The gently curved metal walls of the room gleamed softly in the pale,
shadowless light, and for a moment the silent chamber seemed as huge
and merciless as the infinity of Space which surrounded the great ship
of which it was a part. The aged man who sat in full Alliance dress
uniform before him, the Director Gentech himself, might for the moment
have been a statue, and the panel of officers which flanked him hewn
from the same stone.
He could feel the eyes of fully a third of the ship's huge complement,
twelve hundred labortechs strong, boring steadily into his back as he
stood, alone in the moment's awful silence, between them and these
statue-men whose swift minds were, he knew, coldly weighing the
accusations against him.
And then the silence was broken. Majtech B-Haaq was speaking again, his
still-young face red with the heat of impressively realistic outrage.
"Sires, I have laid this man's record for the last eight years as a
cadet technician before you plainly, with no embellishment. And his
thanks to you for selecting him from among thousands of other less
fortunate youths on his planet for training as an officer of the
Intergalactic Technical Alliance has been--what other word can describe
it--but mutiny?" And then Cadtech Jon Kane felt the full force of his
accuser's glance upon him.
"You were taken from death itself in some hell town on a cinder
of a planet in Canis Major. And in repayment for eight years of
instruction that most men would gladly risk their lives to obtain
you have compounded your long list of wrongdoings with this ultimate
insult--refusal to accept your commission as Lenantech unless you
are allowed to perform an experiment which is not only preposterous
but which has had fair evaluation by your superiors and been found
worthless." B-Haaq paused for a quick breath. "Sires, I admit that
perhaps the error has been ours from the first, and that the Prokymen
who intended death for this young heretic knew whereof they spoke! As
Cadtech Jon Kane's Section Overseer, I recommend his reduction, both
mental and physical, to mineslave, and subsequent dispatch to one of
the mine worlds of the star system from which he was recruited!"
It seemed suddenly to Kane that here was a crazy kind of irony--doubly
crazy, doubly ironic because for the second time in his young life he
was standing trial for things he had done which were not wrong! Had it
been wrong in that other time, that other part of his life when he had
built a vehicle that would move under its own power, with his own bare
hands? Had that been so great an offense--and if so, against whom? The
simple peasant folk of his planet? Against the ITA itself? If so, how?
And now again. After eight diligent years of trying to learn all that
had been darkly forbidden to him before, and to thousands of others
like him--after the happening of some miracle that had plucked him from
a Proky death cell and placed him where he was encouraged to learn
secrets that had once nearly cost him his life--after all that, now
again, somehow, he had offended.
These men were not cruel men. Nor were the instructors overbearing
taskmasters, nor the labortechs the arrogant men whom the planet-bound
guardedly cursed with their derisive oaths "Space Tinker!" Yet they
were bound to their ideas; ideas which must be clung to for dear life
lest they become exposed to the risk of change. Kane had often enough
been reminded of why that was so. The ideas, the techniques, the
procedures, they'd been savior to an entire segment of a once great
civilization in a half forgotten past which the ITA stubbornly called
its "history." And so they must be preserved at all costs. And that was
why it was wrong to question; wrong to challenge the refusal of a new
idea.
And that was why he was in trouble. Because these men were, in the last
analysis, so little different from those who had surrounded him those
eight years ago in the desert with their long bows.
Guardians of two star systems, they were.
The spine of civilization for over a hundred planets. Without which,
the civilizations of each would surely backslide a second, and last,
time. Implements of wood and stone would not support their ancient
and infinitely complex structures for long, and before the evil but
necessary secrets of the past could be faced with sufficient courage
and re-learned, there would be only mouldering ruin.
Thus taught his instructors.
Therefore, this procedure and that technique are to be protected and
held inviolate if men are to be kept from savagery! Remember the
Holocaust, Cadet! _This_ is the proven way!
But the something in him that he had never been able to
suppress--whatever it was that had made him build his vehicle despite
his father's warnings to silence--that "something" was again to be his
downfall, even among those who had been his rescuers.
"A point of final clarification, if I may, Majtech B-Haaq." A uniformed
Coltech of the Director Gentech's panel had spoken without rising from
his seat. "You have charged that past difficulties with the accused
have involved actual _challenge_ of the instructorship under which he
was assigned?"
"At times, Sire, challenge that has been tantamount to outright refusal
to accept certain standard procedures of operation, accompanied in each
instance with the claim by the accused that his own would be a superior
procedure! There was, you may recall, the affair of the burned out
variable thrust transformer, a standard instructional problem. Cadtech
Kane argued that replacement of a specific fuse in a specific circuit
was ample solution, rather than replacement of the entire complement of
fuses, which has of course been standard procedure in such an instance
for two full centuries. And again--"
"That quite fully answers my question, Majtech, thank you."
Then another moment of awful silence--the awful timelessness of
deliberation.
Jon Kane could feel the cold perspiration that made his well cut cadet
uniform tunic damp and clinging. He tried to repress a shiver, to stand
as completely motionless as the men before him sat.
"Majtech B-Haaq." It was the Director Gentech himself who spoke. His
words were slow, measured, and spoken in a voice which might have
been that of a man twenty years his junior. Gentech Starn, at the age
of ninety, was still a strong man and a strong leader, and his name
had been synonymous with the three letters ITA and the interstellar
authority for which they stood for every one of the sixty years since
his father, Director Gentech before him, had met death on one of Sol
System's cold, hostile outplanets.
"Sire."
"You have prosecuted with excellence. However, may I suggest that I
am yet to be wholly satisfied in this matter. Your accused must have
admirable potentialities as a technical officer, or he would not have
been selected for training, nor would such effort have been expended to
obtain him, at the very outset. Whatever challenges, as you charge he
has made, could not, then, have been totally irresponsible ones. And
it has been a long time since there has been technological challenge
of the Intergalactic Technical Alliance!" A hardly discernible smile
touched the faded, withering lips, and Kane thought he had detected a
momentary lightness in the last words they had spoken. "So it is my
suggestion, Majtech--and gentlemen of this panel, that final decision
hinge upon the success or failure of the experiment which the accused
is held to have proposed, and which he so adamantly refuses to desert!"
"But--Sire, I submit that Cadtech Kane has admitted, by his own words
as well as his actions, his guilt in this matter! He has freely
confessed to each of the charges; has defiantly and openly held that
his experiment will succeed, and has refused retraction of his stand in
this very council chamber--"
"Our decision, Majtech B-Haaq, in cognizance of the folly of unduly
wasting an otherwise competent cadet technician on the mining planets
unless justified to our complete satisfaction, is that the experiment
be allowed to proceed! This hearing is therefore adjourned!"
* * * * *
There were no others in the workshop to which he had been assigned. He
was to work on his drive unit alone, Majtech B-Haaq had ordered, and
of course the reason was obvious. One young heretic was enough.
But what if the glittering, finely-tooled object that rested on the
long workbench before him was wrong and would not work? Yet he knew
that it would! Mounted in a standard model spacetender, the drive unit
which he'd devised would easily produce five times the speed and power,
would consume less than half as much atomic fuel, would quadruple
range, last twice as long.
It had taken slightly over a month to build; B-Haaq had grudgingly
granted him all the time he estimated he'd need, but he'd hurried
nonetheless--sixteen, sometimes eighteen hours at a stretch.
Yet the work had not been difficult. As he'd tooled and formed the
simple, compact parts and watched his creation grow steadily from one
day to the next, he had marvelled that certain self-evident innovations
of design had not been adopted years before. It was not, he knew, that
he was so much cleverer than they! Rather, it was almost as though such
improvement had been deliberately avoided. And ITA space drives had
remained cumbersome, overly-complex and unwieldy.
He straightened from his work. It was done, and the ships of the
Intergalactic Technical Alliance would be caught up a solid century at
least! He had now only to request an installation crew of labortechs,
supervise for a few hours, and then--
"Master Kane!"
The startled cadtech snapped to immediate attention. It was B-Haaq. He
had entered the workshop without signalling.
"Yes Sire!"
"I must make a report of your progress to the Gentech's headquarters."
He spoke levelly, but Kane could feel the resentment in his voice.
"My work is completed, sire. I was at this moment preparing to summon a
labortech installation crew, and to supervise--"
"I'll do the summoning, Master Kane! And the supervision! I don't
believe it necessary to remind you that even if you have refused your
commission, I accepted my own quite some time ago! This mechanism is
completed, you say?"
"Yes, sire. I hope that I shall be permitted to pilot--"
B-Haaq was bending over the gleaming unit, his face expressionless. "No
one is to pilot the craft, Master Kane," he said without looking up.
"We of the ITA still know something of remote radio control, I assure
you. You will work from Navigation Information Center, at controls
already set up there for the purpose."
Kane kept his silence, and tried to keep his disappointment from
showing in his face.
"Tell me, Master Kane--" and the Section Overseer had straightened and
was now facing him squarely again, "--have you ever been told why you
were picked--I believe a better word is rescued--from that hell planet
of yours in Procyon for the ITA?"
"Yes, sire, I was, during basic indoctrination," Kane answered.
"That is fortunate, then. You know, at least, that we thought we
could make a technician out of you! Report to the NIC room in one
hour, Master Kane! Your little show will be all ready by then. You're
dismissed!"
* * * * *
Director Gentech Starn himself, flanked by three of his closest aides,
entered the NIC room.
They took standing positions behind Kane. And behind them, at the
prescribed distance of respect, were grouped the ship's full complement
of Section Overseers and instructors. Kane stood before the central
nav-screen and its compact banks of controls.
Suddenly a red blinker flashed, dully reflected from the myriad tiers
of sensitive mechanism which lined the room's curving bulkheads. He
pressed a stud, and the screen before him came alive. Blackness,
studded with the tiny white-hot sparks that were the suns of the Milky
Way. And then suddenly a larger one which moved swiftly.
And then he was no longer aware of the electric silence that engulfed
him, and there was no sensation, no thought but the singular sensation
and thought which co-ordinated nerve and sensitively disciplined
muscle; which directed his fingers unerringly across the studded
control-banks and guided the streaking spacetender as surely as though
they reached into Space and touched it, holding it by their own
strength to its wide, curving course.
Relay gauges hummed and clicked softly; velocity and power readings
registered, and nav-grid traced the fleet craft's path through the void.
Then Kane spoke. "Sires, as you can see, the spacetender in which my
drive unit has been installed is now proceeding at what is usually
considered to be topmost velocity and with what would normally be
maximum power output for such a craft." He could feel his voice waver
at first, and then with the sound of it and the reassuring feeling
of the control studs beneath his fingertips, it strengthened, became
firm. And he knew they were listening. Listening as though it were the
Gentech himself who spoke. Then he summoned up all his courage. "I will
now," he said, "accelerate the tender to treble its present speed,
while increasing power output by approximately six-fold. If you will
watch the central group of gauges carefully, please."
He jammed his finger down on a white, diamond shaped stud, and his
breath clogged in his throat.
The screen followed the tender's course faithfully. The gauges chuckled
and hummed.
And then the blackness was torn open with a coruscating, soundless
flash, and the tender was in an instant nothing but a white cloud of
rapidly dissipating atoms!
No!... No!... No!
There was no sound from behind him, but he knew that the huge chamber
was quickly and silently emptying.
He did not turn from the screen. It was black again, now, relieved only
by the tiny sparks that were the stars.
He did not know how long he stood there or how long he watched.
Minutes--or even hours, perhaps. He knew only that there was an
uncontrollable thing of rage and disbelief and helpless frustration
seething bitterly inside him that would not abate, and with it was a
crazy jumble of thoughts that made no sense at all.
He heard a man behind him then. It was B-Haaq.
"A pity you've learned your lesson so late," he heard the Majtech say,
"_Mine slave!_"