Here in the windowed bridge, the background was all stars.
Clouds of stars, rivers of them, chains and globes of them, and drawn
across them here and there like curtains of the most glorious fire
ever imagined were the shining nebulae. They were all colors. Red,
blue, smoky yellow, green, diamond white. Some of them, Wyatt realized,
were not stars at all but galaxies, scattered out in careless millions
through the apparently infinite universe. To an earthbound, skybound
man like himself, this was almost too much to take. Look at ten billion
stars and a million galaxies and all the empty space between for them
to roam around in, and realize that this is the universe, you are in
the middle of it, not standing on the edge looking up the way you do
on Earth but right in the middle of it, the nothingness and allness of
it without end, amen. If you have no religion you get one in a hurry,
because obviously only God could have made this.
Wyatt was dimly aware that someone--Makvern--was talking to him. Alpha
Centauri. A hand pointed, guiding him back from the infinite to the
particular.
Ahead, still very far away but close enough to stand out from among the
more distant stars like a beacon lamp, was a yellow sun.
"There's a companion," Makvern said, "but it's insignificant and did
not prevent the formation of a stable planetary system around the
primary. Alpha Centauri has eight planets--it's very much like your own
Sol. The two inner planets are too hot, and the outer ones are too
cold, but the third and fourth support life. The third is closer to
the sun than Earth and is still in a comparatively primitive stage of
evolution. We can pick up minerals there but nothing else. The fourth
world is our target."
Wyatt shut his eyes against the blaze of suns and nebulae and wheeling
galaxies and tried to concentrate on Alpha Centauri, its fourth planet,
and himself.
"Where's your fleet?" he asked, and opened his eyes again, looking
closer at hand instead of trying to see the end of creation.
Once more Makvern pointed.
Once more Wyatt was stunned, this time in a much more personal way.
Suns and galaxies were beyond him, the incredible handiwork of God, but
men had built these ships. And the one was almost as overwhelming a
thing as the other.
It was the hell and all of a fleet.
It too was a long way off, though not anything like as far as Alpha
Centauri. Makvern explained that they did not attempt any very close
maneuvering in hyper-drive, where you counted your fractional seconds
of error in multiples of parsecs. The main task force would approach
the system of Alpha Centauri at planetary speeds and deploy according
to the master attack plan already decided upon while the fleet had
been busy plundering the hapless worlds of the star-system before this
one. The scout ship was now on an intersecting course.
Wyatt watched this convergence with a mounting awe and an increasing
conviction that no matter how many warnings he might bring to Earth it
would not do them one bit of good.
He had thought the scout tender was huge when he first saw it hanging
beyond the dark side of the Moon. The closer he got to the fleet the
smaller the tender seemed to him and the smaller he felt himself, until
he thought that this must be pretty much like a minnow's-eye view of
a school of whales passing in all their majesty, accompanied on the
flanks by the swift sinister forms of great sharks. The analogy was
obvious but not a bad one, Wyatt thought. The phalanx of huge dark
shapes swam in space as in black water, touched with vagrant gleams
of light that might have been phosphorescence instead of starshine.
The hugest of them--the heavy support craft, the troop transports, the
supply ships, and the swag-bellied monstrosities that Brinna said were
used to store and carry loot--travelled together in a wedge-shaped
formation, with the flagship at the apex. Ahead and on both wings
were the smaller, faster destroyer-type craft, heavily armed but
maneuverable. These were the spearhead of any attack, and the defenders
of the fleet from any hostile action in space. Behind came a shoal
of smaller craft like the tender, the inglorious but indispensable
work-horses of the fleet.
* * * * *
Clear across the galaxy these ships had come, built and manned by
humans, conceived in their brains and controlled by their hands. It
seemed a pity their purpose could not have been more noble.
The Task Force swept closer and closer, rolled over the tender like a
mighty wave, engulfed it, and carried it along in its resistless rush
toward Alpha Centauri.
A communicator at the back of the bridge, which had been rattling away
in the course of routine technicalities, suddenly changed its tone.
"Clear channels," said a brisk important voice. "Clear channels for
Number One." The operator at Fleet Control whose image had appeared
on the screen promptly pulled the switch on himself. Involuntarily
everyone in the bridge room snapped to attention, even Makvern and
Brinna.
Swiftly, under her breath, Brinna said, "What does he want that
couldn't wait for our regular report?"
She looked worried. Guilty conscience, Wyatt thought. But Makvern's
conscience was clear, at least where Wyatt was concerned, and he looked
worried too. Almost, you might say, apprehensive.
When he turned to face the screen there was no sign of this in his
face, nothing but the properly alert expression of a staff officer
about to speak to his chief.
A smartly turned out operator, owner of the officious voice, appeared
in the screen. "ST-6," he said. "ST-6, this is Number One calling.
Number One, calling for Staff Captain Makvern."
Makvern stepped forward into the pick-up area. "Captain Makvern here."
"Stand by, sir. Commander Varsek is ready to speak to you."
Makvern stood by. He seemed perfectly at ease. Brinna's mouth was
drawn tight and her eyes were narrowed. Wyatt started to say something
and she shook her head at him fiercely. He shut up. The bridge waited
silently as though the Supreme Being was about to step into it.
The operator had vanished from the screen. It remained blank for a
moment or two. Then it brightened again and Commander Varsek was
mirrored in it.
He nodded to Makvern, who saluted. He was sitting behind a big desk
covered with charts, papers, microfilm spools, a couple of viewers,
and various communic media. In contrast to the immaculate turn-out of
his operator--and everybody else that Wyatt had so far seen--Varsek's
uniform shirt was open down the front, his sleeves were rolled up,
and the shirt itself looked as though he had been digging ditches in
it. He gave the impression of a man enormously embroiled in work, the
two-hours-of-sleep-a-night, coffee-and-benzedrine-and-I-thrive-on-it
type that automatically makes everybody else feel like a lazy slob. All
this part of him Wyatt found only mildly irritating. It was Varsek's
face and what he sensed behind it that made Wyatt feel he could really
hate this man.
Varsek was a big lean man, and his face was big and lean, with a
lot of bone in it and no softness anywhere, and no warmth, and no
friendliness. He smiled, and the smile was a lie. Wyatt thought all the
rest of it was a lie too, or at least a deliberate pose. Only his eyes
were true. They looked at Makvern, and then at Brinna, and then for
quite a long moment at Wyatt, and they were rapacious and hungry, cold
and cruel, highly intelligent, and disconcertingly demonstrative of a
mind capable of handling nearly anything.
"This is your captive, is it?" he said. "Good. He looks more
intelligent than any I've seen yet." He turned his attention back to
Makvern. "I've sent a skimmer for you. You too, Brinna."
Makvern said, in an almost too carefully expressionless voice, "We were
about to report to the flagship."
"This is important, Makvern. Can't wait. I've got Loran aboard, very
sick, about dying I'd say. I want you and Brinna here." His gaze
flicked again to Wyatt. "Bring him along. It may help him to understand
us better."
"Yes, sir," said Makvern.
Varsek nodded and the screen went dead.
Somebody said, "Skimmer's coming into the airlock now, sir."
Makvern turned around and looked at Brinna. His face was absolutely
white. So was hers. White, frightened, and bitterly angry.
"Who is Loran?" asked Wyatt.
"One of our under officers," Makvern said, too quietly. "Come on, we
mustn't keep them waiting."
They left the bridge and went, not below to the main launching hold,
but aft to a small lock. On the way Wyatt asked,
"Can you tell me what's going on?"
"For your own sake," said Makvern, "no."
They got into the skimmer and the pilot took it away and they sat stiff
and silent like three people going to a wake. And Wyatt had an idea
he was about to get a little closer to the truth of whatever forces
were operating behind the scenes here. He needed to know, needed it
desperately. He was prepared to sell or double-cross anybody including
himself in order to get a warning to Earth in time, but before he could
do that he had to know who was buying, and what, and for how much.
The skimmer passed swiftly through the fleet, past the great
dull-gleaming hulls tarnished by a thousand atmospheres, pitted and
scarred by the cosmic dust and drift of half a galaxy.
The black enormous form of the flagship loomed ahead, blotting out the
stars. The skimmer was gathered into it. A minute later, as they stood
close together at the ladder head, Makvern whispered in English,
"This is going to be ugly. Keep out of it, you understand? No matter
what!"