Hal Clement - Cycle of Fire

Devastating though his emotion was it did not become vocal, for Nils Kruger started talking first. Dar listened to precisely the points about fair play, honesty, and decency that had been discussed by Burke and Richter, but did not fully understand the terms used. In any case he did not pay full attention; he was trying to decide on his own line of action.

Argument would presumably be useless. The men would have formed their opinions on what they had learned of him and his people. He could not quite see why Abyormen constituted a danger to the galaxy, but had come to hold the opinions of the human scientists in high respect. In spite of this he found that his natural sense of duty was urging him to go against Burke’s decision — to argue, lie, or commit violence to get what he considered vital information back to his own people. A third impulse was furnished by his natural curiosity; had it not been for duty, he would have liked nothing better than traveling to Earth with his friends — if he could still call them that — and seeing some of the worlds Kruger and the astronomers had described to him. He might have started to speak, bringing his dilemma out in the open, but Kruger never gave him a chance. The boy was forgetting all the discipline that cadet training had drilled into him and coming perilously close to using personal abuse on the commander. The full significance of this escaped Dar, of course, since he had only the vaguest knowledge of Kruger’s background, but he did understand clearly that the boy wanted to let him go back to his people.

It seemed unlikely that Kruger would win his argument with the commander; Dar did have some idea of the relative ranks involved. Could he slip out while the argument was going on and steal one of the landing boats? He had watched carefully more than once while they were being flown; could he handle one himself? With his memory there was no question of his pushing the wrong button after he had once seen the right one pushed. However, his lifetime of fiying preserved him from what would almost certainly have been a fatal error. He realized that there was much more to handling any sort of space ship than he could possibly have learned by observation alone in a couple of dozen rides.

Could he stow away? Unlikely. These men, whatever else they might be, could not be called stupid. Once the commander had ordered that Dar Lang Ahn was not to return to Abyormen, steps would most certainly be taken to enforce the decision.

Could Kruger steal a boat and fly him down? Undoubtedly he could, since he could certainly fly the machines, but Dar was hampered in deciding the answer to this question by his ignorance of the weight of authority among human beings. There was no way to tell whether the boy would. He recognized this lack, and filed the idea for future checking when he could see Kruger alone.

Could he —

His reverie was interrupted at this point by the raised voice of Commander Burke.

“Mr. Kruger! I called this meeting for intelligent discussion, not tear-jerking or personal abuse. Unless you have a meaningful argument to present, you will be silent. I understand your feelings, I share them, and I have weighed the moral issues involved at least as carefully as you have. Do me the favor to remember that I have a number of responsibilities which you do not as yet share and which you quite evidently have not considered. I did not ask for a vote or an expression of opinion from anyone. I stated a conclusion I have reached, to wit, that Dar Lang Ahn’s race — or races, I suppose I should say — will constitute a danger to mankind if they leave their native planet. I firmly believe that the government will share that opinion. However, if you or anyone else has information which might require the modification of it, by all means speak up.”

Kruger was silent, realizing suddenly just how far he had gone and feeling gratitude to the officer for the relative mildness of the rebuke. Unfortunately he had nothing to say which could possibly be construed as information.

The silence was interrupted by another of Dar’s friends, an astronomer named Murchison.

“I’m afraid that there is another point to be considered,” he said slowly, “and I’m fairly sure it will not only cause the government to reach a different conclusion from yours, Commander, but will have them doing their level best to get both Abyormenite races educated as soon as possible.”

“Let’s have it!” the commander replied instantly.

“The main fact is that if we leave these people on this planet, it will amount to an act of genocide. This planet is a poor home for us and at the moment a necessary home for its inhabitants, but before too long it’s not going to be any sort of home for anyone.”

“How long? And why not?”

“Because this is not a stable system. Abyormen seems to have been formed in a more or less normal manner as a planet of the red dwarf sun the local natives call Theer, but at that time Alcyone was nowhere in the neighborhood. For one thing the light pressure of Alcyone is such that a planet could not have formed in its neighborhood.”

“I’ve heard that before, but didn’t see how you were going to keep that theory going, since the planet is here.”

“I didn’t for a while myself. However, there is geological evidence that what I say is true; the tremendous seasonal changes of this planet, due to the elliptical path of Theer about Alcyone, did not occur throughout the early portion of the world’s history, but only in the last few million years. One of two things happened; either Theer was captured by Alcyone fairly recently, or the giant star actually formed in the neighborhood of the dwarf. I incline to the latter view; we are inside a star cluster where the space is loaded — relatively speaking — with gas and dust. It is more than likely that Theer’s entrance into the cluster, if it was not originally a member of it, created enough turbulence to start a condensation in its neighborhood.”

“I can see how that: fits in with the geological time scale, but doesn’t it emphasize my point about the adaptability of these races?”

“In a way, yes, but I don’t believe that any organic structure could adapt to the fate in store for this system. Remember what I said — the space in this vicinity is full of gas and dust. Therefore, it is not a frictionless medium. That is why the alternate theory — that Alcyone captured the Theer system — is possible. The friction is continually shortening Theer’s orbit. More and more of each year is being spent in the hot zone, and less and less at a distance from the giant star which permits Dar’s people to live. Unless Alcyone drifts out of the Pleiades cluster, which it doesn’t seem about to do, another half million or million years will see the red sun, together with Abyormen, dropping into it.”

“That’s a long time.”

“It’s an indefinite time, and long before it expires Abyormen will be uninhabitable for even the ‘hot’ form of life. It’s our business to get these races off the planet or at least help them get themselves off; otherwise we’re guilty of criminal negligence.”

“But if Alcyone’s light pressure kept the matter which should have formed planets away from it, how can there be enough in the vicinity to create the friction you say?”

“The effect of light pressure on a particle, compared to that of gravity, is a function of the size and density of the particle. I assure you that we have made plenty of measurements throughout this volume of space and I’m not just guessing at what will happen. The only thing I’m seriously doubtful about is whether Theer itself will pick up enough matter so that its own increasing luminosity will sterilize this planet before the final fall occurs. I can’t say which will happen first, but one of them will most certainly happen.”