News From Elsewhere (2 page)

Still holding Thali, she leapt to her feet and gazed defiantly at the. sand-smoothed stone column. It rose massively, twice a man’s height from the desert, as if the still recognizable man-shape stood upon a great finger of rock whose base might rest at the very center of the earth.

“Take what must be taken, then!” cried Runa. “And take with it the curse of every such woman, of every such child between earth and sky. Kill me if you can, for my heart is sick, and there is nothing now to love, and I wish to die.”

Then she flung Thali at the foot of the Sightless One and flung herself beside him, thankful that this was at least an end.

It was indeed an end. But the end was tricked out as a beginning.

Suddenly the baby uttered a great sigh. It began to whimper. Before Runa’s astounded eyes it tried to sit up.

The rags in which it had been wrapped were almost tom from its back. And across the shoulders and spine there were ugly bruises and some small cuts. Across the spine also there was a weal—of pink new skin, with fragments of horn and hair clinging to it like the remains of a monstrous scab.

Thali’s whimpering gathered power until it became a lusty howl. And Runa sobbed with joy. As she glanced up at die Sightless One, still impassive and immobile, there rose inside her a song without words or understanding.

Her child was alive and—as she pulled away the last remaining traces of hom and hair with her fingers—demonstrably a Perfect One. The new skin was bleeding a little from the ordeal in the chasm and from her own impatient fingers. But no matter. Thali would pass the Searching Out.

She would think of some excuse for going alone into the desert, and she would tell of the accident, and all would be well. And presently the old men would weave a new legend. . . .

Already the tribes were approaching for the ceremony. She could see them winding toward the Sightless One across the desert, ghost-gray columns in a ghost-gray world.

She turned to look once more at the stone monument—impassive and immobile. The timeless god of time, the fearless god of fear, the deathless god of death.

Now, with unformed images of miracles and mercy tumbling through her mind, Runa began to feel that such a godhead could not be completely immune to love. And perhaps, in the end, the message of love could be made communicable—and in the space of generations grow into a new vision that would cast out fear and transcend the need of death.

But the Sightless One knew nothing of the troubles of the living or of the need for compassion in a world made harsh by men. A world of sickness and hope, of courage and desolation—the legacy of a race that brought about its own destruction on the far side of the centuries.

For the Sightless One was no more than the strangely enduring monument to a man who had once been as other men. One who had sailed seas now shrouded in history. One who in battle had lost an eye and an arm, and finally a life. One who had gained the brief immortality of fame and the more enduring immortality of stone.

Long ago the Sightless One had stood on a high stone column in the square of a great city, where  ountains played and pigeons squabbled and effigies of couchant lions kept their solemn vigil.

But now the lions were buried under the patchily glowing sands of a man-made desert; the fused and blackened remains of the city were entombed forever in silence. And all that remained on the surface of a world that refused to die entirely was a thinly enduring courage and—sometimes—the tender miracle of love.

Motion does not tire anybody. With the earth as our vehicle we are traveling at 20 miles a second round the sun; the sun carries us at 12 miles a second through the galactic system; the galactic system bears us at 250 miles a second amid the spiral nebulae; the spiral nebulae. ... If motion could tire, we ought to be dead tired.

—SIR ARTHUR EDDINGTON,
The Nature of the Physical World

It was twenty hours, ship’s time, after firing point. A million miles astern, the earth shone coldly like a small green moon. On the navigation deck of the
Santa Maria
a profound silence was disturbed only by the steady but discreet ping of the radio probe.

Captain Mauris leaned back on his contour berth and waited patiently for his soul to catch up with his body. His sensations at the beginning of each deep voyage were invariably the same. His body had learned to adapt to a force of 10 G and to a stellar acceleration whose graph was a mad ascending curve, but his spirit, while hardly weak, retained the old subconscious reluctance. It didn’t much care for the big jump. It would hang tenaciously on to the illusion that Captain Mauris would presently wake up to find himself at home in bed.

He rarely did, because more often than not, the dream became the reality. Recently he had calculated that he had slept on earth not more than nine thousand times in his 
life, whereas he had voyaged among the stars for nearly twice that number of earth nights. It was the sort of calculation that he did not care to remember—which was principally why he could not forget it.

Which was the dream—earth or space? After twenty hours of space flight in planetary drive (which nowadays the younger men humorously called first gear) Captain Mauris was not too sure of the answer. He had long ago ceased to have physical spacesickness, but he had never lost the spiritual variety. And lately it had seemed to intensify. Perhaps he was just getting old. Perhaps he really would make this the last trip. ...

The Captain sighed and took refuge in the monumental assumption of Descartes:
I think, therefore I exist.
He began to wonder if the same could be said of his boatload of physicists. With a sardonic smile, Captain Mauris decided that he had seen terrestrial positronic robots that could lay a greater claim to individuality.

Ever since the dim distant days of the twentieth century, when the scientific caste system had been formalized, physicists had tended to become less and less human; and now they were hardly more than semisubstantial extrapolations of their own theories.

They were a race apart. Watching them board the
Santa Maria,
listening to their conversation, Captain Mauris had actually wondered whether they might be the new type of omega robots which, according to rumor, were now past the experimental stage. But he had seen two of them playing chess so badly, and a third so delightfully green with spacesickness, that he had regretfully concluded that they were human. Even sigma robots played chess excellently, and clearly there was no reason why the robot engineers should endow their offspring with uncontrollable nervous systems. . . . The physicists, then, were unfortunately human—a sad comment on the sort of civilization that allowed robots to take charge of global production, while turning the best human brains into second-rate electronic calculators.

The Captain’s private soliloquy was interrupted by Phylo, the first officer, climbing down from the astrodome.

“Dead on,” said Phylo. “Heading straight for Zeta of the Great Bear. When do we change gear, Captain?”

Captain Mauris gave him a sour look. “While I command the
Santa Maria,
Mr. Phylo, we will not change gear.”

“Sorry, sir. When do we use the stellar drive, then?”

“I think,” replied the Captain, “that I will shortly inquire if the physicists are still alive, and if so, when they will be prepared to take the bump.”

Phylo laughed. “I hope you’re disappointed, sir.”

“Meaning what?”

“I hope they’re still kicking. I should hate to have to return to earth and explain why we knocked off six top SJF.P.’s.”

“The world,” said Captain Mauris soberly, “might even smell somewhat sweeter for the loss of a few space-frame physicists. Man is becoming just a litde too clever.”

“I wonder why you volunteered for the trip, then,” said Phylo slyly. “A voyage with S.F.P. men for unspecified experimental purposes hardly promises to be uneventful. Besides, there’s the triple danger money—just like the old days when they first tried out the stellar drive.”

“Of the few parts of the world that remain unspoiled by civilization, the Amazonian hinterland is the most attractive—for me,” said Captain Mauris obliquely. “One of these days, Phylo, I shall buy myself ten thousand acres in the middle of nowhere. And then the only time I shall ever take my feet off terra firma will be when I climb into my hammock. . . . The reason I signed on as Master of the 
Santa Maria
is quite simple. It represents almost five thousand acres.”

“If,” said Philo dryly, “we survive whatever tricks the S.F.P.’s are cooking up.”

“Exactly,” said Captain Mauris. “But it is my firm intention to survive.”

Phylo gazed through the plastiglass anti-glare dome at a swarm of hard, unwinking suns. Finally, without looking at Mauris, he said softly, “I think there’s also another reason, sir.”

“Do you, now.” The Captain’s tone was not encouraging.

Phylo took a deep breath and ploughed on. “They told me back at base that you were the first skipper to successfully use the stellar drive.”

“A slight exaggeration,” said Mauris with a cold smile.

“I was merely the first captain to return and collect his pay envelope. ... However, proceed.”

“I notice,” said Phylo uneasily, “that there’s a parallel set of gears—I mean dual controls—on the main panel.” “Well?”

“I don’t understand the calibrations on the dials under the lightometer. Nor do I understand why the second bank of meters should have all their throw-in switches locked and sealed.”

“An interesting little mystery,” observed the Captain noncommittally. “As you have obviously given some thought to it, what conclusion do you draw?”

“Well, sir,” said Phylo hesitantly, “bearing in mind that the
Santa Maria
has a cargo of S.F.P.’s, a skipper who successfully tested the stellar drive, a set of new instruments, and the fact that we are under sealed orders, I think there’s only one possible conclusion.”

“I should be interested to hear it,” said Captain Mauris. “There have been rumors,” continued Phylo, “of a galactic drive. My guess is that the
Santa Maria
has been fitted out for a trial run.... What do you think, sir?”

“I think,” replied Captain Mauris, glancing at the bulkhead electrochron, “that I shall shortly break the seal and discover what the Fates have in store for us. . . . I’ll tell you this, though—I don’t think we shall be experimenting with a galactic drive.”

“Why not, sir?”

“Because,” said Captain Mauris with a
thin
smile, “the United Space Corporation has already developed it—as a logical extension of the stellar drive.”

Phylo gazed at him in sheer amazement. “It’s the first I’ve heard of it, sir.”

“I know,” said Mauris imperturbably. “It’s still on the secret list. But as I traveled as a paid observer on the test jump, I can definitely assure you that the galactic drive is a fact.”

Phylo’s voice was filled with awe. “Would it be indiscreet to inquire what distance you logged?”

“Not now,” said the Captain. “I think—in view of our position—that it will do no harm to give you the facts. We—er—had a little jaunt round Beta Centauri.” “Godalmighty!”

“A matter of seven hundred light-years for the round 
trip,” added Mauris complacently.

“How long did it take?” demanded Phylo incredulously.

The Captain permitted a note of pride to enter his voice. “Three hours, twenty-seven minutes, ship’s time —starting and finishing in the neighborhood of Pluto’s orbit.”

“Were there any—any casualties?”

“All of us,” said Captain Mauris soberly. “We couldn’t stop laughing for two days. . . . But I forgot. There was one serious casualty: Egon, the navigator. His star maps were damn near useless, of course. He swore we’d never get home. And when we finally hit the system, the relief was too much for him. ... He was the only one who didn’t stop laughing. And from what I hear, he’s still enjoying himself.”

Phylo couldn’t make up his mind whether or not Captain Mauris was having a private joke. After a moment or two he said in a matter-of-fact voice: “I wonder what the hell is going to happen on this trip, then?”

“Probably,” said Captain Mauris, “we shall cease to exist.”

Four hours later, in the privacy of his cabin, the Captain of the
Santa Maria
broke the seal on a slim envelope and read his instructions. He skipped impatiently through the conventional wording until he came to the part that mattered. He went through it carefully, word for word, three times. The final paragraph gave him a certain grim amusement.

While the normal articles of space travel obtain for this experimental voyage,
he read,
there must of necessity be a fluid definition of the Safety Clause. Clearly the primary responsibility of the Master for the safety of his ship and all personnel must be to some extent subordinated by the actual program sanctioned by the Field Testing Executive of the United Space Corporation. It is not implied, however, that the prerogative of Master's Discretion will inevitably be superseded by test requirements. If the Master should satisfy himself, and the authorized scientists concerned, that the danger factor is sufficient to render the ship’s safe return as improbable, therefore neutralizing the validity of the experiment, he is entitled to cancel the test program and return immediately to base. A 
Court of Inquiry will then evaluate the circumstances leading to such a decision
.
It is, however, earnestly hoped that scientific and ship personnel will so cooperate as to bring both the experiment and the voyage to a successful conclusion.