Chapter 15

Now that Cameron was gone there was much more to be done in the hospital. Jeriann rushed to get through but small errors plagued her, nullifying a good part of her work. Finally she forced herself to be more careful, checking the biologicals with extreme caution.

“I hear,” said Maureen, sauntering in, “the nuptials were informal, catch as catch can.”

“No ceremony,” said Jeriann. “We stopped in and registered and went on to my place.”

“What’s the difference as long as you’re sure of him,” said Maureen.

“I’m not. I’m sure of me.”

Maureen looked at her critically. “In your case it’s good enough,” she said with a trace of envy as she leaned against the machine.

“Don’t,” said Jeriann sharply. “This thing is an art, not a science. The heat of your hand will alter the product.”

“Well, all right,” said Maureen crossly. “If I had something worthwhile to do I wouldn’t be so nervous.”

“I think it can be arranged,” said Jeriann, smiling. “How would you like to be a colonist?”

“On the next ship? Maybe.”

“It would be exciting. Also you’d be near Webber.” Jeriann made a delicate adjustment.

“I haven’t made up my mind about him,” said Maureen airily. “He’s virile though.”

“He clanks a lot, if that’s what you mean.”

“At least he doesn’t pretend he’s carrying the world on his shoulders without any----” Maureen stopped. “I guess I shouldn’t say that in front of you.”

“You shouldn’t,” agreed Jeriann. “Nowhere I’ll be apt to hear it. Now why don’t you see Jordan about getting on the next ship?”

After that the work went smoothly and she soon found she’d completed the day’s quota and part of the next. She continued longer until she had tomorrow free. They had the whole day off to do what they liked, if she could persuade him to rest. She was humming when she went out and it was clear evening and there was a beautiful silver fleck in the sky.

Only it was not beautiful because it was a ship--and it was not their ship.

And neither was it the Star Victory. She’d watched it so often on the scanner that every line of it was etched in her mind.

She hurried to gravity center, every step an effort. Why couldn’t they have been discovered later? She would have preferred an alien ship, anything to this. Where had it come from?

Jordan was waiting at the entrance. “I knew you’d be here. You saw the scout?”

It was simple if she had thought about it. The Star Victory was large and carried auxiliary landing craft. “When did it come?”

“Less than an hour ago. Go on in. I’ll wait for Anti.”

Docchi was leaning against the command unit. The telescreen on the opposite wall was glowing but there was nothing on it except harsh white glare. “I tried to get you at the hospital as soon as they stopped talking. You’d just left.”

“They didn’t call until they got close?”

A smile had died on his face and the corpse of it was still there. “They nailed us dead. We should have had someone checking on the scanner. It works turned away from the planet. I guess it wouldn’t have done any good though--there was just too much space to cover. First thing we knew they were on the telescreen. Jordan went outside, and there they were.”

She was thinking of the people on the planet. The asteroid couldn’t abandon them. She hoped the scout didn’t know how vulnerable they were. “What did they say?”

“The general sent an urgent message. He asked us not to land on this or any other planet.”

“He asked us?” The general was accustomed to commanding.

His face was illuminated with the weak radiance of his veins. “I didn’t tell them we had landed and I don’t think they observed it.” He stopped to recall what she said and the effort was painful. “Oh yes, the general asked us. Below the cloud banks he discovered an alien civilization on the Saturn type planet and is negotiating with them. Naturally they’d regard it as a hostile act on the part of mankind if we occupied a planet in their system without first asking.”

Jeriann touched the absorption capsules without feeling them. “Aliens!”

“You were right, though you had no right to be. Not that it would have made any difference what we thought. As long as the general was cruising around the planet we wouldn’t have dared investigate.”

It didn’t pay to generalize on what they learned from one planet, in one system. When man had journeyed throughout the galaxy there would still be surprises waiting for him when he came to the other side. “Let the expedition worry about hostile acts,” said Jeriann. “If the aliens break off negotiations, so much the better for us.”

“You forget we didn’t come solely for ourselves. We hoped to make ourselves useful to mankind. What kind of disservice is that, to embroil humanity in a war with the first aliens we meet?” His face was flaring and white and the smile gone.

“Don’t,” whispered Jeriann. “I’m afraid of lightning--yours most of all. I expect to hear thunder and be struck dead.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “We have a right to think of ourselves but not exclusively of ourselves.”

“I mean, do they care? If they live on that planet they can’t want this. They couldn’t survive under such different conditions. Astronomical observations must be difficult with so many clouds and without space travel are we sure the aliens even know about this world?”

He blinked wearily. “We took a chance. We had to. They have space travel. The general wouldn’t be so anxious not to offend them if they were inferior to our own civilization.”

“But we didn’t see their ships.”

“Again we weren’t looking in the right place. There’s nothing in this system they travel to. But there is a comparable planet in Proxima, and in recent months they’ve been on opposite sides of the respective suns. They wait for more favorable positions.”

It was not luck that had favored the general. Theory said there should be intelligent life in the Centauri system and it further indicated that it would be found on an Earth type planet. It was half correct, and the wrong half had fallen against the accidentals. Stubbornly insisting on following the plan laid down by his superiors, the general had won. “What are we going to do?” said Jeriann. “There are hostages down there.”

“We’ll get them back,” said Docchi. “Nobody can stop us.”

“Can we? Their ships are faster than ours.”

“They can’t use their speed close to a planet. And the expedition won’t be aggressive in someone else’s backyard. We can’t land without breaking up the asteroid but we’ll go near enough so they won’t be able to intercept our ship.”

It was a daring maneuver. The bulk of the asteroid could be used to cut off any attempt to overtake their returning ship. “There’s Roche’s limit,” said Jeriann.

“Doesn’t apply. We’re not a simple planetoidal mass. We’ll clamp the heaviest gravity we’re capable of and, barring something unforeseen, we can hold the crust together at a distance of ten to twenty miles of the surface.”

She understood; they’d take the risk if necessary but it ought to be avoided, because it was a risk. Nobody knew what solid tides would be set in the crust of the asteroid as the result of an external gravity field.

“And then what?” she said. “We get them back and then what?” Her hands were heavy. The silver mote overhead, shining in the light of Alpha, was implacable.

“What else is there?” said Docchi with an attempt at cheerfulness. “We’ll get them back, every person, and then we’ll go on. To the next star and the next, and if we have to, the one after that. Somewhere we’ll find a place.”

Jeriann touched him wonderingly. “I love you for saying that. I love you anyway, but particularly for saying that.”

He seemed to shrink, flaming where she touched him, fiery fingertips on his face. “You know?” he said dully.

“Yes. For quite a while now. Anti suspects too. I think we all do. This was our last chance, wasn’t it?”

He couldn’t look at her. “We shouldn’t have stopped. The next star surely would have been the place.”

“Place,” said Jeriann. “It wasn’t your fault. Why do you suppose we were so eager to agree with you? We knew the longer we went on the more we were at a disadvantage.”

It was so drearily obvious that nearly everyone had some inkling of the truth. The Star Victory was not the only ship of its class; some were rusting in the spaceyards and some were in use as interplanetary freighters. And if the Star Victory could be converted easily, why not the others?

A new drive to replace the obsolete one? Order it and with a little switching around in the manufacturing plants, diverting it from other uses, it was delivered tomorrow and completely installed the day after that. The command unit the accidentals had labored so long to alter? Every dinky little office had as good and in many cases all that was required was changing the information spools. And thousands of crews were available, already trained, used to working together. It wouldn’t be hard to recruit them and add a few officers at the top and a staff of linguists and scientists.

Nona had given them the one thing they needed and now mankind was exploding into space. There was no end in sight. The whole neighboring sphere of space that enveloped the solar system was due for immediate exploration.

And the accidentals hadn’t been forgotten. They were not the objective, wealth was: planets to be claimed and occupied or mined, civilizations to be contacted with whom products and techniques and entire new sciences could be exchanged.

If they were lucky enough to get away from the Centauri system at the next star they’d find other ships waiting, doing business with the natives, if there were any; if not, establishing firm little colonies on everything that was capable of supporting human life. They were surrounded, overwhelmed by numbers. It was no wonder the general hadn’t been perturbed at the failure of his plan to land unnoticed on the asteroid. He knew what had been slow in occurring to them. For them there was no next star.

Docchi gazed in sick defeat at Jeriann. There was no need to talk. There was nothing to say.

The asteroid was rolling toward twilight as Anti came in. “What are we doing about those insolent pirates? They have no jurisdiction here. We ought to aim the asteroid at them. We can smash them.” She saw their faces and the words stopped. “I was hoping--but I guess we can’t hide it among ourselves,” she said.

“It’s no use,” said Docchi heavily. “We’ll have to go down and take them off the planet.”

“How will they know? We can’t get a beam down with a whole planet in the way,” said Anti. “Let’s wait till morning so we can tell them to be ready.”

“I don’t know,” said Docchi indecisively.

“None of us know anything,” said Anti fiercely. “Go home and get some sleep. We’ll think of something by morning.”

After they were gone Anti went outside. Looking up she could see the scout, still visible, glistening in the light of Alpha. It was much brighter than the stars that had been watching them.

Cameron tried to be detached and objective. “Do they know we’re here?”

“I don’t think so. They’d have been upset if they had any idea.”

“Seems likely,” agreed the doctor. “We left as they were approaching. But we took off from the face nearest the planet and they came in from the opposite side. The asteroid acted as a screen.”

“Probably,” agreed Docchi with indifference. “How soon can you be ready?”

“Do we have to come up immediately?”