John Rackham (20 page)

Ryth led them swiftly along
a
chain
of
tunnels
and
out
into the pink dawn, onto a narrow ledge. They
were on
a
hillside overlooking Stopa. The air was chill
and tainted with smoke and fumes from down there. One glowing sky-fight hung
close to the far horizon, barely visible in the growing sunlight. The
connecting ribbon
of
dust was completely lost against the sky.
Bragan felt Ryth move to stand close by him and put her hand on his arm.

"I
don't understand," she breathed. "I don't understand anything. You
knew that I was—spying on you, trying to steal your knowledge?"

"Don't worry about it," he
chuckled. "Who cares, now? The cooking was worth it all. I've put on
weight!" He felt slightly light-headed and it seemed the right thing to
put his arm around her and hug her tight.

He heard Karsh muttering under his breath,
"Seconds only —any time—there she goes!"

There,
right at the dim heart of the moon-ball a star was bom, a pinpoint of brilliant
light that grew swiftly and spread, opening out as if someone had pulled back a
curtain from a window. It grew until Bragan had to shut his eyes against it,
and the brilliance struck through his eyelids, the heat of it warm on his face.
And still it grew. He put up a palm to shade his face and saw the fire-ball
changed from blue-white to yellow, to golden, and grow a broad arm into the
sky. Then from over his shoulder came the other end of the arm to meet it, and
merge and make a great band of glaring light across the sky. He glanced down at
the stark-lit scene, felt the heat, and shafted an anxious glance across to
Karsh.

"Radiation
hazard?"

"This phase? Negligible. Nothing hard will
get this far. It will be mostly short-range gamma stuff; won't bother us at
all."

"How long before it
bums itself out?"

"Hard
to tell exactly, but something like thirty, thirty-five days, not more. By that
time it will be all dust." Karsh turned away. "Just dust—but if it
falls back this way, settles down into the atmosphere, we're as good as
dead."

"How soon will you
know, which way?"

"Within
half an hour. I have the computation-program already set up. It's up to the
instruments, now."

Bragan
turned to look down at Ryth. "We've provoked your gods, my dear. It's up
to them, now."

"What
are you?" she whispered, and her father came close to repeat the question
in slightly different form.

"What is it all about, Bragan? There are
things here that
7.
don't understand."

"I
imagine that applies to many of your people, too, Mor-din. It's about time I
explained the whole thing. Can we go below, and I'll talk so that you can all
hear—"

"A
moment!" the old man growled and laid a hand on his arm. "See there;
we have company," and he pointed down the hillside to where a procession
was winding its way up. A dozen or so Scartanni armed with stun-guns were
herding five lumbering figures in body-armor, black armor and weapons that
were all dead and useless now. Ryth caught her breath and her hand gripped his
arm tightly as she eyed the shapes.

"What are those?"

"They
are Zorgan," Bragan said softly. "The real ones, this time." He
looked to Mordin curiously. "What do you want done with them?"

The old man stared and put a shaking hand to
his face, as well he might, because these creatures were all of seven and a
half feet tall and as the armor-joints moved it could be seen that they were
humanoid only by a stretch of the imagination. As they came close Bragan
stared up into the flat-planed scaly faces and lizard-slit eyes with stony calm
and prepared his mouth and tongue for the rasping syllables of their language.

"You are helpless, defeated, and your
master fleet is burned into dust in that star-fire up there. Do you understand
this? Which one speaks for the rest?" He used the speech-form to indicate
rank, and one of the captives bared his yellow fangs in the appropriate manner.

"I
speak, being 'dan' of this party, what remains of it. Our armor and weapons are
dead; our ship destroyed. We accept death."

"Wait! Bragan turned to the old man.
"It's up to you. They expect to be executed. Well?"

"We
do not kill," Mordin mumbled. "What kind of creatures are
these?"

"Zorgan.
I suggest you keep them prisoner until you can work something out. You
might
get them to understand cooperation with you, but I doubt it."

Mordin gave the orders and watched the
ungainly two-legged dungs tramp away. Ryth shivered.

"I have seen snakes that look like
men!"

"That's
not too far-out. I reckon there's a lot of reptile in their evolutionary tree.
You'll have problems there. They don't think the way we do, at all. Shall we go
back down now?"

Back at the central control point once more,
with Ryth on one side and Karsh on the other, Bragan faced Mordin, and a
microphone that linked him with the whole of Scarta.

"We're
not proud of what we did," he began. "Our only excuse is that we had
no choice. . . . Beyond the red star and the white is the territory of the
Zorgan horde. We—we come from the planetary system of a small star in the opposite
direction. We are of the Solar Union. We learned long ago that war is waste,
that conquest is a crime. When we began moving into space, to go traveling
among the stars, we went in peace, not wishing to interfere with anyone else.
We learned to stand well back and observe and then pass by. But then we
encountered Zorgan. We studied them enough to know them well, and to fear what
we knew. Because Zorgan knows only one thing, to expand and to conquer, by
any and all means. We knew, by studying, that within a certain measurable
period of time Zorgan would reach as far as our sun, and would descend on us.
That was the situation we faced."

He paused to stare at Mordin while he
collected his thoughts. "The Solar Union comprises three planets and several
smaller bases, and, unlike Scarta, we long ago developed a highly complex
technical culture—so that all our resources go into maintaining our living,
with little to spare. We just did not have the resources to turn over into a
defensive and warlike economy. So what were we to do?"

He paused again, looked at Ryth now, spoke to
her. "You are farmers. You also have great skill in medicine and chemicals.
You must know, therefore, of the practice of immunization against a deadly disease.
It is done by infecting the person or animal with a mild form of the disease
first. The person sickens but recovers, and is then proof against the virulent
fonn, if and when it should strike." Ryth opened her eyes wide.

Mordin came forward in his seat to gasp,
"You mean— you were immunizing us?"

"Yes.
It was the only plan we could think of. It fell into two parts. Like this.
Zorgan works to technique always. That technique is predictable. We were able
to predict almost to the day when Zorgan would contact Scarta. We had that much
time. We were to come, with a fleet the exact image of the Zorgan one, only
smaller, and take you. To impress you with the power and might of Zorgan. And
then—somehow—to allow ourselves to be defeated, but at the same time warning
you of the major fleet that would follow. As you know"—he grinned—"it
didn't work quite like that!"

"So that's why,"
Ryth whispered, "you wouldn't surrender."

"1
couldn't. It was all right for the others to
turn traitor and help out. That was fine. But somebody had to stand out and
keep reminding you of the pressure, to keep you driving. There wasn't much
time. And the other leg of the plan was that we of the Solar Union would
crash-build the biggest and most powerful fleet we could, to get here and stand
by for support-attack, at exactly the right time. The time when Zorgan was
being engaged and held by ground resistance. As you know, they got here. We
should be hearing from them soon as to the fate of the rest of the Zorgan fleet
up there. And there it is." Bragan shrugged wearily. "As I said, we're
not proud of it, but what could we doP"

"You
deliberately attacked us, pretending to be ZorganP" old Mordin muttered,
his craggy face furrowed in unbelief. "For a year we have been upset,
outraged! You have made us change our whole way of living—!"

A chattering
of reports interrupted him. The sky-watch crew reported swarms of dots
descending from the skies in random fashion, and there was a rapid return of
tension, but Karsh spoke up, turning to scan the displays.

"Nothing
to worry about. Those ships carry just enough battery-power to make a landing
of sorts, but they are helpless otherwise without their supply from upstairs.
You won't have any trouble with them." He got up and stalked across to a
set of chattering consoles, to study the readings that were coming up. Mordin
reached for Bragan's arm in anger.

"You deliberately
involved us, set us up as a target—
I"

"No!" Ryth struck
at her father's arm in sudden heat.

"Can't
you see? Remember the snake-people we saw, the real Zorgans? They would have
come in any case, wouldn't they? And we would have been utterly defeated,
without warning, hope or mercy!"

"That's
true," Bragan assured him. "You wouldn't have stood a chance, and you
know it, if you stop and think a littie. And then it would have been our turn.
What else could we do?" As he watched the old man's face, there came
another crackle and buzz from the ship's radio-link and he reached for it.

"Alpha to Antibody. Do
you read?"

"Antibody
to Alpha. We read. Bragan here. Who's that?"

"This
is Fleet Admiral Zarnov speaking. Nice to hear from you again, Professor.
I
admire your spectacular. Quite a fireball!"

"Yes. What of
Zorgan?"

"All taken care of. The three major
monitors managed to burst out of the fire-blast, but they were staggering, and
we took care of them. About a dozen smaller craft, but they didn't give us any
trouble at all. What was that fire-ball stunt, anyway? For a while we thought
the planet had gone nova!"

"It might be that bad, yet. Tell you
later." Bragan. shut off the radio and looked at Mordin again. Ryth leaned
forward, her face aglow.

"People
of Scarta, what else can you say but everlasting gratitude to these people of
the Solar Union? They risked their lives to prepare us and to save us from
dreadful defeat!" She glared at her father, and the old man sighed and
nodded.

"It
is true. We are scarred, but it would have been much worse if it hadn't been
for you."

Bragan
caught a sudden thumbs-up signal from Karsh, and a big grin. He leaned forward
to speak into the microphone. "There's more. Much more. People of Scarta,
look up at the great light in your sky. Look up and rejoice, for that is the
end of your angry gods. No more will stones fall from the sky to strike you.
They have all been burned away into dust!"

"Is that t> u»?" Ryth caught his
arm.

"Guaranteed! The stellar-effect has
blasted the debris out into the void. For good. You're going to have some spectacular
sunsets for a while, but no more god-stones. That's all over." He took up
the ship's radio again. "Antibody to Alpha. Bragan here. That was no nova,
Admiral Zamov; that was the twilight of the gods of Scarta. You want to come
down now?"

"Not just yet, not while the radiation
count is so high. Later."

"All right. When you do, I invite you to
come and be my guest on a little farm-holding I know of. I guarantee you the
best cooking you've tasted in a long while." He put the radio away again,
turned to Ryth. "I should explain. I am not a military man, not a fighter.
I am a teacher. My field is military history and psychology of warfare. And I'm
thinking of giving it up, retiring, settling down to a quiet country life. You
wouldn't happen to know of someone who needs a good hardworking farmhand,
would you?"

She
met his eyes squarely and steadily. "I do not need a hand, but I would
welcome a partner, someone to share in the work—and eveiything."