Zach Hughes - Closed System

Pat picked passages at random from the various volumes. Interesting, very, very interesting. Thescholars at the university would bury themselvesin these books for decades, for in the ponderouswords of von Forster, in the history of religion onOld Earth, were hints of information which was new and dazzling. If von Forster could be trusted,Earth had had a rich and long history before thedestruction, with fragmented and isolated segmentsof the population reaching for modern civilizationat different times, in different areas.

Von Forster would be a feast for the scholar, andthere was no doubt in Pat's mind that the informa­tion which the man had written to explain thesocial basis for the various religions and cults andgods and goddesses would give man his deepestlook into his forgotten past.

But that could, perhaps, come later.

He had Corinne's permission to go anywherewithin the temple complex. It was just a matter of exploration. The word had obviously been passedto the priests who presided over the functions ofthe temple, for he was never stopped, never ques­tioned. When he discovered an elevator which onlywent down, he felt tendrils of excitement. He pushedthe button. The car came up, the door opened, andgoing into the car, he saw that there was but onefloor below ground level. The elevator opened intoa cavernous chamber, crowded with equipment,test benches, people.

He wandered around idly, being nodded to by the "priests" working at various tasks. To him, a lot of the work going on looked like humbug, forsome of the priests were working with native pro­duce and vegetation, testing various chemical re­actions. His opinion was confirmed when one busypriest told him that for twenty years he'd beenworking with a particularly hardy native thornbush, feeding it variously treated extracts of po­tato pulp in order to influence it to produce edible fruit.

But behind a shielded door, deep under the earth,white-smocked young men monitored the hundredsof instruments of the nuclear reactor, and they, atleast, knew what they were doing.

He saw no odd, deadly weapon. He did not get his first hint of it until he discovered an almosthidden doorway and went through a sound lockinto the bedlam of excited young voices and anodd hissing of power followed by low claps ofthunder. He rounded another baffle and saw adozen young men seated in command chairs, some­thing very much like his own fire-control helmeton their heads. At the far end of the chamber therewas swift movement and he saw a small, perfectlyoutlined UP battle cruiser flash across the wall, quickly realized that it was a holo image, saw it shudder as a great shout went up from the youngmen.

The next target, for target practice it was, wasmarked with the autonomous flag of the Zede sys­tems, and that cruiser was blasted—the low thun­der was artificial and came from speakers mounted near the target area—by his young friend Gorben,occupying the command chair closest to him. Hewalked over to stand behind Gorben.

"Honored One," Gorben said, "we are indeedblessed that you come to watch our schooling."

"Carry on," Pat said.

"I shall blast an enemy ship especially for you,Honored One," Gorben said.

A UP destroyer zoomed toward them out of thedistance, and with incredible swiftness and dex­terity Gorben brought the snout of his weapon tobear and caught the destroyer in a looping evasiveturn. The low thunder came as the image of the destroyer glowed.

"And thus perish all followers of the Anti-Christ,"Gorben said.

"You're pretty good with that thing," Pat said.

"Honored One, I am the cadet leader, thus hon­ored for my studious concentration and my luckwith the Devil Destroyer."

"Congratulations," Pat said. "Keep up the good work, Gorben."

They were all good, all the young men. And thefire-direction controls were the latest available.All Gorben had to do was direct his eyes and histhoughts to the target and the odd-looking short- snouted weapon swiveled with a hum of gears, thesnout moving almost faster than the eye couldfollow. Pat suspected that the entire setup wasnothing more than a simulator. If the weaponshad been putting out any kind of beam, or charge,the solid stone wall behind the target area would have been affected, possibly reflecting the force back toward the men behind the weapons. How­ever, it was a highly effective simulator, with the target ships being in scale to the distances at whicha battle in space would be fought at laser range.

Pat watched until a priest called a halt to thefiring practice, dismissed one group of young men,and while they stood around, chattering excitedlyabout the exercise, seated another group behindthe weapons. Pat walked toward the exit withGorben.

"Will you be with us, Honored One?" Gorbenasked.

"I'm not sure yet," Pat said.

"You shouldn't miss it, Honored One. What aglorious moment it will be when we destroy allthe minions of the evil satans and demons and are, ourselves, returned to power and the glory whichwas once ours, through our godly ancestors."

"You are expert with the weapon," Pat said,fishing for information. "Do you know how itfunctions?"

"Honored One," Gorben said, "I can take theDevil Destroyer apart piece by piece and reassem­ble it with my eyes hidden."

"Good, very good. Can you also repair and main­tain the power source?" He was still fishing. Obvi­ously, such a weapon had to have a power source.

"I am not schooled in that phase," Gorben said."I know, however, that the power source camewith our godly ancestors, and that the secret iscontained within the shell in the form of minutemagic writings on thin wafers of magic. It is whathappens within the Devil Destroyer itself which is in my field of schooling."

The other young men in Gorben's group hadhurried on, eager to be outside in the pleasantclimate of Dorchlunt. Pat and Gorben walked downa long corridor toward the exit alone.

"Let's test your schooling, young man," Pat said."Recite to me your lessons regarding the Devil Destroyer."

"Sir," Gorben said briskly, coming to a halt, standing at attention. He began to rattle off sub­atomic data, most of which was beyond Pat's understanding. He knew enough of the theory to be amazed that the scientists of Zede had been soadvanced in the field over a thousand years ago.

"Very good," Pat said, wishing that he'd beenable to record Gorben's recitation. "Now here's another exercise, Gorben. As you know, we willsoon be going back to the glory of Zede, where wewill encounter people not so advanced as we. Let'simagine that we have been returned to our glory,and that a new ally, a new friend who does notunderstand your learning, asks you just how the Devil Destroyer works. What would you tell him,in nontechnical language?"

"This imagined friend does not know the magicwords?"

"No. He is unschooled in the magic."

"Ah," Gorben said. "That is difficult."

"We will imagine that I am that person, and Iwill ask you questions. First, what is the source of the Devil Destroyer's power?'

"Sir," Gorben said, "the final emission of devil-destroying purity originates from two sources ofpower. One, the primary power source, can bedriven in several ways, by solar heat, by electricitygenerated by a nuclear reactor, or by the auxiliarypower systems of a ship. The primary power source provides accelerated-particle energy to tap the sec­ondary power source, which is mounted in theDevil Destroyer itself. Calling the power source inthe Devil Destroyer secondary is somewhat mis­leading, since it is there, in the closed system, thatthe particles are accelerated to multiples of the speed of light—"

"Whoa," Pat said. "Can you explain that to me?"

"Honored One, I thought I was explaining."

"Yes, but I'm that imagined man who knowsnothing about—what was it you said, the closedsystem?"