Alexander Kazantsev - The Destruction of Faena

Gor Terr bellowed with laughter, as during his recent crazy spell.

“D’you want me to pay you off, kid, tie your hands together and dump you in an empty airlock? I feel sorry for you. Just get this into your head: no one needs my Quest any more. I shall be the first to break it up. So out of the way, my dear Toni Fae.”

“Kill your old friend first!”

Ave Mar turned to Mada in his astonishment.

Her face was troubled and her eyes were sad.

“Get out of the way!” roared Gor Terr.

“Stop,” came a feeble voice from the hatch. Overcoming his weakness, Um Sat climbed up into the control cabin. (Gor Terr involuntarily froze in front of Toni Fae, not thrusting him aside after all.) “Stop,” repeated Um Sat. “The spaceship Quest is inviolable. Everything is changing in the life of the Faetians. They must choose a new way.”

Again Ave Mar looked at the alarmed, saddened Mada.

Gor Terr stood still in bewilderment.

Toni Fae rushed to the electromagnetic communications apparatus.

Ala Veg realised that her husband was going to die. When she made the mutual suicide pact with Toni Fae, she prepared for the forthcoming electromagnetic communications session by stealing from Mrak Luton a pistol loaded with a poisoned bullet.

Tycho Veg was fading away. Completely bald, without even eyebrows and beard, he was lying on the bed in the Vegs’ common cabin and was staring intently at his wife as if from somewhere far way. Ala Veg could not stand that anguished stare and fled into the observatory.

She went over to the electromagnetic communications apparatus and looked for a long time at the bullet with the brown prickles which she had hidden on the control panel among the instruments.

She was afraid that she might not be able to squeeze it in her fist, although somewhere out there, on faraway Terr, young Toni Fae, who loved her, must depart this life at the same time. She was afraid of inflicting this last blow on her dying husband. Ala Veg was torn by contradictory feelings. She could not recover from the knowledge that her children had perished. The starry distance that separated her from them, however, was dulling her despair. And yet the starry distance to Terr, which brought her the young man’s voice after a long delay, had not prevented her from turning his head and even persuading him to commit suicide with her. But Tycho Veg was here, close to her, was suffering, and was looking at her out of non-existence with huge sad eyes. Ala Veg wept a great deal and stopped observing the stars altogether. What was the point of all that now?

Engineer Tycho Veg died at dinner-time as quietly as he had lived. His wife remained at his side, unable to do anything to help. His naked head with the shadows of the sunken eyes, the taut skin of the face and the grin of the sagging lower jaw were indeed reminiscent of a skull.

When Ala Veg realised that her husband was no more, she was seized by a fit of rage.

Flinging the door wide open, she burst noisily into the common cabin where the Lutons and Brat Lua were having their dinner. Lada Lua was waiting on them at table.

Mrak Luton, flabby, pot-bellied and pompous, was presiding at the table.

“I accuse you, Mrak Luton!” screamed Ala Veg from the threshold. “You murdered my husband Tycho Veg! You made him charge a torpedo with a warhead that wasn’t even screened against radiation!”

Mrak Luton went purple in the face. His pendulous cheeks bulged, his small eyes darted about frantically.

“Is this mutiny?” he wheezed. “I won’t stand for it! Silence! Who incited you, a longhead, to this insubordination?”

“My husband Tycho Veg is dead. Stand up, all of you. Honour his memory and curse his murderer, who is sitting at the head of this table.”

Brat Lua and Lada rose to their feet. Nega Luton played for time, pretending that she had difficulty in rising from the table, but she stood up nevertheless. Mrak Luton remained seated, frenziedly rolling his eyes and fingering the pistol which he was holding in his hand under the table.

“There is no insubordination here, deep-thinking Mrak Luton,” said Brat Lua in a conciliatory tone of voice. “There is only the grief and despair of a Faetess, and that cannot but be respected. We all share your grief. Ala Veg. Engineer Tycho Veg was a good Faetian and of his own accord he would never have begun sending torpedoes to Station Phobo.”

“What? Is this treachery? Have you forgotten that all the power in space belongs to me, the heir of Dictator Yar Jupi? Don’t forget that the ship Quest is also subordinate to me. Only I, in the name of the Blood Council, can command it to return here in order to deliver us all to Terr, where we can enjoy a life of ease.”

“You are mistaken, deep-thinking Mrak Luton,” objected Brat Lua. “There isn’t enough fuel on board the ship to ferry us all to Terr. There isn’t enough on the station either. And there is even less fuel on Phobo.” “What happened to all the fuel? You and engineer Tycho Veg were answerable for it with your lives!”

“Deep-thinking Mrak Luton has forgotten that on his orders Engineer Tycho Veg fuelled the two torpedo-ships sent to Phobo. A similar madness was also committed on Station Phobo.”

“Madness? Silence! How dare you, as a roundhead, condemn the Dictator’s successor? I, a Supreme Officer of the Blood Guard, remain so in space! You are under arrest! I am going to shoot you like a crazed lizard!”

“Wise husband, I implore you,” intervened Nega Luton. “Why use a pistol? After the death of our beloved engineer, the roundhead will be the only one left on the station who can handle the machinery. It’s his duty to provide us with the facilities.”

“You are right, Nega! Thank the gentle lady, roundhead! You will simply get away with imprisonment in my office. Quick march!”

Brat Lua meekly went ahead of the station chief, who kept prodding him in the back with his pistol.

When both Faetians had left the common cabin, Ala Veg turned to the remaining Faetesses.

“Isn’t it enough that Faena has perished? Why must its satellite go the same fatal way? Power, dictatorship, murder?”

“What d’you want, you poor wretch? To rise up against my husband?” demanded Nega Luton angrily.

“You stopped him yourself. If he kills Brat Lua, then we won’t have anyone left who can understand the station’s machinery, and Lada Lua might well refuse to feed us. Then we’ll all perish because of that crazy old man of yours.”

“Aren’t you trying to talk me into mutiny?” sneered Nega Luton.

“Let it be mutiny, then!” confirmed Ala Veg hysterically. “If mutiny will save us, we’ll go that far.”

“How can there be any talk of salvation if there aren’t any spare ships at the stations?” insisted Nega.

“There’s Quest. It could fly here.”

“Why? To add to our starving mouths? Or because there happens to be a certain young man among the astronauts who has finally taken widow Veg’s fancy?”

“Shut up, you viper! Get it into your tiny lizard’s brain that Brat Lua planned an underground settlement on the surface of Mar. In such a shelter, on Mar, the Faetian survivors could go on living.”

“That’s not living, that’s vegetating.”

“I’ve been wanting to say for some time,” interposed Lada Lua, “that there aren’t enough fruits in the greenhouse. But my husband wanted to grow a great many nutritive greens on the surface of Mar. There would be enough not only for us, but for our children.”

“What children do you mean?” asked Nega Luton, stamping her foot. “Have you forgotten, you pug-nosed fattie, about the law forbidding you to have children in space?”