Zach Hughes - The Legend of Miaree

"We could have gone by driver," Miaree said, as she opened the entrance hatch and motioned Rei in. "But drivers are slow and I abhor them."

His interest soared. He noted that the second seat within the small ship seemed to be jury-rigged, set back at an angle behind the pilot’s seat. He took his place and Miaree sat in front of him. He looked past her shoulder. The instruments were unfamiliar to him. The ship was too small for atomics. He guessed that the dials measured some electromagnetic force. He watched and listened with great interest as she moved her hands, activating machinery within the hull, sending a crawl of some force over his skin to leave chill bumps there. She spoke into an instrument with her musical, birdlike voice, was answered. The check-out was businesslike.

The girl knew what she was about. And then, with clankings and jerkings, they were lifted, pushed, expelled. The full force of the sun came into the front viewer and he yelled in pain, his eyes unprotected. With impressive speed, she closed the viewer, hooding it to expel rays which were harmful to his eyes.

"Sorry." she said.

"You can take that stuff?" he asked. He’d closed his eyes before damage was done, but there were sun-ghosts dancing there.

He’d missed the unfolding of the wings. They billowed out in an impressive array, thin, almost invisible through the darkened viewer. Looking back, the satellite was already lost in the distance. This thing, he thought, really moves.

She was busy for a few moments, then, with a nod of her graceful head, she turned to him, loosing her belts. "It will not be a long flight," she said. "But perhaps we can use the time to some advantage." Her lips were held in, her eyes darkening in her intensity of manner. "You asked if there had been a decision. I said there had not been. That was only partially true. Whatever decision is made will, in the main, be dependent on what I can learn from you."

"We come in peace," he said.

"But you come."

"The fleet carries only a few," he said.

"May I ask how many is a few?"

"Ten thousand," he said, waiting for her reaction. "They are mainly technicians, but they have brought their families. It was felt that if, working together, we"—he used her term for it—"Delanians and you Artonuee could not find some solution to our problem, then our race could at least survive here among you."

Her yellow hair framed her eyes, which had gone deep purple.

"And in a hundred years," she asked, "how many will your ten thousand be then?" She turned, checked instruments. Flying down the solar wind, the Rim Star had reached maximum speed.

"Surely you can share a world with us," he said. "In the name of common humanity."

"And if we say no?"

"I can only hope that you won’t," he said.

"But?" She was looking at him, her eyes dark.

"We must survive," he said.

And Miaree shuddered inwardly. His race knew the power source of a sun. The application of such force for purposes of destruction was not an impossible concept. Had not the Artonuee exterminated a life form on The World to protect their eggs? That very subject had been discussed in her last meeting with Mother Aglee. The Artonuee had not used force against any life form in the past few thousand years.

"But," asked Lady Jonea, "if we were faced with a choice between extermination of our own life form and the destruction of another, would we hesitate?"

"We have no weapons," Miaree said.

"We have tools," Mother Aglee said. "Consider the destructive force of the mining torch applied to a life form."

And so it was that Miaree had taken to The World with her a hand-held mining torch. So it was that she had ordered a crewman to demonstrate the tool’s capabilities. But in all of the Artonuee worlds there were only a few such tools. And fewer men who knew how to operate them. What weapons had this alien at his disposal?

It had been decided that she should run a strong bluff. As she watched the disc of New World expand, she looked to it. "Should we so choose." she said carefully, "we could destroy your fleet in space, before it reaches the orbit of Five."

Actually, the mining torch had no such capability. It was a tool, not a weapon. It was designed for close-up work on the rocks of the asteroid belt and in the tunnels which bored into the earth.

Rei’s estimate of the technological abilities of the Artonuee was confused. First a chemical rocket, then a vehicle which flew, apparently, on the solar wind, a vehicle which hummed with a power unknown to him. It was just possible that they had such weapons. He would, he decided, withhold his threats. He would walk softly and learn.

"We do not," Miaree said, "wish to do so, of course, but we are faced with a difficult decision. As I have told you, our worlds are a part of a whole. Each has its place in the scheme of things. You saw vast, empty space on The World. Yet that space is not a luxury, but a necessity. Our ifflings require huge amounts of food, and they eat only the juplee leaf.

You may think, perhaps, that a colony of Delanians on The World would be acceptable? Not so. There is delicate balance. And, such an event would strike straight to the heart of our beliefs, for it is a religious experience when an Artonuee goes home."

"I am not familiar with your terms," Rei said.

Miaree sighed. "I’m sorry. You must understand, then, why we have decided that a long and private series of talks is desirable before we discuss the disposal of your people? Before we can talk rationally, we must know each other. We must know our mutual problems. For example, we Artonuee have long since conquered disease, but suppose your people bring in new strains from Delan? Suppose you yourself have contaminated

The World, the heart of our life?"

"I agree that we must talk," Rei said. "That was the purpose of sending our ship ahead of the fleet. We were to make known our peaceful intentions, trade technical knowledge. It was our hope that your own space explorations had discovered habitable planets toward the far rim. If not, we had hoped that we could combine our resources in such a search. For, as you must know, the worlds of the Artonuee will be bathed in deadly radiations when the giant globular clusters reach a critical mass."

She looked at him swiftly, swirls of red in the deep purple of her eyes.

"You don’t know?" he asked.

"The Fires of God are still distant," she said.

"Miaree, I must tell you. We, being closer, having observed the collision for a millennium, know the forces involved. To date, the collisions have been minor, and yet you can see them in the night sky. In each of the globular clusters there are a million stars, huge, hot, young, fully fueled stars. It is not a matter, when stars collide, of simple one-plus-one equals-two. The increase is geometric. Our astrophysicists estimate that the final explosion will make two thirds of the galaxy uninhabitable."

"Our scientists see no such immediate danger." Miaree said, hiding her shock, her doubt.

"Then you must take me to them," he said. "I can understand, now, your reluctance to welcome us. Your scientists must know that the end will come, but they are figuring the approach of the fires at a constant speed, right? They have no conception of the multiplication of effect?"

"For that," she said pointedly, "we have only your word. And you have something to gain."

"But I can prove it, with data, with the results of our observations. My god, haven’t you sent ships toward the collisions to measure?"

She turned away. He knew, then.

"You don’t have star travel," he said.

She looked at him. "Now do you see why we must talk first?"

He shrugged. "So we are further advanced in one field than you. You have your own advances. This ship, for example. It operates on a principle which is unknown to me. But our weapons are similar. That is, the weapon which you so pointedly demonstrated to me is similar to the weapons of our own fleet. Yet we work for the same thing, for survival of our races. Can’t you see that we have that, at least, in common?"