Arnol turned very slowly toward him. He said, as though it was difficult for him to speak. “Yes. The reaction is begun. There is a great flame of warmth and life inside Earth now. It will take weeks for that warmth and life to creep up to the surface, but it will come.”
He turned his back then, on Kenniston, on all of them. What he had to say was for the tired, waiting young men who had labored with him so long.
He said to them, “Here on this little Earth, long ago, one of our savage ancestors kindled a world. And there are all the others, all the cold, dying worlds out there…”
Kenniston heard no more. A babel had broken loose. Varn Allan was clinging to him, and Gorr Holl was shouting deaf-eningly, and he heard the stammering questions of Mayor Garris and Hubble’s shaking voice.
Over all came the surge of thousands of feet The thousands of Middletown were coming up the slope, scrambling, running, a life-or-death question on their white faces.
“Tell them, Ken,” said Hubble, his voice thick.
Kenniston stood upon the ridge, and the crowd below froze tensely silent as he shouted down to them. “It has succeeded! All danger is over, and in weeks the heat of the core will begin to reach the surface…”
He stopped. These were not the words that could reach their hearts.
Then he found those words, and called them to the thousands.
“It has been chill winter on Earth, for a million years. But now, soon, spring is coming back to Earth. Spring!”
They could understand that. They began to laugh, and to weep, and then to shout and shout.
They were still shouting when the great Control cruisers came humming swiftly down from the sky.
Chapter 21
WAKING WORLD
Slowly, slowly, during all these weeks, the spring had come. It was not the spring of old Earth, but every day the wind blew a little more softly and now at last the first blades of grass were pushing upward, touching the ocher plains with green.
But only by hearsay did Kenniston know of that. Confined with the others in a building of New Middletown, it had seemed to him that the time would never end. The weeks of waiting for the special Committee of Governors to come from Vega, the weeks of the hearing itself, the slow gathering of testimony and careful sifting of motives. And now, the days they had waited for the final verdict.
Arnol was not worried. He was a happy man. He said very little, but he had had a triumph in his eyes all through the hearing. His lifework was justified, and he was content.
Nor were Gorr Holl and Magro worried. The big Capellan, even now when they awaited the decision, was still jubilant.
“Hell, what can they do?” he said to Kenniston, for the twentieth time.
“The thing’s done. The Arnol process is proved practicable, and by now the whole galaxy knows of it. They can’t refuse now to let the humanoids’ dying worlds make use of it. They wouldn’t dare!”
Magro added, “Nor can they force your people to evacuate Earth now that it is getting warmer. It wouldn’t make sense.”
Kenniston said, “They can keep us locked up for the rest of our lives, and I wouldn’t enjoy that.”
Gorr Holl grinned widely at him. “Remember, man, we’re only emotional primitives, and they’ll have to make allowances for that.”
When they were led back into the big room for the verdict, Kenniston’s eyes swung, not to the group of three men and a humanoid that sat behind the table, but to Varn Allan. He knew that her own career was at stake in this hearing. She did not look upset, and she met his gaze with a grave little smile.
Lund, beside her, looked alert and faintly worried now. He shot a hard glance at Kenniston, but Kenniston had to turn his gaze as the reading of the verdict began.
The aging man who read it, the oldest of the four Governors, had no friendliness in his face. He spoke as one who reluctantly performs an unpleasant duty.
“You, the ringleaders in this thing, have rendered yourselves liable to the extremest penalties of Federation law by your direct defiance of the Governors,” he said. “It would be quite in order to direct a sentence of life imprisonment”
He looked down at them coldly. Gorr Holl whispered, “Just trying to scare us—” but he did not sound very confident now.
The old Governor continued. “But in this case it is quite impossible to reach a verdict on purely legalistic grounds. We must admit that your
Kenniston found it hard, hard, to realize that a long, great battle for the survival of worlds was ending in these phrases.
“—on certain other planets, and that presents us with a legal impasse. To punish you now for your use of it here would be, morally if not legally, punishing you for infraction of a no-longer-existing law.”
Gorr Holl uttered such a long and noisy exhalation of relief that he was promptly glared into silence.
“We are unable, therefore, to do other than dismiss you with the official reprimand of the Board of Governors for your behavior.”
Now that the moment had come, now that it was over, Kenniston found that he felt very little emotion, after all. The issues had been so vast that they had dwarfed his personal fate. He knew that that feeling would pass, that later he would be glad and thankful, but now—
The Governor, though, had not finished. He was speaking directly now to Varn Allan.
“Over and above the main issue, there remains the conduct of the responsible officials in dealing with it We are forced to express official censure of what appears to be inexcusable bungling of a psychological problem by the Administrator in charge, and—” here he looked toward Norden Lund—“and on the part of the Sub-Administrator, obvious attempts to hamper his superior for selfish reasons.”
The cold voice ended with the brief, hard phrases,
“We recommend, for Administrator Allan: Demotion one grade. For Sub-Administrator Lund: Demotion one grade. This hearing is concluded.”
Kenniston looked across the big room at Varn Allan. Her face had not changed, and silently she turned to go.
Gorr Holl was slapping him mightily on the back, Magro was saying something excitedly, but he wrenched away from them and went after her. She saw him coming, and waited. But Norden Lund was between them.
Lund’s face was white with controlled rage, and his voice was thick as he told Kenniston, “So you primitives have ruined my career?”
Varn Allan cut in contemptuously. “You ruined it yourself, Norden, with your ambitious plotting.”
He turned and strode away from them. Varn Allan, looking after him, sighed and said, “You have made a deadly enemy.”
He was not thinking of that. He waited until she turned back toward him, and he asked, “Are you my enemy too, for what I’ve done to you?”
She shook her head gravely. “No. That was not your doing. In a new and confused situation, I failed. That is all.”
“The hell it is!” he burst out. “They were unfair to you! You did your best, and—”
“And it wasn’t quite good enough,” she finished. And then she smiled a little at him. “It’s not a tragedy. An Administrator’s burden is not easy.
I shall not be entirely sorry.”
He had never admired her courage so much as now. He wanted to say so, he wanted so say many things, but she turned away from him a little, and said, “This is a great day for you, Kenniston. For this is the day when they are allowing those of your people who wish to, to return to your old town.”
“Yes, I heard that it was today.”
