Andre Norton - THE STARS ARE OURS

"But why?" Why, if Lars bad been working with this group so closely, hadn't he wanted to join them? Why had they had to live in the farmhouse on a starvation level, under constant fear of a roundup?

"Why didn't he come here?" It was as if Kimber bad picked that out of Dard's mind. "He said he wasn't sure he could make the trip-crippled as he was. He didn't want to try it until the last possible moment when it wouldn't matter if he were sighted trying-or traced here. He believed that he was under constant surveillance by some enemy and that the minute he, or any of you, made a move out of the ordinary, that enemy would bring in the Peacemen, perhaps before he had the answer to our problem. So you had to live on a very narrow edge of safety."

"Very narrow," Dard agreed. There was logic in what Kimber said. If Folley had been spying on them, and he must have or else he would not have appeared in the barn, he would have suspected something if any of them had not shown around the house as usual. Lars could never have made the journey they had just taken. Yes, he could see why his brother had waited until it was too late for him.

"But there's something else." Kimber sat down on the stool again, his elbows resting on his knees, his chin supported by his cupped hands.

"What do you know about the Temple of the Voice?"

Dard. still intent upon the problem of the cold sleep, was startled. Why did Kimber want to know about the innermost heart of the neighboring Pax establishment?

The 'Voice" was that giant computer to which representatives of Pax fed data-to have it digested and to receive back the logical directives which enabled them to control the thousands under their rule. He knew what the "Voice" was, had had it hazily described to him by hearsay. But he doubted whether any Free Scientist or any associate of such proscribed outlaws had ever dared to approach the"Temple" which housed it.

"It's the center of the Pax-" he began, only to have the pilot interrupt him.

"I mean- give me your own description of the place."

Dard froze. He hoped that his panic at that moment was not open enough to be marked. How did they know he had been to the Temple-through that mysterious digester which had picked over his memories while he was unconscious?

"You were there-two years ago," the other bored in relentlessly.

"Yes, I was there. Kathia was sick-there was just a chance of getting some medico to attend her if I could show a 'confidence card.' I made a Seventh Day visit but when I presented my attendance slip to the Circle they asked too many questions. I never got the card."

Kimber nodded. "It's okay, kid. I'm not accusing you of being a Pax plant. If you had been that, the digester would have warned us. But I have a very good reason for wanting to know about the Temple of the Voice. Now tell me everything you can remember-every detail."

Dard began. And discovered that his memory was a vivid one. He could recall the number of steps leading into the inner court and quote closely enough every word that the

"Laurel Crowned" speaker of that particular Seventh Day had spouted in his talk to the faithful. When he finished he saw that Kimber was regarding him with an expression of mingled amazement and admiration.

"Good Lord, kid, how do you remember everything-just from one short visit?"

Dard laughed shakily. "What's worse, I can't forget anything. I can tell you every detail of every day I've lived. since the purge. Before then," his hand went to his head,

"before then for some reason it's not so dear."

"Lots of us would rather not remember what happened since then. You get a pack of fanatics in control-the way Renzi's forces have taken over this ant hill of a world-and things crack wide open. We've organized our collective sanity to save our own lives. And there's nothing we can do about the rest of mankind now-when we're only a handful of outlaws hiding out in the wilderness. There's a good big price on the head of everyone here in the Cleft. The whole company of Pax would like nothing better than to round us up. Only we're planning to get away. That's why we have to have the help of the Voice."

"The Voice?"

Kimber swept over the half interruption. "You know what the Voice is, don't you? A computer-mechanical brain they used to call them. Feed it data, it digests the figures and then spews out an answer to any problem which would require months or years for a human mind to solve. The astrogation course, the one which is going to take us to a sun enough like Sol to provide us with a proper world, is beyond the power of our setting up. We have the data and all our puny calculations-but the Voice has to melt them down for us!"

Dard stared at this madman. No one but a Peaceman who had reached the ratified status of "Laurel Wearer" dared approach the inner sanctuary which held the Voice. And just how Kimber proposed to get there and set the machine to work on outlawed formula, he could not possibly guess.

Kimber volunteered no more information and Dard did not ask. In fact he half forgot it during the next few hours as he was shown that strange honeycomb fortress, blasted out of the living rock, which served the last of the Free Scientists as a base. Kimber was his guide and escort along the narrow passages, giving him short glimpses of Hydro-gardens, of strange laboratories, and once, from a vantage point, the star ship itself.

"Not too large, is she?" the pilot had commented, eyeing the long silvery dart with a full-sized frown. "But she's the best we could do. Her core is an experimental model designed for a try at the outer planets just before the purge. In the first days of the disturbance they got her here-or the most important parts of her-and we have been building ever since.

No, the ship wasn't large. Dard frankly could not see where all the toiling inhabitants of the Cleft were going to find berths on her, whether in the suspended animation of hibernation or not. But he didn't mention that aloud. Instead he said:

"I don't see how you've been able to hide out without detection this long."

Kimber grinned wickedly. "We have more ways than one. What do you think of this?" He drew his hand from his breeches pocket. On his dark palm lay a flat piece of shining metal.

"That, my boy, is gold! There's been precious little of it about for the past hundred years or so-governments buried their supplies of it and sat tight on them brooding. But it hasn't lost its magic. We have found many metals in these mountains and, while this is useless for our purposes, it still carries a lot of weight out there." He pointed to the peak which guarded the entrance to the Cleft. "We have our trading messengers and we fill hands in proper places. Then this is all camouflaged. If you were to fly across this valley in a 'copter, you'd see only what our techneers want you to. Don't ask me how they do it-some warping of the light rays-too deep for me." He shrugged. "I'm only a pilot waiting for a job."

"But if you are able to keep hidden, why 'Ad Astra'?"

Kimber rubbed the curve of his jaw with his thumb.

"For several reasons. Pax has all the power pretty well in its hands now, so the Peacemen are stretching to wipe out the last holes of resistance. We've been receiving a steady stream of warnings through our messengers and the outside men we've bought. The roundup gangs are consolidating- planning on a big raid. What we have here is the precarious safety of a rabbit crouching at the bottom of a burrow while the hound sniffs outside. We have no time for anything except the ship, preparing to take advantage of the thin promise for another future that it offers us. Lui Skort-he's a medico with a taste for history-gives Pax another fifty to a hundred years of life. And the Cleft can't last that long. So we'll try the chance in a million of going out-and it is a chance in a million. We may not find another earth-type planet, we may not ever survive the voyage. And, well, you can fill in a few of the other ifs, ands, and buts for yourself."