RESCUE PARTY
Who was to blame? For three days Alveron's
thoughts had come back to that question, and still he
had found no answer. A creature of a less civilized or a
less sensitive race would never have let it torture his
mind, and would have satisfied himself with the assurance
that no one could be responsible for the working
of fate. But Alveron and his kind had been lords of the
Universe since the dawn of history, since that far-distant
age when the Time Barrier had been folded round
the cosmos by the unknown powers that lay beyond the
Beginning. To them had been given all knowledge --
and with infinite knowledge went infinite responsibility.
If there were mistakes and errors in the administration
of the galaxy, the fault lay on the heads of
Alveron and his people. And this was no mere mistake:
it was one of the greatest tragedies in history.
The crew still knew nothing. Even Rugon, his
closest friend and the ship's deputy captain, had been
told only part of the truth. But now the doomed worlds
lay less than a billion miles ahead. In a few hours, they
would be landing on the third planet.
Once again Alveron read the message from Base;
then with a flick of a tentacle that no human eye
could have followed, he pressed the 'General Attention'
button. Throughout the mile-long cylinder that
was the Galactic Survey Ship S9000, creatures of many
races laid down their work to listen to the words of
their captain.
'I know you have all been wondering,' began Alveron,
'why we were ordered to abandon our survey
and to proceed at such an acceleration to this region
of space. Some of you may realize what this acceleration means.
Our ship is on its last voyage: the generators
have already been running for sixty hours at Ultimate
Overload. We will be very lucky if we return to
Base under our own power.
'We are approaching a sun which is about to become
a Nova. Detonation will occur in seven hours, with an
uncertainty of one hour, leaving us a maximum of
only four hours for exploration. There are ten planets
in the system about to be destroyed-and there is a
civilization on the third. That fact was discovered only
a few days ago. It is our tragic mission to contact
that doomed race and if possible to save some of its
members. I know that there is little we can do in so
short a time with this single ship. No other machine
can possibly reach the system before detonation occurs.'
There was a long pause during which there could
have been no sound or movement in the whole of the
mighty ship as it sped silently toward the worlds ahead.
Alveron knew what his companions were thinking and
he tried to answer their unspoken question.
'You will wonder how such a disaster, the greatest of
which we have any record, has been allowed to occur.
On one point I can reassure you. The fault does not
lie with the Survey.
'As you know, with our present fleet of under twelve
thousand ships, it is possible to re-examine each of the
eight thousand million solar systems in the Galaxy at
intervals of about a million years. Most worlds change
very little in so short a time as that.
'Less than four hundred thousand years ago, the
survey-ship S5o6o examined the planets of the system
we are approaching. It found intelligence on none of
them, though the third planet was teeming with animal
life and two other worlds had once been inhabited.
The usual report was submitted and the system is due
for its next examination in six hundred thousand
years.
'It now appears that in the incredibly short period
since the last survey, intelligent life has appeared in
the system. The first intimation of this occurred when
unknown radio signals were detected on the planet
Kulath in the system X29.35, Y34.76, Z27.93. Bearings
were taken on them; they were coming from the system
ahead.
'Kulath is two hundred light-years from here, so
those radio waves had been on their way for two centuries.
Thus for at least that period a civilization' has
existed on one of these worlds-a civilization that can
generate electromagnetic waves and all that that implies.
'An immediate telescopic examination of the system
was made and it was then found that the sun was in
the unstable pre-nova stage. Detonation might occur
at any moment, and indeed might have done so while
the light waves were on their way to Kulath.
'There was a slight delay while the supervelocity
scanners on Kulath II were focused onto the system.
They showed that the explosion had not yet occurred
but was only a few hours away. If Kulath had been a
fraction of a light-year further from this sun, we should
never have known of its civilization until it had ceased
to exist.
'The Administrator of Kulath contacted Sector Base
immediately, and I was ordered to proceed to the system
at once. Our object is to save what members we
can of the doomed race, if indeed there are any left.
But we have assumed that a civilization possessing
radio could have protected itself against any rise of
temperature that may have already occurred.
'This ship and the two tenders will each explore a
section of the planet. Commander Torkalee will take
Number One, Commander Orostron Number Two.
They will have just under four hours in which to explore
this world. At the end of that time, they must be
back in the ship. It will be leaving then, with or without
them. I will give the two commanders detailed instructions
in the control room immediately.
'That is all. We enter atmosphere in two hours.'
On the world once known as Earth the fires were
dying out: there was nothing left to burn. The great
forests that had swept across the planet like a tidal
wave with the passing of the cities were now no more
than glowing charcoal and the smoke of their funeral
pyres still stained the sky. But the last hours were still
to come, for the surface rocks had not yet begun to
flow. The continents were dimly visible through the
haze, but their outlines meant nothing to the watchers
in the approaching ship. The charts they possessed
were out of date by a dozen Ice Ages and more deluges
than one.
The S9000 had driven past Jupiter and seen at once
that no life could exist in those half-gaseous oceans of
compressed hydrocarbons, now erupting furiously
under the sun's abnormal heat. Mars and the outer
planets they had missed, and Alveron realized that the
worlds nearer the sun than Earth would be already
melting. It was more than likely, he thought sadly,
that the tragedy of this unknown race was already
finished. Deep in his heart, he thought it might be
better so. The ship could only have carried a few
hundred survivors, and the problem of selection had
been haunting his mind.
Rugon, Chief of Communications and Deputy Captain,
came into the control room. For the last hour he
had been striving to detect radiation from Earth, but
in vain.
'We're too late,' he announced gloomily. 'I've monitored
the whole spectrum and the ether's dead except
for our own stations and some two-hundred-year-old
programs from Kulath. Nothing in this system is radiating
any more.'
He moved toward the giant vision screen with a
graceful flowing motion that no mere biped could ever
hope to imitate. Alveron said nothing; he had been
expecting this news.
One entire wall of the control room was taken up
by the screen, a great black rectangle that gave an impression
of almost infinite depth. Three of Rugon's
slender control tentacles, useless for heavy work but
incredibly swift at all manipulation, flickered over the
selector dials and the screen lit up with a thousand
points of light. The star field flowed swiftly past as
Rugon adjusted the controls, bringing the projector
to bear upon the sun itself.
No man of Earth would have recognized the monstrous
shape that filled the screen. The sun's light was
white no longer: great violet-blue clouds covered half
of its surface and from them long streamers of flame
were erupting into space. At one point an enormous
prominence had reared itself out of the photosphere,
far out even into the flickering veils of the corona. It
was as though a tree of fire had taken root in the surface
of the sun -- a tree that stood half a million miles
high and whose branches were rivers of flame sweeping
through space at hundreds of miles a second.
'I suppose,' said Rugon presently, 'that you are quite
satisfied about the astronomers' calculations. After
all --'
'Oh, we're perfectly safe,' said Alveron confidently.
'I've spoken to Kulath Observatory and they have
been making some additional checks through our own
instruments. That uncertainty of an hour includes a
private safety margin which they won't tell me in case
I feel tempted to stay any longer.'
He glanced at the instrument board.
'The pilot should have brought us to the atmosphere
now. Switch the screen back to the planet, please. Ah,
there they go!'
There was a sudden tremor underfoot and a raucous
clanging of alarms, instantly stilled. Across the vision
screen two slim projectiles dived toward the looming
mass of Earth. For a few miles they traveled together,
then they separated, one vanishing abruptly as it
entered the shadow of the planet.
Slowly the huge mother ship, with its thousand
times greater mass, descended after them into the
raging storms that already were tearing down the
deserted cities of Man.
It was night in the hemisphere over which Orostron
drove his tiny command. Like Torkalee, his mission
was to photograph and record, and to report progress
to the mother ship. The little scout had no room for
specimens or passengers. If contact was made with the
inhabitants of this world, the S9000 would come at
once. There would be no time for parleying. If there
was any trouble the rescue would be by force and the
explanations could come later.
The ruined land beneath was bathed with an eerie,
flickering light, for a great auroral display was raging
over half the world. But the image on the vision screen
was independent of external light, and it showed
clearly a waste of barren rock that seemed never to
have known any form of life. Presumably this desert
land must come to an end somewhere. Orostron increased
his speed to the highest value he dared risk in
so dense an atmosphere.
The machine fled on through the storm, and presently
the desert of rock began to climb toward the sky.
A great mountain range lay ahead, its peaks lost in the
smoke-laden clouds. Orostron directed the scanners
toward the horizon, and on the vision screen the line
of mountains seemed suddenly very close and menacing.
He started to climb rapidly. It was difficult to
imagine a more unpromising land in which to find
civilization and he wondered if it would be wise to
change course. He decided against it. Five minutes
later, he had his reward.
Miles below lay a decapitated mountain, the whole
of its summit sheered away by some tremendous feat
of engineering. Rising out of the rock and straddling
the artificial plateau was an intricate structure of metal
girders, supporting masses of machinery. Orostron
brought his ship to a halt and spiraled down toward
the mountain.
The slight Doppler blur had now vanished, and the
picture on the screen was clear-cut. The latticework
was supporting some scores of great metal mirrors,
pointing skyward at an angle of forty-five degrees to
the horizontal. They were slightly concave, and each
had some complicated mechanism at its focus. There
seemed something impressive and purposeful about
the great array; every mirror was aimed at precisely the
same spot in the sky -- or beyond.
Orostron turned to his colleagues.
'It looks like some kind of observatory to me,' he
said. 'Have you ever seen anything like it before?'
Klarten, a multitentacled, tripedal creature from a
globular cluster at the edge of the Milky Way, had a
different theory.
'That's communication equipment. Those reflectors
are for focusing electromagnetic beams. I've seen the
same kind of installation on a hundred worlds before.
It may even be the station that Kulath picked up --
though that's rather unlikely, for the beams would be
very narrow from mirrors that size.'
'That would explain why Rugon could detect no
radiation before we landed,' added Hansur II, one of
the twin beings from the planet Thargon.
Orostron did not agree at all.
'If that is a radio station, it must be built for interplanetary
communication. Look at the way the mirrors
are pointed. I don't believe that a race which has only
had radio for two centuries can have crossed space. It
took my people six thousand years to do it.'
'We managed it in three, said Hansur II mildly,
speaking a few seconds ahead of his twin. Before the
inevitable argument could develop, Klarten began to
wave his tentacles with excitement. While the others
had been talking, he had started the automatic monitor.
'Here it is! Listen!'
He threw a switch, and the little room was filled
with a raucous whining sound, continually changing
in pitch but nevertheless retaining certain characteristics
that were difficult to define.
The four explorers listened intently for a minute;
then Orostron said, 'Surely that can't be any form of
speech! No creature could produce sounds as quickly
as that!'
Hansur I had come to the same conclusion. 'That's
a television program. Don't you think so, Klarten?'
The other agreed.
'Yes, and each of those mirrors seems to be radiating
a different program. I wonder where they're going? If
I'm correct, one of the other planets in the system must
lie along those beams. We can soon check that.'
Orostron called the S9000 and reported the discovery.
Both Rugon and Alveron were greatly excited,
and made a quick check of the astronomical records.
The result was surprising -- and disappointing.
None of the other nine planets lay anywhere near the
line of transmission. The great mirrors appeared to be
pointing blindly into space.
There seemed only one conclusion to be drawn, and
Klarten was the first to voice it.
'They had interplanetary communication,' he said.
'But the station must be deserted now, and the transmitters
no longer controlled. They haven't been
switched off, and are just pointing where they were
left.'
'Well, we'll soon find out,' said Orostron. 'I'm going
to land.'
He brought the machine slowly down to the level of
the great metal mirrors, and past them until it came
to rest on the mountain rock. A hundred yards away,
a white stone building crouched beneath the maze of
steel girders. It was windowless, but there were several
doors in the wall facing them.
Orostron watched his companions climb into their
protective suits and wished he could follow. But someone
had to stay in the machine to keep in touch with
the mother ship. Those were Alveron's instructions
and they were very wise. One never knew what would
happen on a world that was being explored for the
first time, especially under conditions such as these.
Very cautiously, the three explorers stepped out of
the airlock and adjusted the antigravity field of their
suits. Then, each with the mode of locomotion peculiar
to his race, the little party went toward the building,
the Hansur twins leading and Klarten following close
behind. His gravity control was apparently giving
trouble, for he suddenly fell to the ground, rather to
the amusement of his colleagues. Orostron saw them
pause for a moment at the nearest door -- then it
opened slowly and they disappeared from sight.
So Orostron waited, with what patience he could,
while the storm rose around him and the light of the
aurora grew even brighter in the sky. At the agreed
times he called the mother ship and received brief
acknowledgments from Rugon. He wondered how
Torkalee was faring, halfway round the planet, but he
could not contact him through the crash and thunder
of solar interference.
It did not take Klarten and the Hansurs long to discover
that their theories were largely correct. The
building was a radio station, and it was utterly deserted.
It consisted of one tremendous room with a few
small offices leading from it. In the main chamber, row
after row of electrical equipment stretched into the
distance; lights flickered and winked on hundreds of
control panels, and a dull glow came from the elements
in a great avenue of vacuum tubes.
But Klarten was not impressed. The first radio set
his race had built was now fossilized in strata a
thousand million years old. Man, who had possessed
electrical machines for only a few centuries, could not
compete with those who had known them for half the
lifetime of the Earth.
Nevertheless, the party kept their recorders running
as they explored the building. There was still one
problem to be solved. The deserted station was broadcasting
programs, but where were they coming from?
The central switchboard had been quickly located.
It was designed to handle scores of programs simultaneously,
but the source of those programs was lost in
a maze of cables that vanished underground. Back in
the S9000, Rugon was trying to analyze the broadcasts
and perhaps his researches would reveal their origin.
It was impossible to trace cables that might lead across
continents.
The party wasted little time at the deserted station.
There was nothing they could learn from it, and they
were seeking life rather than scientific information. A
few minutes later the little ship rose swiftly from the
plateau and headed toward the plains that must lie
beyond the mountains. Less than three hours were
still left to them.
As the array of enigmatic mirrors dropped out of
sight, Orostron was struck by a sudden thought. Was it
imagination, or had they all moved through a small
angle while he had been waiting, as if they were still
compensating for the rotation of the Earth? He could
not be sure, and he dismissed the matter as unimportant.
It would only mean that the directing mechanism
was still working, after a fashion.
They discovered the city fifteen minutes later. It was
a great, sprawling metropolis, built around a river that
had disappeared leaving an ugly scar winding its way
among the great buildings and beneath bridges that
looked very incongruous now.
Even from the air, the city looked deserted. But
only two and a half hours were left -- there was no time
for further exploration. Orostron made his decision,
and landed near the largest structure he could see. It
seemed reasonable to suppose that some creatures
would have sought shelter in the strongest buildings,
where they would be safe until the very, end.
The deepest caves -- the heart of the planet itself --
would give no protection when the final cataclysm
came. Even if this race had reached the outer planets,
its doom would only be delayed by the few hours it
would take for the ravening wavefronts to cross the
Solar System.
Orostron could not know that the city had been
deserted not for a few days or weeks, but for over a
century. For the culture of cities, which had outlasted
so many civilizations had been doomed at last when the
helicopter brought universal transportation, Within a
few generations the great masses of mankind, knowing
that they could reach any part of the globe in a matter
of hours, had gone back to the fields and forests for
which they had always longed. The new civilization
had machines and resources of which earlier ages had
never dreamed, but it was essentially rural and no
longer bound to the steel and concrete warrens that
had dominated the centuries before. Such cities as still
remained were specialized centers of research administration
or entertainment; the others had been
allowed to decay, where it was too much trouble to
destroy them. The dozen or so greatest of all cities, and
the ancient university towns, had scarcely changed
and would have lasted for many generations to come.
But the cities that had been founded on steam and
iron and surface transportation had passed with the
industries that had nourished them.
And so while Orostron waited in the tender, his colleagues
raced through endless empty corridors and
deserted halls, taking innumerable photographs but
learning nothing of the creatures who had used these
buildings. There were libraries, meeting places, council
rooms, thousands of offices -- all were empty and
deep with dust. If they had not seen the radio station
on its mountain eyrie, the explorers could well have
believed that this world had known no life for centuries.
Through the long minutes of waiting, Orostron
tried to imagine where this race could have vanished.
Perhaps they had killed themselves knowing that escape
was impossible; perhaps they had built great
shelters in the bowels of the planet, and even now
were cowering in their millions beneath his feet, waiting
for the end. He began to fear that he would never
know.
It was almost a relief when at last he had to give the
order for the return. Soon he would know if Torkalee's
party had been more fortunate. And he was anxious
to get back to the mother ship, for as the minutes
passed the suspense had become more and more acute.
There had always been the thought in his mind:
What if .the astronomers of Kulath had made a mistake?
He would begin to feel happy when the walls
of the S9000 were around him. He would be happier
still when they were out in space and this ominous sun
was shrinking far astern.
As soon as his colleagues had entered the airlock,
Orostron hurled his tiny machine into the sky and set
the controls to home on the S9000. Then he turned
to his friends.
'Well, what have you found?' he asked.
Klarten produced a large roll of canvas and spread
it out on the floor.
'This is what they were like,' he said quietly. 'Bipeds,
with only two arms. They seem to have managed
well, in spite of that handicap. Only two eyes as well,
unless there are others in the back. We were lucky to
find this; it's about the only thing they left behind.'
The ancient oil painting stared stonily back at the
three creatures regarding it so intently. By the irony
of fate, its complete worthlessness had saved it from
oblivion. When the city had been evacuated, no one
had bothered to move Alderman John Richards, 19o9-1974.
For a century and a half he had been gathering
dust while far away from the old cities the new civilization
had been rising to heights no earlier culture had
ever known.
'That was almost all we found,' said Klarten. 'The
city must have been deserted for years. I'm afraid our
expedition has been a failure. If there are any living
beings on this world, they've hidden themselves too
well for us to find them.'
His commander was forced to agree.
'It was an almost impossible task,' he said. 'If we'd
had weeks instead of hours we might have succeeded.
for all we know, they may even have built shelters
under the sea. No one seems to have thought of that.'
He glanced quickly at the indicators and corrected
the course.
'We'll be there in five minutes. Alveron seems to be
moving rather quickly. I wonder if Torkalee has found
anything.'
The S9000 was hanging a few miles above the seaboard
of a blazing continent when Orostron homed
upon it. The danger line was thirty minutes away and
there was no time to lose. Skilfully, he maneuvered the
little ship into its launching tube and the party stepped
out of the airlock.
There was a small crowd waiting for them. That was
to be expected, but Orostron could see at once that
something more than curiosity had brought his friends
here. Even before a word was spoken, he knew that
something was wrong.
'Torkalee hasn't returned. He's lost his party and
we're going to the rescue. Come along to the control
room at once.'
From the beginning, Torkalee had been luckier
than Orostron. He had followed the zone of twilight,
keeping away from the intolerable glare of the sun,
until he came to the shores of an inland sea. It was a
very recent sea, one of the latest of Man's works, for the
land it covered had been desert less than a century before.
In a few hours it would be desert again, for the
water was boiling and clouds of steam were rising to
the skies. But they could not veil the loveliness of the
great white city that overlooked the tideless sea.
Flying machines were still parked neatly round the
square in which Torkalee landed. They were disappointingly
primitive, though beautifully finished,
and depended on rotating airfoils for. support. Nowhere
was there any sign of life, but the place gave the
impression that its inhabitants were not very far away.
Lights were still shining from some of the windows.
Torkalee's three companions lost no time in leaving
the machine. Leader of the party, by seniority of rank
and race was T'sinadree, who like Alveron himself had
been born on one of the ancient planets of the Central
Suns. Next came Alarkane, from a race which was one
of the youngest in the Universe and took a perverse
pride in the fact. Last came one of the strange beings
from the system of Palador. It was nameless, like all
its kind, for it possessed no identity of its own, being
merely a mobile but still dependent cell in the consciousness
of its race. Though it and its fellows had
long been scattered over the galaxy in the exploration
of countless worlds, some unknown link still bound
them together as inexorably as the living cells in a
human body.
When a creature of Palador spoke, the pronoun
it used was always 'We.' There was not, nor could there
ever be, any first person singular in the language of
Palador.
The great doors of the splendid building baffled
the explorers, though any human child would have
known their secret. T'sinadree wasted no time on them
but called Torkalee on his personal transmitter. Then
the three hurried aside while their commander
maneuvered his machine into the best position. There
was a brief burst of intolerable flame; the massive steelwork
flickered once at the edge of the visible spectrum
and was gone. The stones were still glowing when the
eager party hurried into the building, the beams of
their light projectors fanning before them.
The torches were not needed. Before them lay a
great hall, glowing with light from lines of tubes along
the ceiling. On either side, the hall opened out into
long corridors, while straight ahead a massive stairway
swept majestically toward the upper floors.
For a moment T'sinadree hesitated. Then, since one
way was as good as another, he led his companions
down the first corridor.
The feeling that life was near had now become very
strong. At any moment, it seemed, they might be confronted
by the creatures of this world. If they showed
hostility -- and they could scarcely be blamed if they
did -- the paralyzers would be used at once.
The tension was very great as the party entered the
first room, and only relaxed when they saw that it held
nothing but machines -- row after row of them, now
stilled and silent. Lining the enormous room were
thousands of metal filing cabinets, forming a continuous
wall as far as the eye could reach. And that was all;
there was no furniture, nothing but the cabinets and
the mysterious machines.
Alarkane, always the quickest of the three, was already
examining the cabinets. Each held many
thousand sheets of tough, thin material, perforated
with innumerable holes and slots. The Paladorian appropriated
one of the cards and Alarkane recorded the
scene together with some close-ups of the machines.
Then they left. The great room, which had been one
of the marvels of the world, meant nothing to them.
No living eye would ever again see that wonderful
battery of almost human Hollerith analyzers and the
five thousand million punched cards holding all that
could be recorded of each man, woman and child on
the planet.
It was clear that this building had been used very
recently: With growing excitement, the explorers
hurried on to the next room. This they found to be
an enormous library, for millions of books lay all
around them on miles and miles of shelving. Here,
though the explorers could not know it, were the
records of all the laws that Man had ever passed, and
all the speeches that had ever been made in his council
chambers.
T'sinadree was deciding his plan of action, when
Alarkane drew his attention to one of the racks a
hundred yards away. It was half empty, unlike all the
others. Around it books lay in a tumbled heap on the
floor, as if knocked down by someone in frantic haste.
The signs were unmistakable. Not long ago, other
creatures had been this way. Faint wheel marks were
clearly visible on the floor to the acute sense of
Alarkane, though the others could see nothing.
Alarkane could even detect footprints, but knowing
nothing of the creatures that had formed them he
could not say which way they led.
The sense of nearness was stronger than ever now,
but it was nearness in time, not in space. Alarkane
voiced the thoughts of the party.
'Those books must have been valuable, and someone
has come to rescue them -- rather as an afterthought,
I should say. That means there must be a
place of refuge, possibly not very far away. Perhaps we
may be able to find some other clues that will lead us
to it.'
T'sinadree agreed; the Paladorian wasn't enthusiastic.
'That may be so,' it said. 'but the refuge may be anywhere
on the planet, and we have just two hours left.
Let us waste no more time if we hope to rescue these
people.'
The party hurried forward once more, pausing only
to collect a few books that might be useful to the
scientists at Base -- though it was doubtful if they could
ever be translated. They soon found that the great
building was composed largely of small rooms, all
showing signs of recent occupation. Most of them were
in a neat and tidy condition, but one or two were very
much the reverse. The explorers were particularly
puzzled by one room -- clearly an office of some kind --
that appeared to have been completely wrecked. The
floor was littered with papers, the furniture had been
smashed, and smoke was pouring through the broken
windows from the fires outside.
T'sinadree was rather alarmed.
'Surely no dangerous animal could have got into a
place like this!' he exclaimed, fingering his paralyzer
nervously.
Alarkane did not answer. He began to make that
annoying sound which his race called 'laughter.' It was
several minutes before he would explain what had
amused him.
'I don't think any animal has done it,' he said. 'In
fact, the explanation is very simple. Suppose you had
been working all your life in this room, dealing with
endless papers, year after year. And suddenly, you are
told that you will never see it again, that your work is
finished, and that you can leave it forever. More than
that -- no one will come after you. Everything is
finished. How would you make your exit, T'sinadree?'
The other thought for a moment.
'Well, I suppose I'd just tidy things up and leave.
That's what seems to have happened in all the other
rooms.'
Alarkane laughed again.
'I'm quite sure you would. But some individuals
have a different psychology. I think I should have liked
the creature that used this room.'
He did not explain himself further, and his two colleagues
puzzled over his words for quite a while before
they gave it up.
It came as something of a shock when Torkalee gave
the order to return. They had gathered a great deal of
information, but had found no clue that might lead
them to the missing inhabitants of this world. That
problem was as baffling as ever, and now it seemed
that it would never be solved. There were only forty
minutes left before the S9000 would be departing.
They were halfway back to the tender when they
saw the semicircular passage leading down into the
depths of the building.. Its architectural style was quite
different from that used elsewhere, and the gently
sloping floor was an irresistible attraction to creatures
whose many legs had grown weary of the marble staircases
which only bipeds could have built in such profusion.
T'sinadree had been the worst sufferer, for he
normally employed twelve legs and could use twenty
when he was in a hurry, though no one had ever seen
him perform this feat.
The party stopped dead and looked down the passageway
with a single thought. A tunnel, leading
down into the depths of Earth! At its end, they might
yet find the people of this world and rescue some of
them from their fate. For there was still time to call
the mother ship if the need arose.
T'sinadree signaled to his commander and Torkalee
brought the little machine immediately overhead.
There might not be time for the party to retrace its
footsteps through the maze of passages, so meticulously
recorded in the Paladorian mind that there was no
possibility of going astray. If speed was necessary,
Torkalee could blast his way through the dozen floors
above their head. In any case, it should not take long
to find what lay at the end of the passage.
It took only thirty seconds. The tunnel ended quite
abruptly in a very curious cylindrical room with
magnificently padded seats along the walls. There was
no way out save that by which they had come and it
was several seconds before the purpose of the chamber
dawned on Alarkane's mind. It was a pity, he thought,
that they would never have time to use this. The
thought was suddenly interrupted by a cry from
T'sinadree. Alarkane wheeled around, and saw that
the entrance had closed silently behind them.
Even in that first moment of panic, Alarkane found
himself thinking with some admiration: Whoever
they were they knew how to build automatic
machinery!
The Paladorian was the first to speak. It waved one
of its tentacles toward the seats.
'We think it would be best to be seated,' it said.
The multiplex mind of Palador had already analyzed
the situation and knew what was coming.
They did not have long to wait before a low-pitched
hum came from a grill overhead, and for the very last
time in history a human, even if lifeless, voice was
heard on Earth. The words were meaningless, though
the trapped explorers could guess their message clearly
enough.
'Choose your stations, please, and be seated.'
Simultaneously, a wall panel at one end of the compartment
glowed with light. On it was a simple map,
consisting of a series of a dozen circles connected by a
line. Each of the circles had writing alongside it, and
beside the writing were two buttons of different colors.
Alarkane looked questioningly at his leader.
'Don't touch them,' said T'sinadree. 'If we leave the
controls alone, the doors may open again.'
He was wrong. The engineers who had designed the
automatic subway had assumed that anyone who
entered it would naturally wish to go somewhere. If
they selected no intermediate station, their destination
could only be the end of the line.
There was another pause while the relays and thyratrons
waited for their orders. In those thirty seconds, if
they had known what to do, the party could have
opened the doors and left the subway. But they did not
know, and the machines geared to a human psychology
acted for them.
The surge of acceleration was not very great; the
lavish upholstery was a luxury, not a necessity. Only an
almost imperceptible vibration told of the speed at
which they were travelling through the bowels of the
earth, on a journey the duration of which they could
not even guess. And in thirty minutes, the S9000 would
be leaving the Solar System.
There was a long silence in the speeding machine.
T'sinadree and Alarkane were thinking rapidly. So
was the Paladorian, though in a different fashion. The
conception of personal death was meaningless to it,
for the destruction of a single unit meant no more to
the group mind than the loss of a nail-paring to a man.
But it could, though with great difficulty, appreciate
the plight of individual intelligences such as Alarkane
and T'sinadree, and it was anxious to help them if it
could.
Alarkane had managed to contact Torkalee with his
personal transmitter, though the signal was very weak
and seemed to be fading quickly. Rapidly he explained
the situation, and almost at once the signals became
clearer. Torkalee was following the path of the
machine, flying above the ground under which they
were speeding to their unknown destination. That was
the first indication they had of the fact that they were
traveling at nearly a thousand miles an hour, and very
soon after that Torkalee was able to give the still more
disturbing news that they were rapidly approaching
the sea. While they were beneath the land. there was a
hope, though a slender one, that they might stop the
machine and escape. But under the ocean -- not all the
brains and the machinery in the great mother ship
could save them. No one could have devised a more
perfect trap.
T'sinadree had been examining the wall map with
great attention. Its meaning was obvious, and along the
line connecting the circles a tiny spot of light was
crawling. It was already halfway to the first of the
stations marked.
'I'm going to press one of those buttons,' said T'sinadree
at last. 'It won't do any harm, and we may learn
something.'
'I agree. Which will you try first?'
'There are only two kinds, and it won't matter if we
try the wrong one first. I suppose one is to start the
machine and the other is to stop it.'
Alarkane was not very hopeful.
'It started without any button pressing,' he said. 'I
think it's completely automatic and we can't control
it from here at all.'
T'sinadree could not agree.
'These buttons are clearly associated with the
stations, and there's no point in having them unless you
can use them to stop yourself. The only question is,
which is the right one?'
His analysis was perfectly correct. The machine
could be stopped at any intermediate station. They
had only been on their way ten minutes, and if they
could leave now, no harm would have been done. It
was just bad luck that T'sinadree's first choice was the
wrong button.
The little light on the map crawled slowly through
the illuminated circle without checking its speed. And
at the same time Torkalee called from the ship overhead.
'You have just passed underneath a city and are
heading out to sea. There cannot be another stop for
nearly a thousand miles.'
Alveron had given up all hope of finding life on this
world. The S9000 had roamed over half the planet,
never staying long in one place, descending ever and
again in an effort to attract attention. There had been
no response; Earth seemed utterly dead. If any of its
inhabitants were still alive, thought Alveron, they must
have hidden themselves in its depths where no help
could reach them, though their doom would be nonetheless
certain.
Rugon brought news of the disaster. The great ship
ceased its fruitless searching and fled back through the
storm to the ocean above which Torkalee's little tender
was still following the track of the buried machine.
The scene was truly terrifying. Not since the days
when Earth was born had there been such seas as this.
Mountains of water were racing before the storm
which had now reached velocities of many hundred
miles an hour. Even at this distance from the mainland
the air was full of flying debris - trees, fragments
of houses, sheets of metal, anything that had not been
anchored to the ground. No airborne machine could
have lived for a moment in such a gale. And ever and
again even the roar of the wind was drowned as the
vast water-mountains met head-on with a crash that
seemed to shake the sky.
Fortunately, there had been no serious earthquakes
yet. Far beneath the bed of the ocean the wonderful
piece of engineering which had been the World President's
private vacuum-subway was still working perfectly,
unaffected by the tumult and destruction above.
It would continue to work until the last minute of the
Earth's existence, which, if the astronomers were right,
was not much more than fifteen minutes away -- though
precisely how much more Alveron would have given
a great deal to know. It would be nearly an hour before
the trapped party could reach land and even the
slightest hope of rescue.
Alveron's instructions had been precise, though
even without them he would never have dreamed of
taking any risks with the great machine that had been
entrusted to his care. Had he been human, the decision
to abandon the trapped members of his crew would
have been desperately hard to make. But he came of a
race far more sensitive than Man, a race that so loved
the things of the spirit that long ago, and with infinite
reluctance, it had taken over control of the Universe
since only thus could it be sure that justice was being
done. Alveron would need all his superhuman gifts to
carry him through the next few hours.
Meanwhile, a mile below the bed of the ocean, Alarkane
and T'sinadree were very busy indeed with their
private communicators. Fifteen minutes is not a long
time in which to wind up the affairs of a lifetime. It
is indeed, scarcely long enough to dictate more than a
few of those farewell messages which at such moments
are so much more important than all other matters.
All the while the Paladorian had remained silent
and motionless, saying not a word. The other two, resigned
to their fate and engrossed in their personal
affairs, had given it no thought. They were startled
when suddenly it began to address them in its
peculiarly passionless voice.
'We perceive that you are making certain arrangements
concerning your anticipated destruction. That
will probably be unnecessary. Captain Alveron hopes
to rescue us if we can stop this machine when we reach
land again.'
Both T'sinadree and Alarkane were too surprised
to say anything for a moment. Then the latter gasped,
'How do you know?'
It was a foolish question, for he remembered at once
that there were several Paladorians -- if one could use
the phrase -- in the S9000, and consequently their companion
knew everything that was happening in the
mother ship. So he did not wait for an answer but continued,
'Alveron can't do that! He daren't take such
a risk!'
'There will be no risk,' said the Paladorian. 'We
have told him what to do. It is really very simple.'
Alarkane and T'sinadree looked at their companion
with something approaching awe, realizing now what
must have happened. In moments of crisis, the single
units comprising the Paladorian mind could link together
in an organization no less close than that of any
physical brain. At such moments they formed an
intellect more powerful than any other in the Universe.
All ordinary problems could be solved by a few
hundred or thousand units. Very rarely, millions would
be needed, and on two historic occasions the billions of
cells of the entire Paladorian consciousness had been
welded together to deal with emergencies that threatened
the race. The mind of Palador was one of the
greatest mental resources of the Universe; its .full
force was seldom required, but the knowledge that
it was available was supremely comforting to other
races. Alarkane wondered how many cells had coordinated
to deal with this particular emergency. He
also wondered how so trivial an incident had ever come
to its attention.
To that question he was never to know the answer,
though he might have guessed it had he known that the
chillingly remote Paladorian mind possessed an almost
human streak of vanity. Long ago, Alarkane had
written a book trying to prove that eventually all intelligent
races would sacrifice individual consciousness
and that one day only group-minds would remain in
the Universe. Palador, he had said, was the first of
those ultimate intellects, and the vast, dispersed mind
had not been displeased.
They had no time to ask any further questions
before Alveron himself began to speak through their
communicators.
'Alveron calling! We're staying on this planet until
the detonation waves reach it, so we may be able to
rescue you. You're heading toward a city on the coast
which you'll reach in forty minutes at your present
speed. If you cannot stop yourselves then, we're going
to blast the tunnel behind and ahead of you to cut off
your power. Then we'll sink a shaft to get you out -- the
chief engineer says he can do it in five minutes with
the main projectors. So you should be safe within an
hour, unless the sun blows up before.'
'And if that happens, you'll be destroyed as well!
You mustn't take such a risk!'
'Don't let that worry you; we're perfectly safe. When
the sun detonates, the explosion wave will take several
minutes to rise to its maximum. But apart from that,
we're on the night side of the planet, behind an eightthousand-mile
screen of rock. When the first warning
of the explosion comes, we will accelerate out of the
Solar System, keeping in the shadow of the planet.
Under our maximum drive, we will reach the velocity
of light before leaving the cone of shadow, and the sun
cannot harm us then.'
T'sinadree was still afraid to hope. Another objection
came at once into his mind.
'Yes, but how will you get any warning, here on the
night side of the planet?'
'Very easily,' replied Alveron. 'This world has a
moon which is now visible from this hemisphere. We
have telescopes trained on it. If it shows any sudden
increase in brilliance, our main drive goes on automatically
and we'll be thrown out of the system.'
The logic was flawless. Alveron, cautious as ever, was
taking no chances. It would be many minutes before
the eight-thousand-mile shield of rock and metal could
be destroyed by the fires of the exploding sun. In that
time, the S9000 could have reached the safety of the
velocity of light.
Alarkane pressed the second button when they were
still several miles from the coast. He did not expect
anything to happen then, assuming that the machine
could not stop between stations. It seemed too good to
be true when, a few minutes later, the machine's slight
vibration died away and they came to a halt.
The doors slid silently apart. Even before they were
fully open, the three had left the compartment. They
were taking no more chances. Before them a long
tunnel stretched into the distance, rising slowly out
of sight. They were starting along it when suddenly
Alveron's voice called from the communicators.
'Stay where you are! We're going to blast!'
The ground shuddered once, and far ahead there
came the rumble of falling rock. Again the earth shook
-- and a hundred yards ahead the passageway vanished
abruptly. A tremendous vertical shaft had been cut
clean through it.
The party hurried forward again until they came to
the end of the corridor and stood waiting on its lip.
The shaft in which it ended was a full thousand feet
across and descended into the earth as far as the torches
could throw their beams. Overhead, the storm clouds
fled beneath a moon that no man would have recognized,
so luridly brilliant was its disk. And, most
glorious of all sights, the S9000 floated high above, the
great projectors that had drilled this enormous pit
still glowing cherry red.
A dark shape detached itself from the mother ship
and dropped swiftly toward the ground. Torkalee was
returning to collect his friends. A little later, Alveron
greeted them in the control room. He waved to the
great vision screen and said quietly, 'See, we were
barely in time.'
The continent below them was slowly settling
beneath the mile-high waves that were attacking its
coasts. The last that anyone was ever to see of Earth
was a great plain, bathed with the silver light of the
abnormally brilliant moon. Across its face the waters
were pouring in a glittering flood toward a distant
range of mountains. The sea had won its final victory
but its triumph would be short-lived for soon sea and
land would be no more. Even as the silent party in the
control room watched the destruction below, the infinitely
greater catastrophe to which this was only the
prelude came swiftly upon them.
It was as though dawn had broken suddenly over
this moonlit landscape. But it was not dawn: it was
only the moon, shining with the brilliance of a second
sun. For perhaps thirty seconds that awesome, unnatural
light burnt fiercely on the doomed land
beneath. Then there came a sudden flashing of indicator
ights across the control board. The main drive
was on. For a second Alveron glanced at the indicators
and checked their information. When he looked again
at the screen, Earth was gone.
The magnificent, desperately overstrained generators
quietly died when the S9000 was passing the orbit
of Persephone. It did not matter, the sun could never
harm them now, and although the ship was speeding
helplessly out into the lonely night of interstellar space,
it would only be a matter of days before rescue came.
There was irony in that. A day ago, they had been
the rescuers, going to the aid of a race that now no
longer existed. Not for the first time Alveron wondered
about the world that had just perished. He tried, in
vain, to picture it as it had been in its glory, the streets
of its cities thronged with life. Primitive though its
people had been, they might have offered much to the
Universe. If only they could have made contact! Regret
was useless; long before their coming, the people
of this world must have buried themselves in its iron
heart. And now they and their civilization would remain
a mystery for the rest of time.
Alveron was glad when his thoughts were interrupted
by Rugon's entrance. The chief of communications
had been very busy ever since the take-off,
trying to analyze the programs radiated by the transmitter
Orostron had discovered. The problem was not
a difficult one, but it demanded the construction of
special equipment, and that had taken time.
'Well, what have you found?' asked Alveron.
'Quite a lot,' replied his friend. 'There's something
mysterious here, and I don't understand it.
'It didn't take long to find how the vision transmissions
were built up, and we've been able to convert
them to suit our own equipment. It seems that there
were cameras all over the planet, surveying points of
interest. Some of them were apparently in cities, on
the tops of very high buildings. The cameras were
rotating continuously to give panoramic views. In the
programs we've recorded there are about twenty
different scenes.
'In addition, there are a number of transmissions of
a different kind, neither sound nor vision. They seem
to be purely scientific -- possibly instrument readings
or something of that sort. All these programs were
going out simultaneously on different frequency
bands.
'Now there must be a reason for all this. Orostron
still thinks that the station simply wasn't switched off
when it was deserted. But these aren't the sort of programs
such a station would normally radiate at all. It
was certainly used for interplanetary relaying -- Klarten was
quite right there. So these people must have
crossed space, since none of the other planets had any
life at the time of the last survey. Don't you agree?'
Alveron was following intently.
'Yes, that seems reasonable enough. But it's also
certain that the beam was pointing to none of the other
planets. I checked that myself.'
'I know,' said Rugon. 'What I want to discover is
why a giant interplanetary relay station is busily transmitting
pictures of a world about to be destroyed --
pictures that would be of immense interest to scientists
and astronomers. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble
to arrange all those panoramic cameras. I am convinced
that those beams were going somewhere.'
Alveron started up.
'Do you imagine that there might be an outer
planet that hasn't been reported?' he asked. 'If so, your
theory's certainly wrong. The beam wasn't even pointing
in the plane of the Solar System. And even if it
were -- just look at this.'
He switched on the vision screen and adjusted the
controls. Against the velvet curtain of space was
hanging a blue-white sphere, apparently composed of
many concentric shells of incandescent gas. Even
though its immense distance made all movement invisible,
it was clearly expanding at an enormous rate.
At its center was a blinding point of light -- the white
dwarf star that the sun had now become.
'You probably don't realize just how big that sphere
is, 'said Alveron. 'Look at this.'
He increased the magnification until the center portion
of the nova was visible. Close to its heart were
two minute condensations, one on either side of the
nucleus.
'Those are the two giant planets of the system. They
have still managed to retain their existence -- after a
fashion. And they were several hundred million miles
from the sun. The nova is still expanding -- but it's
already twice the size of the Solar System.'
Rugon was silent for a moment.
'Perhaps you're right,' he said, rather grudgingly.
'You've disposed of my first theory. But you still
haven't satisfied me.'
He made several swift circuits of the room before
speaking again. Alveron waited patiently. He knew
the almost intuitive powers of his friend, who could
often solve a problem when mere logic seemed insufficient.
Then, rather slowly, Rugon began to speak again.
'What do you think of this?' he said. 'Suppose we've
completely underestimated this people? Orostron did
it once-he thought they could never have crossed
space, since they'd only known radio for two centuries.
Hansur II told me that. Well, Orostron was quite
wrong. Perhaps we're all wrong. I've had a look at the
material that Klarten brought back from the transmitter.
He wasn't impressed by what he found but
it's a marvellous achievement for so short a time. There
were devices in that station that belonged to civilizations
thousands of years older. Alveron, can we follow
that beam to see where it leads?'
Alveron said nothing for a full minute. He had been
more than half expecting the question, but it was not
an easy one to answer. The main generators had gone
completely. There was no point in trying to repair
them. But there was still power available, and while
there was power, anything could be done in time. It
would mean a lot of improvisation, and some difficult
maneuvers, for the ship still had its enormous initial
velocity. Yes, it could be done, and the activity would
keep the crew from becoming further depressed, now
that the reaction caused by the mission's failure had
started to set in. The news that the nearest heavy
repair ship could not reach them for three weeks had
also caused a slump in morale.
The engineers, as usual, made a tremendous fuss.
Again, as usual, they did the job in half the time they
had dismissed as being absolutely impossible. Very
slowly, over many hours, the great ship began to discard
the speed its main drive had given it in as many
minutes. In a tremendous curve, millions of miles in
radius, the S9000 changed its course and the star fields
shifted round it.
The maneuver took three days, but at the end of that
time the ship was limping along a course parallel to
the beam that had once come from Earth. They were
heading out into emptiness, the blazing sphere that
had been the sun dwindling slowly behind them. By
the standards of interstellar flight, they were almost
stationary.
For hours Rugon strained over his instruments, driving
his detector beams far ahead into space. There were
certainly no planets within many light-years; there was
no doubt of that. From time to time Alveron came to
see him and always he had to give the same reply:
'Nothing to report.' About a fifth of the time Rugon's
intuition let him down badly; he began to wonder if
this was such an occasion.
Not until a week later did the needles of the massdetectors
quiver feebly at the ends of their scales. But
Rugon said nothing, not even to his captain. He waited
until he was sure, and he went on waiting until even
the short-range scanners began to react, and to build up
the first faint pictures on the vision screen. Still he
waited patiently until he could interpret the images.
Then, when he knew that his wildest fancy was even
less than the truth, he called his colleagues into the
control room.
The picture on the vision screen was the familiar
one of endless star fields, sun beyond sun to the very
limits of the Universe. Near the center of the screen
a distant nebula made a patch of haze that was difficult
for the eye to grasp.
Rugon increased the magnification. The stars flowed
out of the field; the little nebula expanded until it
filled the screen and then -- it was a nebula no longer.
A simultaneous gasp of amazement came from all the
company at the sight that lay before them.
Lying across league after league of space, ranged in
a vast three-dimensional array of rows and columns
with the precision of a marching army, were thousands
of tiny pencils of light. They were moving swiftly;
the whole immense lattice holding its shape as a single
unit. Even as Alveron and his comrades watched, the
formation began to drift off the screen and Rugon had
to recenter the controls.
After a long pause, Rugon started to speak.
'This is the race,' he said softly, 'that has known
radio for only two centuries -- the race that we believed
had crept to die in the heart of its planet. I have examined
those images under the highest possible
magnification.
'That is the greatest fleet of which there has ever
been a record. Each of those points of light represents
a ship larger than our own. Of course, they are very
primitive -- what you see on the screen are the jets of
their rockets. Yes, they dared to use rockets to bridge
interstellar space! You realize what that means. It
would take them centuries to reach the nearest star.
The whole race must have embarked on this journey
in the hope that its descendants would complete it,
generations later.
'To measure the extent of their accomplishment,
think of the ages it took us to conquer space, and the
longer ages still before we attempted to reach the stars.
Even if we were threatened with annihilation, could
we have done so much in so short a time? Remember,
this is the youngest civilization in the Universe. Four
hundred thousand years ago it did not even exist. What
will it be a million years from now?'
An hour later, Orostron left the crippled mother
ship to make contact with the great fleet ahead. As the
little torpedo disappeared among the stars, Alveron
turned to his friend and made a remark that Rugon
was often to remember in the years ahead.
'I wonder what they'll be like?' he mused. 'Will they
be nothing but wonderful engineers, with no art or
philosophy? They're going to have such a surprise
when Orostron reaches them -- I expect it will be
rather a blow to their pride. It's funny how all
isolated races think they're the only people in the
Universe. But they should be grateful to us; we're
going to save them a good many hundred years of
travel.'
Alveron glanced at the Milky Way, lying like a veil
of silver mist across the vision screen. He waved toward
it with a sweep of a tentacle that embraced the
whole circle of the galaxy, from the Central Planets to
the lonely suns of the Rim.
'You know,' he said to Rugon, 'I feel rather afraid of
these people. Suppose they don't like our little Federation?'
He waved once more toward the star-clouds that
lay massed across the screen, glowing with the light of
their countless suns.
'Something tells me they'll be very determined
people,' he added. 'We had better be polite to them.
After all, we only outnumber them about a thousand
million to one.'
Rugon laughed at his captain's little joke.
Twenty years afterward, the remark didn't seem
funny.
Arthur C. Clarke 1946
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