The City and the Stars / The Sands of Mars (28 page)

The mountains were still swimming in shadow when they reached Shalmirane. From their height the great bowl of the fortress looked very small; it seemed impossible that the fate of Earth had once depended on that tiny ebony circle.

When Alvin brought the ship to rest among the ruins by the lakeside, the desolation crowded in upon him, chilling his soul. He opened the air lock, and the stillness of the place crept into the ship. Hilvar, who had scarcely spoken during the entire flight, asked quietly: “Why have you come here again?”

Alvin did not answer until they had almost reached the edge of the lake. Then he said: “I wanted to show you what this ship was like. And I also hoped that the polyp might be in existence once more; I feel I owe it a debt, and I want to tell it what I’ve discovered.”

“In that case,” replied Hilvar, “you will have to wait. You have come back much too soon.”

Alvin had expected that; it had been a remote chance and he was not disappointed that it had failed. The waters of the lake were perfectly still, no longer beating with that steady rhythm that had so puzzled them on their first visit. He knelt down at the water’s edge and peered into the cold, dark depths.

Tiny translucent bells, trailing almost invisible tentacles, were drifting to and fro beneath the surface. Alvin plunged in his hand and scooped one up. He dropped it at once, with a slight exclamation of annoyance. It had stung him.

Some day— perhaps years, perhaps centuries in the future— these mindless jellies would reassemble and the great polyp would be reborn as its memories linked together and its consciousness flashed into existence once again. Alvin wondered how it would receive the discoveries he had made; it might not be pleased to learn the truth about the Master. Indeed, it might refuse to admit that all its ages of patient waiting had been in vain.

Yet had they? Deluded though these creatures might have been, their long vigil had at last brought its reward. As if by a miracle, they had saved from the past knowledge that else might have been lost forever. Now they could rest at last, and their creed could go the way of a million other faiths that had once thought themselves eternal.

CHAPTER

19

H
ilvar and Alvin walked in reflective silence back to the waiting ship, and presently the fortress was once more a dark shadow among the hills. It dwindled swiftly until it became a black and lidless eye, staring up forever into space, and soon they lost it in the great panorama of Lys.

Alvin did nothing to check the machine; still they rose until the whole of Lys lay spread beneath them, a green island in an ocher sea. Never before had Alvin been so high; when finally they came to rest the whole crescent of the Earth was visible below. Lys was very small now, only an emerald stain against the rusty desert— but far around the curve of the globe something was glittering like a man-colored jewel. And so for the first time, Hilvar saw the city of Diaspar.

They sat for a long while watching the Earth turn beneath them. Of all Man’s ancient powers, this surely was the one he could least afford to lose. Alvin wished he could show the world as he saw it now to the rulers of Lys and Diaspar.

“Hilvar,” he said at last, “do you think that what I’m doing is right?”

The question surprised Hilvar, who did not suspect the sudden doubts that sometimes overwhelmed his friend, and still knew nothing of Alvin’s meeting with the Central Computer and the impact which that had had upon his mind. It was not an easy question to answer dispassionately; like Khedron, though with less cause, Hilvar felt that his own character was becoming submerged. He was being sucked helplessly into the vortex which Alvin left behind him on his way through life.

“I believe you are right,” Hilvar answered slowly. “Our two peoples have been separated for long enough.” That, he thought, was true, though he knew that his own feelings must bias his reply. But Alvin was still worried.

“There’s one problem that bothers me,” he said in a troubled voice, “and that’s the difference in our life spans.” He said no more, but each knew what the other was thinking.

“I’ve been worried about that as well,” Hilvar admitted, “but I think the problem will solve itself in time when our people get to know each other again. We can’t
both
be right— our lives may be too short, and yours are certainly far too long. Eventually there will be a compromise.”

Alvin wondered. That way, it was true, lay the only hope, but the ages of transition would be hard indeed. He remembered again those bitter words of Seranis:
“Both he and I will have been dead for centuries while you are still a young man.”
Very well; he would accept the conditions. Even in Diaspar all friendships lay under the same shadow; whether it was a hundred or a million years away made little difference at the end.

Alvin knew, with a certainty that passed all logic, that the welfare of the race demanded the mingling of these two cultures; in such a cause individual happiness was unimportant. For a moment Alvin saw humanity as something more than the living background of his own life, and he accepted without flinching the unhappiness his choice must one day bring.

Beneath them the world continued on its endless turning. Sensing his friend’s mood, Hilvar said nothing, until presently Alvin broke the silence.

“When I first left Diaspar,” he said, “I did not know what I hoped to find. Lys would have satisfied me once— more than satisfied me— yet now everything on Earth seems so small and unimportant. Each discovery I’ve made has raised bigger questions, and opened up wider horizons. I wonder where it will end….”

Hilvar had never seen Alvin in so thoughtful a mood, and did not wish to interrupt his soliloquy. He had learned a great deal about his friend in the last few minutes.

“The robot told me,” Alvin continued, “that this ship can reach the Seven Suns in less than a day. Do you think I should go?”

“Do you think I could stop you?” Hilvar replied quietly.

Alvin smiled.

“That’s no answer,” he said. “Who knows what lies out there in space? The Invaders may have left the Universe, but there may be other intelligences unfriendly to Man.”

“Why should there be?” Hilvar asked. “That’s one of the questions our philosophers have been debating for ages. A truly intelligent race is not likely to be unfriendly.”

“But the Invaders—?”

“They are an enigma, I admit. If they were really vicious, they must have destroyed themselves by now. And even if they have not—” Hilvar pointed to the unending deserts below. “Once we had an Empire. What have we now that they would covet?”

Alvin was a little surprised that anyone else shared this point of view, so closely allied to his own.

“Do all your people think this way?” he asked.

“Only a minority. The average person doesn’t worry about it, but would probably say that if the Invaders really wanted to destroy Earth, they’d have done it ages ago. I don’t suppose anyone is actually afraid of them.”

“Things are very different in Diaspar,” said Alvin. “My people are great cowards. They are terrified of leaving their city, and I don’t know what will happen when they hear that I’ve located a spaceship. Jeserac will have told the Council by now, and I would like to know what it is doing.”

“I can tell you that. It is preparing to receive its first delegation from Lys. Seranis has just told me.”

Alvin looked again at the screen. He could span the distance between Lys and Diaspar in a single glance; though one of his aims had been achieved, that seemed a small matter now. Yet he was very glad; now, surely, the long ages of sterile isolation would be ending.

The knowledge that he had succeeded in what had once been his main mission cleared away the last doubts from Alvin’s mind. He had fulfilled his purpose here on Earth, more swiftly and more thoroughly than he had dared to hope. The way lay clear ahead for what might be his last, and would certainly be his greatest, adventure.

“Will you come with me, Hilvar?” he said, all too conscious of what he was asking.

Hilvar looked at him steadfastly.

“There was no need to ask that, Alvin,” he said. “I told Seranis and all my friends that I was leaving with you— a good hour ago.”

They were very high when Alvin gave the robot its final instructions. The ship had come almost to rest and the Earth was perhaps a thousand miles below, nearly filling the sky. It looked very uninviting; Alvin wondered how many ships in the past had hovered here for a little while and then continued on their way.

There was an appreciable pause, as if the robot was checking controls and circuits that had not been used for geological ages. Then came a very faint sound, the first that Alvin had ever heard from a machine. It was a tiny humming, which soared swiftly octave by octave until it was lost at the edge of hearing. There was no sense of change of motion, but suddenly he noticed that the stars were drifting across the screen. The Earth reappeared, and rolled past— then appeared again, in a slightly different position. The ship was “hunting,” swinging in space like a compass needle seeking the north. For minutes the skies turned and twisted around them, until at last the ship came to rest, a giant projectile aimed at the stars.

Centered in the screen the great ring of the Seven Suns lay in its rainbow-hued beauty. A little of Earth was still visible as a dark crescent edged with the gold and crimson of the sunset. Something was happening now, Alvin knew, beyond all his experience. He waited, gripping his seat, while the seconds drifted by and the Seven Suns glittered on the screen.

There was no sound, only a sudden wrench that seemed to blur the vision— but Earth had vanished as if a giant hand had whipped it away. They were alone in space, alone with the stars and a strangely shrunken sun. Earth was gone as though it had never been.

Again came that wrench, and with it now the faintest murmur of sound, as if for the first time the generators were exerting some appreciable fraction of their power. Yet for a moment it seemed that nothing had happened; then Alvin realized that the sun itself was gone and that the stars were creeping slowly past the ship. He looked back for an instant and saw— nothing. All the heavens behind had vanished utterly, obliterated by a hemisphere of night. Even as he watched, he could see the stars plunge into it, to disappear like sparks falling upon water. The ship was traveling far faster than light, and Alvin knew that the familiar space of Earth and sun held him no more.

When that sudden, vertiginous wrench came for the third time, his heart almost stopped beating. The strange blurring of vision was unmistakable now: for a moment his surrounding seemed distorted out of recognition. The meaning of that distortion came to him in a flash of insight he could not explain.
It was real, and no delusion of his eyes.
Somehow he was catching, as he passed through the thin film of the Present, a glimpse of the changes that were occurring in the space around him.

At the same instant the murmur of the generators rose to a roar that shook the ship— a sound doubly impressive for it was the first cry of protest that Alvin had ever heard from a machine. Then it was all over, and the sudden silence seemed to ring in his ears. The great generators had done their work; they would not be needed again until the end of the voyage. The stars ahead flared blue-white and vanished into the ultraviolet. Yet by some magic of Science or Nature the Seven Suns were still visible, though now their positions and colors were subtly changed. The ship was hurtling toward them along a tunnel of darkness, beyond the boundaries of space and time, at a velocity too enormous for the mind to contemplate.