Alexander Kazantsev - The Destruction of Faena

“Well?” asked the Dictator nervously.

“After thinking it over all night, I have decided to accept your offer and lead the expedition to the planet Terr.”

Yar Jupi started and sighed with relief.

“Urn Sat, having become an honorary longface, you confirm your wisdom. I shall glorify this on both continents. However, yesterday in the Temple of Eternity, I had in mind one stipulation which you will have to observe.”

“I also wanted to add a condition to my consent to head the expedition.”

“I can’t bear it when conditions are imposed on me,” said the Dictator, raising his voice slightly.

“It is rather the first practical step to complementing the space crew.”

“I shall complement the space crew with longfaces, the most worthy of the worthy.”

“Perhaps Dictator Yar Jupi will remember yesterday’s promise to include any of the longfaces in the crew.”

“I confirm that, even if it means my daughter.”

“The daughter of Dictator Yar Jupi?” Dm Sat was truly astonished. It had never even entered his head that the Dictator himself would talk about her first.

“Do you dare to regard my daughter as ballast on the flight when she is a Sister of Health?” said Yar Jupi, raising his voice.

Both men fell silent, studying each other. No matter how clever he might be, it had never occurred to Urn Sat that the Dictator had thought of saving his daughter from the horrors of a disintegration war by sending her on a space expedition; and however cunning and crafty Yar Jupi might be, he could not have presumed that Dm Sat had come to him solely in order to obtain his consent to his daughter’s flight to Terr.

“So you don’t want her to fly?” demanded Yar Jupi ominously. “You’re worried about her? I appreciate that Would you care to go over to those flowers? They are beautiful, are they not? Have you ever seen the like? Savour their aroma!…”

“I have never seen anything more beautiful than the daughter of Dictator Yar Jupi. Have no doubt that she will be the fairest flower on Terr…”

“Then we shall leave those blossoms in peace,” interrupted Yar Jupi curtly.

The body of Kutsi Merc was lying in a damp underground passage behind blank walls with a spiral ornament.

The casing of the artificial hump had been pierced and the air was entering it, slowly destroying the safety fuse.

No one on Faena, however, had an inkling of this danger on the day of the ceremonial farewell to the astronauts leaving for the planet Terr.

The expedition consisted of three Culturals and three Superiors, one of the latter being Mada Jupi.

For the toilers in the fields and workshops of Powermania, the day of the send-off was declared a public holiday so that the Faetians could go out on the road all the way as far as Cape Farewell, as the Dictator had named part of the Great Beach near the cosmodrome. This was the usual point of departure for all space probes, and also for the ships of the Superiors who were maintaining contact with Space Station Deimo. The proprietors hoped to gain considerable profits from the possible colonisation of the planets and were not parsimonious with their out lays.

Mada and Ave could not escape the feeling that they would soon find themselves being pursued. They were riding in the same steam-car as Dm Sat The old scientist was pensive and sad.

The young members of the expedition kept either looking back over their shoulders or looking intently at the Faetians who flashed past, standing on either side of the road and throwing flowers under the wheels of the car. There were roundheads and longfaces among them. They stood closely packed side by side, as if there were no distinction between them. For many Faetians, a joint expedition of the two continents to a planet was a symbol of peace and inspired them with the hope that it might be possible not only to come to terms on Faena and avoid a war, so but to send part of the population to other planets.

Many Faetians had come out onto the road with their children.

The Faetian landworkers were conspicuous with their dark suntan. Those who toiled in the workshop buildings had earthy complexions. But particularly noticeable were the Faetians from the deep mines. The coal-dust had so ingrained itself into their pores that their skin seemed dark, as if they were of another race and were neither longfaces nor roundheads.

Mada had withdrawn wholly into herself, depressed by what was happening. Like a true Faetess, she evaluated everything through the images near to her. She hardly remembered her own mother, but her nanny was to her a symbol of everything that she was leaving behind on Faena. She felt troubled because happiness lay ahead of her, whereas here… She shut her eyes tight.

When she opened them again, she saw that the road had reached the ocean. She looked at Ave, and her expression spoke volumes.

Ave had been thinking all the time about the Faetians standing by the roadside. Tomorrow they would return to workshops filled with the noise of lathes and the reek of oil. They would take up their stations by moving belts conveying the frames of machines in the process of stage-by-stage assembly, and they would stay there with no hope of Justice, compulsorily and joylessly toiling to the end of their hopeless days.

Ave Mar knew that on his shoulders lay the responsibility for the outcome of the space flight and how much it meant to all these deprived people.

Millions of these Faetians were also dreaming of happiness and the right to have children, whatever shape their heads might be. The means of annihilation alone must no longer be taken from the civilised world. Faena could not exist like that!

Um Sat was thinking sadly about the same thing. He was reflecting that the laws governing life of the whole community of the Faetians must evidently be understood like the laws of nature. The most serious mistake, apart from the discovery and promulgation of the means of disintegrating matter, was that, having lived until old age, he did not understand those laws. Why, for example, were the Faetian toilers creating with their hands not only what was needed to all for life, but also that which was capable of cutting that life off? Why did these crowds now seeing them off tolerate the power of a maniac who had made war his goal in life? Yar Jupi had now conceived the idea of making a grand gesture, of sending out an expedition to look for new “space continents”. But how would the settlers live out there? According to the former laws of Faena, taking injustice and the threat of wars into space? No, true wisdom was in seeking not only new planets to inhabit, for which even Yar Jupi was prepared, but new laws by which to live that would scare the daylight out of him. Only why had the half-crazed Dictator let his daughter go out into space so easily? It was no picnic, after all!…

As he compared one detail with another, the old sage of learning suddenly came to the frightening conclusion that the Dictator might be trying to save his daughter from an imminent disintegration war on Faena.

He looked in a different light at the crowds of Faetians who were seeing him off. Would he ever see them again?

Mada pressed Ave’s hand and looked round eloquently. Ave understood her fears…

Her alarm was not unfounded… Much had indeed been discovered in the Dictator’s palace.

Grom Alt, the brother of the dead Yar Alt, had stumbled on the trail. This was the Grom Alt who had escorted Um Sat to the Dictator.

The officer of the Blood Guard noticed a dark streak on the floor running from the Blood Door to Mada Jupi’s chambers, to the underground passage. Grom Alt was of too humble a rank to use the “blood” passage. But he decided that at all costs he must check what that stain was. He scraped up a sample of the dried substance and hurried to the laboratory.