6
An increasing sense of futility and depression crept over Kim and Dona during the next few days.
They visited four solar systems, separated by distances which would have seemed unthinkable before the alteration of the overdrive.
There was no longer any sensation of travel, because no distance required any appreciable period of time. Once, indeed, Kim commented curtly on the danger that would exist if they went too close to the Galaxy's edge. With only the amount of received light to work the cut-out switch, under other circumstances they might have plunged completely out of the Galaxy and to unimaginable distances before the switch could have acted.
"I'm going to have to put a limiting device of some sort on this thing," he observed. "With a limiting device, the transmitter-drive can't stay on longer than a few micro-seconds. If we don't, we might find ourselves lost from our own Galaxy and unable to find it again. Not that it would seem to matter so much."
His skepticism seemed justified. TheStarshinewas the only vessel now plying among the stars. It had been of the last and best type, though by no means the largest, ever constructed, and by three small changes in its overdrive mechanism Kim had made it into something of which other men had never dreamed.
For the first time in the history of the human race, other galaxies were open to the exploration and the colonization of men. It was probably possible for the cosmos itself to be circumnavigated in theStarshine. But its crew of two humans could find no planet of their own race on which they dared to land.
They approached Voorten II, and found a great planet seemingly empty of human beings. There were roads and cities, but the roads were empty and the cities full of human skeletons. Kim and Dona saw only three living beings of human form, and they were skin and bones and shook clenched fists and gibbered at the slim space-craft as it hovered overhead. TheStarshinesoared away.
It hovered over Makab VI, and there were towers which had been power-houses rusting into ruin, and human beings naked and chained, pulling ploughs while other human beings flourished whips behind them. The great metropolis where the matter-transmitter should have been was ruins. Unquestionably the matter-transmitter here had been destroyed and the planet was cut off from the rest of civilization.
They came fearfully to rest above the planet center upon Moteh VII and saw decay. The people reveled in the streets, but listlessly, and the communicator brought only barbarous, sensual music and howled songs of a beastliness that was impossible to describe.
The vessel actually touched ground upon Xanin V. Kim and Dona actually talked to two citizens. But those folk were blank-faced and dull. Yet what they told Kim and Dona, apathetically, in response to questioning, was so disheartening that Dona impulsively offered to take them away. But the two citizens were frightened at the idea. They fled when Dona would have urged them.
Out in clear space again, on interplanetary drive, Kim looked at Dona with brooding eyes.
"It looks as if we can't find a home, Dona," he said quietly. "The human race is finished. We completed a job, we humans. We conquered a galaxy and we occupied it, and the job was done. Then we went downhill. You and I, we came from the newest planet of all, and we didn't fit. We're criminals there. But the older planets, like these, are indescribably horrible." He stopped, and asked wryly, "What shall we do, Dona? I'd have liked a wedding ceremony. But what are we going to do?"
Dona smiled at him.
"There's one place yet. The Prime Board called us criminals. Let's look up the criminals on Ades. Maybe—and it's just possible—people who have mustered energy and independence enough to commit political crimes would be bearable. If we don't find anything there, why, we'll go to another galaxy, choose a planet and settle down. And I promise I won't be sorry, Kim!"
Kim made his computations and swung theStarshinecarefully. He was able to center the course of the space-ship with absolute precision upon the sun around which Ades circled slowly in lonely majesty. He pressed the matter-transmission stud, and the alarm-bells rang stridently, and there was the sun and the planet Ades barely half a million miles from their starting-point.
It was not a large planet, and there was much ice and snow. The electron telescope showed no monster cities, either, but there were settlements of a size that could be picked out. Kim sent theStarshinetoward it.
"Of course, I'm only head of this small city," said the man with the bearskin hat. "And my powers are limited here, but I think we'll find plenty to join us. I'll go, of course, if you'll take me."
Kim nodded in an odd grim satisfaction.
"We'll set up matter-transmitters," he suggested. "Then there'll be complete and continuous communication with this planet from the start."
"Right," said the man with the bearskin hat. He added candidly: "We've brains on Ades, my friend. We've got every technical device the rest of the Galaxy has, except the Disciplinary Circuit, and we won't allow that! If this is a scheme of some damned despot to add another planet to his empire, it won't work. There are three empires already started, you know, all taken by matter-transmitter. But that won't work here!"
"If you build the transmitters yourselves, you'll know there's nothing tricky about the circuits," Kim said. "My offer is to take a transmitter and an exploring party to the next nearest galaxy and pick out a planet there to start on. Ades isn't ideal."
"No," agreed the man with the bearskin hat. "It's too cold, and we're overcrowded. There are twenty million of us and more keep coming out of the transmitter every day. The Galaxy seems to be combing out all its brains and sending them all here. We're short of minerals, though—metals, especially. So we'll pick some good sound planets to start on over in a second galaxy. Hm! Come to the communicator and we'll talk to the other men we need to reach."
They went out of the small building which was the center of government of the quite small city. There was nothing impressive about it, anywhere. It was not even systematically planned. Each citizen, it appeared, had built as he chose. Each seemed to dress as he pleased, too.
To Kim and to Dona there was a startling novelty in the faces they saw about them. On Alphin III almost everybody had looked alike. At any rate their faces had worn the same expression of bovine contentment.
On other planets contentment had not been the prevailing sentiment. On some, despair had seemed to be universal.
But these people, these criminals, were individuals. Their manner was not the elaborate, cringing politeness of Alphin III. It was free and natural.
The communicator-station was rough and ready. It was not a work of art, but a building put up by people who needed a building and built one for that purpose only. The vision-screens lighted up one by one and faces appeared, as variegated as the costumes beneath them. They had a common look for aliveness which was heartening to Kim.
The conference lasted for a long time. There was enthusiasm, and there was reserve. TheStarshinewould carry a matter-transmitter to the next galaxy and open a way for migration of the criminals of Ades to a new island universe for conquest.
Kim would turn over the construction-records of the space-ship so that others could be built. He would give the details of the matter-transmitter alteration. No space-ships had been attempted by the inhabitants of Ades, because fighting-beams would soon have been mounted on useful planets, against them, and all useful planets contained only enemies.
"What do you want?" asked a figure in one vision-plate. "We don't do things for nothing, here, and we don't take things without paying for them, either."
"Dona and I want only a place to live and a people to live among who are free," Kim answered sharply.
"You've got that," the man in the bearskin hat said. "All right? We'll all call public meetings and confirm these arrangements?"
The heads of other cities nodded.
"We'll pass on the news to other cities at once," another man said. He was one of those who had nodded. "Everybody will wish to come in on it, of course. If not now, then later."
"Wait!" Kim said suddenly. "How about the planets around us? Are we going to leave them enslaved?"
"Nobody can free a slave," a whiskered man in a vision-plate said drily. "We could only release prisoners. In time we may have to take them over, I suppose, but on the planet I come from there aren't a dozen men who'd know how to be free if we emancipated them. They don't want to be free. They're satisfied as they are. If any of them want to be free, they'll be sent here, eventually."
"I am reluctant to desert them," Kim answered slowly.
"Count, man," the man with bearskin hat cried. "There are three hundred million inhabited planets! All of them but Ades are ruled by Disciplinary Circuits. If we set out to liberate them, it would take one thousand years, and there are only twenty million of us. Designate just one of us to stay on each planet to teach the people to be free again. Otherwise we wouldn't do a tenth of the job and we'd destroy ourselves by scattering. But, hang it all, we'd be tyrants! No! We go on and start on a new galaxy. That's a job worth doing. We'll keep a group of watchers here to receive the new ones who come here into exile and forward them. Some day, maybe, we'll come back and take over the old Galaxy if it seems worth while. But we've a job to do. How many galaxies are there, anyhow, for us and our children and our children's children to take over?"
"It's a job that will never be finished," another voice said. "That's good!"
There were trees visible from the window of the house that had been offered by a citizen for Kim's and Dona's use. The sun went down beyond those trees, with a glowing of many colors in the foliage. Kim had never watched a sunset before except upon the towers and pinnacles of a city. He had never noted quite this sharp tang in the air, either, which he learned was the smell of fresh growing things.
"I think I'm going to like living like this," he said to Dona. "Have you noticed the way people act? They don't behave as if I were important at all, in one way. They seem to think I'm commonplace. But I've never before felt so definitely that I matter."
"You do, Kim, darling," Dona said, wisely. She stood close beside him, watching the sunset too. She looked up at him. "You matter enormously, and they know it. But to themselves they matter, too, and when they listen to you and agree with you it's because they mean it, instead of just citizen-like politeness. It is good. I think it must be a part of what we've been looking for. It's a part of freedom, I suppose."
"And you," Kim said. "Do you feel important too?"
She laughed at him and pressed close.
"My dear!" she said. "Could I help it? Can any woman help feeling important on her wedding-day? Do you realize that we've been married two whole hours?"