* * *
And then the projects—Step into a capsule, a raindrop-shaped shell, glide through a system of curving tunnels, checking here and there to be fed through automatic locks; and you came to a project. Two or three or at most four people would be conducting it; they already knew who you were, but you were introduced, and they showed you politely around. Elisabeth’s interest in what they had to show was moderate. Harold’s kept growing.
“You’re running some rather dangerous experiments here,” he remarked eventually to Derek Alston. This was on another day. There’d been only a scattered few of those blank periods lately.
Derek shook his head. “I don’t run them,” he said. “They’re Solar U and SP projects. The asteroid merely provides facilities.”
“Why do you let them set themselves up here?”
Derek Alston shrugged. “They have to be set up somewhere. If there should be some disastrous miscalculation, our defensive system will contain the damage and reduce the probable loss in human lives.”
And the asteroid had, to be sure, a remarkable defensive system. For any ordinary purpose it seemed almost excessive. Harold had studied it and wondered again.
“In Eleven,” he said, “they’re working around with something on the order of a solar cannon. If they slip up on that one, you might find your defensive system strained.”
Derek looked over at him.
“I believe you weren’t supposed to know the purpose of that device,” he said idly.
“They were a little misleading about that, as a matter of fact,” said Harold. “But I came across something similar in the outsystems once.”
“Yes, I imagine you’ve learned a great deal more there than they ever taught in navigation school.” Derek scratched his head and looked owlish. “If you were to make a guess, what would you say was the real purpose of maintaining such projects on our asteroid? After all, I have to admit that the System Police and Solar U are capable of providing equally suitable protective settings for them.”
“The impression I’ve had,” Harold told him, “is that they’re being kept a secret from somebody. They’re not the sort of thing likely to be associated with a private asteroid.”
“No, not at all. Your guess is a good one. There are men, and there is mankind. Not quite the same thing. Mankind lost a major round on Earthplanet in this century and exists there only in fragments. And though men go to the outsystems, mankind hasn’t reached them yet.”
“You think it’s here?”
“Here in Solar U, in the System Police, in major centers like Mars Underground. And on the private asteroids. Various shapes of the same thing. Yes, mankind is here, what’s left of it at the moment. It has regrouped in Earthsystem and is building up.”
Harold considered that. “Why make it a conspiracy?” he asked then. “Why not be open about it?”
“Because it’s dangerous to frighten men. Earthplanet regards Earthsystem as an irritation. But it looks at our lack of obvious organization and purpose, our relatively small number, and it doesn’t take alarm. It knows it would take disproportionate effort, tremendous unified effort, to wipe us out, and we don’t seem worth it. So Earth’s men continue with their grinding struggles and maneuverings which eventually are to give somebody control of the planet. By that time Earthsystem’s mankind should not be very much concerned about Earthplanet’s intentions towards it.
“The projects you’ve seen are minor ones. We move farther ahead of them every year, and our population grows steadily. Even now I doubt that the planet’s full resources would be sufficient to interfere seriously with that process. But for the present we must conceal the strength we have and the strength we are obtaining. We want no trouble with Earth. Men will have their way there for a time, and then, whatever their designs, mankind will begin to evolve from them again, as it always does. It is a hardy thing. We can wait. . . .”
* * *
And that, Harold decided, had been upper echelon information, given him by one who might be among Earthsystem’s present leaders. Elisabeth and Sally Alston had a general understanding of the situation but did not seem to be aware of the underlying purpose. Professor Alston evidently had made him an offer.
He thought about it, and presently a feeling began to grow in him, something like loss, something like loneliness. Elisabeth appeared to sense it and was disturbed.
Then another day. A gun was in his hand again, and in his other hand were the last three of a dozen little crystal globes he’d picked up in one of the machine shops. He swung them up, and they went flying away along a massive wall of asteroid rock. As they began to drop again, the gun snaked out and, in turn, each of the globes sparkled brightly and vanished.
He’d been aware of Derek Alston coming up from behind him before he fired; and now he pocketed the gun and turned.
“Very pretty shooting, friend!” Derek remarked. “I never was able to develop much skill with a handgun myself, but I enjoy watching an expert.”
Harold shrugged. “I had the time, and the motivation, to put in a great deal of practice.”
“No doubt.” Derek held up a sheaf of papers. “Your final medical and psychological reports! It appears you’ve come all the way back. Care to look them over?”
Harold shook his head. “No. I’ve known for a couple of days that I’d come all the way back.” He patted the pocket which held the gun. “This was a test.”
They regarded each other a moment. And now, Harold wondered, how was he going to say it? The Alstons had been more than generous hosts, and Derek took pride in what Earthsystem was accomplishing—with very good reason.
But he’d moved for eight years among the stars. And in spite of all the plans that had gone sour, and the ugliness which tarnished and finally destroyed the Prideful Sue, he’d found there what he’d been looking for. Earthsystem seemed dwindled and small. He couldn’t possibly come back to it.
Make it brief, he thought.
“I’m not sure what I’ll do next,” he told Derek Alston. “But I’m shipping transsolar again.”
“Well, I should hope so!” said Derek promptly.
“I was wondering whether you’d understand . . . Elisabeth in particular.”
“Of course she understands! I do—we all do!” Derek smiled. “But before you start talking of leaving, there’s one more project I must show you. It’s one you should appreciate. . . .”
They stepped, a minute later, out of a capsule deep in the bowels of the asteroid, and went along a passage with steel bulkheads. A massive lock opened at their approach, and lights came on.
“Come on in and look around,” Derek said. “This is our third control room. Not too many people know we have it.”
Harold looked around the shining place. First incredulously, then with something like growing awe. He glanced at Derek Alston. “Mind if I check these?” he asked.
“Not at all. Go ahead.”
Once, some two years before, he’d been in the control room of Earthplanet’s biggest, newest, and proudest outsystem transport. What he’d seen then was dwarfed, made trifling and clumsy, by what was here. His skin shivered with a lover’s delight. “You have power to go with it?” he asked presently.
“We have the power.”
“Where’s the asteroid going on interstellar drives?”
“I told you mankind hadn’t got to the outsystems yet,” Derek said. “But it’s ready to move there. We’ve been preparing for it. The outsystems won’t know for a while that we’re around—not till we’re ready to let them know it.”
“This asteroid is moving to the outsystems?”
“Not this one. Not for some years. We still have functions to perform here. But a few others—the first will be ready to start within the next three months. They can use an experienced transsolar navigator. They think they can also use a fighting captain with an outsystem background. If you’re interested, I’ll take you over to one of them this afternoon.”
Harold drew in a long, deep breath.
“I’m interested,” he said.
Gone Fishing
Barney Chard, thirty-seven—financier, entrepreneur, occasional blackmailer, occasional con man, and very competent in all these activities—stood on a rickety wooden lake dock, squinting against the late afternoon sun, and waiting for his current business prospect to give up the pretense of being interested in trying to catch fish.
The prospect, who stood a few yards farther up the dock, rod in one hand, was named Dr. Oliver B. McAllen. He was a retired physicist, though less retired than was generally assumed. A dozen years ago he had rated as one of the country’s top men in his line. And, while dressed like an aging tramp in what he had referred to as fishing togs, he was at the moment potentially the country’s wealthiest citizen. There was a clandestine invention he’d fathered which he called the McAllen Tube. The Tube was the reason Barney Chard had come to see McAllen.