World without Stars (2 page)

Yet when we invited him to dinner, he accepted with a courtliness you rarely see anymore.

He and I went onto the porch for cocktails while Lute programmed the food mechs. Space dropped dizzily from the viewport,
thin starred black here on the rim. Huge and shapeless—we being still more or less within it—the galaxy streamed past and
was lost to sight; we looked toward remoteness.

“I need a gunner in case of trouble,” I told him. “We’ll be dealing with a technologically advanced race, one that we know
almost nothing about. But of course we don’t really expect a fight, so we want a man who can double as second deck officer.
If he has some xenological skill to boot, that’s ideal.”

“I think I can claim the whole lot,” he answered. “No formal trainin’. By the time they got around to foundin’ academies in
those subjects, I’d already been in space for quite a spell. But you can check me out with the people aboard
Lady Lara
, and on a psychograph too if you want.”

Luck seemed to have fluxed in my direction. Unless—“You may change your mind when you know where the
Meteor’s
bound,” I warned him. “Or do you?”

“No. Just that it’s a pretty long hop, and you’ll call at Earth afterward. Otherwise none of your gang has blabbed.” He chuckled.
“Reckon you’d rather not have competition in the early stages of contact, when the cream’s at its most skimmable.”

“I’ll have to tell you, though, and trust you as a Guild brother. We’re going to some Yonderfolk.”

“Eh?” He started gratifyingly. “Beyond this galaxy? Like M 31?”

“No,” I said. “Not that far. Though where we’re bound, we’ll be much lonelier. Intergalactic space.”

Valland settled back, crossed his legs and twirled his glass between calloused fingers. I offered him a cigarillo, but he
declined in favor of a pipe from his tunic: another archaism. Having lit up, I explained:

“There are stars between the galaxies, you know. Dim red dwarfs, so widely separated that this neighborhood looks Crowded
by comparison; nevertheless, stars. Hitherto no one’s thought it worthwhile to investigate them in any detail. Not when we’ll
take millions of years learning about this one Milky Way of our own, let alone its sisters. But lately … some of the intergalactics
have made contact with us. They might be worth trading with, goods or knowledge or both. We’re going out to have a look. If
anything develops, we’ll stay for a few years to get the business established.”

“I see.” He blew a slow cloud. “Sounds interestin’. But after that, you’ll head for Earth?”

“Yes. A universarium there is one of the
Meteor’s
, co-owners, and wants a direct report.” I shrugged. “Science is still alive on Earth, if nothing else.”

“More’n that,” he murmured. “Earth’ll always be Manhome.”

“Look here,” I asked bluntly, “if you’re so anxious to go back, why not get a ticket?”

“No hurry.” His affability was unruffled. “I’d’ve done so in time, if need be. I’ve done it before. But passage across an
energy gap like that isn’t cheap. Might’s well get paid for makin’ the trip.”

I didn’t press him. That’s no way to get to know a man. And I had to know my crew, so that we wouldn’t break under the years
of otherness.

Lute had arranged a good dinner. We were enjoying it, talking the usual things—whatever became of old Jarud, did you hear
what happened on Claw, now once I met the
damnedest nonhuman society you ever, let me warn you from bitter experience against gambling with the Stonks, is it true they’ve
made a machine that—when Wenli came in. She was trying not to cry.

“Daddy!” she begged of me. “I got bad dreams in my head.”

“Better start the hypnopulser, Lute,” I muttered as I picked up the slight form. Having operated out of City enough consecutive
years to know as well as beget the child, I hurt at her pain.

My wife half rose. “’Scuse me, mistress,” Valland said. “Don’t you think best we chase the dreams off for good before we put
her to sleep?”

She looked doubtful. “I been around a while,” Valland said apologetically. “Not a father myself, but you can’t help pilin’
up observations. C’mere, little lady.” He held out his arms and I passed Wenli to him.

He set her on his lap and leaned back from the table, letting the plate keep his food warm. “All right, my friend,” he said,
“what kind of dreams?”

She was at a shy stage of life, but to him she explained about blobby monsters that wanted to sit on her. “Well, now,” he
said, “I know a person who can take care of that. Let’s ask him to come give a hand.”

“Who?” Her eyes got quite round.

“Fellow name of Thor. He has a red beard, and he drives in a wagon pulled by goats—goats are animals with horns and long
long
whiskers—and the wheels make thunder. You ever heard thunder? Sounds like a boat takin’ off in a terrible hurry. And Thor
has a hammer, too, which he throws at trolls. I don’t think those blobby characters will stand a chance.”

I started to open my mouth. This didn’t look semantically right to me. Lute laid a warning hand on mine. Following her gaze,
I saw that Wenli had stopped shivering.

“Will Thor come if we ask?” she breathed.

“Oh, yes,” Valland said. “He owes me a favor. I helped him out once when he got into an argument with an electrostatic generator.
Now let me tell you more about him.”

Afterward I learned that the tall tale he went on to relate came from Earth, in days so old that even the books are forgetting.
But Wenli crowed and clapped her hands when Thor caught the snake that girdles the world. Lute laughed. So did I.

Finally Valland carried Wenli back to bed, fetched his omnisonor, and sang to her. The ballad was likewise ancient—his translation—but
it bounced right along, and before he had finished cataloguing the improbable things that should be done to the drunken sailor,
my daughter was asleep with no machine needed.

We came back to the ’fresher room. “Sorry to poke in like that,” Valland said. “Maybe you should’ve curbed me.”

“No.” Lute’s eyes glowed. “I’ve never seen anyone do anything better.”

“Thanks. I’m a childish type myself, so—Hoy, meant to tell you before, this is one gorgeous piece of steak.”

We went on to brandy and soda. Valland’s capacity was epical. I suppose Lute and I were rather drunk toward the end, though
we wouldn’t have regretted it next day if our idea had been workable. We exchanged a glance, she nodded, and we offered our
guest our total hospitality.

He hadn’t shown much effect of alcohol, beyond merriment. Yet now he actually blushed. “No,” he said. “Thanks a million, but
I got me a berth in dock country. Better get down there.”

Lute wasn’t quite pleased. She has her human share of vanity. He saw that too. Rising, he took her hand and bowed above it.

“You see,” he explained with great gentleness, “I’m from way back. The antithanatic was developed in my lifetime—yes,
that long ago; I shipped on the first star craft. So I have medieval habits. What other people do, fine, that’s their business.
But I’ve only got one girl, and she’s on Earth.”

“Oh,” Lute said. “Haven’t you been gone from her for quite a time, then?”

He smiled. “Sure have. Why do you think I want to return?”

“I don’t understand why you left in the first place.”

Valland took no offense. “Earth’s no place for a live man to live any more. Fine for Mary, not for me. It’s not unfair to
either of us. We get together often enough, considerin’ that we’ll never grow old. Between whiles, I can remember …. But goodnight
now, and thanks again.”

His attitude still seemed peculiar to me. I’d have to check most carefully with his present captain. You can’t take an unbalanced
man out between the galaxies.

On the other hand, we’re each a bit eccentric, one way or another. That goes along with being immortal. Sometimes we’re a
bit crazy, even. We don’t have the heart to edit certain things out of our memories, and so they grow in the psyche till we
no longer have a sense of proportion about them. Like my own case—but no matter.

One thing we have all gained in our centuries is patience. Could be that Hugh Valland simply had a bit more than most.

W
E WERE
nine aboard the
Meteor
, specialists whose skills overlapped. That was not many, to rattle around in so huge a hull. But you need room and privacy
on a long trip, and of course as a rule we hauled a lot of cargo.

“Probably not this time, however,” I explained to Valland and Yo Rorn. They were the only ones who hadn’t shipped with me
before; I’d hastily recruited them at Landomar when two vacancies developed for reasons that aren’t relevant here. To make
up the delay, I hadn’t briefed them in detail before we started. But now I must. They’d need days of Study to master what
little we knew about our goal.

We sat in my com chamber, we three, with coffee and smokes. A steady one gee of acceleration gave weight, and that soft engine-pulse
which goes on and on until finally it enters your bones. A viewscreen showed us Landomar’s sun, already dwindled, and the
galaxy filling half the sky with clots and sprawls of glow. That was to starboard; the vector we wanted to build up ran almost
parallel to the rim. Portward yawned emptiness, here and there the dim spindles of Other stellar continents.

“Mmm, yeah, don’t look like we could find a lot of useful Stuff on a planet where they breathe hydrogen and drink liquid ammonia,”
Valland nodded. “I never did, anyway.”

“Then why are we going?” Rorn asked. He was a lean, darky saturnine man who kept to himself, hadn’t so much as told us where
in the cosmos he was born. His psychograph indicated a tightly checked instability. But the readings also
said he was a good electronician, and he had recommendations from past service. He stubbed out his cigaret and lit another.
“Someone from a similar planet would be logical to deal with the—what did you say their name was?”

“I can’t pronounce it either,” I replied. “Let’s just call them Yonderfolk.”

Rorn scowled. “That could mean any extragalactic race.”

“We know what we mean,” said Valland mildly. “Ever meet the natives of Carstor’s Planet?”

“Heard of them,” I said. “Tall, thin, very ancient culture, unbearably dignified. Right?”

“Uh-huh. When I was there, we called ’em Squidgies.”

“Business, please,” Rorn barked.

“Very well,” I said. “What we hope to get from our Yonderfolk is, mainly, knowledge. Insights, ideas, art forms, possibly
something new in physics or chemistry or some other science. You never can tell. If nothing else, they know about the intergalactic
stars, so maybe they can steer us onto planets that will be profitable for humans. In fact, judging from what they’ve revealed
so far, there’s one such planet right in their home system.”

Valland looked for a while into the blackness to port. “They must be different from anybody we’ve met before,” he murmured.
“We can’t imagine how different.”

“Right,” I said. “Consider what that could mean in terms of what they know.”

I cleared my throat. “Brace yourself, Yo,” said Valland. “The Old Man’s shiftin’ into lecture gear.” Rorn looked blank, then
resentful. I didn’t mind.

“The galaxies were formed by the condensation of monstrous hydrogen clouds. But there wasn’t an absolute vacuum between them.
Especially not in the beginning, when the universe hadn’t yet expanded very far. So between the proto-galaxies there must
have been smaller condensations of gas, which became star clusters. Giant stars in those clusters
soon went supernova, enriching the interstellar medium. Some second and third generation suns got born.

“But then the clusters broke up. Gravitational effect of the galaxies, you see. The dispersal of matter became too great for
star formation to go on. The bright ones burned themselves out. But the red dwarfs are still around. A type M, far instance,
stays fifty billion years on the main sequence.”

“Please,” Rorn said, irritated. “Valland and I do know elementary astrophysics.” To the gunner: “Don’t you?”

“But I begin to see what it means,” Valland said low. Excitement coursed over his face. He clenched his pipe in one fist.
“Stars so far apart that you can’t find one from another without a big telescope. Metal poor, because the supernova enrichment
stopped early. And old—old.”

“Right,” I said. “Planets, too. Almost without iron or copper or uranium, anything that made it so easy for us to become industrialized.
But the lighter elements exist. So does life. So does intelligence.

“I don’t know how those Yonderfoik we’re going to visit went beyond the Stone Age. That’s one of the things we have to find
out. I can guess. They could experiment with electrostatics, with voltaic piles, with ceramics. Finally they could get to
the point of electrodynamics—oh, let’s say by using ceramic tubes filled with electrolytic solution for conductors. And so,
finally, they’d extract light metals like aluminum and magnesium from ores. But they may have needed millions of years of
civilization to get that far, and beyond.”

“What’d they learn along the way?” Valland wondered. “Yeah, I see why we’ve got to go there.”

“Even after they developed the space jump, they steered clear of the galaxies,” I said. “They can’t take the radiation. Where
they live, there are no natural radioactives worth mentioning, except perhaps a few things like K-40. Their sun doesn’t spit
out many charged particles. There’s no galactic
magnetic field to accelerate cosmic rays. No supernovae either.”

“Why, maybe they have natural immortality,” Valland suggested.

“Mmm, I doubt that,” I said. “True, we’re saddled with more radiation. But ordinary quantum processes will mutate cells too.
Or viruses, or chemicals, or Q factor, or—or whatever else they may have on Yonder.”

“Have they developed an antithanatic, then?” Rorn asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “If not, that’s one valuable thing we have to offer. I hope.”

I saw in the brief twist of Valland’s mouth that he understood me. Spacemen don’t talk about it much, but there are races,
as intelligent and as able to suffer as we ourselves, for whom nobody has figured out an aging preventive. The job is hard
enough in most cases: develop a synthetic virus which, rather than attacking normal cells, destroys any that do
not
quite conform to the host’s genetic code. When the biochemistry is too different from what we know— Mostly, we leave such
planets alone.