The Stars, Like Dust Read online

  “I tied a cord to the wrist of each corpse and then tied each cord to a towing magnet. I dumped them through the air lock, heard the magnets clank against the hold, and knew that the hard-frozen bodies would follow the ship now wherever it went. You see, once we returned to Rhodia, I knew I would need the evidence of their bodies to show that it had been the meteor that had killed them and not I.

  “But how was I to return? I was quite helpless. There was no way I could run the ship, and there was nothing I dared try there in the depths of interstellar space. I didn’t even know how to use the sub-etheric communication system, so that I couldn’t SOS. I could only let the ship travel on its own course.”

  “But you couldn’t very well do that, could you?” Biron said. He wondered if Gillbret were inventing this, either out of simple romantic imaginings or for some severely practical reason of his own. “What about the Jumps through hyperspace? You must have managed those, or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “A Tyrannian ship,” said Gillbret, “once the controls are properly set, will make any number of Jumps quite automatically.”

  Biron stared his disbelief. Did Gillbret take him for a fool? “You’re making that up,” he said.

  “I am not. It’s one of the damned military advances which won their wars for them. They didn’t defeat fifty planetary systems outnumbering Tyrann by hundreds of times in population and resources, just by playing mumbletypeg, you know. Sure they tackled us one at a time, and utilized our traitors very skillfully, but they had a definite military edge as well. Everyone knows that their tactics were superior to ours, and part of that was due to the automatic Jump. It meant a great increase in the maneuverability of their ships and made possible much more elaborate battle plans than any we could set up.

  “I’ll admit it’s one of their best-kept secrets, this technique of theirs. I never learned it until I was trapped alone on the Bloodsucker—the Tyranni have the most annoying custom of naming their ships unpleasantly, though I suppose it’s good psychology—and watched it happen. I watched it make the Jumps without a hand on the controls.”

  “And you mean to say that this ship can do that too?”

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  Biron turned to the control board. There were still dozens of contacts he had not determined the slightest use for. Well, later!

  He turned to Gillbret again. “And the ship took you home?”

  “No, it didn’t. When that meteor wove its pattern through the control room, it didn’t leave the board untouched. It would have been most amazing if it had. Dials were smashed, the casing battered and dented. There was no way of telling how the previous set of the controls had been altered, but it must have been somehow, because it never took me back to Rhodia.

  “Eventually, of course, it began deceleration, and I knew the trip was theoretically over. I couldn’t tell where I was, but I managed to maneuver the visiplate so that I could tell there was a planet close enough to show a disk in the ship telescope. It was blind luck, because the disk was increasing in size. The ship was heading for the planet.

  “Oh, not directly. That would have been too impossible to hope for. If I had just drifted, the ship would have missed the planet by a million miles, at least, but at that distance I could use ordinary etheric radio. I knew how to do that. It was after this was all over that I began educating myself in electronics. I made up my mind that I would never be quite so helpless again. Being helpless is one of the things that isn’t altogether amusing.”

  Biron prompted, “So you used the radio.”

  Gillbret went on: “Exactly, and they came and got me.”

  “Who?”

  “The men of the planet. It was inhabited.”

  “Well, the luck piles up. What planet was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You mean they didn’t tell you?”

  “Amusing, isn’t it? They didn’t. But it was somewhere among the Nebular Kingdoms!”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Because they knew the ship I was in was a Tyrannian vessel. They knew that by sight, and almost blasted it before I could convince them I was the only one on board alive.”

  Biron put his large hands on his knees and kneaded them. “Now hold on and pull back. I don’t get this. If they knew it was a Tyrannian vessel and intended blasting it, isn’t that the best proof that the world was not in the Nebular Kingdoms? that it was anywhere but there?”

  “No, by the Galaxy.” Gillbret’s eyes were shining, and his voice climbed in enthusiasm. “It was in the Kingdoms. They took me to the surface, and what a world it was! There were men there from all over the Kingdoms. I could tell by the accents. And they had no fear of the Tyranni. The place was an arsenal. You couldn’t tell from space. It might have been a run-down farming world, but the life of the planet was underground. Somewhere in the Kingdoms, my boy, somewhere there is that planet still, and it is not afraid of the Tyranni, and it is going to destroy the Tyranni as it would have destroyed the ship I was on then, if the crewmen had been still alive.”

  Biron felt his heart bound. For a moment he wanted to believe.

  After all, maybe. Maybe!

  11. AND MAYBE NOT!

  And then again, maybe not!

  Biron said, “How did you learn all this about its being an arsenal? How long did you stay? What did you see?”

  Gillbret grew impatient. “It wasn’t exactly what I saw at all. They didn’t conduct me on any tours, or anything like that.” He forced himself to relax. “Well, look, this is what happened. By the time they got me off the ship, I was in more or less of a bad state. I had been too frightened to eat much—it’s a terrible thing, being marooned in space—and I must have looked worse than I really was.

  “I identified myself, more or less, and they took me underground. With the ship, of course. I suppose they were more interested in the ship than in myself. It gave them a chance to study Tyrannian spatio-engineering. They took me to what must have been a hospital.”

  “But what did you see, Uncle?” asked Artemisia.

  Biron interrupted, “Hasn’t he ever told you this before?”

  Artemisia said, “No.”

  And Gillbret added, “I’ve never told anyone till now. I was taken to a hospital, as I said. I passed research laboratories in that hospital that must have been better than anything we have in Rhodia. On the way to the hospital I passed factories in which some sort of metalwork was going on. The ships that had captured me were certainly like none I’ve ever heard about.

  “It was all so apparent to me at the time that I have never questioned it in the years since. I think of it as my ‘rebellion world,’ and I know that someday swarms of ships will leave it to attack the Tyranni, and that the subject worlds will be called upon to rally round the rebel leaders. From year to year I’ve waited for it to happen. Each new year I’ve thought to myself: This may be the one. And, each time, I half hoped it wouldn’t be, because I was longing to get away first, to join them so that I might be part of the great attack. I didn’t want them to start without me.”

  He laughed shakily. “I suppose it would have amused most people to know what was going on in my mind. In my mind. Nobody thought much of me, you know.”

  Biron said, “All this happened over twenty years ago, and they haven’t attacked? There’s been no sign of them? No strange ships have been reported? No incidents? And you still think——”

  Gillbret fired at him, “Yes, I do. Twenty years isn’t too long to organize a rebellion against a planet that rules fifty systems. I was there just at the beginning of the rebellion. I know that too. Slowly, since then, they must have been honeycombing the planet with their underground preparations, developing newer ships and weapons, training more men, organizing the attack.

  “It’s only in the video thrillers that men spring to arms at a moment’s notice; that a new weapon is needed one day, invented the next, mass-produced the third, and used the fourt
h. These things take time, Biron, and the men of the rebellion world must know they will have to be completely ready before beginning. They won’t be able to strike twice.

  “And what do you call ‘incidents’? Tyrannian ships have disappeared and never been found. Space is big, you might say, and they might simply be lost, but what if they were captured by the rebels? There was the case of the Tireless two years back. It reported a strange object close enough to stimulate the massometer, and then was never heard from again. It could have been a meteor, I suppose, but was it?

  “The search lasted months. They never found it. I think the rebels have it. The Tireless was a new ship, an experimental model. It would be just what they would want.”

  Biron said, “Once having landed there, why didn’t you stay?”

  “Don’t you suppose I wanted to? I had no chance. I listened to them when they thought I was unconscious, and I learned a bit more then. They were just starting, out there, at that time. They couldn’t afford to be found out then. They knew I was Gillbret oth Hinriad. There was enough identification on the ship, even if I hadn’t told them myself, which I had. They knew that if I didn’t return to Rhodia there would be a full-scale search that would not readily come to a halt.

  “They couldn’t risk such a search, so they had to see to it that I was returned to Rhodia. And that’s where they took me.”

  “What!” cried Biron. “But that must have been an even greater risk. How did they do that?”

  “I don’t know.” Gillbret passed his thin fingers through his graying hair, and his eyes seemed to be probing uselessly into the backward stretches of his memory. “They anesthetized me, I suppose. That part all blanks out. Past a certain point there is nothing. I can only remember that I opened my eyes and was back in the Bloodsucker; I was in space, just off Rhodia.”

  “The two dead crewmen were still attached by the tow magnets? They hadn’t been removed on the rebellion world?” asked Biron.

  “They were still there.”

  “Was there any evidence at all to indicate that you had been on the rebellion world?”

  “None; except for what I remembered.”

  “How did you know you were off Rhodia?”

  “I didn’t. I knew I was near a planet; the massometer said so. I used the radio again, and this time it was Rhodian ships that came for me. I told my story to the Tyrannian Commissioner of that day, with appropriate modifications. I made no mention of the rebellion world, of course. And I said the meteor had hit just after the last Jump. I didn’t want them to think I knew that a Tyrannian ship could make the Jumps automatically.”

  “Do you think the rebellion world found out that little fact? Did you tell them?”

  “I didn’t tell them. I had no chance. I wasn’t there long enough. Conscious, that is. But I don’t know how long I was unconscious and what they managed to find out for themselves.”

  Biron stared at the visiplate. Judging from the rigidity of the picture it presented, the ship they were on might have been nailed in space. The Remorseless was traveling at the rate of ten thousand miles an hour, but what was that to the immense distances of space. The stars were hard, bright, and motionless. They had a hypnotic quality about them.

  He said, “Then where are we going? I take it you still don’t know where the rebellion world is?”

  “I don’t. But I have an idea who would. I am almost sure I know.” Gillbret was eager about it.

  “Who?”

  “The Autarch of Lingane.”

  “Lingane?” Biron frowned. He had heard the name some time back, it seemed to him, but he had forgotten the connection. “Why he?”

  “Lingane was the last Kingdom captured by the Tyranni. It is not, shall we say, as pacified as the rest. Doesn’t that make sense?”

  “As far as it goes. But how far is that?”

  “If you want another reason, there is your father.”

  “My father?” For a moment Biron forgot that his father was dead. He saw him standing before his mind’s eye, large and alive, but then he remembered and there was that same cold wrench inside him. “How does my father come into this?”

  “He was at court six months ago. I gained certain notions as to what he wanted. Some of his talks with my cousin, Hinrik, I overheard.”

  “Oh, Uncle,” said Artemisia impatiently.

  “My dear?”

  “You had no right to eavesdrop on Father’s private discussions.”

  Gillbret shrugged. “Of course not, but it was amusing, and useful as well.”

  Biron interrupted, “Now, wait. You say it was six months ago that my father was at Rhodia?” He felt excitement mount.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me. While there, did he have access to the Director’s collection of Primitivism? You told me once that the Director had a large library of matters concerning Earth.”

  “I imagine so. The library is quite famous and it is usually made available to distinguished visitors, if they’re interested. They usually aren’t, but your father was. Yes, I remember that very well. He spent nearly a day there.”

  That checked. It had been half a year ago that his father had first asked his help. Biron said, “You yourself know the library well, I imagine.”

  “Of course.”

  “Is there anything in the library that would suggest that there exists a document on Earth of great military value?”

  Gillbret was blank of face and, obviously, blank of mind.

  Biron said, “Somewhere in the last centuries of prehistoric Earth there must have been such a document. I can only tell you that my father thought it to be the most valuable single item in the Galaxy, and the deadliest. I was to have gotten it for him, but I left Earth too soon, and in any case”—his voice faltered—“he died too soon.”

  But Gillbret was still blank. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You don’t understand. My father mentioned it to me first six months ago. He must have learned of it in the library on Rhodia. If you’ve been through it yourself, can’t you tell me what it was he must have learned?”

  But Gillbret could only shake his head.

  Biron said, “Well, continue with your story.”

  Gillbret said, “They spoke of the Autarch of Lingane, your father and my cousin. Despite your father’s cautious phraseology, Biron, it was obvious that the Autarch was the fount and head of the conspiracy.

  “And then”—he hesitated—“there was a mission from Lingane and the Autarch himself was at its head. I—I told him of the rebellion world.”

  “You said a while ago you told nobody,” said Biron.

  “Except the Autarch. I had to know the truth.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Practically nothing. But then, he had to be cautious too. Could he trust me? I might have been working for the Tyranni. How could he know? But he didn’t close the door altogether. It’s our only lead.”

  “Is it?” Biron said. “Then we’ll go to Lingane. One place, I suppose, is like another.”

  Mention of his father had depressed him, and, for the moment, nothing mattered much. Let it be Lingane.

  Let it be Lingane! That was easy to say. But how does one go about pointing the ship at a tiny speck of light thirty-five light-years away. Two hundred trillion miles. A two with fourteen zeros after it. At ten thousand miles an hour (current cruising speed of the Remorseless) it would take well over two million years to get there.

  Biron leafed through the Standard Galactic Ephemeris with something like despair. Tens of thousands of stars were listed in detail, with their positions crammed into three figures. There were hundreds of pages of these figures, symbolized by the Greek letters ρ (rho), Θ (theta), and φ (phi).

  ρ was the distance from the Galactic Center in parsecs; Θ, the angular separation, along the plane of the Galactic Lens from the Standard Galactic Baseline (the line, that is, which connects the Galactic Center and the sun of the planet Earth); φ, th
e angular separation from the Baseline in the plane perpendicular to that of the Galactic Lens, the two latter measurements being expressed in radians. Given those three figures, one could locate any star accurately in all the vast immensity of space.

  That is, on a given date. In addition to the star’s position on the standard day for which all the data were calculated, one had to know the star’s proper motion, both speed and direction. It was a small correction, comparatively, but necessary. A million miles is virtually nothing compared with stellar distances, but it is a long way with a ship.

  There was, of course, the question of the ship’s own position. One could calculate the distance from Rhodia by the reading of the massometer, or, more correctly, the distance from Rhodia’s sun, since this far out in space the sun’s gravitational field drowned out that of any of its planets. The direction they were traveling with reference to the Galactic Baseline was more difficult to determine. Biron had to locate two known stars other than Rhodia’s sun. From their apparent positions and the known distance from Rhodia’s sun, he could plot their actual position.

  It was roughly done but, he felt sure, accurately enough. Knowing his own position and that of Lingane’s sun, he had only to adjust the controls for the proper direction and strength of the hyperatomic thrust.

  Biron felt lonely and tense. Not frightened! He rejected the word. But tense, definitely. He was deliberately calculating the elements of the Jump for a time six hours later. He wanted plenty of time to check his figures. And perhaps there might be the chance for a nap. He had dragged the bed makings out of the cabin and it was ready for him now.

  The other two were, presumably, sleeping in the cabin. He told himself that that was a good thing and that he wanted nobody around bothering him, yet when he heard the small sound of bare feet outside, he looked up with a certain eagerness.

  “Hello,” he said, “why aren’t you sleeping?”

  Artemisia stood in the doorway, hesitating. She said, in a small voice, “Do you mind if I come in? Will I be bothering you?”