The Earth Gods Are Coming (2 page)

When, during the course of their education, children were taught that once in the long long ago a hundred different religions flourished upon the fair face of the Earth, blighting that pleasant place with fear and misunderstanding and strife, they were frankly incredulous. Different ways of thought, multifaceted systems of logic, mores that changed as circumstances dictated—all these and more were understandable. But how two people could disagree about religion was a thing that passed all human understanding.

From the acceptance of one great universal religion of light and grace, power and perfect understanding, the idea that the opposite would be all that the devil's hell could spawn was a simple step. On Earth is light. On the worlds floating in space that the Earth made her own was light. And, on any world that so far had not been visited by man, too, would be light, for the old intolerances had been swept away.

Earthmen went out to the stars owning a belief that they were in a sufficient state of grace as to meet with any alien culture on friendly terms, to explore in humility, to learn and, if it was so willed, to teach.

One thing, they avoided bloodshed.

Now, from the relatively tiny segment of the Galaxy that had been explored and sparsely settled by man, had grown a loose confederation of solar systems living in amity one with another. Men called this the Solar Commonwealth of Stars.

And throughout that commonwealth there had been few wars, few interstellar conflicts, fewer invasions. One migrating influx of alien war-mad ships had caused trouble; but in ridding the Commonwealth of them mankind and her allies had developed strong fighting forces. That had been the eye opening incident that had given rise to the Culture Dissemination Bureau.

But, with one universal religion that thought along ways well-tried in human experience, so that men knew that what they preached and practised was the best and the right; with no dissentients and none unhappy; glorying in their harmony: it must follow that ways of thought that were anti-human, that did not seek to enhance the dignity of man, his birthright of freedom and happiness and the right to lead his own life, must of necessity be evil.

It was no question of simple black and white. Everything that humanity had learned about itself over the centuries had coalesced into the present human way of life.

If any other way of life that was diametrically opposed to it were to be found, and no amount of patient thought and meditation and willingness to learn and understand, could relate that alien mode of conduct with men's—then that alien way of life must,
must,
be evil.

In all the history of the Solar Commonwealth of Stars, no alien
evil
culture had been found.

The CDB had been set up; but that was insurance.

And now, in this quiet room high in the CDB, with the star charts on the walls and the celestial globes waiting to come to life, with Dick Myrtle chuckling away there in his seat and a full space navy admiral called Gus sitting puffily across from him, Colonel Roy Inglis, Space Marines, was solemnly being told that the final evil had arrived. He found it difficult to accept.

"But has everything been tried?" he asked, automatically. "We call no man enemy until he no longer calls us friend— and even, beyond that—"

"I know, Roy, I know." Admiral Rattigan sat lumpily in his chair, shrouded eyes hiding his thoughts. "Lord knows, we've tried all we could. None of this is. public, of course, although leaks have—well, leaked. It is so serious that it is quite beyond our comprehension. We just don't seem to be able to take it seriously."

Leaks. He remembered how one service might know all manner of great secrets within it, and yet the idea of sharing that knowledge with a sister service just did not arise. That was a minor hangover of security; that he could recognize, but now that general scrutiny was needless there were other reasons for that clannish service pride.

"Since we found out," Rattigan was saying. "All the way up the line, no one has really believed. Not believed. I, personally, find it difficult to accept. The ultimate evil has, at last arrived."

"The ultimate evil," Inglis said.

Now he understood the unsmiling welcome he had received. The usual laughing, carefree welcome of communications and service personnel was proverbial. There had been nothing carefree about the CDB staff. They'd known something was wrong. It was a feeling, an aura, that seeped down from higher echelons. Nothing that they, in the lower ranks, could personally finger; but a nuance they would unfailingly recognize.

"Some theologians," Inglis said carefully, "have postulated that there can be no great evil. That if we re-check our thinking we will find ourselves at fault."

"Would to God we were, Roy. No ... no, there is no mistake, as far as the best minds can tell."

Dick Myrtle spoke, slowly and thoughtfully for him, or for the way he'd been when Inglis knew him, in the old capsule-dropping days. "Evil is a force just as is good, we all know that. It isn't just a matter of boiling up a few children in oil, or starving half the population and killing the other half so that a selected few may live in luxury, nor is it merely being unkind to your neighbour. These are degrees of evil.

"Remember the reports on that culture on—where was it now—that binary with the involved planetary orbit that gave two winters for every summer?"

"Klordovain, Gus. Summer was a pretty time."

"That's the place, Dick. Remember that culture they had of exposing every third child? And of burying alive every third oldster when the winters came?"

"I remember," said Inglis. The papers and the networks had been full of it.

"Well, we talked this over, and we were able to affect certain ecological changes, helped the people and today they don't have this inbuilt urge to shed people when the going gets tough. But any group of Terrans faced with a lack of oxygen or food on a drifting ship might get down to drawing straws for life. It's a matter of viewpoint, and of talking it out."

"And you've talked to these aliens—these evil ones?"

"They've been spoken to by a scouting party—luckily enough from the CDB. I have the transcripts. You're going through them, later." Rattigan sighed, fingering the jewel in his ear. "Every mind that has studied them has formed the same conclusion. Evil."

"Not just a bunch of aliens who don't happen to think like us?"

"Not just that. That and a whole lot more."

"So it seems," said Myrtle gloomily, "that we'll have to unsheath the weapons again, the bombs and the dust and the ray sand all the rest of it."

"It looks very much like war," Admiral Gus Rattigan said. "Devil take it."

"War." Inglis found the idea distasteful. He was not a religious fanatic of any persuasion; he was a space marine who would do a job. If that job included war, he would carry on just the same, despite a civilized man's abhorrence of the idiocy. "War," he said again. "What contacts have the aliens?"

Rattigan chuckled. He sounded like a nuclear steam pile hotting up. "They haven't."

"Oh?"

"The scout ship was smart enough to avoid letting the aliens have any inkling of our spatial co-ordinates. Of course, it doesn't take much guesswork to select an area of space and say: 'These new aliens must come from there,' but that doesn't find a group of suns in all the spread of the Galaxy."

"But," said Inglis with a premonition chasing down his spine right to his toes, "do we know where they come from?"

Slowly, Admiral Rattigan shook his head. He stared straight at Inglis. He had shut his mouth and his jaw lumped, ridged and hard. It was suddenly, after the conversation, very quiet in the lofty room.

Inglis said softy, "And that's why you asked me up here?"

Rattigan, opening his mouth to let the word out and then rat-trapping it again, said, "Yes."

It was left to Dick Myrtle to break the tension. He rose, crossed to the nearer celestial globe and switched it on. Lights speckled the globe, tiny chips of light in patterns and whorls with here and there black pockets between—the stars and galactic dust aswirl in the deeps of space.

"Earth, the Solar Commonwealth," indicated Dick Myrtle, establishing co-ordinates. "Here is where the scouter made contact. The alien ships vanished along a track leading out to here. The ship the scouter brought in and from which our information derives, was fully equipped for extended interstellar travel." He flicked his fingers at the globe. "They could be anywhere out there."

"I'll take the job, of course, Admiral—Gus. And thanks."

"Aren't you married now? What about—"

"I don't think that need worry any of us," Inglis said harshly. Even in a world with a universal religion, wife trouble was no unfamiliar thing.

"Can you start tomorrow?"

"Today."

"Good."

Like that it was settled.

Well, he'd been complaining that he was growing soft. Now was his chance to head back for deep space and see just how soft he had become.

The rest of the details were settled in crisp spaceman style. What ship he would be taking, crew, captain, general directives, armament.

"Armament?"

"We have strong fighting forces, Roy, which have never been used—the last time the Solar Commonwealth fought was years ago. But we have the ships and the weapons and the men; some of whom are trained. You'll take a fully war-trained crew with you. Let's hope they stand up to any real fighting as well as they checked out of combat school."

"War ..." said Inglis. He shook his head.

"But we don't want you to fight unless you're forced. If you do, it will mean your mission is failing. You appreciate that?"

"Yes. Break the news gently to Laura—my wife—will you, Dick? I don't want to hurt her more than is unavoidable."

"Check."

"One last thing, Colonel Inglis." Admiral Rattigan spoke slowly and deliberately.

He paused, clamped both hands into the small of his back and began to stamp up and down the room.

"Your mission is to seek out and find these aliens. The Evil Ones. Find where their home is, their base, their native star. But," he stopped full in front of Inglis and rocked back on his heels to stare up at the taller man, "but, make very sure that they do not find out from you where Earth is. Make very sure. It may well be necessary that, in the last extreme, to prevent them finding, you may have to—"

"I understand," Inglis said.

Soft? In this, he could not afford to be soft.

"I understand perfectly, Admiral," he said again.

-

Apart from a parsec long swirl of interstellar dust and an erratic field of radiation that made detector meters jump nervously, space was empty.

Around the Solarian Light Cruiser
Swallow
space stretched clear from the last star they had passed to the next, a hard dot of colored light visible against the distant thickened galaxy only by virtue of its nearness that gave it a disc and by the lick of dust that, in coiling in a centuries-long drift behind it, outlined the star against diaphanous darkness.

The control room of the light cruiser was a warm oasis of human comfort, filled with yellow light and the minuteness of human occupation, familiar, reassuring, against the stark-ness of forces beyond the full comprehension of men.

Commander Luigi Varese stood with his back to the screens, ignoring the relayed view. He was a handsome man, as many women could testify, with a large face that moved with liquid lizard grace and courtesy that could have originated only in the warm wine-filled Mediterranean lands. Like Admiral Rattigan, he wore a tiny jewel in his ear. He was a spaceman.

Now he stood looking back into the routine bridge activity with his hands clasped together in the small of his back, pressing into his dark blue uniform. That handsome, heavy face was not smiling, and the broad mouth was as near to a twist of annoyance as Varese ever allowed himself.

Abruptly, he flung a gesticulating hand towards the screens behind him. His words, although vehement, were heard only by the ears for which they were intended; the dozen or so officers and technicians on the bridge did not hear anything they should not have. Varese was a good space navy officer.

"We are engaged upon a wild goose chase. I felt that from the moment we sailed, but did not recognize the symptoms. Among all these approaching stars, thickening as we vector in towards the hub, how can you imagine—" He broke off, astounded, even at himself. He went on, "The first contact was by sheer chance; everyone recognizes that. Pretty soon we'll be out somewhere where they're only just getting around to capsule dropping." Then, having prepared what he had to say, he delivered the point of this harangue. "It is therefore necessary, Colonel, for me formally to advise you that in view of the suspect state of the ship's engines we should return to base. I recommend an immediate one hundred and eighty degree course reversal."

"Thank you, Commander." Inglis appreciated the good commander's viewpoint well enough. After all, space navy had always considered themselves top dogs out in space. No doubt Commander Varese wondered, with some resentment, why he had not been entrusted with this task. So far, the presence aboard
Swallow
of Colonel Inglis, Space Marines, had made not the slightest difference to her search.

Inglis had tried to extend the hand of friendship to Varese and had met with only partial success. Men grew into their own ways in space. They constructed a shell over their emotions, a carapace that in protecting them against the great dark, isolated them also from other men. You had to know a min for a long time in space before you accepted him unreservedly. The converse was also true; unshakable bonds of friendship could be forged in microseconds by men facing the same dangers.

He tried again, the olive branch thinly disguised.

"Just how bad are the engines, Commander? I mean, can you give me any idea of their probable life? I'm rather anxious to finish this leg of the pattern."

"We could reach the next star," Varese admitted. "And still be able to return to base. But we are an awfully long way out."

"Yes. Right into the capsule dropping zone as you pointed out." He smiled. "I know how long the chances are of us striking anything out in the galaxy, Commander. Lord knows, the first contact was a fluke. But if the aliens are out here, then the further we vector across the more chance we have of stumbling across them. It's a simple matter of cumulative math."

"That is so. But I have my ship and crew to think of."

"True. And I have you to think of—if you'll forgive me mentioning it. It wasn't exactly tactful."

Varese laughed, all the scowl lines leaving his face.

"At least, Colonel, you're honest! All right. We go look at this upcoming star, and then—"

"And then your poor patched engines can run us home."

Varese took that well, too. Inglis considered himself lucky. The way he'd been feeling lately, he was enough to rub any man up the wrong way, let alone a man who considered that his rightful place as captain had been usurped.

The run out to the co-ordinates of the only previous contact with the Evil Ones had gone to schedule. After that, in Inglis' book, a spreading search line should, if Gus Rattigan was right, bring them slap up against the aliens in some form.
Swallow
was a standard light cruiser and possessed a useful pair of legs. Unfortunately, half of those legs had been found to have cramp; Varese was perfectly in order in his advice,
they
should turn for base. It was most infuriating; but it was typical space.

The next time the commander spoke to him, Varese's voice was diffident, in marked contrast to his usual vivacious positivism. "I suppose, Colonel, you have considered the possibility of decoy?"

"I had considered that, Commander."

"Umm. Well. We are not a scouter, our screens cannot scan so much of space as one of those lads—a ship just about completely filled with scanning equipment. Oh yes, we have teeth, we can fight. But our shiny little popguns of which I am so proud will be of little use should we meet up with an alien much in size and power above a scouter."

"And you suggest that, beyond our own radar horizon, our own screen ranges, there is a scouter following us, watching us and reporting back to half the Commonwealth Fleet, ready to pounce on whoever or whatever pounces on us?"

"Something like that."

In the pause that followed the contact alarm shrilled. Commander Varese turned machine-like for the screen.

Inglis, feeling out of it, tried to relax; but the controlled bustle as ratings and techs balanced their equipment, bringing in a picture of the contact, scraped his nerves. He thought about a smoke, then decided against it.

One universal religion based on the best in life that had gone before and designed to answer the deepest needs in mankind had not—most certainly not—resulted in the creation of perfect men. Human nature might be altered very slightiy from what it had been when first men stood on their hind legs and monkeyed about with flint and fire; but, assuredly, men were still men and for the sake of the race men hoped that this would always be so.

Varese was a first-class officer and a fine type of man; but he could still feel a natural pique that he had been put under the command of a marine colonel in this important mission. Inglis brought his mind away from that, tried to imagine what Laura was doing now. The ident cyb chimed in triumph.

The tech read off the transcribed code word.

"CDB Ship
Isabella,
sir."

"Solarian!" Varese expelled breath gustily. "We're still not through the capsule dropping zone yet, then. They must have covered a whole lot of space since my days."

"This means, Commander," Inglis pointed out somberly, "that the aliens were inside our dropping areas."

"In other words, what have the CDB ships been dropping their Prophets of Earth onto? Right?"

"Right. I wonder how long
Isabella
has been out?"

"We're overhauling her fast. Soon find out."

Swallow
swooped up on
Isabella.
Between the stars the ships were running free on ftl drive and could see each other only by courtesy of complicated apparatus that took in their respective images and translated them from jumbles of neg-space into recognizable pictures. The captain of
Isabella
stepped front and center of his screen, smiling a welcome to this unexpected visitant from a home that grew increasingly precious each year.

"Captain N'Gombi, CDB," he introduced himself.

Varese replied, introducing Inglis. "How long have you been out, Captain?"

N'Gombi kept the smile on his dark, competent face. "We're just completing our fifth year. We have about a' hundred Prophets left. As soon as they are dropped—"

He had no need to finish.

Inglis remembered his own CDB stint. He'd been out nine years. Nine years cooped up in a spaceship—admittedly a large spaceship—and in all that time they had not once descended to a planetary surface. They'd been far too busy rushing from solar system to solar system, locating planets, checking for suitability, and dropping their capsules. It was not an experience he would like to have to repeat. Returning to the marines had been like breathing fresh air after a lifetime of canned and reconstituted air; no, he corrected himself, not a lifetime, just nine years.

He said to N'Gombi: "Well, captain, you'll soon be heading back to Solterra. My felicitations." Then, his voice unconsciously hardening. "You haven't made any contacts with alien ships—"

"Alien ships?" N'Gombi's dark features expressed interest. "No. Apart from three routine calls from patrolling cruisers, you are the first contact we've had. We thought you were the patrol, although we did not expect any more. We're well out into the galaxy here."

"Yes, we are. Well out."

There would be more chit-chat, messages, news, all the trivial exchanges of information that the space-weary men aboard the CDB ship hungered for. But, for Inglis, the hurry pressed him in greater urgency, even, than the capsule droppers knew.

Varese anticipated him. In this lonely meeting between the stars, he, as a spaceman, could sense the grandeur of it all; two tiny hulls of Earth filled air, meeting parsecs away from all that had given them birth were well representative of the vaulting aspirations of men.

Varese said politely, "This has been most pleasant, Captain. But we are more pushed for time than perhaps you realize." He went into a technical explanation. N'Gombi listened with his head slightly down bent.

"Yes, Commander. You would do well to head home with despatch. I know your cruiser type—commanded the old
Wyvern—
and you would be well-advised to reach docking facilities as soon as is feasible." N'Gombi hesitated, then, patently making up his mind, he said, "This is in itself a disappointment. I had been hoping that you were the patrol, they have the happy knack of arriving when they are required. I would have asked you to go to a solar system we just left. Unfortunately, during the dropping operations we lost a man overboard."

"In space?"

"No." The pain in N'Gombi's face was quite plain and distressing. "He was the despatch crew chief. A clamp hung up. In freeing it he lost his balance and went through the bomb bay doors with the capsule. His men last saw him in his suit clinging to the capsule handling rings."

Varese swore. "That's terrible. In that type of capsule handling chute he would easily have ridden the capsule to the surface. He'd have landed with it!"

"Quite so, commander. One of my men has been marooned alive on that unknown planet."

"God!" Inglis said softy to himself. He didn't often swear. But this story chilled him. Of course, the big CDB ship could not make planetfall and her orders did not allow for unscheduled stops at planets. The Dissemination ships fleeted in from space, made one revolution of a planet, dropped their capsule, and fled to the next. Time was too precious to lose. He knew. He'd served nine years of it; the long stretches of boredom and then the livid activity docketting a planet and sending down the Prophet in its capsule.

"We're on a pretty important mission, Captain," Varese was saying doubtfully. "If we'd been merely a routine patrol we would be on our way to pick your man up. Lives are precious. But—"

Inglis made up his mind. "This mission has been shot already," he said firmly. "We can make one more solar system and then head home. We might as well make it the system where this unfortunate man was lost." He did not mention that the failure of his own personal mission from Gus Rattigan would not be rectified by picking up a hundred stranded crewmen.

"If you'd be good enough to pass all the details to Commander Varese, co-ordinates, everything, we'll get along."

He could have made an issue of it. Been reluctant. At last been swayed by the other's pleas. But spacemen-real spacemen—did not operate like that, whether they professed the universal religion or not. Comradeship in space was a strong bond extending even to a solitary crewman stranded upon a primitive planet.

Inglis listened with only half an ear to the details.

The Evil Ones—the hostile aliens, the extra-terrestrials who thought along lines abhorrent to men, call them what you will—were not going to be found this trip. Perhaps, despite his own brave words and hopes, he hadn't really expected to find them all that easily himself. His own life had followed that sort of pattern. There would be a long stretch of humdrum activity, then a frenzied assault on some peak of desire or promotion or a worthwhile job, followed, usually, by a deflating letdown and a sense of loss and of encroaching old age. Even Laura—even the marriage that had started out with such high hopes—had let him down. Or, had he let down her family, the aristocratic, autocratic, high-and-mighty Chalmers-Wong-Berkelys? If those crank engines of
Swallow
hadn't let him down ...

Well, one terrified and hopeless capsule despatch chief marooned on an unknown planet might, if he could, begin to hope. If all else failed, at least he could salvage his own pride in rescuing this obscure unfortunate spaceman. The man's name was mentioned along with the other pertinent data.

Abd al-Malik ibn-Zobeir.

"Well, Abdul," Inglis said softly. "We're on our way to find you. Let's hope—for both our sakes—we're successful."

-