up the criminals on Ades. Maybe--and it's just possible--people who
have mustered energy and independence enough to commit political crimes
would be bearable. If we don't find anything there, why, we'll go to
another galaxy, choose a planet and settle down. And I promise I won't
be sorry, Kim!"
Kim made his computations and swung the _Starshine_ carefully. He
was able to center the course of the space-ship with absolute precision
upon the sun around which Ades circled slowly in lonely majesty.
He pressed the matter-transmission stud, and the alarm-bells rang
stridently, and there was the sun and the planet Ades barely half a
million miles from their starting-point.
It was not a large planet, and there was much ice and snow. The
electron telescope showed no monster cities, either, but there
were settlements of a size that could be picked out. Kim sent the
_Starshine_ toward it.
"Of course, I'm only head of this small city," said the man with the
bearskin hat. "And my powers are limited here, but I think we'll find
plenty to join us. I'll go, of course, if you'll take me."
Kim nodded in an odd grim satisfaction.
"We'll set up matter-transmitters," he suggested. "Then there'll be
complete and continuous communication with this planet from the start."
"Right," said the man with the bearskin hat. He added candidly: "We've
brains on Ades, my friend. We've got every technical device the rest
of the Galaxy has, except the Disciplinary Circuit, and we won't allow
that! If this is a scheme of some damned despot to add another planet
to his empire, it won't work. There are three empires already started,
you know, all taken by matter-transmitter. But that won't work here!"
"If you build the transmitters yourselves, you'll know there's
nothing tricky about the circuits," Kim said. "My offer is to take a
transmitter and an exploring party to the next nearest galaxy and pick
out a planet there to start on. Ades isn't ideal."
"No," agreed the man with the bearskin hat. "It's too cold, and we're
overcrowded. There are twenty million of us and more keep coming out
of the transmitter every day. The Galaxy seems to be combing out
all its brains and sending them all here. We're short of minerals,
though--metals, especially. So we'll pick some good sound planets to
start on over in a second galaxy. Hm! Come to the communicator and
we'll talk to the other men we need to reach."
They went out of the small building which was the center of government
of the quite small city. There was nothing impressive about it,
anywhere. It was not even systematically planned. Each citizen, it
appeared, had built as he chose. Each seemed to dress as he pleased,
too.
To Kim and to Dona there was a startling novelty in the faces they saw
about them. On Alphin III almost everybody had looked alike. At any
rate their faces had worn the same expression of bovine contentment.
On other planets contentment had not been the prevailing sentiment. On
some, despair had seemed to be universal.
But these people, these criminals, were individuals. Their manner was
not the elaborate, cringing politeness of Alphin III. It was free and
natural.
The communicator-station was rough and ready. It was not a work of
art, but a building put up by people who needed a building and built
one for that purpose only. The vision-screens lighted up one by one and
faces appeared, as variegated as the costumes beneath them. They had a
common look for aliveness which was heartening to Kim.
The conference lasted for a long time. There was enthusiasm, and there
was reserve. The _Starshine_ would carry a matter-transmitter to
the next galaxy and open a way for migration of the criminals of Ades
to a new island universe for conquest.
Kim would turn over the construction-records of the space-ship
so that others could be built. He would give the details of the
matter-transmitter alteration. No space-ships had been attempted
by the inhabitants of Ades, because fighting-beams would soon have
been mounted on useful planets, against them, and all useful planets
contained only enemies.
"What do you want?" asked a figure in one vision-plate. "We don't do
things for nothing, here, and we don't take things without paying for
them, either."
"Dona and I want only a place to live and a people to live among who
are free," Kim answered sharply.
"You've got that," the man in the bearskin hat said. "All right? We'll
all call public meetings and confirm these arrangements?"
The heads of other cities nodded.
"We'll pass on the news to other cities at once," another man said. He
was one of those who had nodded. "Everybody will wish to come in on it,
of course. If not now, then later."
"Wait!" Kim said suddenly. "How about the planets around us? Are we
going to leave them enslaved?"
"Nobody can free a slave," a whiskered man in a vision-plate said
drily. "We could only release prisoners. In time we may have to take
them over, I suppose, but on the planet I come from there aren't a
dozen men who'd know how to be free if we emancipated them. They don't
want to be free. They're satisfied as they are. If any of them want to
be free, they'll be sent here, eventually."
"I am reluctant to desert them," Kim answered slowly.
"Count, man," the man with bearskin hat cried. "There are three
hundred million inhabited planets! All of them but Ades are ruled by
Disciplinary Circuits. If we set out to liberate them, it would take
one thousand years, and there are only twenty million of us. Designate
just one of us to stay on each planet to teach the people to be free
again. Otherwise we wouldn't do a tenth of the job and we'd destroy
ourselves by scattering. But, hang it all, we'd be tyrants! No! We go
on and start on a new galaxy. That's a job worth doing. We'll keep a
group of watchers here to receive the new ones who come here into exile
and forward them. Some day, maybe, we'll come back and take over the
old Galaxy if it seems worth while. But we've a job to do. How many
galaxies are there, anyhow, for us and our children and our children's
children to take over?"
"It's a job that will never be finished," another voice said. "That's
good!"
* * * * *
There were trees visible from the window of the house that had been
offered by a citizen for Kim's and Dona's use. The sun went down beyond
those trees, with a glowing of many colors in the foliage. Kim had
never watched a sunset before except upon the towers and pinnacles of
a city. He had never noted quite this sharp tang in the air, either,
which he learned was the smell of fresh growing things.
"I think I'm going to like living like this," he said to Dona. "Have
you noticed the way people act? They don't behave as if I were
important at all, in one way. They seem to think I'm commonplace. But
I've never before felt so definitely that I matter."
"You do, Kim, darling," Dona said, wisely. She stood close beside him,
watching the sunset too. She looked up at him. "You matter enormously,
and they know it. But to themselves they matter, too, and when they
listen to you and agree with you it's because they mean it, instead of
just citizen-like politeness. It is good. I think it must be a part of
what we've been looking for. It's a part of freedom, I suppose."
"And you," Kim said. "Do you feel important too?"
She laughed at him and pressed close.
"My dear!" she said. "Could I help it? Can any woman help feeling
important on her wedding-day? Do you realize that we've been married
two whole hours?"
PART TWO
THE MANLESS WORLDS
1
_Empires in the Making_
The speaker inside the house spoke softly.
"Guests for Kim Rendell, asking permission to land."
Kim stared up at the unfamiliar stars of the Second Galaxy, and picked
out a tiny winking light with his eyes. He moved to a speaker-disk.
"Land and be welcomed." To Dona he added, "It's a flier. I've been
expecting something like this. We need fuel for the _Starshine_
if we're not to be stuck on this one planet forever. My guess is that
somebody has come through the matter-transmitter from Ades to argue
about it."
He moved to the edge of the terrace to watch the landing. Dona came and
stood beside him, her hand twisting into his. The night was very dark,
and the two small moons of Terranova cast no more than enough light
to outline nearby objects. The house behind Kim and Dona was low and
sprawling and, on its polished outer surface, unnamed Second Galaxy
constellations glinted faintly.
The flier came down, black and seemingly ungainly, with spinning rotors
that guided and controlled its descent, rather than sustaining it
against the planet's gravity. The extraordinarily flexible vegetation
of Terranova bent away from the hovering object. It landed and the
rotors ceased to spin. Figures got out.
"I'm here," said Kim Rendell into the darkness.
Two men came across the matted lawn to the terrace. One was the
colony organizer for Terranova and the other was the definitely
rough-and-ready mayor of Steadheim, a small settlement on Ades back in
the First Galaxy.
"I am honored," said Kim in the stock phrase of greeting.
The two figures came heavily up on the terrace. Dona went indoors
and came back with refreshments, according to the custom of Ades and
Terranova. The visitors accepted the glasses, in which ice tinkled
musically.
"You seem depressed," said Kim politely, another stock phrase. It was a
way of getting immediately to business.
"There's trouble," growled the Mayor of Steadheim. "Bad trouble. It
couldn't be worse. It looks like Ades is going to be wiped out. For
lack of space-ships and fuel."
"Lack of space-ships and fuel?" protested Kim. "But you're making them!"
"We thought we were," growled the Mayor. "We've stopped. We're stuck.
We're finished--and the ships aren't. The same with the fuel. There's
not a drop for you and things look bad! But we can't make ships, and we
couldn't make fuel for them if we could! That's why we've come to you.
_We've got to have those ships!_"
"But why not?" demanded Kim. "What's preventing it? You've got the
record-reels from the _Starshine_! They tell you everything,
from the first steps in making a ship to the last least item of its
outfitting! You know how to make fuel!"
"Space!" exploded the Mayor of Steadheim. "Of course we know how! We
know all about it! There are fifty useless hulks in a neat row outside
my city--every one unfinished. We're short of metal on Ades and we had
to melt down tools to make them, but we did--as far as we could go. Now
we're stuck and we're apt to be wiped out because of it!"
The Mayor of Steadheim wore a bearskin cap and his costume was
appropriate to that part of Ades in which his municipality lay. He
was dressed for a sub-arctic climate, not for the balmy warmth of
Terranova, where Kim Rendell had made his homestead. He sweated as he
gulped at his drink.
"Tell me the trouble," said Kim. "Maybe--"
"Hafnium!" barked the mayor. "There's no hafnium on Ades! The ships are
done, all but the fuel-catalyzers. The fuel is ready--all but the first
catalyzation that prepares it to be put in a ship's tanks. We have to
have hafnium to make catalyzers for the ships. We have to have hafnium
to make the fuel!
"We haven't got it! There's not an atom of it on the planet! We're so
short of heavy elements, anyhow, that we make hammers out of magnesium
alloy and put stones in 'em to give them weight so they'll strike a
real blow! We haven't got an atom of hafnium and we can't make ships or
run them either without it!"
Kim blinked at the Colony Organizer for Terranova.
"Here--"
"No hafnium here either," said the Colony Organizer gloomily. "We
analyzed a huge sample of ocean salts. If there were any on the planet
there'd be a trace in the ocean. Naturally! So what do we do?"
Kim spoke unhappily.
"I wouldn't know. I'm a matter-transmitter technician. I can do things
with power and, of course, I understand the _Starshine's_ engines.
But there's no record of the early, primitive types that went before
them--types that might work on other fuel. Maybe in some library on one
of the older planets--But at that, the fuel the _Starshine_ used
was so perfect that it would be recorded thousands of years back."
"Take a year to find it," said the Mayor of Steadheim bitterly. "If
we could search! And it might be no good then! We haven't got a year.
Probably we haven't a month!"
"We're beaten," mourned the Colony Organizer. "All we can do is get
as many through the Transmitter from Ades as possible and go on half
rations. But we'll starve."
"We're _not_ beaten!" roared the Mayor of Steadheim. "We'll get
hafnium and have a fighting fleet and fuel to power it! There's plenty
of the blasted stuff somewhere in the Galaxy! Kim Rendell, if I find
out where it is, will you go get it?"
"The _Starshine_," said Kim grimly, "barely made it to port here.
There's less than six hours' fuel left."
"And who'd sell us hafnium?" demanded the Colony Organizer bitterly.
"We're the men of Ades--the rebels, the outlaws! We were sent to Ades
to keep us from contaminating the sheep who live under governments with
disciplinary circuits and think they're men! We'd be killed on sight
for breaking our exile on any planet in the First Galaxy! Who'd sell us
hafnium?"
"Who spoke of buying?" roared the mayor. "I was sent to Ades for
murder! I'm not above killing again for the things I believe in! I've a
wife on Ades, where there are ten men for every woman. I've four tall
sons! D'you think I won't kill for them?"
"You speak of piracy," said the Colony Organizer, distastefully.
"Piracy! Murder! What's the difference? When my sons are in danger--"
"What's this danger?" Kim said sharply. "It's bad enough to be
grounded, as we seem to be. But you said just now--"
"Sinab Two!" snorted the Mayor of Steadheim. "That's the danger! We
know! When a man becomes a criminal anywhere he's sent to us. In the
First Galaxy a man with brains usually becomes a criminal. A free man
always does! So we've known for a long while there were empires in the
making. You heard that, Kim Rendell!"
"Yes, I've heard that," agreed Kim.
So he had, but only vaguely. His own home planet, Alphin Three, was
ostensibly a technarchy, ruled by men chosen for their aptitude for
public affairs by psychological tests and given power after long
training.
Actually it was a tyranny, ruled by members of the Prime Council. Other
planets were despotisms or oligarchies and many were kingdoms, these
days. Every possible form of government was represented in the three
hundred million inhabited planets of the First Galaxy.
But every planet was independent and in all--by virtue of the
disciplinary circuit--the government was absolute and hence tyrannical.
Empires, however, were something new. On Ades, Kim barely heard that
three were in process of formation.
"One's the Empire of Greater Sinab," snorted the mayor, "and we've just
heard how it grows!"
"Surprise attacks, no doubt," said Kim, "through matter-transmitters."
"We'd not worry if that were all!" snapped the mayor. "It's vastly
worse! You know the old fighting-beams?"
"I know them!" said Kim grimly.
2
_The Deadly Beams_
He did. They were the most terrible weapons ever created by men. They
had ended war by making all battles mass suicide for both sides.
They were beams of the same neuronic frequencies utilized in the
disciplinary circuits which kept men enslaved.
But where the disciplinary circuits were used in place of police and
prisons and merely tortured the individual citizen to whom they were
tuned--wherever he might be upon a planet--the fighting-beams killed
indiscriminately. They induced monstrous, murderous currents in any
living tissue containing the amino-chains normally a part of human
flesh.
They were death-rays. They killed men and women and children alike in
instants of shrieking agony. But no planet could be attacked from space
if it was defended by such beams. It was two thousand years since the
last attempt at attack from space had been made.
That fleet had been detected far out and swept with fighting-beams and
every living thing in the attacking ships died instantly. So planets
were independent of each other. But when space-ships ceased to be used
the fighting-beams were needless and ultimately were scrapped or put
into museums.
"Somebody," the mayor said wrathfully, "has changed those beams!
They're not tuned to animal tissue in general any more! They're tuned
to male tissue. To blood containing male hormones, perhaps! And Sinab
Two is building an empire with 'em! We found out only two weeks ago!
"There's a planet near Ades--Thom Four. Four years ago its
matter-transmitter ceased to operate. The Galaxy's going to pot anyhow.
Nothing new about that! But we just learned the real reason. The real
reason was that four years ago fighting-beams killed men and left women
unharmed.
"Every man on Thom Four died as the planet rotated. The beams came from
space. Every man and every boy and every male baby died! There were
only girls and women left." He added curtly, "There were half a billion
people on Thom Four!"
Kim stiffened. Dona, beside him, drew closer.
"Every man killed!" said Kim. "What--"
The Mayor of Steadheim swore angrily.
"Half the population! On Ades we're nine-tenths men! Women don't run to
revolt or crime. There'd not be much left on Ades if those beams swept
us! But I'm talking about Thom Four. The men died. All of them. So many
that the women couldn't bury them all.
"One instant, the planet was going about its business as usual. The
next, every man was dead, his heart burst and blood running from his
nostrils. Lying in the streets, toppled in the baths and eating-halls,
crumpled beside the machines.
"Boys in the schools dropped at their desks. Babes in arms, with their
mothers shrieking at the sight! Only women left. A world of women!
Cities and continents filled with dead men and women going mad with
grief!"
Kim felt Dona's hand fumbling for his. She held it fast.
"Go on!" said Kim.
"When they thought to go to the matter-transmitter and ask for help
from other planets the matter-transmitter was smashed. They didn't
go at first. They couldn't believe it. They called from city to city
before they realized theirs was a manless world. Then, when they'd have
told the men of another planet what had happened--they couldn't.
"For four years there was not one man or boy on the planet Thom Four.
Only women. The old ones grew older. The girls grew up. Some couldn't
remember ever seeing a man. No communication with other worlds. Then,
one day, there was a new matter-transmitter in the place of the smashed
one. Men came out of it. The women crowded about them.
"The men were very friendly. They were from Sinab Two. Their employer
had sent them to colonize. There were a thousand women to every
man--ten thousand! Some of the women realized what had been done.
They'd have killed the newcomers. But some women fell in love with
them, of course!
"In a matter of days every man had women ready to fight all other women
who would harm him. Their own men were dead four years. What else could
they do? More and more men colonists came. Presently things settled
down. The men were happy enough. They'd no need to work with all the
women about.
"They established polygamy, naturally! Presently it was understood that
Thom Four was part of the empire of Greater Sinab. So it was. What
else? In a generation there'll be a new population, all its citizens
descended from loyal subjects of the emperor.
"And why shouldn't they be loyal? A million colonists inherited the
possessions and the women of a planet! It was developed. Everything
was built. Every man was rich and with a harem. A darned clever way to
build an empire! Who'd want to revolt--and who could?"
He stopped. The two moons of Terranova floated tranquilly, higher in
the sky. The soft sweet unfamiliar smells of a Terranovan night came to
the small group on the terrace of Kim Rendell's house.
"That's what's ahead on Ades!" raged the Mayor of Steadheim. "And
I've four sons! A woman of Thom Four smashed the lock on the new
matter-transmitter, which set it to send only to Sinab, and traveled to
Khiv Five to warn them. But they laughed at her and when she begged to
be sent to a distant planet they grinned--and sent her to Ades!"
He paused.
"Not long after, a criminal from Khiv Five--he'd struck a minor noble
for spitting on him--came to Ades. There'd been inquiry for that woman.
Spies, doubtless, from Thom Four, trying to trace her. It was clear
enough she'd told the truth."
"So," said Kim slowly, "you think Ades will be next."
"I know it!" said the Mayor of Steadheim. "We've checked the planets
that have cut communication in our star-cluster. Twenty-one inhabited
planets have ceased to communicate in the past few years--the twenty
planets nearest to Sinab. We figured Khiv Five would be next. Then we'd
be in line for it.
"Khiv Five cut communications four days ago! Every man on Khiv Five is
dead! We've had exiles from a dozen nearby planets. All know Khiv Five
is cut off. It's inhabited only by women, going mad with grief!
"In a few years, when they grieve no longer, but despair instead, new
colonists from Sinab will come out of a new matter-transmitter to let
the women fall in love with them--and to breed new subjects for the
Empire of Sinab! So we've got to have space-ships, man! We've got to!"
Kim was silent. His face was hard and grim.
"Twenty planets those so-and-so's have taken over!" roared the mayor.
"They've murdered not less than four billion men already, and the
weasels have a hundred wives apiece and the riches of generations for
reward! D'you think I'll let that happen to Ades, with my four sons
there? _Space_, no! I want ships to fight with!"
The two small moons rose higher. Strange sweet smells floated in the
air. Dona pressed close to Kim. On Terranova, across the gulf between
island universes, Kim was surely safe, but any woman can feel fear for
her man on any excuse.
"It's a hard problem," said Kim evenly. "We barely made Terranova with
the _Starshine_, and there's just about enough fuel left to take
off with. Of course, on transmitter-drive she could go anywhere, but I
doubt that we've fuel enough to land her.
"Here on Terranova we need supplies from Ades to live. If
fighting-beams play on Ades we'll starve. And, even if we had fuel the
_Starshine_ isn't armed and they'll have a fleet prepared to fight
anything."
Dona murmured in his ear.
"We're beaten, then," said the Colony Organizer bitterly. "Ades will
be wiped out, we'll starve and the Sinabians will go through the First
Galaxy, killing off the men on planet after planet and then moving in
to take over."
Dona murmured again in Kim's ear. The Mayor of Steadheim growled
profanely, furiously. Dona laughed softly. The two visitors stared at
her suspiciously.
"What do we do, Kim Rendell?"
"I suppose," said Kim wryly, "we'll have to fight. We've no fuel and no
weapons--but that ought to surprise them."
"Eh?"
"They'll be prepared," Kim explained, "to defend themselves against
any conceivable resistance by any conceivable weapon. And a warship a
fairly intelligent planet could build should be able to wipe out ten
thousand _Starshines_. So when we attack them without any weapons
at all they won't quite know what to do."
The two visitors simply stared at him.
"You've got to get hafnium! You've got to get fuel! You can't face a
battleship!"
"But," said Kim, "battleships have fuel on board and they'll have
hafnium too. It'll be risky--but convenient...."
3
_Contact!_
Actually there was less than a quart of fuel in the _Starshine's_
tanks. Kim knew it ruefully well. It would run the little ship at
interplanetary speed for perhaps six hours. On normal overdrive--two
hundred light-speeds--it would send her just about one-seventh of a
light-year, and star-systems averaged eight light-years apart in both
the First and Second Galaxies.
Of course, on transmitter-drive--the practically infinite speed
the _Starshine_ alone in history had attained--the ship might
circumnavigate the cosmos on a quart of fuel. But merely rising from
Terranova would consume one-third of it, and landing on any other
planet would take another third.