Stars, Like Dust Read online

  The ship lights went out altogether, and there were only the stars left.

  It seemed a long while before a crisp announcement filled the air momentarily: “The Jump will take place in exactly one minute.” And then the same voice counted the seconds backwards: “Fifty...forty...thirty...twenty... ten...five...three...two...one...”

  It was as though there had been a momentary discontinuity in existence, a bump which joggled only the deep inside of a man’s bones.

  In that immeasurable fraction of a second, one hundred light-years had passed, and the ship, which had been on the outskirts of the solar system, was now in the depths of interstellar space.

  Someone near Biron said shakily, “Look at the stars!”

  In a moment the whisper had taken life through the large room and hissed itself across the tables: “The stars! See!”

  In that same immeasurable fraction of a second the star view had changed radically. The center of the great Galaxy, which stretched thirty thousand light-years from tip to tip, was closer now, and the stars had thickened in number. They spread across the black velvet vacuum in a fine powder, back-dropping the occasional brightness of the nearby stars.

  Biron, against his will, remembered the beginning of a poem he himself had once written at the sentimental age of nineteen, on the occasion of his first space flight; the one that had first taken him to the Earth he was now leaving. His lips moved silently:

  “The stars, like dust, encircle me

  In living mists of light;

  And all of space I seem to see

  In one vast burst of sight.”

  The lights went on then, and Biron’s thoughts were snapped out of space as suddenly as they had entered it. He was in a space liner’s salon again, with a dinner dragging to an end, and the hum of conversation rising to a prosaic level again.

  He glanced at his wrist watch, half looked away, then, very slowly, brought the wrist watch into focus again. He stared at it for a long minute. It was the wrist watch he had left in his bedroom that night; it had withstood the killing radiation of the bomb, and he had collected it with the rest of his belongings the next morning. How many times had he looked at it since then? How many times had he stared at it, taken mental note of the time and no note at all of the other piece of information it shouted at him?

  For the plastic wristband was white, not blue. It was white!

  Slowly the events of that night, all of them, fell into place. Strange how one fact could shake an the confusion out of them.

  He rose abruptly, murmuring, “Pardon me!” under his breath. It was a breach of etiquette to leave before the captain, but that was a matter of small importance to him then.

  He hastened to his room, striding up the ramps rapidly, rather than waiting for the non-gravity elevators. He locked the door behind him and looked quickly through the bathroom and the built-in closets. He had no real hope of catching anyone. What they had had to do, they must have done hours ago.

  Carefully, he went through his baggage. They had done a thorough job. With scarcely any sign to show that they had come and gone, they had carefully withdrawn his identification papers, a packet of letters from his father, and even his capsular introduction to Hinrik of Rhodia.

  That was why they had moved him. It was neither the old room nor the new that they were interested in; merely the process of moving. For nearly an hour they must have legitimately--legitimately, by Space!--concerned themselves with his baggage, and served their own purposes thereby.

  Biron sank down upon the double bed and thought furiously, but it didn’t help. The trap had been perfect. Everything had been planned. Had it not been for the completely unpredictable chance of his leaving his wrist watch in the bedroom that night, he would not even now have realized how close-meshed the Tyranni’s net through space was.

  There was a soft burr as his door signal sounded.

  “Come in,” he said.

  It was the steward, who said respectfully, “The captain wishes to know if there is anything he can do for you. You seemed ill as you left the table.”

  “I’m all right,” he said.

  How they watched him! And in that moment he knew that there was no escape, and that the ship was carrying him politely, but surely, to his death.

  FOUR:

  Free?

  Sander Jonti met the other’s eyes coldly. He said, “Gone, you say?”

  Rizzett passed a hand over his ruddy face. “Something is gone. I don’t know its identity. It might have been the document we’re after, certainly. All we know about it is that it had been dated somewhere in the fifteenth to twenty-first century of Earth’s primitive calendar, and that it is dangerous.”

  “Is there any definite reason to believe that the missing one is the document?”

  “Only circumstantial reasoning. It was guarded closely by the Earth government.”

  “Discount that. An Earthman will treat any document relating to the pre-Galactic past with veneration. It’s their ridiculous worship of tradition.”

  “But this one was stolen and yet they never announced the fact. Why do they guard an empty case?”

  “I can imagine their doing that rather than finding themselves forced to admit that a holy relic has been stolen. Yet I cannot believe that young Farrill obtained it after all. I thought you had him under observation.”

  The other smiled. “He didn’t get it.”

  “How do you know?”

  Jonti’s agent quickly exploded his land mine. “Because the document has been gone twenty years.”

  “What?”

  “It has not been seen for twenty years.”

  “Then it can’t be the right one. It was less than six months ago that the Rancher learned of its existence.”

  “Then somebody else beat him to it by nineteen and a half years.”

  Jonti considered. He said, “It does not matter. It cannot matter.”

  “Why so?”

  “Because I have been here on Earth for months. Before I came, it was easy to believe that there might be information of value on the planet. But consider now. When Earth was the only inhabited planet in the Galaxy, it was a primitive place, militarily speaking. The only weapon they had ever invented worth mentioning was a crude and inefficient nuclear-reaction bomb for which they had not even developed the logical defense.” He flung his arm outward in a delicate gesture to where the blue horizon gleamed its sickly radio. activity beyond the thick concrete of the room.

  He went on. “All this is placed in sharp focus for me as a temporary resident here. It is ridiculous to assume that it is possible to learn anything from a society at that level of military technology. It is always very fashionable to assume that there are lost arts and lost sciences, and there are always these people who make a cult of primitivism and who make all sorts of ridiculous claims for the prehistoric civilizations on Earth.”

  Rizzett said, “Yet the Rancher was a wise man. He told us specifically that it was the most dangerous document he knew. You remember what he said. I can quote it. He said, ‘The matter is death for the Tyranni, and death for us as well; but it would mean final life for the Galaxy.’ “

  “The Rancher, like all human beings, can be wrong.”

  “Consider, sir, that we have no idea as to the nature of the document. It could, for instance, be somebody’s laboratory notes which had never been published. It might be something that could relate to a weapon the Earthmen had never recognized as a weapon; something which on the face of it might not be a weapon--”

  “Nonsense. You are a military man and should know better. If there is one science into which man has probed continuously and successfully, it is that of military technology. No potential weapon would remain unrealized for ten thousand years. I think, Rizzett, we will return to Lingane.”

  Rizzett shrugged. He was not convinced.

  Nor, a thousandfold, was Jonti. It had been stolen, and that was significant. It had been worth stealing! Anyone in the Galaxy
might have it now.

  Unwillingly the thought came to him that the Tyranni might have it. The Rancher had been most evasive on the matter. Even Jonti himself had not been trusted sufficiently. The Rancher had said it carried death; it could not be used without having it cut both ways. Jonti’s lips clamped shut. The fool and his idiotic hintings! And now the Tyranni had him.

  What if a man like Aratap were now in the possession of such a secret as this might be? Aratap! The one man, now that the Rancher was gone, who remained unpredictable; the most dangerous Tyrannian of them all.

  Simok Aratap was a small man; a little bandy-legged, narrow-eyed fellow. He had the stumpy, thick-limbed appearance of the average Tyrannian, yet though he faced an exceptionally large and well-muscled specimen of the subject worlds, he was completely self-possessed. He was the confident heir (in the second generation) of those who had left their windy, infertile worlds and sparked across the emptiness to capture and enchain the rich and populous planets of the Nebular Regions.

  His father had headed a squadron of small, flitting ships that had struck and vanished, then struck again, and made scrap of the lumbering titanic ships that had opposed them.

  The worlds of the Nebula had fought in the old fashion, but the Tyranni had learned a new one. Where the huge, glittering vessels of the opposed navies attempted single combat, they found themselves flailing at emptiness and wasting their stores of energy. Instead, the Tyranni, abandoning power alone, stressed speed and co-operation, so that the opposed Kingdoms toppled one after the other, singly; each waiting (half joyfully at the discomfiture of its neighbors), fallaciously secure behind its steel-shipped ramparts, until its own turn came.

  But those wars were fifty years earlier. Now the Nebular Regions were satrapies that required merely the acts of occupation and taxation. Previously there had been worlds to gain, Aratap thought wearily, and now there was little left to do but to contend with single men.

  He looked at the young man who faced him. He was quite a young man. A tall fellow with very good shoulders indeed; an absorbed, intent face with the hair of his head cut ridiculously short in what was undoubtedly a collegiate affectation. In an unofficial sense, Aratap was sorry for him. He was obviously frightened.

  Biron did not recognize the feeling inside him as “fright.” If he had been asked to put a name to the emotion, he would have described it as “tension.” All his life he had known the Tyranni to be the overlords. His father, strong and vital though he was, unquestioned on his own estate, respectfully heard on others, was quiet and almost humble in the presence of the Tyranni.

  They came occasionally to Widemos on polite visits, with questions as to the annual tribute they called taxation. The Rancher of Widemos was responsible for the collection and delivery of these funds on behalf of the planet Nephelos and, perfunctorily, the Tyranni would check his books.

  The Rancher himself would assist them out of their small vessels. They would sit at the head of the table at mealtimes, and they would be served first. When they spoke, all other conversation stopped instantly.

  As a child, he wondered that such small, ugly men should be so carefully handled, but he learned as he grew up that they were to his father what his father was to a cow hand. He even learned to speak softly to them himself, and to address them as “Excellency.”

  He had learned so well that now that he faced one of the overlords, one of the Tyranni, he could feel himself shiver with tension.

  The ship which he had considered his prison became officially one on the day of landing upon Rhodia. They had signaled at his door and two husky crewmen had entered and stood on either side of him. The captain, who followed, had said in a flat voice, “Biron Farrill, I take you into custody by the power vested in me as captain of this vessel, and hold you for questioning by the Commissioner of the Great King.”

  The Commissioner was this small Tyrannian who sat before him now, seemingly abstracted and uninterested. The “Great King” was the Khan of the Tyranni, who still lived in the legendary stone palace on the Tyrannian’s home planet.

  Biron looked furtively about him. He was not physically constrained in any way, but four guards in the slate blue of the Tyrannian Outer Police flanked him, two and two. They were armed. A fifth, with a major’s insignia, sat beside the Commissioner’s desk.

  The Commissioner spoke to him for the first time. “As you may know”--his voice was high--pitched, thin--”the old Rancher of Widemos, your father, has been executed for treason.”

  His faded eyes were fixed on Biron’s. There seemed nothing beyond mildness in them.

  Biron remained stolid. It bothered him that he could do nothing. It would have been so much more satisfying to howl at them, to flail madly at them, but that would not make his father less dead. He thought he knew the reason for this initial statement. It was intended to break him down, to make him give himself away. Well, it wouldn’t.

  He said evenly, “I am Biron Malaine of Earth. If you are questioning my identity, I would like to communicate with the Terrestrial Consul.”

  “Ah yes, but we are at a purely informal stage just now. You are Biron Malaine, you say, of Earth. And yet”--Aratap indicated the papers before him--”there are letters here which were written by Widemos to his son. There is a college registration receipt and tickets to commencement exercises made out to a Biron Farrill. They were found in your baggage.”

  Biron felt desperate but he did not let it show. “My baggage was searched illegally, so that I deny that those can be admitted as evidence.”

  “We are not in a court of law, Mr. Farrill or Malaine. How do you explain them?”

  “If they were found in my baggage, they were placed there by someone else.”

  The Commissioner passed it by, and Biron felt amazed. His statements sounded so thin, so patently foolish. Yet the Commissioner did not remark upon them, but only tapped the black capsule with his forefinger. “And this introduction to the Director of Rhodia? Also not yours?”

  “No, that is mine.” Biron had planned that. The introduction did not mention his name. He said, “There is a plot to assassinate the Director--”

  He stopped, appalled. It sounded so completely unconvincing when he finally put the beginning of his carefully prepared speech into actual sound. Surely the Commissioner was smiling cynically at him?

  But Aratap was not. He merely sighed a little and with quick, practiced gestures removed contact lenses from his eyes and placed them carefully in a glass of saline solution that stood on the desk before him. His naked eyeballs were a little watery.

  He said, “And you know of it? Even back on Earth, five hundred light-years away? Our own police here on Rhodia have not heard of it.”

  “The police are here. The plot is being developed on Earth.”

  “I see. And are you their agent? Or are you going to warn Hinrik against them?”

  “The latter, of course.”

  “Indeed? And why do you intend to warn him?”

  “For the substantial reward which I expect to get.”

  Aratap smiled. “That, at least, rings true and lends a certain truthful gloss to your previous statements. What are the details of the plot you speak of?”

  “That is for the Director only.”

  A momentary hesitation, then a shrug. “Very well. The Tyranni are not interested and do not concern themselves with local politics. We will arrange an interview between yourself and the Director and that will be our contribution to his safety. My men will hold you until your baggage can be collected, and then you will be free to go. Remove him.”

  The last was to the armed men, who left with Biron. Aratap replaced his contact lenses, an action which removed ‘instantly that look of vague incompetence their absence had seemed to induce.

  He said to the major, who had remained, “We will keep an eye, I think, on this young Farrill.”

  The officer nodded shortly. “Good! For a moment I thought you might have been taken in. To me, his story wa
s quite incoherent.”

  “It was. It’s just that which makes him maneuverable for the while. All young fools who get their notions of interstellar intrigue from the video spy thrillers are easily handled. lie is, of course, the son of the ex-Rancher.”

  And now the major hesitated. “Are you sure? It’s a vague and unsatisfactory accusation we have against him.”

  “You mean that it might be arranged evidence after all? For what purpose?”

  “It could mean that he is a decoy, sacrificed to divert our attention from a real Biron Farrill elsewhere.”

  “No. Improbably theatrical, that. Besides, we have a photocube.”

  “What? Of the boy?”

  “Of the Rancher’s son. Would you like to see it?”

  “I certainly would.”

  Aratap lifted the paperweight upon his desk. It was a simple glass cube, three inches on each side, black and opaque. He said, “I meant to confront him with it if it had seemed best. It is a cute process, this one, Major. I don’t know if you’re acquainted with it. It’s been developed recently among the inner worlds. Outwardly, it seems an ordinary photocube, but when it is turned upside down, there’s an automatic molecular re-arrangement which renders it totally opaque. It is a pleasant conceit.”

  He turned the cube right side up. The opacity shimmered for a moment, then cleared slowly like a black fog wisping and feathering before the wind. Aratap watched it calmly, hands folded across his chest.

  And then it was water-clear, and a young face smiled brightly out of it, accurate and alive, trapped and solidified in mid-breath forever.

  “An item,” said Aratap, “in the ex-Rancher’s possessions. What do you think?”

  “It is the young man, without question.”

  “Yes.” The Tyrannian official regarded the photocube thoughtfully. “You know, using this same process, I don’t see why six photographs could not be taken in the same cube. It has six faces, and by resting the cube on each of them in turn, a series of new molecular orientations might be induced. Six connected photographs, flowing one into another as you turned, a static phenomenon turned dynamic and taking on new breadth and vision. Major, it would be a new art form.” A mounting enthusiasm had crept into his voice.