Worlds Apart (12 page)

"In fact," said Corey, "we must unite. You know and we know that we're not the only living things in the galaxy. If there are plants here, somewhere else there is an intelligent species. Earth destroyed itself. If we are not to he destroyed, we must be strong, united -- "

"I understand perfectly," said P. ertwee. "I disagree, that's all."

"If you understood," replied Corey patiently, "you could not disagree."

"That is precisely the attitude we're against. The idea that there is only one reality. You say you're right and we're wrong. We don't say we're right, you're wrong. We'd say we think we're right and though you may be too, we don't think so -- "

"Exactly," retorted Corey, losing patience a little. "Not 'I'll do this,' but 'I think perhaps possibly I might do this sometime, eventually, if nothing better occurs to me' -- inaction, indecision, procrastination, laissez-faire, indolence. It was your kind that brought Earth to destruction. You didn't believe it could happen. Now you've been given a second chance -- and you want to do the same thing again."

Toni was still there, standing, looking from Pertwee to Corey and back to Pertwee. No one had offered her a chair. The officers were waiting to be called into the discussion, or for the commodore to come to some decision. At any rate, only the two of them were doing any talking.

"I don't quite see that," said Pertwee mildly.

"Suppose we encountered another intelligent race now. We'd be split, disunited, unable to work together."

"I don't think that's a good argument. If we're separate, so much the better chance of one of the groups escaping or surviving. In any case, how much trouble does one usually take over a billion-to-one chance? Granted that a brick might fall on your head in a street back on Earth -- did you always go around wearing a steel helmet?"

"I was trying to make you understand so that you would cooperate peaceably," said Commodore Corey. "I see it was a vain hope. Pertwee, I want to know where your people are."

"We don't know,~' said Pertwee. "We're lost." He didn't expect Corey to believe his answers, but if the commodore was stupid enough to allow it, Pertwee could use his answers to instruct Toni.

"What have you done with the ship?"

"Hidden it."

"Where?"

"I don't know. Only some of us know. Not either of us."

"How many of you are there?"

Pertwee had no time to think. The situation, naturally, had found him completely unprepared. Perhaps he should have pretended that he and Toni were the only Mundans left, but now it was too late. Nor had he a chance to consider carefully whether it would be better for the commodore to think the Mundans were strong and numerous or to say they were few and weak, not worth bothering about.

Without hesitation he said: "There are very few of us. We were almost wiped out seventeen years ago by a plague native to this planet. And two years ago it broke out again. We've never been able to find any cure or even an adequate prevention. It seems to be a virus disease -- "

The officers moved uneasily, but the commodore's voice lashed out at them. "Fools! Can't you see these are just stupid, inconsistent lies designed to frighten us and mislead us? There is no sense in it. How could you hide a ship nearly as big as this and not know where to find it? Why hide it, anyway? Only a few of them, he says -- yet instead of being glad to see us, as a few lonely people would be, these two lie to us and argue with us . . . The others died seventeen years ago, he says -- yet see, their clothes are new, manufactured, and the garment the woman wears is obviously a fashion developed over a period in a large group on a safe, healthy planet . . . "

It was a good enough resum�Corey was clearly no fool. "And yet," Corey was musing, "some of it may be true. They might hide the ship, at that. For the first colonists were conditioned -- "

A light dawned on him: "That's why you won't co-operate," he said. "It's not us you're afraid of, it's atomic power. Pertwee, you early colonists were all conditioned against atomic power, so that you wouldn't use it, wouldn't teach your children anything about it. If you did hide your ship, that's why -- because you were rigidly conditioned never to use atomic power unless in a life-and-death emergency. You don't know it, but you were made not quite sane on that point. It was drummed into you night and day -- can you understand what I'm talking about?"

Pertwee could, up to a point. It needed thinking over, later.

"It's not that," he said. "It's -- "

"Hell!" exclaimed the commodore. "I'm wasting no more time. Pertwee, /where are your people?/"

"To the north," said Pertwee.

"I don't believe you," Corey retorted, "but we'll go where you say. It will only take a few minutes to prove or disprove."

That was the trouble. Stalling for time would do absolutely no good, since the people at Lemon probably didn't know of the existence of the ship. But it was the sort of thing one did, hopefully.

Pertwee turned toward Toni, but one of the lieutenants prodded him round again. They weren't going to be allowed to communicate with each other at all, apparently.

Corey spoke quietly to Mathers, who left the cabin. A few minutes later they felt the steel under them pulse and the sensation of movement.

"How far north?" asked Corey conversationally.

5

The young Mundans found when they spoke to the first people they met in Lemon that no one there had heard or seen anything of the ship. That was a pity. It meant explaining again and again what had been seen, because it was too big for people to believe easily. Some people sought confirmation from everyone who would give it; and though there were nearly two hundred young Mundans telling the same story, some people continued to refuse to believe it.

Rog went straight to the Bentleys. "The sister ship to the Mundis just passed on the way north," he said. Alice, beside him, nodded in confirmation.

That was all the Bentleys needed, in contrast to the people out in the streets who believed that this was some plot of Rog Foley's, part of a second coup, perhaps.

"Did they see us?" asked Bentley.

"No. Unless they decided to pretend they hadn't. But they're looking for us, all right."

"Did you signal?"

"I stopped someone who wanted to."

"Why?" asked Bentley.

Rog frowned. "I hoped you, of all people, wouldn't have to ask that."

"I don't. I agree with your action. But I still want to know what /your/ reasons were."

Rog gave them. "Are yours different?" he asked.

"A little. We know a little more than you could, of course. Which is why I'm particularly glad that, knowing as littie as you did, you still had the sense not to communicate with them before we'd considered the matter. But shall we leave discussion to the Council meeting? You want one now, I suppose?"

"No," said Rog. "Not the Council. This is important."

"So?"

"Leave out the people who won't have anything to contribute, among your people and mine. Robertson, Boyne, Hamburger, and -- sorry, Alice -- Fred Mitchell."

"They're duly elected representatives," murmured Bentley.

"If we want common sense, we'll hear more of it if they're not there. This is an emergency. I'm going to call a meeting, Mr. Bentley. I'm asking you and Mary and Jessie Bendall and Brad Hulton, but I'm not asking Robertson and Boyne. What are you going to do about it?"

"I'm going to come," said Bentley agreeably.

The meeting lasted a long time. Scores of points of view were expressed; but the sole decision could have been prophesied by Rog or Bentley or half a dozen others.

Communication would not be sought with the second ship. The ship was too powerful, Lemon too defenseless. If the ship returned, Lemon would not call attention to itself; neither would any particular attempt at concealment be made.

The Mundans hadn't realized until that meeting how defenseless they were. Until that meeting they hadn't cared. The young people couldn't know -- they hadn't much experience of weapons, none at all of warfare. The founders had been glad to forget what they knew. Now they had to dig bits of recollection from reluctant memories.

There were people like Mary Bentley who didn't care that Lemon was defenseless. "I don't say we should seek contact with them," she said, "but if it comes, what can we have to fear from our own kind, with Earth gone? Surely our peaceful setup will be exactly what they want, what they must hope we have achieved?"

There were others like Mary's own daughter, who said that some of the weapons that could be made should be, just so that Lemon would be able to stand up for itself if necessary. But the third member of the family at the conference pointed out that it was like making candle snuffers to put out a moor fire. A crew with an atom-powered ship had control of such immense forces that it was hardly necessary to carry weapons. Anything loaded with some of that power was a deadly weapon.

Some, like Jessie Bendall, thought it was worth considering hiding from the second ship altogether. They said it might be worth while sacrificing the crops and breaking up the regular lines of the fields and hiding the cattle and camouflaging the houses. Everyone agreed that it was well worth considering hiding if it didn't entail much. But putting the colony back ten years was too drastic for most people.

And the only person to mention Pertwee and the possibility that the ship might contact him did him a severe injustice. It was Brad, who murmured that they were probably wasting their time. If the ship was searching the planet it would probably find Pertwee and Toni, who would not merely be glad to join the crew but would tell them where Lemon was whenever they were asked.

5

"I think," said Commodore Corey, we've wasted quite enough time."

They had visited several locations suggested by Pertwee. He had pretended to be sure and said he wasn't at all sure. He had insisted that he was telling the truth and he had admitted he was lying. But the ship was limited only by the acceleration the people inside it could stand, and by the destructive effect of friction against the atmosphere at high speeds. Even allowing for these, it was only a matter of an hour or two from one side of the planet to the other.

Pertwee had taken the ship very close to Lemon on one of the trips. From an unguarded remark one of the lieutenants had dropped he found that the ship had already been this way. There was a possibility that the people in Lemon had seen it; only a possibility, however.

As they passed within twenty miles of Lemon, the, impatience of the people about him communicated itself to Pertwee and he was satisfied. If on the second visit to this region they were impatient because they had already examined it and found nothing, they would be most unlikely to work out for themselves, from his itinerary, where Lemon must be. That was why he had taken them so close. The place where one is least likely to look for anything is where one has looked already.

But now they were a thousand miles from Lemon again, and the commodore was losing patience.

"Back on Earth," he observed, "we had truth drugs and lie detectors and other useful methods of getting information quickly from people who were reluctant to give it. We have none of these methods here, unfortunatdy. Do you know, Pertwee, I think we will just have to resort to crude old-fashioned torture."

Pertwee had expected they would. It wasn't really possible, he decided, for Toni and him to keep the secret of Lemon's location from Corey. Not if Corey was really determined. If he had been alone, perhaps, though he doubted even that. One man can decide to die before giving information. But two of them, and one of them Toni . . .

It was too much to expect that she could withstand torture, not really knowing why she should. Her experience didn't contain enough for her to know even the shape of what would probably happen if the Clades discovered the Mundan colony.

Besides, technically they were both under sentence of death in Lemon. Should they give so much for a settlement which had rejected them?

The commodore caught Lieutenant Fenham's eye. "Will you work on her yourself," he asked, "or do you want someone else?"

The woman thought. "This is really a job for Lieutenant Barton, sir," she said. Corey nodded, and she left the room.

Pertwee saw Toni was puzzled, cautious, but not in the least afraid. In her experience, people who hurt each other were angry. They didn't speak coldly and calmly as the commodore was doing.

Lieutenant Fenham returned, and at sight of the girl who accompanied her Pertwee started. She wore the usual neat, impersonal uniform, but she was lovely. One felt drawn to her, determined to like her, to think the best of her. Her hair under her cap was silvery-blond. Though she wore no make-up her lips stood out vividly against her creamy skin and her brilliant teeth.

Very likely in her and Toni, Pertwee thought, the most attractive girls of each party met.

"Hallo," said Toni, with a friendly grin. "What's your name?"

"Phyllis Barton," said the girl coldly. Still Toni grinned. Toni's way of dealing with competition had always been to try and get on with it. There seemed no reason why this shouldn't apply to Phyllis Barton.

What might have been a reason soon appeared. Barton and Fenham fastened Toni in a chair. Lieutenant Barton took off her tunic. She was surveying Toni thoughtfully, running through the various possibilities.

"I don't want them mutilated or hurt too much," said the commodore. "I only want information."

"'Them,' sir?" queried the girl.

"We may have to work on the man too, if you have difficulty with the woman."

Phyllis nodded. She put her hands lightly on Toni's shoulders, probing carefully with her thumbs. Then, having found her spot, she leaned on her arms and pressed her thumbs into Toni's flesh with all her strength.

Toni screamed. It was a revelation to her that one could be hurt so much, so easily, with so little warning. No one had ever hurt her scientifically before. Any blows which had ever fallen on Toni had been struck in anger, carelessly. There was nothing careless about Phyllis Barton.