John Rackham (16 page)

"Facts,"
she said, "don't care whether you believe them, whether you believe
in
them, or what you believe
about
them.
That's something we are all taught when we are very young." She sounded
like a child now, her voice unsteady and her breath labored. "Facts
are.
So then, in fact, that was some five or six large things, perhaps stone,
sometimes metal. Things which fell from the sky at great speed and with much
noise, fire and smoke. They struck the earth. And where they struck they
destroyed, making great holes and setting fires around. Those are the facts,
whether you believe them or not. By your face I think you do not."

"Eh?"
Bragan stared at her stupidly for a moment, engrossed by the sudden arc-light
flare of total comprehension in his mind. "Believe you? Of course I do.
This silly expression is for me, for being so stupidly blind as not to see
this
a
long time ago. I'm a fool! Ryth, tell me, how
long has this been going on, and how often does it happen?"

"You
don't understand, or you wouldn't ask. Who can predict the whim of the gods?
How often? I have seen perhaps a hundred such strikes, not so many as close as
this.

Four
in one day I saw once. Sometimes weeks, even years, the gods will doze, or
strike other places. I am told there is always somewhere on Scarta where the
gods are awake and angry. But I also know of people who have lived a whole life
and never seen a strike."

"That figures. And
it's been going on for a long time?"

"In
the beginning, when the gods made Scarta and gave it to us as a place to live,
they chose for themselves the great sky-lights. But then they could look down
and see how beautiful Scarta was, and they knew they had given away the best
part, and ever since they have been angry and they throw stones down on us from
time to time—"

He heard her with only the fringe of his
mind. The theology didn't interest him. All intelligent peoples go through a
stage of devising myths to account for origins, and this was no better, nor
worse, than others. But it confirmed something for him. "In the
beginning—" is a phrase that means, in fact, a time so far back that no
one can remember when it was not so. And Scarta had no moon. It was so obvious
that he could kick himself now for not having expected it.

"If
you don't believe me," she said, "you have only to climb up the
ladder and look for yourself. The strike couldn't have been far away!"

"I
believe you. Now that it is all over we have to get up and out in any case, and
study the damage. Come on; let me help you." He stood, gave her a hand,
and she got to her feet, reeled a little and leaned on him.

"You
need something hot," he advised. "You've had
a
pretty bad shock. Your nerves are shot!" He put his arm around her,
led her along the tunnel until he found the ladder and then helped her up to
the surface again. The stink of sulphur was plainer now and there was a fitful
breeze full of rain. It took only a moment to see that the impacts had indeed
been close. There was one smoldering crater not thirty yards beyond the
buildings, and five in a cluster gouged out of the hillside where they had
labored so hard to clear the trees. The look was like angry red eyes rimmed
with fire and smoke.

Meteors,
he mused.
Meteorites. Bolides. Thunderbolts. The
original air raids.
He
recalled the scatter of little circular lakes he had seen from the air. He knew
why Stopa was
a
spaced-out city built of fragile stone-dust,
why the farmhouses were fragile, and why there were shelters everywhere. And
he knew, because Ryth had just told him why, the Scartanni were people of
immense ingenuity, lightning-fast reflexes, and indomitable will. Scarta had
lost its moon millions of years ago, possibly even before the dawn of anthropoid
evolution. In all that time those shifting unstable glow-balls of rock and
rubble up there had been hurling down assorted chunks of debris at random and
with great frequency.

It must have taken sheer guts and unbeatable
persistence just to survive in such conditions. Weakness, despair, panic and
all debilitating neuroses must have been bred out of the stock countless
generations ago. With this kind of evolutionary pressure, from outside, it was
no wonder the Scartanni were a people of one language, one culture and no
tendency toward fancy frills. Nor could they ever have afforded the wasteful
insanity of war. With the constant knowledge that whimsical nemesis can smash
you dead at any moment, you tend to think things through to basics and work for
the things that really matter.

Ryth
shivered and stirred within his arm. "Now that you have seen," she
said, "I must report to Tarat, or they will be sending someone to find out
if I need help, and that will be
a
waste
of time."

"Right," he nodded, turning for
just one more look at those burning circles, like the eyes of hell.
Imagine living ioith that hanging over you!
he thought.
No wonder they're not scared of Zorgan, and
no wonder they're itching for just one more chance to hit back!
"All right, come on."

"I can walk," she protested, and he
hugged her tighter.

"You
can take it easy, Ryth. You don't have to prove anything to me. Come on."
He half-carried her back indoors to her room. Then, "You go ahead and make
your report while I make some coffee for us. You need something. And get some
clothes on!"

It
wasn't real coffee, but a berry he had discovered and experimented with until
he had produced a fair substitute. It was bubbling by the time she came back
with a blanket draped around her. Pink was fighting its way back to her cheeks
but she was thankful to sit by the table and sip at the cup he put out for her.
Outside, the drizzle from the atmospheric disturbance had sharpened into a
downpour and the rattle on the roof was quite plain.

"You look excited," she murmured.
"As if you had discovered something."

"I
have. Something so big that I can't quite grasp it yet. So much that I hardly
know where to start asking questions. That alarm, for one. How is that
worked?"

"I don't know the technical details. But
I do know that every city and every village of any size keeps a constant
sky-watch in some manner, day and night. It's some kind of radio that can see
the god-stones as they begin to fall, and clever devices that can work out
where they will strike, and then all the dwellings in that region are called
with the alarm, to take cover. Is that enough? Hork could have told you more,
perhaps."

"It's enough. Early-warning radar! It
figures. No wonder Tarat knew where and when we had landed, and no impact."
He chuckled at the thought, and then eyed her curiously. "Ryth, why
haven't
I
heard about this before?"

"Because we never talk about it. Because
there is neither sense nor reason in it. Every child is taught from the first
what the alarm means, and what to do. What more is there to say? I know that I
may be struck dead at any moment, so why talk about it? You realize that the
shelters would not save anyone from a direct hit? That they are there only to
help?"

"I realize that, all right. But there is
rhyme and reason, Ryth. If it won't distress you, may I explain your 'gods' to
you? Not that it will change anything, but at least it will explain just what
does, in fact, happen."

She
shrugged indifferently and he set away to explain, as simply as he could make
it, the basic laws about gravity, and orbit, and satellite. And then the law
that decrees the breakup of a satellite- that comes too near a planetary body.

"In
all probability Scarta captured it in a highly eccentric orbit, and every time
it zoomed in close it ruptured a bit more, until it broke up altogether under
stress. And now you have the debris spinning around up there in three
equila-terally spaced nodes, with a ribbon of dust connecting them. And the
silly thing is that Iknew all that a long time ago. I even knew those tumbling
rock-piles are unstable. We had a hell of a job securing our collector-dishes
to them so that they would keep an eye on the sun—" He broke off as the
association of ideas to go with collector-dishes sparked off an idea so vast
that it caught his breath. Ryth stared at him and shivered.

"What are you thinking
now?"

"Somednng—don't
ask me. I have to let it settle!" He got up, all at once, and went to the
door. The rain had stopped and the night air was as clear as crystal. He
stepped out and looked up. There, just sinking over one hilltop, was a ball of
silver fire, and newly risen over another was a second cool flame, with the
great glowing scarf of dust banded between them. He stared, and thought, and
wondered as the immensity of his idea took hold. He started out of a reverie
as she came to brush his shoulder. She had left her blanket draped over the
chair and was as naked as Eve.

"Denzil!"
She caught his arm and turned him to face her. "There is something
I
must say. I must!"

"Yes. What?" He hardly saw her
because his mind was still seeing visions of a different kind. Silver light
painted the side of her hair and cheek, shoulder and breast, and the red glow
of Betelguese tinged the shadowy side so that she was two kinds of fire, cool
and warm.

"Just
now. In the shelter. When I believed I might not live very much longer—I did
something I would not have done, otherwise."

Something in her voice sliced through his
preoccupation
and he tensed, seeing her as if for the first time. She raised a
hand uncertainly. He knew. The knowledge made his vision
blur with a sudden rush of blood to his head. And then,
with an effort, he clutched at sanity and stepped back just
a
pace.
                                                                                     
«

"No need to explain," he muttered.
"We all do silly things in the heat of a moment like that. If you're
worried that I might have misunderstood, forget it. I wouldn't make a mistake
like that. You're Scarta, and I'm the enemy, Zorgan. It's forgotten. Think no
more about it."

She
sagged visibly, let her arm fall, and looked like
a
struck child. Then she sighed, and lifted her chin again.

"Very
well. It is forgotten. It was, as you say, a silly thing to do. I think I will
go to bed now."

He
watched her go away, and was numb. But there was no choice, for him. What, he
asked himself savagely, does one man matter when a whole planet is at stake?

IX

F
or
the first time
in
all the weeks he had spent on the holding he was awake before her the next
morning. She turned out looking as if someone had switched out a flame inside
her somewhere. He feigned concern.

"A
bad night? No wonder, after the shock you had. Better take things easy for a
while. I can manage on my own. You just tell me—"

"I am perfectly all rightl" she
snapped. "I shall not take it easy. There is much to be done!"

"All
right." He shrugged. "You're the boss. Don't you want to hear about
my idea of last night?"

"Not
unless it will help to destroy your kind, when they cornel"

"Well, now!" he grinned. "That's
just what it could well be,
if
you
had the technology to do it. What d'you think of that?"

"I think you are a big liar, Zorgan. But
I will listen, while we eat breakfast." She did more than listen. She hung
on his words with a kind of fascinated horror as he expounded.

"The
first thing," he told her, "is that sky-waming radio of yours. You've
never taken it any further than the source of the trouble, and I can't blame
you for that. But the fact is that with a little know-how you could easily lay
a blanket of early warning well out past the meteorite zone. It would call for
some filtering and fancy electronics, but it could be done."

"To what
purpose?"

"Get
it through your headl
We
are not your sky-gods. We come from a long
way further off, as I told you. Planets of another star, out there! And by
stretching your sky-watch you'll have advance warning of the big fleet, when it
comes."