Andre Norton - The Science Fiction anthology

I fell in what was left of my Company behind the men that had saved us. More Company uniforms than I had ever seen in one place. They said nothing. Just walked into a hole in that mountain. Into a cave. And in the cave, at the far end, a door opened. An elevator. We followed the tall old man into the elevator and it began to descend. The elevator car went down for a long time. At last I could see a faint glow far below. The glow grew brighter and the car stopped. Far below the glow was still brighter. We all stepped out into a long corridor cut from solid rock. I estimated that we were at least two hundred miles down and the glow was hundreds of miles deeper. We went through three sealed doors and emerged into a vast room. A room bright with light and filled with more men in Company uniforms, civilians, even women. At least a thousand. And I saw it. The thousand refugees, all of them. Gathered from all the Companies, from wherever they had been in the Galaxies. Gathered here in a room two hundred miles into the heart of their dead planet. A room filled with giant machines. Ionic machines. Highly advanced ionic power reactors.

The old man stood in front of his people and spoke. “I am Jason Portario, I thank you for coming.”

I broke in, “Ionic power is an execution offense. You know that. How the hell did you get all this ...”

“I know the offense, Commander,” Portario said, “and I know you. You’re a fair man. You’re a brave man. It doesn’t matter where we got the power, many men are dead to get it, but we have it, and we will keep it. We have a job to do.”

I said, “After that stunt out there you’ve about as much chance as a snowball in hell. O’Hara’s half way to Galaxy Center. Look, with a little luck we get you out to Salaman. If you leave all this equipment I might be able to hide you until it blows over.”

The old man shrugged. “I would have preferred not to show our hand, but we had to save you. I was aware that the Council would find us out sooner or later, they missed the ionic material a month ago. But that is unimportant. The important matter is will you take our job? All we need is another two days, perhaps three. Can you hold off an attack for that long?”

“Why?” I asked.

Portario smiled. “All right, Commander, you should know all we plan. Sit down, and let me finish before you speak.”

I sat. Rajay-Ben sat. The agitation of his colored lights showed that he was as disturbed as I was. The thousand Nova-Mauranians stood there in the room and watched us. Yuan Saltario stood with his friends. I could feel his eyes on me. Hot eyes. As if something inside that lost man was burning again. Portario lighted a pipe. I had not seen a pipe since I was a child. The habit was classified as ancient usage in the United Galaxies. Portario saw me staring. He held his pipe and looked at it.

“In a way, Commander,” the old man said, “this pipe is my story. On Nova-Maurania we liked a pipe. We liked a lot of the old habits. Maybe we should have died with all the others. You know, I was the one who found the error. Sometimes I’m not at all sure my friends here thank me for it. Our planet is dead, Commander, and so are we. We’re dead inside. But we have a dream. We want to live again. And to live again our planet must live again.” The old man paused as if trying to be sure of telling it right. “We mean no harm to anyone. All we want is our life back. We don’t want to live forever like lumps of ice circling around a dead heart. What we plan may kill us all, but we feel it is worth the risk. We have thousands of ionic power reactors. We have blasted out Venturi tubes. We found life still deep in the center of this planet. It is all ready now. With all the power we have we will break the hold of our dead sun and send this planet off into space! We ...”

I said, “You’re insane! It can’t ...”

“But it can, Commander. It’s a great risk, yes, but it can be done, my calculations are perfect! We want to leave this dead system, go off into space and find a new star that will bring life back to our planet! A green, live, warm Nova-Maurania once again!”

Rajay-Ben was laughing. “That’s the craziest damned dream I ever sat still for. You know what your chances of being picked up by another star are? Picked up just right? Why ...”

Portario said, “We have calculated the exact initial thrust, the exact tangential velocity, the precise orbital path we need. If all goes exactly, I emphasize, exactly , to the last detail as we have planned it we can do it! Our chances of being caught by the correct star in the absolutely correct position are one in a thousand trillion, but we can do it!”

It was so impossible I began to believe he was right. “If you aren’t caught just right?”

Portario’s black eyes watched me. “We could burn up or stay frozen and lifeless. We could drift in space forever as cold and dead as we are now and our ionic power won’t last forever. The forces we will use could blow the planet apart. But we are going to try. We would rather die than live as walking dead men in this perfect United Galaxies we do not want.”

The silence in the room was like a Salaman fog. Thick silence broken only by the steady hum of the machines deep beneath us in the dead planet. A wild, impossible dream of one thousand lost souls. A dream that would destroy them, and they did not care. There was something about it all that I liked.

I said, “Why not get Council approval?”

Portario smiled. “Council has little liking for wild dreams, Commander. It would not be considered as advancing the future of United Galaxies’ destiny. Then there are the ionics.” And Portario hesitated. “And there is the danger of imbalance, Galactic imbalance. I have calculated carefully, the danger is remote, but Council is not going to take even a remote chance.”

Yuan Saltario broke in. “All they care about is their damned sterile destiny! They don’t care about people. Well we do! We care about something to live for. The hell with the destiny of the Galaxies! They don’t know, and we’ll be gone before they do know.”

“They know plenty now. O’Hara’s beamed them in.”

“So we must hurry,” Portario said. “Three days, Commander, will you protect us for three days?”

A Council offense punishable by instant destruction with United Galaxies reserve ionic weapons in the hands of the super-secret police and disaster teams. And three days is a long time. I would be risking my whole Company. I heard Rajay-Ben laugh.

“Blast me, Red, it’s so damned crazy I’m for it. Let’s give it a shot.”

I did not know then how much it would really cost us. If I had I might not have agreed. Or maybe I would have, it was good to know people could still have such dreams in our computer age.

“Okay,” I said, “beam the full Companies and try to get one more. Mandasiva’s Sirian boys would be good. We’ll split the fee three ways.”

Yuan Saltario said, “Thanks, Red.”

I said, “Thank me later, if we’re still around.”

We beamed the Companies and in twenty minutes they were on their way. Straight into the biggest trouble we had had since the War of Survival. I expected trouble, but I didn’t know how much. Pete Colenso tipped me off.

Pete spoke across the light years on our beam. “Mandasiva says okay if we guarantee the payment. I’ve deposited the bond with him and we’re on our way. But, Red, something’s funny.”

“What?”

“This place is empty. The whole damned galaxy out here is like a desert. Every Company has moved out somewhere.”

“Okay,” I beamed, “get rolling fast.”

There was only one client who could hire all the Companies at one time. United Galaxies itself. We were in for it. I had expected perhaps ten Companies, not three against 97, give or take a few out on other jobs. It gave me a chill. Not the odds, but if Council was that worried maybe there was bad danger. But I’d given my word and a Companion keeps his word. We had one ace in the hole, a small one. If the other Companies were not here in Menelaus yet, they must have rendezvoused at Galaxy Center. It was the kind of “follow-the-book” mistake United would make. It gave us a day and a half. We would need it.