Empire Part 40

Greg was saying, "All right, if that's the way you want it. I was hoping you'd come back with us. But we'll help you repair your ship. We'll give you all the supplies we can spare."

Russ rose to his feet. "That," he said, "calls for a little drink."

He opened a cabinet and took out bottles and gla.s.ses.

"Only three," said Chambers. "Craven doesn't drink."

Craven interrupted. "Pour one for me, too, Page."

Chambers looked at the scientist, astounded. "I never knew you to take a drink in your life."

Craven twisted his face into a grin. "This is a special occasion."

The _Invincible_ was nearing Mars, heading for Earth, which was still a greenish sphere far to one side of the flaming Sun.

Russ watched the little green globe, thinking.

Earth was home. To him it always would be home. But that would be changed soon. Just a few more generations, and, to millions upon millions of human beings, Earth no longer would be home.

With the new material energy engines, life on every planet would be possible now, even easy. The cost of manufacture, mining, shipping across the vast distances between the planets would be only a fraction of what it had been when man had been forced to rely upon the unwieldy, expensive acc.u.mulator system of supplying life-giving power.

Now Mars would have power of her own. Even Pluto could generate her own.

And power was ... well, it was power. The power to live, the power to work, to establish and maintain commerce, to adjust gravity to Earth standard or to any standard. The power to remake and reshape and rebuild planetary conditions to suit man exactly.

Earthmen and Earthwomen would be moving out en ma.s.se now to the new and virgin fields of endeavor--to the farms of Venus, to the manufacturing centers that were springing up on Mars, to the mines of the Jovian worlds, to the great laboratory plants that would spring up on t.i.tan and on Pluto and on the other colder worlds.

The migration of races had started long ago. In the Old Stone Age, the Cro-Magnon had swept out of nowhere to oust the Neanderthal. Centuries later the barbarians of the north, in another of those restless migrations, had overwhelmed and swept away the Roman Empire. And many centuries later, migration had turned from Europe to a new world across the sea, and fighting Americans had battled their way from east to west, conquering a continent.

And now another great migration was on--man was leaving the Earth, moving into s.p.a.ce. He was leaving behind him the world that had reared and fostered him. He was striking out and out. First the planets would be overrun, and then man would leap from the planets to the stars!

For years after America had become a country, had built a tradition of her own, Europe was regarded by millions as the homeland. But as the years swept by, this had ceased to be and the Americas were a world unto themselves, owing nothing to Europe.

And that was the way it would be with Earth. For centuries, for thousands of years, Earth would be the Mother Planet, the homeland for all the millions of roaming men and women who dared the gulfs of s.p.a.ce and the strangeness of new worlds. There would be trips back to the Earth for sentimental reasons ... to see the place where one's ancestors were born and had lived, to goggle at the monument which marked the point from which the first s.p.a.ceship had taken off for the Moon, to visit old museums and see old cities and breathe the air that men and women had breathed for thousands of years before they found the power to take them anywhere.

In the end, Earth would be just a worn-out planet. Even now her minerals were rapidly being exhausted; her oil wells were dry and all her coal was mined; her industry stabilized and filled; her businesses interlocking and highly compet.i.tive. A world that was too full, that had too many things, too many activities, too many people. A world that didn't need men and women. A world where even genius was kept from rising to the top.

And this was what was driving mankind away from the Earth. The compet.i.tion, the crowded conditions, in business and industrial fields, the lack of opportunity for new development, the everlasting struggle to get ahead, fighting for a place to live when millions of others were fighting for the same thing. But not entirely that, not that alone.

There was something else--that old adventuresome spirit, the driving urge to face new dangers, to step over old frontiers, to do and dare, to make a d.a.m.n fool of one's self, or to surpa.s.s the greatest accomplishments of history.

But Earth would never die, for there was a part of Earth in every man and woman who would go forth into s.p.a.ce, part of Earth's courage, part of Earth's ideals, part of Earth's dreams. The habits and the virtues and the faults that Earth had sp.a.w.ned and fostered ... these were things that would never die. Old Earth would live forever. Even when she was drifting dust and the Sun was a dead, cold star, Earth would live on in the courage and the dreams that by that time would be spreading to the far corners of the Galaxy.

Russ dug the pipe out of his pocket, searched for the pouch, found it on the desk behind him. It was empty.

"h.e.l.l," he said, "my tobacco's all gone."

Greg grinned. "You won't have to wait long. We'll be back on Earth in a few more hours."

Russ put the stem between his teeth, bit down on it savagely. "I guess that's right. I can dry smoke her until we get there."

Earth was larger now. Mars had swung astern.

Suddenly a winking light stabbed out into s.p.a.ce from the night side of Earth. Signaling ... signaling ... clearing the s.p.a.celanes for a greater future than any human prophet had ever predicted.

The End