Worlds Apart (11 page)

"Maybe it was a mistake not to let that ship know we're here," he said. "But I think we all ought to think about it a bit first. Take everyone's views before we answer for everybody. The people in Lemon count too, you know. Now, Fred, do you still want to show them we're here?"

"Some people are too damn cautious," said Fred, but he didn't answer the question. Alice spoke to him rapidly, quietly. His eyes opened wide.

Rog wasn't surprised that Alice had seen some of the implications that Fred had missed, but he wanted the others to see them too.

"Dick!" he called.

Dick, started guiltily. He had just realized he was naked, and was tiptoeing away. He turned, blushing.

"Dick, if you knew you could have atomic power for the taking, would you take it?"

Dick forgot his nakedness again in the consideration of the problem. "I'd think twice about it," he admitted. "Yes, I believe. I'd take it. But it would depend. I wouldn't like to burn my boats . . . "

"You know that ship is powered by atomic engines, don't you?"

"Of course." Dick had, but the others only now saw what Rog was driving at. Suppose, after all, the old folk were right, and they were much better off without atomic power. Everyone was quite prepared to believe that was, at least, possible. Well, close contact with the people on ship might knock a hole in that idea. Besides -- "

"Suppose there were disagreement," said Rog, "and there often is between different groups -- remember? /They/ have the power; we haven't. They could blow us all to atoms before their tempers had a chance to cool."

He let that sink in, then said quietly: "Am I being too damn cautious when I say we should let this ship go and be glad it didn't see us?"

There was sudden uproar, everyone telling everyone else that was exactly what he'd been going to say, if Rog hadn't said it first. Rog let them argue about it and work things out for themselves. He saw Fred looking a little green about the gills as Alice pointed out to him how little a community like Lemon stood to gain from a very different community, and how much it had to lose.

Then he held up his hand for silence again. "Come on," he said. "We're going back to Lemon."

There was a gasp of surprise at that. He was ahead of them again. There were some shouts of protest.

"I brought you here, I know," Rog went on. "That was right, then. But the situation has changed. I think we all belong together -- don't you?"

Before they left New Paris they climbed on the roof of some of the cottages and made sure that nothing that could be seen from the air showed that there was a village there. They rubbed dirt on one house that had been whitewashed, and knocked down a wall that cast a long, straight shadow.

Then, as they had come, they trekked down the hill, Rog and Alice and June in the lead.

3

After spending a few days by the side of the lake they had discovered, which they christened Antonia after Toni, Pertwee and Toni moved on. They had ceased to talk about their purpose in traveling; the life suited them, and nothing else mattered as far as they could see.

Besides, they had found one important thing. Toni's imagination was fired by the idea that they might return with scores of such things to relate. She was impatient to get on and find the next. Pertwee, more phlegmatic, thought they would be certain to be accepted again in Lemon on their own terms as it was, having found the lake, and that it was unlikely that an unspectacular world like Mundis would have much more to offer.

They were about seven hundred miles from Lemon when they heard a noise. A noise of any kind on Mundis was unusual. Apart from the gentle whispering and crackling of foliage in the constant sough of the atmosphere, and the various sounds of the rains, there was hardly any sound natural to the planet. But this was a kind of buzz, perhaps a roar far away -- steady, yet with a certain beat about it.

Toni, never having known any but domestic animals or anything but individual men one could possibly fear, was puzzled, curious, but not afraid. Pertwee, however, found excitement and fear warring within him the instant they heard the sound, long before they had any idea of what might be producing it.

They could see nothing. They were in the middle of the usual Mundan scene -- almost all grassland, with small forests dotted here and there, a few bare patches, and one rocky ridge about five miles to their left. They were still traveling northeast. The sound seemed to come from the direction they had come. Pertwee wondered fleetingly whether aviation had been developed at Lemon since they left, and then recognized the sound.

It was the noise made by the engines of a spaceship. His heart nearly stopped beating at the thought. It could not possibly be the Mundis -- it had not been demolished with any idea of being rebuilt. Every part of it had been incorporated in something else or destroyed in an effort to ensure that there would never again be such a thing as an atomic engine.

Yet these were atomic engines. And there was the ship powered by them -- far, away, moving very slowly, but still such a sight that Toni became as awed and impressed by the significance of the occasion as Pertwee.

So there had been another ship. They had been told, half a lifetime ago, that the Mundis would be the only interstellar ship there was time to build. Well, that had been a guess, and it had been wrong. There had been time, it seemed, for at least one more.

Had it been at Lemon already, Pertwee wondered. He also wondered for a moment whether they really wanted to contact it or not.

But he didn't consider that seriously. The second ship represented a complication the Mundan colony might have been better without. There was no real question, however, of pretending now that it didn't exist. A whole lot of questions had to be answered.

The ship was low, and obviously someone was scanning the ground very carefully. Pertwee looked about him quickly. There was nothing but grass and brown soil for quite a distance round them, and against neither would they stand out.

"Your white ket, Toni," he said urgently. "Get it out."

Toni pulled open her knapsack and produced the white ket. Pertwee almost tore it from her. The ship was coming close. He stood erect and waved the white garment above his head. The next most conspicuous thing Toni could find was the red scarf she sometimes used as a sash. She stood some yards from Pertwee and waved it, pulling it through long loops in the air.

The lookout must have been good, for almost at once they were seen. The ship changed its course slightly and dipped to get a better look. Then it dropped still further. It landed only a hundred yards or so from Pertwee and Toni. They blinked in its vast shadow.

It was very like the Mundis, Pertwee saw, but bigger, considerably bigger. He turned to look at the blunt nose to see the name. Clades, it read. He frowned. Clades -- wasn't that the Latin for destruction, or disaster, or something like that? It was reasonable enough to call it that, perhaps, since it had left an Earth that was about to blow itself up. All the same, he couldn't regard it as a good omen.

The lock opened, and six men came bounding out. They ran to Pertwee and Toni like a team of guards retaking an escaped prisoner. When they reached them they formed up neatly in line.

"You're from the Mundis?" said the first man in line.

Pertwee offered his hand a little hesitantly.

"Yes, that's so," he said. "Glad to see you. You must have left Earth after us?"

The man took his hand in a firm grip. But he didn't offer any information. "Better talk to the commodore," he said.

The six men formed about them as an escort. Pertwee caught a bewildered glance from Toni. She had never seen a disciplined force before. She couldn't understand why these men, who looked otherwise like the men she knew, should stare straight in front of them without expression and make every move together and walk in a stiff, precise way she had never seen before. Pertwee wanted to tell her that people could be soldiers and still human, but there were two men between him and Toni.

The men wore a uniform that was not unlike the U.S. Air Force uniform, as Pertwee remembered it. Only it was green, of all colors -- green for Earth, perhaps. The most interesting thing about the uniforms, however, was that they appeared new. That meant . . .

At the lock, which was five feet above the ground as the ship had landed, the sergeant glanced at Toni and barked an order. One of the men put his hands on her waist, a little self-consciously, for she was wearing her blue ket and his hands were on bare skin. She smiled up at him; a lot of men had held her in one way or another. But he whirled her round, caught her again by the hips, and heaved. She sailed up easily and landed lightly in the lock.

They seemed to be waiting for Pertwee to jump up, without assistance, but he knew he couldn't do it. He pulled himself up with his hands instead. The men left behind retired about three steps, formed in line, and jumped up three at a time. Toni was waiting, still more puzzled. Pertwee would have had a chance for a word or two with her then, but he was as puzzled as she was.

There were small alterations in the layout of the ship, Pertwee saw -- inevitable modifications, the result of the experience gained in building the Mundis. Sometimes the workmanship seemed inferior, however, barer and rougher -- the Clades must have been built in more of a hurry than the Mundis. Some things were missing altogether.

He remembered, for the first time for years, now that he was on his way to see the commander of this ship, that he had been the captain of the Mundis. That was history, though; when they had stripped him of office years ago he had given up all idea of rule, of being a leader. He had done so with a certain relief. Unlike young Foley, he had never wanted power. But like Foley, he had always found it difficult to avoid being given positions of responsibility.

They reached the commodore's room. It was a big room. There were three men there already, the commodore and two of his officers.

The commodore came forward, smiling affably. "I'm Commodore Corey," he said. "These are Captain Sloan and Lieutenant Mathers. You're? . . . "

"John Pertwee. This is my wife Toni."

The commodore undoubtedly noticed how much younger than Pertwee Toni was, but he made no comment. Instead he turned to the escort, who had formed themselves into a squad by the door.

"Take your men away, sergeant," he said.

"Yes, sir." The sergeant had one last glance at Pertwee's shorts and Toni's ket to make sure that neither of them was concealing weapons, and marched his men out. Toni was relieved to see them go. The men in the cabin were in uniform, but not rigid and expressionless and machine-like. They were more like the men she was used to. Mathers, who was only about twenty-five, was looking at her in almost the frankly admiring way that might have been expected. But as she looked he seemed suddenly to realize that and became machine-like. She frowned. There was something odd about the way all these men looked at her.

Twenty-five! -- it struck Pertwee suddenly that this was the end of the Gap. The commodore was about the same age as he was, and some of the men had been forty, some thirty, some twenty.

He picked up the recording in his mind of what Corey had said, when it became obvious they were waiting for an answer.

Corey had asked where they had come from, where the main colony was. It was a perfectly natural question.

Pertwee moved slightly so that he caught Toni's eye, warning her. "From the north," he said casually, as if it didn't matter. It would be easy enough later to turn the lie into truth, but not so easy to turn the truth into a lie.

"Have you come far?" asked the commodore politely, then added quickly, "Oh, Mrs. Pertwee, you must be wondering if there are no women among us. Just a moment. He pressed a button on his desk. He had stumbled slightly over the designation "Mrs."

A woman appeared and saluted. Her tunic admitted reluctantly that she had a bosom, her trousers didn't absolutely deny hips; otherwise she was dressed exactly as Mathers was, in lieutenant's uniform.

"Lieutenant Fenham," said the commodore. "Show Mrs. Pertwee around, will you?"he said. He said the Mrs. quite confidently this time.

Toni was used to a community that spoke its mind. "But I want to stay here with Jack," she said. She glanced at Lieutenant Fenham with distaste she didn't manage to hide altogether. The women Toni knew didn't ape their menfolk. Uniform, worn by men, merely aroused her curiosity; worn by women it produced dislike. Besides, Fenham wasn't attractive. Her figure might be all right, quite possibly was, but she hid it as if it were hideous. And her face was hard and plain and altogether uninteresting. She was about forty.

"I would rather you went with Lieutenant Fenham," said the commodore gently.

"And I'd rather she stayed here," said Pertwee, just as quietly. "Are we under restraint, Commodore?"

"I wish you wouldn't put it like that," said the commodore. "Lieutenant Fenham!"

The woman took Toni's arm. From the look of surprise on Toni's face, she had found herself, for probably the first time in her life, in the grasp of a woman much stronger than herself.

"Don't say anything, Toni," said Pertwee rapidly. "Don't believe anything they tell you about me. Don't tell them -- "

"Never mind, Lieutenant," said the commodore regretfully. "No useful purpose would now be served. We might as well keep them together."

Beginning to understand a little about the Clades and her crew, Pertwee wished suddenly, passionately, that the Mundis had been the only interstellar ship built.

4

"Try to understand," said Commodore Corey patiently. "We're not going to destroy your people, or torture them, or make them slaves. That isn't our purpose at all. We want to unify the human race again -- can't you understand that?"

In other circumstances, Pertwee thought, he and Corey might have got on quite well. It wasn't a question of good and evil; but there were two strong groups with very different ideas on what was good.

He had begun to guess what sort of ideas the Clades party was operating. Towards the end, on Earth, obviously if there were to be any sort of order a militarist attitude had to be taken up. Pertwee didn't follow it any further than that. He merely pictured, fleetingly, the grimness and determination of the work of building the Clades -- definitely the last performance this time -- and saw how grim, firm, determined, strong the crew picked for it would be.