New America

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Like a bullet, but one that hunted its own target, the ferry left the mother ship and curved down from orbit. Stars crowded darkness, unwinking and wintry. Yakov Kahn’s gaze went out the viewpoint over the pilot board, across thirty-three light-years to the spark which was Sol. Almost convulsively, he looked away again, sought the clotted silver of the Milky Way and the sprawl of Sagittarius. There, behind dust clouds where new suns were being born, lay the galaxy’s heart.

Once he had dreamed of seeking thither himself. But he was a boy then, who stood on a rooftop and peered through city sky-glow and city haze, wanting only to be yonder. Afterward the dream struck facts of distance, energy, and economics. The wreck had not gone under in an instant. His sons, his grandsons—

No. Probably no man ever would.

Beside him, Bill Redfeather’s craggy features scowled at instruments. “All systems check,” he reported.

Kahn’s mouth twitched slightly upward. “I should hope so.”

Redfeather looked irritated. It was the pilot’s, not the co-pilot’s, responsibility to be sure they wouldn’t burn as a meteorite in the atmosphere of the planet.

Its night side swelled before them, a monstrous darkness when you remembered the lights of Earth, but rimmed to dayward with blue and rosy red. An ocean sheened, polished metal scutcheoned with a hurricane; and that was alien too, no pelagicultural cover, no floating towns or crisscrossing transport webs. As he watched how Kahn regarded the sight, Redfeather’s mood turned gentle.

“You think too damn much, Jake,” he said.

“Well—” Kahn shrugged. “My last space trip.”

“Nonsense. They’ll need men yet on the Lunar run.”

“A nice, safe shuttle.” Kahn’s Israeli accent harshened his English. “No, thank you. I will make a clean break and stay groundside. High time I began raising a family anyway.”

If I can find a girl Almost seventy years will have passed since we started out And even then I was an anachronism, too many missions to too many stars…. Cut that! No self-pity allowed.

“I wonder what they’ve become like,” Red-feather said.

“Eh?” Kahn pulled himself out of his thoughts. “Who?”

“The people, of course. A century here, cut off from the rest of the human race. That must have done things to them.”

Thus far the crew had talked little about what they would find. Too depressing. But evasion had to end. “They will probably seem more familiar to you than to me,” Kahn said, “being drawn from North America. Their radio reports haven’t suggested any more social change than one would expect in a scientific base. A certain primitivism, I imagine; nothing else.”

“Even among nonhumans?”

“They don’t appear to have been significantly influenced by their neighbors. Or vice versa, for that matter. Too large a difference. I should think the primary effect on them was due to Mithras itself.”

“How?”

“Room to move around. Wilderness. Horizons. But we will see.”

The ferry was coming into daylight now. Groom-bridge 1830 rose blindingly over the curve of its innermost planet. Clouds drifted gold across plains and great wrinkled mountains.

“Think we can get in some hunting and such?” Redfeather asked eagerly. “I mean the real thing, not popping loose at a robot in an amusement park.”

“No doubt,” Kahn said. “We will have time. They can’t pack up and leave on no more notice than our call after we entered orbit.”

“Damned shame, to end the project,” Red-feather said. “I hope they solved the rotation problems, anyhow.”

“Which?”

“You know. With the tidal action this sun must exert, why does Mithras have only a sixty-hour day?”

“Oh, that. That was answered in the first decade the base was here. I have read old reports. A smaller liquid core makes for less isostatic friction. Other factors enter in, too, like the absence of a satellite. Trivial, compared to what they have been learning since. Imagine a biochemistry like Earth’s, but with its own evolution, natives as intelligent as we are but not human, an entire world.”

Kahn’s fist smote the arm of his chair. He bounced a little in his harness, under the low deceleration pressure. “The Directorate is governed by idiots,” he said roughly. “Terminating the whole interstellar program just because some cost accountant machine says population has grown so large and resources so low that we can’t afford to keep on learning. My God, we can’t afford not to! Without new knowledge, what hope have we for changing matters?”

“Could be the Directors had that in mind also,” Redfeather grunted.

Kahn gave the co-pilot a sharp glance. Sometimes Redfeather surprised him.

The houseboat came down the Benison River, past Riptide Straits, and there lay the Bay of Desire. The sun was westering, a huge red-gold ball that struck fire off the waters. Kilometers distant, on the opposite shore, the Princess reared her blue peak high over the clustered, climbing roofs of Withylet village; closer at hand, the sails of boats shone white as the wings of the sea whistlers cruising above them. The air was still warm, but through an open window David Thrailkill sensed a coolness in the breeze, and a smell of salt, off the Weatherwomb Ocean beyond the Door.

“Want to take the helm, dear?” he asked Leonie.

“Sure, if you’ll mind Vivian,” said his wife.

Thrailkill went aft across the cabin to get a bottle of beer from the cooler. The engine throb was louder there, and didn’t sound quite right. Well, an overhaul was overdue, after so long a time upriver. He walked forward again, with his seven-year-old daughter in tow. (That would have been three years on Earth, an enchanting age, though already he could see that she would have her mother’s blond good looks and a touch of his own studiousness.) Leonie chuckled at them as they went by.

Strongtail was on the porch, to savor the view. They were following the eastern bayshore. It rose as steeply as the other side, in hills that were green from winter rains but had begun to show a tinge of summer’s tawniness. Flameflowers shouted color among pseudograsses and scattered boskets. Thrailkill lowered his lanky form into a chair, cocked feet on rail, and tilted the bottle. Cold pungency gurgled past his lips, like water cloven by the twin bows. “Ahhh!” he said. “I’m almost sorry to come home.”

Vivian flitted in Strongtail’s direction, several balls clutched to her chest. “Juggle?” she begged.

“Indeed,” said the Mithran. The girl laughed for joy, and bounced around as much as the balls. Strongtail had uncommon skill in keeping things aloft and awhirl. His build helped, of course. The first expeditipn had compared the autochthons to kangaroos with bird heads and arms as long as a gibbon’s. But a man who had spent his life among them needed no chimeras. To Thrailkill, his friend’s nude, brown-furred small form was a unity, more graceful and in a way more beautiful than any human.

The slender beak remained open while Strong-tail juggled, uttering those trills which men could not imitate without a vocalizer. “Yes, a pleasant adventure,” he said. “Fortune is that we have ample excuse to repeat it.”

“We sure do.” Thrailkill’s gaunt face cracked in a grin. “This is going to rock them back on their heels in Treequad. For nigh on two hundred and fifty years, we’ve been skiting across the world, and never dreamed about an altogether fantastic culture right up the Benison. Won’t Painted Jaguar be surprised?”

He spoke English. After an Earth century of contact, the Mithrans around the Bay understood even if they were not able to voice the language. And naturally every human kid knew what the flutings of his playmates meant. You couldn’t travel far, though, before you met strangeness; not surprising, on a planet whose most advanced civilization was pre-industrial and whose natives were nowhere given to exploration or empire building.

Sometimes Thrailkill got a bit exasperated with them. They were too damned gentle. Not that they weren’t vigorous, merry, et cetera. You couldn’t ask for a better companion than Strongtail. But he lacked ambition. He’d helped build this boat, and gone xenologizing on it, for fun and to oblige his buddy. When the mores of the riparian tribes became evident in all their dazzling complexities, he had not seen why the humans got so excited; to him, it was merely an occasion for amusement.

Thrailkill dismissed that recollection. Mithras is their planet, he reminded himself, not for the first time. We’re here simply because their ancestors let us establish a base. If they seldom take any of the machines and ideas we offer; if they refuse chance after chance to really accomplish something, that’s their own affair. Maybe I just envy their attitude.

“I do not grasp your last reference,” said Strongtail.

“Hm? Painted Jaguar? An old story among my people.” Thrailkill looked toward the sun, where it touched the haze around the Princess with amber. Earth’s sun he had watched only on film, little and fierce and hasty in heaven. “I’m not sure I understand it myself, quite.”

Point Desire hove in view, the closest thing to a city that the region possessed, several hundred houses with adobe walls and red tile roofs on a headland above the docks. A dozen or so boats were in, mainly trading ketches from the southern arm of the Bay.

“Anxious though I am to see my kindred/’ the Mithran said, “I think we would do wrong not to dine with Rich-in-Peace.”

Thrailkill laughed. “Come off it, you hypocrite. You know damn well you want some of her cooking.” He rubbed his chin. “As a matter of fact, so do I.”

The houseboat strode on. When it passed another craft, Strongtail exchanged cheerful whistles. That the blocky structure moved without sails or oars was no longer a cause of wonder, and never had been very much. The people took for granted that humans made curious things.

“Indeed this has been a delightful journey,” Strongtail mused. “Morning mists rolling still and white, islands hidden among waterstalks, a fish line to trail aft, and at night our jesting in our own snug world.… I would like a houseboat for myself.”

“Why, you can use this one any time,” Thrailkill said.

“I know. But so many kin and friends would wish to come with me, years must pass before they have each shared my pleasure. There should be at least one other houseboat.”

“So make one. I’ll help whenever I get a chance, and you can have a motor built in Treequad.”

“For what fair value in exchange? I would have to work hard, to gather food or timber or whatever else the builder might wish.” Strongtail relaxed. “No, too many other joys wait, ranging Hermit Woods, lazing on Broadstrands, making music under the stars. Or playing with your cub.” He sent the balls through a series of leaps that made Vivian squeal.

The boat eased into a berth. There followed the routine of making fast, getting shipshape, packing the stuff which must go ashore. That went quickly, because several Mithrans stopped their dockside fishing in order to help. They seemed agitated about something, but wouldn’t say what. Presently everyone walked to the landward end of the dock. Planks boomed underfoot.

Rich-in-Peace’s inn was not large, even by local standards, and few customers were present. Those sat on their tails at the counter, which had been split from a single scarletwood log, and talked with more excitement than usual. Leonie let the door screen fold behind her. “Hello,” she called. “We’re back for some of your delicious chowder.”

“And beer,” Strongtail reminded. “Never forget beer.”

Rich-in-Peace bustled around the counter. Her big amber eyes glistened. The house fell silent; this was her place, she was entitled to break the news.

“You have not heard?” she caroled.

“No, our radio went out on the way back.” Thrailkill replied. “What’s happened?”

She spread her hands. They had three fingers apiece, at right angles to each other. “But so wonderful!” she exclaimed. “A ship has come from your country. They say you can go home.” As if the implications had suddenly broken on her, she stopped. After a moment: “I hope you will want to come back and visit us.”

She doesn’t realize, flashed through the stupefaction in Thrailkill. He was only dimly aware of Leonie’s tight grasp on his arm. That’s a one-way trip.

Sunset smoldered away in bronze and gold. From the heights above Treequad, Kahn and Thrailkill could look past the now purple hills that flanked the Door, out to a glimpse of the Weather-womb Ocean. The xenologist sighed. “I always wanted to build a real seagoing schooner and take her there,” he said. “Coasting down to Gate-of-the-South—what a trip!”

“I am surprised that the natives have not done so,” Kahn said. “They appear to have the capability, and it would be better for trade than those toilsome overland routes you mentioned.”

“I suggested that, and my father before me,” Thrailkill answered. “But none of them cared to make the initial effort. Once we thought about doing it ourselves, to set an example. But we had a lot of other work, and too few of us.”

“Well, if the natives are so shiftless, why do you care about improving their lot?”

Thrailkill bristled at the insult to his Mithrans, until he remembered that Kahn could not be expected to understand. “‘Shiftless’ is the wrong word,” he said. “They work as hard as necessary. Their arts make everything of ours look sick. Let’s just call them less adventurous than humans.” His smile was wry. “Probably the real reason we’ve done so much here, and wanted to do so much more. Not for altruism, just for the hell of it.”

The mirth departed from him. He looked from the Door, past the twinkling lanterns of Goodwort and Withylet which guarded it, back across the mercury sheet of the Bay, to Treequad at his feet.

“So, I’m not going to build that schooner,” he said. Roughly: “Come on, we’d better return.”

They started downhill, over a trail which wound among groves of tall sweet-scented sheathbud trees. Leaves rustled in the twilight, a flock of marsh birds winged homeward with remote trum-petings, insects chirred from the pseudograsses. Below, Treequad was a darkness filling the flat-lands between hills and Bay. Lights could be seen from windows, and the Center tower was etched slim against the waters; but the whole impression was of openness and peace, with some underlying mystery to which men could not quite put a name.

“Why did you establish yourselves here, rather than at the town farther north?” Kahn asked. His voice seemed flat and loud, and the way he jumped from subject to subject was also an offense to serenity. Thrailkill didn’t mind, though. He had recognized his own sort of man in the dark, moody captain, which was why he had invited Kahn to stay with him and had taken his guest on this ramble.

Good Lord, what can he do but grab blindly at whatever he notices? He left Earth a generation ago, and even if he read everything we sent up till then, why, we never could transmit more than a fraction of what we saw and heard and did. He’s got two and a half—well, an Earth century’s worth of questions to ask.

Thrailkill glanced around. The eastern sky had turned plum color, where the first few stars trod forth. We ourselves, he thought, have a thousand years’ worth; ten thousand years’. But of course now those questions will never be asked.

“Why Treequad?” he said slowly. “Well, they already had a College of Poets and Ceremonialists here—call it the equivalent of an intellectual community, though in human terms it isn’t very. They made useful go-betweens for us, in dealing with less well-educated natives. And then, uh, Point Desire is a trading center, therefore especially worth studying. We didn’t want to disturb conditions by plumping our own breed down right there.”

“I see. That is also why you haven’t expanded your numbers?”

“Partly. We’d like to. This continent, this whole planet, is so underpopulated that— But a scientific base can’t afford to grow. How would everyone be brought home again when it’s terminated?”

Fiercely: “Damn you on Earth! You’re terminating us too soon!”

“I agree,” Kahn said. “If it makes any consolation, all the others are being ended too. They don’t mind so greatly. This is the sole world we have found where men can live without carrying around an environmental shell.”

“What? There must be more.”

“Indeed. But how far have we ranged? Less than fifty light-years. And never visited half the stars in that radius. You don’t know what a gigantic project it is, to push a ship close to the speed of light. Too gigantic. The whole effort is coming to an end, as Earth grows poor and weary. I doubt if it will ever be revived.”

Thrailkill felt a chill. The idea hadn’t occurred to him before, in the excitement of meeting the fer-riers, but— “What can we do when we get there?” he demanded. “We’re not fitted for… for city life.”

“Have no fears,” Kahn said. “Universities, foundations, vision programs, any number of institutions will be delighted to have you. At least, that was so when I left, and society appears to have gotten static. And you should have party conversation for the rest of your lives, about your adventures on Mithras.”

“M-m-m, I s’pose.” Thrailkill rehearsed some fragments of his personal years.

Adventure enough. When he and Tom Jackson and Gleam-of-Wings climbed the Snowtooths, white starkness overhead and the wind awhistle below them, the thunder and plumes of an avalanche across a valley, the huge furry beast that came from a cave and must be slain before it slew them. Or shooting the rapids on a river that tumbled down the Goldstream Hills, landing wet and cold at Volcano to boast over their liquor in the smoky-raftered taproom of Monstersbane Inn. Prowling the alleys and passing the lean temples of the Fivedom; standing off a horde of the natives’ half-intelligent, insensately ferocious cousins, in the stockade at Tearwort; following the caravans through the Desolations, down to Gate-of-the-South, while drums beat unseen from dry hills; or simply this last trip, along the Benison through fogs and waterstalks, to those lands where the dwellers gave their lives to nothing but rites that made no sense and one dared not laugh—Indeed Earth offered nothing like that, and the vision-screen people would pay well for a taste of it to spice their fantasies.

Though Thrailkill remembered quieter times more clearly, and did not see how they could be told. The Inn of the Poetess, small and snug beneath the stormcloud mass of Demon Mountain, firelight, songs, comradeship; shadows and sun-flecks and silence in Hermit Woods; sailing out to Fish Hound Island with Leonie on their wedding night, that the sunrise might find them alone on its crags (how very bright the stars had been—even little Sol was a beacon for them); afterward, building sand castles with Vivian on Broadstrands, while the surf rolled in from ten thousand kilometers of ocean. They used to end such a day by finding some odd eating place in Kings Point Station or Goodwort, and Vivian would fall asleep to the creak of the sweeps as their ferry trudged home across the water.

Well, those were private memories anyway.

He realized they had been walking for quite some time in silence. Only their footfalls on the cobbles, now that they were back in town, or an occasional trill from the houses that bulked on either side, could be heard. Courtesy insisted he should make conversation with the vaguely visible shape on his right. “What will you do?” he asked. “After we return, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” Kahn said. “Teach, perhaps.”

“Something technical, no doubt.”

“I could, if need be. Science and technology no longer change from generation to generation. But I would prefer history. I have had considerable time to read history, in space.”

“Really? I mean, the temporal contraction effect—”

“You forget that at one gravity acceleration, a ship needs a year to reach near-light speed, and another year to brake at the end. Your passengers will be in suspended animation, but we of the crew must stand watch.”

Kahn lit a cigaret. Earlier, Thrailkill had experimented with one, but tobacco made him ill, he found. He wondered for a moment if Earth’s food had the savor of Mithran. Funny. I never appreciated kernelkraut or sour nuts or filet of crackler till now, when I’m about to lose them.

The cigaret end brightened and faded, brightened and faded, like a tiny red watchlight in the gloaming. “After all,” Kahn said, “I have seen many human events. I was born before the Directorate came to power. My father was a radiation technician in the Solar War. And, too, mine are an old people, who spent most,of their existence on the receiving end of history. It is natural that I should be interested. You have been more fortunate.”

“And the Mithrans are luckier yet, eh?”

“I don’t know. Thus far, they are essentially a historyless race. Or are they? How can you tell? We look through our own eyes. To us, accomplishment equals exploitation of the world. Our purest science and art remain a sort of conquest. What might the Mithrans do yet, in Mithran terms?”

“Let us keep up the base,” Thrailkill said, “and we’ll keep on reporting what they do.”

“That would be splendid,” Kahn told him, “except that there will be no ships to take your descendants home. You have maintained yourselves an enclave of a few hundred people for a century. You cannot do so forever. If nothing else, genetic drift in that low a population would destroy you.”

They walked on unspeaking, till they reached the Center. It was a village within the village, clustered around the tower. Thence had sprung the maser beams, up through the sky to the relay satellite, and so to those on Earth who wondered what the universe was like. No more, Thrailkill thought. Dust will gather, nightcats will nest in corroding instruments, legends will be muttered about the tall strangers who built and departed, and one century an earthquake will bring down the tower which talked across space, and the very myths will die.

On the far side of the Mall, close to the clear plash of Louis’ Fountain, they stopped. There lay Thrailkill’s house, long and solid, made to endure. His grandfather had begun it, his father had completed it, he himself had wanted to add rooms but had no reason to when he would only be allowed two children. The windows were aglow, and he heard a symphony of Mithran voices.

“What the devil!” he said. “We’ve got company.” He opened the door.

The fireplace danced with flames, against the evening cold. Their light shimmered off the beautiful grain of wainscots, glowed on patterned rugs and the copper statue which owned one corner, and sheened along the fur of his friends. The room was full of them: Strongtail, Gleam-of-Wings, Nightstar, Gift-of-God, Dreamer, Elf-in-the-Forest, and more and more, all he had loved who could get here quickly enough. They sat grave on their tails, balancing cups of herb tea in their hands, while Leonie attended to the duties of a hostess.

She stopped when Thrailkill and Kahn entered. “How late you are!” she said. “I was growing worried.”

“No need,” Thrailkill replied, largely for Kahn’s benefit. “The last prowltiger hereabouts was shot five years ago.” I did that Another adventure— hai, what a stalk through the folded hills! (The Mithrans didn’t like it They attached some kind of significance to the ugly brutes. But prowltigers never took a Mithran. When the Harris boy was killed, we stopped listening to objections. Our friends forgave us eventually.) He looked around. “You honor this roof,” he said with due formalism. “Be welcome in good cheer.”

Strongtail’s music was a dirge. “Is the story true that you can never return?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” Thrailkill said. Aside to Kahn: “They want us to stay. I’m not sure why. We haven’t done anything in particular for them.”

“But you tried,” said Nightstar. “That was a large plenty, that you should care.”

“And you were something to wonder at,” Elf-in-the-Forest added.

“We have enjoyed you,” Strongtail said. “Why must you go?”

“We took council,” sang Gift-of-God, “and came hither to ask from house to house that you remain.”

“But we can’t!” Leonie’s words cracked over.

“Why can you not?” responded Dreamer.

It burst upon Thrailkill. He stood in the home of his fathers and shouted: “Why not? We can!”

The long night drew toward a close. Having slept, Kahn borrowed one of the flitters that had been manufactured here and went after Bill Redfeather, who’d gone on a jaunt with one of the autochthons.

He hummed across the Bay under constellations not so different from those on Earth. Thirty-three light-years were hardly significant in the galaxy. But the humans no longer used human names; those were the Boat, the Garden of Healing, the Fourfold, that wheeled and glittered around another pole star. I suppose there are more native influences, he thought. Not too many, but some. I wonder what kind of civilization they would build. They could hardly help but do better than Earth, on a rich and uncrowded planet In time they would be able to launch starships of their own.

The unrolling map guided him toward Stark-beam, and when the hamlet came into sight he detected the emissions from Redfeather’s portable transceiver and homed on them. They led him to a peak that loomed over the peninsular hills and the soaring scarletwood forest. He must come down vertically on a meadow.

Dew soaked his breeches as he stepped out. The eastern sky had paled, but most light still came from the stars, and from the campfire that fluttered before a tent. Redfeather and Strongtail squatted there, half seen in shadows. A pot on a framework of sticks bubbled above, merrily competing with the first sleepy bird-chirps. The air was raw, and Kahn shivered and felt glad to settle down with hands held near the coals.

Strongtail murmured some notes. “I think that means ‘welcome,’ ” Redfeather said. Strongtail nodded. “Breakfast will be ready soon. Or lunch or something. Hard to get used to his diurnal period. What do the base people do?”

“About twenty hours awake, ten asleep, around the clock,” Kahn said. “Have you had a good outing?”

“Lord, yes. Strongtail’s a mighty fine guide, even if he can’t talk to me. Very kind of you to take me.” Strongtail trilled in pleasure. “I do wish I could hunt, but my pal here doesn’t quite approve. Oh, well, I’m glad to get out in the woods anyway.” Redfeather stirred the pot. “I suppose you’re joining us?”

“No, that wasn’t why I called.” Kahn lit a cigaret and smoked in short, hard puffs. “Business. Regrets, but you will have to come directly back with me.”

“Huh? What’s the rush? I mean, unless the people changed their minds about staying.”

“No, they haven’t. They have been threshing the matter this whole night. Hardly any of them wish to leave with us. I argued, but I might as well have talked to those trees.”

“Why bother, Jake? We don’t have positive orders to bring them back.” Redfeather smiled. “Give me a few days here, and I could well decide to stay myself.”

“What?” Kahn stared at the firelit face. “Yes, I see. I am not personally one for the bucolic life—”

“No need to be. Having made the final decision, we… they’ll want mines, factories, sawmills, everything you can name.”

Kahn glanced at Strongtail. “What do you say to that?” he asked. “Do you wish these things done?”

The Mithran nodded slowly. A qualified “Yes,” Kahn assumed; he didn’t like the idea, but various regions could be given the humans and there was plenty of room elsewhere. If, indeed, anything that formal was contemplated. Thrailkill had remarked that the autochthons had no concept of real estate as property.

Kahn finished his cigaret, ground out the stub with a vicious gesture, and rose. “Excuse me, Strongtail,” he said. “We have private affairs to discuss. Come into the flitter, Bill.”

Privacy was another notion, incomprehensible, with which Strongtail cooperated to oblige. He tended the pot, drank in its odors and the green scent of the awakening forest, was briefly saddened by the trouble he had sensed, and then turned his mind to more easy and pleasurable thoughts. Once .he started, Kahn’s yell pierced the flitter canopy. “God damn you, I am the captain and you will obey orders!” He knew that humans often submitted themselves, however reluctantly, to the will of someone else. The fact that Mithrans left a job whenever they got bored had occasioned friction in the early days. Later generations solved the problem by rarely employing Mithrans.

Well-a-day, they made up for their peculiarities by such things as houseboats. It would be amusing, no, wonderful to see what they did when they really felt themselves part of the land.

Unless—No, while the prowltiger episode, and certain others, had been unfortunate, limits were not exceeded. Should that ever happen, Strongtail would be forced to kill. But he would continue to love as he did.

The canopy slid back and the Earthmen returned. Kahn looked grim, Redfeather was quiet and shaken. Sweat filled his brows. “I’m sorry,” he told the Mithran, “I must go to the spaceship.”

The meeting hall in Treequad was so big that the entire human population could gather within. Mounting the stage, Kahn looked beyond gaily muraled walls to the faces. The very graybeards, he thought, had an air of youth which did not exist for any age on Earth. Sun and wind had embraced them throughout their lives. They had had a planet to wander in, as men had not owned since Columbus.

He turned to Thrailkill, who had accompanied him. Normally an elected speaker presided over these sessions, but today they listened to him and naturally his host went along. “Is everybody here?” he asked.

Thrailkill’s gaze swept the room. Sunlight streamed in the windows, to touch women’s hair and men’s eyes with ruddiness. A quiet had fallen, underscored by rustlings and shufflings. Somewhere a baby cried, but was quickly soothed.

“Yes,” he said. “The last field expedition came in two hours ago, from the Icefloe Dwellers.” He scowled at Kahn. “I don’t know why you want this assembly. Our minds are made up.”

The spaceman consulted his watch. He had to stall for a bit. His men wouldn’t get down from orbit for some minutes yet, and then they must walk here. “I told you,” he said. “I want to make a final appeal.”

“We’ve heard your arguments,” Thrailkill said.

“Not formally.”

“Oh, all right.” Thrailkill advanced to the lectern. The PA boomed his words forth under the rafters.

“The meeting will please come to order,” he said. “As you know, we’re met for the purpose of officially ratifying the decision that we have reached. I daresay Captain Kahn will need such a recorded vote. First he’d like to address you.” He bowed slightly to his guests and took a chair. Leonie was in the front row with Vivian; he winked at them.

Kahn leaned on the stand. His body felt heavy and tired. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “you have spent many hours this past night talking things over in private groups. Quite an exciting night, no? I have asked you to come here after sleeping on the question, because your choice should be made in a calmer mood, it being irrevocable.

“Hardly any of you have agreed to leave with us. I wonder if the majority have considered what their own desires mean. As was said long ago, ‘II faut vouloir les consequences de ce que Ton veut.’ ” Blankness met him, driving home how far these people had drifted from Earth. “I mean you must want the results of what you want. You are too few to maintain a culture at the modern level. True, your ancestors brought along the means to produce certain amenities, and you have a lot of information on microtape. But there are only so many heads among you, and each head can hold only so much. You are simply not going to have enough engineers, medical specialists, psychopediatricians, geneticists… every trained type necessary to operate a civilization, as opposed to a mere scientific base. Some of your children will die from causes that could have been prevented. Those who survive will mature ignorant of Earth’s high heritage.

“A similar thing happened before, on the American frontier. But America was close to Europe. The new barbarism ended in a few generations, as contact strengthened. You will be alone, but no more than one thin thread of radio, a lifetime passing between message and answer. Do you want to sink back into a dark age?”

Someone called, “We’ve done okay so far.” Others added remarks. Kahn was content to let them wrangle; thus he gained time, without drawing on his own exhausted resources. But Thrailkill shushed them and said:

“I believe we’re aware of that problem, Captain. In fact, we’ve lived with it during the whole existence of this… colony.” There, Kahn thought. He spoke the word. “We haven’t really been bothered. From what we hear about Earth, we’ve gained more than we’ve lost.” Applause. “And now that you’ve made us realize this is our home, this is where we belong, why, we won’t stay small. For purely genetic reasons we’ll have to expand our population as fast as possible. My wife and I always did want a houseful of kids. Now we can have them.” Cheering began. His reserve broke apart. “We’ll build our own civilization! And someday we’ll come back to you, as visitors. You’re giving up the stars. We’re not!”

They rose from their chairs and shouted.

Kahn let the noise surf around him, while he stood slumped. Soon, he begged. Let it be soon. Seeing that he remained where he was, the crowd grew gradually still. He waited till the last one had finished talking to his neighbor. Then the silence was so deep that he could hear the songbirds outside.

“Very well,” he said in a dull tone. “But what is to become of the Mithrans?”

Thrailkill, who had also stayed on his feet, said rapidly, “You mentioned that to me before, Captain. I told you then and I tell you now, the planet has room for both races. We aren’t going to turn on our friends.”

“My mate Bill Redfeather is an Amerind,” Kahn said. “Quite a few of his ancestors were friends to the white man. It didn’t help them in the long run. I am a Jew myself, if you know what that means. My people spent the better part of two thousand years being alien. We remember in our bones how that was. Finally some started a country of their own. The Arabs who were there objected, and lived out the rest of their lives in refugee camps. Ask Muthaswamy, my chief engineer, to explain the history of Moslem and Hindu in India. Ask his assistant Ngola to tell you what happened when Europe entered Africa. And, as far as that goes, what happened when Europe left again. You cannot intermingle two cultures. One of them will devour the other. And already, this minute, yours is the more powerful.”

They mumbled, down in the hall, and stared at him and did not understand. He sucked air into his lungs and tried anew:

“Yes, you don’t intend to harm the Mithrans. Thus far there has been little conflict. But when your numbers grow, when you begin to rape the land for all the resources this hungry civilization needs, when mutual exasperation escalates into battle—can you speak for your children? Your grandchildren? Their grandchildren, to the end of time? The people of Bach and Goethe brought forth Hitler. No, you don’t know what I am talking about, do you?

“Well, let us suppose that man on this planet reverses his entire previous record and gives the natives some fairly decent reservations and does not take them away again. Still, how much hope have they of becoming anything but parasites? They cannot become one with you. The surviving Amerinds could be assimilated, but they were human. Mithrans are not. They do not and cannot think like humans. But don’t they have the right to live in their world as they wish, make their own works, hope their own hopes?

“You call this planet underpopulated. By your standards, that is correct. But not by the natives’. How many individuals per hectare do you expect an economy like theirs to support? Take away part of a continent, and you murder that many unborn sentient beings. But you won’t stop there. You will take the world, and so murder an entire way of existence. How do you know that way isn’t better than ours? Certainly you have no right to deny the universe the chance that it is better.”

They seethed and buzzed at his feet. Thrailkill advanced, fists clenched, and said flatly, “Have you so little pride in being a man?”

“On the contrary,” Kahn answered, “I have so much pride that I will not see my race guilty of the ultimate crime. We are not going to make anyone else pay for our mistakes. We are going home and see if we cannot amend them ourselves.”

“So you say!” Thrailkill spat.

O God of mercy, send my men. Kahn looked into the eyes of the one whose salt he had eaten, and knew they would watch him for what remained of his life. And behind would gleam the Bay of Desire, and the Princess’ peak holy against a smokeless heaven, and the Weatherwomb waiting for ships to sail west. “You will be heroes on Earth,” he said. “And you will at least have memories. I—”

The communicator in his pocket buzzed. “Ready.” He slapped it once: “Go ahead.”

Thunder crashed on the roof, shaking walls. A deeptoned whistle followed. Kahn sagged back against the lectern. That would be the warboat, with guns and nuclear bombs.

The door flew open. Redfeather entered, and a squad of armed men. The rest had surrounded the hall.

Kahn straightened. His voice was a stranger’s, lost in the yells and cries: “You are still citizens of the Directorate. As master of an official ship, I have discretionary police authority. Will or no, you shall come back with me.”

He saw Leonie clutch her child to her. He ducked Thrailkill’s roundhouse swing and stumbled off the stage, along the aisle toward his men. Hands grabbed at him. Redfeather fired a warning burst, and thereafter he walked alone. He breathed hard, but kept his face motionless. It wouldn’t do for him to weep. Not yet.