Battle for the Stars

CHAPTER 10

Driving north from New York next day, Birrel almost regretted his refusal of a flitter. It seemed ridiculous for a man who could lead a squadron across a big part of the galaxy, but the traffic frightened him.

He had not driven cars very much, and certainly not on highways like this big, northern thruway. On Earth, people apparently still used cars in great numbers for short distances, and they drove fast. Automatic safety controls triggered by proximity radar prevented collisions, if you stayed within a certain speed limit, but none of these people appeared to worry about the limit. It was not until they branched off on a subsidiary highway that held much less traffic that Birrel's tension relaxed.

Lyllin had hardly said a word to him since their start. He turned now toward her and said, “I want to explain about this ancestral home business. I didn't want to talk about it last night in Charteris’ place."

Still looking composedly ahead, Lyllin said, “But you don't have to explain. It's perfectly natural that you should want to see the place your people came from."

"Will you stop behaving like a woman and listen?” he said irritatedly. “My people, again. What in the world would I care where my great-grandfather lived? I'm doing this because Ferdias ordered it.” He added, “I wasn't supposed to tell you even that much, but it wouldn't look natural to leave you behind, so it seems I have to."

Lyllin's face cleared and she turned now and looked at him. “Ferdias’ order? But why—” She stopped. Her mind was quick and after a moment she said, “You're to meet someone at this place, is that it?"

"Yes."

"And I'm not supposed to know what it's all about?"

He nodded. “That's it."

He thought that Lyllin looked somehow relieved. She said, “I don't mind, you don't have to tell me. I'm worried, I wish I knew, but it's all right."

He understood. Her relief was because she had found out that he did not really care about Earth ancestors or ancestral homes, that that was only a cover-up.

They turned off the secondary highway onto even less travelled roads. These back roads were old and rambling, twisting accommodatingly around hills and ponds, and bordered most of the way by big trees. A few of the trees Birrel knew, for their seeds had in the past been taken to other worlds, but others were totally strange to him. It was the same with the houses. Some of them were modem plastic-and-metal villas such as you would see on any civilized planet these days, but there were also antique stone houses, and once he and Lyllin both exclaimed when they saw a very old house that was built all of wood.

It seemed to Birrel that this countryside looked as oldfashioned in its own way as did the city New York in a different way. They passed a steepled church mantled thick with ivy, stone fences with moss upon them, smooth fields that looked as though they had been tilled for ages. In some of the fields, quite modern driverless tractors were trundling about, doing the cultivation they were programmed for without need of any direction, Apparently this was mostly farming country, and that at least did not surprise Birrel. On every planet people still farmed, for the convenient synthetic foods never quite satisfied human hungers altogether. It was the obsolete look of the farms and homes and villages that surprised him.

He remembered now something Charteris had told him as they looked from the latter's terrace at New York. “You'll find us very old-fashioned in some ways. It's really an emotional attachment to the past, to the times, even after star-travel began, when Earth was still the center of the universe.” Birrel had not fully understood that then, but now he was beginning to, it did explain why these people were so loath to give up old customs, old habits of thought, old ways of living that went back two centuries to the days of Earth's pre-eminence and glory.

A brilliant bird flashed across the road and he and Lyllin argued what it was. “A robin, I think,” Birrel said doubtfully. “In school, when I was little, we had an old Earth poem about Robin Redbreast. I didn't know then what it was."

"Not nearly so splendid as a Vegan flame-bird,” Lyllin said. “But the red of it, with these green trees and blue sky… It's a pretty world, in a way."

They rolled finally down a little hill and over a bridged stream into the town of Orville. It was only a village, with a number of shops, some modern plastic and others quite ancient in style, around an open square. There was a time-corroded statue of a soldier at the center of the park, and benches on which old men sat in the sun.

Birrel asked directions of a merchant standing in front of his shop, a chubby man who stared open-mouthed at the two visitors. And Birrel suddenly realized how strange indeed they must look in this sleepy, little Earth village — he in his blue-and-silver starman's coverall, his face dark from foreign suns, and Lyllin whose beauty was a breath of the alien.

A rag-tag of curious, small boys had gathered around by the time he got his directions. He was glad to drive on out of the village by the designated road.

"You would think” said Lyllin, “that it would all be more modern. After all, this is where it all started. But so many old-fashioned buildings, roads…"

Birrel nodded. “I guess they poured most of what they had — men, money, materials — into the effort to conquer space. A lot of people have gone out from here and not come back. It doesn't have as many people now as it used to."

This road was an even narrower and more rambling one, looping casually along the side of a wide, shallow valley whose neat farms and fields and patches of woods lay silent in the blaze of the soft golden sun. They met no other cars, though an occasional flitter bummed across the blue sky. The farms looked well-worked and prosperous, but most of the houses were old. Birrel kept counting them, and when he had counted six houses he turned into a lane and stopped.

This house was of field-stone, an ancient, brown, dumpy structure that had a forlorn and deserted look. Under the tall, stiff, dark-green trees in its front yard — were they the trees called ‘pines?'—the grass was high and ragged. The lane went on past the house, past an orchard of gnarled trees heavy with green fruit, to a big old barn. There was no one in sight and no sign that anyone was here.

"Are you sure it's the place?” asked Lyllin.

He nodded, getting out of the car and starting toward the porch. “It's the place. Ferdias’ agent bought it a while ago, so we'd have this secluded place to make contact. There should be someone here."

There was a bell-push at the door, but no one answered it. Birrel tried the door. It swung open, and they went in.

They went through a dark, entry hall into a room such as they had never seen before. Its walls were of painted wood, instead of plastic. The furniture was wooden, too, and of archaic design, the whole effect to Birrel's eyes being one of slightly dismal ugliness. He stood, looking uncertainly around. The room, the house, were very silent.

"Look at this,” said Lyllin, in tones of surprise.

She was touching a chair, and the chair rocked back and forth on its curved bottom. “I thought it was a child's toy, but it's too big for a child."

He shook his head. “Beyond me. And it's beyond me too why Ferdias’ man isn't here."

He called, but there was no answer. He went through all the rooms, and there was no one. Birrel felt a mounting alarm. Had something gone wrong with Ferdias’ careful plans? Where was Karsh, who should have met him here with the information and orders he must have? Suppose Karsh didn't come. Who then could give him warning of Solleremos’ strike, if Orion did strike?

His dismay and anxiety increased by the moment. He stood, irresolute. Finally, he said, “We'll have to wait. Ferdias’ man is bound to be along soon, he must have left the place unlocked in case we came.

"You mean, perhaps stay here all night?” said Lyllin. “But food and beds."

"We'd better look around,” he said unhappily.

They found new blankets on the old-fashioned beds. And in the kitchen cupboards there was food in modern self-heating plastipacks.

"We can make out,” he said. “But it's a devil of a thing."

While Lyllin prepared their supper, he went out and restlessly walked around the place. The weedy yard ran into brushy, unused fields and nearby woods. The old barn was empty, and the other outbuildings were shabby and forlorn.

He did not think much of Earth, if this was a sample. He went back inside and helped Lyllin solve the puzzle of an ancient sink. Even the reddening sunset light pouring through the windows could not make the wooden walls and timeworn cupboards look less dingy. He said so, and Lyllin smiled.

"It's not so bad. We'll eat out on that back porch. It's less musty there."

The porch was not screened, and gregarious buzzing insects dropped in upon them as they ate, and Birrel slapped and swore. The whole western sky was a flare of crimson great bastions of cloud building ever higher.

Under the sunset, beyond the fields, the ragged woods brooded darkly.

A small animal came soundlessly out of the high grass near the barn and stopped and stared at them with greenish eyes.

"What is it, Jay, a wild creature?"

He looked. “It's a cat, that's what it is. An Earthman in the Stardream had one for a pet, kept it at base. He called it Tom.” He tossed a bit of food onto the step. “Here, Tom."

The cat stalked carefully forward, eyed them coldly for a moment, then bent to the food. After a moment it turned its back on them and departed.

Darkness fell. Birrel began to feel a thin edge of desperation. Karsh had not come. What if he didn't come at all? How long could he wait in this forgotten backwater place, not knowing what was going on out there in deep space, whether the Orion squadrons were still poised there or whether they were moving? He could not stay away from the Fifth forever and he did not wish to call Brescnik from here unless it was vitally necessary.

Lyllin said, “Is it possible that your man is waiting in that village, Orville-that he missed you and doesn't know you're here?"

"It could be, I suppose.” He grasped at the straw. “I'll go down to the village. If he's there, I'll soon find him. Do you mind waiting here, just in case he does come?"

She said she didn't mind. But he took the compact shocker from his coverall pocket and left it for her before he went out.