seeing it. I feltlike taking that trip myself. But I had agreed to look and I would look.If we were lucky we would have forty-eight hours to look and run.
I fell in what was left of my Company behind the men that had saved us.More Company uniforms than I had ever seen in one place. They saidnothing. Just walked into a hole in that mountain. Into a cave. And inthe cave, at the far end, a door opened. An elevator. We followed thetall old man into the elevator and it began to descend. The elevator carwent down for a long time. At last I could see a faint glow far below.The glow grew brighter and the car stopped. Far below the glow was stillbrighter. We all stepped out into a long corridor cut from solid rock. Iestimated that we were at least two hundred miles down and the glow washundreds of miles deeper. We went through three sealed doors and emergedinto a vast room. A room bright with light and filled with more men inCompany uniforms, civilians, even women. At least a thousand. And I sawit. The thousand refugees, all of them. Gathered from all the Companies,from wherever they had been in the Galaxies. Gathered here in a roomtwo hundred miles into the heart of their dead planet. A room filledwith giant machines. Ionic machines. Highly advanced ionic powerreactors.
The old man stood in front of his people and spoke. "I am JasonPortario, I thank you for coming."
I broke in, "Ionic power is an execution offense. You know that. How thehell did you get all this ..."
"I know the offense, Commander," Portario said, "and I know you. You'rea fair man. You're a brave man. It doesn't matter where we got thepower, many men are dead to get it, but we have it, and we will keep it.We have a job to do."
I said, "After that stunt out there you've about as much chance as asnowball in hell. O'Hara's half way to Galaxy Center. Look, with alittle luck we get you out to Salaman. If you leave all this equipment Imight be able to hide you until it blows over."
* * * * *
The old man shrugged. "I would have preferred not to show our hand, butwe had to save you. I was aware that the Council would find us outsooner or later, they missed the ionic material a month ago. But that isunimportant. The important matter is will you take our job? All we needis another two days, perhaps three. Can you hold off an attack for thatlong?"
"Why?" I asked.
Portario smiled. "All right, Commander, you should know all we plan. Sitdown, and let me finish before you speak."
I sat. Rajay-Ben sat. The agitation of his colored lights showed that hewas as disturbed as I was. The thousand Nova-Mauranians stood there inthe room and watched us. Yuan Saltario stood with his friends. I couldfeel his eyes on me. Hot eyes. As if something inside that lost man wasburning again. Portario lighted a pipe. I had not seen a pipe since Iwas a child. The habit was classified as ancient usage in the UnitedGalaxies. Portario saw me staring. He held his pipe and looked at it.
"In a way, Commander," the old man said, "this pipe is my story. OnNova-Maurania we liked a pipe. We liked a lot of the old habits. Maybewe should have died with all the others. You know, I was the one whofound the error. Sometimes I'm not at all sure my friends here thank mefor it. Our planet is dead, Commander, and so are we. We're dead inside.But we have a dream. We want to live again. And to live again our planetmust live again." The old man paused as if trying to be sure of tellingit right. "We mean no harm to anyone. All we want is our life back. Wedon't want to live forever like lumps of ice circling around a deadheart. What we plan may kill us all, but we feel it is worth the risk.We have thousands of ionic power reactors. We have blasted out Venturitubes. We found life still deep in the center of this planet. It is allready now. With all the power we have we will break the hold of our deadsun and send this planet off into space! We ..."
I said, "You're insane! It can't ..."
"But it can, Commander. It's a great risk, yes, but it can be done, mycalculations are perfect! We want to leave this dead system, go off intospace and find a new star that will bring life back to our planet! Agreen, live, warm Nova-Maurania once again!"
Rajay-Ben was laughing. "That's the craziest damned dream I ever satstill for. You know what your chances of being picked up by another starare? Picked up just right? Why ..."
Portario said, "We have calculated the exact initial thrust, the exacttangential velocity, the precise orbital path we need. If all goesexactly, I emphasize, _exactly_, to the last detail as we have plannedit we can do it! Our chances of being caught by the correct star in theabsolutely correct position are one in a thousand trillion, but we cando it!"
It was so impossible I began to believe he was right. "If you aren'tcaught just right?"
Portario's black eyes watched me. "We could burn up or stay frozen andlifeless. We could drift in space forever as cold and dead as we are nowand our ionic power won't last forever. The forces we will use couldblow the planet apart. But we are going to try. We would rather die thanlive as walking dead men in this perfect United Galaxies we do notwant."
The silence in the room was like a Salaman fog. Thick silence brokenonly by the steady hum of the machines deep beneath us in the deadplanet. A wild, impossible dream of one thousand lost souls. A dreamthat would destroy them, and they did not care. There was somethingabout it all that I liked.
I said, "Why not get Council approval?"
Portario smiled. "Council has little liking for wild dreams, Commander.It would not be considered as advancing the future of United Galaxies'destiny. Then there are the ionics." And Portario hesitated. "And thereis the danger of imbalance, Galactic imbalance. I have calculatedcarefully, the danger is remote, but Council is not going to take even aremote chance."
Yuan Saltario broke in. "All they care about is their damned steriledestiny! They don't care about people. Well we do! We care aboutsomething to live for. The hell with the destiny of the Galaxies! Theydon't know, and we'll be gone before they do know."
"They know plenty now. O'Hara's beamed them in."
"So we must hurry," Portario said. "Three days, Commander, will youprotect us for three days?"
A Council offense punishable by instant destruction with United Galaxiesreserve ionic weapons in the hands of the super-secret police anddisaster teams. And three days is a long time. I would be risking mywhole Company. I heard Rajay-Ben laugh.
"Blast me, Red, it's so damned crazy I'm for it. Let's give it a shot."
I did not know then how much it would really cost us. If I had I mightnot have agreed. Or maybe I would have, it was good to know people couldstill have such dreams in our computer age.
"Okay," I said, "beam the full Companies and try to get one more.Mandasiva's Sirian boys would be good. We'll split the fee three ways."
Yuan Saltario said, "Thanks, Red."
I said, "Thank me later, if we're still around."
We beamed the Companies and in twenty minutes they were on their way.Straight into the biggest trouble we had had since the War of Survival.I expected trouble, but I didn't know how much. Pete Colenso tipped meoff.
Pete spoke across the light years on our beam. "Mandasiva says okay ifwe guarantee the payment. I've deposited the bond with him and we're onour way. But, Red, something's funny."
"What?"
"This place is empty. The whole damned galaxy out here is like a desert.Every Company has moved out somewhere."
"Okay," I beamed, "get rolling fast."
There was only one client who could hire all the Companies at one time.United Galaxies itself. We were in for it. I had expected perhaps tenCompanies, not three against 97, give or take a few out on other jobs.It gave me a chill. Not the odds, but if Council was that worried maybethere was bad danger. But I'd given my word and a Companion keeps hisword. We had one ace in the hole, a small one. If the other Companieswere not here in Menelaus yet, they must have rendezvoused at GalaxyCenter. It was the kind of "follow-the-book" mistake United would make.It gave us a day and a half. We would need it.
They came at dawn on the second day. We were deployed across five ofthe dead planets of Menelaus XII in a ring around N
ova-Maurania. Theycame fast and hard, and Portario and his men had at least ten hours workleft before they could fire their reactors and pray. Until then we didthe praying. It didn't help.
Mandasiva's command ship went at the third hour. A Lukan blaster got it.By the fourth hour I had watched three of my sub-command ships go. ASirian force beam got one, an Earth fusion gun got another, and thethird went out of action and rammed O'Hara's command ship that had beenleading their attack against us. That third ship of mine was PeteColenso's. Old Mike would have been proud of his boy. I was sick. Petehad been a good boy. So had O'Hara. Not a boy,