William Forstchen - Into the Sea of Stars

Smith grabbed hold of a circular railing of gold, stop ping his forward momentum. He stood there surrounded by thunder.

Ian cautiously slipped up to the doorway and peaked out. "My God, it's full of people," he whispered.

He was looking out into a vast cylinder-shaped audi ence chamber: a kilometer or more in diameter, its length ten kilometers back up into the vessel. The entire popu lation of the one habitat-millions of them-had gathered in this one place.

"O my children," Smith shouted, and his amplified voice rose above the thunderous roar.

"For you are the Father of us all!" ten millions answered in return.

"Our promise shall be fulfilled, our glory magnified a thousandfold. Our revenge shall be just."

"For so you have promised!"

"Our Hegira shall come to an end in the gardens of Paradise!"

Smith reached to his belt and with a dramatic flourish drew a sword that glinted in the harsh blue sunlight pour ing in through the windows that surrounded the docking port like a beaded halo.

Ian gasped with amazement as, like a field of steely wheat, a wavering shimmer of metal rippled up over the multitude. Until all human forms were blotted out beneath ten million upraised swords.

"Father, Father, Father…"

Smith pushed off from the golden ring and reentered the golden room.

"That is power, Ian Lacklin," he said with a cold glim mer of menace. "Think of that power when, in vengeance for what we suffered, I unleash it across the world that so cruelly drove us out into the night."

Ian was silent as together they reboarded the shuttle.

Not a word was said between the two as the same performance was repeated at half a dozen other colonies.

Ian knew he had been invited to the ritual display to be impressed. But for what purpose? Part of it, he guessed, was to judge his reaction. But by the informal way that he was treated, Ian suspected that Smith was looking for a contact that was not filled with ritual, nor blood kin, for that matter.

Finally a question almost anthropological in nature broke the silence.

"Why the swords? I mean, I've been observing your technological level and it's simply astounding. Why this anachronism? Now, don't take offense, but in my eyes swords are rather ridiculous in a technological level anywhere beyond the Napoleonic. It's even stranger when I can't trace any useful cultural lineage out of it. I mean, swords were never used in space in your time, at least, not in anything above a poorly written video thriller."

"But there is a cultural lineage," Smith replied. "There's a direct historical linkage that centers our society around the sword and the mystique of the warrior. One more stop, Ian Lacklin, and then I shall explain."

The adulation seemed to have put Franklin Smith in a jovial mood, and he laughed as he entered through the airlock into yet another golden room. Ian sat in the shuttle and waited as the waves of noise washed the interior. For several minutes he looked across the star-studded night, the familiar formations now changed, with some brighter, and others dimmed, or lost altogether. Finally he found the one he was looking for, almost lost in the harsh glare of Delta.

The chanting would soon be heard there, as well, Ian realized, and he, more than anyone else alive, would be the one responsible for the devastation to come. He, a historian, a studier of others, a bookworm lost in fantasies of the heroic past would be the cause. Ian suddenly realized that in this movement he might very well be the prime ingredient in the fate of an entire world.

As his eyes scanned the shuttle, Ian recognized the superior technology. Hell, they had a thousand-year head start, a thousand years without the long night, the plagues, the convulsive wars that followed. Only in the last two hundred years had Earth reemerged into the enlighten ment. For all practical purposes the only technological advantage his people had was the translight capability. In all others, they were sadly lacking. So now, thanks to his damnable curiosity, Earth's one small advantage would allow Smith to cross space in a matter of months-bring ing with him the fire and sword of vengeance.

The chants were still thundering as Smith slipped into the seat next to him, closed the airlocks, and broke free and away.

"The day we left Earth orbit," Smith suddenly stated, picking up on a question that Ian had already half for gotten, "we numbered just over one hundred thousand. The bastards who started the wars knew that we were trapped-we who were on that colony. Even if we made the engines, produced the sails, or deployed our ion packs, we were still trapped."

"Why?"

"Because the Earthside government forced one hundred thousand people aboard a colony designed for twenty-five thousand. It was such a crude analogy. Earth with her twelve billion had exceeded her carrying capacity, and those of us who protested and tried to alter that equation without resorting to war were forced onto a colony that had far exceeded its closed eco-capacity, as well. They knew we could only stay alive through massive trans shipments from Earth. Those bastards reasoned that if they were defeated, they could still destroy us outright or leave us in space to linger a slow death until we finally destroyed ourselves.

"I remember one of their leaders laughing at me when we had just reached solar system escape velocity. He said he would enjoy contemplating the ways that we would use to kill each other."

Smith stopped for a moment and looked straight in the direction of Sol and the Earth that he had escaped.

"I outlived you, you bastards!" Smith screamed. "You laughed at me and I beat you all. And I'll be back with billions to seek revenge."

"The sword," Ian asked, trying to divert Smith away from what appeared to be a potentially violent tirade.

"Yes, the sword, your question about the sword," Smith replied absently.

He looked off into space, as if searching for some distant, painful memory. "Consider this problem, Ian Lacklin. You are acknowledged as the great leader of a group. Be it through cunning, political stealth, charismatic awe, or, in the very rare case, through actual ability to rule. You have a closed system, there are one hundred thou sand people and you know that only twenty-five thousand will live. And you, Ian Lacklin, you alone can choose. What now would you do?"

Ian recoiled at the thought of the few possibilities. The harming of an insect was to him a moral question, and often he would catch a fly only to release it outside rather than kill it. True, he had played absurd "survival in the shelter" games while in graduate school, but this was different. The man before him was real and had faced that actual question-and had apparently solved it.

"I think I would have resigned or killed myself."

"Bullshit!" Smith thundered his response with such rage that Ian pulled back from him. "You sit here in your complacency and talk philosophical bullshit. First you absolve yourself of the problem, thereby attempting to make yourself morally superior. I hold such people in contempt. Complete contempt!"

"I'm not trying to show myself superior to you," Ian shouted back. "It's just that my mind rebels at finding a way to kill seventy-five thousand people."

Smith looked at Ian for a moment then smiled a sad, almost whimsical smile. "If any of my people had ever dared to speak to me like that, my followers would tear him apart. You know, I miss this. I truly miss this." He sighed and looked off into space for a moment. "Too bad it will have to end sometime.

"I still hold the moral whiners in contempt," Smith said, drawing the conversation back to its original path, "for they present an argument, such as nonviolence or disarmament and peace, while living in the safety of their sheltered lives. Let them truly be placed on the line, let them see their children starving in the name of peace, let them see their families bombed and raped-then see how their moral arguments stand.