The Old Man of the Stars (7 page)

Alida screamed. She would have flung herself past Matthew and out into the open, but he caught her arm and held her back.

“Bellhouse—the doors!” he shouted.

Bellhouse thumbed the switch, and the airlock door closed with a thud. As its echoes died away there was a sharp sound as though a great fingernail had scratched piercingly down the outside of the spaceship.

“It'll take more than that to pierce the hull,” snapped Matthew.

The sound came again. Through the ports they saw the helicars swooping and plunging, sending out against the side of the ship a succession of vicious bright rays.

Alida was crying, her body racked by bitter sobs. Matthews' eyes narrowed with pain. He tried to put an arm about her shoulder, but she shook him off and showed him a face contorted by hatred.

“You!” she spat. “This is your fault. Your expedition to Earth...your selfishness...and it was you who let Clifford go out there.”

He said: “Alida....”

“Where will it end? What hope is there now?”

Two of the women took her arms and led her gently away, trying to soothe her. The sound of her sobs came back with a hollow, resonant note as she went down the corridor.

Bellhouse said, not looking at Matthew: “Before we start any arguments, we ought to get clear of this place.”

“Run away?” said Matthew, enraged. “We'll man the disruptors and blow those little insects out of existence.”

“That's a fair-sized town over there,” said Bellhouse, “and if I'm not mistaken they've got other resources. There's something moving over there now.”

The two of them looked out of a port. Visibility was poor because of the columns of dust that lashed up out of the ground every time one of the helicar's rays swept across But Bellhouse was right. A vague shape of some heavy vehicle was moving into position at the end of one of the town's wide streets.

Matthew said; “We can stand up to it. We can give as good as we get.”

“Can we? They'll be calling up reinforcements. They don't like the look of human beings—that's plain enough. And one hole blown in the side of the ship means we're stuck here until we can make repairs. What's it going to be: do we clear out before we're damaged, or do we make a last stand?”

Matthew's every impulse was to stand fast. The need to avenge Clifford's death burned in his mind.

“Of course,” said Bellhouse ironically, “we might be able to make them understand, after a while, that we mean no harm. But whether we'd get a chance of explaining is open to question.”

The ground almost directly below the port burst into a fury of flame. The ship rocked violently, and Matthew was thrown back against the corridor wall.

Then another tremor ran through the ship, as the disruptors opened fire. Matthew thrust himself upright with a scowl of satisfaction.

Then he said, sharply: “You're right. Of course you're right. We can't expect to have a quiet talk with creatures who fire as soon as they see a human being, and we can't defeat them. It would be madness to come this far and then be wiped out because we were too proud to cut and run.”

He called for one of the auxiliary pilots. Bellhouse went back into the engine-room. Matthew did not go to his usual seat, nor did he strap himself into position with the others in the lounge. He sent his rapid instructions booming through the ship, but he himself wrapped his arms around a corridor stanchion, and glared out of the window.

Another great blast of force struck at the ship. Matthew closed his eyes and cursed. Tears ran down his cheeks. He mouthed Clifford's name, and went on cursing bitterly until the roar of the take-off drowned out every sound, and pressure weighed on him so that everything went black and he hung limply by his arms from the stanchion.

Space claimed them again.

CHAPTER FIVE

Now they were conscious of nothing but a spirit of resignation. A sense of fatality settled on them all. Eternity stretched ahead of them, and eternity lay behind. They were rejected by the spinning worlds of the cosmos: they were doomed to wander out across the vastness of interstellar space with no hope, no promise of rest and contentment at last.

Alida was the only one who was not resigned. When she passed Matthew, her face glowed with hatred. If he tried to stop her and make her speak to him, she would wrench herself away and call him a murderer.

The others sank into sullenness. The years could roll on. There had never been such a place as Elysium, and there would be no such destination as Earth.

There were times when Matthew felt that he was too weak to go on any further with his weary odyssey. He sat at the control panel and was tempted to bring the whole thing to an end by hurling the ship out of its course and letting it spin madly off, like a stone from a catapult, into the furnace of some blazing sun.

At other times he merely wished that he would one morning not awaken. Let the end come for him, and for all of them, quietly. Call it a day. For him it had been a long day—a day composed of centuries.

They visited another world. It was dead. It had never lived. Lost in the cold, far from its sun, it showed no sign of ever having offered its bleak hospitality to any human being or other creature.

They left it and went on their way.

The men and women aged. The children grew up. Alida's beautiful face set into the sadness of maturity. She was marked by lines of suffering. There was only her daughter to give her comfort.

Eve was growing up into a beautiful girl. She had inherited all her mother's grace and strength of character. When Clifford had been alive, Matthew and Eve had spent a great deal of time together; but now Alida did all she could to keep them apart. She was not entirely successful. Eve had, as a little girl, conceived a deep affection for Matthew. He fascinated her and puzzled her.

“Why don't you grow older, like everybody else?” she once asked, putting her head on one side and studying him with her shrewd, observant eyes.

At first she laughed at his explanation and did not believe it. At some time in her life she must have learned that it was true, but it did not seem to affect her attitude towards Matthew in any way. She was neither afraid nor resentful.

However hard Alida might try to keep Matthew at a distance, the conditions in the ship made it impossible for her to live an entirely separate life with her daughter. Eve still smiled and talked to Matthew when they met. As she grew older, there was a deeper seriousness in her manner, but her affection did not seem to lessen.

The ship was becoming crowded by now. A number of children had been born in the course of the years. If any of the planets they had visited had been at all suitable, Matthew would have fallen in with the original suggestion that those who wished to stay behind and not complete the full journey should do so. But there had been nothing but the hostility of creatures who attacked automatically when they saw an Earthman, or else the bitterness of unfertile, dark worlds on which people bred in Elysium could never hope to live.

It was not until they were five years out from Earth that they discovered, on the last world they were to visit before they reached their destination, conditions like those of Elysium,

Here was the same mellow climate. Sparkling seas washed the gentle coasts of rich, luxuriant land.

“There must be a snag somewhere,” said Bellhouse, an hour after the landing. “Someone is waiting somewhere with a flame-gun. Or else the nights are freezing and the plant life is deadly poison.”

But the nights were warm. The plants and herbs made a feast, after years of living on Dr. Richard's shallow through sustaining cultures. Here was a replica of the comfortable world that they had left so far away in space and time. Here, at last, was comfort.

A dangerous comfort, thought Matthew.

Any enthusiasm the other members of the crew may once have possessed for the voyage to Earth had faded long ago. Only doggedness and the obvious futility of trying to go back had kept them pressing on through space. Now they had found a planet which offered them tranquillity and rest. Why should they face another five years of wretchedness in the throbbing prison of the ship merely in order to reach a destination about which they knew nothing certain?

Matthew sensed this current of thought within a few days of landing. He was prepared to take the advantage of a month or two's holiday here before attempting the last lap. But he was not prepared to stay here forever.

Even Dr. Richard, who had been so reliable, was a member of the faction that wanted to stay. And that meant trouble. It was possible to leave half the members of the expedition behind if they wanted to settle here: the ship could still be handled by the remainder; but Dr. Richard, with his skill and the gift that was still known as ‘green fingers', could not be spared.

“Life here is fascinating,” said the biologist apologetic-ally. “There is so much here worth studying. It is a pity that we cannot stay. Living conditions are admirable.”

“But it would be just as weak and unadventurous as staying on Elysium would have been,” said Matthew. “We're so close to Earth. We can't give up now. One more journey—another five years—and we're there.”

Dr. Richard pursed his lips. “Five years is not a great deal to you. To you it means little. But to some of us it means a great deal.”

Matthew turned away. He saw that Alida was watching him, and for once her expression was not hostile. There seemed to be sympathy in it—pity, even. He was angry. He didn't want anybody's pity. He was immortal, and they well, look at them: their faces had aged, the young men were already well advanced into middle age, and some were prematurely old.

And they were lazy and unimaginative. All they wanted to do was settle down and live a dull, unambitious existence here, until some space raiders came along as the last lot had done and wiped out all their possessions.

He wondered if they had thought of that. Tackling Dr. Richard and a couple of the others about it, he said:

“Would you be happy living here, expecting an attack at any time? You have seen the other planets we've visited, and what happened to them. Why should you suppose this one will escape a similar fate, as soon as the murderers, whoever they were, find out that there's a colony here? And how do you know”—the thought struck him suddenly—“that there aren't already other people on another part of this planet, lying in wait for you?”

“We'd have seen them by now.”

“Not necessarily.”

The following day, spurred on by Matthew's disturbing suggestions, they took the ship up and made a survey of the planet. There was no sign of human life. Animals scuttered in alarm beneath the great shadow of the ship, but none of them appeared to be of a high level of intelligence, and there was no indication of any civilised community anywhere on the face of this world.

But three days later, in the mellow twilight that burnished the side of the spaceship to golden bronze, a man emerged from the woods and crossed the meadow in which the children were playing. He came with a hand oustretched in greeting. He was not one of the crew: he was a stranger.

Inside the ship, Matthew and Bellhouse interrogated him.

“How is it that we saw no sign of your colony when we flew over a few days ago?”

The newcomer, who had given his name as Diemer, smiled sadly.

“We have taken care to conceal ourselves whenever any unknown person or ship approaches. We have learned from experience.”

“Experience?”

“You must have come from strange places,” said Diemer curiously, “if you do not know what life has been like in the last twenty years or so.”

“We have come from a long way away,” said Matthew, determined to be noncommittal for the time being.

“It was plain that you were different from so many of our people. We watched your ship, and we came to study your encampment. And it was only when we saw that you were different, and sensed that you were not troublemakers, that I showed myself.”

Matthew said: “What sort of trouble might we have been expected to make?”

“Where there are Earthmen, unfortunately, there is nothing but strife and bloodshed throughout the universe.”

“We have come a long way,” said Matthew again. “We've seen some terrible sights on our way. It's time we had an explanation. What has been happening?”

Diemer hesitated. He looked from one to the other as though weighing them up; then he reached a decision, and said: “I will tell you the whole story.”

It was a story of steady conquest and exploitation. It was a story of greed and expansion—the old, vicious histories of national strife extended on to a cosmic scale.

The small colonies that had been left behind by the ship on which Matthew had made his outward journey had been largely involved. Growing larger, they worked with the natives of the planets on which they had landed, and eventually sent a small ship back to Earth or got in touch with Earth and directed new trading and emigration ships to the planets. The Earthmen were the pioneers of interplanetary travel. Holding the mastery of space, they held the mastery of commerce and scientific development. They picked the brains of the different peoples with whom they came in contact, and pooled the interplanetary resources for their own benefit.

Where the natives of different worlds objected to the domination of human beings, they were first coaxed and then, if necessary, threatened. There were massacres and outbreaks of cruelty. The wealth of the universe sent Earthmen mad: they took part in a rush beside which all the gold rushes and diamond booms of their own world paled into insignificance. The wider the bounds of the starry empire, the more grasping men became.

“There were liberal, humanitarian elements who disapproved,” said Diemer, “but they fought a losing battle. When there are unlimited supplies of riches, and a civilisation is on the upgrade, it is always the brutal side of man that shows itself.”

There were many Earthmen who were so filled with disgust at the savagery of their own people that they fled from Earth. They sought out unfertile planets, or at any rate planets that would not be seized by the acquisitive spaceships of the Interplanetary Development Bureau.

“The founders of our colony,” said Diemer, “were among those who got away—in secrecy, with difficulty, leaving most of their belongings and cutting themselves away from a corrupt society.”

“I don't know that I'd call this an unfertile planet,” smiled Matthew.

“Not in the true sense of the word, perhaps. But to the Earthmen it wasn't of much use. There is no mineral wealth. The planet was explored in the early days of exploration, but there was no material here for the manufacture of atom blasts or the space torsion drive. It wasn't even positioned suitably for a supply station, or a jumping-off place for the patrol ships. It was just quiet, restful, and lonely. So they went on and left it. Their colonies were built up on more prosperous worlds.”

But there was bound to be a day of reckoning. It took a long time for the downtrodden races of the universe to combine and muster the strength to oppose their conquerors. There were innumerable difficulties. The space patrols and all the power of Earth's commercial empire was widespread, and individual revolts were bound to fail. To attempt concerted action under the noses of human rulers was difficult and dangerous. But at last the great rebellion took place.

It was helped by a civil war that had broken out on Earth. The powers of the master planet fell out among themselves over the control of the universe, and in the course of their squabble had to recall many of their forces from the outposts of the universe. The races of the exploited planets seized their opportunity, combined, and overthrew the depleted armies and technical staffs that had been left to govern them.

Once started, there was no stopping the outbreak. Earthmen were slaughtered wherever they could be found. Generations of fear and hatred piled up behind the rebels: they had known oppression too long for them to be merciful and level-headed. With their own ships and the fast-moving ships captured from their governors, they ranged through the universe, launching attack after attack.

By the time the Earthmen had hastily settled their differences and turned to face the threat, it was too late. The fanatical desire to claim freedom from the yoke of the Earthmen drove the rebels on and on, killing and laying waste. They did not hesitate to destroy their own cities when it was necessary to do so.

Great battles were fought out in space. Ships burned briefly, like the flickering of a candle flame against the brilliance of the stars. Planet after planet was ravaged. All the wealth and power of the universe was thrown away or destroyed in the furious conflict.

“Here on Platonia,” said Diemer, “we hid ourselves. We had lived a simple life, free from hatred and greed, and we did not wish to be involved in the death throes of an evil system. Even now, when we believe that the war is ended and that few are left alive, we cannot take risks. If any of the rebels happen to visit this world and see us, they will kill us at once: Earthmen are killed at sight. And if Earthmen come, they are liable to kill us because we want no part of them, or to force us into the service of their shattered, defeated armies. Right and wrong have been submerged, forgotten. There has been nothing but killing. We consider it our duty to stay alive and build a small civilisation on finer foundations. I don't know if we shall succeed.”

There was a long silence when he had finished. Outside the ship, the voices of children called brightly across the meadow. The sky was clear. The tale of war and destruction seemed remote and unreal.

At last Diemer spoke again. He said:

“Now tell me where you have come from. If all that I have told you is news to you, you must have come a great distance, from some forgotten world.”