For a moment hope lighted her face, but it quickly faded. "There
is a time-lag when the shield is deactivated, Aram," she said. "If
we use it now, we won't be able to operate the locks in time. They
are radio-controlled from inside the ship and the shield stops all
radiation ... both ways!"
"Then we'll ram the locks!"
"Will the ship stand it?"
"I don't know, Deve, but it's our only chance. If we can confuse them
just long enough to get under way, we may make it. Show me how the
shield is energized."
Deve shrugged and sat down before the control panel. Her fingers
flashed lightly over the banks of switches. A low whining of generators
started deep in the vitals of the small starship. Aram, watching the
process, glanced through the ports at the melting steelite door of the
cavern, and he was amazed to see the scene fade before his eyes into a
murky grayness.
"They can't see us now," Deve Jennet said with a slow smile, "and we
can't see them."
"Let's go," breathed Aram.
* * * * *
He hurriedly began rigging the Serpent for flight, warming the jets,
energizing the pumps and aerators. He gave silent thanks for the
rigid training of the Thirty Suns Navy, for his hands automatically
and swiftly found the proper instruments and controls. Gyros began
their ascending crescendo, whining in strident unison with the shield
generators to shape a harmonic pattern that pulsed in the eardrums and
set the teeth on edge. Accumulators filled slowly, relays clicked shut
as the Serpent poised itself for flight.
A harsh, thumping sound made Aram Jerrold pause. He cursed bitterly
and resumed his work. The Greens, of course, were not fools. They
could not see the Serpent, nor, presumably, had they ever encountered
an invisible craft before. But having melted down the steelite portal
at last and flooded into the vast pit, they could hear the Serpent's,
myriad warnings of impending takeoff, and they must have begun raking
the pit with projectile fire. Some of the shots were finding the
invisible Serpent, and Aram knew that the destroyer's light armor could
not long withstand a shelling.
"Deve! Has Mikal had time to get the Star Cluster clear of the locks
now?" Jerrold shouted at the girl over the whine of machinery.
Deve Jennet had heard the projectiles too. She nodded her head and
braced herself against the navigation table. "Let's go!" she shouted
back.
With pounding heart, Aram Jerrold lifted the Serpent off the floor
of the pit. Blindly, he let the invisible starship nose into the
open shaft above. He knew that the moment the Greens realized their
quarry was gone, they would begin firing blindly up into the vertical
tunnel above them. If one shot should hit the jets...! Aram shuddered.
The destroyer would come hurtling down out of the shaft to smashing
destruction on the floor of the pit. He held his breath and eased the
power forward. The Serpent responded eagerly, leaping up the mile-long
tunnel....
Ahead lay the second set of locks and then the shallows of the sea.
The small starship careened upward, scraping its flanks on the smooth
metal of the shaft. Aram sat frozen before the controls. A thousand
questions burned in his mind, and there were no sure answers for any of
them.
He couldn't be sure that Mikal had gotten the Star Cluster free. He
might at this moment be driving the Serpent into the atomic tail-flare
of the larger ship. He did not know whether or not the small destroyer
could withstand the impact of the locks ... or the sea itself. Still,
he drove the ship upward and outward, the automatics set to continue
the same suicidal course should his own human hands falter or fail.
He shouted for Deve to strap herself to the deck rings near the
navigation table and make ready for the impact. Time seemed to slow
down to a crawling pace. The breath came harshly in his throat, and
sweat coursed down his naked back. His bare feet and legs felt cold and
clammy....
He was not ready when it came. The first rending screech of tearing
metal filled the tiny control room and the instrument panel came
smashing up to meet him. He heard a whooshing roar and the scream of
protesting gyros. He heard Deve cry out as her bindings ripped loose,
and then blackness seemed to splash up out of the control panel and
engulf him....
* * * * *
Jerrold woke. His head was pounding painfully and his lips felt mashed
and bruised. The strap that had held him to the pilot's seat had
broken, and he lay across the instrument panel in a welter of glass
shards from shattered dials. The instruments were smeared with
blood ... his blood, Aram realized numbly. He put a hand to his face,
and it came away sticky and red.
The atomics throbbed, and the dials told him that the Serpent was still
under way. The high pitched hissing of escaping air attested to the
damage, but it also told him that the ship was in space ... and clear
of Atmion IV.
Jerrold got dizzily to his feet and looked about for Deve. She lay
crumpled in a corner under a chart-locker, bruised and scratched by
the impact of the crash. She moaned slightly as Aram picked her up and
carried her to the pilot's chair.
Red alarm lights glared at him from several points on the panel,
showing that five forward compartments had been crumpled and ruptured
by the ramming of the locks. The pressure in the ship was low enough
to add to his discomfort. Methodically, fighting off the dizziness,
Aram sealed off the leaky compartments and started the aerators to
build up the pressure. The greyness beyond the parts indicated that the
energy shield was still operating. The Serpent was traveling in slow
first-stage flight toward Kaidor, four and one half light years distant.
"Aram!"
Jerrold turned to see that Deve had opened her eyes and was staring at
him, horrified. He tried to grin reassuringly at her, but his bruised
lips succeeded only in grimacing grotesquely through the bloody smear
of his face.
Deve got to her feet, found the surgical kit that all Fleet vessels
carried and set to work mending the damage. Aram was glad to find that
aside from his battered lips, he had only a long scalp cut along his
hair-line where the instrument panel had tried to decapitate him. The
kit contained balms and soothing anaesthetics, and presently both Deve
and Jerrold were patched and cleansed of blood and dirt.
There were coveralls in the lockers, and spaceboots; and a hot drink
from the robot galley added to their rising spirits. They had escaped
a force of the best the Thirty Suns Government could throw against
them and they were free of Atmion IV. Their ship was damaged, but
serviceable ... and they were together.
Deve cut the energy shield and Aram took star-shots to reckon their
position. If the Greens had chased them in spacecraft, their long
flight under the shield had certainly lost the pursuit, for the space
behind them toward Atmion IV was clear. The three stars of the system
blazed below them and Aram pointed the ship at the spot where the
yellow Kaidor Sun lay just under the range of visibility, shifting
into second-stage flight. The three suns of Atmion streaked into a
polychromatic blur, and the Serpent plunged through the interstellar
night toward the Thirtieth Decant and the unknown.
* * * * *
It was a star-system of ten planets. Aram Jerrold could see clearly
that, as was generally the case, one of them was a ringed giant. Under
planetary first-stage drive, he brought the small starship down into
the system's ecliptic plane. At a distance of one light day, as the
Serpent passed the outermost planet, the energy shield was reactivated.
During the days of the trip from the Twenty Ninth Decant and the Atmion
Suns, no word had come from Kant Mikal and his party aboard the Star
Cluster. Both Jerrold and Deve Jennet had pondered the advisability
of trying to establish contact with the larger ship, but finally they
decided to maintain radio silence. Aram felt it inadvisable to risk
detection of the Serpent so close to Santane's stronghold.
Instead, they resolved to stick to the original plan as outlined by
Kant Mikal back on Atmion IV--landing on the third planet of the Kaidor
Sun and there awaiting word from the Star Cluster. Meanwhile, Aram
could attempt to repair the damage caused the Serpent by the ramming of
the locks.
On a dead-reckoning course, Jerrold guided the small spaceship sunward.
The peaceful pleasure of the days in space was forgotten now, forced
out of his mind by the nearness of Kaidor V and its hellish spawn of
destruction. Thinking of the poor creature he had seen in the tunnels
back on Atmion IV, Aram was taken with a sick chill. Here, under the
alien light of Kaidor Sun, the virus that had degenerated what had once
been a man lay quiescent in the sleek shells of uncounted interstellar
missiles, ready to leap out and away and carry its mind-destroying
power to all the inhabited worlds of the Thirty Suns. Jerrold knew that
the use of such a weapon would mean disaster. If war came, it would be
a war of stellar giants, smashing planets and minds alike in a hideous
carnival of death and savagery. The spawn of the Kaidor Sun meant
ruin....
As yet, Aram reflected with faint hope, there had been no break.
Provincial Governor Santane was still, as far as anyone outside the
Thirtieth Decant knew, a loyal civil servant of the Thirty Suns
bureaucracy. The Special Intelligence reports that clicked methodically
through the Serpent's subspace communicator gave no hint of rebellion
against the banner of the Spaceship and Sun in the Kaidor system. It
was possible, too, thought Jerrold, that the Group under Kant Mikal
could convince Santane of the folly of open defiance. But even as the
thoughts formed in his mind, doubt grew. Kant Mikal had said that
Santane had already stopped weapons shipments to the rest of the
Thirty Suns. He had no such authority. It would take some time for
an investigation to be activated through the ponderous bureaucratic
procedures of the Tetrarchy, but investigation there would definitely
be ... and Santane could have nothing in his mind but war with the
Thirty Suns Government to have taken such a risk. Kaidor Province was
the scientific arsenal of the Tetrarchy, and as such strategically
valuable beyond its intrinsic worth. It would not be too difficult,
Aram realized, to imagine that the man who ruled Kaidor could rule the
Tetrarchy. Only it wasn't so. No one system could muster enough power
to crush the Thirty Suns without being smashed to rubble itself in the
process. A man who had served in a galactic Fleet could understand
that. But a man who had served only as a governor could not, and _that_
was the danger....
As a naval officer, Aram Jerrold knew something that Santane did not.
He knew that vast navies will fight and destroy long after the hope of
victory has gone.
If war came, there would _be_ no victory. There would be only galactic
disaster....
* * * * *
With the energy shield off, and under reduced power, the Serpent came
down into the atmosphere of Kaidor III. The planet's satellite lay,
like a crescent of silver, in the dark blue, star-flecked sky of the
stratosphere.
Beneath them, the vast curving surface of the planet flattened as the
starship sank lower, the mottled blues and greens and browns taking
shape of oceans, islands and continents. The sky grew lighter--a pale
blue--as the Serpent crossed the twilight line and slanted down toward
the surface of the turbulent sea.
Scud clouds raced across the sky and light rain pattered against the
ports of the slowly moving spaceship. Quite suddenly the squall passed,
and the Serpent hung above a sea of brilliant blues and greens, frothed
with white-caps.
Deve watched through the ports, enraptured. "Look, Aram! Look at the
colors in that sea!"
Side by side they watched the play of colors in the ocean, fascinated
by the swirling grace and chromatic wonder of the waves.
In the far distance lay the low silhouette of land. Jerrold let the
Serpent move toward it, keel skimming the dancing white crowns of the
sea.
There were a few graceful sea-birds with leathery wings and brightly
plumed breasts, and there was life in the sea. Deve and Jerrold could
see schools of lithe shapes flashing silver beneath the water. But the
land itself was silent. The white sand of a curving beach came up out
of the distance to meet them. Beyond lay green rolling hills and wooded
slopes bright with flowers, and farther into the glare of the morning
sun great snow-capped mountains reared their jagged spines against the
blue in the sky.
"Aram ... it's beautiful!" the girl breathed. "It's the world we
dreamed of finding...."
Jerrold remembered the nights they had shared back on mighty Terminus.
He recalled their idle dreams of a world beyond the farthest stars
where they could be free. This, he felt, was such a world.
Deve turned around suddenly to face him. There was longing in her
eyes--a look of wistfulness that filled him with tenderness.
"We ... we must never forget this world, Aram," she said. "Perhaps one
day we can come here...." She let her voice sink low. "Oh, Aram! If
we could only stay here! If we could just forget everything but this
lovely, peaceful world!"
Aram Jerrold thought of Santane and the threatening clouds of war.
He thought of the mighty, senseless civilization of the Thirty
Suns--oblivious to the dangers that threatened to engulf it. Quite
suddenly he hated it all. Hated it more than he had ever despised
it when it had tortured and persecuted him. He felt trapped by his
unasked-for responsibilities to the culture that had condemned him.
But trapped he was, and he knew it. Even hating it, he could not let a
galactic civilization vanish without trace and refuse to lift a hand to
save it ... _to save something from the wreckage_.
Kant Mikal's words came back to him. Pressing, insistent, demanding.
He took Deve in his arms. "I'd want nothing more than to stay here ...
with you," he said gently. "But we'd never be safe if Santane ruled the
Tetrarchy. He'd never leave a paradise like this alone...."
"I know that," said Deve, sighing. "But maybe someday...." She broke
off. "I'm so tired, Aram."
Jerrold thought of how long this girl had been fighting--in secret, in
constant danger of her life--against the menace of an interregnum of
savagery in the galaxy. It made him want to kill Santane with his bare
hands and smash the Tetrarchy into cosmic rubble!
But it was no good. A responsibility had fallen onto Deve's shoulders
and his. Kant Mikal had said it. And no matter how they might wish
that two others had been chosen out of all the teeming billions of the
Thirty Suns, both he and Deve knew that they must throw themselves
between the galactic millstones and try with their last breath to avert
the limbo that yawned to swallow the first stellar civilization that
the race had laboriously built. It was not perfect--but it was their
own.
* * * * *
For two days and two nights Deve and Aram waited by the restless sea of
Kaidor III. They wandered over the green hills and through the wooded
glades hand in hand, caught up in the wonder and beauty of the silent
planet.
Aram was able to patch some of the breaks in the Serpent's hull, and
together he and Deve planned what moves they must make next. Each time
they left the ship, the recorders were set so that any possible word
from the Star Cluster would be caught; but only the endless stream of
reports and routine messages of the Thirty Suns Naval Intelligence
Bureau marred the wire of the recording device when they sought the
shelter of the ship again.
Together, they swam in the warm sea and rested in the sunlight on the
white beach, listening to the restless sound of the ocean. It was an
idyll of happiness made more poignant by the pressing nearness of
danger coming ever closer.
It was on the evening of the third day on Kaidor III that the subspace
radio shattered their faint hopes for the success of the Star Cluster's
mission. The information came not from the Group and Kant Mikal, but
viciously, shockingly, from the announcer in the Naval Intelligence
sending station back on Terminus. It came, smashing the peaceful
stillness of the evening calm.
"ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ALL FLEET UNITS OF THE TWENTY EIGHTH, TWENTY
NINTH, AND THIRTIETH DECANT SQUADRONS! RENDEZVOUS CHECK POINT 45223
KAIDOR PROVINCE ACCORDING TO PLAN 5-25 DIRECTIVE 19-A-9! TASK FORCE
COMMANDER WILL NEUTRALIZE PLANET KAIDOR FIVE FOR THE SAFETY OF THE
TETRARCHY!"