1,000-Year Voyage (5 page)

“By doing what?” Rigilus asked, moodily. “You don't suppose that I can suddenly go into their midst, single Randos out and kill him, do you?”

“No, I don't see any necessity for anything quite so blatant as that,” Merva agreed, “but there is certainly nothing to prevent his meeting with an accident, and quickly, too, before he can talk too much. He always has been a man with an enquiring turn of mind and if he has too much to say it will mean ten against us and that will take a good deal of handling. You'll have to act at once!”

Rigilus hesitated, plainly uncertain. Merva looked at him steadily, waiting, then as he made no move she made a quick gesture of annoyance.

“This isn't a matter that can wait, Rigilus! Since you won't act—I shall—and now!”

She wasted no further time. Hurrying from the laboratory she overtook Randos who was moving at a languid pace along the immense corridor that ran through the heart of the vessel. He turned as Merva came hurrying up and looked at her in sardonic inquiry.

“Is there something I can do for the wife of the Ruler?” he asked, cynically.

Immediately Merva's mood changed from that to which everyone was accustomed. Instead she switched on extreme plaintiveness that even the wily Randos could not entirely resist.

“I feel that I owe you an apology, Randos,” Merva said. “I was downright rude to you back in the laboratory there, considering you were only asking a perfectly normal question. My husband and I have been working so hard on that apparatus that it has made us rather less courteous than usual. I do hope that you will forgive me.”

Randos merely shrugged and waited for the next.

“Since you asked so many questions,” Merva continued, “you are entitled to the answers and I feel that I am the best one to give them to you since the idea of building a machine to capture life energy is mine. Would you care to step into the sub-laboratory for a moment where I can explain more fully?”

Randos nodded, not for a moment expecting anything.

Upon which Merva turned to the nearby doorway that led on to a contiguous region of the main laboratory and stepped into the great instrument-lined space beyond,

Randos following behind her and looked about him with interest. He had already been in here before and knew pretty well all the apparatus contained therein. How any of it could apply to the life energy equipment that was in the main laboratory he had yet to discover.

“The one thing which you must understand,” Merva said, seriously, “is that the life energy equipment which we are now building has nothing whatever to do with the children which you and the other men and their wives are expecting to bring amongst us shortly. It is concerned entirely with the progeny of Rigilus and myself. Our idea is to capture some of this life energy and by its means we can perhaps extend the so-called normal span of our lives to double or treble the accepted amount.”

“At least I thank you for telling me,” Randos said, gravely. “I do feel though that you are making an extreme mistake in attempting to tamper with an energy which Nature alone gives.”

“It is quite possible that we are wrong in our calculations,” Merva admitted, “but we cannot possibly determine that until we have experimented. Certainly we will see that nobody comes to any harm because of our endeavours.

“In here,” she continued, moving to one of the machines, “is a subsidiary equipment which we have perfected and which no doubt in your travels around you have already seen!”

Randos shook his head as he looked around him. “Even if I have seen it I have not recognized it. Which one is it?”

Merva pointed to a squat, many-dialled apparatus upon the top of which were electro-magnetic devices.

“This is it,” she said, simply, switching a button so that the apparatus hummed steadily, “and with it in action you can see for yourself exactly how we propose to absorb the energy. That is, of course, the whole business on a very small scale, but at least it will give you the idea.”

Randos nodded interestedly and stepped forward. Merva seemed to consider something carefully and then nodded towards a massive switch on the apparatus.

“Actually this is a job for two to handle,” she explained. “You pull that switch down and I'll move this lever here and then we have the first stage of the theoretical experiment complete.”

Randos did exactly as he was ordered and pulled the switch. Immediately Merva moved the lever she had referred to from left to right with savage vigour. The result was that Randos gave a tremendous gasp of anguish as a colossal electrical current surged through him, flashing from the soles of his boots, along the metal floor on which he was standing. Even Merva herself caught some of the electrical impact and was flung backwards to land heavily on her face some feet away. When at length she felt sufficiently recovered, she sat up and looked about her to behold Randos sprawled helplessly on the floor in front of the softly humming machine.

“Unfortunate,” she commented to herself, rising, “but very necessary.”

With that she left the machine running, walked in a wide circle round the fallen Randos and so out into the corridor again and back to the laboratory. Rigilus looked at her enquiringly as she entered and he could not help the feeling of emotional disturbance that passed through him as he studied the unholy smile on her face.

“I think,” she said, catching his glance, “that Randos will not disturb us again, and to the best of my knowledge there is nobody else scientific enough amongst our colleagues to even have the vaguest idea what we are driving at.”

“What have you
done
to Randos?” Rigilus demanded, catching Merva's shoulders and shaking her fiercely.

“Eliminated him,” she answered coldly, snatching herself free, “and I'll thank you to keep your hands off me Rigilus!”

Rigilus dropped his hands and looked at her steadily from beneath his tufted eyebrows.

“Just what did you do? I may as well know.”

“I had the fool pull down the main switch on one of the electrical storage generators. I rather feared he would suspect the trick but he didn't. He did exactly as I told him and the second the main switch was on and the potential lever released he naturally got the full voltage and that was that! It will look as though he went into the laboratory and set the thing going for himself, not taking the necessary precautions to save himself from electrocution.”

Rigilus tightened his lips.

“You certainly mean to enforce your will by whatever means you can, don't you, Merva?”

She nodded calmly. “Certainly I do. And there will probably have to be quite a few accidents before we have the children of these fools entirely in our hands. I am quite prepared for that and if you do not like what I am doing, Rigilus, it is possible that even you might run into trouble.”

Rigilus stared at her for a moment and then laughed shortly.

“You against me? Don't be absurd my dear. I would very soon discover any machinations which you might plan against me.”

“So you imagine,” she retorted. “There is one thing which you must understand, Rigilus, and that is, that I am determined this plan of vengeance shall be executed no matter who tries to prevent it. I've had the feeling all along that you are no longer so keen on the plan as you were and for that reason I must see to it that you do not lose your enthusiasm. If you do and it is left entirely to me to carry the plan through then at least you can die feeling that your mission has been left in good hands.”

CHAPTER THREE

MERVA STRIKES

THE death of Randos was accepted without question as an accident for the simple reason that it never occurred to the more simple minded members forming the rest of the banished ones that neither Rigilus or Merva would descend to the level of murder, for murder was one of the most outmoded of crimes long since destroyed in the civilisation of Earth by the concentrated work of medical specialists and psychiatric experts.

The only one who did have the vaguest suspicion and yet could not do anything about it was Randos' wife, but even she was disarmed by the immense superficial sympathy which Merva poured upon her and at last even she came to think that the whole business must have been an accident so splendidly did Merva play her delusive part.

Certainly nobody else asked any questions about the life energy equipment, even though none of them was prevented from studying it during the times when Merva and Rigilus were off duty and thereby unable to guard the laboratory....

And the weeks and the months passed by. With the life energy machine now completed there were no further experiments for Merva and Rigilus to engage upon. There was nothing they could do but wait until the slow maturity of the few children that had been born in the past few days had reached a reasonable maximum thereby enabling them to become suitable subjects for the transmission of life current.

There also came a further hiatus in the life of Merva herself when her own child was born. It proved to be a son, with the green eyes and black hair of his mother. Rigilus was not sure whether he was pleased by the event or not. He felt somehow that if necessary his ruthless wife would not hesitate to sacrifice her own child to the ideal of revenge if necessity compelled it. But this was something far too early to decide as yet, so he behaved just as any father might when at length Merva was up and about again and the recipient of congratulations from the remainder of the banished people.

Merva herself seemed somewhat changed after the birth of her son in that her manner was less harsh and indeed even sympathetic at times. What Rigilus did not grasp in his masculine bluntness was that Merva was merely lulling everybody else in the ship into a sense of false security—giving them a totally wrong impression of her character—so that the life energy experiment when it was finally conducted would seem not to attach so much to her, as a mother herself, as to Rigilus. Merva well knew that Rigilus had been the first to expound the plan of vengeance and had made each of his colleagues register that vow before departing from Earth, that they would implement the plan of revenge that he had outlined. It would therefore not seem unusual when the children of the colleagues were subjected to the life energy experiment that he was the prime mover in the whole scheme.

If there was any trouble—as Merva fully anticipated there would be—it would be Rigilus who would catch the full blast of it. Not that this concerned her in the least now. By him she had had her son, which was all that mattered, and this son could very easily take the place of Rigilus as the years passed and there was granted to her the eternality of life produced by the life energy of other children in whom she had not the remotest interest.

Rigilus, suspecting none of these things, went steadily on. He maintained a just control of the peoples in the space machine and they in turn behaved quite normally and caused no trouble whatever. Indeed, they had no need to as yet, for they were allowed to educate their children as they wished—and there were six children in all, three boys and three girls—which had brought into their lives an interest and lifted from them the crushing load of monotony produced by the everlasting journeying through space.

Inevitably there were times, as the months spread into years and Merva still waited her chance, when the children were old enough to ask questions concerning their strange environment. This was the very thing that Randos had predicted, but Rigilus was well ready for it. Still keeping to the promise he had made and securing beforehand Merva's assent, he told the children the story of a vast exploration into the far deeps of space from the Mother World and said nothing whatever about the banishment which was the cause of it, or the plan of vengeance which must one day be brought to maturity….

And still the years passed on and the children grew. They were all brightly intelligent offspring, carefully educated in the arts of science by their doting parents and indeed having lavished upon them a great deal more attention than any normal children because there was nothing much else for their parents to do.

Rigilus and Merva's own child grew up alongside them, showing signs early of becoming tall and massive like his father, with a great deal of his majestic bearing, but having also the coldly individual indifference which was his mother's outstanding characteristic. Rigilus had little chance to converse or direct the mind of his own son: Merva always took the issues straight out of his hands, spending many hours inculcating into that pliable young mind the urgency and the need for revenge upon the successors of those who had brought about this banishment into the deeps of space.

As yet the boy, who had been given the unusual name of Exodus, was hardly able to take in the invective and venom which his mother poured into his mind, but she knew quite well what she was doing and she knew too, that as the mind gradually developed it would absorb and mature itself upon the facts which she had given. She hoped that when Exodus reached manhood he would be the living symbol of vengeance and would bring to bear all the scientific knowledge that had been given him upon the problem of revenge....

And still the years passed and the machine flew onwards with the same resistless, unchanging velocity.

Then at last came the day when Merva acted. She had by this time so satisfied the other members of the spaceship's community that she was entirely sympathetic towards their children that she had no difficulty in gathering them all about her with the apparent intention of taking them into the solarium to unfold to them one of those wildly imaginative stories for which she was remarkable.

Rigilus knew exactly what she intended doing but had no power whatever to stop her—or if he had he did not choose to use it. He had by this time come to realise only too clearly that his wife was entirely the dominant factor in their union. All he could do was to go to the laboratory at her summons and there he found her with the three boys and the three girls grouped around her and the throbbing energy of the life-energy machine already in operation.

“You intend then to carry it through?” he asked her briefly.

“Certainly I do, and shut and lock the door,” she commanded.

He obeyed and came over to her, surveying the six innocent-eyed children with a certain air of resignation.

“Somehow,” he said, heavily, “it seems a difficult thing now to use the young and hopeful lives in the furtherance of a scheme of vengeance. We are mature and full of hates and bitterness: these children are young and have the virtue of absolute innocence. Can you find it in your heart Merva, to still carry out the plan which you devised so many years ago?”

“Can I find it in my heart?” she repeated, gazing at him blankly with her green eyes. “What do you think I've been doing these past five years? I have been waiting, waiting, waiting! Longing for the day when I could ay last use the energy of these children to restore to me the energy and mental power, which is already beginning to show signs of waning.

“Do you know, Rigilus, I looked at myself in the mirror this morning and, just for a moment I could see the lines of time beginning to appear clearly upon my face and that was what prompted me to get the experiment under way before the chisel has the chance to dig any deeper. I cannot understand why you should even question the moves we are about to make. You seem to have forgotten that the idea was originally yours—”

“The idea of vengeance, yes,” Rigilus interrupted. “But this ghastly scheme of trying to absorb the life energy of children was yours. I did not agree with it then and I do not agree with it now and if I could think of any way of stopping you short of murder. I would. In the years that have passed I have come to realise that nursing a grievance is nothing but slow destruction of the mind. It becomes even more pointless when one is most unlikely to see the result of one's planning.”

Merva sighed. “From that I gather that you still do not realise that if we can get enough life-energy from these children you and I can go on through the years and see the plan come to a successful conclusion.”

Rigilus sighed. “Space travelling so consistently has changed all that for me. The plan of revenge no longer interests me.”

“In which case it is left for me to deal with,” Merva said harshly, “and deal with it I shall!”

Turning aside she quickly ushered the wondering children forward until they were within range of the life-energy apparatus. Rigilus stood watching them in sad silence, trying meanwhile to make up his mind what he ought to do.

Merva ignored his deep meditation, switched on the apparatus, and then busied herself with the various control knobs. From long experience and numerous tests, which of course had not been made on any living beings, she knew the exact area of the machine's influence, which meant that the six children now standing before it would come directly within its baleful radius.

There was no time for Rigilus to decide what he must do for within a matter of moments the children had been absorbed in the instrument's strange power. The effect was exactly as Rigilus had once foreseen and which he felt sure Merva herself must have known would happen. The children simply dropped as though struck down with an invisible ray. They themselves had the experience of finding every vestige of their strength drained from them, the result of which was to stop the action of their hearts completely.

Not that this interested Merva: her eyes were fixed on the input dials of the instrument and at length she turned sharply towards where Rigilus was gazing in aghast silence at the six small bodies sprawled upon the metal floor.

“Look, Rigilus. A hundred per cent intake of energy,” Merva exclaimed gripping his arm. “Every detail that we worked out has proved itself to be correct. There is enough energy stored here if used gradually over the years to give us life as prolonged as we can possibly wish.” Merva looked at Rigilus intently as he hardly seemed to note what she was saying. Then suddenly her voice rose almost to an hysterical shout. “Don't you realise what I am
saying
, Rigilus? We have enough power here to—”

“Yes, yes, I heard you,” Rigilus said, irritably, looking up at her. “And what of these children who have been destroyed in order that this destruction of old age might be accomplished? How are you going to explain that to their parents?”

She smiled bitterly. “You are going to explain that, Rigilus. I have every bit of it worked out, and in case you wonder what I mean it as simple as this….”

Before Rigilus could grasp what she had meant she suddenly swung to the instrument next to the life-energy machine and snapped on the control button. Rigilus had split seconds to understand what the second machine was. He had seen Merva constructing it at intervals through the years but had assumed, quite naturally, that it was intended as a protective mechanism, if the other members of the ship's colony showed signs of becoming dangerous. Certainly he had never suspected that it would be used against himself.

It was fashioned after the shape of a projector and emanated atomic vibration to the extent that it was capable of destroying the molecular structure of the flesh and bone. It could also destroy inorganic matter completely as Rigilus had already seen during past experiments. These were the only things he had time to remember then, her cruel face the picture of venom, Merva swung the lensed front of the instrument straight at him and pressed the button. Rigilus never knew what hit him. He was conscious of a brief and thundering pain that cascaded into total whirling darkness and his immense body crashed heavily to the floor.

Merva looked down at him but she did not switch the machine off; instead she raced to the door of the laboratory, yanked it open and called hoarsely down the long corridor.

“Come quickly, all of you! Quickly! Something terrible has happened!”

It was only a matter of moments before the men and women of the community came hurrying down the narrow vista in response to her cry, to finally come upon her in the laboratory to find her staring in horror at the fallen figure of Rigilus and the six children lying around him.

“What happened, Merva?” one of the men demanded, gripping her arm and shaking her.

Merva was the complete actress when she wanted. She merely looked at the man dazedly as though she were too horror-stricken to find words to express herself. Then she pointed to the fallen figures upon the floor. By this time the parents of the children were gathering up their respective offspring in their arms and there arose in the still quiet of the enormous space the grief-stricken cries of the womenfolk and the bitter murmurings of the men.

“What happened?” demanded the man again, who was holding Merva.

At this she pulled herself free from his grip and moved to the atomic machine and switched it off. Then she turned and faced the men and women, looking at them fixedly.

“It was Rigilus,” she said, in her low voice. “He must have been planning this moment for a long time. I brought the children in here intending to tell them a story as I have done for so many years when Rigilus suddenly came in and said he had an electrical experiment which he thought would entertain them. Before I could grasp what had happened he had projected this instrument at the children and it instantly killed them. I think that it was an accident for realising what he had done, he raced forward to examine them and himself came within range of the instrument and was stricken down even as they had been. Then I called for you....”