The Old Man of the Stars (3 page)

Matthew nodded. “I shall go.”

* * * *

And here, after the weary years in space, when children had been born and grown old and died, after adventures on fantastic worlds with generations now dead and forgotten, he was; here he was on Elysium, an old man whose knowledge was regarded as nonsense, whose factual narratives were called fables. An old man in his physical prime but mentally weary, wanting one thing and one thing only—to go home, no matter how long it might take.

CHAPTER TWO

The following day he went to visit the observatory and the construction plant on the far side of the woods.

The buildings were hidden away as though people were ashamed of their very existence. On Elysium the scientist did not hold an honoured place in the community. Research was not frowned on, but it was not encouraged. Only those without the capacity for what the Elysians considered real living—that is, a pleasant pastoral life, making the most of immediate joys—dabbled in the sciences. Living conditions on this planet were ideal. No effort was needed. Work was something you did only to amuse yourself, and there were few who found scientific research amusing. When the world was so idyllic, why struggle and belabour your brain too earnestly?

Matthew walked briskly along the path through the woods. It was a fine morning, but he did not take a great deal of pleasure in it: nearly every morning on Elysium was fine, and where was the charm in that?

As he approached the main road that led down to the massive white building in which lay all his hopes, he noticed a young woman in the shade of the trees above the slope. She did not hear his footsteps. She was looking down wistfully at the entrance to the main workshop.

Matthew said: “What brings you here?”

She started, and gave a little cry. When she turned to face him her eyes widened, but it was with a sort of angry curiosity rather than the distaste he was accustomed to read in the eyes of young women.

“You are old Matthew,” she said accusingly.

He grimaced. “Old Matthew,” he echoed.

“You are behind the work that is going on down there. You wish to build a ship that will take you back to Earth.”

“Yes.”

“Why must you do it?” she demanded. “Why? Isn't this world beautiful enough? Life here is sweet.”

“For you it is,” he said. “You are young.”

“But you are not old in any physical sense—you are not tired or ill. Can't you enjoy what life has to offer? Has life here never meant anything to you?”

It was a question he could hardly bring himself to answer. He recalled the joy of those first decades here, when the weary travellers felt that they had at last reached the perfect world. Automatically they had named the planet Elysium. Here they had rested, then set up their homes, gradually building up the small towns and communities, which could exist so easily on the fertile lands all about them. And Matthew had realised that here was a planet that provided what Philipson had called the optimum conditions: here, if anywhere in the universe, was the golden world on which he would be immortal.

Had life here never meant anything to him? It had meant a great deal, at first. And then, as the years rolled by, it had palled. He who had survived the aching, cramped monotony of space and the dangers of galactic exploration now found that contentment was a thing that did not last. He became restless and querulous. A sedentary contemplative life did not suit him.

He looked at the girl's fair complexion and at her mobile, eager mouth. She was all that was young and desirable, seeing life before her as an adventure and a delight. He said:

“I am very conscious of the beauties of this planet. Only someone like myself who has known other worlds can truly appreciate this one.”

“Then why must you persist in trying to get back to Earth—if there is such a place?”

“There is indeed such a place,” Matthew assured her. “And there are other places that ought to be visited on the way back. When we left Earth, we made many exploratory landings on other worlds. As our numbers grew, and families in the ship increased, we sought out temperate climates and left small colonies there. On at least three worlds we found other races who were friendly, and we left representatives there to work on the construction of spaceships that could return to Earth with the news of what we had found. All across the universe we left groups of Earthmen and their families. Our own ship, overhauled time and time again, went ever onwards...until at last we reached here and sank into this—this slothfulness.”

“Not slothfulness,” she said: “happiness.”

Again she glanced down towards the building below.

Matthew said: “You are concerned about someone?”

“I am worried about your influence on Clifford of the Martin,” she said defiantly.

“He's your brother?”

She blushed. “No.”

“Oh. I see.”

Matthew envied young Clifford. He envied all people who were mortal—all people who were not doomed to go on living as he was, until desire had grown stale and life had lost its savour. Brusquely he said:

“He's one of my most loyal men. He has been on the project from the start. One of the few young men today with a real flair. He's brilliant.”

“And you want to take him away, out there.” She waved towards the tranquil skies.

“He wants to come,” Matthew observed.

“He would be better living out his life here. How can anyone spend a lifetime shut up in a metal box, hurtling through space? That is not—what we were born or.”

“Nevertheless,” said Matthew, “he wants to come. The spirit of adventure is not yet dead.”

“If he goes,” she said, “I shall go with him.”

Matthew put his hand on her shoulder. She did not flinch, but turned her vexed, appealing face towards him again.

He said: “I hope you will come with us. There will not be many who will volunteer. And now, don't you think you ought to come down and see the ship? Have you ever seen it before?”

“Only when I was a little girl, when it was still regarded as a museum piece, before you started work on it again.”

“Then you must certainly come and see the progress we have made.”

They went down the slope together and walked along the road below the great bulk of the main workshops.

* * * *

The ship lay in its great cradle, tilted over to one side as the welders crouched over the rocket exhausts and played glaring flames against the metal. The thumping of a machine at the far end of the hall echoed and boomed through the high building.

“This is it,” said Matthew: “this is the ship that brought us here—myself and your ancestors. The historians may scoff at most of what I say, and they may claim that there is no such place as Earth, but at least they've never got round to claiming that there was never any space ship. They may have doubts about where it came from, but they can't deny that it's here.”

The girl, dwarfed by the enormity of the vessel, looked up at it with an unfathomable expression. Was she trying to imagine herself inside it, flung away from the surface of the only world she had known, out into the vastness of space, in search of an old world that was perhaps only a figment of Matthew's imagination?

He said: “There's Clifford. He must have been in the observatory.”

A tall young man in a smooth, one-piece mechanic's plasticoat came hurrying towards them. He looked from Matthew to the girl in surprise.

“Hello, sir. I didn't know you knew Alida.”

“We've only just met. I didn't realise you had won a volunteer for us.”

Clifford gasped. “I'd no idea....”

“Well, let's leave it for the time being, anyway. We're nowhere near launching day yet, I fancy.”

Clifford grimaced. “Men dropping off again. They don't see the point of working hard. The only comment I've heard in favour of carrying on”—he grinned—“was to the effect that it would be worth getting the job finished so that they could see the back of you, and then everyone would be able to live in peace.”

Matthew smiled ruefully.

The two men took Alida up into the interior of the ship. The gangways and floors were all tilted to one side at present, but it was still possible to examine the control panels, unused for so long, and appraise the furnishings and fittings. Nothing had decayed: here on Elysium the ship had been preserved, free from corrosion and rot.

Yet that was not enough. As Matthew had long ago explained to Clifford and as he now explained to Alida, you could not leave a machine such as this ship unused for a couple of hundred years and expect it to work again as soon as you pressed a button. Circuits had to be checked, and innumerable mechanical adjustments made. Plates had buckled slightly, particularly around the exhausts, as a result of the mere weight of the ship remaining in the same position for so long. There were fuel problems, too: it was necessary to adapt the local supplies and to experiment with new combinations. The rocket tubes would need to be altered to cope with different conditions.

“Even so, it wouldn't be a difficult job,” said Matthew, “if only we got some co-operation.”

Alida did not reply. It was evident that she had not yet made up her mind whether to persist in regarding the whole venture as a pointless folly or whether to admit that, in spite of everything, her imagination was somehow fired.

As she climbed slowly and awkwardly up the slanting corridor to the main lounge, the two men looked out of an open port at the welders below. Clifford said:

“I was making a few more checks on that incoming planet just before you arrived.”

“Oh, yes. Anything startling?”

“No It won't come very close. As far as my calculations go, I should say that it comes regularly into this area—about once in three hundred years, roughly. One of the travellers. That's assuming it has a fixed orbit, of course: it may be one of the rogues.”

“In which case it might hit us.”

“I don't think so. It won't even give us any bad weather, as far as I can tell.”

“Any reports from any of the other towns?”

Clifford's lip curled. “Nobody else seems interested. Sometimes I can't even make radio contact with them—they don't answer calls, or else they leave their sets switched off altogether.”

Matthew glanced at him with affection. He liked this boy. Clifford was one of the few speculative types left in this self-satisfied world. He was a scientist and an adventurer of the mind: he wanted to know why things happened; he wanted to make things work. He was driven on by a splendid discontent. In the old days, back on Earth, he would have been the sort of boy who at the age of three or four years takes a watch to pieces, and puts it back together again.

Suddenly Clifford leaned forward and muttered:

“Hello, what's the fuss?”

A man had run in from the direction of the observatory and was looking about him. Clifford shouted and waved.

The man below looked up and shouted.

“Can't hear a word,” said Clifford. “Better go down. Bellhouse looks worked-up about something.”

He slid expertly down the slope, caught the edge of the airlock door, and lowered himself down the flimsy ladder to the ground. He and Bellhouse talked for a moment, and then they were waving Matthew down. Matthew fetched Alida and helped her back to ground level. He found Clifford already fuming with impatience.

“A message from Martinstown,” he said at once, as soon as Matthew had reached him. “Incredible. They've been attacked.”

“Attacked? By whom?”

“Three spaceships.”

Spaceships.... Matthew's first reaction was one of incredulous joy. Spaceships, messengers from home or at least from some civilisation in contact with Earth! Then the hope faded. It was too much to expect. And, as the meaning of what Clifford had said sank in, he demanded:

“But what reason was there for attacking Martinstown? Nobody on this planet would do it. Besides, we haven't got three spaceships anywhere here. They're not things you can construct in secret. And who'd want to?”

“Nevertheless,” said Clifford, “they reported a devastating attack on the town—a great blaze spreading from the outskirts, and the ships coming back for another attempt—and then they went dead. Not a sound. Cut off completely.”

“I just don't understand. No race that I've ever known came out of the skies and starting destroying towns and people for no reason whatever. Was there no attempt to establish normal contact?”

“If there was,” said Clifford grimly, “the operator didn't tell me. He said the ships circled low over the town for a minute or two; and of course everyone came out to have a look; and then the firing started.”

They looked at one another, all possessed by the same thought at once.

Alida said: “We must tell our own people. At once.”

Bellhouse went racing back to the observatory. The others followed, crossing the springy turf to the knoll on which the smaller building stood.

Clifford said, taking Alida's arm as they hurried up the steps: “Do you think they'll make for our own town now—or are the others to suffer first? We must send out a general alarm.”

“If you can make anybody listen,” said Matthew savagely. “If they haven't got their receivers switched off!”

They found Bellhouse already sending out his signal.

“No reply from our own administration Centre,” he snapped. “They've probably got their chairs drawn up to the window so they can admire the view—and the set switched off so that they're not disturbed by the demands of our modern mechanised civilisation.”

He flicked another wavelength into operation, and got an immediate reply.

“Enemy spaceships attacked Martinstown,” he said without delay.

There was a squawk of disbelief from the receiver.

“Martinstown has been blotted out,” he shouted. “This is no joke. It's true. Best thing, maybe, is to get your people out into the woods and fields. Lie low until we see whether the ships are going to tackle any of the rest of us.”

He cut off a protest in mid-sentence, and tried to make contact with the most remote of the Elysian towns. Again there was no reply. That could mean anything: it could mean that the set had been switched off, or it could mean that the town had already been destroyed.

“Perhaps it's going up in smoke this very minute,” said Matthew. “But damn it, what's the point—?”