[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
June 1956
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Less than an hour after the last spaceship made touchdown on Mandmoora,
Jane Crowley stood before a scowling, head shaking public Information
Officer.
"My company sent me fifty light years from its nearest base in the
Denebian system, Colonel," Jane said. "I'm sorry, but it's impossible
for me to return to Deneb without my story."
"This office has issued press releases, my dear Miss Crowley, which--"
"Press releases!" The way Jane uttered those two words made the
Colonel wince. "I didn't come fifty light years for press releases.
I came...." She watched the Colonel's face and let her voice trail
off. This approach was having absolutely no effect. But Jane Crowley
was a woman, young and quite pretty and it was likely, she thought,
that where the straightforward, man-to-man approach might fail, the
ways of a woman might succeed. "But Colonel," she pouted, then let her
composed face fall apart as if she were going to cry. "But Colonel, my
job depends on this story. My ... my whole career ... you see ..." she
sniffled.
"There now, Miss Crowley," the Colonel said, looking very
uncomfortable. "There now, miss. Please."
"Then you'll let me go out there among the Mandmoora?"
"I'm sorry, miss. Out of the question. Definitely out. We've evacuated
all the Mandmoora who want to go. What remains is a hard core of
Mandmooranian fanatics who refuse to leave their native planet under
any circumstances. They've got an island just off shore here, you see.
They're sun-worshippers. Ironical, isn't it? Sun-worshippers. Their sun
about to go nova on them, boiling all the oceans of this waterworld and
killing every speck of life on Mandmoora, and they're sun-worshippers.
They just won't go. They want to stay. They say we can't make them go
and they're right, we can't. Poor devils. They'll be boiled and broiled
alive, all three thousands of 'em. But this headquarters can't send
men out to their island after them. They'd resist and it would mean
bloodshed, on both sides. We won't have it."
The Colonel's haggard face brightened, and he went on: "There's your
story, Miss Crowley. Three thousand die-hard sun-worshippers, facing
certain death at the altar of the very deity they adore. File _that_
story from Deneb, Miss Crowley."
"It's been filed a hundred times already," Jane said, shaking her head.
"You know it has."
The Colonel shrugged. "I refuse to authorize your going out to
Mandmoora Island. Be reasonable, miss, can't you? We have evacuated a
hundred million Mandmoorans in history's greatest mass exodus. Three
thousand fanatics don't want out. Three thousand fanatics will broil
with their world, then. That's all."
"But if they could be led to understand."
"I thought you wanted a story. A human interest story, wasn't it?"
"I was only thinking out loud."
"I've given you the only story you'll get here. Why should your video
service expect more than the others?"
"No reason, I guess," Jane knew now that the answer was definitely no.
She was hardly listening to the Colonel as he went on. There had to be
another way, somewhere, somehow. It was the story of the century--and
there wasn't another newsman on Mandmoora with a chance to scoop her.
Which also meant that if Jane didn't get the story, the rest of the
civilized galaxy wouldn't, either, except for watered-down public
information releases.
"... otherwise," the Colonel was saying. "The press people have said
we were more than fair, miss. We let them set up a headquarters beyond
the Mandmooranian sun's eighth planet: our experts said the nova won't
explode that far, you know. Headquarters will be safe there. We've
even agreed to let the last ship out stop at press headquarters for an
interview before it goes subspace for the dash to Deneb. What could be
fairer?"
"Nothing, I guess," Jane said. "Well, thank you for your time, Colonel."
"Not at all, young lady." The Colonel touched something on his desk
and a door at the other end of the office opened, irising with a
faint hissing sound. Through it Jane could hear the sounds of office
machinery, think-writers and duplics and a subspace ticker coming in
with the news from the rest of the galaxy.
A woman, thought Jane. Maybe if I was a man it would have been
different, but they wanted a woman's viewpoint because it's a
heartstring-plucking story. She recalled the Colonel's first
incredulous outburst. "But I can't send a _woman_ out there, Miss
Crowley. A woman!"
* * * * *
As she reached the door, impulse became idea and idea came to the
surface for execution. "Thank you very much, Colonel," she said in a
clear, loud voice. "Interstellar News Alliance knew it could count on
you."
"What's that?" demanded the Colonel in a voice barely audible across
the large room. He was busy now with a mountain of last minute
paperwork and was listening only with one ear, the rest of him already
hard at work.
"Thanks again, Colonel," Jane said, and stepped through the irised
shutter of a door. She turned to show her best smile to the
sergeant-major at the desk immediately outside the door. "There,
sergeant," she said, smiling. "You see? I told you the Colonel would
give me an unlimited pass."
"I never would of believed it," the sergeant said, looking at the smile
and daring a glance at the rest of Jane Crowley, which was every bit as
delightful as the pretty way she showed her teeth.
"An unlimited pass, sergeant. Make one out for me, please."
The sergeant-major nodded and took a book of forms from a drawer in his
desk. He wrote for a while, then said, "That's C-r-o-w-l-e-y, ma'am?"
"Right."
"Any time limit on the pass?"
"None at all," Jane said, still amazed that her ruse, her show of
elation had actually worked.
The sergeant-major applied the finishing touches to the pass with an
ink-stamp duplicate of the Colonel's signature and handed the stiff
plastic rectangle to Jane. "There you are, ma'am," he said. "But watch
your step, Miz Crowley. The last ship's blasting off in twenty hours,
with or without the Mandmoorans. Twenty hours, ma'am. So please don't
get lost."
Jane thanked him, smiled again, and got out of there.
Five minutes later, the Colonel buzzed for his sergeant-major. "Yes,
sir?" the sergeant asked, poking his head in through the irising door.
"Well, I see the lady reporter didn't give much trouble after I made it
clear the answer was no. Now, about that Sbogan file. Sbogan, that is
the name?"
"Yeah, Sbogan. Fomalhautian name. What did you ... did you say, sir?"
"The Sbogan file should--"
"No. About the reporter. You told her no? Your answer was no, sir?"
"Naturally. We couldn't let her put her pretty head in the lion's
mouth."
"Oh, Lord, sir," the sergeant-major said. "I gave her an unlimited
pass."
"Sergeant!"
"She said you had ... sir...."
"An unlimited pass--sergeant! Send out an alarm for that girl. We're
all right as long as she doesn't leave the mainland. But if she goes to
the Mandmooran Island, where those hold-out sun-worshippers are...."
"She'll make tracks for there, all right," the sergeant-major predicted.
"Stop her. Stop her before she gets that far! Because once she crosses
to the island, there isn't a thing we can do about it. You can't tell a
nova to wait, sergeant!"
"I'll try to stop her, sir."
"Make it a general alarm, sergeant. You've _got_ to stop her."
Moments later, Jane Crowley's description was being radio'd to every
martial checkpoint in the city of Northport.
* * * * *
It was very hot and sultry on the tarry streets of Northport. It had
been an exotic city, really exotic, Jane thought. You could tell by
the out-of-this world architecture, but oddly--with nothing but the
uniformed figures of the interstellar rescue organization to be seen
on the streets--Northport lost most of its charm. For the charm of any
alien place, of any exotic world, lies in its people. Jane had once
made a broadcast to that effect, and it had been very well received.
It would be nothing though, absolutely nothing, compared to what Jane
almost had in her grasp now. A final interview with the die-hards, with
the Mandmoorans who refused to leave their planet because they had
faith in the sun which would soon, in hardly more than hours, destroy
them.
The docks were crowded, littered with the worldly belongings of a
few score Mandmoorans who had changed their mind and had paddled
over from the island. A squad of soldiers was busy processing them
and the Mandmoorans, big muscular purple-skinned men with shocks of
stiff lemon-yellow hair and smaller women, brittle-looking women with
strange, wasp-waisted figures, glanced up frequently at the sky. Their
sun, a faintly bluish white star, seemed somehow swollen. It actually
seemed larger to Jane than it had been when she had landed several
hours ago. Probably, she told herself, that's imagination. On the other
hand, the Mandmoorans would certainly have been able to see a change
in solar size by this time. For the Mandmooranian sun had doubled its
apparent size in the past ten days, Jane had been told at the P.I.
office.
The only result so far was the sweltering heat on Mandmoora. The heat,
though, was not lethal. There had been hot summers before, the die-hard
sun-worshippers had said. So they had told Jane at the P.I.O. The
natives said nothing, could be made to say nothing, about the swollen
appearance of the sun they worshipped.
In twenty hours their last chance for rescue would be gone. In thirty
hours, Mandmoora's sun would go nova, bursting to a million times its
former luminosity in micro-seconds, sending out a shell of intensely
hot gases which, when it reached Mandmoora, would instantly destroy all
life on the planet. Including three thousand sun-worshippers waiting
devoutly for their deity to prove the interstellar interlopers wrong....
"Hey, Miss!" someone cried suddenly. It was an Army corporal running
toward her, bulling his way through a knot of Mandmooran refugees.
"You're Jane Crowley, ain't you?" He was only a dozen strides away now,
and shouting. "Because I got orders to...."
Jane didn't hear the rest of it. She turned and ran down the length
of the deserted quay adjacent to the one strewn with Mandmooran
belongings. She reached the end of the quay and whirled. The corporal
was trotting confidently toward her, in no great hurry now. For she
had trapped herself on the quay. She was very angry with herself. A
fine newshen you are, she thought. First chance you have, you let
yourself get caught. A fine....
Something gave her a raucous razzing, something out over the water.
She whirled and faced it. A runabout whizzed in across the blue water
toward her. Someone was waving.
She waved back frantically, suddenly recognizing him. It was Sid
Masters. She had met Sid on the ship which had taken both of them
to Mandmoora. Sid was with the electronics outfit setting up camera
equipment on Mandmoora, equipment which would transmit through subspace
the pictures of a sun going nova seen from the surface of its only
inhabited planet. She had struck up a quick friendship with Sid on the
space-liner.
Making up her mind suddenly, Jane didn't wait for the running corporal
to reach her. Instead, she turned and jumped off the quay.
She came up sputtering. The water was tepid, was typical harbor-water,
fouled with gasoline and debris. Masters' gas-turbine driven boat
was very close now. The sound of its motor almost drowned out the
corporal's shouts as Jane treaded water.
"Going to the island," Masters shouted. "You?"
"They don't want me to, Sid!"
He smiled. She couldn't hear all of what he said, but she got the last
part of it. "... want me to, either. Hop in, beautiful."
There was a splash behind her. Jane turned and saw the corporal break
surface, yelling and waving his arms. She stroked for Sid Masters'
runabout. The electronics technician shouted his encouragement, but
as she got one hand on the gunwale of the idling runabout, Jane felt
something grab and tug at her leg.
She lashed out with her free leg, churning water. But the corporal
clung grimly to her ankle. Then an old, half-rotted oar appeared
alongside Jane's heel, and with it--guiding it--Sid Masters' arms. The
oar went out over the water and probed and a moment later the corporal
shouted and Jane felt the pressure leave her ankle.
"Hop aboard and be quick about it," Masters yelled.
Jane needed no urging. She scrambled ungracefully over the gunwale.
She was dripping wet and thought she looked a mess. But Masters merely
said, "Pleasure to have you aboard, beautiful," and the runabout
roared and headed out across the harbor to the island, to the last
redoubt of the three thousand sun-worshipping Mandmoorans who waited
for a miracle which would not come to save them.
* * * * *
"Simple," Sid Masters said in answer to Jane's question half an hour
later. "I thought it would be a good idea to set up camera equipment
on the island itself, to show the galaxy the last sun-worshipping
rites of the Mandmoorans--before their god killed them. Maybe it's
heartless, but it's good journalism. Besides, it isn't up to me to get
the Mandmoorans off their island. I'd gladly film their exodus instead,
and first-hand, not with automatic equipment. Anyhow, Colonel, what's
his name at P.I.O. said no."
"And you didn't take no for an answer?"
"I didn't take no for an answer. Hell, all I have to do is set up the
equipment so the Mandmoorans don't see it and get off the island. It
shouldn't be hard."
"I want to get a final impression of the Mandmooran sun-worshippers as
they wait for the end," Jane said. "As you said, Sid, it isn't pretty
but it's good journalism. Sure, I'd rather not get my story and see
them saved--"
"But if they're going to die you want the story. Right?"
"Yes," Jane said. Then: "I want to thank you, Sid--"
He grinned. "You looked so helpless there on the end of the quay. You
were wringing your hands, did you know it?"
"What a sight that must have been. Sid!" Jane cried abruptly. "Sid!
We're being followed. That boat--"
"Of course we're being followed. But this runabout's got good speed.
They won't catch us before we reach the island. And once we reach
it, they probably have orders not to land under any circumstances.
They--hey wait a minute! Look behind them."
At first Jane didn't get it. She looked ahead and saw the green smear
of the sun-worshippers' island, expanding out from the horizon toward
them. They'd be beaching the light-weight, lithium-alloy runabout in a
matter of minutes, she thought. Then, after that....
"No Jane. I said behind them. Behind the boat following us."
At first she saw nothing but the dazzling suntrack across the water
back there. Then, dancing on the suntrack as if belonging to it, scores
of silver midges. But a while ago, the single boat pursuing them had
looked like a silver midge.
"Boats," Jane said.
"Boats. A whole fleet of them."
"What can it mean, Sid?"
"Beats me. I can guess, though. Jane, maybe we're going to be in on the
kind of ending we'd rather see."
"I don't understand."
"It's a fleet of evacuation craft, probably. Making a last attempt to
get the Mandmoorans off their island. Maybe they had some word from the
sun-worshipping chief out there, I don't know."
"Should we wait until they land?"
"Not on your life," Sid said. "We've broken a law, Jane. They'd take us
into custody until the whole operation was over. We'll beach this boat
like we planned, and then my equipment--"
"And my pad and pencil," Jane said.
"--go to work."
Moments later they could see a throng of the Mandmoorans waiting on
the beach for them, the brilliant purple of their bodies gleaming
metallically against the dead white sands.
* * * * *
The Mandmooran chief was a big fellow six and a half feet tall. He was
old: the shock of stiff yellow hair had faded to a corn-silk color, the
purple skin was wrinkle-creased and had lost some of its sheen. But he
carried himself straight and tall and he looked every inch a chieftain.
"We stay here," he told Sid in English. "Lord Sun no kills worship
people. You tell soldiers?"
"They're coming," Sid said. "See? We have nothing to do with that."
"You not with them?"
"Not us," Sid said.
"What then you want?"
Sid looked at Jane, who shrugged. Words and phrases were already
forming in her mind. The sad proud look on the old chief's face. The
gleaming, healthy, royal purple Mandmoorans. The dried, withered
vegetation all around them, scorched by the swollen sun. The angry,
resentful look on some of the Mandmooran faces behind the chief. The
distant wailing chant of the sun-worshipping priests.
"... cameras," Sid was saying. "As for the lady, she only wants to
talk with you and look around some. All right?"
"Twice," the chief said slowly, "your soldiers try to trick us. Third
time now."