"We'd destroy anything to avoid war. We can't permit our society to degenerate into bickering provinces, forever quarreling and fighting - like your clans. We're stable because we lack the very concept of variation. Uniformity must be preserved and separation must be discouraged. The idea itself must remain unknown."
Williamson was thoughtful. "Do you think you can keep the idea unknown? There are so many semantic correlatives, hints, verbal leads. Even if you blast us, it may arise somewhere else."
"We'll take that chance." Rogers moved toward the door. "I'll return to my ship and wait there. I suggest you take another vote. Maybe knowing how far we're prepared to go will change the results."
"I doubt it."
Rogers' web whispered suddenly. "This is North at Relay."
Rogers fingered the web in acknowledgment.
"A Class-One Battleship is in your area. A team has already been landed. Keep your ship grounded until it can fall back. I've ordered the team to lay out its fission-mine terminals."
Rogers said nothing. His fingers tightened around the web convulsively.
"What's wrong?" Williamson asked.
"Nothing." Rogers pushed the door open. "I'm in a hurry to return to my ship. Let's go."
Commander Ferris contacted Rogers as soon as his ship had left Williamson's World.
"North tells me you've already informed them," Ferris said.
"That's right. He also contacted your team directly. Had it prepare to attack."
"So I'm informed. How much time did you offer them?"
"Six hours."
"Do you think they'll give in?"
"I don't know," Rogers said. "I hope so. But I doubt it."
Williamson's World turned slowly in the viewscreen with its green and blue forest, rivers and oceans. Terra might have looked that way, once. He could see the Class-One battleship, a great silvery globe moving slowly in its orbit around the planet.
The legendary world had been found and contacted. Now it would be destroyed. He had tried to prevent it, but without success. He couldn't prevent the inevitable.
If Williamson's World refused to join the Galactic culture its destruction became a necessity - grim, axiomatic. It was either Williamson's World or the Galaxy. To preserve the greater, the lesser had to be sacrificed.
He made himself as comfortable as possible by the view-screen, and waited.
At the end of six hours a line of black dots rose from the planet and headed slowly toward the Class-One battleship. He recognized them for what they were - old-fashioned jet-driven rocket ships. A formation of antiquated war vessels, rising up to give battle.
The planet had not changed its mind. It was going to fight. It was willing to be destroyed, rather than give up its way of life. The black dots grew swiftly larger, became roaring blazing metal disks puffing awkwardly along. A pathetic sight. Rogers felt strangely moved, watching the jet-driven ships divide up for the contact. The Class-One battleship had secured its orbit, and was swinging in a lazy, efficient arc. Its banks of energy tubes were slowly rising, lining up to meet the attack.
Suddenly the formation of the ancient rocketships dived. They rumbled over the Class-One, firing jerkily. The Class-One's tubes followed their path. They began to reform clumsily, gaining distance for a second try, and another run.
A tongue of colorless energy flicked out. The attackers vanished.
Commander Ferris contacted Rogers. "The poor tragic fools." His heavy face was gray. "Attacking us with those things."
"Any damage?"
"None whatever." Ferris wiped his forehead shakily. "No damage to me at all."
"What next?" Rogers asked stonily.
"I've declined the mine operation and passed it back to Relay. They'll have to do it. The impulse should already be -" Below them, the green and blue globe shuddered convulsively. Soundlessly, effortlessly, it flew apart. Fragments rose, bits of debris and the planet dissolved in a cloud of white flame, a blazing mass of incandescent fire. For an instant it remained a miniature sun, lighting up the void. Then it faded into ash.
The screens of Rogers' ship hummed into life, as the debris struck. Particles rained against them, and were instantly disintegrated.
"Well," Ferris said. "It's over. North will report the original scout mistaken. Williamson's World wasn't found. The legend will remain a legend."
Rogers continued to watch until the last bits of debris had ceased flying, and only a vague, discolored shadow remained. The screens clicked off automatically. To his right, the Class-One battleship picked up speed and headed toward the Riga System.
Williamson's World was gone. The Galactic Relay culture had been preserved. The idea, the concept of a separate culture with its own ways, its own customs, had been disposed of in the most effective possible way.
"Good job," the Relay trace web whispered. North was pleased. "The fission mines were perfectly placed. Nothing remains."
"No," Rogers agreed. "Nothing remains."
Corporal Pete Matson pushed the front door open, grinning from ear to ear. "Hi, honey! Surprise!"
"Pete!" Gloria Matson came running, throwing her arms around her husband. "What are you doing home? Pete -"
"Special leave. Forty-eight hours." Pete tossed down his suitcase triumphantly. "Hi there, kid."
His son greeted him shyly. "Hello."
Pete squatted down and opened his suitcase. "How have things been going? How's school?"
"He's had another cold," Gloria said. "He's almost over it. But what happened? Why did they -"
"Military secret." Pete fumbled in his suitcase. "Here." He held something out to his son. "I brought you something. A souvenir."
He handed his son a handmade wooden drinking cup. The boy took it shyly and turned it around, curious and puzzled. "What's a - a souvenir?"
Matson struggled to express the difficult concept. "Well, it's something that reminds you of a different place. Something you don't have, where you are. You know." Matson tapped the cup. "That's to drink out of. It's sure not like our plastic cups, is it?"
"No," the child said.
"Look at this, Gloria." Pete shook out a great folded cloth from his suitcase, printed with multi-colored designs. "Picked this up cheap. You can make a shirt out of it. What do you say? Ever seen anything like it?"
"No," Gloria said, awed. "I haven't." She took the cloth and fingered it reverently.
Pete Matson beamed, as his wife and child stood clutching the souvenirs he had brought them, reminders of his excursion to distant places. Foreign lands.
"Gee," his son whispered, turning the cup around and around. A strange light glowed in his eyes. Thanks a lot, Dad. For the -- souvenir."
The strange light grew.
Survey Team
Halloway came up through six miles of ash to see how the rocket looked in landing. He emerged from the lead-shielded bore and joined Young, crouching down with a small knot of surface troops.
The surface of the planet was dark and silent. The air stung his nose. It smelled foul. Halloway shivered uneasily. "Where the hell are we?"
A soldier pointed into the blackness. "The mountains are over there. See them? The Rockies, and this is Colorado."
Colorado... The old name awakened vague emotion in Halloway. He fingered his blast rifle. "When will it get here?" he asked. Far off, against the horizon, he could see the Enemy's green and yellow signal flares. And an occasional flash of fission white.
"Any time now. It's mechanically controlled all the way, piloted by robot. When it comes it really comes."
An Enemy mine burst a few dozen miles away. For a brief instant the landscape was outlined in jagged lightning. Halloway and the troops dropped to the ground automatically. He caught the dead burned smell of the surface of Earth as it was now, thirty years after the war began.
It was a lot different from the way he remembered it when he was a kid in California. He could remember the valley country, grape orchards and walnuts and lemons. Smudge pots under the orange t
rees. Green mountains and sky the color of a woman's eyes. And the fresh smell of the soil...
That was all gone now. Nothing remained but gray ash pulverized with the white stones of buildings. Once a city had been in this spot. He could see the yawning cavities of cellars, filled now with slag, dried rivers of rust that had once been buildings. Rubble strewn everywhere, aimlessly...
The mine flare faded out and the blackness settled back. They got cautiously to their feet. "Quite a sight," a soldier murmured.
"It was a lot different before," Halloway said.
"Was it? I was born undersurface."
"In those days we grew our food right in the ground, on the surface. In the soil. Not in underground tanks. We -"
Halloway broke off. A great rushing sound filled the air suddenly, cutting off his words. An immense shape roared past them in the blackness, struck someplace close, and shook the earth.
"The rocket!" a soldier shouted. They all began running, Halloway lumbering awkwardly along.
"Good news, I hope," Young said, close by him.
"I hope, too," Halloway gasped. "Mars is our last chance. If this doesn't work we're finished. The report on Venus was negative; nothing there but lava and steam."
Later they examined the rocket from Mars.
"It'll do," Young murmured.
"You're sure?" Director Davidson asked tensely. "Once we get there we can't come running back."
"We're sure." Halloway tossed the spools across the desk to Davidson. "Examine them yourself. The air on Mars will be thin, and dry. The gravity is much weaker than ours. But we'll be able to live there, which is more than you can say for this God-forsaken Earth."
Davidson picked up the spools. The unblinking recessed lights gleamed down on the metal desk, the metal walls and floor of the office. Hidden machinery wheezed in the walls, maintaining the air and temperature. "I'll have to rely on you experts, of course. If some vital factor is not taken into account -"
"Naturally, it's a gamble," Young said. "We can't be sure of all factors at this distance." He tapped the spools. "Mechanical samples and photos. Robots creeping around, doing the best they can. We're lucky to have anything to go on."
"There's no radiation at least," Halloway said. "We can count on that. But Mars will be dry and dusty and cold. It's a long way out."Weak sun. Deserts and wrinkled hills."
"Mars is old," Young agreed.
"It was cooled a long time ago. Look at it this way: We have eight planets, excluding Earth. Pluto to Jupiter is out. No chance of survival there. Mercury is nothing but liquid metal. Venus is still volcano and steam - pre-Cambrian. That's seven of the eight. Mars is the only possibility a priori."
"In other words," Davidson said slowly, "Mars has to be okay because there's nothing else for us to try."
"We could stay here. Live on here in the undersurface systems like gophers."
"We could not last more than another year. You've seen the recent psych graphs."
They had. The tension index was up. Men weren't made to live in metal tunnels, living on tank-grown food, working and sleeping and dying without seeing the sun.
It was the children they were really thinking about. Kids that had never been up to the surface. Wan-faced pseudo mutants with eyes like blind fish. A generation born in the subterranean world. The tension index was up because men were seeing their children alter and meld in with a world of tunnels and slimy darkness and dripping luminous rocks.
"Then it's agreed?" Young said.
Davidson searched the faces of the two technicians. "Maybe we could reclaim the surface, revive Earth again, renew its soil. It hasn't really gone that far, has it?"
"No chance," Young said flatly. "Even if we could work an arrangement with the Enemy there'll be particles in suspension for another fifty years. Earth will be too hot for life the rest of this century. And we can't wait."
"All right," Davidson said. "I'll authorize the survey team. We'll risk that, at least. You want to go? Be the first humans to land on Mars?"
"You bet," Halloway said grimly. "It's in our contract that I go."
The red globe that was Mars grew steadily larger. In the control room Young and van Ecker, the navigator, watched it intently.
"We'll have to bail," van Ecker said. "No chance of landing at this velocity."
Young was nervous. "That's all right for us, but how about the first load of settlers? We can't expect women and children to jump."
"By then we'll know more." Van Ecker nodded and Captain Mason sounded the emergency alarm. Throughout the ship relay bells clanged ominously. The ship throbbed with scampering feet as crew members grabbed their jump-suits and hurried to the hatches.
"Mars," Captain Mason murmured, still at the viewscreen. "Not like Luna. This is the real thing."
Young and Halloway moved toward the hatch. "We better get going."
Mars was swelling rapidly. An ugly bleak globe, dull red. Halloway fitted on his jump helmet. Van Ecker came behind him.
Mason remained in the control cabin. "I'll follow," he said, "after the crew's out."
The hatch slid back and they moved out onto the jump shelf. The crew were already beginning to leap.
"Too bad to waste a ship," Young said.
"Can't be helped." Van Ecker clamped his helmet on and jumped. His brake-units sent him spinning upward, rising like a balloon into the blackness above them. Young and Halloway followed. Below them the ship plunged on, downward toward the surface of Mars. In the sky tiny luminous dots drifted - the crew members.
"I've been thinking," Halloway said into his helmet speaker.
"What about?" Young's voice came in his earphones.
"Davidson was talking about overlooking some vital factor. There is one we haven't considered."
"What's that?"
"The Martians."
"Good God!" van Ecker chimed in. Halloway could see him drifting off to his right, settling slowly toward the planet below. "You think there are Martians?"
"It's possible. Mars will sustain life. If we can live there other complex forms could exist, too."
"We'll know soon enough," Young said.
Van Ecker laughed. "Maybe they trapped one of our robot rockets. Maybe they're expecting us."
Halloway was silent. It was too close to be funny. The red planet was growing rapidly. He could see white spots at the poles. A few hazy blue-green ribbons that had once been called canals. Was there a civilization down there, an organized culture waiting for them, as they drifted slowly down? He groped at his pack until his fingers closed over the butt of his pistol.
"Better get your guns out," he said.
"If there's a Martian defense system waiting for us we won't have a chance," Young said. "Mars cooled millions of years ahead of Earth. It's a cinch they'll be so advanced we won't even be -"
"Too late now," Mason's voice came faintly. "You experts should have thought of that before."
"Where are you?" Halloway demanded.
"Drifting below you. The ship is empty. Should strike any moment. I got all the equipment out, attached it to automatic jump units."
A faint flash of light exploded briefly below, winked out. The ship, striking the surface...
"I'm almost down," Mason said nervously. "I'll be the first..."
Mars had ceased to be a globe. Now it was a great red dish, a vast plain of dull rust spread out beneath them. They fell slowly, silently, toward it. Mountains became visible. Narrow trickles of water that were rivers. A vague checker-board pattern that might have been fields and pastures...
Halloway gripped his pistol tightly. His brake-units shrieked as the air thickened. He was almost down. A muffled crunch sounded abruptly in his earphones.
"Mason!" Young shouted.
"I'm down," Mason's voice came faintly.
"You all right?"
"Knocked the wind out of me. But I'm all right."
"How does it look?" Halloway demanded.
For a moment there was sil
ence. Then: "Good God!" Mason gasped. "A city!"
"A city?" Young yelled. "What kind? What's it like?"
"Can you see them?" van Ecker shouted. "What are they like? Are there a lot of them?"
They could hear Mason breathing. His breath rasped hoarsely in their phones. "No," he gasped at last. "No sign of life. No activity. The city is - it looks deserted."
"Deserted?"
"Ruins. Nothing but ruins. Miles of wrecked columns and walls and rusting scaffolding."
"Thank God," Young breathed. "They must have died out. We're safe. They must have evolved and finished their cycle a long time ago."
"Did they leave us anything?" Fear clutched at Halloway. "Is there anything left for us?" He clawed wildly at his brake-units, struggling frantically to hurry his descent. "Is it all gone?"
"You think they used up everything?" Young said. "You think they exhausted all the -"
"I can't tell." Mason's weak voice came, tinged with uneasiness. "It looks bad. Big pits. Mining pits. I can't tell, but it looks bad..."
Halloway struggled desperately with his brake-units.
The planet was a shambles.
"Good God," Young mumbled. He sat down on a broken column and wiped his face. "Not a damn thing left. Nothing."
Around them the crew were setting up emergency defense units. The communications team was assembling a battery-driven transmitter. A bore team was drilling for water. Other teams were scouting around, looking for food.
"There won't be any signs of life," Halloway said. He waved at the endless expanse of debris and rust. "They're gone, finished a long time ago."
"I don't understand," Mason muttered. "How could they wreck a whole planet?"
"We wrecked Earth in thirty years."
"Not this way. They've used Mars up. Used up everything. Nothing left. Nothing at all. It's one vast scrap-heap."
Shakily Halloway tried to light a cigarette. The match burned feebly, then sputtered out. He felt light and dopey. His heart throbbed heavily. The distant sun beat down, pale and small. Mars was a cold, lonely dead world.
Halloway said, "They must have had a hell of a time, watching their cities rot away. No water or minerals, finally no soil." He picked up a handful of dry sand, let it trickle through his fingers.