Air Force for high-altitude flying. He thought the A.F. boys would be
glad to know their designs were good.
The skimmer was dormant, being lifted and handled by forces outside.
Brinna said, "We have to wait for pressure to build up."
The huge hatch doors beneath had closed. Presently Wyatt heard sounds
faintly from outside the skimmer, chiefly a throbbing noise like the
beating of a gigantic heart which he thought must be the air-pumps.
He nursed the idea that had come to him. He didn't think it was a very
good idea but it was the only one he had, and he had to do something,
try somehow, to get a warning to Earth. He could not just wait for
Brinna to help him escape, it might never be possible--even if she
wasn't double-crossing him as she was obviously double-crossing someone
else. He'd try his own way.
Soon a light showed on the control board and Brinna pushed a lever
under it.
She got up. "All right," she said. "You go ahead of me."
Wyatt rose, his hands still tied. He passed through the aperture and
onto the narrow stair which had unfolded from the rim. There was a
platform under the bottom rung and he stepped onto it. Brinna came
behind him. The skimmer hung suspended from a grapple on an overhead
track. Makvern's craft was just beyond it on a similar grapple. At the
end of the track was a mobile rack with three skimmers already in it
and two empty slots. Three other racks held fifteen more, stacked up
like pies in a bakery.
* * * * *
The men in spacesuits--some of them were women--were taking off their
helmets. They were looking at Wyatt, interested but not unduly so.
Makvern was walking toward them. He also was looking at Wyatt. His eyes
were dark and his skin was leathery with exposure to many suns. His
hair was rough and wiry, iron gray. His shoulders were wide and his
body was hard and narrow and his legs were long. Wyatt thought if he
had not met Makvern in another time and place he might have liked him.
As it was, he hated him.
Makvern nodded to Brinna. He wore the same black uniform, but the
insigne on his shirt was different and contained a ruby stud. He
watched Wyatt as another man untied his hands.
"A technician, eh?" he said, speaking English no better than Brinna
did, but perfectly intelligibly. "Good work, Captain. We have needed
one badly."
"Thank you," said Brinna. "I hope he'll be useful."
Makvern said to Wyatt, "What is your field?"
"Communications," said Wyatt. "And I can tell you right now that I
don't know anything more about weapons and defense than anybody who can
read the daily papers, and that I won't be useful at all."
Makvern said, "I see Brinna explained to you why you were being brought
here."
"She did. Fully."
"Well," said Makvern. "Come along."
He walked away and Brinna motioned for Wyatt to follow and he did,
padding in his sock feet over the deck. It was a hell of a thing, he
thought, to be on his way to Alpha Centauri without any shoes.
But his hands were free now. They were so sure he couldn't escape,
inside their ship. Well, he couldn't. But maybe he could do something
else. He looked at Makvern as they walked along the huge room.
"Star-ships," Wyatt said. "Faster than light. How the devil can you
communicate at speeds and distances like that?"
Makvern smiled slightly. "That's right, you said you're a
communications man. Well, there are ways. There are beams you never
heard of."
"I'd like to see an outfit that can send a signal faster than light,"
Wyatt grunted.
Makvern looked at him thoughtfully. "Why not? We'll be going right
past the communic room."
Brinna looked as though she wanted to say something, but she didn't,
and they went on out of the hold and through a neat functional
labyrinth of corridors.
"Here we are," said Makvern and opened a bulkhead door.
Wyatt sprang forward, low and fast, like a football player making a
desperate tackle. His shoulder struck Makvern in the small of the back,
his arms clasped him tight around the waist, and his weight bore him
forward and down, through the door into the communications room. They
hit the deck together, Wyatt on top, Makvern grunting heavily from the
impact. Two men inside the room sprang up from their places in alarm.
Wyatt turned his head and saw Brinna in the doorway and kicked the door
shut in her face. There was no way to lock it. He scrambled to his
feet, wild with the need for haste, and he realized then that Makvern
was not moving. He must have hit his head on the deck when he fell.
Wyatt dragged him against the door to block it, and by that time one of
the two men had turned back to his instruments and was shouting into
what Wyatt assumed to be the ship's intercom.
The other man was almost on top of him.
Wyatt could not possibly avoid that rush. The man was big and he was
young and strong and he pinned Wyatt against the wall and pounded at
him. Wyatt did not worry about prize-ring rules. He lowered his head
and butted, hard. The man staggered back, and Wyatt gave him a clip on
the jaw to help him down and then made a rush of his own, at the man
who was busily arousing the whole ship.
This man was not a pugnacious type. He looked at Wyatt with large
horrified eyes and flung up his hands in a vague gesture of striking
but Wyatt's fist took him solidly in the face and he whimpered and
turned around and folded over his own knees.
The communic room was now quiet, except for a series of noises outside
the door. Wyatt stood panting, looking at the maze of equipment.
Right here within reach was the means of warning Earth. The radio
system on this ship must be strong enough to blanket every receiver on
the planet. All he had to do was figure out how to use it.
He swore in an agony of frustration. Nothing was marked right, nothing
was as he knew it. It was all there, and it was totally useless.
He reached down and took hold of the man who was crouched on the deck
near him. He dragged him upright. He shook him.
"Listen," he said. "Listen, you're going to get this thing working.
Understand?"
The man shook his head dazedly from side to side and said something in
his own language.
Wyatt's grip became cruel. "You're going to send a message to Earth,"
he said, and then Makvern spoke quietly behind him.
"He can't understand you, Wyatt. Let him go."
* * * * *
Wyatt spun around, still holding the man. Makvern had got up. He was
standing beside the door with a weapon in his hand. The door was now
open and Brinna was standing in it, her thumbs hooked in her belt,
watching. Men were arriving behind her in the corridor.
Wyatt said, "If you shoot me you'll get your own man too." He shifted
his grip, dragging the man closer to the control panel. Feeling even
while he was speaking the absolute hopelessness of this last ditch
play, he said,
"Tell him what I want or I'll smash your communication system so
thoroughly--"
"It was a good try, Wyatt," said Makvern, not without a certain
admiration, and pressed a stud on his weapon.
Wyatt never knew what hit him.
When he awoke he was lying in a bunk in a small metal cabin. Close
beside his head there swung a curious helmet-like device linked by
cables to a squat cabinet.
Makvern was standing looking down at him. He looked alert and wary and
his hand rested casually on his holstered side-arm.
"How are you feeling now?" said Makvern.
Wyatt started a sour reply, and then he froze in an incredulous
astonishment.
Makvern had not spoken in English. He had spoken in a totally strange
language--and yet he, Wyatt, had understood him!
"What--how--" Wyatt began.
Makvern smiled. "How do you know the language of Uryx, our language,
all of a sudden? Simple. Learning-tapes."
He gestured toward the helmet and the cabinet. Wyatt gaped like a
yokel. It was too uncanny. Hearing words he'd never consciously heard
before, and yet understanding them--
He articulated with difficulty. "Learning-tapes?"
Makvern sat down. "You've been under a seda-ray for some days, Wyatt.
In fact, we're nearly to our rendezvous with the fleet, off Alpha
Centauri."
So time had passed? That wasn't surprising. But this other thing--
Makvern went on. "Don't you yet have it on your Earth, the technique of
teaching arbitrary knowledge to a subject in his sleep?"
Wyatt began to get it now. "You mean, a recorded voice repeating facts
over and over in a sleeping man's ear? Yes. We have that--but it's not
good enough to teach a man a whole new language in sleep."
"With us," said Makvern, "it is good enough. We always use it, once
we pick up the vocabulary and grammar from our first captives. Makes
it easier to question them. Instead of all our intelligence officers,
technicians and so on having to learn the captive's language, we give
him _our_ language."
It was still too much for Wyatt to take in. He lay looking at Makvern,
and after a moment he said,
"You seem like a decent guy, not a butcher or a greedy conqueror type.
Maybe you can tell me what gives your people the idea they've a right
to go around acting like a bunch of goddamned bandits."
* * * * *
Makvern smiled faintly. "Probably," he said, "because that's exactly
what we are. Uryx is still a young empire. I imagine you have learned
on Earth how empires grow--starting from a small weak poverty-ridden
state fighting for its existence and becoming, by the process of eating
its neighbors, a tremendous power able to conquer everything in sight.
When it does this it wants to gorge itself on all the things it never
had before."
He made a sweeping gesture. "Wealth, beauty, techniques, cultures,
knowledge, everything under a thousand suns that can enrich or
entertain us. We are still in this stage of acquisitiveness."
Wyatt grunted. "That all sounds very philosophic, but it still doesn't
make you anything but bandits."
"When we join the main fleet," said Makvern, refusing to be angered,
"you can take that up with Varsek."
"Varsek?"
"Commander in Chief of the Task Force. The--ah--Boss, I think you would
say."
"I'll be glad to take it up with him," Wyatt said. "And if he thinks
he's going to get any help from me, he's wrong."
He looked up at Makvern and he said suddenly, "You deliberately gave me
a chance at that communic room, didn't you?"
"Did I?"
"Yes. You didn't have to show it to me, you must have known what was in
my mind. But you had no intention of letting me get a message off to
Earth. You shammed unconsciousness till it looked like I might make it,
and then you came to and stopped me."
"Why would I do a thing like that?" Makvern asked calmly.
"Why, indeed? That's what I'm asking."
Makvern said, "Perhaps I was testing you to find out something, Wyatt.
Let me ask you a question in return. Why did you let Brinna capture you
so easily?"
"What do you mean, easily?"
"You had a weapon. Yet you didn't use it on Brinna. Why?"
Wyatt became instantly wary and on guard. Makvern, then, suspected
the arrangement between Brinna and himself, suspected Brinna of a
double-cross? He'd better be careful.
He said, "What's this about Brinna? To me, she's just a female wildcat
that dropped out of the sky."
"She is what you would call very high brass," Makvern said. "A high
officer of the Task Force, completely trusted by Commander Varsek."
Had Makvern faintly emphasized the word "trusted"? Wyatt wasn't sure.
He was only sure now that some devil's broth of intrigue went on in
the immense Task Force that followed its looting voyage through the
galactic suns, and that he, Wyatt, was less than the smallest pawn in
the hidden game.
"I wouldn't," said Makvern, "think too much of Brinna. She's beautiful,
I know. But she's in love."
Oddly, Wyatt felt a pang to hear that. "In love? With whom?"
"With power," Makvern said grimly, and then the next moment the light
in the cabin went blue and there was a vertiginous shock that made
Wyatt feel as though he was falling, falling, everything gone from
around him, plunging through abysses of darkness--
A whining sound went up to a shriek and passed beyond hearing, and then
the lights burned white again and the dizziness in his head passed.
"What the devil--" he began huskily.
Makvern stood up. "We just went out of overdrive. We've reached the
Task Force. Come on Wyatt--for you, this is it."