The Edmond Hamilton Megapack: 16 Classic Science Fiction Tales (40 page)

Kenniston, his immediate feeling of hostility tempered a little by puzzlement, waited for her to speak. She sat almost stiffly, a queerly prim little figure in the drab jacket and slacks, but he thought that there were lines of tiredness and strain in her clear face now.

She turned and looked at him with thoughtful blue eyes, and it came to him that Varn Allan felt ill at ease with him, that she wanted to say something that she did not quite know how to say. So she, too, was worried about this business at Vega? He thought savagely that that was fine, that it cut her down from a high-and-mighty official of the great Federation into an anxious woman, almost a girl.

She said, “I came to tell you—owing to the pressing nature of this case, the Board of Governors has granted us two hours on the day after we arrive at Vega Four.”

“Two hours!” exclaimed Kenniston. It did not seem much time in which to decide the fate of a world.

“The Governors have the problems of half a galaxy to decide. They cannot give more time than that to anyone. So perpare your case carefully. There is never a second hearing.”

He thought that she had not come only to say that, and he waited, forcing her to speak. He realized now that her tension and weariness equaled his own.

Finally, reluctantly, Varn Allan said, “As Sub-Administrator of the sector, Norden Lund will have the right to speak on this problem to the Governors.”

Kenniston hadn’t known that, but it made no difference to him and he said so.

“It may make a very great difference indeed to you and your people,” she warned him.

“In what way?”

She told him, “Lund is ambitious. He wants to be an Administrator, and later, a Governor—perhaps even Chairman. His aspirations are unbounded.”

Now, Kenniston began to understand a little. “In other words, as Gorr Holl said, Lund is after your job.”

“Yes. It would be a step up for him. And to make that step, he would quite cheerfully commit an injustice. Of that I am sure.” Varn Allan leaned forward. “He sees in the problem of Earth an unparalleled opportunity to advance himself. Your unheard-of irruption into this time from the past has created tremendous interest in you. And many worlds will be watching this coming hearing.”

In her earnestness, she had risen and was standing in front of him, speaking carefully, choosing her words to make him understand.

“If Lund can dominate this hearing, if he can offer some sensational proof that I have blundered in handling the Earth problem and that he has been right, he will have distinguished himself before the eyes of everyone.”

Kenniston was sure now that he completely understood, but he did not let his feelings show in his face or voice as he asked, “Then you’re afraid that Lund is going to spring some surprise at this hearing?”

Varn Allan nodded earnestly. “Yes—I know that he has something in mind. He has been smugly triumphant with me, ever since we took off. But what it is, I do not know.” She looked at Kenniston worriedly, and asked, “Do you know? Is there something about your people, about this Earth problem, that Lund could use at the hearing?”

Kenniston got to his feet. He looked down into her face, and then he began to laugh. Softly, at first, and then more loudly—a bitter, angry laughter that vented all the resentment he had felt from the first. She looked up at him, startled and uncomprehending.

“This,” he said, “is very rich indeed. This is really comic. You come to Earth as the law of the Federation, as Miss High-and-Mighty, and look at us as though we were a bunch of sheep, and order us this and order us that, and can hardly bear even to talk to the poor fuzzy-witted primitives. And then, all of a sudden, when your own precious job is in danger, you come running to me to help you save it!”

Varn Allan’s face was white and incredulous, her blue eyes starting to flare, her whole slim figure rigid.

Kenniston told her savagely, “You know what? I don’t give a damn who’s administrator, you or Lund! You’re neither of you my kind. If he can take your job, more power to him—it’ll make no difference to me or mine!”

He knew by the white wrath in her face that he had thrust beneath that serious, composed exterior at last, that the competent, brilliant official had emotions like any other woman and that he had got to them.

“So you think that,” Varn Allan breathed. “So you think that I would plead for your help, to save my position?”

Her voice rose then, driven by an anger that seemed almost more than her small figure could contain. It was as though he had touched a spring that released a hot, long-pent passion.

“My position—my official rank! Do you think I am like Lund, that the power to give orders is pleasure to me? What would you, a primitive, know of a tradition of service to the Federation? Do you suppose I wanted to follow that family tradition, that I enjoyed the years of study when other girls were dancing, that my idea of a happy life is to spend it in starship cabins and on unfriendly worlds? Do you think all that is so dear to me that I would worry and plot and come pleading to a primitive, to keep it?”

She choked on her own indignation, and turned toward the door. Kenniston, startled by that violent outburst, obeyed a sudden impulse and caught her arm.

“Wait! Don’t go. I—”

She looked up at him with blazing eyes and said, “Let me go or I’ll call an orderly.”

Kenniston did not release her. He said awkwardly, “No, wait. I was out of line. I’m sorry—”

He was. He was ashamed of himself, and he did not know exactly why he should be, but something in her passion had made him so. He hated unfairness, and he felt that he had been unfair.

He said so, and Varn Allan looked up at him with eyes that were still angry, but after a moment she turned away from the door.

“Let us forget it,” she said stiffly. “I was at fault, for talking emotionally like—”

“Like a primitive,” Kenniston finished for her, and she set her small jaw and said, “Exactly. Like a primitive.”

Kenniston laughed. His hostility to her and her kind might remain, but he had lost that resentful consciousness of inferiority that had nagged him since he met her. He had lost it, when the cool, competent Federation official had revealed herself as a worried and lonely girl.

“No, no, I wasn’t laughing at you,” he said hastily. “Now tell me, why did you feel it necessary to bring up this Lund business with me?”

“It was to save my rank and position,” she said bitterly. “It was because I was afraid of losing them, of—”

“Oh, all right, I’ve apologized for that,” he said impatiently. “Christ, but you people are touchy!”

For a moment Varn Allan was silent. Then she said, “You think it will make no difference to you whether Lund or I speak at the hearing, that we’re both against your people. You are wrong, Kenniston.”

“You and he are both for evacuating us off Earth,” he reminded her, “So what difference is there?”

“There’s a very great difference,” she said earnestly. “I may have made mistakes in dealing with your people, but my desire has been to accomplish a smooth, peaceful evacuation. Lund would like to deal with this Earth problem dramatically—that is to say, forcefully.”

“Forcefully?” Kenniston stiffened. “I told you both what it would mean if you tried force!”

“I know, and I believe you enough to want to solve this evacuation problem peacefully, even though it should involve delay. That is my idea of an Administrator’s duty. But Lund knows that due to your strange background, and due to the fact that this Earth case focuses the whole long controversy about world evacuation, all eyes will be on this hearing, and he would use it to advance himself, no matter what disastrous events he might unchain on Earth.”

Her logic was clear enough, and it squared with Kenniston’s estimate of Lund. He felt a suddenly deepened worry.

“But what could Lund bring up about the Earth problem that would be a surprise?” he wanted to know.

Varn Allan shook her head. “I don’t know. I thought maybe you might know. He has something, I’m sure.”

Kenniston said thoughtfully, “I don’t. But maybe Gorr and the others might have some idea. I’ll try to find out.”

He looked at her, and whatever his feelings about her might be he had to admit that he was convinced of her sincere attachment to her duty, and that though her ideas of justice might not jibe with his, she would not be deliberately unjust.

He said, “Thanks for telling me this. And again—I’m sorry I shot off.”

She said soberly, “I know you’re under strain, from this voyage and from anxiety. But—don’t let Gorr and the rest encourage you to hope for too much. The evacuation itself cannot be avoided; it is the way in which it is to be done that worries me.” And she added with sudden weariness, “I wish I were a girl of your Middletown, who had never left her world and to whom the stars were just lights in the sky.”

He shook his head. “You’d still have your worries, believe me. Hurled out of your own life into this one—Carol, right now, is more upset than you’ll ever be.”

“Carol? That would be the girl I saw with you?”

He nodded. “Yes. My girl. She was raised in that old town of ours, school and picnics and parties and what hat to wear, and then suddenly—bang! She’s here in this crazy future, and may not even be allowed to stay on Earth!”

Varn Allan said, musingly, “How strange it must be, to have grown up on one little, little planet, to have lived that tiny, circumscribed routine. In a way, I envy her. And I’m sorry for her.”

She turned to go, and Kenniston held out his hand. “No hard feelings, then?”

She was for a moment completely puzzled by his gesture, then understood and smiled and laid her hand awkwardly in his. But she took it away hastily and went out.

Kenniston stared after her. “Well, I’ll be damned if she isn’t afraid of men!”

His resentful hostility to her was gone, and while he knew she would be in there pitching against him on this evacuation that she thought so necessary, it did not worry him like the matter of Norden Lund.

The more he thought about Lund, the more he worried. Finally, he went to Gorr Holl’s cabin and told the big Capellan.

Gorr Holl instantly looked upset. “That’s bad. Lund could make nasty trouble, if he’s got hold of something. But what could it be?”

“I thought maybe you’d know.”

“Not a thing,” the Capellan denied. “Wait a minute—Piers Eglin has been a little thick with Lund lately. Maybe he’d know.”

Kenniston got up. “Piers always wants to talk to me about the old town. If he knows anything, maybe he’ll spill it.”

But it was not until the next day—the strange dawnless artifical day of starship routine—that he got a chance to talk to the little historian.

He asked Eglin bluntly, “Do you know what Lund’s got up his sleeve for this hearing?”

The question fluttered Piers Eglin badly. He fidgeted, and looked away with a hunted expression, and mumbled, “Why do you ask me? What could I know?”

Kenniston stared at him. “You’re a pretty poor liar, Piers. What do you know?”

Eglin began to babble almost incoherently. “Kenniston, listen—you mustn’t draw me into your troubles! I like you, I wish I could help you—but I’m a historian, it’s my life, that old town of yours on Earth is like a dream come true to me, and to save it, I would do anything. Anything!”

“What the devil are you talking about?” Kenniston demanded. “What does Middletown have to do with it?”

The little historian said feverishly, “You don’t understand its importance. You people from the past will die away, but that city from the far past can be preserved forever, the greatest of historical treasures. I can preserve it, keep it for future study, if I have official backing—”

A light dawned on Kenniston. “And Norden Lund is going to give you that backing? In exchange for what? What have you done to help him?”

Eglin shook his head wretchedly. “I can’t say anything. Honestly, I can’t.”

He was nearly in tears, as he went away. Kenniston looked after him, mystified and deeply troubled.

He told Gorr Holl and the others. Magro looked baffled. “But what could Piers do to help Lund? I don’t get it at all.”

“Maybe he overheard some of our people making threats and wild talk, and reported it?” Kenniston said.

Gorr Holl shook his head. “Just hearsay wouldn’t be worth much. And anyway, Piers wasn’t around your people much after the first—he spent all his time in the old town.”

Lal’lor said slowly, “I do not like it. Try to find out what it is that Piers has done, Kenniston.”

Kenniston, thought, found in the following “days” that Piers Eglin very definitely was avoiding him. He did not even see the little historian again until they made their landing on Vega Four.

He had sat for hours that day in the bridge room of the Thanis, looking with unbelieving wonderment at the alien solar system shaping itself out of the void, the spinning planets sweeping in majestic curves through the brilliant circle of Vega’s light.

The ship was sweeping in toward the fourth planet. Kenniston saw the cloudy globe leap up to meet them, and again he felt the magically tempered pressure. As they hummed downward, he was stricken with a vertiginous fear that they were going to crash.