II.
Thomakein, the Ertinian, stopped the recorder as the Terran ship reversed itself painfully and began to decelerate for the trip back to home. He nodded to himself and made a verbal addition to the recording, stating that the smaller ship had been satisfied as to the destruction of the larger, otherwise a continuance of the fight would have been inevitable. Then Thomakein placed the recording in a can and placed it on a shelf containing other recordings. He forgot about it then, for there was something more interesting in view.
That derelict warship would be a veritable mine of information about the culture of this system. All warships are gold mines of information concerning the technical abilities, the culture, the beliefs, and the people themselves.
Could he assume the destruction of the crew in the derelict?
The smaller ship had—unless they were out of the battle and forced to withdraw due to lack of fighting contact. That didn't seem right to Thomakein. For the smaller ship to attack the larger ship meant a dogged determination. There would have been a last-try stand on the part of the smaller ship no matter how much faster the larger ship were. At worst, the determination seemed to indicate that ramming the larger ship was not out of order.
But the smaller ship had not rammed the larger. Hadn't even tried. In fact, the smaller ship had turned and started to decelerate as soon as the larger ship had doubled her speed.
Thomakein couldn't read either of the name plates of the two fighting ships. He had no idea as to the origin of the two. As an Ertinian, Thomakein couldn't even recognize the characters let alone read them. He was forced to go once more on deduction.
The course of the larger vessel. It was obviously fleeing from the smaller ship. Thomakein played with his computer for a bit and came to two possibilities, one of which was remote, the other pointing to the fourth planet.
A carefully collected table of masses and other physical constants of the planets of Sol was consulted.
Thomakein retrieved his recording, set it up and added:
"The smaller ship, noticing the increased acceleration of the larger, assumed—probably—that the larger ship's crew was killed by the increased gravity-apparent. Since the larger ship was fleeing, it would in all probability have used every bit of acceleration that the crew could stand. Its course was dead-center for the fourth planet's position if integrated for a course based on the larger ship's velocity and direction and acceleration at and prior to the engagement.
"This fourth planet has a surface gravity of approximately one-eighth of the acceleration of the larger ship. Doubling this means that the crew must withstand sixteen gravities. The chances of any being of intelligent size withstanding sixteen gravities is of course depending upon an infinite number of factors. However, the probable reasoning of the smaller ship is that sixteen gravities will kill the crew of the larger ship. Otherwise they would have continued to try to do battle with the larger ship. Their return indicates that they were satisfied."
Thomakein nodded again, replaced the recording, and then paced the derelict Mardinex for a full hour with every constant at his disposal on the recorders.
At the end of that hour, Thomakein noted that nothing had registered and he smiled with assurance.
He stretched and said to himself: "I can stand under four gravities. I can live under twelve with the standard Ertinian acceleration garb. But sixteen gravities for one hour? Never."
Thomakein noted the acceleration of the derelict as being slightly over six gravities on his own accelerometer, which registered the Ertinian constant.
Then he began to maneuver his little ship toward the derelict.
Entering the Mardinex through the blasted observation dome was no great problem. The lower meteor spotters and most of the machinery had gone with the dome and so no pressor came forth to keep Thomakein from his intention.
The insides were a mess. Broken girders and ruined equipment made a bad tangle of the lower third of the great warship. Thomakein jockeyed the little ship back and forth inside of the derelict until he had lodged it against the remainder of a lower deck in such a manner as to keep it there under the six Terran gravities of acceleration. Then he donned spacesuit and started to prowl the ship. It was painful and heavy going, but Thomakein made it slowly.
An hour later, Thomakein heard the ringing of alarms, coming from somewhere up above, and the sound made him stop suddenly. Sound, he reasoned, requires air for propagation. The sound came through the floor, but somewhere there must be air inside of the derelict.
So upward he went through the damage. He found an air-tight door and fought the catch until it puffed open, nearly throwing him back into the damaged opening. White-faced, Thomakein held on until his breath returned, and then with a determined look at the gap below—and the place where he would have been if he had fallen out of the derelict—Thomakein tried the door again. He closed the outer door and tried the inner.
His alien grasp of mechanics was not universal enough to discover his trouble immediately. But it was logical, and logic told him to look for the air vent. He found it, and turned the valve permitting air to enter the air-tight door system. The inner door opened easily and Thomakein entered a portion of the hull where the alarm bells rang loud and clear.
He found them ringing in a room filled with control instruments. Throwing the dome of his suit back over his head, Thomakein looked around him with interest. There was nothing in the room that logic or a grasp of elementary mechanics could solve. It did Thomakein no good to look at the Martian characters that labeled the instruments and dials, for he recognized nothing of any part of the Solar System.
He did recognize the bloody lump of inert flesh as having once been the operator of this room—or one of them he came to conclude as his search found others.
Thomakein was not squeamish. But they did litter up the place and the pools of blood made the floor slippery which was dangerous under 6-G Terran—or for Thomakein, five point six eight. So Thomakein struggled with the Martian bodies and hauled them to the corridor where he let them drop over the edge of the central well onto the bulkhead below. He returned to the instrument room in an attempt to find out what the bell-ringing could mean.
He inspected the celestial globe with some interest until he noticed that the upper limb contained some minute, luminous spheres—prolate spheroids to be exact. Wondering, Thomakein tried to look forward and up with respect to the ship's course.
His anxiety increased. He was about to meet a whole battle fleet that was spread out in a dragnet pattern. Then before he could worry about it he was through the network and some of the ships tried to follow but with no success. The Mardinex bucked and pitched as tractors were applied and subsequently broken as the tension reached overload values.
Thomakein smiled. Their inability to catch him plus their obvious willingness to let the matter drop with but a perfunctory try gave him sufficient evidence as to their origin.
They could never catch a ship under six gravities when the best they could do was three. The functions with respect to one another would be as though the faster ship were accelerating away from the slower ship by 3-G plus the initial velocity of the faster ship's intrinsic speed, for the pursuers were standing still.
The Mardinex swept out past Mars and Thomakein smiled more and more. This maze of equipment was better than anything that he had expected. The Ertinians would really get the information as to the kind of people who inhabited this system.
Thomakein wandered idly from room to room, finding dead Martians and dropping them onto the bulkhead. Two he saved for the surgeons of Ertene to inspect; they were in fair physical condition compared to the rest but they were no less dead from acceleration pressure.
Eventually, Thomakein came to the room wherein Guy Maynard was lying strapped to the surgeon's table. The Ertinian opened the door and walked idly in, looking the room over quickly to see which item of interest was the most compelling.
His glance fell upon Maynard and passed onward to the equipment on the cart beyond the Terran. Then Thomakein's eyes snapped back to the unconscious Terran and Thomakein's jaw fell while his face took on an astonished look.
Thomakein often remarked afterwards that it was a shame that no one of his photographically inclined friends had been present. He'd have enjoyed a picture of himself at that moment and he realized the fact.
Thomakein had ignored the dead Martians. They were different enough to permit him a certain amount of callousness.
But the man strapped to the table, and hooked up to the diabolical looking machine was the image of an Ertinian! Thomakein didn't know what the machine was for, but his logical mind told him that if this man, different from the rest, were strapped to a table with some sort of electronic equipment tied to his hands, feet, and head, it was sufficient evidence that this was a captive and the machine some sort of torture. He stepped forward and jerked the electrodes from Maynard's inert frame and pushed the machine backward onto the floor with a foot.
A quick check told Thomakein that the unknown man was not dead, though nearly so.
He raced through the derelict to his own ship and returned with a stimulant. The man remained unconscious but alive. His eyes opened after a long time, but behind them was no sign of intelligence. They merely stared foolishly, and closed for long periods.
Thomakein tended the man as best he could with the limited supplies from his own ship and then began to plan his return to Ertene with his find.
Days passed, and Thomakein unwillingly abandoned any hope of having this man give him any information. The man was as one dead. He could not speak, nor could he understand anything. Thomakein decided that the best thing to do was to take the unknown man to Ertene with him. Perhaps Charalas, or one of his contemporary neuro-surgeons could bring this man to himself. Thomakein diagnosed the illness as some sort of nerve shock though he knew that he was no man of medicine.
Yet the surgeons of Ertene were brilliant, and if they could bring this unknown man to himself, they would have a gold mine indeed.
So at the proper time, Thomakein took off from the derelict with the mindless Guy Maynard. By now, the derelict was far beyond the last outpost of the Solar System and obviously beyond detection. Thomakein installed a repeater-circuit detector in the wrecked ship; it would enable him to find the Mardinex at some later time.
So unknowing, Guy Maynard came to Ertene.
The first thing that reached across the mental gap to Guy Maynard was music. Faint, elfin music that seemed to sway and soothe the ragged edges of his mind. It came and it went depending on how he felt.
But gradually the music increased in strength and power, and the lapses were shorter. Warm pleasant light assailed him now and gave him a feeling of bodily well-being. Flashes of clear thinking found him considering the satisfied condition of his body, and the fear and nerve-racking torture of the Martian method of extracting information dropped deeper and deeper into the region of forgetfulness.
Then he realized, one day, that he was being fed. It made him ashamed to be fed at his age, but the thought was fleeting and gone before he could clutch at it and consider why he should be ashamed. One portion of his mind cursed the fleetingness of such thoughts and recognized the possibilities that might lie in the sheer contemplation of self.
There were periods in which someone spoke to him in a strange tongue. It was a throaty voice; a woman. Maynard's inquisitive section tried the problem of what was a woman and why it should stir the rest of him and came to the meager conclusion that it was standard for this body to be stirred by woman: especially women with throaty voices. The tongue was alien; he could understand none of it. But the tones were soothing and pleasant, and they seemed to imply that he should try to understand their meaning.
And then the wonder of meaning came before that alert part of Maynard's mind. What is meaning? it asked. Must things have meaning? It decided that meaning must have some place in the body's existence. It reasoned thus: There is light. Then what is the meaning of light? Must light have a meaning? It must have some importance. Then if light has importance and meaning, so must all things!
Even self!
So the voices strived to teach Ertinian to the Terran while he was still in the mindless state, and gradually he came to think in terms of this alien tongue. But he had been taught to think in Terran, and the Terran words came to mind slowly but surely.
And then came the day when Guy Maynard realized that he was Guy Maynard, and that he had been saved, somehow, from the terrors of the Martian inquisition. He saw the alien tongue for what it was and wondered about it.
Where was he?
Why?
The days wore on with Maynard growing stronger mentally. They gave him everything they could, these Ertinians. Scrolls were given to him to read, and the movement of reflections from his eyeballs motivated recording equipment that spoke the word he was scanning into his ear in that pleasant throaty voice. It was lightning-fast training, but it worked, once Guy's mentality went to work as an entity. Maynard learned to read Ertinian printing and lastly the simplified cursory writing.
Then with handwriting at the gate of learning, they placed his hand around a controlled pencil, and the voice spoke as the controlled pencil wrote. They spoke Ertinian to him, not knowing Terran, though his earlier replies were recorded.
And as he strengthened, his replies made sense, and for every Ertinian word impressed upon his mind, he gave them the Terran word. They taught him composition and grammar as he taught them, and whether it was by the written script or the spoken word, the interchange of knowledge was complete.
One day he asked: "Where am I?"
And the doctor replied: "You are on Ertene."
"That I know. But where or what is Ertene?"
"Ertene is a wandering planet. We found you almost dead in a derelict spaceship and brought you back to life."
"I recall parts of that. But—Ertene?"
"Generations ago, Ertene left her parent sun because of a great, impending cataclysm. Since then we have been wandering in space in search of a suitable home."
"Sol is not far away—you will find a home there."
The doctor smiled sagely and did not comment on that. Maynard wondered about it briefly and tried to explain, but they would have none of it.
He tried at later times, but there was a reticence about their accepting Sol as a home sun. No matter what attack he tried, there was a casual reference to a decision to be made in the future.
But their lessons continued, and Guy progressed from the hospital to the spacious grounds. He sought the libraries and read quite a bit, for they urged him to, saying: "We can not entertain you continually. You are not strong enough to work, nor will we permit you to take any position. Therefore your best bet is to continue learning. In fact, Guy, you have a job to perform on Ertene. You are to become well versed in Ertinian lore so that you may converse with us freely and draw comparisons between Ertene and your Terra for us. Therefore apply yourself."
Guy agreed that if he could do nothing else, he could at least do their bidding.
So he applied himself. He read. He spoke at length with those about him. He practised with the writing machine. He accepted their customs with the air of one who feels that he must, in order that he be accepted.
And gradually he took on the manner of an Ertinian. He spoke with a pure Ertinian accent, he thought in Ertinian terms, and his hand was the handwriting of an Ertinian. And from his studies he came to the next question.
"Charalas, how could you tell me from an Ertinian?"
Charalas smiled. "We can."
"But how? It is not apparent."
"Not to you. It is one of those things that you miss because you are too close to it. It is like your adage: 'Cannot see the forest for the trees.' It will come out."
"Come out?"
"Grow out," smiled the neuro-surgeon. "Your ... beard. You notice that I used the Terran name. That is because we have no comparable term in Ertinian. That is because no Ertinian ever grew hair on his face. Daily, you ... shave ... with an edged tool we furnished you upon your request. You were robotlike in those days, Guy. You performed certain duties instinctively and the lack of ... shaving equipment ... caused you no end of mental concern. Thomakein studied your books and had a ... razor ... fashioned for you."
"Whiskers. I never noticed that."
"No, it is one of those things. Save for that, Guy, you could lose yourself among us. The ... mustache ... you wear marks you on Ertene as an alien."
"I could shave that off."
"No. Do not. It is a mark of distinction. Everyone on Ertene has seen your picture with it and therefore you will be accorded the deference we show an alien when people see it. Otherwise you would be expected to behave as we do in all things."
"That I can do."
"We know that. But there is another reason for our request. One day you will know about it. It has to do with our decision concerning alliance with Sol's family."
Guy considered. "Soon?"
"It will be some time."
Again that unwillingness to discuss the future. Guy thought it over and decided that this was something beyond him. He, too, let the matter drop for the present and took a new subject.
"Charalas, this sun of yours. It is not a true sun."
"No," laughed Charalas. "It is not."
"Nor is it anything like a true sun. Matter is stable stuff only under certain limits. If that size were truly solar matter, it would necessarily be so dense that space would be warped in around it so tight that nothing could emerge—radiation, I mean. To the observer, it would not exist. That is axiomatic. If a bit of solar matter of that size were isolated, it would merely expand and cool in a matter of hours—if it were solar-core matter it would probably be curtains for anything that tried to live in the neighborhood. Matter of that size is stable only at reasonable temperatures. I don't know the limits, but I'd guess that three or four thousand degrees kelvin would be tops. Oh, I forgot the opposite end; the very high temperature white dwarf might be that size—but it would warp space as I said before and thus do no good. Therefore a true sun of that size and mass is impossible.
"Another thing, Charalas. We are close to Sol. A light-week or less. That would have been seen ... should have been seen by our observatories. Why haven't they seen it?"
"Our shield," explained Charalas, "explains both. You see, Guy, in order that a planet may wander space, some means of solar effect must be maintained. As you say, nothing practical can be found in nature. Our planet drive is poorly controlled. We can not maneuver Ertene as you would a spaceship. It requires great power to even shift the course of Ertene by so much as a few degrees. We've taken luck as a course through the galaxy and have visited only those stars that have lain along our course. Trying to swing anything of solar mass would be impossible. Ertene would merely leave the sun; the sun would not answer Ertene's gravitational pull.
"But this is trivial. Obviously we have no real sun. But we needed one." Charalas smiled shyly. "At this point I must sound braggart," he said, "but it was an ancestor of mine—Timalas—who brought Ertene her sun."
"Great sounding guy," commented the Terran.
"He was. Ertene left the parent sun with only the light-shield. The light-shield, Guy, is a screen of energy that permits radiation to pass inwardly but not outwardly. Thus we collect the radiation of all the stars and lose but a minute quantity of the input from losses. That kept Ertene warm during those first years of our wandering.
"It also presented Ertene with a serious problem. The entire sky was faintly luminous. It was neither night nor day at any place on Ertene, but a half-light all the time. Disconcerting and entirely alien to the human animal. Evolutionary strains might have appeared to accept this strange condition, but Timalas decided that Intis, the lesser moon, would serve as a sun. He converted the screen slightly, distorting it so that the focal point for incoming radiation was at Intis. The lesser moon became incandescent, eventually, and serves as Ertene's sun. It is synthetic. The other radiations that prove useful to growing things and to man but which are not visible are emitted right from the inner surface of the light-shield itself. Intis serves as the source of light and most of the heat. It is a natural effect, giving us beautiful sunrises and peaceful sunsets. The radiation that causes growth and healthful effects is ever-present, because of the screen. Some heat, too, for that is included in the beneficial radiation. But the visible spectrum is directed at Intis along with a great quantity of the heat rays. Intis is small, Guy, and it is also beneficial that the re-radiation from Intis that misses Ertene and falls on the screen is converted also. Much of Ertene's power is derived from the screen itself—a back-energy collected from the screen generator."
"So the effective sun is the result of an energy shield? And this same shield prevents any radiation from leaving this region. I can see why we haven't seen Ertene. You can't see something that doesn't radiate. But what about occultation?"
"Quite possible. But the size of the screen is such that it is of stellar size as seen from stellar distances. It is but a true point in space." Charalas smiled. "I was about to say a point-source of light similar to a star but the shield is a point-source of no-light, really. Occultation is possible but the probabilities are remote, plus the probability of a repeat, so that the observer would consider the brief occultation of the star anything but an accident to his photographic plate."
"Don't get you on that."
"It's easy, Guy. Take a star-photograph and lay a thin line across it and see how many stars are really covered by this line—which is of the thickness of the stars themselves. Too few for a non-suspecting observer to tie together into a theory. No, we are safe from detection."
"Detection?"
"Yes. Call it that. Suppose we were to pass through a malignant culture. We did, three generations ago and it was only our shield that saved us from being absorbed into that system. We would have been slaves to that civilization."
"I see."
"Do you?"
"Certainly," said Guy. "You intend to have me present the Solar Government to your leaders. Upon my tale will rest your decision. You will decide whether to join us—or to pass undetected."
"I believe you understand," said Charalas. "So study well and be prepared to draw the most discerning comparisons, for the Council will ask the most delicate questions and you should be able to discuss any phase of Ertene's social system and the corresponding Terran system."
Mentally, Guy bade good-by to Sol. He applied himself to his Ertinian lessons because he felt that if Sol were lost to him—as it might be—he could at least enter the Ertinian life as an Ertinian.