Part 13

The others were close behind him. Their belt lamps cut hard slashes of light across the airless dark. They passed through the lock chamber and came into a corridor running fore and aft. It was utterly still. The heavy drag of their boots on the metal deck made not the slightest sound. It was like walking in a fever-dream, and the deadness of the ship, the black, inert, unstirring deadness, was more oppressive than the desolation in which it lay. The rocks and cliffs had never moved, they had never been built by the hands of men, no thought or hope had ever entered into them. Trehearne's skin crept in little waves of cold. He could hear the beating of his own blood in his ears, the dull throbbing of his own heart. He moved with the others, lonely figures in a tomb, and he started like a child at every shape the light picked out.

The whole after section of the ship was a laboratory. Much of the delicate equipment was shattered, either by speed-vibration or a hard landing. Trehearne could make nothing of the tortured mass of metal and splintered crystal, but Quorn said, very softly, "He was studying interstellar radiation. Most of that stuff is beyond me, but I can see that much."

One section of the laboratory contained a complicated mass of coils and prisms and intricate banks of reflectors arranged around what must have been a great central tube. There was a small platform at the focal point of the mechanism, fitted with straps. Along one bulkhead was a stack of metal cages for experimental animals. Several of the little creatures were still there. They had died, the quick death of airlessness and cold, but their bodies were still perfect. They had, then, survived the voyage. The ultra-speeds of interstellar flight had not harmed them.

The men searched for a time among the wreckage, and then Edri said, "There's nothing for us here. No good trying to figure out the apparatus. They couldn't do that in all the years they had the ship impounded, when it was all in shape. Most of it Orthis designed and built himself."

Trehearne looked again at the small furry bodies in the cages, lying as though in sleep. Somehow they made the betrayal of Orthis doubly cruel--that even beasts could be given the freedom of the stars, that so many generations of the races of so many worlds had been denied.

They went into the corridor, retracing their steps, and passed on forward. They found the living quarters, small and spare and monastically neat. The coverings of the bunk were rumpled and the pillow still retained the hollow where a man's head had lain. Trehearne shivered. Presently they went on, to the bridge.

Trehearne realized then what an act of heroism it had been to push this antique ship to the limits of the Galaxy and beyond. The instruments were so few and rudimentary, the system of controls so crude. There was a locking device, a primitive Iron Mike that could keep the ship on its course without human attention, and he thought that only that had made Orthis' lonely flight possible. But the science of star-craft had come a long way since then.

Quorn's voice, held to a whisper as one speaks in a church, reached him on the helmet phone. "It's incredible. This ship wasn't even built for voyaging, it was a spatial laboratory. It's a wonder it survived at all."

Edri drew a long breath, with a quiver in it like a sob. "We still haven't found what we're looking for. Do you suppose it isn't here? Do you suppose that after all...." He didn't finish.

They began to search again. It was Trehearne who found the door in the after bulkhead of the bridge. He pushed it open and looked through into the cabin beyond. The beam of his belt-lamp speared brightly into the immemorial dark.

Involuntarily, he screamed.

Quorn and Edri ran to him. He was clinging to the bulkhead. Cold sweat poured down his face, and his eyes were wide and wild. They looked past him, over his shoulder.

The cabin was small. It was fitted as a library, crammed with metal cases of books, some of them micro-tape volumes of an ancient type, some of them thick ragged notebooks. The knife-sharp light-beams picked them out, in brilliant highlight and black shadow. There was a great table, bolted down, and on the table was a metal box. A man's hand rested there, the fingers open, curled slightly over the edge of the box, protectively, possessively, as though it were something loved and precious.

"Oh God," whispered Quorn, "look at him...."

He sat in a metal chair behind the table. His head was lifted, looking toward the port in the outer wall that showed the black sky slashed across with the mighty fires of the Galaxy. The hard light showed him clearly. He was an old man. The years of his life had been many and unkind. They had shaped his face as though from iron, gouging the lines deep, hammering the ridges hard, driving out all traces of youth and hope and whatever laughter there might have been to forge a mask of bitter anger, and reproach, and in the end, despair. It seemed to Trehearne that he could read a whole life history in that face, caught forever in the moment of death, when surely the man was crying out upon whatever gods he worshipped, demanding _Why?_

Edri began suddenly to laugh. "Orthis. It's Orthis. He's been here waiting for us to come in...."

Quorn raised a hand in its heavy gauntlet and struck Edri's helmet so that Trehearne could hear the ringing in his own audio. "Shut up. Damn you, Edri. Shut up." Edri stopped laughing. After a moment he said, "For a moment I thought...."

Trehearne muttered, "So did I." Here in the airless utter cold, death held no decay, no change. But there was more to it than the lack of physical corruption. The fire in this man had burned so deep that even death could not erase its scars. Where the lamp-beams caught them, his open eyes seemed still to glow with the unforgotten embers.

For a long time the three men stood, not moving, grouped in the doorway. Trehearne said once, "I think he wanted whoever found him to look inside that box, there under his hand." Orthis' life-work, the future of the Galaxy, held in a little box. They knew it. But still they were not quite ready to go in and take away from Orthis the thing that he had kept so long. And it was strange, Trehearne thought, that in this moment when their emotions ought to be at the highest pitch, when they should be feeling most poignantly the weight of all the centuries of sacrifice and struggle that had led them here, and what it was all going to mean, they were too tired to feel anything very much, only the edges of awe and an instinctive reluctance to approach the dead. He wanted to get away from this funeral ship. Finally he wanted it so much that he went in and tried to move Orthis' hand from off the box. The arm was frozen rigid as a steel bar, and he gave it up, working the box carefully out from under the icy fingers, in horror lest they break.

The others had come slowly in beside him. The box was not locked. He lifted up the lid, and the lamplight showed a notebook bound in cloth. On top of it lay a loose sheet of paper with a few angular lines of writing. Edri picked it up, very clumsily in his armored hands, and held it to the light, reading aloud in a queer flat voice. "I have clung to life this much longer...."

Edri stopped, and coughed, and started over, and Trehearne thought that Orthis listened.

"I have clung to life this much longer to write down for the first time all my formulae, complete and simplified so that they can be understood and used. In them lies the freedom of the stars. I, the first of the star-born, was rejected by the greed and fear of the planet-born. But it will not always be so.

"I shall not see what comes. My ship has already flown too far, I have little fuel, and I am old. Therefore I have set the airlock control and in a few minutes it will open. A swift death, and better than a slow one as the air-pumps fail. After that, I shall wait. What I dreamed will never be forgotten. Some day there will come others who believe as I have always believed, that the stars are for all men."

Edri fell silent. And Quorn said, "He watched the Galaxy for a thousand years, and waited."

Trehearne forced himself to move, to break the spell. "Unless we hurry, it will not have done him any good." He reached out and took the box and shut it, and thrust it into Edri's hands. "Come on. Edri, do you hear me? Come on! We haven't got much time."

Edri looked at the box, and then at Orthis, who had had a thousand years of time. Then he turned and went out, and Quorn went after him, and Trehearne, down the dark corridor and out of the silent ship. Trehearne looked up at the flaming river of stars in the sky and thought what a mighty dream the first of the star-born men had carried with him into the long night.

A sudden panic of haste came over him. Orthis had given them this trust literally with his own hand. If they failed now because they were too slow, too worn out now, at the last, to do what needed to be done.... He began to run toward the skiff, shouting at the others, urging them on, harrying them until they ran too, staggering over the blasted rock. He pushed them inside, a little crazy now himself, talking incessantly about the need for haste. Quorn took off from the ledge. They did not want to be near the ship of Orthis when they did what they were going to do. He sent the light craft racing across the dead world, searching for a place to land.

"Hurry," said Trehearne. "Got to hurry!"

Quorn cursed him savagely. "I'm doing all I can. Shut up and listen. Both of you. Keep your pressure suits on and your helmets ready."

Trehearne stopped talking. He sat, holding his hands tight between his knees, shaking all over. Edri was bent over the notebook from the metal box, reading.

"It's all here," he said. His voice was hoarse with weariness, with emotion he was too numb to feel. "The equations, the formulae, the instructions for constructing the equipment, the instructions for using it. I don't understand them, but others will." He looked at Trehearne with red-rimmed eyes. "Orthis has a foreword here. He was the first of the star-born. The mutation began spontaneously on that first long voyage. The constant vibration of speed, not speed as we know it now but more than the human body was used to, speed approaching the velocity of light, and the impact of interstellar radiation on the living cell. That's what did it. Orthis was the end-product of four generations of breeding under those conditions. He was nature's first attempt to create Galactic Man, to readjust the human body to meet new needs. And the thing he labored on so long was the reduction of that long natural process to a workable formula that could accomplish the change in one generation instead of four. God, I'm so tired I'm repeating this stuff like a parrot from Orthis' own words. What you do, of course, is alter the germ plasm of both parents before conception takes place, and ... anyway, it's all here."

Quorn said suddenly, "This place looks as good as any. At least it'll give us a little more cover."

He took the skiff down carefully toward the flat bed of an ancient watercourse. The channel was filled now with frozen air, but in bygone ages it had gouged a deep canyon in the rock, leaving eroded holes and overhangs. Quorn worked the skiff into one of these washed-out places, under the canyon wall.

Edri was going over his book again, making sure, dazed with the hypnosis of exhaustion and the need to be right. He did not dare to fumble or read a single figure wrong. There wouldn't be any time for corrections or recheckings. The weight of the responsibility was so heavy on him that he seemed to be physically shrinking under it. His lips moved constantly. Trehearne did not envy him his job.

Quorn grunted at him and they went aft together to struggle with the ultra-wave equipment. Trehearne was possessed by a demon of urgency, and he had not the slightest idea what he was doing. Quorn gave orders and he obeyed them blindly, sometimes right, sometimes wrong. Nerve and temper were worn to the last frayed edge and beyond, and before they were through they were snarling at each other like dogs. Hooking the power leads to the skiff's generators was the hardest task of all, but somehow they finished. They lifted Edri to his feet and sat him down again, still clutching his book, in front of the transmitter. Quorn bent over the control switches. The generators hummed, feeding in the power. Edri was still staring at the book. Trehearne shook him. "Go on," he said. "Talk."

Edri blinked and frowned, looking up at them as though he had forgotten entirely what he had to do. Quorn took Edri's face between his hands and spoke to him, slapping his cheeks gently one after the other as he talked. "Listen, I've got it on the emergency band, covering all channels. Every ultra-wave receiver within its range will pick it up, including non-Vardda communication centers. Edri, do you understand me? The minute Kerrel picks it up he'll be able to center us and come in on our beam. So you've got to make it fast. Fast!"

Edri blinked again, and shivered. "All right. I'll try." He glanced nervously at Trehearne. Quorn made the last dial setting, and then he spoke into the transmitter.

"G-One! G-One! Emergency. Request clearance all channels. Use your recorders! Use your recorders! G-One, clear all channels...."

He motioned violently, and Edri leaned forward. "I may not have time to repeat. We have found the ship of Orthis. Here follow the formulae for the Vardda mutation."

TWENTY-ONE

Edri had begun to read from the notebook. He was going fast, but taking desperate pains to make each syllable clear. Quorn hung tensely over his dials. Trehearne sat motionless, except that his muscles quivered. Sweat ran in his eyes. He was tired. He was so tired that Quorn, three feet away, looked as blurred and indistinct as though he were lost in the haze of distance. Edri's voice went on, and on, and on.

Quorn said hoarsely, "The cruiser has picked us up. They're already trying to jam us. Hurry up."

Edri's face became that of a hunted thing. His voice rose shrill, racing desperately. He turned the last page. He finished it, and then he went back to the beginning and started to repeat. Quorn stood up.

"It isn't any use, we're blanked out. That means the cruiser's close, close enough to...."

He didn't have time to get the rest of the words out. The skiff was shaken suddenly as by a giant hand. Quorn was flung against a bulkhead, and Trehearne lay on the floor. Only Edri, hanging on to the transmitter, still talked.

"Shell burst," Quorn said, getting up again. "They're ranging us down the canyon." He reached for his helmet. The skiff shuddered a second time, harder. Trehearne scrambled painfully to his feet. He tried to jam Edri's helmet down over his head, but Edri fought him, clinging to the transmitter. Quorn laid hold of him and yelled, "You're not getting through any more! Come on!" He closed the master switch. Between them they got Edri's hands loose and the helmet on him. The skiff was racked again, and something broke with a crackle of exploding glass. Trehearne locked his own helmet. Through the audio he could hear Quorn shouting something about the airlock and getting clear before the skiff was blasted flat with them inside it. Half dragging Edri between them, they began to run. Some of the deck plates were already buckled, and there was an ominous shrill whistle of escaping air. They reached the lock and got it open.

Out on the canyon floor a great light blossomed and died. Chunks of rock struck silently against the skiff. The deck leaped under their feet, and the airlock spewed them out as the hull rocked over. They hit the ground hard, too hard. For the space of several seconds they lay where they were, and there were no more shell bursts. Trehearne groaned and sat up. "I guess that was the last one. Quorn? Edri? Somebody answer me."

Edri was silent, but Quorn said thickly, "They know we quit sending. Damn it, I've cut my mouth on the helmet rim and it's bleeding all over me." Trehearne could hear him spitting. He crawled over and shook Edri. Presently Edri said, "Where's the notebook?"

"Still in the skiff."

"We've got to get it...."

"What for?"

"I guess you're right. Did we do it, Quorn? Did we put it through?"

"I don't know, I don't know! They came in on us so fast...."

He got up off the ground, looking at something, and then he pointed, up into the black sky. "Are we going to run," he asked, "or wait?"

Trehearne looked up and down the river bed that was clogged with air, frozen, and then along the cruel, cold line of the cliffs above. "We could breathe for a few hours, all right, till our oxygen gave out. But it hardly seems worth it."

Quorn sat down again. "I guess we wait."

They waited, and the cruiser dropped down silently out of the sky. It was dark in the canyon, where the cliffs cut off the galactic light, but the cruiser's ports shone brightly. Trehearne was almost glad to see them. They were human. They were comforting, after all the night and desolation of a dead world. The airlock opened and a vivid shaft of brilliance shot out of it, going straight on with no air to diffuse it, until it hit the opposite wall of the canyon, near the skiff. Men in pressure suits began to come out of the lock. Trehearne rose. He stepped into the bright beam and walked slowly toward the men. Edri came after him, and Quorn.

A voice he did not know spoke over the helmet phone. "Identify yourselves."

They gave their names, and Trehearne added, "We're unarmed. We're through." There was a certain relief in being through. Whatever happened from here on was out of their hands. They could sit passively and rest, and let it happen. He looked at the ship and thought of warmth and light and food and comfort, and most of all he thought of sleep. Shairn and Kerrel could come later.

The men from the cruiser carried weapons, a type of shock-rifle more deadly than the little tubes that only stunned. They came out a short distance, toward the three bulky shapes that shuffled down the beam of light. The first voice that had spoken gave an order, and the two men went off toward the skiff to search it, their belt lamps bobbing. Then it spoke again to Trehearne and the others. "Keep your hands as high as you can. All right, that's far enough."

Trehearne said, "I told you, we're unarmed."

"Precaution. Stand where you are."

They stood, and were searched.

"Very well," said the officer's voice. "Come aboard."

"No."

One short word, spoken quietly in a voice that Trehearne knew. A voice he had not heard for a long, long time, but that he remembered. Kerrel's voice. Some of the exhaustion in him stirred and drew back, and anger took his place. The men stood in the beam of light, but with their backs toward it, facing their prisoners. The undiffused glare passed around them, leaving their faces in darkness, invisible behind the helmet plates. Trehearne tried to identify Kerrel, but he could not.

The officer said, rather irritably, "But there's no point in standing out here any longer." The case had been long and hard for him, too. "We take off as soon as the search detail comes back."

"Yes," said Kerrel. "But not them. They stay here."

The suited shapes, the faceless and unhuman shapes that had stood together drew apart a little and turned toward each other, as though they tried to pierce the darkness with their peering helmet plates. There was a silence of astonishment, and then Edri said, "That's murder."

The voice of the officer, rising on a note of anger, demanded, "Kerrel, what the hell--Have you gone clean crazy?"

"Is justice a crazy thing?" There was something strange about Kerrel's voice. It was flat and toneless and devoid of passion, the voice of a man with too much inside himself to bear, too much to find escape through any normal channels. "They may have succeeded. Do you understand that? They may, just possibly, have done what they set out to do. Do you know what that would mean?"

"As well as you do. And don't worry about justice, they'll get it. But they'll get it from the Council on Llyrdis, according to law."

"Law," said Kerrel softly. "Once Trehearne received the benefit of our law. I told them then that they were wrong to give it to him. The law is good, I've served it all my life. But there are times when one has to go beyond the law if one is to go on serving it. Leave them here."

Trehearne spoke, for the first time. "It wouldn't do for me to go back to Llyrdis, would it, Kerrel? Not to stand up in open Council and tell exactly how and why Yann died."

Kerrel's voice answered him, and he could not tell which of the helmeted shapes was speaking, the shapes with the shadowed faces. It was maddening not to know.

"And was I wrong, Trehearne? Could you stand up in open Council and say that I was wrong to try it?"

"Listen," said the officer. "I'm not judge and I'm not jury. I was sent out by the Council to bring these men in, and I'm going to do it. For God's sake, Kerrel, stop trying to carry the weight of the universe on your shoulders. No man is that big. Come on, you three--into the ship."

"No."

One figure detached itself. One figure drew away from the rest of the group and stood between them and the ship, with a shock-rifle in its hands.

"You're not thinking far enough ahead. Suppose they've failed. Should they be put on trial--under a law and a system that they've risked their lives to tear down--should they be allowed to talk to the whole Galaxy about what they've done, to become heroes and martyrs, a focal point of trouble for all time to come?"

"There have been Orthist trials before." The officer was moving toward Kerrel. "I think you'd better give me that rifle, before you get carried away."

The muzzle of the shock-gun lifted, and Kerrel said, "Wait, I'm not finished yet." The officer took another step and then he hesitated, and an uneasiness seemed to come over him and the rest of the cruiser's men. Trehearne's belly contracted with a sick impotent fury and his hands moved forward in a grasping motion, futile, hungry. Quorn was cursing in a monotone, so low that it only formed a background for the voices speaking over it.

Kerrel said, "These men are different. They found the ship, the shrine. They've been inside it, handled the notebooks, for all I know they've seen the body of Orthis himself. They proved it could be done. Will that ever be forgotten?"

"I don't give a damn," the officer said. "No one is going to kill prisoners. Give me the gun."

Kerrel stepped back, just a little, a step or two. The group of men began to widen out, slowly, leaving one by one the beam of light until only three were left, a small screen between Kerrel and the prisoners. Trehearne's legs bent and flexed. He watched the gun.

Kerrel said, "Suppose they didn't fail. Suppose it's all over, the thousand years of Vardda life. Should they be allowed to enjoy the thing they've done?"

"Fine talk," Trehearne said. The darkness was deep and close, outside the beam. "Noble talk. Maybe I even believe it. But you've got another reason, too."

"I admit it. But in this, it doesn't matter. No woman ever born was important enough to matter in this." He asked quietly of the officer, "Will you leave them here?"

"Will you put that gun down!"

Back another step. "You three men there, in front of the prisoners. Move aside."

"All right," said the officer. "_Jump him!_"

Trehearne sprang for the darkness. He saw the three men in front of him melt away. The rifle cracked and flared, not aimed at anyone just yet, a warning. And then the night was full of motion.