avoiding the main corridors.
He hardly looked at what he could see of the ship as he passed through it. He didn’t care now. All he could think of was the terrible need for haste, the need to avert the disaster that was coming. His ears, his nerves cringed, waiting for the first shell to burst against the
He knew it was too soon, but the minutes were passing fast.
Gorr Holl did some rapid explaining as they went. “The evacuation order came from the Board of Governors by an executive committee. According to Federation law, you can make an appeal from that order to the Board of Governors in full session. Now, remember, Kenniston, no one can deny you the right of appeal, so don’t let them bull you out of it.”
They came out on a shadowy catwalk. Gorr Holl stopped and pointed to a corridor some nine feet below. At its end was a closed door.
“That’s the Visor room. Varn Allan is in contact with the committee now. Go in and make your appeal. And remember, Lund is in there too.”
He melted back into the shadows. Kenniston went down a companionway to the corridor and along it to the door at the end. He tried it and it swung open under his hand, and he went through into a high and narrow room, where Varn and Norden Lund turned to face him, startled and surprised by his sudden entrance.
He hardly saw them. Something else caught his gaze and held him transfixed, frozen with a kind of awe.
Two walls of the room were occupied by complicated and unfamiliar mechanisms, all apparently automatic. Facing him was the third wall—a giant-sized screen, reproducing so clear a picture that it was weirdly like a window.
A window into another world…
At a black plastic table sat four figures. Three of these were men in ordinary jackets and slacks—one of them quite old, another elderly, the third dark, brusque-looking, not far into middle age. The fourth at the table was not a man. He was a Spican like Magro, white-furred and oddly catlike with his narrow mane and handsome, faintly cruel face.
But he was older and graver than Magro.
The four of them were like a quartet of businessmen, rudely interrupted in the midst of an earnest conference. They stared out of the screen at Kenniston, and the youngest man demanded of Varn Allan, “Who is this person?”
Kenniston still stood motionless, looking beyond them now. He saw that the room behind them was like the one in which he stood but much larger, a communications room massive with control banks and screens.
Through the window of that room billions of miles across space, Kenniston could see the looming wall of a titanic building. And above it blazed the fiery limb of a diamond Sun, supernal, magnificent, shedding a blue-white blaze across the heavens.
Again the sharp voice from across the galaxy, flashing through the parsecs far faster than light by the magic of latter-day science.
“Varn Allan! Who is this man?”
“He’s one of the Earth primitives, sir,” she answered angrily, and turned again to Kenniston. “You have no right here! Leave at once.”
“No,” said Kenniston. “Not until I’ve had my say.”
“Lund,” said Varn Allan, “will you please call orderlies and have him removed?”
Kenniston moved a little. “I wouldn’t,” he said.
Lund considered. His eyes moved from Kenniston’s knotted fist to Varn Allan’s angry face, and there was a smile in them.
“After all,” he said, “I suppose this man is a citizen of the Federation now. Can we deny him his right of speech?”
Varn Allan’s blue eyes flashed hotly at him. Then she spoke to the images in the screen. “I’m sorry, gentlemen. But perhaps this will demonstrate the situation here more clearly. I have had no cooperation from the primitives, and my own subordinate is apparently trying to undermine my authority.”
The dark younger man of the four said impatiently, “This is not the occasion to hear complaints of administrative wrangling!”
Kenniston was glaring upward at the quartet on Vega’s faraway world who seemed to hold the fate of Middletown in their hands. He demanded, “Are you the executive committee responsible for the evacuation order?”
The oldest man said to him quietly, “There is no need for truculence. Yes, we are that committee.” He glanced at Varn Allan. “I think, Allan, that since the interruption has been made, we may as well clear this thing up now.”
Varn Allan shrugged, and Lund’s smile broadened a little.
Kenniston said, “I’m sorry, but there isn’t time for politeness. In a few minutes my people are going to fire on your ships. I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want my people killed, nor yours.”
The old man answered, “There will be no killing. The paralysis ray, used at full potency, can immobilize your whole population without harm.”
Kenniston shook his head. “That’s only a postponement. When they come to again they will fight. That is what I must make you understand.
As long as my people live they will fight to stay on Earth!”
The ring of utter truth in his passionate cry seemed to disturb them deeply. And the white-furred Spican said slowly, “It may be so. Some of my own people still have such an illogical attachment to one planet.”
Lund spoke up, his tone smooth and deferential. “That is the point of basic psychology which I have been trying to make with Administrator Allan.”
Varn Allan said icily, “If you have a suggestion to make, I shall be glad to hear it.”
“Of course,” said Lund, “it’s quite impossible to allow these people to remain on Earth. To do so would establish a fatal precedent for other waning planets whose populations must be transferred. But my idea—”
Whatever Lund had been going to say was lost, for Kenniston drowned him out. “The hell with your ideas!” He moved closer to the screen. “I ask you to revoke the order for evacuation.”
The old man spread his hands in a weary gesture of negation. “That is out of the question.”
“Then,” said Kenniston harshly, “I appeal your decision to the Board of Governors in full session!”
That startled them all. They stared at him, and Lund said, “So the savage has learned a little law!” Then he laughed. “But of course—Gorr Holl and his friends have been coaching him.”
Varn Allan came up to Kenniston, “This is a waste of time,” she said. “The Board of Governors will issue the same ruling.”
“Quite so,” said the dark brusque man in the screen. “It’s merely a stratagem to gain time.”
“Nevertheless,” said the Spican, regarding Kenniston with faint amusement in his slit-pupiled eyes, “his demand is perfectly legal.”
The old man sighed. “Yes.” He looked at Kenniston. “I am forced by Federation law to grant your right of appeal. But I warn you that Administrator Allan is right. The Board will ratify our decision.”
“Until they do,” Kenniston pressed, “I demand that you withdraw from Earth the ships that have created this critical situation.”
The old man nodded reluctantly. “That too is a legitimate demand. The ships will be recalled temporarily to Vega. And you will come with them, since all appeals to the Board of Governors must be made in person.”
In person? The significance of the two casual words hit Kenniston staggeringly, replacing his dawning hope with a breathless and more personal emotion.
Those two words meant—they meant leaving Earth, he, John Kenniston, going out into the dark abyss, out across half the starry universe on a forlorn hope. Out to an incredibly distant and alien world, to plead the cause of Middletown to alien ears, with all the odds against him! He knew now what Gorr Holl had meant, “—with your background, it won’t be easy.”
Varn Allan’s crisp voice was challenging him. “Do you agree to go?
Say quickly—there’s little time left to notify your people before they attack.”
Mention of that imminent attack that meant irrevocable disaster to his people, steadied Kenniston. He had to avert that, at any cost or risk.
