Part 3

The wailing shriek rose to a crescendo, and then it died. Earth was gone. They had stepped away from it. Even its sky was behind them. A weight like to the weight of mountains lay on Trehearne, and he was horribly afraid.

He waited for the pressure to ease. His temples were bursting, it was an agony to breathe, and he thought, It can't go on like this, it's got to let up! But it did not. There was a change in the pitch of the motor vibration. He listened to it climb, higher and higher, until it slipped over the threshhold of hearing, and as it climbed, the pressure grew. The bones of his chest crushed in upon his lungs. Everything around him began to waver and grow vague, to recede slowly into a reddish twilight.

And still the pressure grew.

Something was happening to him. Something unearthly and strange. He was a flier, a test-pilot. He had known pressure before. He had taken all the gravs a power-diving plane could bear and he had never come near blacking out. But this was different. He felt it in the fibres, the very atoms of his being. This was velocity beside which the velocities of the fastest jets was as nothing. This was the speed of interstellar flight. And he could feel it tearing at the separate cells of his flesh, riving them apart, rending the tissues of physical existence. _A difference, a condition of the flesh. With us there is no doubt, but you...._

Anguish became terror, terror turned into blind panic. His body was shredding apart, dissolving toward a tattered ruin, a heap of bloody rags. This body he had been so proud of, this star-born self that was only a mockery, a sham. The mutation hadn't bred true. He was going to die, to cease utterly from being. He was....

Far, far away, a voice, Shairn's voice, crying, "I've killed him. Poor Michael, I didn't mean for him to die!"

Poor Michael. A mongrel, a walking deceit. Proud Michael, who thought he was so damned good, and wasn't anything. Idiot Michael, who had run after a witch. And she hadn't meant for him to die. She hadn't really been that angry because he had treated her like an equal--not nicely, perhaps, but like an equal, which he wasn't. That was kind of her, not really to want him killed. He began to be able to see her face again. He wasn't sure whether it was true sight, or only the memory of how she had looked before he began to die. But he could see her, pale, distorted. He was glad he could see her. She was sitting in front of him, and she wasn't far away. Somehow, pressure or no pressure, he was going to get to her. He was going to put his hands around her white throat, and then they could forget about starflight together, and it wouldn't matter that he was a mongrel and she was not. He began to fight against the pressure.

He wanted so little. Only to get up, to move the short distance and lock his fingers at the back of her neck, with his two thumbs lying over the great pulses. So little. He was filled with a raging determination to have it. He fought. He had nothing to fight with but will-power and the instinctive desire of the organism to claw onto life as long as there was a flicker of it left. He wanted to get up, and he fought, an inner struggle without sound or motion, a blind battle to regain control of his own flesh. His face contorted, like the face of a man who lifts something far too heavy, and the sweat ran on it. Slowly, slowly, his hands moved on the chair arms, contracted, became fists. The muscles of his arms tightened, and then the great muscles of the chest and belly, and they labored, and the breath came painfully into his lungs--came, and went, and came again, and his flagging heart stumbled, steadied, and began to beat more evenly. The red mist that wrapped him cleared away a bit and he could see Shairn more distinctly. She was staring at him. Her mouth and eyes were wide open, ludicrous, startled. Then Edri's head came between them and blotted her out, and he was shouting, but the blood was pounding so loud in Trehearne's ears that he could not hear what he said. He raised a hand and tried to thrust Edri away. He did not want to lose sight of Shairn. There was a tremendous exaltation on him. He was winning. He was going to get up and do the thing he wanted to do. The sinews coiled and tensed along his thighs. The pressure didn't hurt so much, and the terrible vibrations of speed were not tearing at him quite so hard. He leaned forward a little, breathing in deep harsh gasps, and his body strained and tightened....

"_He's going to live, he's made it. Michael...._"

Shairn's voice, thin and shrill through the tumult in his ears. For a moment the meaning didn't penetrate. Then slowly it dawned on him what she had said. And then, more slowly still, he realized that it was true. He could feel the life flowing back into him. He was getting the hang of it now, a simple matter of tensing the muscles in a certain way, and the agony of the vibration lessened, the atoms of his body stopped their ghastly dissolution. It was only a matter of strength--not the kind that can move great weights, but a more subtle kind, a tensile strength that knit the fabric of the flesh together and made it impervious as steel. In an infantile way he had been using it for years without knowing it, in his testing of fast planes. That was why he had never blacked out, why he had never been tortured as other men were by the spectre of inertia waiting for them at the end of a dive. Now he had found at last the purpose his body was made for. He forgot about Shairn. She didn't matter any more. He had won, he was alive, he was going to live, and he was not a sham nor a mockery, he was not even a mongrel. The mutation had bred true. His vision was clearing fast. He raised his head and looked around, and they were all staring at him, the Vardda, the Starmen, who had been so sure he was going to die. They were talking back and forth in excited voices, they were getting up and coming toward him, and Edri was pounding him on the shoulder. He thrust them all away and stood up.

"I'm one of you now," he said. "I passed your test." He was suddenly exhausted and shaken, but he would not show it. He stood erect and faced them.

Shairn took him in her arms and kissed him. Trehearne said, "You're glad I didn't die."

"Yes. Oh, yes!"

"You would have felt just a little guilty, wouldn't you?" He held her off and looked at her. She was very beautiful. Her throat was warm and white. He studied it, thinking what he had wanted to do only a short few minutes ago, and then he shook his head. He said slowly, "I owe you something, Shairn. I won't forget it."

She did not like his tone, and her brows drew into a dark line. She turned away, and over her shoulder Trehearne saw Kerrel looking at him in such an intent, strange way that he challenged it. "You don't look very happy, Kerrel. Does my survival upset you?"

Kerrel shook his head. "I don't enjoy condemning a man, particularly when I have nothing against him. But it brings up other problems. You have no conception of them now, Trehearne, but the thing you have just done brings you automatically into conflict with the most basic tenet of Vardda law, and how the Council will decide the question I don't know." He shifted his gaze to Edri and said in a curiously soft tone, "It could have the most dangerous consequences."

If it was bait, Edri refused to take it. He laughed and said, "This is no time to worry about consequences. I'm going to find Trehearne a cabin and me a bottle, and put the two together for a small celebration. A man doesn't become a Vardda every day." He took Trehearne's elbow and started him toward the door. "Come on."

Trehearne's new-found strength had not deserted him--it was, apparently, automatic when it was once started, like the heart-beat--but the ordinary kind was running out of him like water from a sieve. He made it out into the passageway without staggering, but a few steps farther on he clung to the bolt-heads in the wall and said unhappily, "I think I'm going to fall over."

"Reaction," said Edri. "Don't let it bother you. We all get it, first time out. Here, hang on."

The passage seemed a mile long, but eventually there was a cabin, small, compact, and functional, and there was a bunk, and Trehearne sat down on it. Edri went away somewhere, and came back again after a minute with a bottle. The stuff, whatever it was, went down like white fire, and Trehearne felt better. He set the cup aside and then began to look at his hands, turning them over as though he had never seen them before.

"They seem like everybody else's," he said.

"They're not. You're not. As Kerrel told you, you have no idea yet of what you've done, but as time goes by you will."

"It's quite true, then--about the mutation?"

"Oh, yes, quite. The form and structure of your body cells, and mine, are different from other people's. Due to that altered form and structure, your tissues, and mine, possess a tensile strength in their cell-walls that can withstand incredible acceleration pressure without collapse. And I hope you never know how lucky you were that the mutation was a recessive that finally bred true in you." He filled the glasses again, slowly, withdrawn for a moment into some brooding thought of his own. Then he added sombrely, "Some day I'll tell you the story of Orthis, who found the secret of the mutation. And a grand proud story it is, but with a shameful ending. He.... No. Forget it. The less you know about that, the better. Besides, we're celebrating. Drink up."

Trehearne drank. His head was swimming, and he felt hollow inside. The glass was heavy in his hands. He said, "There'll be trouble when I get to--to Llyrdis?"

"Sufficient unto the day, Trehearne. Worry about that when you come to it."

But he had already ceased to worry. Llyrdis. He said the name again, and it felt strange on his tongue. Llyrdis. A name and a world he had never heard of until a few short hours ago, and now.... The hollow spaces inside him were filled suddenly with homesickness, with a longing, with something akin to horror. He stared at the iron walls that closed him in, and he knew where he was, in an impossible ship with alien people, flying faster than light across nothingness to an alien star.... His stomach contracted, sending up a bitter fluid to burn his throat, and his hands were cold as a dead man's. Earth was gone. His Earth, sky, mountains, sunrise, city streets, country roads, the faces and voices of people, the men he had worked with, the women he had had or wanted to have, all the familiar things--the currency, the bars, the names of nations, books, pictures, shirtmakers, history--what was the use now of all the history he had learned, where did Caesar rank among the stars? Earth was gone, and even the sun had gone with it, and it was in a way as though he had died--and how do you start life again afterward, a stranger? There was this cabin, and outside its walls there was no world, no sunlight, nothing. Nothing.

_Nothing...._

Edri led him swiftly to a tiny adjoining cubicle and left him alone with his misery while he used the intercom by the cabin door. Presently the ship's doctor joined him. They got Trehearne back into the bunk, and a needle glittered briefly in the light, sending him to a place where there were not even any dreams.

On Number Four screen in the ship's control room, the pinpoint fleck that represented an isolated yellow sun flickered, faded, and went out.

SIX

Trehearne looked up from the bunk and asked, "How long have I slept?"

"Nearly twenty-four hours by Earth reckoning," Edri answered. "You needed it." He leaned over and offered Trehearne a prosaic pack of American cigarettes. "Smoke?"

Trehearne took one and sat up. He smoked for some time in silence, remembering. Finally he said, "It all happened, didn't it?"

Edri nodded.

"I know it must have, but I don't believe it." Trehearne shook his head. "Of all the incredible.... What were you doing there, Edri? How can you come and go on Earth without anyone knowing? What are the Vardda, besides--well, mutants?"

"Traders. Merchants. The most commercial race in the galaxy." Edri lifted the cover off a tray on a small table by the bunk. "I brought your breakfast. Go ahead and eat while I gabble. How we come and go is fairly simple. We land at odd intervals, here and there in the waste spaces of which Earth has a number. We do our business, and after a while are picked up again. As I told you before, we're exceedingly careful, and the fact that hardly anyone on Earth would believe the truth if they were told it is a protection. Of course, trading in secret that way, we're limited in what we can take, and Earth exports--the genuine articles and not mere copies--command very high prices. You'd be amazed at the value of French perfumes, Scotch whiskey, and American films on planets you never heard of."

"Do you trade with them all in secret?"

"Good Lord, no! Most worlds, even the very primitive ones, we can deal with quite openly. They might not like us, but they benefit enormously from our commerce."

"Then why not Earth?"

"Well," said Edri, "I don't like to offend your sensibilities as a native of the place, but Earth is a crazy planet. Oh, it's not the only one. There's a number of them scattered about, and we avoid open contact with all of them. You see, Trehearne, most worlds develop, or remain undeveloped, more or less homogeneously in the matter of civilization. I don't mean they're entirely peaceful, because they're not, but in the long run their populations are more predictable, more stable than on the Earth-type worlds that have grown up all out of joint. You know what I mean--on one side of the world atomic power, on the other the wooden plough and the blowgun. Too big a gap, and it makes trouble all down the line. Now, a primitive society regards war as a sport and takes an honest pleasure in it. A society in a high state of culture regards it as something outgrown and obsolete as hunting game for food. Everybody knows where they are. But when you get a world with great big overlapping mobs of population, every one of them in a different stage of cultural development and every one of them subject to a constant bombardment of outside stimuli they can't assimilate, you have got a mixture that keeps exploding in all directions. We have a healthy desire not to get blown up, and besides, it's impossible to establish any profitable trade with a world continually torn by wars. So--does that answer your question?"

"I take it," Trehearne said sourly, "that the Vardda don't think much of Earth."

"It's a good world. It'll settle down some day. Nobody can fight forever. They either knock themselves back into barbarism again, or they grow up."

Trehearne put down the fork on the empty plate, and looked at Edri, rather angrily. "Don't the Vardda ever fight?" he demanded. "I gather there's a vast commercial empire. There must be trade wars, battles over markets and rights. No empire was ever built without them."

"No other empire was ever built," said Edri quietly, "without any competition. I think you still don't quite understand. We have an absolute, complete, and unbreakable monopoly on interstellar flight. Only the Vardda ships go between the stars, and only the Vardda men can fly them. You know the reason, you proved it in yourself. We don't have to fight."

Trehearne let go a long, low whistle. "And we thought we had monopolies on Earth! But I don't see why, if you could mutate, others couldn't do it, too. How do you hold them down?"

"We don't hold anybody down. We don't rule, influence, or interfere with any world but our own. We learned long ago that it was bad business. As to the mutation, it's impossible. The secret of the process was lost with Orthis, some thousand years ago." He rose abruptly from the chair where he had been sitting, and pointed to some garments in the locker. "I think those will fit you. Get dressed, and I'll show you around."

Trehearne looked doubtfully at the clothes, a tunic of dark green silk, dark trousers, a modestly jewelled belt, and sandals. Edri grinned.

"You'll get used to them. And you won't feel half as peculiar as you would look going about in those ridiculous tweeds."

Trehearne shrugged, and put them on. He had to admit they were comfortable. There was a mirror set inside the locker door, and he studied himself in it. He was startled to see how changed he was in the Vardda dress. The last vestige of Earth was gone.

Still looking into the mirror, he said, "Edri...."

"Yes?"

"I am a Vardda now. I've proved it. What can they do to me, on Llyrdis?"

"I wish I could tell you. Actually, you are a true Vardda, a complete atavism. But legally--that's another thing. That basic tenet of Vardda law that Kerrel referred to is a prohibition against admitting into our race non-Vardda strains of any kind. Keeping the Vardda blood pure isn't just pride, it's an economic necessity, and the one unbreakable tabu. The solution of that puzzle will be up to the Council, and my advice is to forget it until then. Come on, and I'll give you something else to think about."

Trehearne was glad enough to go. The lost, sick, nightmarish feeling was creeping back on him again, and he was glad of any diversion. They went out into the corridor, and he followed Edri forward. He became aware of a deep inner vibration of power that filled the ship, a sort of humming drone that seemed to challenge the whole universe to make it stop. It sang in his ears, in his blood and his quivering nerve-ends, and the excitement he had felt when he first saw the ship returned to him full force. This was the ultimate. All his life he had been playing with children's toys, but here, under his feet and all around him, was the highest dream of men.

"What's the motive power? What's the principle? And how can you go faster than light? The limiting speed, contraction, mass...."

Edri laughed. "One at a time, please. And such simple little questions, too! It took centuries to evolve a technology capable of answering them, and you want me to explain it all in a few words. Well, a few words is all I know about it. I'm a drinker by profession, not a scientist. Anyway, a really functional ship, whether it plies water, air, or space, must get its motive power by reacting against the element it travels in. And so, right now, the big atomic-powered generators in the stern are producing fifth-order rays which react against the fabric of space itself. And space, not wishing to be torn apart, obligingly thrusts us onward. Very simple, I believe, once you know the trick."

Trehearne grunted.

"As to limiting speeds," said Edri, "the Vardda scientists used to believe in them too--until they got to playing around with cosmotrons. One day a particle they were experimenting with upset them horribly by going much faster than light, and that's how they discovered the fifth-order rays. They found out, as your scientists will find, that the theoretical absolutes you set up from limited knowledge will prove illusory when your knowledge expands. I could explain all that to you if I knew continuum-mechanics better than I do!"

"I couldn't understand it anyway," said Trehearne, "so it's just as well."

They had reached the forward end of the corridor. There was a narrow circular stairway leading up. Edri stood back and motioned Trehearne to climb it. He did, fighting down another attack of the shakes on the way--you couldn't take it all in, you couldn't get used to it all at once, the strangeness, the utter separation from everything that had been, the headlong plunge into alien horizons, for a long time you were going to get panicky when you thought about it. He emerged into a round observation dome of immensely heavy quartz. He didn't know what he had expected to see, but he was disappointed. There was nothing to be seen at all but darkness, streaked with creeping lines of light.

"Those are stars," said Edri, who had come up behind him. "Or rather, the radiation patterns of stars. At our present velocity we're overtaking the lines of luminous energy they have left behind them. Star-tracks, we call them."

He closed a switch, and the thick quartzite became suffused with a pallid, milky glow. Edri consulted a master dial, and made adjustments.

"Watch the dome," he said. "It's triple thickness, of a special molecular composition, each plane laid at a different oblique angle. I've switched high-frequency electronic current into hair-line grids between the three planes and all sorts of interesting and complicated things are happening in the molecular structure of the quartzite."

Trehearne watched. His heart was beating hard.

"Behold," said Edri, "the light-impulses of the star-tracks are caught, stepped up, wrenched about, and finally held on the inner lens."

Trehearne beheld, and beholding, he forgot Edri and the ship and himself. He forgot Earth, the past, and the future. He forgot almost to breathe.

Edri's voice came to him softly. "You may see this often, Trehearne, but never again for the first time."

Trehearne barely heard him. The ship had fallen away beneath him, leaving him suspended in the plunging gulfs that lie between the island stars, and he looked awestruck into the dark and splendid loneliness of space.

Through the magic of that quartzite dome he saw the great suns march in flame and thunder on their way around the ouroboros curve of infinity. Some were solitary hunters, others were joined together in companies of stars. He saw their cosmic pageant of life and death, the young suns blazing with a blue-white strength, the golden suns, the old red suns, the dead suns black with funeral ash. He saw the far-off galaxies, the coiling fires of the nebulae, the wonderful terrifying nations of the Milky Way streaming along the rim of creation. And as he looked the last of thought and feeling went from him and he was like a child still dazed from birthing.

Some of the stars, perhaps, he recognized--Algol beating like a bloody heart, the splintered glory of Sirius. Orion strode gigantic across the gulfs, girded with suns, and dead ahead, tipping the far-flung Hyades, Aldebaran burned in sullen splendor.

Aldebaran. Another sun. Other worlds, other peoples, other ways of life. He was going there, a stranger.

A deep tremor shook him. Time went by, but he took no notice of it. He was a man lost, sunk and drowned in infinity. Edri watched him, with a certain sadness. After a while he pulled the switch again, and the dome went blank, showing only the flat darkness and the crawling streaks of light. Trehearne sighed, but he did not move. Edri smiled, and shook him. Trehearne turned slowly, and when Edri led the way back down the stair he followed, but without knowing where he was going or why.

The passageway was empty. Edri stopped and waited until Trehearne's eyes focussed on him with some semblance of understanding.

"I'm going," he said, "to break a life-long habit and say something important. Are you listening?"

Trehearne nodded.

"You'll be spending a lot of time with the others, which will inevitably mean with Shairn. Keep away from her, Trehearne. No matter whether you love her or hate her, stay away."

Trehearne smiled. His head was ringing with stars, his vision was dazzled by the blaze of nebulae.

"Shairn doesn't look to me like much of a permanent deal for anybody."

"That's the trouble. Kerrel talked her into this flying jaunt around with him to break up the games she was playing with somebody else on Llyrdis. He's put up with an awful lot from her, and he's not the type at all--which makes people wonder."

"What?"