Part 14

Lying on the black rock, on the iron ridges of frozen air that flowed between, Trehearne watched the clumsy dance of men in shapeless pressure suits and round blank helmets, in and out of the sharp bright beam that was empty now except for themselves. They had moved around Kerrel in the blackness and the silence and come upon him from the back, but their hands were hampered by the gauntlets and the bulging fabric of Kerrel's suit was hard to hold. They lost him, and then he was part of the group again and they did not know which one, and their voices rose in an angry babble. Only Kerrel did not speak. Trehearne crept on his belly, farther away from the beam, and the shadows that were Quorn and Edri followed him. Suddenly Edri tapped his helmet, and then pointed, and Trehearne saw the solitary figure of a man walking in the darkness outside the beam, but from this angle showing black against it, toward the place where the prisoners had been.

Trehearne said aloud, "This is Trehearne speaking. He's coming our way, to your right and just outside the beam."

The men began to run, spreading out. And then the shock-rifle flared and flared again, steady, systematic, raking all the ground where the prisoners should be, the blue bolts cracking in the helmet phones like heavy static. Trehearne and the others fled farther away, floundering over the bitter ground, and the blue bolts haunted them, and then two men flung themselves at Kerrel from behind. He fell, dropping the rifle.

The two men got up after a moment, rather slowly. Someone came with a belt lamp, and then others, and then all of them, with Trehearne and Quorn and Edri. They all stood looking down at the figure that still lay where it had fallen and did not move. There was a ridge of rock with sharp teeth edging it, sticking up from the frozen air.

"He hit hard," said one of the men, "right on his face-plate, and it broke."

The officer swore, viciously. "What a stinking mess! Why did he have to do it? He must have been crazy."

"I don't know," Trehearne said slowly. "Where do you draw the line between lunacy and belief? If there'd been more like him, we couldn't have done what we did."

They picked Kerrel up and carried him to the cruiser, and Trehearne plodded on where he was told. Inside the ship he and the others were stripped of their pressure suits and searched again for weapons. Then guards took them down a corridor, tired bitter men who had been too long on a grinding job. One of them said, "We overhauled the _Mirzim_. All your friends are here." And then he added, "It's a pity that we have to save the lives of men like you."

They came to a heavy door and stopped, and Shairn was standing there. She looked thin, and her eyes were shadowed, and there were lines around her mouth that had not been there before. She was not the old Shairn. She was someone new. There was no joy in that meeting. She looked at Trehearne and said, "Michael, what have you done?"

He shook his head and answered, "That's the hell of it. We may not have done anything at all."

TWENTY-TWO

The voyage was ending. They had known from the long period of deceleration that it was ending, and now the last pressures, and the small, grinding shocks as the cruiser settled into its dock, told them that they were again on Llyrdis. The bells rang, and the throb of the generators gave way to an unfamiliar silence.

They waited, then. And nothing happened. The hours went by and nothing happened.

Trehearne said finally, "They're not even going to remove us from the cruiser. They'll take us off to wherever we're bound for without even hearing us."

Edri shook his head. "No. Vardda law sentences no man without formal trial."

They could see nothing, hear nothing. Until, at last, the door was unlocked. There were officers and guards--many guards, all of them armed. Their faces told nothing.

"You will come with us," said the young captain of guards soberly.

"Where?" demanded Joris. "To Llyrdis prison or--"

"All communication with the prisoners forbidden," clipped the young captain. "You will come with us."

It seemed strange to Trehearne to walk again on unmoving floors, corridors, decks--on a planet. The tawny glare of Aldebaran was dazzling when they filed out of the cruiser. The air seemed unnaturally damp, heavy with the tang of the sea.

He and Joris and Edri, the first to emerge, looked around with a throb of eagerness, of half-hope. They could not see much. The cruiser had landed in a closed-off sector and there were other guards waiting out here beside a number of the sleek cars.

But Trehearne could hear. He could hear all the usual hum and din and clangor of the vast spaceport, the grind of cranes and rumble of trams, the scream of a fast planet-flyer coming in. And then the _whoosh_ of a great bulk hurtling upward, a starship outbound for distant suns. And in the distance the shining towers of Llyrdis city still magnificently challenged the heavens.

Trehearne felt a sick sense of futility. All this vast ordered turmoil of routine and activity, all the Galaxy-wide trade that centered here, the thousand-year solidity of Vardda commercial monopoly--how could he have dreamed that a pitifully faint and aborted radio call could ever shake it? The faces of his friends showed him how their last hope had begun to wane.

"The cars," said the young captain. "You four will go in the first one."

Edri found his voice. "What about Arrin?"

"I am permitted to tell you that your comrade has been removed to hospital and is in good condition."

Joris said nothing. Trehearne saw his sunken eyes looking across the spaceport and thought how it must be for him to come back thus to this place where for years he had sat with his hands guiding the Vardda ships that came and went. Then the car took them out of the spaceport, fast. Trehearne saw that other cars, with guards alone in them, ran unobtrusively along ahead of and behind them.

And nothing was changed in Llyrdis. The peacock city preened itself beneath the sun, iridescent, splendid, its streets thronged with the smiling Vardda and the other stranger races--echoing with music, brilliant with color. They passed a Vardda man and girl who stood, laughing as they talked. And it was then that Trehearne ceased altogether to hope.

"We're going to the Council Hall," Edri said presently.

Joris nodded somberly. "I could have told you that. As a Council member, I have to be formally impeached and removed before charges against me can be pressed." He added grimly, "Old Ristin, the chairman, won't weep over that. We tangled pretty often, in the past."

The Council Hall sat amid a crowded nexus of governmental buildings. It dominated Llyrdis, not by size, but by age. It was a grey old pile, without beauty but with the massiveness and solidity of eternal things. Its courts and corridors and staring officials Trehearne saw only vaguely. They slid over his vision, and nothing seemed entirely tangible until, in an anteroom, Shairn's face leaped real to his eyes.

She had been waiting to see him pass, he knew. Her face was white and strained, and she said nothing, but her eyes said, "_Michael! Michael!_" He looked back at her as they went on and he wondered what she read in his own eyes. And then they had entered the deliberative chamber itself.

It was not large and not crowded, a half-moon-shaped hall with something more than a hundred Vardda in its chairs. Of the blur of faces turned toward him, most were grave, some curious, some open in their hatred.

Ristin, the chairman, was a magnificent white-haired old Lucifer who disdained the petty vanity of pretending that this was a routine matter.

"This Council is not a judicial body," he informed the four. "The criminal charges against you--piracy, resisting of authority--will be handled by the regular courts. We are here investigating a matter urgent to the state."

Joris got up, thrusting his gray head forward like an old mastiff's. He growled, "Since this is an investigation, you can't legally carry it out without hearing us."

Ristin said grimly, "The Coordinator of the Port was always good at making himself heard here. But you will have to wait this time, Joris." He looked up at the watching Vardda faces as he added, "The problem of your personal offense is not foremost. What concerns us most urgently is the general policy to be adopted by the Council."

Trehearne hardly heard. That glimpse of Shairn had done things to him and his mind was far away. He wondered vaguely why Edri, who had sat sagging heavily beside him, suddenly stiffened, why Edri convulsively grasped his wrist.

Ristin was continuing, "Therefore I emphasize again that we of the Council must not let any emotion of resentment sway our judgment. We are elected to serve the best interests of the Vardda as a whole and we must let no lesser considerations in any way affect our decision."

Then Joris laughed. His head came up, and his bellowing laughter echoed and re-echoed from the vaulted roof. He swung around to Trehearne and Edri and Quorn, and his eyes were blazing now. "_By God, you did it after all!_"

Trehearne, still only half understanding, felt a white-hot thrill. Edri had begun to tremble violently.

Ristin's cool voice cut in. "Believe me, your exultation is premature. Nevertheless there is no purpose in concealing the fact that your actions have presented us with an unprecedentedly grave problem."

Quorn said hoarsely to Trehearne, "Don't you get it? Our message got through!"

Trehearne understood then. The gravity of the watching faces, the bitter hatred in some of them, the strong leadership the old chairman was wielding to conquer the crisis--all these belied the everyday appearance of Llyrdis that had been the death-knell of his hopes. He knew, now. He knew that through them, after a thousand years, the voice of Orthis had spoken to the Galaxy. And it had been heard--somewhere it had been heard.

Ristin was saying, "So far only vague rumor and hearsay is abroad. Every operator who might have heard the broadcast has been warned not to repeat it but there are bound to be Orthists among them. The fact that non-Vardda worlds possess ultra-wave receivers for use in their commerce with us is an even more serious matter. It stands thus--that in spite of the news-services' co-operation with us on the matter, it is slowly becoming public knowledge that Orthis' secret was found and broadcast. At least three recordings of it have been found, and two written records. We can assume that there are more."

Joris said grimly, "In other words--the secret is out and everyone will soon know that--and what are you going to do about it?"

"The Coordinator of the Port has summed it up," Ristin agreed, coolly. "What shall we do about it?"

A tall Vardda leaped up and cried, "I suggest that the first thing we do is to execute these traitors!"

There was a fierce chorus of agreement from a few dozen voices. Ristin called sharply for order.

"I have reminded you that our paramount consideration at this moment must be the ultimate best interests of our people! Let us have no more such outbreaks."

An older Vardda man rose in the tiers and said quietly, "Before I advance my suggestion I should admit that I have always had secret Orthist sympathies. I don't think that I am the only one here who can say that. You must allow for that." He went on. "I would have liked long ago to see this unnatural monopoly ended. Now our hand has been forced. I suggest that our best and wisest course is to act at once--to declare publicly that we Vardda are going to _give_ the secret to the whole Galaxy."

He paused, to emphasize his point. "The secret is out anyway. But by acting quickly we can take credit for that. We can aver that the broadcast was made with our consent. Remember, whether we like it or not, in a few generations other worlds will be flying the stars--and we do not want them cherishing a legacy of hatred for us then."

Trehearne, listening, smiled grimly. "Politics don't change much across the Galaxy."

"But it's all we hoped for," Edri whispered. "It would work, too!"

Discussion, angry debate, had sprung up. It went on and on, passionate voices accusing and denying, Ristin sternly maintaining order, bringing back the argument to the main issue time after time. Finally, in a lull of the disputing voices, Joris swung around and faced the Council.

"Now listen to me," the old man roared. "You'd think the way some of you talk that this meant the end of the Vardda, the end of Llyrdis, the end of everything. That's utter asininity. In the first place, mutations don't take place overnight. It will be a generation or two before the other races start going out between the stars in any numbers."

Trehearne saw that sink home. The Vardda Council, being human, could not worry too deeply for long about a future they wouldn't see.

"And furthermore," Joris bellowed, "when every half-baked folk in the Galaxy does take to starflight, does that mean the great Vardda trade is ruined forever? Listen! We Vardda were the first to go out to the stars. _The first!_ Do you think all the lubberly races of the Galaxy can compete with us out there? Do you think so?"

He caught them with that, with the Vardda pride, the Vardda glory. Trehearne saw the strained faces changing. Not all of them, but many.

Joris paused before he said his final word. "Do you think there will ever be a time when we Vardda can't hold our own?"

There was not much talk after that. There were questions, protests, doubts, but little more argument. All the arguments had been spoken.

"We have to decide this now or never," Ristin told them. "If we delay longer, there will not be a choice."

Trehearne heard the resolution read, and the voting and the result. Not easily could the Vardda yield! Forty-three voted against the resolution. But seventy-nine for it.

Ristin said, "It will be announced by general broadcast tonight that, in view of the advance of civilization on many star-worlds, the Vardda deem the time ripe to share the secret of mutation with other selected races."

Quorn said, "It's done. Trehearne, it's done."

Trehearne still could not quite grasp that that simple statement marked a change forever in the Galaxy, that with it all human races began the great change toward Galactic Man.

"And these criminals who forced us to do the thing?" demanded a Vardda recalcitrant, glaring at Trehearne and his fellows.

"We have no choice there," Ristin said dryly. "To punish them for what they did would belie our own announcement. The ordinary charges against them can be dismissed."

"So that for their crime they go unpunished?"

Ristin sighed regretfully. "The interests of the state demand it. Yes."

Trehearne's comrades were breaking down, half stunned, half incredulous of the victory they had thought beyond them. But strangely Trehearne was not thinking of what they had won for the Galaxy races. He was feeling a pride that Joris' phrase, "We Vardda," had kindled in him.

"_We Vardda_--"

And he was one of them. He was one of the starlords, the first, the oldest, the greatest of the starmen.

Edri was thinking of something else. He had stepped forward amid the general clamor to speak to Ristin. "There is one more thing. Orthis--"

"A cruiser has been sent to guard his ship," said Ristin.

Edri nodded painfully. "But Orthis was not ever child of a planet. He was star-born, dwelling always between the stars. He has sat long on that far world. If his ship could take space again...."

Ristin said musingly, "A good thought. By putting that ship into an orbit around our system we'll create a monument that will remind all the Galaxy that it was a Vardda who gave them starflight."

Edri turned to Trehearne and Joris. He had tears in his eyes. He said, "Orthis is going home."

* * * * *

The message left for Trehearne had told him simply that Shairn would be at the Silver Tower. It was handed him when they finally emerged from the Council Hall. Joris got him a car and driver. Trehearne hesitated, suddenly hating to part from the old man. Edri, and Quorn and the others had their eager plans. But Joris took no joy in their victory.

"Had it been done a generation ago my son would be a star-captain now," he muttered, in answer to Trehearne's awkward words. "Well--"

The car took him out of the city, smooth and fast, and the great flare of Aldebaran sank toward the sea and dusk came on. The stars burgeoned and Trehearne looked up at them. He looked at the far faint spark of little Sol, and thought of Earth and of a changeling born there who had by a miracle won his way home.

That green and distant Earth knew nothing yet of the battle fought and won beyond the edges of the Galaxy. But it had been Earth's battle too and she would know of it in time. Even to Earth, when a generation had passed, the starships would begin to go openly. And with their internecine conflicts past, Earth's young men too would go out among the stars to join the great march of Galactic Man. Who could say where that march might not lead them? To other galaxies, other island continents of suns....

Trehearne's thoughts came back from the immensities of the future when he saw the Silver Tower glimmering in the starlight. He left the car and walked toward it, and then he saw the pale figure on the shadowy beach beside the slow wash of the sea, and he went down to it.

He put out his arms to her, but she held him off. She spoke to him, her voice clear, her face a white blur in the darkness. "I won't have hidden things between us, Michael. I want you to know. I hate you for what you've done to the Vardda. I'll always hate you for it."

He stepped back and let his arms fall. "In that case," he said, "I'd better go."

"No, wait." She came to him and put her hands on either side of his face, very gently, and she said, "I love you, in spite of everything. I don't know why. My mind keeps telling me all the reasons why I shouldn't, but--it's a queer thing, Michael. I've never been in love before. Will you have me on those grounds?"

He held her this time, tight against him, and his lips brushed over hers as he answered, "Life with you won't be any haven of peace, I'm sure. But I knew that when I found you."

Standing with her in the gloom, the sea-wind rumpling her white robe and tumbling her hair, memory tricked him back to that night on the Breton beach, centuries ago. So far and far he had come since then, and yet of it all that was almost his clearest memory.

He knew now, with a wisdom that he had not had before, that it would always be so with a man--that it was not the conflicts and the pain and the triumph, not the empires and the stars and the struggles that the memory clung to the longest. It was the little things, the sound of a girl's laughter, the cry of birds on the sea-wind, the flare of a long-ago sunset, that a man held, that he would always hold, when everything else was gone.