Annoyed at letting his attention stray from the immediate problem, the captain reread the message he now knew by heart:

SHIPNET: NO DATE NO TIME TO: CAPTAIN FROM: ANON

Sir: A number of us wish to make the following proposal, which we put forward for your most serious consideration. We suggest that our mission be terminated here at Thalassa.

All its objectives will be realized, without the additional risks involved in proceeding to Sagan 2. We fully recognize that this will involve problems with the existing population, but we believe they can be solved with the technology we possess - specifically, the use of tectonic engineering to increase the available land area.

As per Regulations, Section 14, Para 24 (a), we respectfully request that a Ship's Council be held to discuss this matter as soon as possible.

'Well, Captain Malina? Ambassador Kaldor? Any comments?'

The two guests in the spacious but simply furnished captain's quarters looked at each other simultaneously. Then Kaldor gave an almost imperceptible nod to the deputy captain, and confirmed his relinquishment of priority by taking another slow, deliberate sip of the excellent Thalassan wine their hosts had provided.

Deputy Captain Malina, who was rather more at ease with machines than with people, looked at the printout unhappily.

'At least it's very polite.'

'So I should hope,' Captain Bey said impatiently. 'Have you any idea who could have sent it?'

'None whatsoever. Excluding the three of us, I'm afraid we have 158 suspects.'

'157,' Kaldor interjected. 'Lieutenant Commander Lorenson has an excellent alibi. He was dead at the time.'

'That doesn't narrow the field much,' the Captain said, managing a bleak smile. 'Have you any theories, Doctor?'

Indeed I have, Kaldor thought. I lived on Mars for two of its long years; my money would be on the Sabras. But that's only a hunch, and I may be wrong...

'Not yet, Captain. But I'll keep my eyes open. If I find anything, I'll inform you - as far as possible.'

The two officers understood him perfectly. In his role as counsellor, Moses Kaldor was not even responsible to the captain. He was the nearest thing aboard Magellan to a father confessor.

'I assume, Dr Kaldor, that you'll certainly let me know - if you uncover information that could endanger this mission.'

Kaldor hesitated, then nodded briefly. He hoped he would not find himself in the traditional dilemma of the priest who received the confession of a murderer - who was still planning his crime.

I'm not getting much help, the captain thought sourly. But I have absolute trust in these two men, and need someone to confide in. Even though the final decision must be mine.

'The first question is should I answer this message or ignore it? Either move could be risky. If it's only a casual suggestion -perhaps from a single individual in a moment of psychological disturbance - I might be unwise to take it too seriously. But if it's from a determined group, then perhaps a dialogue may help. It could defuse the situation. It could also identify those concerned.' And what would you do then? the captain asked himself. Clap them in irons?

'I think you should talk to them,' Kaldor said. 'Problems seldom go away if they're ignored.'

'I agree,' said Deputy Captain Malina. 'But I'm sure it's not any of the Drive or Power crews. I've known all of them since they graduated - or before.'

You could be surprised, Kaldor thought. Who ever really knows anyone?

'Very well,' the captain said, rising to his feet. 'That's what I'd already decided. And, just in case, I think I'd better reread some history. I recall that Magellan had a little trouble with his crew.'

'Indeed he did,' Kaldor answered. 'But I trust you won't have to maroon anyone.'

Or hang one of your commanders, he added to himself; it would have been very tactless to mention that particular piece of history.

And it would be even worse to remind Captain Bey - though surely he could not have forgotten! - that the great navigator had been killed before he could complete his mission.

 

32 Clinic

This time, the way back to life had not been prepared so carefully in advance. Loren Lorenson's second awakening was not as comfortable as his first; indeed, it was so unpleasant that he sometimes wished he had been left to sink into oblivion.

When he regained semiconsciousness, he quickly regretted it. There were tubes down his throat, and wires attached to his arms and legs. Wires! He felt a sudden panic at the memory of that deadly, downward tugging, then brought his emotions under control.

Now there was something else to worry about. He did not seem to be breathing; he could detect no movement of his diaphragm. How very odd - oh, I suppose they've by-passed my lungs -

A nurse must have been alerted by his monitors, for suddenly there was a soft voice in his ear, and he sensed a shadow falling across eyelids that he was still too tired to open.

'You're doing very well, Mister Lorenson. There's nothing to worry about. You'll be up in a few days - No, don't try to talk.'

I'd no intention of it, Loren thought. I know exactly what's happened -

Then there was the faint hiss of a hypodermic jet, a brief freezing coldness on his arm, and, once more, blessed oblivion.

The next time, to his great relief, everything was quite different. The tubes and wires were gone. Though he felt very weak, he was in no discomfort. And he was breathing again in a steady, normal rhythm.

'Hello,' said a deep male voice from a few metres away. 'Welcome back.'

Loren rolled his head towards the sound, and had a blurred glimpse of a bandaged figure in an adjacent bed.

'I guess you won't recognize me, Mister Lorenson. Lieutenant Bill Horton, communications engineer - and ex-surfboard rider.'

'Oh, hello, Bill - what have you been doing -' whispered Loren. But then the nurse arrived and ended that conversation with another well-placed hypodermic.

Now he was perfectly fit and only wanted to be allowed to get up. Surgeon-Commander Newton believed that, on the whole, it was best to let her patients know what was happening to them, and why. Even if they didn't understand, it helped to keep them quiet so that their annoying presence did not interfere too much with the smooth running of the medical establishment.

'You may feel all right, Loren,' she said, 'but your lungs are still repairing themselves, and you must avoid exertion until they're back to full capacity. If Thalassa's ocean was like Earth's, there would have been no problem. But it's much less saline - it's drinkable, remember, and you drank about a litre of it. And as your body fluids are saltier than the sea, the isotonic balance was all wrong. So there was a good deal of membrane damage through osmotic pressure. We had to do a lot of high-speed research in Ship's Archives before we could handle you. After all, drowning is not a normal space hazard.'

'I'll be a good patient,' Loren said. 'And I certainly appreciate all you've done. But when can I have visitors?'

'There's one waiting outside right now. You can have fifteen minutes. Then nurse will throw her out.'

And don't mind me,' Lieutenant Bill Horton said. 'I'm fast asleep.'

 

33 Tides

Mirissa felt distinctly unwell, and of course it was all the fault of the Pill. But at least she had the consolation of knowing that this could only happen one more time - when (and if!) she had the second child permitted to her.

It was incredible to think that virtually all the generations of women who had ever existed had been forced to endure these monthly inconveniences for half their lives. Was it pure coincidence, she wondered, that the cycle of fertility approximated to that of the Earth's single giant Moon? Just suppose it had worked the same way on Thalassa, with its two close satellites! Perhaps it was just as well that their tides were barely perceptible; the thought of five- and seven-day cycles clashing discordantly together was so comically horrible that she could not help smiling and immediately felt much better.

It had taken her weeks to make the decision, and she had not yet told Loren - still less Brant, busily repairing Calypso back on North Island. Would she have done this if he had not left her - for all his bluster and bravado, running away without a fight?

No - that was unfair, a primitive, even prehuman reaction. Yet such instincts died hard; Loren had told her, apologetically, that sometimes he and Brant stalked each other down the corridors of his dreams.

She could not blame Brant; on the contrary, she should be proud of him. It was not cowardice, but consideration, that had sent him north until they could work out both their destinies.

Her decision had not been made in haste; she realized now that it must have been hovering below the verge of consciousness for weeks. Loren's temporary death had reminded her - as if she needed reminding! - that soon they must part forever. She knew what must be done before he set forth for the stars. Every instinct told her that it was right.

And what would Brant say? How would he react? That was another of the many problems yet to be faced.

I love you, Brant, she whispered. I want you to come back; my second child will be yours.

But not my first.

 

34 Shipnet

How odd, thought Owen Fletcher, that I share my name with one of the most famous mutineers of all time! Could I be a descendant? Let's see - it's more than two thousand years since they landed on Pitcairn Island ... say, a hundred generations, to make it easy ...

Fletcher took a naive pride in his ability to make mental calculations which, though elementary, surprised and impressed the vast majority; for centuries Man had pushed buttons when faced with the problem of adding two and two. Remembering a few logarithms and mathematical constants helped enormously and made his performance even more mysterious to those who did not know how it was done. Of course, he only chose examples that he knew how to handle, and it was very seldom that anyone bothered to check his answers ...

A hundred generations back - so two to the hundred ancestors then. Log two is point three zero one zero - that's thirty point one ... Olympus! - a million, million, million, million, million people! Something wrong - nothing like that number ever lived on Earth since the beginning of time - of course, that assumes there was never any overlapping - the human family tree must be hopelessly intertwined - anyway, after a hundred generations everyone must be related to everyone else - I'll never be able to prove it, but Fletcher Christian must be my ancestor - many times over.

All very interesting, he thought, as he switched off the display and the ancient records vanished from the screen. But I'm not a mutineer. I'm a - a petitioner, with a perfectly reasonable request. Karl, Ranjit, Bob all agree ... Werner is uncertain but won't give us away. How I wish we could talk to the rest of the Sabras and let them know about the lovely world we've found while they're asleep.

Meanwhile, I have to answer the captain ...

Captain Bey found it distinctly unsettling, having to go about the ship's business not knowing who - or how many - of his officers or crew were addressing him through the anonymity of SHIPNET. There was no way that these unlogged inputs could be traced - confidentiality was their very purpose, built in as a stabilizing social mechanism by the long-dead geniuses who had designed Magellan. He had tentatively raised the subject of a tracer with his chief communications engineer, but Commander Rocklyn had been so shocked that he had promptly dropped the matter.

So now he was continually searching faces, noting expressions, listening to voice inflections - and trying to behave as if nothing had happened. Perhaps he was overreacting and nothing important had happened. But he feared that a seed had been planted, and it would grow and grow with every day the ship remained in orbit above Thalassa.

His first acknowledgement, drafted after consultation with Malina and Kaldor, had been bland enough:

From: CAPTAIN To: ANON

In reply to your undated communication, I have no objection to discussions along the lines you propose, either through SHIPNET or formally in Ship's Council.

In fact, he had very strong objections; he had spent almost half his adult life training for the awesome responsibility of transplanting a million human beings across a hundred and twenty-five light-years of space. That was his mission; if the word 'sacred' had meant anything to him, he would have used it. Nothing short of catastrophic damage to the ship or the unlikely discovery that Sagan 2's sun was about to go nova could possibly deflect him from that goal.

Meanwhile, there was one obvious line of action. Perhaps - like Bligh's men! - the crew was becoming demoralized, or at least slack. The repairs to the ice plant after the minor damage caused by the tsunami had taken twice as long as expected, and that was typical. The whole tempo of the ship was slowing down; yes it was time to start cracking the whip again.

'Joan,' he said to his secretary, thirty thousand kilometres below. 'Let me have the latest shield assembly report. And tell Captain Malina I want to discuss the hoisting schedule with him.'

He did not know if they could lift more than one snowflake a day. But they could try.

 

35 Convalescence

Lieutenant Horton was an amusing companion, but Loren was glad to get rid of him as soon as the electrofusion currents had welded his broken bones. As Loren discovered in somewhat wearisome detail, the young engineer had fallen in with a gang of hairy hunks on North Island, whose second main interest in life appeared to be riding microjet surfboards up vertical waves. Horton had found, the hard way, that it was even more dangerous than it looked.

'I'm quite surprised,' Loren had interjected at one point in a rather steamy narrative. 'I'd have sworn you were ninety per cent hetero.'

'Ninety-two, according to my profile,' Horton said cheerfully. 'But I like to check my calibration from time to time.'

The lieutenant was only half joking. Somewhere he had heard that hundred percenters were so rare that they were classed as pathological. Not that he really believed it; but it worried him slightly on those very few occasions when he gave the matter any thought.

Now Loren was the sole patient and had convinced the Lassan nurse that her continuous presence was quite unnecessary - at least when Mirissa was paying her daily visit. Surgeon-Commander Newton, who like most physicians could be embarrassingly frank, had told him bluntly, 'You still need another week to recuperate. If you must make love, let her do all the work.'

He had many other visitors, of course. With two exceptions, most were welcome.

Mayor Waldron could bully his little nurse to let her in at any time; fortunately, her visitations never coincided with Mirissa's. The first time the mayor arrived, Loren contrived to be in an almost moribund state, but this tactic proved disastrous, as it made it impossible for him to fend off some moist caresses. On the second visit - luckily there had been a ten-minute warning - he was propped up by pillows and fully conscious. However, by a strange coincidence, an elaborate respiratory function test was in progress, and the breathing-tube inserted in Loren's mouth made conversation impossible. The test was completed about thirty seconds after the mayor's departure.

Brant Falconer's one courtesy visit was something of a strain for them both. They talked politely about the scorps, progress at the Mangrove Bay freezing plant, North Island politics - anything, in fact, except Mirissa. Loren could see that Brant was worried, even embarrassed, but the very last thing he expected was an apology. His visitor managed to get it off his chest just before he left.

'You know, Loren,' he said reluctantly, 'there was nothing else I could have done about that wave. If I'd kept on course, we'd have smashed into the reef. It was just too bad Calypso couldn't reach deep water in time.'

'I'm quite sure,' Loren said with complete sincerity, 'that no one could have done a better job.'

'Er - I'm glad you understand that.'

Brant was obviously relieved, and Loren felt a surge of sympathy - even of pity - for him. Perhaps there had been some criticism of his seamanship; to anyone as proud of his skills as Brant, that would have been intolerable.

'I understand that they've salvaged the sledge.'

'Yes - it will soon be repaired, and as good as new.'

'Like me.'

In the brief comradeship of their joint laughter, Loren was struck by a sudden, ironic thought.

Brant must often have wished that Kumar had been a little less courageous.

 

36 Kilimanjaro

Why had he dreamed of Kilimanjaro?

It was a strange word; a name, he felt sure - but of what?

Moses Kaldor lay in the grey light of the Thalassan dawn, slowly wakening to the sounds of Tarna. Not that there were many at this hour; a sand-sledge was whirring somewhere on its way to the beach, probably to meet a returning fisherman.

Kilimanjaro.

Kaldor was not a boastful man, but he doubted if any other human being had read quite so many ancient books on such a wide range of subjects. He had also received several terabytes of memory implant, and though information stored that way was not really knowledge, it was available if you could recall the access codes.

It was a little early to make the effort, and he doubted if the matter was particularly important. Yet he had learned not to neglect dreams; old Sigmund Freud had made some valid points, two thousand years ago. And anyway, he would not be able to get to sleep again ...

He closed his eyes, triggered the search command, and waited. Though that was pure imagination - the process took place at a wholly subconscious level - he could picture myriads of Ks flickering past somewhere in the depths of his brain.

Now something was happening to the phosphenes that forever dance in random patterns on the retina of the tightly closed eye. A dark window had appeared magically in the faintly luminescent chaos; letters were forming and there it was:

KILIMANJARO: Volcanic mountain, Africa. Ht. 5.9 km.

Site of first Space Elevator Earth Terminus.

Well! What did that mean? He let his mind play with this scanty information.

Something to do with that other volcano, Krakan - which had certainly been in his thoughts a good deal recently? That seemed rather farfetched. And he needed no warning that Krakan - or its boisterous offspring - might erupt again.

The first space elevator? That was indeed ancient history; it marked the very beginning of planetary colonization by giving mankind virtually free access to the Solar System. And they were employing the same technology here, using cables of super-strength material to lift the great blocks of ice up to Magellan as the ship hovered in stationary orbit above the Equator.

Yet this, too, was a very far cry from that African mountain. The connection was too remote; the answer, Kaldor felt certain, must be somewhere else.

The direct approach had failed. The only way to find the link - if he ever would - was to leave it to chance and time, and the mysterious workings of the unconscious mind.

He would do his best to forget about Kilimanjaro, until it chose the auspicious time to erupt in his brain.

 

37 In Vino Veritas

Next to Mirissa, Kumar was Loren's most welcome - and most frequent - visitor. Despite his nickname, it seemed to Loren that Kumar was more like a faithful dog - or, rather, a friendly puppy - than a lion. There were a dozen much-pampered dogs in Tarna, and someday they might also live again on Sagan 2, resuming their long acquaintanceship with man.

Loren had now learned what a risk the boy had taken in that tumultuous sea. It was well for them both that Kumar never left shore without a diver's knife strapped to his leg; even so, he had been underwater for more than three minutes, sawing through the cable entangling Loren. Calypso's crew had been certain that they had both drowned.

Despite the bond that now united them, Loren found it difficult to make much conversation with Kumar. After all, there were only a limited number of ways in which one could say, 'Thank you for saving my life', and their backgrounds were so utterly dissimilar that they had very few common grounds of reference. If he talked to Kumar about Earth, or the ship, everything had to be explained in agonizing detail; and after a while Loren realized that he was wasting his time. Unlike his sister, Kumar lived in the world of immediate experience; only the here and now of Thalassa were important to him. 'How I envy him!' Kaldor had once remarked. 'He's a creature of today - not haunted by the past or fearful of the future!'

Loren was about to go to sleep on what he hoped would be his last night in the clinic when Kumar arrived carrying a very large bottle, which he held up in triumph.

'Guess!'

'I've no idea,' Loren said, quite untruthfully.

'The first wine of the season, from Krakan. They say it will be a very good year.'

'How do you know anything about it?'

'Our family's had a vineyard there for more than a hundred years. The Lion Brands are the most famous in the world.'

Kumar hunted around until he had produced two glasses and poured generous helpings into each. Loren took a cautious sip; it was a little sweet for his taste, but very, very smooth.

'What do you call it?' he asked.

'Krakan Special.'

'Since Krakan's nearly killed me once, should I risk it?'

'It won't even give you a hangover.'

Loren took another, longer draught, and in a surprisingly short time the glass was empty. In an even shorter time it was full again.

This seemed an excellent way of spending his last night in hospital, and Loren felt his normal gratitude towards Kumar extending to the entire world. Even one of Mayor Waldron's visits would no longer be unwelcome.

'By the way, how is Brant? I haven't seen him for a week.'

'Still on North Island, arranging repairs to the boat and talking to the marine biologists. Everyone's very excited about the scorps. But no one can decide what to do about them. If anything.'

'You know, I feel rather the same way about Brant.'

Kumar laughed.

'Don't worry. He's got a girl on North Island.'

'Oh. Does Mirissa know?'

'Of course.'

'And she doesn't mind?'

'Why should she? Bran- loves her - and he always comes back.'

Loren processed this information, though rather slowly. It occurred to him that he was a new variable in an already complex equation. Did Mirissa have any other lovers? Did he really want to know? Should he ask?

'Anyway,' Kumar continued as he refilled both their glasses, 'all that really matters is that their gene maps have been approved, and they've been registered for a son. When he's born, it will be different. Then they'll only need each other. Wasn't it the same on Earth?'

'Sometimes,' Loren said. So Kumar doesn't know; the secret was still between the two of them.

At least I will see my son, Loren thought, if only for a few months. And then ...

To his horror, he felt tears trickling down his cheeks. When had he last cried? Two hundred years ago, looking back on the burning Earth ...

'What's the matter?' Kumar asked. 'Are you thinking about your wife?' His concern was so genuine that Loren found it impossible to take offence at his bluntness - or at his reference to a subject that by mutual consent, was seldom mentioned, because it had nothing to do with the here and now. Two hundred years ago on Earth and three hundred years hence on Sagan 2 were too far from Thalassa for his emotions to grasp, especially in his present somewhat bemused condition.

'No, Kumar, I was not thinking of- my wife -'

'Will you ... ever ... tell her ... about Mirissa?'

'Perhaps. Perhaps not. I really don't know. I feel very sleepy. Did we drink the whole bottle? Kumar? Kumar!'

The nurse came in during the night, and suppressing her giggles, tucked in the sheets so that they would not fall out.

Loren woke first. After the initial shock of recognition, he started to laugh.

'What's so funny?' Kumar said, heaving himself rather blearily out of bed.

'If you really want to know -I was wondering if Mirissa would be jealous.'

Kumar grinned wryly.

'I may have been a little drunk,' he said, 'but I'm quite sure that nothing happened.'

'So am I.'

Yet he realized that he loved Kumar - not because he had saved his life or even because he was Mirissa's brother - but simply because he was Kumar. Sex had absolutely nothing to do with it; the very idea would have filled them not with embarrassment but hilarity. That was just as well. Life on Tarna was already sufficiently complicated.

'And you were right,' Loren added, 'about the Krakan Special. I don't have a hangover. In fact, I feel wonderful. Can you send a few bottles up to the ship? Better still - a few hundred litres.'

 

38 Debate

It was a simple question, but it did not have a simple answer: What would happen to discipline aboard Magellan if the very purpose of the ship's mission was put to the vote?

Of course, any result would not be binding, and he could override it if necessary. He would have to, if a majority decided to stay (not that for a moment he imagined ...) But such an outcome would be psychologically devastating. The crew would be divided into two factions, and that could lead to situations he preferred not to contemplate.

And yet - a commander had to be firm but not pig-headed. There was a good deal of sense in the proposal and it had many attractions. After all, he had enjoyed the benefits of presidential hospitality himself and had every intention of meeting that lady decathlon champion again. This was a beautiful world; perhaps they could speed up the slow process of continent building so that there was room for the extra millions. It would be infinitely easier than colonizing Sagan 2 ...

For that matter, they might never reach Sagan 2. Although the ship's operational reliability was still estimated to be ninety-eight per cent, there were external hazards which no one could predict. Only a few of his most trusted officers knew about the section of the ice-shield that had been lost somewhere around light-year 48. If that interstellar meteoroid, or whatever it was, had been just a few metres closer ...

Someone had suggested that the thing could have been an ancient space-probe from Earth. The odds against this were literally astronomical, and of course such an ironic hypothesis could never be proved.

And now his unknown petitioners were calling themselves the New Thalassans. Did that mean, Captain Bey wondered, that there were many of them and they were getting organized into a political movement? If so, perhaps the best thing would be to get them out into the open as soon as possible.

Yes, it was time to call Ship's Council.

Moses Kaldor's rejection had been swift and courteous.

'No, Captain; I can't get involved in the debate - pro or con. If I did, the crew would no longer trust my impartiality. But I'm willing to act as chairman, or moderator - whatever you like to call it.'

'Agreed,' Captain Bey said promptly; this was as much as he had really hoped for. 'And who will present the motions? We can't expect the New Thalassans to come out into the open and plead their case.'

'I wish we could have a straight vote without any arguments and discussions,' Deputy Captain Malina had lamented.

Privately, Captain Bey agreed. But this was a democratic society of responsible, highly educated men, and Ship's Orders recognized that fact. The New Thalassans had asked for a Council to air their views; if he refused, he would be disobeying his own letters of appointment and violating the trust given him on Earth two hundred years ago.

It had not been easy to arrange the Council. Since everyone, without exception, had to be given a chance of voting, schedules and duty rosters had to be reorganized and sleep periods disrupted. The fact that half the crew was down on Thalassa presented another problem that had never arisen before - that of security. Whatever its outcome might be, it was highly undesirable that the Lassans overhear the debate ...

And so Loren Lorenson was alone, with the door of his Tarna office locked for the first time he could recall, when the Council began. Once again he was wearing full-view goggles; but this time he was not drifting through a submarine forest. He was aboard Magellan, in the familiar assembly room, looking at the faces of colleagues, and whenever he switched his viewpoint, at the screen on which their comments and their verdict would be displayed. At the moment it bore one brief message:

RESOLVED: That the Starship Magellan terminate its mission at Thalassa as all its prime objectives can be achieved here.

So Moses is up on the ship, Loren thought, as he scanned the audience; I wondered why I'd not seen him lately. He looks tired - and so does the captain. Maybe this is more serious than I'd imagined ...

Kaldor rapped briskly for attention.

'Captain, officers, fellow crewmembers - although this is our first Council, you all know the rules of procedure. If you wish to speak, hold up your hand to be recognized. If you wish to make a written statement, use your keypad; the addresses have been scrambled to ensure anonymity. In either case, please be as brief as possible.

'If there are no questions, we will open with Item 001.'

The New Thalassans had added a few arguments, but essentially 001 was still the memorandum that had jolted Captain Bey two weeks ago - a period in which he had made no progress at all in discovering its authorship.

Perhaps the most telling additional point was the suggestion that it was their duty to stay here; Lassa needed them, technically, culturally, genetically. I wonder, Loren thought, tempted though he was to agree. In any event, we should ask their opinion first. We're not old-style imperialists - or are we?

Everyone had had time to reread the memorandum; Kaldor rapped for attention again.

'No one has, ah, requested permission to speak in favour of the resolution; of course, there will be opportunities later. So I will ask Lieutenant Elgar to put the case against.'

Raymond Elgar was a thoughtful young Power and Communications engineer whom Loren knew only slightly; he had musical talents and claimed to be writing an epic poem about the voyage. When challenged to produce even a single verse, he invariably replied, 'Wait until Sagan 2 plus one year.'

It was obvious why Lieutenant Elgar had volunteered (if indeed he had volunteered) for this role. His poetic pretensions would hardly allow him to do otherwise; and perhaps he really was working on that epic.

'Captain - shipmates - lend me your ears -'

That's a striking phrase, Loren thought. I wonder if it's original?

'I think we will all agree, in our hearts as well as our minds, that the idea of remaining on Thalassa has a great many attractions. But consider these points:

'There are only 161 of us. Have we the right to make an irrevocable decision for the million who are still sleeping?

'And what of the Lassans? It's been suggested that we'll help them by staying on. But will we? They have a way of life that seems to suit them perfectly. Consider our background, our training - the goal to which we dedicated ourselves years ago. Do you really imagine that a million of us could become part of Thalassan society without disrupting it completely?

'And there is the question of duty. Generations of men and women sacrificed themselves to make this mission possible - to give the human race a better chance of survival. The more suns we reach, the greater our insurance against disaster. We have seen what the Thalassan volcanoes can do; who knows what may happen here in the centuries to come?

'There has been glib talk of tectonic engineering to make new land, to provide room for the increased population. May I remind you that even on Earth, after thousands of years of research and development, that was still not an exact science. Remember the Nazca Plate Catastrophe of 3175! I can imagine nothing more reckless than to meddle with the forces pent up inside Thalassa.

'There's no need to say any more. There can be only one decision in this matter. We must leave the Lassans to their own destiny; we have to go on to Sagan 2.'

Loren was not surprised at the slowly mounting applause. The interesting question was: who had not joined it? As far as he could judge, the audience was almost equally divided. Of course, some people might be applauding because they admired the very effective presentation - not necessarily because they agreed with the speaker.

'Thank you, Lieutenant Elgar,' Chairman Kaldor said. 'We particularly appreciate your brevity. Now would anyone like to express the contrary opinion?'

There was an uneasy stirring, followed by a profound silence.

For at least a minute, nothing happened. Then letters began to appear on the screen.

002. WOULD THE CAPTAIN PLEASE GIVE THE LATEST ESTIMATE OF PROBABLE MISSION SUCCESS

003. WHY NOT REVIVE A REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLE OF THE SLEEPERS TO POLL THEIR OPINION

004. WHY NOT ASK THE LASSANS WHAT THEY THINK. IT'S THEIR WORLD

With total secrecy and neutrality, the computer stored and numbered the inputs from the Council members. In two millennia, no one had been able to invent a better way of sampling group opinion and obtaining a consensus. All over the ship - and down on Thalassa - men and women were tapping out messages on the seven buttons of their little one-hand keypads. Perhaps the earliest skill acquired by any child was the ability to touch-type all the necessary combinations without even thinking about them.

Loren swept his eye across the audience and was amused to note that almost everyone had both hands in full view. He could see nobody with the typical far-off look, indicating that a private message was being transmitted via a concealed keypad. But somehow, a lot of people were talking.

015. WHAT ABOUT A COMPROMISE? SOME OF US MIGHT PREFER TO STAY. THE SHIP COULD GO ON

Kaldor rapped for attention.

'That's not the resolution we're discussing,' he said, 'but it's been noted.'

'To answer Zero Zero Two,' Captain Bey said - barely remembering in time to get a go-ahead nod from the chairman, 'the figure is ninety-eight per cent. I wouldn't be surprised if our chance of reaching Sagan 2 is better than that of North or South Island staying above water.'

021. APART FROM KRAKAN, WHICH THEY CANT DO MUCH ABOUT, THE LASSANS DON'T HAVE ANY SERIOUS CHALLENGES. MAYBE WE SHOULD LEAVE THEM SOME. KNR

That would be, let's see ... Of course - Kingsley Rasmussen. Obviously he had no wish to remain incognito. He was expressing a thought that at one time or other had occurred to almost everyone.

022. WE'VE ALREADY SUGGESTED THEY REBUILD THE DEEP SPACE ANTENNA ON KRAKAN TO KEEP IN TOUCH WITH US. RMM

023. A TEN YEAR JOB AT THE MOST. KNR

'Gentlemen,' Kaldor said a little impatiently, 'we're getting away from the point.'

Have I anything to contribute? Loren asked himself. No, I will sit out this debate; I can see too many sides. Sooner or later I will have to choose between duty and happiness. But not yet. Not yet .

'I'm quite surprised," Kaldor said after nothing more had appeared on the screen for a full two minutes, 'that no one has anything more to say on such an important matter.'

He waited hopefully for another minute.

'Very well. Perhaps you'd like to continue the discussion informally. We will not take a vote now, but during the next forty-eight hours you can record your opinion in the usual way. Thank you.'

He glanced at Captain Bey, who rose to his feet with a swiftness that showed his obvious relief.

'Thank you, Dr Kaldor. Ship's Council terminated.'

Then he looked anxiously at Kaldor, who was staring at the display screen as if he had just noticed it for the first time.

'Are you all right, Doctor?'

'Sorry, Captain - I'm fine. I've just remembered something important, that's all.'

Indeed he had. For the thousandth time, at least, he marvelled at the labyrinthine workings of the subconscious mind.

Entry 021 had done it. 'The Lassans don't have any serious challenges.'

Now he knew why he had dreamed of Kilimanjaro.

 

39 The Leopard in the Snows

I'm sorry, Evelyn - it's been many days since I last talked to you. Does this mean that your image is fading in my mind as the future absorbs more and more of my energies and attention?

I suppose so, and logically I should welcome it. Clinging too long to the past is a sickness - as you often reminded me. But in my heart I still can't accept that bitter truth.

Much has happened in the last few weeks. The ship has been infected with what I call the Bounty Syndrome. We should have anticipated it - indeed, we did, but only as a joke. Now it's serious, though so far not too serious. I hope.

Some of the crew would like to remain on Thalassa - who can blame them? - and have frankly admitted it. Others want to terminate the whole mission here and forget about Sagan 2. We don't know the strength of this faction, because it hasn't come out into the open.

Forty-eight hours after the Council, we had the vote. Although of course the balloting was secret, I don't know how far the results can be trusted: 151 were for going on; only 6 wanted to terminate the mission here; and there were 4 undecideds.

Captain Bey was pleased. He feels the situation's under control but is going to take some precautions. He realizes that the longer we stay here, the greater the pressure will be not to leave at all. He won't mind a few deserters - 'If they want to go, I certainly don't want to keep them,' was the way he put it. But he's worried about disaffection spreading to the rest of the crew.

So he's accelerating shield construction. Now that the system is completely automatic and running smoothly, we plan to make two lifts a day instead of one. If this works out, we can leave in four months. This hasn't been announced yet. I hope there are no protests when it is, from the New Lassans or anyone else.

And now another matter that may be completely unimportant but which I find fascinating. Do you remember how we used to read stories to each other when we first met? It was a wonderful way of getting to know how people really lived and thought thousands of years ago - long before sensory or even video recordings existed ...

Once you read to me - I had not the slightest conscious memory of it - a story about a great mountain in Africa, with a strange name, Kilimanjaro. I've looked it up in Ship's Archives, and now I understand why it's been haunting me.

It seems that there was a cave high up on the mountain, above the snow line. And in that cave was the frozen body of a great hunting cat - a leopard. That's the mystery: no one ever knew what the leopard was doing at such an altitude, so far from its normal territory.

You know, Evelyn, that I was always proud - many people said vain! - about my powers of intuition. Well, it seems to me that something like this is happening here.

Not once but several times, a large and powerful marine animal has been detected a long way from its natural habitat. Recently, the first one was captured; it's a kind of huge crustacean, like the sea scorpions that once lived on Earth.

We're not sure if they're intelligent, and that may even be a meaningless question. But certainly they are highly organized social animals, with primitive technologies - though perhaps that's too strong a word. As far as we've discovered, they don't show any greater abilities than bees or ants or termites, but their scale of operations is different and quite impressive.

Most important of all, they've discovered metal, though as yet they seem to use it only for ornament, and their sole source of supply is what they can steal from the Lassans. They've done this several times.

And recently a scorp crawled up the channel right into the heart of our freezing plant. The naive assumption was that it was hunting for food. But there was plenty where it came from - at least fifty kilometres away.

I want to know what the scorp was doing so far from home; I feel that the answer may be very important to the Lassans.

I wonder if we'll find it before I begin the long sleep to Sagan 2?

 

40 Confrontation

The instant that Captain Bey walked into President Farradine's office, he knew that something was wrong.

Normally, Edgar Farradine greeted him by his first name and immediately produced the wine decanter. This time there was no 'Sirdar', and no wine, but at least he was offered a chair.

'I've just received some disturbing news, Captain Bey. If you don't mind, I'd like the prime minister to join us.'

This was the first time the Captain had ever heard the president come straight to the point - whatever it was - and also the first time he had met the PM in Farradine's office.

'In that case, Mr. President, may I ask Ambassador Kaldor to join me?'

The president hesitated only a moment then he replied, 'Certainly.' The captain was relieved to see a ghost of a smile, as if in recognition of this diplomatic nicety. The visitors might be outranked - but not outnumbered.

Prime Minister Bergman, as Captain Bey knew perfectly well, was really the power behind the throne. Behind the PM was the cabinet, and behind the cabinet was the Jefferson Mark 3 Constitution. The arrangement had worked well for the last few centuries; Captain Bey had a foreboding that it was now about to undergo some major perturbation.

Kaldor was quickly rescued from Mrs. Farradine, who was using him as a guinea pig to try out her ideas for redecorating the President's House. The prime minister arrived a few seconds later, wearing his usual inscrutable expression.

When they were all seated, the president folded his arms, leaned back in his ornate swivel chair, and looked accusingly at his visitors.

'Captain Bey – Dr. Kaldor - we have received some most disturbing information. We would like to know if there is any truth in the report that you now intend to end your mission here - and not at Sagan 2.'

Captain Bey felt a great sensation of relief- followed instantly by annoyance. There must have been a bad breach of security; he had hoped that the Lassans would never hear of the petition and Ship's Council - though perhaps that was too much to expect.

'Mr. President – Mr. Prime Minister - if you have heard such a rumour, I can assure you that there is absolutely no truth in it. Why do you think we are hoisting six hundred tons of ice a day to rebuild our shield? Would we bother to do that if we planned to stay here?'

'Perhaps. If for some reason you've changed your mind, you would hardly alert us by suspending operations.'

The quick rejoiner gave the captain a momentary shock; he had underrated these amiable people. Then he realized that they - and their computers - must have already analysed all the obvious possibilities.

'True enough. But I'd like to tell you - it's still confidential and not yet announced - that we plan to double the rate of hoisting to finish the shield more quickly. Far from staying on, we plan to leave early. I had hoped to inform you of this in more pleasant circumstances.'

Even the prime minister could not completely conceal his surprise; the president did not even try. Before they could recover, Captain Bey resumed his attack:

'And it's only fair, Mr. President, that you give us the evidence for your - accusation. Otherwise, how can we refute it?'

The president looked at the prime minister. The prime minister looked at the visitors.

'I'm afraid that's impossible. It would reveal our sources of information.'

'Then it's a stalemate. We won't be able to convince you until we really do leave - one hundred and thirty days from now according to the revised schedule.'

There was a thoughtful and rather gloomy silence; then Kaldor said quietly: 'Could I have a brief private talk with the captain?'

'Of course.'

While they were gone, the president asked the prime minister: 'Are they telling the truth?'

'Kaldor wouldn't lie; I'm certain of that. But perhaps he doesn't know all the facts.'

There was no time to continue the discussion before the parties of the second part returned to face their accusers.

'Mr. President,' the captain said, 'Dr. Kaldor and I both agree that there is something we should tell you. We'd hoped to keep it quiet - it was embarrassing and we thought the matter had been settled. Possibly we're wrong; in that case, we may need your help.'

He gave a brief summary of the Council proceedings and the events that had led up to them and concluded, 'If you wish, I'm prepared to show you the recordings. We have nothing to hide.'

'That won't be necessary, Sirdar,' the president said, obviously vastly relieved. The prime minister, however, still looked worried.

'Er - just a minute, Mr. President. That doesn't dispose of the reports we've received. They were very convincing, you'll recall.'

'I'm sure the captain will be able to explain them.'

'Only if you tell me what they are.'

There was another pause. Then the president moved towards the wine decanter.

'Let's have a drink first,' he said cheerfully. 'Then I'll tell you how we found out.'

 

41 Pillow Talk

It had gone very smoothly, Owen Fletcher told himself. Of course, he was somewhat disappointed by the vote, though he wondered how accurately it reflected opinion aboard the ship. After all, he had instructed two of his fellow conspirators to register Noes, lest the - still-pitiful - strength of the New Thalassan movement be revealed.

What to do next was, as always, the problem. He was an engineer, not a politician - though he was rapidly moving in that direction - and could see no way of recruiting further support without coming out into the open.

This left only two alternatives. The first, and easier, was to jump ship, as close to launch-time as possible, by simply failing to report back. Captain Bey would be too busy to hunt for them -even if he felt inclined - and their Lassan friends would hide them until Magellan's departure.

But that would be a double desertion - one unheard of in the closely-knit Sabra community. He would have abandoned his sleeping colleagues - including his own brother and sister. What would they think of him, three centuries hence on hostile Sagan 2, when they learned that he could have opened the gates of Paradise for them but had failed to do so?

And now the time was running out; those computer simulations of up-rated lifting schedules could have only one meaning. Though he had not even discussed this with his friends, he saw no alternative to action.

But his mind still shied away from the word sabotage.

Rose Killian had never heard of Delilah and would have been horrified to be compared to her. She was a simple, rather naive Norther who - like so many young Lassans - had been overwhelmed by the glamorous visitors from Earth. Her affair with Karl Bosley was not only her first really profound emotional experience; it was also his.

They were both heartsick at the thought of parting. Rose was weeping on Karl's shoulder late one night when he could bear her misery no longer.

'Promise not to tell anyone,' he said, fondling the strands of hair lying along his chest. 'I've some good news for you. It's a big secret - nobody knows it yet. The ship isn't going to leave. We're all staying here on Thalassa.'

Rose almost fell off the bed in her surprise.

'You're not saying this just to make me happy?'

'No - it's true. But don't say a word to anyone. It must be kept completely secret.'

'Of course, darling.'

But Rose's closest friend Marion was also weeping for her Earth lover, so she had to be told ...

... and Marion passed the good news on to Pauline ... who couldn't resist telling Svetlana ... who mentioned it in confidence to Crystal.

And Crystal was the president's daughter.

 

42 Survivor

This is a very unhappy business, Captain Bey thought. Owen Fletcher is a good man; I approved his selection myself. How could he have done such a thing?

There was probably no single explanation. If he had not been a Sabra and in love with that girl, it might never have happened. What was the word for one plus one adding up to more than two? Sin-something - ah, yes, synergy. Yet he could not help feeling that there was something more, something that he would probably never know.

He remembered a remark that Kaldor, who always had a phrase for every occasion, had made to him once when they were talking about crew psychology.

'We're all maimed, Captain, whether we admit it or not. No one who's been through our experiences during those last years on Earth could possibly be unaffected. And we all share the same feeling of guilt.'

'Guilt?' he had asked in surprise and indignation.

'Yes, even though it's not our fault. We're survivors - the only survivors. And survivors always feel guilty at being alive.'

It was a disturbing remark, and it might help to explain Fletcher - and many other things.

We're all maimed men.

I wonder what your injury is, Moses Kaldor - and how you handle it. I know mine, and have been able to use it for the benefit of my fellow humans. It brought me to where I am today, and I can be proud of that.

Perhaps in an earlier age I might have been a dictator, or a warlord. Instead, I have been usefully employed as Chief of Continental Police, as General-in-Charge of Space Construction Facilities - and finally as commander of a starship. My fantasies of power have been successfully sublimated.

He walked to the captain's safe, to which he alone held the key, and slipped the coded metal bar into its slot. The door swung smoothly open to reveal assorted bundles of papers, some medals and trophies, and a small, flat wooden box bearing the letters S.B. inlaid in silver.

As the captain placed it on the table, he was happy to feel the familiar stirring in his loins. He opened the lid and stared down at the gleaming instrument of power, snug in its velvet bed.

Once his perversion had been shared by millions. Usually it was quite harmless - in primitive societies, even valuable. And many times it had changed the course of history, for better or for worse.

'I know you're a phallic symbol,' the captain whispered. 'But you're also a gun. I've used you before; I can use you again

The flashback could not have lasted for more than a fraction of a second, yet it seemed to cover years of time. He was still standing by his desk when it was over; just for a moment, all the careful work of the psychotherapists was undone, and the gates of memory opened wide.

He looked back in horror - yet with fascination - on those last turbulent decades which had brought out the best and the worst in humanity. He remembered how, as a young Inspector of Police in Cairo, he had given his first order to fire on a rioting crowd. The bullets were supposed to be merely incapacitating. But two people had died.

What had they been rioting about? He had never even known - there were so many political and religious movements in the final days. And it was also the great era of the supercriminals; they had nothing to lose and no future to look forward to, so they were prepared to take any risks. Most of them had been psychopaths, but some had been near geniuses. He thought of Joseph Kidder, who had almost stolen a starship. No one knew what had happened to him, and sometimes Captain Bey had been struck by a nightmare fantasy: 'Just suppose that one of my sleepers is really...'

The forcible running down of the population, the total prohibition of any new births after the year 3600, the absolute priority given to the development of the quantum drive and the building of the Magellan-class ships - all these, together with the knowledge of impending doom, had imposed such strains on terrestrial society that it still seemed a miracle that anyone had been able to escape from the solar system. Captain Bey remembered, with admiration and gratitude, those who had burned up their last years for a cause whose success or failure they would never know.

He could see again the last world president, Elizabeth Windsor, exhausted but proud as she left the ship after her tour of inspection, returning to a planet that had only days to live. She had even less time; the bomb in her spaceplane had exploded just before it was due to land at Port Canaveral.

The captain's blood still ran cold at the memory; that bomb had been intended for Magellan, and only a mistake in timing had saved the ship. It was ironic that each of the rival cults had claimed responsibility ...

Jonathan Cauldwell and his dwindling but still vocal band of followers proclaimed ever more desperately that all would be well, that God was merely testing Mankind as He had once tested Job. Despite everything that was happening to the Sun, it would soon return to normal, and humanity would be saved - unless those who disbelieved in His mercy provoked His wrath. And then He might change His mind ...

The Will of God cult believed the exact opposite. Doomsday had come at last, and no attempt should be made to avoid it. Indeed, it should be welcomed, since after Judgement those who were worthy of salvation would live in eternal bliss.

And so, from totally opposing premises, the Cauldwellites and the WOGs arrived at the same conclusion: The human race should not attempt to escape its destiny. All starships should be destroyed.

Perhaps it was fortunate that the two rival cults were so bitterly opposed that they could not cooperate even towards a goal that they both shared. In fact, after the death of President Windsor their hostility turned to internecine violence. The rumour was started - almost certainly by the World Security Bureau, though Bey's colleagues had never admitted it to him - that the bomb had been planted by the WOGs and its timer sabotaged by the Cauldwellites. The exactly opposite version was also popular; one of them might even have been true.

All this was history, now known only to a handful of men besides himself and soon to be forgotten. Yet how strange that Magellan was once again threatened by sabotage.

Unlike the WOGs and the Cauldwellites, the Sabras were highly competent and not unhinged by fanaticism. They could therefore be a more serious problem, but Captain Bey believed he knew how to handle it.

'You're a good man, Owen Fletcher,' he thought grimly. 'But I've killed better ones in my time. And when there was no alternative, I've used torture.'

He was more than a little proud of the fact that he had never enjoyed it; and this time, there was a better way.

 

43 Interrogation

And now Magellan had a new crewmember, untimely awakened from his slumber and still adjusting to the realities of the situation - as Kaldor had done a year ago. Nothing but an emergency justified such action. But according to the computer records only Dr Marcus Steiner, once Chief Scientist of the Terran Bureau of Investigation, possessed the knowledge and skills that, unfortunately, were needed now.

Back on Earth, his friends had often asked him why he had chosen to become a professor of criminology. And he had always given the same answer: 'The only alternative was to become a criminal.'

It had taken Steiner almost a week to modify the sickbay's standard encephalographic equipment and to check the computer programs. Meanwhile, the four Sabras remained confined to their quarters and stubbornly refused to make any admission of guilt.

Owen Fletcher did not look very happy when he saw the preparations that had been made for him; there were too many similarities to electric chairs and torture devices from the bloodstained history of earth. Dr Steiner quickly put him at ease with the synthetic familiarity of the good interrogator.

'There's nothing to be alarmed at, Owen - I promise you won't feel a thing. You won't even be aware of the answers you're giving me - but there's no way you can hide the truth. Because you're an intelligent man, I'll tell you exactly what I'm going to do. Surprisingly enough, it helps me do my job; whether you like it or not, your subconscious mind will trust me - and cooperate.'

What nonsense, thought Fletcher; surely he doesn't think he can fool me as easily as that! But he made no reply, as he was seated in the chair and the orderlies fastened leather straps loosely around his forearms and waist. He did not attempt to resist; two of his largest ex-colleagues were standing uncomfortably in the background, carefully avoiding his eye.

'If you need a drink or want to go to the toilet, just say so. This first session will take exactly one hour; we may need some shorter ones later. We want to make you relaxed and comfortable.'

In the circumstances, this was a highly optimistic remark, but no one seemed to think it at all funny.

'Sorry we've had to shave your head, but scalp electrodes don't like hair. And you'll have to be blindfolded, so we don't pick up confusing visual inputs ... Now you'll start getting drowsy, but you'll remain conscious ... We're going to ask you a series of questions which have just three possible answers - Yes, No, Don't Know. But you won't have to reply; your brain will do it for you, and the computer's trinary logic system will know what it's saying.

'And there's absolutely no way you can lie to us; you're very welcome to try! Believe me, some of the best minds of Earth invented this machine - and were never able to fool it. If it gets ambiguous answers, the computer will simply reframe the questions. Are you ready? Very well... Recorder on high, please ... Check gain on Channel 5 ... Run program.'

YOUR NAME IS OWEN FLETCHER ... ANSWER YES ... OR NO...

YOUR NAME IS JOHN SMITH ... ANSWER YES ... OR NO ...

YOU WERE BORN IN LOWELL CITY, MARS ... ANSWER YES...OR NO....

YOUR NAME IS JOHN SMITH ... ANSWER YES ... OR NO ...

YOU WERE BORN IN AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND... ANSWER YES ... OR NO ...

YOUR NAME IS OWEN FLETCHER ...

YOU WERE BORN ON 3 MARCH 3585 ...

YOU WERE BORN ON 31 DECEMBER 3584 ...

The questions came at such short intervals that even if he had not been in a mildly sedated condition, Fletcher would have been unable to falsify the answers. Nor would it have mattered had he done so; within a few minutes, the computer had established the pattern of his automatic responses to all the questions whose answers were already known.

From time to time the calibration was rechecked (YOUR NAME IS OWEN FLETCHER ... YOU WERE BORN IN CAPETOWN, ZULULAND ...), and questions were occasionally repeated to confirm answers already given. The whole process was completely automatic, once the physiological constellation of YES - NO responses had been identified.

The primitive 'lie detectors' had tried to do this with fair success - but seldom complete certainty. It had taken no more than two hundred years to perfect the technology and thereby to revolutionize the practice of law, both criminal and civil, to the point when few trials ever lasted more than hours.

It was not so much an interrogation as a computerized - and cheat-proof- version of the ancient game Twenty Questions. In principle, any piece of information could be quickly pinned down by a series of YES - NO replies, and it was surprising how seldom as many as twenty were needed when an expert human cooperated with an expert machine.

When a rather dazed Owen Fletcher staggered from the chair, exactly one hour later, he had no idea what he had been asked or how he had responded. He was fairly confident, however, that he had given nothing away.

He was mildly surprised when Dr Steiner said cheerfully, 'That's it, Owen. We won't need you again.'

The professor was proud of the fact that he had never hurt anybody, but a good interrogator had to be something of a sadist - if only a psychological one. Besides, it added to his reputation for infallibility, and that was half the battle.

He waited until Fletcher had regained his balance and was being escorted back to the detention cell.

'Oh, by the way, Owen - that trick with the ice would never have worked.'

In fact, it might well have done; but that didn't matter now. The expression on Lieutenant Fletcher's face gave Dr. Steiner all the reward he needed for the exercise of his considerable skills.

Now he could go back to sleep until Sagan 2. But first he would relax and enjoy himself, making the most of this unexpected interlude.

Tomorrow he would have a look at Thalassa and perhaps go swimming off one of those beautiful beaches. But for the moment he would enjoy the company of an old and beloved friend.

The book he drew reverently out of its vacuum-sealed package was not merely a first edition; it was now the only edition. He opened it at random; after all, he knew practically every page by heart.

He started to read, and fifty light-years from the ruins of Earth, the fog rolled once more down Baker Street.

'The cross-checking has confirmed that only the four Sabras were involved,' Captain Bey said. 'We can be thankful that there's no need to interrogate anyone else.'

'I still don't understand how they hoped to get away with it,' Deputy Captain Malina said unhappily.

'I don't believe they would, but it's lucky it was never put to the test. Anyway, they were still undecided.

'Plan A involved damaging the shield. As you know, Fletcher was on the assembly crew and was working out a scheme to reprogram the last stage of the lifting procedure. If a block of ice could be allowed to impact at just a few metres a second - you see what I mean?

'It could be made to look like an accident, but there was risk that the subsequent inquiry would soon prove it was nothing of the sort. And even if the shield was damaged, it could be repaired.

Fletcher hoped that the delay would give time to acquire more recruits. He might have been right; another year on Thalassa ...

'Plan B involved sabotaging the life-support system, so that the ship had to be evacuated. Again, the same objections.

'Plan C was the most disturbing one because it would have terminated the mission. Luckily, none of the Sabras was in propulsion; it would have been very hard for them to get at the drive...'

Everyone looked shocked - though none more so than Commander Rocklyn.

'It would not have been at all difficult, Sir, if they were sufficiently determined. The big problem would have been to arrange something that would put the drive out of action -permanently - without damaging the ship. I very much doubt if they'd have the technical knowledge necessary.'

'They were working on it,' the captain grimly said. 'We have to review our security proceedings, I'm afraid. There will be a conference on that tomorrow for all senior officers - here, at noon.'

And then Surgeon-Commander Newton put the question that everyone hesitated to ask.

'Will there be a court martial, Captain?'

'It's not necessary; guilt has been established. According to Ship's Orders, the only problem is the sentence.'

Everyone waited. And waited.

'Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,' the captain said, and his officers left in silence.

Alone in his quarters, he felt angry and betrayed. But at least it was over; Magellan had ridden out the man-made storm.

The other three Sabras were - perhaps - harmless; but what about Owen Fletcher?

His mind strayed to the deadly plaything in his safe. He was captain: it would be easy to arrange an accident ...

He put the fantasy aside; he could never do it, of course. In any event, he had already made up his mind and was certain that there would be universal agreement.

Someone had once said that for every problem there is a solution that is simple, attractive - and wrong. But this solution, he was certain, was simple, attractive - and absolutely right.

The Sabras wanted to remain on Thalassa; they could do so. He did not doubt that they would become valuable citizens - perhaps exactly the aggressive, forceful type that this society needed.

How strange that History was repeating itself; like Magellan, he would be marooning some of his men.

But whether he had punished them or rewarded them, he would not know for three hundred years.

 

VI

The Forests of the Sea

 

44 Spyball

The North Island Marine Lab had been less than enthusiastic.

'We still need a week to repair Calypso,' the director said, 'and we were lucky to find the sledge. It's the only one on Thalassa, and we don't want to risk it again.'

I know the symptoms, thought Science Officer Varley; even during the last days on Earth, there were still some lab directors who wanted to keep their beautiful equipment unsullied by actual use.

'Unless Krakan Junior - or Senior - misbehaves again, I don't see that there's any risk. And haven't the geologists promised that they'll be quiet again for at least fifty years?'

'I've a small bet with them on that. But frankly - why do you think this is so important?'

What tunnel vision! Varley thought. Even if the man is a physical oceanographer, one would have expected him to have some interest in marine life. But perhaps I've misjudged him; he may be sounding me out ...

'We have a certain emotional interest in the subject since Dr. Lorenson was killed - luckily not permanently. But quite apart from that, we find the scorps fascinating. Anything we can discover about alien intelligence could be of vital importance someday. And to you even more than to us since they're on your doorstep.'

'I can appreciate that. Perhaps it's lucky we occupy such different ecological niches.'

For how long? the Science Officer thought. If Moses Kaldor is right ...

'Tell me just what a spyball does. The name's certainly intriguing.'

'They were developed a couple of thousand years ago for security and espionage but had many other applications. Some weren't much bigger than pinheads - the one we'll use is the size of a football.'

Varley spread the drawings on the director's table.

'This one was designed especially for underwater use - I'm surprised you're not familiar with it - the reference date is as early as 2045. We found complete specifications in Tech Memory, and fed them into the replicator. The first copy wouldn't work - we still don't know why - but No. 2 tests out fine.

'Here are the acoustic generators - ten megahertz - so we've got millimetre resolution. Hardly video quality, of course, but good enough.

'The signal-processor is quite intelligent. When the spyball's switched on, it sends out a single pulse which builds up an acoustical hologram of everything within twenty or thirty metres. It transmits this information on a two-hundred-kilohertz narrow-band to the buoy floating topside, which radios it back to base. The first image takes ten seconds to build up; then the spyball pulses again.

'If there's no change in the picture, it sends a null signal. But if something happens, it transmits the new information so that an updated image can be generated.

'What we get, then, is a snapshot every ten seconds, which is good enough for most purposes. Of course, if things happen quickly, there will be bad image smearing. But you can't have everything; the system will work anywhere, in total darkness - it isn't easy to spot - and it's economical.'

The director was obviously interested and was doing his best to keep his enthusiasm from showing.

'It's a clever toy - may be useful for our work. Can you give us the specs - and a few more models?'

'The specs - certainly and we'll check that they interface with your replicator so you can make as many copies as you like. The first working model - and maybe the next two or three - we want to dump on Scorpville.

'And then well just wait and see what happens.'

 

45 Bait

The image was grainy, and sometimes hard to interpret despite the false-colour coding which revealed details the eye could not otherwise detect. It was a flattened-out 360-degree panorama of seabed, with a distant view of kelp on the left, a few rock outcroppings at centre, and kelp again on the right. Though it looked like a still photograph, the changing numbers at the lower left-hand corner revealed the passage of time; and occasionally the scene changed with a sudden jerk when some movement altered the information pattern being transmitted.

'As you'll see,' Commander Varley told the invited audience in the Terra Nova auditorium, 'there were no scorps around when we arrived, but they may have heard - or felt - the bump when our, ah, package landed. Here's the first investigator at one minute twenty seconds.'

Now the image was changing abruptly at every ten-second interval, and more scorps were appearing in each frame.

'I'll freeze this one,' said the science officer, 'so that you can study the details. See that scorp on the right? Look at his left claw - no less than five of those metal bands! And he seems to be in a position of authority - in the next frames the other scorps have moved out of his way - now he's examining the mysterious pile of junk that's just fallen out of his sky - this is a particularly good shot - see how he uses claws and mouth palps together - one set for power, the other for precision - now he's pulling at the wire, but our little gift is too heavy to move - look at his attitude - I'll swear he's giving orders, though we haven't detected any signal - maybe it's subsonic - here comes another of the big fellows -'

The scene shifted abruptly, tilting at a crazy angle.

'Here we go; they're dragging us along - and you were right, Dr. Kaldor - they're heading for that cave in the rock pyramid -the package is too big to go inside -just the way we planned it, of course - this is the really interesting part -'

A good deal of thought had gone into the present for the scorps. Although it consisted mostly of junk, that junk had been carefully selected. There were bars of steel, copper, aluminium, and lead; wooden planks; tubes and sheets of plastic; pieces of iron chain; a metal mirror - and several coils of copper wire of assorted gauges. The entire mass weighed over a hundred kilograms, and had been carefully fastened together so that it could only be moved as a single unit. The spyball nestled inconspicuously at one corner, attached by four separate short cables.

The two big scorps were now attacking the pile of junk with determination and, it seemed, a definite plan. Their powerful claws quickly disposed of the wires holding it together, and they immediately discarded the pieces of wood and plastic; it was obvious that they were only interested in the metal.

The mirror gave them pause. They held it up and stared at their reflections - invisible, of course, in the spyball's acoustical image.

'We rather expected them to attack - you can start a good fight by putting a mirror in a tank of fish. Perhaps they recognize themselves. That seems to indicate a fair level of intelligence.'

The scorps abandoned the mirror and began to drag the rest of the debris across the seabed. For the next frames, the views were hopelessly confused. When the image stabilized again, it showed a completely different scene.

'We were in luck - things worked out exactly as we'd hoped. They've dragged the spyball into that guarded cave. But it isn't the Queen Scorp's throne room - if there is a Queen Scorp, which I very much doubt ... Theories, anyone?'

There was silence for a long time while the audience studied the strange spectacle. Then someone remarked, 'It's a junk room!'

'But it must have a purpose -'

'Look - that's a ten-kilowatt outboard motor - someone must have dropped it!'

'Now we know who's been stealing our anchor chains!'

'But why - it doesn't make sense.'

'Obviously it does - to them.'

Moses Kaldor gave his attention-demanding cough, which seldom failed to work.

'This is still only a theory,' he began, 'but more and more the facts seem to support it. You'll notice that everything here is metal, carefully collected from a wide variety of sources ...

'Now, to an intelligent marine creature, metal would be very mysterious, something quite different from all the other natural products of the ocean. The scorps seem to be still in the Stone Age - and there's no way they can get out of it as we land animals did on Earth. Without fire, they are trapped in a technological cul-de-sac.

'I think we may be seeing a replay of something that happened long ago on our own world. Do you know where prehistoric man got his first supplies of iron? From space!

'I don't blame you for looking surprised. But pure iron never occurs in nature - it rusts too easily. Primitive man's only source of supply was meteorites. No wonder they were worshipped; no wonder our ancestors believed in supernatural beings beyond the sky ...

'Is the same story happening here? I urge you to consider it seriously. We still don't know the level of intelligence of the scorps. Perhaps they are collecting metals out of mere curiosity and fascination with their - shall I say magical? - properties. But will they discover how to use them, for anything more than decoration? How far can they progress - while they stay underwater? Will they stay there?

'My friends, I think you should learn all you possibly can about the scorps. You may be sharing your planet with another intelligent race. Are you going to cooperate or fight? Even if they are not really intelligent, the scorps could be a deadly menace - or a useful tool. Perhaps you should cultivate them. By the way, look up the reference Cargo Cult in your History Banks ... that's C-A-R-G-O C-U-L-T.

'I would love to know the next chapter in this story. Are there scorp philosophers, even now, gathering in the kelp forests - to consider what to do about us?

'So please, repair the deep-space antenna so we can keep in touch! Magellan's computer will be waiting for your report - as it watches over us on the road to Sagan 2.'

 

46 Whatever Gods May Be...

'What is God?' Mirissa asked.

Kaldor sighed and looked up from the centuries-old display he was scanning.

'Oh, dear. Why do you ask?'

'Because Loren said yesterday, "Moses thinks the scorps may be looking for God."'

'Did he indeed? I'll speak to him later. And you, young lady, are asking me to explain something that has obsessed millions of men for thousands of years and generated more words than any other single subject in history. How much time can you spare this morning?'

Mirissa laughed. 'Oh, at least an hour. Didn't you once tell me that anything really important can be expressed in a single sentence?'

'Umm. Well, I've come across some exceedingly long-winded sentences in my time. Now, where shall I start ...'

He let his eyes wander to the glade outside the library window and the silent - yet so eloquent! - hulk of the Mother Ship looming above it. Here human life began on this planet; no wonder it often reminds me of Eden. And am I the Snake, about to destroy its innocence? But I won't be telling a girl as clever as Mirissa anything that she doesn't already know - or guess.

'The trouble with the word God,' he began slowly, 'is that it never meant the same thing to any two people - especially if they were philosophers. That's why it slowly dropped out of use during the Third Millennium except as an expletive - in some cultures, too obscene for polite use.

'Instead, it was replaced by a whole constellation of specialized words. This at least stopped people arguing at cross-purposes, which caused ninety per cent of the trouble in the past.

'The Personal God, sometimes called God One, became Alpha. It was the hypothetical entity supposed to watch over the affairs of everyday life - every individual, every animal! - and to reward good and punish evil, usually in a vaguely described existence after death. You worshipped Alpha, prayed to it, carried out elaborate religious ceremonies, and built huge churches in its honour...

'Then there was the God who created the universe and might or might not have had anything to do with it since then. That was Omega. By the time they'd finished dissecting God, the philosophers had used up all the other twenty or so letters of the ancient Greek alphabet, but Alpha and Omega will do very nicely for this morning. I'd guess that not more than ten billion man-years were ever spent discussing them.

'Alpha was inextricably entangled with religion - and that was its downfall. It might still have been around right up to the destruction of the Earth if the myriads of competing religions had left each other alone. But they couldn't do that, because each claimed to possess the One and Only Truth. So they had to destroy their rivals - which means, in effect, not only every other religion but dissenters inside their own faith.

'Of course, I'm grossly simplifying; good men and women often transcended their beliefs, and it's quite possible that religion was essential to early human societies. Without supernatural sanctions to restrain them, men might never have cooperated in anything larger than tribal units. Not until it became corrupted by power and privilege did religion become an essentially antisocial force, the great good it had done being eclipsed by greater evils.

'You've never heard, I hope, of the Inquisition, of Witch Hunts, of Jihads. Would you believe that even well into the Space Age there were nations in which children could be officially executed because their parents adhered to a heretical subset of the state's particular brand of Alpha? You look shocked, but these things -and worse - happened while our ancestors were beginning the exploration of the Solar System.

'Fortunately for mankind, Alpha faded out of the picture, more or less gracefully, in the early 2000s. It was killed by a fascinating development called statistical theology. How much time do I have left? Won't Bobby be getting impatient?'

Mirissa glanced out of the big picture window. The palomino was happily munching at the grass around the base of the Mother Ship, and was clearly perfectly content.

'He won't wander off- as long as there's something to eat here. What was statistical theology?'

'It was the final assault on the problem of Evil. What brought it to a head was the rise of a very eccentric cult - they called themselves Neo-Manichees, don't ask me to explain why - around 2050. Incidentally, it was the first orbital religion; although all the other faiths had used communications satellites to spread their doctrines, the NMs relied on them exclusively. They had no meeting place except the television screen.

'Despite this dependence on technology, their tradition was actually very old. They believed that Alpha existed, but was completely evil - and that mankind's ultimate destiny was to confront and destroy it.

'In support of their faith, they marshalled an immense array of horrible facts from history and zoology. I think they must have been rather sick people, because they seemed to take a morbid delight in collecting such material.

'For example - a favourite proof of Alpha's existence was what's called the Argument from Design. We now know it's utterly fallacious, but the NMs made it sound totally convincing and irrefutable.

'If you find a beautifully designed system - their favourite example was a digital watch - then there must be a planner, a creator, behind it. So just look at the world of Nature-

'And they did, with a vengeance. Their special field was parasitology - you don't know how lucky you are on Thalassa, by the way! I won't revolt you by describing the incredibly ingenious methods and adaptations that various creatures used to invade other organisms - humans especially - and to prey on them, often until they were destroyed. I'll only mention one special pet of the NMs, the ichneumon fly.

'This delightful creature laid its eggs in other insects, after first paralyzing them so that when their larvae hatched out, they would have an ample supply of fresh - living - meat.

'The NMs could go on for hours along these lines, expounding the wonders of Nature as proof that Alpha was, if not supremely evil, then utterly indifferent to human standards of morality and goodness. Don't worry - I can't imitate them, and won't.

'But I must mention another of their favourite proofs - the Argument from Catastrophe. A typical example, which could be multiplied countless times: Alpha worshippers gather to appeal for help in the face of disaster - and are all killed by the collapse of their refuge, whereas most of them would have been saved had they stayed at home.

'Again, the NMs collected volumes of such horrors - burning hospitals and old people's homes, infant schools engulfed by earthquakes, volcanoes, or tidal waves destroying cities - the list is endless.

'Of course, rival Alpha worshippers didn't take this lying down. They collected equal numbers of counterexamples - the wonderful things that had happened, time and again, to save devout believers from catastrophe.

'In various forms, this debate had been going on for several thousand years. But by the twenty-first century, the new information technologies and methods of statistical analysis as well as a wider understanding of probability theory allowed it to be settled.

'It took a few decades for the answers to come in, and a few more before they were accepted by virtually all intelligent men: Bad things happened just as often as good; as had long been suspected, the universe simply obeyed the laws of mathematical probability. Certainly there was no sign of any supernatural intervention, either for good or for ill.

'So the problem of Evil never really existed. To expect the universe to be benevolent was like imagining one could always win at a game of pure chance.

'Some cultists tried to save the day by proclaiming the religion of Alpha the Utterly Indifferent and used the bell-shaped curve of normal distribution as the symbol of their faith. Needless to say, so abstract a deity didn't inspire much devotion.

'And while we're on the subject of mathematics, it gave Alpha another devastating blow in the twenty-first (or was it the twenty-second?) century. A brilliant Terran named Kurt Godel proved that there were certain absolutely fundamental limits to knowledge, and hence the idea of a completely Omniscient Being - one of the definitions of Alpha - was logically absurd. This discovery has come down to us in one of those unforgettable bad puns: 'Godel Deleted God.' Students used to write graffiti on walls with the letters G, O, and the Greek Delta; and of course there were versions that read: "God Deleted Godel".

'But back to Alpha. By mid-millennium, it had more or less faded from human concerns. Virtually all thinking men had finally come to agree with the harsh verdict of the great philosopher Lucretius: all religions were fundamentally immoral, because the superstitions they peddled wrought more evil than good.

'Yet a few of the old faiths managed to survive, though in drastically altered forms, right up to the end of the Earth. The Latter Day Mormons and the Daughters of the Prophet even managed to build seedships of their own. I often wonder what happened to them.

'With Alpha discredited, that left Omega, the Creator of everything. It's not so easy to dispose of Omega; the universe takes a certain amount of explaining. Or does it? There's an ancient philosophical joke that's much subtler than it seems. Question: Why is the universe here? Answer: Where else would it be? And I think that's quite enough for one morning.'

'Thank you, Moses,' Mirissa answered, looking slightly dazed. 'You've said it all before, haven't you?'

'Of course I have - many times. And promise me this -'

'What is it?'

'Don't believe anything I've told you - merely because I said it. No serious philosophical problem is ever settled. Omega is still around - and sometimes I wonder about Alpha ...'

 

VII

As the Sparks Fly Upward

 

47 Ascension

Her name was Carina; she was eighteen years old, and though this was the first time she had ever been out at night in Kumar's boat, it was not by any means the first time she had lain in his arms. She had, indeed, perhaps the best title to the much-disputed claim of being his favourite girl.

Though the sun had set two hours ago, the inner moon - so much brighter and closer than the lost Moon of Earth - was almost full, and the beach, half a kilometre away, was awash with its cold, blue light. A small fire was burning just outside the line of the palm-trees, where the party was still in progress. And the faint sound of music could be heard from time to time above the gentle murmur of the jet drive operating at its very lowest power. Kumar had already arrived at his prime goal and was in no great hurry to go elsewhere. Nevertheless, like the good seaman he was, he occasionally disengaged himself to speak a few words of instruction to the autopilot and made a swift scan of the horizon.

Kumar had spoken the truth, thought Carina blissfully. There was something very erotic about the regular, gentle rhythm of a boat, especially when it was amplified by the airbed on which they were lying. After this, would she ever be satisfied by lovemaking on dry land?

And Kumar, unlike quite a few other young Tarnans she could mention, was surprisingly tender and considerate. He was not one of those men who was only concerned with his own satisfaction; his pleasure was not complete unless it was shared. While he's in me, Carina thought, I feel I'm the only girl in his universe - even though I know perfectly well that isn't true.

Carina was vaguely aware that they were still heading away from the village, but she did not mind. She wished that this moment could last forever and would hardly have cared if the boat had been driving at full speed out into the empty ocean, with no land ahead until the circumnavigation of the globe. Kumar knew what he was doing - in more ways than one. Part of her pleasure derived from the utter confidence he inspired; within his arms, she had no worries, no problems. The future did not exist; there was only the timeless present.

Yet time did pass, and now the inner moon was much higher in the sky. In the aftermath of passion, their lips were still languidly exploring the territories of love when the pulsing of the hydrojet ceased and the boat drifted to a stop.

'We're here,' Kumar said, a note of excitement in his voice.

And where may 'here' be? Carina thought lazily as they rolled apart. It seemed hours since she had last bothered to glance at the coastline ... even assuming that it was still within sight.

She climbed slowly to her feet, steadying herself against the gentle rocking of the boat - and stared wide-eyed at the Fairyland that, not long ago, had been the dismal swamp hopefully but inaccurately christened Mangrove Bay.

It was not, of course, the first time she had encountered high technology; the fusion plant and Main Replicator on North Island were much larger and more impressive. But to see this brilliantly illuminated labyrinth of pipes and storage tanks and cranes and handling mechanisms - this bustling combination of shipyard and chemical plant, all functioning silently and efficiently under the stars with not a single human being in sight - was a real visual and psychological shock.

There was a sudden splash, startling in the utter silence of the night, as Kumar threw out the anchor.

'Come on,' he said mischievously 'I want to show you something.'

'Is it safe?'

'Of course - I've been here lots of times.'

And not by yourself, I'm sure, Carina thought. But he was already over the side before she could make any comment.

The water was barely more than waist deep and still retained so much of the day's heat that it was almost uncomfortably warm. When Carina and Kumar walked up on to the beach, hand in hand, it was refreshing to feel the cool night breeze against their bodies. They emerged from the random rippling of tiny wavelets like a new Adam and Eve given the keys to a mechanized Eden.

'Don't worry!' Kumar said. 'I know my way around. Dr. Lorenson's explained everything to me. But I've found something I'm sure he doesn't know.'

They were walking along a line of heavily insulated pipes, supported a metre from the ground, and now for the first time Carina could hear a distinct sound - the throbbing of pumps forcing cooling fluid through the maze of plumbing and heat exchangers that surrounded them.

Presently they came to the famous tank in which the scorp had been found. Very little water was now visible; the surface was almost completely covered with a tangled mass of kelp. There were no reptiles on Thalassa, but the thick flexible stalks reminded Carina of intertwining snakes.

They walked along a series of culverts and past small sluice gates, all of them closed at the moment, until they reached a wide, open area, well away from the main plant. As they left the central complex, Kumar waved cheerfully at the lens of a pointing camera. No one ever discovered, later, why it had been switched off at the crucial moment.

'The freezing tanks,' Kumar said. 'Six hundred tons in each. Ninety-five per cent water, five per cent kelp. What's so funny?'

'Not funny - but very strange,' answered Carina, still smiling. 'Just think of it - carrying some of our ocean forest, all the way to the stars. Who would ever imagine such a thing! But that's not why you brought me here.'

'No,' said Kumar softly. 'Look ...'

At first, she could not see what he was pointing at. Then her mind interpreted the image that flickered at the very edge of vision, and she understood.

It was an old miracle, of course. Men had done such things on many worlds, for over a thousand years. But to witness it with her own eyes was more than breathtaking - it was awesome.

Now that they had walked closer to the last of the tanks, she could see it more clearly. The thin thread of light - it could not have been more than a couple of centimetres wide! - climbed upward to the stars, straight and true as a laser beam. Her eyes followed it until it narrowed into invisibility, teasing her to decide the exact place of its disappearance. And still her gaze swept onward, dizzyingly, until she was staring at the zenith itself, and at the single star that was poised motionless there while all its fainter, natural companions marched steadily past it towards the west. Like some cosmic spider, Magellan had lowered a thread of gossamer and would soon be hoisting the prize it desired from the world below.

Now that they were standing at the very edge of the waiting ice block, Carina had another surprise. Its surface was completely covered with a glittering layer of golden foil, reminding her of the gifts that were presented to children on their birthdays or at the annual Landing Festival.

'Insulation,' Kumar explained. 'And it really is gold - about two atoms thick. Without it, half the ice would melt again before it could get up to the shield.'

Insulation or no, Carina could feel the bite of cold through her bare feet as Kumar led her out on to the frozen slab. They reached its centre in a dozen steps - and there, glittering with a curious nonmetallic sheen, was the taut ribbon that stretched, if not to the stars, at least the thirty thousand kilometres up to the stationary orbit in which Magellan was now parked.

It ended in a cylindrical drum, studded with instruments and control jets, which clearly served as a mobile, intelligent crane-hook, homing on to its load after its long descent through the atmosphere. The whole arrangement looked surprisingly simple and even unsophisticated - deceptively so, like most products of mature, advanced technologies.

Carina suddenly shivered, and not from the cold underfoot, which she now scarcely noticed.

'Are you sure it's safe here?' she asked anxiously.

'Of course. They always lift at midnight, on the second - and that's still hours away. It's a wonderful sight, but I don't think we'll stay so late.'

Now Kumar was kneeling, placing his ear against the incredible ribbon that bound ship and planet together. If it snapped, she wondered anxiously, would they fly apart?

'Listen,' he whispered ...

She had not known what to expect. Sometimes in later years, when she could endure it, she tried to recapture the magic of this moment. She could never be sure if she had succeeded.

At first it seemed that she was hearing the deepest note of a giant harp whose strings were stretched between the worlds. It sent shivers down her spine, and she felt the little hairs at the nape of her neck stirring in that immemorial fear response forged in the primeval jungles of Earth.

Then, as she grew accustomed to it, she became aware of a whole spectrum of shifting overtones covering the range of hearing to the very limits of audibility - and doubtless far beyond. They blurred and merged one into the other, as inconstant yet steadily repeating as the sounds of the sea.

The more she listened, the more she was reminded of the endless beating of the waves upon a desolate beach. She felt that she was hearing the sea of space wash upon the shores of all its worlds - a sound terrifying in its meaningless futility as it reverberated through the aching emptiness of the universe.

And now she became aware of other elements in this immensely complex symphony. There were sudden, plangent twangings as if giant fingers had plucked at the ribbon somewhere along its thousands of taut kilometres. Meteorites? Surely not. Perhaps some electrical discharge in Thalassa's seething ionosphere? And -was this pure imagination, something created by her own unconscious fears? - it seemed that from time to time she heard the faint wailing of demon voices or the ghostly cries of all the sick and starving children who had died on Earth during the Nightmare Centuries.

Suddenly, she could bear it no longer.

'I'm frightened, Kumar,' she whispered, tugging at his shoulder. 'Let's go.'

But Kumar was still lost in the stars, his mouth half open as he pressed his head against that resonant ribbon, hypnotized by its siren song. He never even noticed when, angry as much as scared, Carina stomped across the foil-covered ice and stood waiting for him on the familiar warmth of dry land.

For now he had noticed something new - a series of rising notes that seemed to be calling for his attention. It was like a Fanfare for Strings, if one could imagine such a thing, and it was ineffably sad and distant.

But it was coming closer, growing louder. It was the most thrilling sound that Kumar had ever heard, and it held him paralysed with astonishment and awe. He could almost imagine that something was racing down the ribbon towards him ...

Seconds too late, he realized the truth as the first shock of the precursor wave jolted him flat against the golden foil and the ice block stirred beneath him. Then, for the very last time, Kumar Leonidas looked upon the fragile beauty of his sleeping world, and the terrified, upturned face of the girl who would remember this moment until her own dying day.

Already, it was too late to jump. And so the Little Lion ascended to the silent stars - naked and alone.

 

48 Decision

Captain Bey had graver problems on his mind and was very glad to delegate this task. In any event, no emissary could have been more appropriate than Loren Lorenson.

He had never met the Leonidas elders before and dreaded the encounter. Though Mirissa had offered to accompany him, he preferred to go alone.

The Lassans revered their old folk and did everything possible for their comfort and happiness. Lal and Nikri Leonidas lived in one of the small, self-contained retirement colonies along the south coast of the island. They had a six-room chalet with every conceivable labour-saving device, including the only general-purpose house robot that Loren had ever seen on South Island. By Earth chronology, he would have judged them to be in their late sixties.

After the initial subdued greetings, they sat on the porch, looking out to sea while the robot fussed around bearing drinks and plates of assorted fruit. Loren forced himself to eat a few morsels, then gathered his courage and tackled the hardest task of his life.

'Kumar -' The name stuck in his throat, and he had to begin again. 'Kumar is still on the ship. I owe my life to him; he risked his to save mine. You can understand how I feel about this - I would do anything

Once more he had to fight for control. Then, trying to be as brisk and scientific as he could - like Surgeon-Commander Newton during her briefing - he made yet another start.

'His body is almost undamaged, because decompression was slow and freezing took place immediately. But, of course, he is clinically dead - just as I was myself a few weeks ago ...

'However, the two cases are very different. My - body - was recovered before there was time for brain damage, so revival was a fairly straightforward process.

'It was hours before they recovered Kumar. Physically, his brain is undamaged - but there is no trace of any activity.

'Even so, revival may be possible with extremely advanced technology. According to our records - which cover the entire history of Earth's medical science - it has been done before in similar cases, with a success rate of sixty per cent.

'And that places us in a dilemma, which Captain Bey has asked me to explain to you frankly. We do not have the skills or the equipment to carry out such an operation. But we may - in three hundred years' time ...

'There are a dozen brain experts among the hundreds of medical specialists sleeping aboard the ship. There are technicians who can assemble and operate every conceivable type of surgical and life-support gear. All that Earth ever possessed will be ours again - soon after we reach Sagan 2 ...'

He paused to let the implications sink in. The robot took this inopportune moment to offer its services; he waved it away.

'We would be willing - no, glad, for it is the very least we can do - to take Kumar with us. Though we cannot guarantee it, one day he may live again. We would like you to think it over; there is plenty of time before you have to make the decision.'

The old couple looked at each other for a long, silent moment while Loren stared out to sea. How quiet and peaceful it was! He would be glad to spend his own declining years here, visited from time to time by children and grandchildren ...

Like so much of Tarna, it might almost be Earth. Perhaps through deliberate planning, there was no Lassan vegetation anywhere in sight; all the trees were hauntingly familiar.

Yet something essential was lacking; he realized that it had been puzzling him for a long time - indeed, ever since he had landed on this planet. And suddenly, as if this moment of grief had triggered the memory, he knew what he had missed.

There were no sea gulls wheeling in the sky, filling the air with the saddest and most evocative of all the sounds of Earth.

Lal Leonidas and his wife had still not exchanged a word, yet somehow Loren knew that they had made their decision.

'We appreciate your offer, Commander Lorenson; please express our thanks to Captain Bey.

'But we do not need any time to consider it. Whatever happens, Kumar will be lost to us forever.

'Even if you succeed - and as you say, there is no guarantee -he will awaken in a strange world, knowing that he will never see his home again and that all those he loved are centuries dead. It does not bear thinking of. You mean well, but that would be no kindness to him.

'We know what he would have wished and what must be done. Give him back to us. We will return him to the sea he loved.'

There was nothing more to be said. Loren felt both an overwhelming sadness and a vast relief.

He had done his duty. It was the decision he had expected.

 

49 Fire on the Reef

Now the little kayak would never be completed; but it would make its first and its last voyage.

Until sunset, it had lain at the water's edge, lapped by the gentle waves of the tideless sea. Loren was moved, but not surprised, to see how many had come to pay their last eespects. All Tarna was here, but many had also come from all over South Island - and even from North. Though some, perhaps, had been drawn by morbid curiosity - for the whole world had been shocked by the uniquely spectacular accident - Loren had never seen such a genuine outpouring of grief. He had not realized that the Lassans were capable of such deep emotion, and in his mind he savoured once again a phrase that Mirissa had found, searching the Archives for consolation: 'Little friend of all the world'. Its origin was lost, and no one could guess what long-dead scholar, in what century, had saved it for the ages to come.

Once he had embraced them both with wordless sympathy, he had left Mirissa and Brant with the Leonidas family, gathered with numerous relatives from both islands. He did not want to meet any strangers, for he knew what many of them must be thinking. 'He saved you - but you could not save him.' That was a burden he would carry for the rest of his life.

He bit his lip to check the tears that were not appropriate for a senior officer of the greatest starship ever built and felt one of the mind's defence mechanisms come to his rescue. At moments of deep grief, sometimes the only way to prevent loss of control is to evoke some wholly incongruous - even comic - image from the depths of memory.

Yes - the universe had a strange sense of humour. Loren was almost forced to suppress a smile; how Kumar would have enjoyed the final joke it had played on him!

'Don't be surprised,' Commander Newton had warned as she opened the door of the ship's morgue and a gust of icy, formalin-tainted air rolled out to meet them. 'It happens more often than you think. Sometimes it's a final spasm - almost like an unconscious attempt to defy death. This time, it was probably caused by the loss of external pressure and the subsequent freezing.'

Had it not been for the crystals of ice defining the muscles of the splendid young body, Loren might have thought that Kumar was not merely sleeping but lost in blissful dreams.

For in death, the Little Lion was even more male than he had been in life.

And now the sun had vanished behind the low hills to the west, and a cool evening breeze was rising from the sea. With scarcely a ripple, the kayak slipped into the water, drawn by Brant and three other of Kumar's closest friends. For the last time Loren glimpsed the calm and peaceful face of the boy to whom he owed his life.

There had been little weeping until now, but as the four swimmers pushed the boat slowly out from the shore, a great wail of lamentation rose from the assembled crowd. Now Loren could no longer contain his tears and did not care who saw them.

Moving strongly and steadily under the powerful drive of its four escorts, the little kayak headed out to the reef. The quick Thalassan night was already descending as the craft passed between the two flashing beacons that marked the channel to the open sea. It vanished beyond them and for a moment was hidden by the white line of breakers foaming lazily against the outer reef.

The lamentation ceased; everyone was waiting. Then there was a sudden flare of light against the darkling sky, and a pillar of fire rose out of the sea. It burned cleanly and fiercely, with scarcely any smoke; how long it lasted, Loren never knew, for time had ceased on Tarna.

Then, abruptly, the flames collapsed; the crown of fire shrank back into the sea. All was darkness; but for a moment only.

As fire and water met, a fountain of sparks erupted into the sky. Most of the embers fell back upon the sea, but others continued to soar upward until they were lost from view.

And so, for the second time, Kumar Leonidas ascended to the stars.

 

VIII

The Songs of Distant Earth

 

50 Shield of Ice

The lifting of the last snowflake should have been a joyful occasion; now it was merely one of sombre satisfaction. Thirty thousand kilometres above Thalassa, the final hexagon of ice was jockeyed into position, and the shield was complete.

For the first time in almost two years, the quantum drive was activated, though at minimum power. Magellan broke away from its stationary orbit, accelerating to test the balance and the integrity of the artificial iceberg it was to carry out to the stars. There were no problems; the work had been well done. This was a great relief to Captain Bey, who had never been able to forget that Owen Fletcher (now under reasonably strict surveillance on North Island) had been one of the shield's principal architects. And he wondered what Fletcher and the other exiled Sabras had thought when they watched the dedication ceremony.

It had begun with a video retrospective showing the building of the freezing plant and the lifting of the first snowflake. Then there had been a fascinating, speeded-up space ballet showing the great blocks of ice being manoeuvred into place and keyed into the steadily growing shield. It had started in real time, then rapidly accelerated until the last sections were being added at the rate of one every few seconds. Thalassa's leading composer had contrived a witty musical score beginning with a slow pavane and culminating in a breathless polka - slowing down to normal speed again at the very end as the final block of ice was jockeyed into position.

Then the view had switched to a live camera hovering in space a kilometre ahead of Magellan as it orbited in the shadow of the planet. The big sun-screen that protected the ice during the day had been moved aside, so the entire shield was now visible for the first time.

The huge greenish-white disc gleamed coldly beneath the floodlights; soon it would be far colder as it moved out into the few-degrees-above-absolute zero of the galactic night. There it would be warmed only by the background light of the stars, the radiation leakage from the ship - and the occasional rare burst of energy from impacting dust.

The camera drifted slowly across the artificial iceberg, to the accompaniment of Moses Kaldor's unmistakable voice.

'People of Thalassa, we thank you for your gift. Behind this shield of ice, we hope to travel safely to the world that is waiting for us, seventy-five light-years away, three hundred years hence.

'If all goes well, we will still be carrying at least twenty thousand tons of ice when we reach Sagan 2. That will be allowed to fall on to the planet, and the heat of reentry will turn it into the first rain that frigid world has ever known. For a little while, before it freezes again, it will be the precursor of oceans yet unborn.

'And one day our descendants will know seas like yours, though not as wide or as deep. Water from our two worlds will mingle together, bringing life to our new home. And we will remember you, with love and gratitude.'

 

51 Relic

'It's beautiful,' Mirissa said reverently. 'I can understand why gold was so prized on Earth.'

'The gold is the least important part,' Kaldor answered, as he slid the gleaming bell out of its velvet-lined box. 'Can you guess what this is?'

'It's obviously a work of art. But it must be something much more for you to have carried it across fifty light-years.'

'You're right, of course. It's an exact model of a great temple, more than a hundred metres tall. Originally, there were seven of these caskets, all identical in shape, nesting one inside the other -this was the innermost, holding the Relic itself. It was given to me by some old and dear friends on my very last night on Earth. "All things are impermanent," they reminded me. "But we have guarded this for more than four thousand years. Take it with you to the stars, with our blessings."

'Even though I did not share their faith, how could I refuse so priceless an offering? And now I will leave it here, where men first came to this planet - another gift from Earth - perhaps the last.'

'Don't say that,' Mirissa said. 'You have left so many gifts - we will never be able to count them all.'

Kaldor smiled wistfully and did not answer for a moment as he let his eyes linger on the familiar view from the library window. He had been happy here, tracing the history of Thalassa and learning much that might be of priceless value when the new colony was started on Sagan 2.

Farewell, old Mother Ship, he thought. You did your work well. We still have far to go; may Magellan serve us as faithfully as you served the people we have grown to love.

'I'm sure my friends would have approved - I've done my duty. The Relic will be safer here, in the Museum of Earth, than aboard the ship. After all, we may never reach Sagan 2.'

'Of course you will. But you haven't told me what's inside this seventh casket.'

'It's all that's left of one of the greatest men who ever lived; he founded the only faith that never became stained with blood. I'm sure he would have been most amused to know that, forty centuries after his death, one of his teeth would be carried to the stars.'

 

52 The Songs of Distant Earth

Now was the time of transition, of farewells - of partings as deep as death. Yet for all the tears that were shed - on Thalassa as well as the ship - there was also a feeling of relief. Though things would never be quite the same again, life could now return to normal. The visitors were like guests who had slightly overstayed their welcome; it was time to go.

Even President Farradine now accepted this and had abandoned his dream of an interstellar Olympics. He had ample consolation; the freezing units at Mangrove Bay were being transferred to North Island, and the first skating rink on Thalassa would be ready in time for the Games. Whether any competitors would also be ready was another question, but many young Lassans were spending hours staring incredulously at some of the great performers of the past.

Meanwhile, everyone agreed that some farewell ceremony should be arranged to mark Magellan's departure. Unfortunately, few could agree what form it should take. There were innumerable private parties - which put a considerable mental and physical strain on all concerned - but no official, public one.

Mayor Waldron, claiming priority on behalf of Tarna, felt that the ceremony should take place at First Landing. Edgar Farradine argued that the President's Palace, despite its modest size, was more appropriate. Some wit suggested Krakan as a compromise, pointing out that its famous vineyards would be an appropriate place for the farewell toasts. The matter was still unresolved when the Thalassan Broadcasting Corporation - one of the planet's more enterprising bureaucracies - quietly preempted the entire project.

The farewell concert was to be remembered, and replayed, for generations to come. There was no video to distract the senses -only music and the briefest of narration. The heritage of two thousand years was ransacked to recall the past and to give hope for the future. It was not only a Requiem but also a Berceuse.

It still seemed a miracle that after their art had reached technological perfection, composers of music could find anything new to say. For two thousand years, electronics had given them complete command over every sound audible to the human ear, and it might have been thought that all the possibilities of the medium had been long exhausted.

There had, indeed, been about a century of beepings and twitterings and electro-eructations before composers had mastered their now infinite powers and had once again successfully married technology and art. No one had ever surpassed Beethoven or Bach; but some had approached them.

To the legions of listeners, the concert was a reminder of things they had never known - things that belonged to Earth alone. The slow beat of mighty bells, climbing like invisible smoke from old cathedral spires; the chant of patient boatmen, in tongues now lost forever, rowing home against the tide in the last light of day; the songs of armies marching into battles that Time had robbed of all their pain and evil; the merged murmur of ten million voices as man's greatest cities woke to meet the dawn; the cold dance of the aurora over endless seas of ice; the roar of mighty engines climbing upward on the highway to the stars. All these the listeners heard in the music that came out of the night - the songs of distant Earth, carried across the light-years ...

For the concluding item, the producers had selected the last great work in the symphonic tradition. Written in the years when Thalassa had lost touch with Earth, it was totally new to the audience. Yet its oceanic theme made it peculiarly appropriate to this occasion - and its impact upon the listeners was everything the long-dead composer could have wished.

'... When I wrote "Lamentation for Atlantis", almost thirty years ago, I had no specific images in mind; I was concerned only with emotional reactions, not explicit scenes; I wanted the music to convey a sense of mystery, of sadness - of overwhelming loss. I was not trying to paint a sound-portrait of ruined cities full of fish. But now something strange happens, whenever I hear the Lento lugubre - as I am doing in my mind at this very moment ...

'It begins at Bar 136, when the series of chords descending to the organ's lowest register first meets the soprano's wordless aria, rising higher and higher out of the depths ... You know, of course, that I based that theme on the songs of the great whales, those mighty minstrels of the sea with whom we made peace too late, too late ... I wrote it for Olga Kondrashin, and no one else could ever sing those passages without electronic backing ...

'When the vocal line begins, it's as if I'm seeing something that really exists. I'm standing in a great city square almost as large as St Mark's or St Peter's. All around are half-ruined buildings, like Greek temples, and overturned statues draped with seaweeds, green fronds waving slowly back and forth. Everything is partly covered by a thick layer of silt.

'The square seems empty at first; then I notice something - disturbing. Don't ask me why it's always a surprise, why I'm always seeing it for the first time...

'There's a low mound in the centre of the square, with a pattern of lines radiating from it. I wonder if they are ruined walls, partly buried in the silt. But the arrangement makes no sense; and then I see that the mound is - pulsing.

'And a moment later I notice two huge, unblinking eyes staring out at me.

'That's all; nothing happens. Nothing has happened here for six thousand years, since that night when the land barrier gave way and the sea poured in through the Pillars of Hercules.

'The Lento is my favourite movement, but I couldn't end the symphony in such a mood of tragedy and despair. Hence the Finale, "Resurgence".

'I know, of course, that Plato's Atlantis never really existed. And for that very reason, it can never die. It will always be an ideal - a dream of perfection - a goal to inspire men for all ages to come. So that's why the symphony ends with a triumphant march into the future.

'I know that the popular interpretation of the March is a New Atlantis emerging from the waves. That's rather too literal; to me the Finale depicts the conquest of space. Once I'd found it and pinned it down, it took me months to get rid of that closing theme. Those damned fifteen notes were hammering away in my brain night and day ...

'Now, the Lamentation exists quite apart from me; it has taken on a life of its own. Even when Earth is gone, it will be speeding out towards the Andromeda Galaxy, driven by fifty thousand megawatts from the Deep Space transmitter in Tsiolkovski Crater.

'Someday, centuries of millennia hence, it will be captured -and understood.'

Spoken Memoirs - Sergei Di Pietro (3411-3509).

 

53 The Golden Mask

'We've always pretended she doesn't exist,' Mirissa said. 'But now I would like to see her - just once.'

Loren was silent for a while. Then he answered, 'You know that Captain Bey has never allowed any visitors.'

Of course she knew that; she also understood the reasons why.

Although it had aroused some resentment at first, everyone on Thalassa now realized that Magellan's small crew was far too busy to act as tour guides - or nursemaids - to the unpredictable fifteen per cent who would become nauseated in the ship's zero-gravity sections. Even President Farradine had been tactfully turned down.

'I've spoken to Moses - and he's spoken to the captain. It's all arranged. But it's to be kept secret until the ship has left.'

Loren stared at her in amazement; then he smiled. Mirissa was always surprising him; that was part of her attraction. And he realized, with a twinge of sadness, that no one on Thalassa had a better right to this privilege; her brother was the only other Lassan to have made the journey. Captain Bey was a fair man, willing to alter the rules when necessary. And once the ship had left, only three days from now, it would not matter.

'Suppose you're spacesick?'

'I've never even been seasick -'

'- that doesn't prove anything -'

'- and I've seen Commander Newton. She's given me a ninety-five per cent rating. And she suggests the midnight shuttle - there won't be any villagers around then.'

'You've thought of everything, haven't you?' Loren said in frank admiration. 'I'll meet you at Number Two Landing, fifteen minutes before midnight.'

He paused, then added with difficulty, 'I won't be coming down again. Please say good-bye to Brant for me.'

That was an ordeal he could not face. Indeed, he had not set foot in the Leonidas residence since Kumar had made his last voyage and Brant had returned to comfort Mirissa. Already, it was almost as if Loren had never entered their lives.

And he was inexorably leaving theirs, for now he could look on Mirissa with love but without desire. A deeper emotion - one of the worst pains he had ever known - now filled his mind.

He had longed, and hoped, to see his child - but Magellan's new schedule made that impossible. Though he had heard his son's heartbeats, mingled with his mother's, he would never hold him in his arms.

The shuttle made its rendezvous on the day side of the planet, so Magellan was still almost a hundred kilometres away when Mirissa first saw it. Even though she knew its real size, it looked like a child's toy as it glittered in the sunlight.

From ten kilometres, it seemed no larger. Her brain and eyes insisted that those dark circles round the centre section were only portholes. Not until the endless, curving hull of the ship loomed up beside them did her mind admit that they were cargo and docking hatches, one of which the ferry was about to enter.

Loren looked at Mirissa anxiously as she unbuckled her seatbelt; this was the dangerous moment when, free from restraints for the first time, the overconfident passenger suddenly realized that zero-gravity was not as enjoyable as it looked. But Mirissa seemed completely at ease as she drifted through the airlock, propelled by a few gentle pushes from Loren.

'Luckily there's no need to go into the one-gee section, so you'll avoid the problem of re-adapting twice. You won't have to worry about gravity again until you're back on the ground.'

It would have been interesting, Mirissa thought, to have visited the living quarters in the spinning section of the ship - but that would have involved them in endless polite conversations and personal contacts, which were the last things she needed now. She was rather glad that Captain Bey was still down on Thalassa; there was no need even for a courtesy visit of thanks.

Once they had left the airlock they found themselves in a tubular corridor that seemed to stretch the whole length of the ship. On one side was a ladder, on the other, two lines of flexible loops, convenient for hands or feet, glided slowly in either direction along parallel slots.

'This is not a very good place to be when we're accelerating,' Loren said. 'Then it becomes a vertical shaft - two kilometers deep. That's when you really need the ladder and handholds. Just grab that loop, and let it do all the work.'

They were swept effortlessly along for several hundred metres, then switched to a corridor at right angles to the main one. 'Let go of the strap,' Loren said when they had travelled a few dozen metres. 'I want to show you something.'

Mirissa released her hold, and they drifted to a stop beside a long, narrow window set in the side of the tunnel. She peered through the thick glass into a huge, brightly-lit metal cavern. Though she had quite lost her bearings, she guessed that this great cylindrical chamber must span almost the entire width of the ship - and that central bar must therefore lie along its axis.

'The quantum drive,' Loren said proudly.

He did not even attempt to name the shrouded metal and crystal shapes, the curiously-formed flying buttresses springing from the walls of the chamber, the pulsing constellations of lights, the sphere of utter blackness that, even though it was completely featureless, somehow seemed to be spinning ... But after a while he said:

'The greatest achievement of human genius - Earth's last gift to its children. One day it will make us masters of the galaxy.'

There was an arrogance about the words that made Mirissa wince. That was the old Loren speaking again, before he had been mellowed by Thalassa. So be it, she thought; but part of him has been changed forever.

'Do you suppose,' she asked gently, 'that the galaxy will even notice?'

Yet she was impressed, and stared for a long time at the huge and meaningless shapes that had carried Loren to her across the light-years. She did not know whether to bless them for what they had brought her or to curse them for what they would soon take away.

Loren led her on through the maze, deeper into Magellan's heart. Not once did they meet another person; it was a reminder of the ship's size - and the smallness of its crew.

'We're nearly there,' Loren said in a voice that was now hushed and solemn. 'And this is the Guardian.'

Taken completely by surprise, Mirissa floated towards the golden face staring at her out of the alcove until she was about to collide with it. She put out her hand, and felt cold metal. So it was real - and not, as she had first imagined, a holodisplay.

'What - who - is it?' she whispered.

'We have many of Earth's greatest art treasures on board,' Loren said with sombre pride. 'This was one of the most famous. He was a king who died very young - when he was still a boy.

Loren's voice faded away as they shared the same thought. Mirissa had to blink away her tears before she could read the inscription below the mask.

TUTANKHAMUN

1361-1353 bc

(Valley of the Kings, Egypt, ad 1922)

Yes, he had been almost exactly the same age as Kumar. The golden face stared out at them across the millennia, and across the light-years - the face of a young god struck down in his prime. There was power and confidence here but not yet the arrogance and cruelty that the lost years would have given.

'Why here?' Mirissa said, half guessing the answer.

'It seemed an appropriate symbol. The Egyptians believed that if they carried out the right ceremonies, the dead would exist again in some kind of afterworld. Pure superstition, of course - yet here we have made it come true.'

But not in the way I would have wished, Mirissa thought sadly. As she stared into the jet-black eyes of the boy king, looking out at her from his mask of incorruptible gold, it was hard to believe that this was only a marvellous work of art and not a living person.

She could not tear her eyes away from that calm yet hypnotic gaze across the centuries. Once more she put forth her hand, and stroked a golden cheek. The precious metal suddenly reminded her of a poem she had found in the First Landing Archives, when she set the computer searching the literature of the past for words of solace. Most of the hundreds of lines had been inappropriate, but this one ('Author unknown - ?1800-2100') fitted perfectly:

They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man, The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.

Loren waited patiently until Mirissa's thoughts had run their course. Then he slid a card into an almost invisible slot beside the death-mask, and a circular door opened silently.

It was incongruous to find a cloak-room full of heavy furs inside a spaceship, but Mirissa could appreciate the need for them. Already the temperature had fallen many degrees, and she found herself shivering with the unaccustomed cold.

Loren helped her into the thermosuit - not without difficulty in zero gravity - and they floated towards a circle of frosted glass set in the far wall of the little chamber. The crystal trapdoor swung towards them like an opening watchglass, and out of its swirled a blast of frigid air such as Mirissa had never imagined far less experienced. Thin wisps of moisture condensed in the freezing air, dancing round her like ghosts. She looked at Loren as if to say, 'Surely you don't expect me to go in there!'

He took her arm reassuringly and said, 'Don't worry - the suit will protect you, and after a few minutes you won't notice the cold on your face.'

She found this hard to believe; but he was right. As she followed him through the trapdoor, breathing cautiously at first, she was surprised to find the experience not at all unpleasant. Indeed, it was positively stimulating; for the first time she could understand why people had willingly gone into the polar regions of the Earth.

She could easily imagine that she was there herself, for she seemed to be floating in a frigid, snow-white universe. All around her were glittering honeycombs that might have been made of ice, forming thousands of hexagonal cells. It was almost like a smaller version of Magellan's shield - except that here the units were only about a metre across, and laced together with clusters of pipes and bundles of wiring.

So here they were, sleeping all around her - the hundreds of thousands of colonists to whom Earth was still in literal truth, a memory of only yesterday. What were they dreaming, she wondered, less than halfway through their five-hundred-year sleep? Did the brain dream at all in this dim no-man's-land between life and death? Not according to Loren; but who could be really sure?

Mirissa had seen videos of bees scurrying about their mysterious business inside a hive; she felt like a human bee as she followed Loren, hand over hand along the grid-work of rails crisscrossing the face of the great honeycomb. She was now quite at ease in zero gravity and was no longer even aware of the bitter cold. Indeed, she was scarcely aware of her body and sometimes had to persuade herself that this was not all a dream from which she would presently awake.

The cells bore no names but were all identified by an alphanumeric code; Loren went unerringly to H-354. At the touch of a button, the hexagonal metal-and-glass container slid outward on telescopic rails to reveal the sleeping woman inside.

She was not beautiful - though it was unfair to pass judgement on any woman without the crowning glory of her hair. Her skin was of a colour that Mirissa had never seen and which she knew had become very rare on Earth - a black so deep that it held almost a hint of blue. And it was so flawless that Mirissa could not resist a spasm of envy; into her mind came a fleeting image of intertwined bodies, ebon and ivory - an image which, she knew, would haunt her in the years ahead.

She looked again at the face. Even in this centuries-long repose, it showed determination and intelligence. Would we have been friends? Mirissa wondered. I doubt it; we are too much alike.

So you are Kitani, and you are carrying Loren's first child out to the stars. But will she really be the first, since she will be born centuries after mine? First or second, I wish her well ...

She was still numb, though not only with cold, when the crystal door closed behind them. Loren steered her gently back along the corridor and past the Guardian.

Once more her fingers brushed the cheek of the immortal golden boy. For a shocked moment, it felt warm to her touch; then she realized that her body was still adjusting to normal temperature.

That would take only minutes; but how long, she wondered, before the ice would melt around her heart?

 

54 Valediction

This is the last time I shall talk to you, Evelyn, before I begin my longest sleep. I am still on Thalassa, but the shuttle will be lifting for Magellan in a few minutes; there is nothing more for me to do - until planetfall, three hundred years from now ...

I feel a great sadness, for I have just said good-bye to my dearest friend here, Mirissa Leonidas. How you would have enjoyed meeting her! She is perhaps the most intelligent person I have met on Thalassa, and we had many long talks together - though I fear that some were more like the monologues for which you so often criticized me ...

She asked about God, of course; but perhaps her shrewdest question was one I was quite unable to answer.

Soon after her beloved young brother was killed, she asked me, 'What is the purpose of grief? Does it serve any biological function?'

How strange that I had never given any serious thought to that!

One could imagine an intelligent species which functioned perfectly well if the dead were remembered with no emotion - if indeed they were remembered at all. It would be an utterly inhuman society, but it could be at least as successful as the termites and the ants were on Earth.

Could grief be an accidental - even a pathological - by-product of love, which of course does have an essential biological function? It's a strange and disturbing thought. Yet it's our emotions that make us human; who would abandon them, even knowing that each new love is yet another hostage to those twin terrorists, Time and Fate?

She often talked to me about you, Evelyn. It puzzled her that a man could love only one woman in all his life and not seek another when she was gone. Once I teased her by saying that fidelity was almost as strange to the Lassans as jealousy; she retorted that they had gained by losing both.

They are calling me; the shuttle is waiting. Now I must say good-bye to Thalassa forever. And your image, too, is beginning to fade. Though I am good at giving advice to others, perhaps I have clung too long to my own grief, and it does no service to your memory.

Thalassa has helped to cure me. Now I can rejoice that I knew you rather than mourn because I lost you.

A strange calmness has come upon me. For the first time, I feel that I really understand my old Buddhist friends' concepts of Detachment - even of Nirvana ...

And if I do not wake on Sagan 2, so be it. My work here is done, and I am well content.

 

55 Departure

The trimaran reached the edge of the kelp bed just before midnight, and Brant anchored in thirty metres of water. He would start to drop the spyballs at dawn until the fence was laid between Scorpville and South Island. Once that was established, any comings and goings would be observed. If the scorps found one of the spyballs and carried it home as a trophy, so much the better. It would continue to operate, doubtless providing even more useful information than in the open sea.

Now there was nothing to do but to lie in the gently rocking boat and listen to the soft music from Radio Tarna, tonight uncharacteristically subdued. From time to time there would be an announcement or a message of goodwill or a poem in honour of the villagers. There could be few people sleeping on either island tonight; Mirissa wondered fleetingly what thoughts must be passing through the minds of Owen Fletcher and his fellow exiles, marooned on an alien world for the rest of their lives. The last time she had seen them on a Norther Videocast, they had not appeared at all unhappy and had been cheerfully discussing local business opportunities.

Brant was so quiet that she would have thought he was sleeping, except that his grip on her hand was as firm as ever, as they lay side by side, looking up at the stars. He had changed - perhaps even more than she had. He was less impatient, more considerate. Best of all, he had already accepted the child, with words whose gentleness had reduced her to tears: 'He will have two fathers.'

Now Radio Tarna was starting the final and quite unnecessary launch countdown - the first that any Lassan had ever heard except for historic recordings from the past. Will we see anything at all, Mirissa wondered? Magellan is on the other side of the world, hovering at high noon above a hemisphere of ocean. We have the whole thickness of the planet between us...

'... Zero ...' Tarna Radio said - and instantly was obliterated by a roar of white noise. Brant reached for the gain control and had barely cut off the sound when the sky erupted.

The entire horizon was ringed with fire. North, south, east, west - there was no difference. Long streamers of flame reached up out of the ocean, halfway towards the zenith, in such an auroral display, as Thalassa had never witnessed before, and would never see again.

It was beautiful but awe-inspiring. Now Mirissa understood why Magellan had been placed on the far side of the world; yet this was not the quantum drive itself but merely the stray energies leaking from it, being absorbed harmlessly in the ionosphere. Loren had told her something incomprehensible about superspace shockwaves, adding that not even the inventors of the drive had ever understood the phenomenon.

She wondered, briefly, what the scorps would make of these celestial fireworks; some trace of this actinic fury must filter down through the forests of kelp to illuminate the byways of their sunken cities.

Perhaps it was imagination, but the radiating, multicoloured beams that formed the encircling crown of light seemed to be creeping slowly across the sky. The source of their energy was gaining speed, accelerating along its orbit as it left Thalassa forever. It was many minutes before she could be quite sure of the movement; in the same time, the intensity of the display had also diminished appreciably.

Then abruptly, it ceased. Radio Tarna came back on the air, rather breathlessly.

'... everything according to plan ... the ship is now being reorientated ... other displays later, but not so spectacular ... all stages of the initial breakaway will be on the other side of the world, but we'll be able to see Magellan directly in three days, when it's leaving the system