America 2040 - Golden World Part 26

After some discussion, the roll-call vote got under way and Rocky realized quickly that he was going to be defeated.

"Hold it right there!" he shouted, leaping to his feet.

"You are interfering with a democratic vote," Baxter said.

"To h.e.l.l with your democratic vote," Rocky said. "It's quite clear that your democratic vote is going toleave us all under Duncan Rodrick's thumb. You're all voting to postpone a definite decision because you think, or hope, that theSpirit of America is going to lift off and go back to Earth for another load of colonists, or that Harry Shaw has another starship almost ready and that it will show up here within the next few years. Let me disillusion you. First, this planet will never yield enough rhenium to lift the ship.

Paul Warden and his crew are feeding synthetic fat to every miner they can find in exchange for the low-grade copper ore, which contains minute amounts of rhenium, and I mean minute. They've gathered exactly two hundred and forty grains of rhenium to date. That's half an ounce. And as for another ship coming, there won't be one."

Rocky paused. He was on the verge of betraying every oath he had ever taken.

"How do you know that there will not be another ship?" Baxter asked.

Well, Rocky was thinking,under Earth and Service laws, I've already committed treason and mutiny .

But there was no more Earth law. It had gone up in the nuclear war that had followed the naval war off South America as surely as night follows day.

He took a deep breath. "I know that there will be no ship, not in the next few years, not in millions of years, because I know something you don't know, something that Rodrick has kept from all but a few people because he doesn't trust anyone but himself to know the meaning of duty and honor. I have been sworn to secrecy, and that's bothered me, because I feel that everyone has the right to know that war broke out between the United States and the Soviet Union while we were firing our rockets to leave Earth orbit. "

There was a stunned silence.

"I'm sorry," Rocky said. "I know that you're shocked, and I hate to break the news to you so brutally.

Rodrick wouldn't put it on the viewscreens outside the bridge, but the United States destroyed the Russian fleet off the west coast of South America. "

"The bombs..." someone began fearfully.

"In all honesty, we did not see the bombs begin to fall. When the hidden explosive went off in the communications-room area, we lost all contact with Earth. But I have no doubt that they did fall. The Russian fleet was being destroyed, and without the fleet, South America would have been lost to them.

Do you have any doubt that they used their bombs?"

There was a sound of weeping. Everyone sat with downcast eyes.

"Do you want to continue to live under the military dictatorship, at the whim of a man who would keep such news from you because he's determined to waste the energies and resources of this colony simply to carry out his orders to take theSpirit of America back to an Earth where there will be no one left alive?"

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it, no!" a man shouted. "I move that we strike the results of our balloting so far and start over."

When the vote had been taken, a satisfied Rocky Miller rose once again. "It's not going to be easy," he said. "We're going to have to work together. We're going to have to keep quiet that I told you about the war on Earth, because if Rodrick finds out that anyone other than his little elite knows, he'll know that we are planning something. We must prepare in the greatest secrecy. One by one the crawlers must bemoved, the two plastic machines edged toward the south, and all the things we're taking loaded onto cargo carriers and trailers. We must be out of Hamilton, out of the immediate area, and headed south before the alarm is given. Are there any questions?"

There were, many of them. But before the meeting ended, the a.s.signments were made and each of the dissidents was firm in the conviction that now, more than ever, they had a right to choose their own dwelling places on the planet that would be their home for the rest of their lives. Knowing Earth's sad fate made it even more necessary, in their minds, to exercise freedom of will and freedom of choice.

Time was short. Many of them went to their quarters and began to pack, to plan, and also to weep a bit, in some cases, for friends and relatives left behind on Earth, now dead.

It was important, they all felt, to break away from the tyranny of the ship's captain quickly and permanently. Theirs, they felt, was the true spirit of America. They were going to establish independence and freedom, just as President Dexter Hamilton had said that the colony would. They were all good Americans, all exceptional in their own fields, and each was secure in his or her own self-esteem. But because they were Americans, each felt that he or she knew better how to establish true freedom than any other person alive. In that respect, transporting a representative group of Americans over eleven light years into s.p.a.ce and then telling them that they were the last Earth people alive hadn't changed the American att.i.tude one iota.

NINETEEN.

Max Rosen was ready a full two hours ahead of the start of the scheduled wedding festivities. He spent those two hours standing up, drinking coffee, and snarling at the well-meaning jokes of other officers and his engineering crew. He stood up because he was well aware of his extraordinary talent for wrinkling unwrinklable service material, and he wanted to avoid walking to the altar looking as if he had slept in his uniform.

"Nervous!" he yelled. "Why the h.e.l.l should I be nervous?" He spilled a cup of coffee, narrowly missing soiling his white uniform, to prove how calm he was.

As Max opened drawers and slammed them, looking for something to mop up the mess, Stoner McRae winked at Paul Warden and said, "We'll do it, Max. You just take it easy."

It was a beautiful Sunday morning. Eden's late summer days were becoming a bit shorter, the nights a bit cooler. Rains had been recorded not more than two hundred miles to the north, and the weather scientists predicted that Hamilton would see its first rain with the beginning of the rainy season in a matter of weeks.

If the entire colony was putting on its finest. Field teams had been bringing back representative samples of Eden's spectacular flowers for days, and Amando Kwait had been keeping the flowers fresh with infusions of some magical formula, which prevented wilt for weeks. The streets were decorated with the flowers and with native plants, which the colonists had been gradually planting. The Unified Meeting House, glowing, gleaming white plastic in a design by the Earth's finest architect, was bustling with people making last-minute additions to the ma.s.ses of flowers there. It was not just a double wedding that had put the colony into a festival mood: Amando Kwait's fields were still producing a large variety of good things to eat. The veld around Hamilton had bloomed with a crop of low-growing but very delicious berries. Fish was now a staple on all tables, with Allen Jones reporting glowingly that the western ocean teemed with edible varieties. In spare time- and there was some for the very energetic, due to Omega's long days-two sportfishing boats were being constructed in a shed by the beach. There were now three new real natives of Eden, three more babies having been born, a little girl and a set of male twins.

Only Rocky Miller's group of dissidents failed to see that things were just about as optimum as possible, that Hamilton had been built on what was probably the most beautiful site on the continent, and that just about everything was right in this new world.

But on that Sunday, even the minority led by Rocky and Clive felt a genuine excitement. It had been relatively simple to move equipment they would be taking into positions where departure would be swift and unnoticed, with all the colony crowded into the meeting house.

The only people who seemed to be worried were the two brides-to-be, although the worry was not a major one. It was just that the flower girl and ring bearer had not returned from their fishing trip into the Renfro Mountains with the admiral. Betsy McRae was helping Grace and Jackie get ready, as was Evangeline Burr-the McRae house was being used as a dressing room because it was near the meeting house. The two wedding gowns were spread out carefully on the beds in Betsy's and Cindy's bedrooms.

"The admiral will have Cindy and Clay back in plenty of time," Betsy told Grace. "Stoner talked to them early this morning, and they were well under way. "

The admiral had discovered that he was quite a singer. He had not spent too much time with music, but as Clay and Cindy blended their young voices, he a.n.a.lyzed the songs they sang, tried his own wave-generating voice box, and found that he could modulate his voice quite nicely and sing anything from tenor to ba.s.s. It came as no surprise to any of them. They belted out some nice rounds based on a children's song about an eency-weency spider. Jumper howled accompaniment when they hit high notes.

The sun was warm, the breeze cooling, as the crawler sped southward in the Renfro foothills. They were taking the most direct route home, and once they were out of the foothills and could bring the crawler up to full speed, they'd be in Hamilton well before eleven o'clock, giving Clay and Cindy a full hour to get ready. They both knew their roles in the wedding, thanks to a very thorough rehearsal on the night before they joined the admiral in the mountains.

Shortly after dawn, Clay had called control and been patched through to Stoner to report on their progress. Clay was at the controls of the crawler. He was a good driver-Stoner had seen to that. Clay was a responsible boy, not the sort who would endanger himself, his pa.s.sengers, or valuable equipment through thoughtlessness or recklessness. The admiral was navigating.

The crawler sped down the valley beside a hundred-foot-wide river, which formed a lake just ahead of them in the broad, open end of the valley. Beyond the lake, down the gorge formed by the river, the rolling slopes of the veld began and flattened quickly, giving them a sixty-mile-per-hour driving speed to cover the last hundred and fifty miles into Hamilton. The lake, which blocked their southward progress, was long and narrow, spreading across the valley to a length of about three miles. Between the crawler and the exit gorge was less than a half mile of deep water. "Hey, Admiral," Clay said, "we'd save maybe a half hour if we go straight across. What do you say?"

It took only a microsecond for the admiral to evaluate the choice. The crawler was amphibious. By activating hydrojets, it would move across the half mile of lake at a speed of thirty miles per hour.

"The sea is my element," the admiral said. Clay didn't slow the crawler. It sped across the gra.s.sy verge of the lake and sent sheets of water splashing as it hit shallow water. The treads dug, and its forward speed took it to a point where it was afloat. Clay hit the hydrojets, and the speed was maintained.

They were less than two hundred feet from the far sh.o.r.e of the lake when a shadow pa.s.sed over them swiftly, and Clay jerked his head up to see a winged figure, quite large, zoom past and bank off to the left, heading for the sh.o.r.e. Something hit the water within five feet of the crawler's side, and a second later the lake erupted around them, the water blinding Clay for a moment. There was a hollow explosion, and Clay's feet went numb as the floorboard of the crawler leaped up. A jet of water came directly up between his feet.

In those frenzied few seconds before the crawler sank swiftly, leaving them treading water, the admiral saw that a stream of large-winged things, quite manlike except for the huge, spreading wings, were arrowing down toward them from above the western ridge. He a.s.sured himself Cindy and Clay were all right-they were stunned, and their ears rang with the force of the explosion, but were treading water, and Clay was holding a laser rifle clear of the water with one hand. Jumper had already started swimming for sh.o.r.e. Cat had climbed swiftly onto the admiral's shoulder.

"Get to sh.o.r.e, quickly," the admiral commanded. Clay and Cindy swam the short distance, Clay keeping his weapon dry. The admiral ran up onto the rocky sh.o.r.e and pointed toward an outcrop of rock.

Jumper was barking excitedly. The winged figures were closing in swiftly, flying in a disciplined line. Clay raised his laser rifle and fired once, twice, three times, and fire lanced up to send two of the flyers tumbling limply into the lake. The others veered away after releasing a barrage of spears, which fell just short as Clay seized Cindy's hand and ran for the cover of the rocks. The admiral's laser pistol functioned, even though wet, but the flyers were quickly out of range.

The flying squad, about twenty strong, landed on the pebbly beach two hundred yards away, and quickly shed their wings, now giving the appearance of thin, almost sticklike humanoid shapes.

"Admiral," Clay said, "I think we've just met the people who built the dead city." He remembered the one representation of a flying man, the limbs mere straight lines, and other pictures from the city.

"Cindy," the admiral said, "I want you to crawl up under this overhanging rock and stay there. Take Jumper with you."

The admiral was blaming himself. He had not been alert. He'd let peaceful Omega lull him. He had been as surprised as any of them by the sudden attack. Now he had no communications. The crawler was sunk in deep water, and he hadn't even been careful enough to carry a communicator with him. He was not yet overly concerned for the safety of the humans in his care, but Clay and Cindy would miss the wedding, and the first contact with the intelligent race of Omega had, through no choice of his own, begun with violence.

The admiral knew his adversaries had explosives. That meant that any approaching flyer had to be shot out of the air before he got near enough to drop anything near them; the laser rifle that Clay had been alert enough to salvage would take care of that. His own laser and projectile weapon would handle those on the ground. He could see that a few of them had long spears, and others were unslinging bows fromtheir shoulders.

The stickmen were falling into line two hundred yards away. The admiral said, "Stay under cover, Clay.

Don't move from this spot." He stood, walked toward the stick-men, holding both his hands, empty, out in front of him. The stickmen went into a defensive formation, those in front kneeling, arrows strung, those behind ready to launch their spears. The admiral kept walking toward them, his hands out in front of him in peace.

Clay kept scanning the sky. He guessed that the stickmen had launched themselves from somewhere high on the western ridge, using the huge wings like hang gliders.

"What are they doing?" Cindy asked, for she couldn't see from under the overhanging rock.

"The admiral is trying to talk to them," Clay said. "Come on out and watch. It's all right."

Now the admiral was nearing the group of stickmen. He halted a hundred feet away. "We do not want to fight," he said, amplifying his voice. He extended his hands, palms out. "We are friends."

From one of the stickmen came a barked sound, and with a strength and accuracy that surprised him, the spears were launched. He danced, jerked, leaped, avoiding the rain of spears, which whizzed past him with a speed that spoke of great throwing strength in the sticklike arms. A hail of arrows followed, and then the stickmen were rushing forward, drawing battle-axes from slings at their hips. He couldn't dodge all the arrows, but his tough skin shed them as if it were armor. He looked down and saw that there were several holes in his uniform. Then he sadly drew his laser and cut down the three stickmen who had taken the fore in the wild rush that was closing on him rapidly. He hoped that he would not have to kill all of them. When a fourth stickman went down, the others, with wild, grating screams, turned and fled.

The admiral hurried back to the rocks. "I didn't want to have to kill them," he said sadly.

"I know," Clay said. "I don't think they'll bother us anymore, though."

"Why would they just attack us without trying to find out if we were peaceful or not?" Cindy asked.

"They're quite humanlike," the admiral said.

The admiral had made his plans. He knew that as time for the wedding neared and there was no communication from them, Rodrick would send out a scout to look for them. Meanwhile, he saw no real threat from the primitive weapons of the stickmen as long as he exercised care and stayed alert. It was possible that the homing device in the crawler was still functional. He called Cat, who had joined Jumper in taking a snooze in the sun. He gave Cat instructions, and Cat slinked across to the lake and plunged into the water.

Something moved above the western ridge. The admiral saw just enough to worry him. It was big and smooth and rounded and had caught his eye for only a moment before sinking back down behind the ridge. A ship. It made no sense. Stickmen armed with spears and bows and one explosive bomb coming from an airship? Then he saw the flyers, just clearing the tops of the trees on the distant ridge.

"Clay, let me have the rifle, please," he said.

"Uh, oh," Clay said as the flyers zoomed down the ridge in formation, a hundred strong. Cat had disappeared. Cindy saw it surface and swim rapidly to the bank, shake itself, and dash for them. It climbed to the admiral's shoulder.

"Cat turned on the homer," the admiral said. "The light came on."

"Good," Clay replied. He, like the admiral, had not been too concerned about twenty or so stickmen armed with Stone Age weapons. But a hundred?

"Here's my pistol," the admiral said. "Above all, we mustn't let them get close enough overhead to drop explosives on us."

"Admiral, look!" Clay shouted, as something big-he could tell it was big even at that distance-appeared over the top of the ridge. Seconds later a new flight of the stickmen were gliding down the slope.

"Stand by," the admiral said as the first flight started across the lake. He looked for suspicious burdens, anything that might be an explosive device, and saw one of the lead flyers with a bulky object in his hand.

He aimed carefully, and the flyer detonated in midair, wings shattering, the explosion throwing those near him out of control to crash into the lake. Another flash and another explosion.

"Clay, wait until they reach the sh.o.r.eline before you begin to fire," the admiral ordered.

Clay had the short-range laser pistol. The admiral saw no more bombs. He dropped a half dozen of the lead flyers, and then the flight veered away to land out of range down the sh.o.r.e. The second flight veered away, too, this time to the west, to land on the low ridge nearest them. "They're surrounding us," Clay said. A round, bulky projectile arched into the air from the group of stickmen on the ridge to the west and fell two hundred feet short of them, to explode noisily and harmlessly.

The admiral's projectile weapon held twenty bullets, and he had an additional fifty in his cartridge belt.

The laser rifle and the pistol would fire one thousand times each before the charge and crystal were expended. It was nine o'clock, Omega time. If the homing device had not been damaged by the explosion, it was broadcasting an emergency signal. A scout ship could reach them from Hamilton in less than half an hour. If the homing device was not working, Stoner and the others would begin to worry when Clay and Cindy hadn't shown up by eleven o'clock.

No real problem, the admiral was thinking as he watched the newly arrived flight of stickmen form themselves for an attack. It meant slaughter for the attackers, but he could keep his party safe until help came from Hamilton.

The attack came from east and west. The admiral, incapable of missing with the laser rifle, whirled from east to west, slicing down the stickmen in the lead. Before they were within spear range, Clay's laser pistol began to have its deadly effect. The charge faltered and turned, and the admiral felt that surely, as intelligent beings, the stickmen would see the futility of attacking again. But they came again not fifteen minutes later, and the unthinkable happened. Just as he was turning the eastern attack force with his deadly laser fire, and Clay was causing a slowing of the western group at a range of about seventy-five yards, the laser rifle failed. He put it aside and expended ten rounds of explosive projectiles before the attack faltered and turned.

The ground to the east and west was littered with the dead. Individual stickmen dashed among the dead, salvaging spears and arrows. It was obvious that they would try again, and the admiral had only one laserpistol and sixty rounds of projectiles left.

Mandy Miller's moment of decision had come before she was prepared for it, or expected it. Actually, she had expected Rocky's resentment and discontent to fester, for in the past he had not demonstrated any great capacity for direct action.

He had not come home that Sat.u.r.day night. She had spent the evening catching up on her report reading, for since Duncan Rodrick's engagement had been announced shed had no desire to be with people. She was so intent on her reading that she didn't stop to a.n.a.lyze her feelings, but if she had, she would probably have breathed a sigh of relief that Rocky was staying out late. And if he was enjoying himself at one of the prewedding parties, that was fine, too.

She went to bed after midnight and was awakened the next morning by Rocky's hand on her shoulder.

He was fully dressed. He had not been drinking. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he looked as if he had not slept. Her first thought was that he had found himself another lover, and that thought didn't even make her angry.

"It's seven o'clock," he said. "I have some breakfast ready."

That was so unlike him that she didn't dress, just put on a robe and joined him in the little dining alcove.

The smell of coffee cheered her. It was going to be a typical Hamilton day, bright, almost cloudless, warm. She ate heartily, and he didn't speak until they were both finished.

"There are containers in the living room for your clothing," Rocky said. "You won't be able to take all your files. I'll pack the kitchen items. "

"What are you talking about?" she asked.

He looked at her, eyes hard, lips compressed. "It's test time, baby. You told me that you'd go with me when the time came. It's come. Were pulling out this morning, during the wedding."

"Oh, Rocky," she said sadly.

"I'm going," he said, his voice calm. "And we're going to see what you're made of, how much value you put on this marriage. There are about two hundred people who'll be leaving just after twelve o'clock, so you have plenty of time to pack and make up your mind."

"Rocky, please don't do this."

"It's too late for that," he said. "The only undecided question is whether I go as a bachelor or with my loving wife."

She opened her mouth to tell him that she would not go, that she would not betray her oath, but through the open windows came the sound of the meeting house's bells, and soon those same bells would be ringing for the wedding of Duncan and Jackie, and if she didn't go, she'd be a woman alone, seeing him almost every day, seeing him with Jackie. Then, too, she had made certain vows to Rocky, vowing to love, honor, and cherish, for better and for worse.

"You're very quiet," Rocky said. He looked scared, she realized. "Rocky, you don't really want to do this. You don't really want to cause this split. It can only lead to trouble. We're few enough as it is. How long do you think the others will be content living without the advantages of civilization? What will you do when they begin to crawl back to the colony, one by one, begging to be taken back?"

"That's not going to happen. We'll make it fine," he said.

"You're asking me to leave my work-to abandon my responsibilities."