The Last Space Ship
MURRAY LEINSTER
_A Breathtaking Power Packed
Full Length Novel_
GALAXY PUBLISHING CORP.
421 HUDSON STREET
NEW YORK 14, N. Y.
GALAXY _Science Fiction_ Novels, selected by the editors of
GALAXY _Science Fiction_ Magazine, are the choice of science
fiction novels both original and reprint.
GALAXY _Science Fiction_ Novel No. 25
35c a copy. Six Novel Subscriptions $2.00
_Copyright 1949 by Will F. Jenkins_
_Reprinted by arrangement with the publishers,
FREDERICK FELL, INC._
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_by_
THE GUINN COMPANY, INC.
NEW YORK 14, N. Y.
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
PART ONE
THE DISCIPLINARY CIRCUIT
1. Victim of Tyrants
2. Break for Freedom
3. Rays of Destruction
4. Outcasts of Space
5. Super-Science
6. Haven at Last
PART TWO
THE MANLESS WORLDS
1. Empires in the Making
2. The Deadly Beams
3. Contact!
4. Encounter in the Void
5. The Needed Fuel
6. Man-Made Meteor
7. Ready for Action
8. Pitched Battle
9. Homecoming
PART THREE
THE BOOMERANG CIRCUIT
1. Damaged Transmitter
2. Enemy Sabotage
3. Dangerous Trip
4. Despots Take Over
5. Industrial World
6. Vanished World
7. One Chance in a Million
8. Dark Barrier
9. Gadget of Hope
PART ONE
THE DISCIPLINARY CIRCUIT
1
_Victim of Tyrants_
Kim Rendell stood by the propped-up _Starshine_ in the transport
hall of the primary museum on Alphin III. He regarded a placard under
the space-ship with a grim and entirely mirthless amusement. He was
unshaven and hollow-cheeked. He was even ragged. He was a pariah
because he had tried to strike at the very foundation of civilization.
He stood beside the hundred-foot, tapering hull, his appearance marking
him as a blocked man. And he re-read the loan-placard within the
railing about the exhibit:
Citizens, be grateful to Kim Rendell, who shares with you the
pleasure of contemplating this heirloom.
This is a space-ship, like those which for ten thousand years were
the only means of travel between planets and solar systems. Even
after matter-transmitters were devised, space-ships continued to be
used for exploration for many years. Since exploration of the
Galaxy has been completed and all useful planets colonized and
equipped with matter-transmitters, space-ships are no longer in use.
This very vessel, however, was used by Sten Rendell when the first
human colonists came in it to Alphin III, bringing with them the
matter-transmitter which enabled civilization to enter upon and
occupy the planet on which you stand.
This ship is private property, lent to the people of Alphin III by
Kim Rendell, great-grandson of Sten Rendell.
Kim Rendell read it again. He was haggard and hungry. He had been
guilty of the most horrifying crime imaginable to a man of his time.
But the law would not, of course, allow him or any other man to be
coerced by any violence or threat to his personal liberty.
Freedom was the law on Alphin III, a wryly humorous law. No man could
be punished. No man could have any violence offered him. Theoretically,
the individual was free as men had never been free before in all of
human history. Despite Kim's crime, this space-ship still belonged to
him and it could not be taken from him.
Yet he was hungry, and he would remain hungry. He was shabby and he
would grow shabbier. This was the only roof on Alphin III which would
shelter him, and this solely because the law would not permit any man
to be excluded from his rightful possessions.
A lector came up to him and bowed politely.
"Citizen," he said apologetically, "may I speak to you?"
"Why not?" asked Kim grimly. "I am not proud."
The lector said uncomfortably:
"I see that you are in difficulty. Your clothes are threadbare." Then
he added with unhappy courtesy, "You are a criminal, are you not?"
"I am blocked," said Kim in a hard voice. "I was advised by the Prime
Board to leave Alphin Three for my own benefit. I refused. They put on
the first block. Automatically, after that, the other blocks came on
one each day. I have not eaten for three days. I suppose you would call
me a criminal."
"I sympathize deeply," the lector answered unhappily. "I hope that soon
you will concede the wisdom of the advised action and be civilized
again. But may I ask how you entered the museum? The third block
prevents entrance to all places of study."
Kim pointed to the loan-card.
"I am Kim Rendell," he said drily. "The law does not allow me to be
prevented access to my own property. I insisted on my right to visit
this ship, and the Disciplinary Circuit for this building had to be
turned off at the door so I could enter." He shivered. "It is very cold
out-of-doors today, and I could not enter any other building."
The lector looked relieved.
"I am glad to know these things," he said gratefully. "Thank you."
He glanced at Kim with a sort of fluttered curiosity. "It is most
interesting to meet a criminal. What was your crime?"
Kim looked at him under scowling brows.
"I tried to nullify the Disciplinary Circuit."
The lector blinked at him, fascinated, then walked hastily away as if
frightened. Kim Rendell stooped under the railing and approached the
_Starshine_.
The entrance-port was open, and a flush ladder led up to it. Kim,
hollow-cheeked and ragged and defiant, climbed the steps and entered.
The entry-port gave upon a vestibule which Kim knew from his
grandfather's tables to be an airlock. Kim's grandfather had once
gone off into space in the _Starshine_ with his father. It was,
possibly, the last space-flight ever made.
For a hundred years, now, the ship had been a museum-piece, open to
public inspection. But parts had been sealed off as uninstructive. Kim
broke the seals. This was his property, but if he had not already been
a criminal under block, the breaking of the seals would have made him
one. At least, it would have had to be explained to a lector who, at
discretion, could accept the explanation or refer it to a second-degree
counsellor.
The counsellor might deplore the matter and dismiss it, or suggest
corrective self-discipline.
If the seal-breaker did not accept the suggestion the matter would go
to a social board whose suggestion, in turn, could be rejected. But
when it reached the Prime Board--and any matter from the breaking of
a seal to mass murder would go there if suggested self-discipline was
refused--there was no more nonsense.
Kim's case had reached the Prime Board instantly, and he had been
advised to leave Alphin III for his own good. His crime was monstrous,
but he had ironically refused exile.
Now he was under block. His psychogram had been placed in the
Disciplinary Circuit.[1]
[Footnote 1: _Disciplinary Circuit_: The principal instrument of
government during the so-called Era of Perfection in the First Galaxy.
In early ages, all the functions of government were performed by human
beings in person. The Electric Chair (q.v.) was possibly the first
mechanical device to perform a governmental act, that of the execution
of criminals.
The Disciplinary Circuit was a device based upon the discovery of
the psychographic patterns of human beings, which permitted the
exact identification of any person passing through a neuronic field
of the type IX2H.... A development which permitted the induction of
alternative electric currents in any identified person, made the
Disciplinary Circuit possible.... It was first used in prisons,
permitting much less supervision of prisoners (See Prisons and
Prisoners) with equal security.
Later, because it allowed of an enormous reduction in the personnel
of government, all citizens were psychographed. Circuits were set
up in all cities of the First Galaxy. When a broadcast adaptation
became possible, the system was complete. Every citizen was liable to
discipline at any time.
No offender could hide from government. Wherever he might be, he was
subject to punishment focused upon him because of his completely
individual psychographic pattern.... Worship of efficiency and
the obvious reduction in taxes (See Taxes) at first obscured the
possibilities of tyranny inherent in such a governmental system....
[See (1) Era of Perfection, (2) Revolts, (3) Ades, (4) First Galaxy,
Reconquest of. For typical developments of government based upon the
Disciplinary Circuit, see articles on Sirius VIII, Algol II, Norten V
and the almost unbelievable but authenticated history of government on
Voorten II.]
_Encyclopaedia of History, Vol. XXIV. Cosmopolis, 2nd Galaxy._]
* * * * *
On the first day he was blocked from the customary complete outfit of
new garments, clean, sterile, and of his own choice. These garments
normally arrived by his bedside in the carrier which took away the old
ones to be converted back to raw material for the garment machines.
On the second day he could enter no place of public recreation. An
attempt to pass the door of any sport-field, theatre, or concert
stadium caused the Disciplinary Circuit to act. His body began to
tingle. He could turn back then. If he persisted, the tingling became
more severe. If he was obstinate, it became agony, which continued
until he turned back.
On the third day he found it impossible to enter any place of study or
labor. The fourth day blocked him from any place where food or drink
was served. On the fifth day his own quarters were barred to him.
After seven days the city and the planet would be barred. Anywhere
he went, his body would tingle, gently in the morning, more and more
strongly as the day wore on, until the torment became unbearable. Then
he would go to the matter-transmitter, name his chosen place of exile,
and walk off the planet which was Alphin III.
But it happened that Kim was a matter-transmitter technician. It
happened that he knew that the Disciplinary Circuit was tied in to the
matter-transmitter, and blocked men were not sent to destinations of
their own choosing.
Blocked men automatically went to Ades. And they did not come back.
Ever.
Behind the sealed-off parts of the space-ship, Kim searched hungrily
and worked desperately, not for food, of course. He had determined to
attempt the impossible. He had accomplished only the first step toward
it when he felt an infinitesimal tingling all over his body. He stood
rigid for a second, and then smiled grimly. He closed the casing of the
catalyzer he had examined and worked on.
"Just in time," he said. "The merciless brutes!"
He moved from the catalyzer. A moment later he heard footsteps. Someone
came up the flush ladder and into the space-ship. Kim Rendell turned
his head. Then he bent over the fuel-register, which amazingly showed
the tanks to be almost one-twelfth full of fuel, and stood motionless.
The footsteps moved here and there. Presently they came cautiously to
the engine-room. Kim did not stir. A man made an indescribable sound of
satisfaction. Kim, not moving even his eyes, saw that it was the lector
who had spoken to him outside the ship. He did not address Kim now.
With a quite extraordinary air of someone about to pick up an inanimate
object, the lector laid hands upon Kim to lift him off his feet.
"Citizen!" Kim said severely. "What does this mean?"
The lector gasped. He fell back. His mouth dropped open and his face
went white.
"I--I thought you were paralyzed."
"I do not care what you thought," Kim said. "It is against the law for
any citizen to lay violent hands upon another."
By an effort the lector babbler regained his self-control.
"You--you.... The Circuit failed to work!"
"You reported that I had entered this ship," Kim said drily. "There is
some uneasiness about what I do, because of my crime. So the Circuit
was applied to paralyze me, and you were ordered to bring me quietly to
the matter-transmitter. As you observe, it is not practical. Go back
and report it."
The lector said something incoherent, turned and fled. Kim followed him
leisurely to the entry-port. He turned the hand-power wheels which put
a barrier across the entrance. He went back to his examination of the
ship. The first part of the impossible had been achieved, but there was
much more, too much more, which must be done. He worked feverishly.
His grandfather had told him many tales of the _Starshine_.
She had made voyages of as long as two years in emptiness, at full
acceleration, during which she had covered four hundred light-years
of space, had purified her air, and fed her crew. Her tanks could
hold fuel for six years' drive at full acceleration and her
food-synthesizers, primitive as they were by modern standards, could
yet produce some four hundred foodstuffs from the carbon, hydrogen,
nitrogen, and traces of other elements into which almost any organic
raw material could be resolved.
She was, in fact, one of the last and most useful space-ships ever
constructed at the last space-ship yard in existence. She was almost
certainly the last ever to be used. But she was only a museum-piece
now and her switches were opened and her control-cables severed lest
visitors to the museum injure her. But Kim's grandfather had lectured
him at great length upon her qualities. The old gentleman had had an
elderly man's distaste for modern perfectionism.
Kim threw switches here and there. He spliced cables wherever he found
them cut. He was hungry and he was gaunt, and he worked with a bitter
anticipation of failure. He had been in the museum for almost an hour,
and in the ship for half of that, when voices called politely through
the barrier-grille.
"Citizen Kim Rendell, may we enter?"
He made sure it was safe, then opened the way.
"Enter and welcome, citizens," he said ironically, in the prescribed
formula. But his hands were clenched and he was all ready to fight for
his life.
2
_Break for Freedom_
Slowly the Prime Board of Alphin III filed up the flush ladder and into
the cabin of the _Starshine_. There was Malby, who looked like an
elderly sheep. There was Ponter, who rather resembled an immature frog.
There was Shimlo, who did not look like anything but an advanced case
of benevolent imbecility, and Burt, who at least looked intelligent and
whom Kim Rendell hated with a corrosive hatred.
"Greeting, citizen," Malby said. Even his voice had a bleating quality.
"Despite your crime, we have broken all precedent to come and reason
with you. You are not mad, yet you act like a madman."
Kim grinned savagely at him.
"Come, now! I found a material that changes a man's psychogram, so he's
immune to the Disciplinary Circuit. I was immune to discipline. So you
four had me seized and my little amulet taken away from me. And then
you sealed up every other bit of that material on the planet. Not so?"
"Naturally," Burt said pleasantly. "The Disciplinary Circuit is
the basis of civilization nowadays. All discipline and hence all
civilization would cease if the Circuit were nullified. Naturally, you
must be disposed of."
"But carefully, so if there is anyone who shares my secret, he'll be
betrayed by trying to help me!" said Kim. "And quietly, too, so those
amiable sheep, my fellow-citizens, won't suspect there's anything
wrong. They don't realize that they're slaves. They don't know of
your pleasure-palaces on the other side of the planet. They don't
realize that, when you take a fancy to a woman and she's blocked in her
quarters until she's hysterical with fear and loneliness, you advise
her to take psychological treatments which make her a submissive inmate
of the harems you keep there. They don't know what happens to men you
put under block for being too inquisitive about those women and who
enter the matter-transmitter for exile."
Burt looked mildly inquiring. "What does happen to them?"
"Ades!" Kim said furiously. "They go to the transmitter and name their
chosen place of exile, and the transmitter-clerk dutifully pushes the
proper buttons, but the Circuit takes over. They go to Ades! And no man
has ever come back."
There was a sudden tension in the air. Burt looked at his fellows.
Shimlo was the picture of benevolent indignation, but his eyes were
ugly. Ponter opened his mouth and closed it absurdly, looking more than
ever like a frog.
"This is monstrous!" Malby bleated. "This is monstrous!"
Burt held up his hand.
"How did you get this strange idea?" he asked.
"I'm a matter-transmitter technician, fourth grade," Kim said coldly.
"I worked on the transmitter when it gave trouble. I found the
Disciplinary Circuit tie-in. I traced it. So I knew there was something
wrong about all personal freedom on Alphin III and I started to look
for more things wrong. I found them. I started to do something about
them. Then I got caught."
Burt nodded.
"So!" he said thoughtfully. "We underestimated you, Kim Rendell. It
is much pleasanter to rule Alphin Three as beloved citizens than as
admitted tyrants. There are times when we have to protect ourselves.
Naturally, we would rather not show our hands. It is clear that you
must be sent into exile. Frankly, to Ades--whatever it may be like
there. Apparently you did not have any friends."
"I dared not trust any of the sheep you rule," Kim said angrily. "But
I did know there was more hafnium on this ship. I didn't dare come
at first, or you'd have guessed. But after I'd starved a bit and was
convincingly cold, I risked the venture. You guessed my intention
too late. I can defy you again, even if you did take away my first
protection from the Circuit. You know that?"
Burt nodded again.
"Of course," he admitted. "Yet we do not want a scandal. We will make
a bargain within limits. You must be disposed of, but we will promise
that you can go wherever you choose via the matter-transmitter."
"Your word's no good," Kim snapped.
"You will starve," Burt said mildly. "Of course you can seal yourself
in the ship, but we will have lectors, special lectors, waiting for you
when you come out again."
Kim scowled. "Yes?" he said. "I've been here half an hour. The ship's
circuits were cut, but I've put the communicator back in working order.
I can broadcast over the entire planet, telling the truth. I won't
destroy your power, but I'll make your slaves begin to realize what
they are. Sooner or later, one of them will kill you."
Malby bleated. It was not necessarily panic, but there are some minds
to whom public admiration is necessary. Such persons will commit any
crime to get admiration which they crave with a passionate desire. Burt
held up his hand again.
"But why tell us?" he asked pleasantly. "Why didn't you simply
broadcast what you've learned? Possibly it was because you wished to
bargain with us first? You have terms?"
Kim ground his teeth.
"That's right," he said. "There is a girl, Dona Brett. She was to marry
me, but one of you saw her, I think you, Burt. She is now blocked in
her quarters to grow hysterical and terrified. It was on account of her
that I acted too soon, and got caught. I want her here."
Burt considered without perceptible emotion.
"She is quite pretty, but there are others," he said in his detached
way. "If we send her, you will not broadcast?"
"I'll kill her and myself," Kim said. "It's apparently the only service
I can do her. Get out, now. It will take your best technician at least
forty minutes to make a scrambler which will keep me from broadcasting.
I'll give you twenty minutes to get her to me. I'll talk to all the
planet if she isn't here."
Burt shrugged.
"Almost, I overestimated you," he said mildly. "I thought you had an
actual plan. Very well. She will come. But if I were you, I would not
delay my suicide."
Burt's eyes gleamed for an instant. Then he went out, followed by
the others. Kim worked the controls which sealed the ship. He got
feverishly to work again.
From time to time he stared desperately out of the vision-ports, and
then resumed his labors. His task seemingly was an impossible one.
The _Starshine_ had been made into a mere museum exhibit. It was
complete, but Kim's knowledge was inadequate and his time far too short.
Eighteen minutes passed before he saw Dona. She stood quietly beside
the railing outside the space-ship, alone and quite pale. He opened
the outer airlock door. She came up. He closed the outer door and
opened the inner. She faced him. She was deathly white. As she saw him,
hollow-cheeked and bitter, she managed to smile.
"My poor Kim! What did they do to you?"
"Blocked me!" Kim cried. "Took away my hafnium gadget and put me on
the Circuit. They locked up every scrap of hafnium on the planet
behind an all-citizen block. They just didn't know that it was used in
space-ships in the fuel-catalyzers. I've found enough to make the two
of us safe, though. Here!" He thrust a scrap of metal into her hand.
"Hold it tightly. It has to touch your skin."
She caught her breath.
"I was blocked in my quarters, and I couldn't come out," she told him
unsteadily. "I was going crazy with terror, because you'd told me what
it might mean. I tried--so hard--to break through. But flesh and blood
can't face the Circuit. I hadn't any reason to hope that you'd be able
to do anything, but I did hope."
"I told them I'd kill both of us," he said fiercely. "Maybe I shall!
But if I can only find the right cable, we'll have a chance!"
Suddenly, every muscle in his body went rigid and a screaming torment
filled him. It lasted for part of a second. His face went gray. He
wetted his lips.
"Burt!" he said thickly. "He had a psychometer under his robe. They
came here, and he knew my psychogram was changed by the hafnium I'd
found, so while they talked he stole the new pattern. It's taken them
this long to get it ready for the Circuit. Now they're putting it in."
With a sudden, convulsive jerk, he went rigid once more. His muscles
stood out in great knots. He was paralyzed, with every nerve and sinew
in his body tensed to tetanic rigor. Agony filled him with an exquisite
torment. It was the Disciplinary Circuit. It was those waves broadcast,
focused upon him at full power. They would have found him anywhere upon
the planet. And their torment was unspeakable.
Dona sobbed suddenly.
"Kim!" she cried desperately. "I know you can hear me! Listen! They
must have me on the Circuit too, only what you gave me has thrown it
off. They expect to hold us paralyzed while they cut in with torches
and take us. But they mustn't! So I'm going to give you the thing
you gave me. If it changed my pattern, it will change yours again,
to something they can't guess at." She sobbed again. "Please, Kim!
Don't give it back. Go ahead and do what you planned, whatever it is.
And if you don't win out, please kill me before you give up. Please!
I don't want to be conditioned to do whatever they want in their
pleasure-palaces."
She took the tiny sliver of metal in her shaking fingers. She pushed
aside the flesh of her hand to put it in his grip. Courageously she
released it.
The agonized paralysis left Kim Rendell. But now Dona was a pitiful
figure of agony.
Kim groaned. Rage filled him. His anguish and fury was so terrible
that he would have destroyed the whole planet, had he been able. But
he could not permit her gift, which she had given at the price of such
torment, to go without reward. He must struggle on to save them both,
even though now he had no hope.
He sprang to the control-board. He stabbed at buttons almost at random,
hoping for a response. He'd tried to get the ship into some sort of
operating condition, but now there was no time. Frenziedly he attempted
to find some combination of controls which would make something,
anything happen. He slipped the second bit of hafnium into his mouth to
have both hands free. In desperation he ripped the control-board panel
loose. He saw clipped wires everywhere behind it. Seizing the dangling
ends, he struck them fiercely together. A lurid blue spark leaped. He
cried out in triumph, and the morsel of metal Dona had sacrificed to
him dropped from his lips.
His muscles contorted and agony filled him.
There was a roaring noise. The _Starshine_ bucked violently. There
were crashes and there was a feeling of intolerable weight which he
could feel, despite his agony. The ship reeled crazily. It smashed
through a wall. It battered into a roof. It spun like a mad thing and
went skyward tail-first with Kim Rendell in frozen, helpless torment,
holding two cables together with muscles utterly beyond his control.
It went up toward empty space, in which no other vessel was navigating
anywhere.
3
_Rays of Destruction_
Eventually the "_Starshine_," alone in space as no other
space-ship had been alone in twenty thousand years, behaved like a
sentient thing. At first, of course, her actions were frenzied, almost
insane, as if the Disciplinary Circuit waves which made Dona a statue
of agony and kept Kim frozen with contorted muscles could affect the
space-ship too.
Wildly the little vessel went upward through air which screamed as it
parted for her passage. She yawed and swayed and ludicrously plunged
backwards. The screaming of the air rose to a shriek, and then to a
high thin whistle, and then ceased altogether. Finally she was free of
the air of Alphin III.
After this she really made speed, backing away from the planet. Her
meteor-detectors had been turned on in one of Kim's random splicings,
and when current reached them they reported a monstrous obstruction in
her path and shunted in the meteor-repelling beams. The obstacle was
the planet itself, and the beams tried to push it away. Naturally, they
pushed the ship itself away, out into the huge chasm of interplanetary
space.
It kept up for a long time, too, because Kim was paralyzed by the
broadcast waves. They were kept focused upon him by the psychographic
locator. So long as those waves of the Disciplinary Circuit came
up through the ionosphere, Kim's spasmodically contracted muscles
kept together the two cables which had started everything. But the
_Starshine_ backed away at four gravities acceleration, faster and
ever faster, and ordinary psychographic locators are not designed for
use beyond planetary distances.
Ultimately the tormenting radio-beam lessened from sheer distance. At
last the influence broke off suddenly and Kim's hands on the leads
dropped away. The beam fumbled back to contact, and wavered away again,
and presently was only a tingling sensation probing for a target the
locators could no longer keep lined up.
Then the _Starshine_ seemed to lose her frenzy and become merely
a derelict. She sped on, giving no sign of life for a time. Then her
vision-ports glowed abruptly. Kim Rendell, working desperately against
time and with the chill of outer space creeping into the ship's
unpowered hull, had found a severed cable which supplied light and
heat.
An hour later still, the ship steadied in her motion. He had traced
down the gyros' power-lead and set them to work.
Two hours later yet the _Starshine_ paused in her flight. Her
long, pointed nose turned about. A new element of motion entered the
picture she made. She changed course.
At last, as if having her drive finally in operation gave her something
of purposefulness, the slim space-ship ceased to look frenzied or
frowsy or bemused, and swam through space with a serene competence,
like something very much alive and knowing exactly what she was about.
She came to rest upon the almost but not quite airless bulk of Alphin
II some thirty hours after her escape from Alphin III. Kim was
desperately hungry. But for the lesser gravity of the smaller inner
planet, which was responsible for its thinned-out atmosphere, he might
have staggered as he walked. Certainly a normal space-suit would have
been a heavy burden for a man who had starved for days. Dona, also,
looked pale and worn-out when she took from him the things he brought
back through the airlock.
They put the great masses of spongy, woody stuff in the synthesizer. It
was organic matter. Some of it, perhaps, could have been consumed as
food in its original state. But the synthesizer received it, and hummed
and buzzed quietly to itself, and presently the man and woman ate.
The synthesizer was not the equivalent of those magnificently complex
food-machines which in public dining-halls provide almost every dish
the gourmets have ever invented from raw materials. But it did make a
palatable meal from the tasteless vegetation of the small planet.
Kim said quietly, when they had finished eating, "Now we'll find out
for certain what Burt intends to do about us." He grimaced. "He's
dangerously intelligent. He underestimated me before. He may consider
us dead, or he may overestimate us. I think he'll play it safe. I
would, in his place."
"What does that mean?" Dona asked wistfully. "We will be able
to go to some other planet, won't we, Kim? As if we'd gone in the
matter-transmitter in a perfectly normal fashion? Simply to take up
residence on another world?"
Kim shook his head. "I'm beginning to doubt it," he said slowly. "The
discovery that with a bit of hafnium a man can change his psychographic
pattern is high explosive. If the Disciplinary Circuit can't pick him
out as an individual, any man can defy any government which depends
on the Circuit. Which means that no government is safe. I've got to
remove you for the sake of the government everywhere in the Galaxy."
"But they can't touch us here," said Dona. "We're safe now."
Kim shook his head.
"No. I was too hungry to think, before. We're not safe. I've got to
work like the devil. Do you remember your Galactic History? Remember
what the Disciplinary Circuit was built up to? Remember the Last War?
It's not only the space-ships which went into museums. I'm suddenly
scared stiff."
He stood up and abruptly began to put on the space-suit again. His face
had become haggard.
"In the Last War there were no battles, only massacres," he said curtly
as he snapped buckles. "There was no victory. They used a beam which
was a stepped-up version of the Disciplinary Circuit. They called it
a fighting-beam, then, and they thought they could fight with it. But
they couldn't. It simply made war impossible. So ultimately they hooded
over the projectors of the fighting-beams, and most of them probably
fell to rust. But there are some in the museums. If Burt and the others
want to play safe, they'll haul those projectors out of the museum and
hook them up to find and kill us. And there's no question but that they
can do it."
He stepped into the airlock and closed the door, still fumbling with
the last adjustments to his space-suit.
Dona was puzzled by his gloomy forebodings. She heard the outer door
open. As she stood there bewildered, she heard him bringing more raw
food-stuff to the airlock with a feverish haste. He made two trips,
three, and four.
She found herself screaming shrilly because of an agony already past.
It had been a bare flash of pain. It was gone in the fraction of a
second, in the fraction of a millisecond. But it was such pain! It was
the anguish of the Disciplinary Circuit a thousand times multiplied.
It was such torment as the ancients tried vainly to picture as the lot
of damned souls in hell. Had it lasted, any living creature would have
died of sheer suffering.
But it flashed into being, and was gone, and Dona had cried out in a
strangled voice. She was filled with a horrible weakness from the one
instant of anguish, and she felt stark panic lest it come again.
The outer airlock door slammed shut. The inner opened. Kim came
staggering within. He did not strip off the space-suit. He ran
clumsily toward the now-repaired control-panel, his face contorted.
"Lie down flat!" he shouted as he opened his face-plate. "I'm taking
off."
The _Starshine_ roared from the almost-barren world which was
an inferior planet of the sun Alphin, not worth colonization by men.
Acceleration built up and built up and built up to the very limit of
what the human body could stand.
After twenty minutes, it dropped from four gravities to one.
"Dona!" Kim called hoarsely.
She answered faintly.
"They've got the ancient projectors hooked up," he said as hoarsely
as before. "They're searching for us. We were so far away that the
beam flashed past. It won't record finding us for minutes, as it'll
take time for the response to get back. That's what will save us, but
they're bound to touch us occasionally until we get out of range."
The _Starshine_ swung about in space. The brutal acceleration
began again, at an angle to the former line of motion.
Ten minutes later there was another moment of intolerable pain. Every
nerve in their bodies jumped in a tetanic convulsion. Had it continued,
their muscles would have torn loose from their bones and their hearts
would have burst from the violence of the fearful contraction. The
_Starshine_ would have gone on senselessly as a speeding coffin.
But again the searing torment lasted for only the fraction of a second.
Back on Alphin III, great projectors swept across the sky. They were
ancient devices, those projectors. They were quaint, even primitive
in appearance. But a thousand years before they had been the final
word in armament. They represented an attack against which there was
no defense. A defense which could not be breached. Those machines had
ended wars.
They poured forth tight beams of the same wave-frequencies and forms
of which the Disciplinary Circuit was a more ancient development
still. But where the Circuit was an exquisitely sensitive device for
the exquisitely graduated torment of individuals, these beams were
murderers of men. They were not tuned to the psychographic patterns of
single persons, but coarsely, in irresistible strength, to all living
matter containing given amino-chain molecules. In short, to all men.
And they had made the Last War the last. There had been one battle in
that war. It had taken place near Canis Major, where there had been
forty thousand warships of space lined up in hostile array. The two
fleets were almost equally matched in numbers, and both possessed the
fighting beams. They hurtled toward each other, the beams stabbing out
ahead. They interpenetrated each other and went on, blindly.
It was a hundred years before the last of the run-away derelicts
blundered to destruction or was picked up by other space-ships which
then still roved the space-ways. Because there was no defense against
the fighting-beams, which were aimed by electronic devices, a ship did
not cease to fight when its crew was dead. And every crew had died
when a fighting-beam lingered briefly on their ship. There was not
one single survivor of the Battle of Canis Major. The fleets plunged
at each other, and every living thing in both fleets had perished
instantly. Thereafter the empty ships fought on as robots against all
other ships. So there were no more wars.
For two hundred years after that battle, the planets of the Galaxy
continued to mount their projectors and keep their detector-screens
out. But war had defeated itself. There could be no victories, but only
joint suicides. There could be no conquests, because even a depopulated
planet's projectors would still destroy all life in any approaching
space-ship for as many years as the projectors were powered for. But in
time, more especially after matter-transmitters had made space-craft
useless, they were forgotten. All but those which went into museums for
the instruction of the young.
These resuscitated weapons were now at work to find and kill Kim
and Dona. In a sense it was like trying to kill flies with a
sixteen-inch gun. The difficulties of aiming were extreme. To set up a
detector-field and neutralize it would take time and skill which were
not available.
So the beams swept through great arcs, with operators watching for
signs of contact. It was long minutes after the first contact before
the instruments on the projectors recorded it, because the news could
only go back at the speed of light. Then the projectors had to retrace
their path, and the _Starshine_ had moved. The beams had to fumble
blindly for the fugitives, and they told of each touch, but only after
it occurred. And Kim struggled to make his course unpredictable.
In ten hours the beam struck four times only, because Kim changed
course and acceleration so fiercely and so frequently that a contact
could only be a matter of chance.
Then for a long time there was no touch at all. In two days Alphin, the
sun, had dwindled until it was merely the brightest of the stars, with
a barely perceptible disk. On the third day the beam found them yet
again, and Dona burst into hysterical sobs. But it was not really bad,
this time. There is a limit to the distance to which a tight beam can
be held together in space, by technicians who have no space-experience
and instinctive know-how.
Within hours after this fifth contact, Kim Rendell found the last key
break in the control-cables of the ship, and was able to throw on
the overdrive, by which the _Starshine_ fled from Alphin at two
hundred times the speed of light. Then, of course, they were safe. Even
had the beam of agony been trained directly upon the ship, it could not
have overtaken them.
But Dona was a bundle of shrinking nerves when it was over, and Kim
raged as he looked at her scared eyes.
"I know," she said unsteadily, when he had her in the control-room to
look at the cosmos as it appeared at faster-than-light speed. "I know
I'm silly, Kim. It can't hurt us any more. We're going to another solar
system entirely. They won't know anything about us. We're all right.
Quite all right. But I'm just all in little pieces."
With somber brow, Kim stared at the vision-plates about him. The
Universe as seen at two hundred light-speeds was not a reassuring
sight. All stars behind had vanished. All those on either hand were
dimmed to near-invisibility. Ahead, where the very nose of the
space-ship pointed, there were specks of light in a recognizable
star-pattern, but the colors and the magnitudes were incredible.
"We're heading now for Cetis Alpha," Kim said slowly, after a
long time. "It's the next nearest solar system. Our fuel-tanks
are one-twelfth full. We have power to travel a distance of fifty
light-years, no more, and it would take us three months to cover that.
Cetis Alpha is seven light-years away, or it was."
"We're going to settle on one of the planets there?" Dona asked
hopefully. "What are they like, Kim?"
"You might look them up in the Pilot," Kim said, rather glumly. "There
are six inhabited ones."
"You sound worried," she said. "What is it?"
"I'm wondering," Kim admitted. "If Burt and the Prime Board should send
word ahead of us by matter-transmitter, to these six planets and all
the other inhabited planets within fifty or a hundred light-years,
it would be awkward for us. Transmission by matter-transmitter is
instantaneous, and it wouldn't take too long for the governments on
the Cetis Alpha planets to set up detectors and remount the projectors
which could kill us. Burt would call us very dangerous criminals. He'd
say we were so dangerous we had better be killed before we land." He
paused, and added, "He's right."
"I don't see why they should do anything so cruel."
"We've struck at the foundation of government," Kim said savagely. "On
Alphin Three there's a pretense that all men are free, and we know
it's a lie. But on the other planets they don't even pretend. On Loré
Four they have a king. On Markab Two the citizens wear collars of
metal--slave-collars--and members of the aristocracy have the right to
murder social inferiors at pleasure. On Andrometa Nine the Disciplinary
Circuit, and so the government, is in the hands of a blood-thirsty
lunatic. The Circuit backs all governments alike, the supposedly free
and the frankly despotic governments impartially. We're a danger to all
of them. Even a decent government, if there is one, would dread having
its citizens able to defy the Circuit. Yet in ten words I can tell how
to nullify the one instrument on which all government is based. Once
that knowledge gets loose, nothing can suppress it."
Dona sighed.
"I was hoping we could go some place where we would be safe," she said.
"Isn't there any such place?"
Kim's laugh was bitter.
"I wonder if there's any place where we can be free," he said. "I
planned big, Dona, but it didn't work out. There wasn't another man on
Alphin Three who wanted to be free as much as I did. I'd about decided
that just the two of us would put on protectors and journey from one
planet to another in search of freedom. But then Burt saw you, and you
were locked up so you'd go frantic with fear and loneliness. Later
they'd have given you a psychological conditioning to cure you of
terror, and sent you away to Burt's pleasure-palace."
"Why didn't you take me away before Burt saw me?" she asked. "Why did
you wait?"
Kim groaned. "Because I wasn't ready. When I realized the danger, I
tried to get you, and I was caught. They found out what I had and
everything became hopeless. They put me on block to see if anyone would
try to befriend me, but I hadn't any friends. I didn't know anyone
else who wouldn't have been frightened if I'd told him he was a slave.
I threatened the Prime Board with a broadcast, but I'm afraid nobody
would have believed me."
"It all happened because of me," Dona said. "Forget what I said about
wanting to be safe, Kim. I don't care any more, not if I'm with you."
Kim scowled at the weird pattern of strangely-colored stars upon the
vision-plate.
"We're using a lot of our fuel in trying for Cetis Alpha's planets. I'd
like to--well--have a marriage ceremony."
Despite her anxiety, Dona burst out laughing.
"It's about time, you big lug!" she cried. "I was beginning to lose
hope."
Kim laughed too. "All right. I'll see if it can be managed. But if
warnings have been sent ahead of us, marriage may be difficult."
4
_Outcasts of Space_
Like a silver arrow, the "_Starshine_" continued to bore on
through a weird, synthetic Universe, two hundred times faster than
light. In the space-ship Kim worked angrily, making desperate attempts
to devise a method of nullifying the non-individualized fighting beams
with which--now that he was in free space in a space-ship--any attempt
to land upon an inhabited planet might be frustrated.
In the end he constructed two small wristlets, one for himself and
one for Dona to wear. If tuned waves of the Circuit struck them, the
wristlets might nullify them. But if the fighting-beams struck, that
would be another story.
Twelve days after turning on the overdrive, which by changing the
constants of space about the space-ship, made two hundred light-speeds
possible, Kim turned it off. He had previously assured himself that
Dona was wearing the little gadget he had built. As he snapped off the
overdrive field, the look of the Universe changed with a startling
suddenness. Stars leaped into being on every side, amazingly bright
and astoundingly varicolored. Cetis Alpha loomed almost dead ahead, a
glaring globe of fire with enormous streamers streaming out on every
side.
There were planets, too. As the _Starshine_ jogged on at a normal
interplanetary--rather than interstellar--speed, Dona focused the
electron telescope upon the nearest. It was a great, round disk,
with polar ice-caps and extraordinarily interconnected seas, so that
there were innumerable small continents distributed everywhere. Green
vegetation showed, and patches of cloud, and when Dona turned the
magnification up to its very peak, they were certain that they saw the
pattern of a magnificent metropolis.
She looked at it hungrily. Kim regarded it steadily. They did not speak
for a long time.
"It would be nice there," Dona said longingly, at last. "Do you think
we can land, Kim?"
"We're going to try," he told her.
But they didn't. They were forty million miles away when a sudden
overwhelming anguish smote them both. All the Universe ceased to be....
* * * * *
Six weeks later, Kim Rendell eased the _Starshine_ to a landing on
the solitary satellite of the red dwarf sun Phanis. It was about four
thousand miles in diameter. Its atmosphere was about one-fourth the
density needed to support human life. Such vegetation as it possessed
was stunted and lichenous. The terrain was tumbled and upheaved, with
raw rock showing in great masses which had apparently solidified in a
condition of frenzied turmoil. It had been examined and dismissed as
useless for human colonization many centuries since. That was why Kim
and Dona could land upon it.
They had spent half their store of fuel in the desperate effort to find
a planet on which they could land.
Their attempt to approach Cetis Alpha VI had been the exact type of
all their fruitless efforts. They came in for a landing, and while yet
millions of miles out, recently reinstalled detector-screens searched
them out. Newly stepped-up long distance psychographic finders had
identified the _Starshine_ as containing living human beings.
Then projectors, taken out of museums, had hurled at them the deadly
pain-beams which had made war futile a thousand years before. They
might have died within one second, from the bursting of their hearts
and the convulsive rupture of every muscular anchorage to every bone,
except for one thing.
Kim's contrived wristlets had saved them. The wristlets, plus a relay
on a set of controls to throw the _Starshine_ into overdrive
travel through space. The wristlets contained a morsel of hafnium, so
that any previous psychographic record of them as individuals would
no longer check with the psychogram a searchbeam would encounter.
But also, on the first instant of convulsive contraction of muscles
beneath the wristlets, they emitted a frantic, tiny signal. That signal
kicked over the control-relay. The _Starshine_ flung itself into
overdrive escape, faster than light, faster than the pain-beams could
follow.
They had suffered, of course. Horribly. But the pain-beams could not
play upon them or more than the tenth of a millisecond before the
_Starshine_ vanished into faster-than-light escape. They had
tried each of the six planets of Cetis Alpha. They had gone rather
desperately to Cetis Gamma, with four inhabited planets, and Sorene,
with three. Then the inroads on their scant fuel-supply and their
dwindling store of vegetation from Alphin II made them accept defeat.
The massed volumes of the Galactic Pilot for this sector, age-yellowed,
brittle volumes now, had told them of vegetation on the useless planet
of the dwarf star Phanis. They came to it. Kim was stunned and bitter.
And they landed.
After the ship had settled down in a weird valley with fantastic
overhanging cliffs and a frozen small waterfall nearby, the two of them
went outside. They wore space-suits, of course, because of the extreme
thinness of the air.
"I suppose we can call this home, now," Kim said bitterly.
It was night. The sky was cloudless, and all the stars of the Galaxy
looked down upon them as they stood in the biting cold. His voice went
by space-phone to the helmet of Dona, by his side.
"I guess I can stand it if you can, Kim," she said quietly.
"We've got fuel for six weeks' drive," he said ironically. "That means
we can go to any place within twenty-five light-years. We've tried
every solar system in that range. They're all warned against us. They
all had their projectors in operation. We couldn't land. And we'd have
starved unless we got to some new material for the synthesizer. This
was the only place we could land on. So we have to stand it, if we
stand anything."
Dona was silent for a little while.
"We've got each other, Kim," she said slowly.
"For a limited time," he said. "If we use our fuel only for heat and to
run the synthesizer for food, it will probably last several years. But
ultimately it will run out and we'll die."
"Are you sorry you threw away everything for me, Kim?" asked Dona. "I'm
not sorry I'm with you. I'd rather be with you for a little while and
then die. Certainly death is better than what I faced."
Kim made a furious gesture.
"It's recognized, everywhere, that the population of a planet has the
right to make all the laws of that planet. We are the population here.
We could be married by our own act. But suppose we had children? When
our fuel gives out they'd die with us. I think we'd go mad anticipating
that. We can't even have each other. We're imprisoned here as they used
to imprison criminals. For life. We can have no hope. There is nothing
we can work at. We can't even try to do anything."