Part 3

He couldn't be sure that Mikal had gotten the Star Cluster free. He might at this moment be driving the Serpent into the atomic tail-flare of the larger ship. He did not know whether or not the small destroyer could withstand the impact of the locks ... or the sea itself. Still, he drove the ship upward and outward, the automatics set to continue the same suicidal course should his own human hands falter or fail.

He shouted for Deve to strap herself to the deck rings near the navigation table and make ready for the impact. Time seemed to slow down to a crawling pace. The breath came harshly in his throat, and sweat coursed down his naked back. His bare feet and legs felt cold and clammy....

He was not ready when it came. The first rending screech of tearing metal filled the tiny control room and the instrument panel came smashing up to meet him. He heard a whooshing roar and the scream of protesting gyros. He heard Deve cry out as her bindings ripped loose, and then blackness seemed to splash up out of the control panel and engulf him....

* * * * *

Jerrold woke. His head was pounding painfully and his lips felt mashed and bruised. The strap that had held him to the pilot's seat had broken, and he lay across the instrument panel in a welter of glass shards from shattered dials. The instruments were smeared with blood ... his blood, Aram realized numbly. He put a hand to his face, and it came away sticky and red.

The atomics throbbed, and the dials told him that the Serpent was still under way. The high pitched hissing of escaping air attested to the damage, but it also told him that the ship was in space ... and clear of Atmion IV.

Jerrold got dizzily to his feet and looked about for Deve. She lay crumpled in a corner under a chart-locker, bruised and scratched by the impact of the crash. She moaned slightly as Aram picked her up and carried her to the pilot's chair.

Red alarm lights glared at him from several points on the panel, showing that five forward compartments had been crumpled and ruptured by the ramming of the locks. The pressure in the ship was low enough to add to his discomfort. Methodically, fighting off the dizziness, Aram sealed off the leaky compartments and started the aerators to build up the pressure. The greyness beyond the parts indicated that the energy shield was still operating. The Serpent was traveling in slow first-stage flight toward Kaidor, four and one half light years distant.

"Aram!"

Jerrold turned to see that Deve had opened her eyes and was staring at him, horrified. He tried to grin reassuringly at her, but his bruised lips succeeded only in grimacing grotesquely through the bloody smear of his face.

Deve got to her feet, found the surgical kit that all Fleet vessels carried and set to work mending the damage. Aram was glad to find that aside from his battered lips, he had only a long scalp cut along his hair-line where the instrument panel had tried to decapitate him. The kit contained balms and soothing anaesthetics, and presently both Deve and Jerrold were patched and cleansed of blood and dirt.

There were coveralls in the lockers, and spaceboots; and a hot drink from the robot galley added to their rising spirits. They had escaped a force of the best the Thirty Suns Government could throw against them and they were free of Atmion IV. Their ship was damaged, but serviceable ... and they were together.

Deve cut the energy shield and Aram took star-shots to reckon their position. If the Greens had chased them in spacecraft, their long flight under the shield had certainly lost the pursuit, for the space behind them toward Atmion IV was clear. The three stars of the system blazed below them and Aram pointed the ship at the spot where the yellow Kaidor Sun lay just under the range of visibility, shifting into second-stage flight. The three suns of Atmion streaked into a polychromatic blur, and the Serpent plunged through the interstellar night toward the Thirtieth Decant and the unknown.

* * * * *

It was a star-system of ten planets. Aram Jerrold could see clearly that, as was generally the case, one of them was a ringed giant. Under planetary first-stage drive, he brought the small starship down into the system's ecliptic plane. At a distance of one light day, as the Serpent passed the outermost planet, the energy shield was reactivated.

During the days of the trip from the Twenty Ninth Decant and the Atmion Suns, no word had come from Kant Mikal and his party aboard the Star Cluster. Both Jerrold and Deve Jennet had pondered the advisability of trying to establish contact with the larger ship, but finally they decided to maintain radio silence. Aram felt it inadvisable to risk detection of the Serpent so close to Santane's stronghold.

Instead, they resolved to stick to the original plan as outlined by Kant Mikal back on Atmion IV--landing on the third planet of the Kaidor Sun and there awaiting word from the Star Cluster. Meanwhile, Aram could attempt to repair the damage caused the Serpent by the ramming of the locks.

On a dead-reckoning course, Jerrold guided the small spaceship sunward. The peaceful pleasure of the days in space was forgotten now, forced out of his mind by the nearness of Kaidor V and its hellish spawn of destruction. Thinking of the poor creature he had seen in the tunnels back on Atmion IV, Aram was taken with a sick chill. Here, under the alien light of Kaidor Sun, the virus that had degenerated what had once been a man lay quiescent in the sleek shells of uncounted interstellar missiles, ready to leap out and away and carry its mind-destroying power to all the inhabited worlds of the Thirty Suns. Jerrold knew that the use of such a weapon would mean disaster. If war came, it would be a war of stellar giants, smashing planets and minds alike in a hideous carnival of death and savagery. The spawn of the Kaidor Sun meant ruin....

As yet, Aram reflected with faint hope, there had been no break. Provincial Governor Santane was still, as far as anyone outside the Thirtieth Decant knew, a loyal civil servant of the Thirty Suns bureaucracy. The Special Intelligence reports that clicked methodically through the Serpent's subspace communicator gave no hint of rebellion against the banner of the Spaceship and Sun in the Kaidor system. It was possible, too, thought Jerrold, that the Group under Kant Mikal could convince Santane of the folly of open defiance. But even as the thoughts formed in his mind, doubt grew. Kant Mikal had said that Santane had already stopped weapons shipments to the rest of the Thirty Suns. He had no such authority. It would take some time for an investigation to be activated through the ponderous bureaucratic procedures of the Tetrarchy, but investigation there would definitely be ... and Santane could have nothing in his mind but war with the Thirty Suns Government to have taken such a risk. Kaidor Province was the scientific arsenal of the Tetrarchy, and as such strategically valuable beyond its intrinsic worth. It would not be too difficult, Aram realized, to imagine that the man who ruled Kaidor could rule the Tetrarchy. Only it wasn't so. No one system could muster enough power to crush the Thirty Suns without being smashed to rubble itself in the process. A man who had served in a galactic Fleet could understand that. But a man who had served only as a governor could not, and _that_ was the danger....

As a naval officer, Aram Jerrold knew something that Santane did not. He knew that vast navies will fight and destroy long after the hope of victory has gone.

If war came, there would _be_ no victory. There would be only galactic disaster....

* * * * *

With the energy shield off, and under reduced power, the Serpent came down into the atmosphere of Kaidor III. The planet's satellite lay, like a crescent of silver, in the dark blue, star-flecked sky of the stratosphere.

Beneath them, the vast curving surface of the planet flattened as the starship sank lower, the mottled blues and greens and browns taking shape of oceans, islands and continents. The sky grew lighter--a pale blue--as the Serpent crossed the twilight line and slanted down toward the surface of the turbulent sea.

Scud clouds raced across the sky and light rain pattered against the ports of the slowly moving spaceship. Quite suddenly the squall passed, and the Serpent hung above a sea of brilliant blues and greens, frothed with white-caps.

Deve watched through the ports, enraptured. "Look, Aram! Look at the colors in that sea!"

Side by side they watched the play of colors in the ocean, fascinated by the swirling grace and chromatic wonder of the waves.

In the far distance lay the low silhouette of land. Jerrold let the Serpent move toward it, keel skimming the dancing white crowns of the sea.

There were a few graceful sea-birds with leathery wings and brightly plumed breasts, and there was life in the sea. Deve and Jerrold could see schools of lithe shapes flashing silver beneath the water. But the land itself was silent. The white sand of a curving beach came up out of the distance to meet them. Beyond lay green rolling hills and wooded slopes bright with flowers, and farther into the glare of the morning sun great snow-capped mountains reared their jagged spines against the blue in the sky.

"Aram ... it's beautiful!" the girl breathed. "It's the world we dreamed of finding...."

Jerrold remembered the nights they had shared back on mighty Terminus. He recalled their idle dreams of a world beyond the farthest stars where they could be free. This, he felt, was such a world.

Deve turned around suddenly to face him. There was longing in her eyes--a look of wistfulness that filled him with tenderness.

"We ... we must never forget this world, Aram," she said. "Perhaps one day we can come here...." She let her voice sink low. "Oh, Aram! If we could only stay here! If we could just forget everything but this lovely, peaceful world!"

Aram Jerrold thought of Santane and the threatening clouds of war. He thought of the mighty, senseless civilization of the Thirty Suns--oblivious to the dangers that threatened to engulf it. Quite suddenly he hated it all. Hated it more than he had ever despised it when it had tortured and persecuted him. He felt trapped by his unasked-for responsibilities to the culture that had condemned him. But trapped he was, and he knew it. Even hating it, he could not let a galactic civilization vanish without trace and refuse to lift a hand to save it ... _to save something from the wreckage_.

Kant Mikal's words came back to him. Pressing, insistent, demanding.

He took Deve in his arms. "I'd want nothing more than to stay here ... with you," he said gently. "But we'd never be safe if Santane ruled the Tetrarchy. He'd never leave a paradise like this alone...."

"I know that," said Deve, sighing. "But maybe someday...." She broke off. "I'm so tired, Aram."

Jerrold thought of how long this girl had been fighting--in secret, in constant danger of her life--against the menace of an interregnum of savagery in the galaxy. It made him want to kill Santane with his bare hands and smash the Tetrarchy into cosmic rubble!

But it was no good. A responsibility had fallen onto Deve's shoulders and his. Kant Mikal had said it. And no matter how they might wish that two others had been chosen out of all the teeming billions of the Thirty Suns, both he and Deve knew that they must throw themselves between the galactic millstones and try with their last breath to avert the limbo that yawned to swallow the first stellar civilization that the race had laboriously built. It was not perfect--but it was their own.

* * * * *

For two days and two nights Deve and Aram waited by the restless sea of Kaidor III. They wandered over the green hills and through the wooded glades hand in hand, caught up in the wonder and beauty of the silent planet.

Aram was able to patch some of the breaks in the Serpent's hull, and together he and Deve planned what moves they must make next. Each time they left the ship, the recorders were set so that any possible word from the Star Cluster would be caught; but only the endless stream of reports and routine messages of the Thirty Suns Naval Intelligence Bureau marred the wire of the recording device when they sought the shelter of the ship again.

Together, they swam in the warm sea and rested in the sunlight on the white beach, listening to the restless sound of the ocean. It was an idyll of happiness made more poignant by the pressing nearness of danger coming ever closer.

It was on the evening of the third day on Kaidor III that the subspace radio shattered their faint hopes for the success of the Star Cluster's mission. The information came not from the Group and Kant Mikal, but viciously, shockingly, from the announcer in the Naval Intelligence sending station back on Terminus. It came, smashing the peaceful stillness of the evening calm.

"ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ALL FLEET UNITS OF THE TWENTY EIGHTH, TWENTY NINTH, AND THIRTIETH DECANT SQUADRONS! RENDEZVOUS CHECK POINT 45223 KAIDOR PROVINCE ACCORDING TO PLAN 5-25 DIRECTIVE 19-A-9! TASK FORCE COMMANDER WILL NEUTRALIZE PLANET KAIDOR FIVE FOR THE SAFETY OF THE TETRARCHY!"

Deve's face was pale. "Santane has done it at last!"

It had come, then, thought Aram heavily. The cosmic wheels were beginning to turn. A provincial governor rebelled and across light years of space forces of mind-defying magnitude began to gather. Thousands of mighty battleships, millions of men! Planet-smashing weapons! Far away, on Terminus, government bureaus shifted ponderously from peaceful administration to War. Clerks and department heads, councilmen and executives--all shifting their attentions from peacetime routines to wartime expedients. And within hours, those wartime expedients would become routine. Fixed, immutable. Routines impossible to change without painful, _time-consuming_, effort.

Jerrold spun the radio dials, searching for the government station on Kaidor V. He needed information. He needed to know what Santane was telling his population.

"... _the Thirty Suns merchant vessel, Star Cluster, has fallen into our hands. The passengers and crew, sabotage agents of the Tetrarchy, have been imprisoned and will be executed_ ..."

The voice of the Kaidor announcer echoed menacingly through the still control room of the Serpent.

"Aram! They've got Kant Mikal and the others!" cried Deve.

"Sabotage agents!" Aram spat.

"... _it is expected that the worker population will conduct itself with courage and resourcefulness under the threatened attack_," continued the announcer smoothly. "_Our newly organized armed forces are even now taking measures against the tyrants' home worlds_ ..."

Aram shuddered, thinking about the "measures" Santane had devised for use against the Tetrarchy. The brutalizing virus....

"... _it is not to be expected that the war will be of long duration. Our scientists have developed a weapon that will make active resistance on the part of the tyrants impossible. They will not dare to attack us_ ..."

Confirmation, thought Aram bleakly, of Santane's dream of winning power by threats. A savage, terrible blunder!

"_Generalissimo Santane has struck the shackles of the Tetrarchy from the people of Kaidor! Work and fight for victory!_" The announcement was followed by the playing of martial music.

Jerrold snapped the radio off with a curse. Kant Mikal a prisoner--very likely dead already. The Fleet converging on Kaidor. Santane, drunk with power, brandishing his awful weapon over the heads of the mute billions of the Thirty Suns!

"What now, Aram?" asked Deve quietly.

"We must go to Kaidor V ... now!" he replied.

In space again, Aram tried to shake off his forebodings and failed miserably. They were speeding into a tempest of stellar magnitude, and they were but two--a man and a woman--against a war-mad galaxy.

The tiny Serpent pointed for the fifth planet of the Kaidor Sun and drew its mantle of invisibility around itself, as though to hide from the fiery stars.

* * * * *

Far beneath the starship, Kaidor V lay like a bright scimitar. With the energy shield momentarily off, they approached the planet's night side, deep in the global penumbra. No lights marked the populous factory cities--the world rested dark, poised to lash out against the stars, falsely confident in its possession of frightful weapons.

Carefully, Jerrold lowered the Serpent toward the spot he had marked on the planetary chart--a deep valley near Santane's capital city of Astrel. Once course and rate of descent were computed, he reactivated the energy shield and groped his way downward through the sullen night of Kaidor V.

After what seemed an eternity of waiting, Deve and Jerrold felt their ship's keel touch the ground. Aram stood by the jets, alert for the sudden tipping that would warn them that the Serpent had landed on a steep slope or crag. The deck assumed a slight angle--no more. Aram cut the power and listened to the descending whine of the gyroscopes as they coasted to a halt. Then there was silence. Only the faint hum of the energy shield broke the stillness.

Jerrold and Deve studied the chart of Kaidor V carefully. Aram had no desire to have the Serpent meet with the same fate as the ill-starred Star Cluster. Concealment and secrecy were paramount.

On the gridded chart of the planet, the dark city of Astrel lay like a blot of ink. "There is a conveyor running near here, Deve," Aram said. "It must carry ores from the mines here--" he pointed out the shafts on the map, "--to the foundries in the city. They won't be able to guard the conveyor all along its length. We can get into Astrel that way, I think."

"And what then?" asked the girl.

Jerrold shrugged. "I'm a space officer--not a spy. I know that we must try to reach Santane and help Mikal and the others if we can--"

"We had some agents still in the city," said Deve thoughtfully. "Perhaps they haven't been discovered. We can try and reach them ... they might be able to help us."

"It will be risky, Deve, now that the fight is in the open."

"I don't see how we can possibly reach Santane alone," she said.

Deve was right, of course, Aram realized. Without help they would never be able to penetrate the barriers of security the Provincial Governor must have erected between himself and the population of his planet.

Cutting the shield, Aram searched the dark landscape beyond the ports. The night was black and still. The stars made an unfamiliar pattern across the sky. A thin band of nebulosity showed the edge of the Galactic Lens in a peculiarly distorted perspective. Here, in the heart of the Thirtieth Decant, they were far from the populous worlds of the galaxy's center--farther even than they had been in Atmion Province. But this barren, cold world would be for the next few hours the center of the Thirty Suns. Here, on the metallic soil of Kaidor V, the fate of an interstellar civilization would be decided....

There were many deadly weapons in the lockers, but Jerrold decided to take only two plastic energy pistols. Such weapons would be less likely to be found by the weapons alarms that were standard street fixtures on all the planets of the Thirty Suns.

With a sigh, the valve slid open and Aram and the girl dropped to the frozen volcanic soil. The air smelled bitter, and the cold was intense. Kaidor V was more than twenty-four light-minutes from its primary, and warmth was slight. It had been chosen for the center of Kaidor Province rather than a more hospitable world because of the richness of its radioactive ores and immense nitrogen yielding deposits.

* * * * *

The starship had landed in a small ravine, and there, Aram decided, it could stay relatively safe from discovery. Aram marked the spot on his chart and etched it into his brain. It was hard to leave the tiny Serpent. It represented all the security they could expect on this unfriendly world.

They climbed to the crest of the ridge and dropped down onto a flat plateau, striking out across it toward the spot where Jerrold estimated they would intercept the line of the conveyor.

They walked along in silence under a canopy of oddly unfriendly stars. Presently the faint sound of machinery warned that the conveyor was near. In the darkness, they almost ran headlong into it. The light of Deve's small pocket torch revealed two belts. One bounced along empty, speeding back toward the mines in the hills; the other groaned under a heavy loading of metallic ores bound for the smelters and steel converters of Astrel.

"It's moving fast, but we'll have to jump it anyway," Aram said softly.

"Don't worry about me," replied Deve stoutly. "Just give me a hand."

Aram grinned in spite of himself. Deve's courage and resolution were a boon on this quixotic mission.

He picked her up and began to run along the uneven soil parallel to the racing conveyor. With an effort he heaved her up on to the pile of ore. He heard her give a little cry of pain as she landed among the sharp shards, and then she was gone into the blackness. Without pause, he leaped onto the belt himself, skinning his hands and legs on the rocky cargo.

* * * * *

For a moment he stopped to catch his breath, and then began to crawl forward toward Deve Jennet. It took him a long while to reach her, and when he did, they found that she had dropped her gun in the scramble to board the conveyor.

The thought of facing a hostile city with one small pistol did not please; but Aram realized that under no circumstances could he have hoped to out-gun the combined forces of the Thirtieth Decant, so the loss of a gun really made little difference. The whole of the Serpent's armory would do them no good if concealment failed.

"We'll have to get clear of this thing before it reaches its destination, Deve," Jerrold shouted above the roar of the belt.

"I only hope the marshalling yards and ore stockpiles aren't too well guarded!" Deve replied--and Aram silently echoed her hope.

In the near distance, coming ever nearer, were the periodic flares of the great steel converters of Astrel. The city itself seemed blacked-out, but apparently Santane--the "Generalissimo," thought Jerrold wryly--was keeping his workers busy on weapons production right up until the last moment of danger ... another proof to Aram's mind that Santane did not believe the Tetrarchy would dare to actually attack. He must already have warned the Thirty Suns Government, perhaps sending specimens of his handiwork to impress the Supreme Council of the power of his virus weapons. Yet the Fleet would attack--Jerrold felt sure of it. The very nature of the Thirty Suns Government made any other course unthinkable. Bureaucracies, Aram knew, reacted like headless beasts to the things that threatened them, unable to make fine distinctions or true evaluations. Defiance brought reprisal. It was as simple as that.

It was difficult to see anything in the darkness, and Jerrold began to fear that they might be catapulted into the furnaces themselves. The flares in the sky seemed very close now.

A tiny blue light flashed by that Aram thought must mark the entrance to the stockpiling yards. He scrambled to his feet and pulled Deve up beside him.

"Get ready to jump clear!" he shouted in her ear.

Wind snatched at his words, and the swaying conveyor made standing difficult--almost impossible. Deve clutched at him, trying to keep her balance. And then, without warning, the belt slammed abruptly into a flat right-angle turn, pitching them off into darkness filled with hurtling chunks of ore.