Theodor stared at him. The old man's self-satisfied poise was almost
amusing.
"Are you a Kometevskyite?" Theodor asked him.
The Colonel laughed. "Of course not, my boy. Those poor people are
fumbling in the dark. Don't you see what's happened?"
"Frankly, no."
The Colonel leaned toward Theodor and whispered gruffly, "The Divine
Plan. God is a military strategist, naturally."
Then he lifted the scotch-and-soda in his clawlike hand and took a
satisfying swallow.
"I knew it all along, of course," he went on musingly, "but this last
news makes it as plain as a rocket blast, at least to anyone who knows
military strategy. Look here, my boy, suppose you were commanding a
fleet and got wind of the enemy's approach--what would you do? Why,
you'd send your scouts and destroyers fanning out toward them. Behind
that screen you'd mass your heavy ships. Then--"
"You don't mean to imply--" Theodor interrupted.
The girl behind the bar looked at them both cryptically.
"Of course I do!" the Colonel cut in sharply. "It's a war between the
forces of good and evil. The bright suns and planets are on one side,
the dark on the other. The moons are the destroyers, Jupiter and
Saturn are the big battleships, while we're on a heavy cruiser, I'm
proud to say. We'll probably go into action soon. Be a corking fight,
what? And all by divine strategy!"
He chuckled and took another big drink. Theodor looked at him sourly.
The girl behind the bar polished a glass and said nothing.
* * * * *
Dotty suddenly began to turn and toss, and a look of terror came over
her sleeping face. Celeste leaned forward apprehensively.
The child's lips worked and Celeste made out the sleepy-fuzzy words:
"They've found out where we're hiding. They're coming to get us. No!
Please, no!"
Celeste's reactions were mixed. She felt worried about Dotty and at
the same time almost in terror of her, as if the little girl were an
agent of supernatural forces. She told herself that this fear was an
expression of her own hostility, yet she didn't really believe it. She
touched the child's hand.
Dotty's eyes opened without making Celeste feel she had quite come
awake. After a bit she looked at Celeste and her little lips parted in
a smile.
"Hello," she said sleepily. "I've been having such funny dreams." Then,
after a pause, frowning, "I really am a god, you know. It feels very
queer."
"Yes, dear?" Celeste prompted uneasily. "Shall I call Frieda?"
The smile left Dotty's lips. "Why do you act so nervous around me?" she
asked. "Don't you love me, Mummy?"
Celeste started at the word. Her throat closed. Then, very slowly, her
face broke into a radiant smile. "Of course I do, darling. I love you
very much."
Dotty nodded happily, her eyes already closed again.
There was a sudden flurry of excited voices beyond the door. Celeste
heard her name called. She stood up.
"I'm going to have to go out and talk with the others," she said. "If
you want me, dear, just call."
"Yes, Mummy."
* * * * *
Edmund rapped for attention. Celeste, Frieda, and Theodor glanced
around at him. He looked more frightfully strained, they realized, than
even they felt. His expression was a study in suppressed excitement,
but there were also signs of a knowledge that was almost too
overpowering for a human being to bear.
His voice was clipped, rapid. "I think it's about time we stopped
worrying about our own affairs and thought of those of the Solar
System, partly because I think they have a direct bearing on the
disappearances of Ivan end Rosalind. As I told you, I've been sorting
out the crucial items from the material we've been presenting. There
are roughly four of those items, as I see it. It's rather like a
mystery story. I wonder if, hearing those four clues, you will come to
the same conclusion I have."
The others nodded.
"First, there are the latest reports from Deep Shaft, which, as
you know, has been sunk to investigate deep-Earth conditions. At
approximately twenty-nine miles below the surface, the delvers have
encountered a metallic obstruction which they have tentatively named
the durasphere. It resists their hardest drills, their strongest
corrosives. They have extended a side-tunnel at that level for a
quarter of a mile. Delicate measurements, made possible by the
mirror-smooth metal surface, show that the durasphere has a slight
curvature that is almost exactly equal to the curvature of the Earth
itself. The suggestion is that deep borings made anywhere in the world
would encounter the durasphere at the same depth.
"Second, the movements of the moons of Mars and Jupiter, and
particularly the debris left behind by the moons of Mars. Granting
Phobos and Deimos had duraspheres proportional in size to that of
Earth, then the debris would roughly equal in amount the material in
those two duraspheres' rocky envelopes. The suggestion is that the
two duraspheres suddenly burst from their envelopes with such titanic
velocity as to leave those disrupted envelopes behind."
It was deadly quiet in the committee room.
"Thirdly, the disappearances of Ivan and Rosalind, and especially
the baffling hint--from Ivan's message in one case and Rosalind's
downward-pointing glove in the other--that they were both somehow drawn
into the depths of the Earth.
"Finally, the dreams of the ESPs, which agree overwhelmingly in the
following points: A group of beings separate themselves from a godlike
and telepathic race because they insist on maintaining a degree of
mental privacy. They flee in great boats or ships of some sort. They
are pursued on such a scale that there is no hiding place for them
anywhere in the universe. In some manner they successfully camouflage
their ships. Eons pass and their still-fanatical pursuers do not
penetrate their secret. Then, suddenly, they are detected."
Edmund waited. "Do you see what I'm driving at?" he asked hoarsely.
* * * * *
He could tell from their looks that the others did, but couldn't bring
themselves to put it into words.
"I suppose it's the time-scale and the value-scale that are so hard for
us to accept," he said softly. "Much more, even, than the size-scale.
The thought that there are creatures in the Universe to whom the whole
career of Man--in fact, the whole career of life--is no more than a few
thousand or hundred thousand years. And to whom Man is no more than a
minor stage property--a trifling part of a clever job of camouflage."
This time he went on, "Fantasy writers have at times hinted all sorts
of odd things about the Earth--that it might even be a kind of single
living creature, or honeycombed with inhabited caverns, and so on.
But I don't know that any of them have ever suggested that the Earth,
together with all the planets and moons of the Solar System, might
be...."
In a whisper, Frieda finished for him, "... a camouflaged fleet of
gigantic spherical spaceships."
"_Your guess happens to be the precise truth._"
At that familiar, yet dreadly unfamiliar voice, all four of them swung
toward the inner door. Dotty was standing there, a sleep-stupefied
little girl with a blanket caught up around her and dragging behind.
Their own daughter. But in her eyes was a look from which they cringed.
She said, "I am a creature somewhat older than what your geologists
call the Archeozoic Era. I am speaking to you through a number of
telepathically sensitive individuals among your kind. In each case my
thoughts suit themselves to your level of comprehension. I inhabit the
disguised and jetless spaceship which is your Earth."
Celeste swayed a step forward. "Baby...." she implored.
Dotty went on, without giving her a glance, "It is true that we planted
the seeds of life on some of these planets simply as part of our
camouflage, just as we gave them a suitable environment for each. And
it is true that now we must let most of that life be destroyed. Our
hiding place has been discovered, our pursuers are upon us, and we must
make one last effort to escape or do battle, since we firmly believe
that the principle of mental privacy to which we have devoted our
existence is perhaps the greatest good in the whole Universe.
"But it is not true that we look with contempt upon you. Our whole race
is deeply devoted to life, wherever it may come into being, and it is
our rule never to interfere with its development. That was one of
the reasons we made life a part of our camouflage--it would make our
pursuers reluctant to examine these planets too closely.
"Yes, we have always cherished you and watched your evolution with
interest from our hidden lairs. We may even unconsciously have shaped
your development in certain ways, trying constantly to educate you away
from war and finally succeeding--which may have given the betraying
clue to our pursuers.
"Your planets must be burst asunder--this particular planet in the
area of the Pacific--so that we may have our last chance to escape.
Even if we did not move, our pursuers would destroy you with us. We
cannot invite you inside our ships--not for lack of space, but because
you could never survive the vast accelerations to which you would be
subjected. You would, you see, need very special accommodations, of
which we have enough only for a few.
"Those few we will take with us, as the seed from which a new human
race may--if we ourselves somehow survive--be born."
* * * * *
Rosalind and Ivan stared dumbly at each other across the egg-shaped
silver room, without apparent entrance or exit, in which they were
sprawled. But their thoughts were no longer of thirty-odd mile
journeys down through solid earth, or of how cool it was after the
heat of the passage, or of how grotesque it was to be trapped here,
the fragment of a marriage. They were both listening to the voice that
spoke inside their minds.
"In a few minutes your bodies will be separated into layers one atom
thick, capable of being shelved or stored in such a way as to endure
almost infinite accelerations. Single cells will cover acres of space.
But do not be alarmed. The process will be painless and each particle
will be catalogued for future assembly. Your consciousness will endure
throughout the process."
Rosalind looked at her gold-shod toes. She was wondering, _will they go
first, or my head? Or will I be peeled like an apple?_
She looked at Ivan and knew he was thinking the same thing.
* * * * *
Up in the committee room, the other Wolvers slumped around the table.
Only little Dotty sat straight and staring, speechless and unanswering,
quite beyond their reach, like a telephone off the hook and with the
connection open, but no voice from the other end.
They had just switched off the TV after listening to a confused
medley of denials, prayers, Kometevskyite chatterings, and a few
astonishingly realistic comments on the possibility of survival.
These last pointed out that, on the side of the Earth opposite the
Pacific, the convulsions would come slowly when the entombed spaceship
burst forth--provided, as seemed the case, that it moved without jets
or reaction.
It would be as if the Earth's vast core simply vanished. Gravity would
diminish abruptly to a fraction of its former value. The empty envelope
of rock and water and air would slowly fall together, though at the
same time the air would begin to escape from the debris because there
would no longer be the mass required to hold it.
However, there might be definite chances of temporary and even
prolonged survival for individuals in strong, hermetically sealed
structures, such as submarines and spaceships. The few spaceships on
Earth were reported to have blasted off, or be preparing to leave, with
as many passengers as could be carried.
But most persons, apparently, could not contemplate action of any sort.
They could only sit and think, like the Wolvers.
A faint smile relaxed Celeste's face. She was thinking, _how beautiful!
It means the death of the Solar System, which is a horrifying
subjective concept. Objectively, though, it would be a more awesome
sight than any human being has ever seen or ever could see. It's an
absurd and even brutal thing to wish--but I wish I could see the whole
cataclysm from beginning to end. It would make death seem very small, a
tiny personal event._
Dotty's face was losing its blank expression, becoming intent and
alarmed.
"We are in contact with our pursuers," she said in the
familiar-unfamiliar voice. "Negotiations are now going on. There
seems to be--there _is_ a change in them. Where they were harsh and
vindictive before, they now are gentle and conciliatory." She paused,
the alarm on her childish features pinching into anxious uncertainty.
"Our pursuers have always been shrewd. The change in them may be false,
intended merely to lull us into allowing them to come close enough to
destroy us. We must not fall into the trap by growing hopeful...."
They leaned forward, clutching hands, watching the little face as
though it were a television screen. Celeste had the wild feeling that
she was listening to a communique from a war so unthinkably vast and
violent, between opponents so astronomically huge and nearly immortal,
that she felt like no more than a reasoning ameba ... and then realized
with an explosive urge to laugh that that was exactly the situation.
"No!" said Dotty. Her eyes began to glow. "They _have_ changed! During
the eons in which we lay sealed away and hidden from them, knowing
nothing of them, they have rebelled against the tyranny of a communal
mind to which no thoughts are private ... the tyranny that we ourselves
fled to escape. They come not to destroy us, but to welcome us back to
a society that we and they can make truly great!"
* * * * *
Frieda collapsed to a chair, trembling between laughter and hysterical
weeping. Theodor looked as blank as Dotty had while waiting for words
to speak. Edmund sprang to the picture window, Celeste toward the TV
set.
Climbing shakily out of the chair, Frieda stumbled to the picture
window and peered out beside Edmund. She saw lights bobbing along the
paths with a wild excitement.
On the TV screen, Celeste watched two brightly lit ships spinning in
the sky--whether human spaceships or Phobos and Deimos come to help
Earth rejoice, she couldn't tell.
Dotty spoke again, the joy in her strange voice forcing them to turn.
"And you, dear children, creatures of our camouflage, we welcome
you--whatever your future career on these planets or like ones--into
the society of enlightened worlds! You need not feel small and alone
and helpless ever again, for we shall always be with you!"
The outer door opened. Ivan and Rosalind reeled in, drunkenly smiling,
arm in arm.
"Like rockets," Rosalind blurted happily. "We came through the
durasphere and solid rock ... shot up right to the surface."
"They didn't have to take us along," Ivan added with a bleary grin.
"But you know that already, don't you? They're too good to let you live
in fear, so they must have told you by now."
"Yes, we know," said Theodor. "They must be almost godlike in their
goodness. I feel ... calm."
Edmund nodded soberly. "Calmer than I ever felt before. It's knowing, I
suppose, that--well, we're not alone."
Dotty blinked and looked around and smiled at them all with a wholly
little-girl smile.
"Oh, Mummy," she said, and it was impossible to tell whether she spoke
to Frieda or Rosalind or Celeste, "I've just had the funniest dream."
"No, darling," said Rosalind gently, "it's we who had the dream. We've
just awakened."