Closed System

Like most revolutionaries recorded by history, shehad great plans for tearing down a working sys­tem, almost none for improving it, assuming that once she and her brother were in power all thingswould automatically be better.

He was pleased to see that he had, apparently,gained her full trust. He landedSkimmer in theback garden and went with her to her apartment.The ship was still there as he looked over hisshoulder upon entering the temple. He began tothink of ways he could get aboard and blink to hellout of there to warn the UP to keep all ships faraway from the Brenden's fleet until someone couldcome up with a countermeasure for the disrupter.With all of the Taratwo fleet close in to the planet,he didn't think much of his chances of doing that,but he had to try something.

At the door of her apartment, she kissed him.'Darling, I have so much to do. We'll be togetherforever soon, but now you'll have to excuse me.'

'I'd like to useSkimmer's library,' he said. 'OK?'

She looked at him piercingly. 'I don't want tolose you.'

He laughed. 'I won't try to run through thewhole fleet. Two cruisers, maybe, but not the en­tire fleet.'

'I know I can trust you,' she said.

'There's one other thing. There's a golden door.A priest told me that it was for adepts only, that Iwas barred.'

'Not worth consideration,' she said. 'It's justthe shrine to the admiral who was in command of the colonization ship. There's a statue of him. The priests worship him, keep his uniform clean andreplace it as it decays, because he was the one who began the priesthood. He figured out the theocracywhich has kept these poor creatures docile for so long.' She laughed. 'It's one of those arcane littlesecrets that religious people love. Since all of theoriginal priests were sworn to secrecy as to the purpose of the theocracy, they've extended thatsecrecy to silly length.' She leaned close, whis­pering. 'The name of the fleet admiral is so sa­cred, so secret, that only the priesthood knows it, and it can only be pronounced within the confinesof the shrine.'

'Well, I guess I can live without seeing theshrine,' he said. 'When will you be finished withyour work?'

'Give me at least three hours, darling. Thencome to me and we'll dine together.' She stood ontiptoe to kiss him again. 'Are you going to try topuzzle out all the secrets of the weapon by con­sulting your library?'

'Well, I'm curious, of course.'

'When I have the time I'll tell you all about it,'she said. 'Those old Zedeians were ingenious men.Isn't it delightful that we're going to beat themwith their own weapon?' Her face went grim. 'And,oh, how I do yearn to see the faces of those menwho treated me as if I were a child, ordering meabout, forcing me to act in vehicles which I hated.'

'Three hours, then,' he said.

'I'll miss you,' she said, starting to close thedoor.

'By the way, I think I've got the general idea ofall of it now, except for one thing. Why do youhave to depend on the Dorchlunters to fire theweapons?'

She cast an impatient glance at her timepiece,then looked into his eyes. 'That's the only flaw leftin the weapon,' she said. 'It can be quite dangerous, turning on itself and the ship which carries it, if an attempt is made to release the energy prema­turely or if one waits too long. Given time, wecould computerize the controls, but we don't have time. The Zedeians were getting extremely both­ersome and suspicious. My brother knew that wecould not risk waiting any longer. But there's no need to be concerned. These people have lived fora thousand years under rigid discipline. The youngmen are taught from childhood to feel the momentof proper charge. It's not magic, it's simply a mat­ter of day-after-day, year-after-year training to develop the awareness of the field which forms arounda disrupter. There has never been an accident witha charged weapon.'

'That's good to know,' he said, and then shewas gone.

It felt good to be back aboardSkimmer. He drewcoffee, seated himself at the computer console.'How

have you been, old man?' he asked.

'Please repeat the instruction,' the computersaid.

The old man was having trouble with his hear­ing again.

'Now don't sulk just because I've left you alone,'Pat said. 'I want material regarding the molecular bonding energy of copper.'

'Please repeat the instruction,' the computersaid. Pat typed it in instead of repeating it orally.The computer gave the equivalent of a sigh, along, purring sound, and began to search its entirememory bank. Pat stopped it, gave more specificinstructions. After ten minutes he realized that theold man was in a bad way, that the ionization inhis memory chambers was worse. He checked afew individual references under atomic theory, molecular energy, just about every heading he couldthink of, and drew only blanks.

He remembered, then, that he had the Artuneemanuscript in both original and translated formin the library. He soon had it on the screen, and ittook only a few minutes to locate the referencesand cross-references to the material included inthe story of a dead alien race. He found what hewanted in a thesis written by one Alaxender ofTrojan.

'It is a fundamental law that an electron at rest,in copper, exerts a force on every other electron atrest, repelling its fellows in inverse proportion to thesquare of the distance between them. This force is measurable, being 8.038 X 10-26pounds.'

The force, minute in regard to a single electron,is balanced by a counterforce, respresented by aproton. If the repulsion of the protons were notexactly balanced by that of the electrons, energywould be released. Alaxender of Trojan had calcu­lated the force represented by the binding energiesin two tenth-of-an-inch cubes of copper placed oneinch from each other at over six hundred billiontons. If, somehow, the balance could be destroyed,releasing that energy in a controlled stream, as itwas apparently released by the disrupter—

Not much work had been done in the field sincethe flurry of interest following the translation ofthe Artunee manuscript. The blink drive, the ulti­mate power source, fulfilled all needs. Man did notneed the power of Bertt, the Artunee. Nor did heneed another weapon of destruction, so interesthad lagged.

It was odd, and it was shaping up to be tragic,that some forgotten Zedeian scientist, possibly onenamed Sargoff, a name mentioned by young Gorben, had discovered Bertt's force quite indepen­dently, and centuries before the Cygnus expedition.

The disrupter worked. And he'd seen the speedand accuracy with which the young men of Dorch­lunt manned the weapons. A UP fleet, massed forfirepower, could be swept with half a dozen of the disrupters within seconds and each ship wouldthen be dead in space, with all the men inside asdead as the ship's systems.

There was no questioning the real danger to allof UP civilization. By chance, a young scholar had rediscovered a thousand-year-old Zedeian secret.By chance, he'd found the colonization ship andthe descendants of the original scientists. And bychance, a small man with a big body, an engaging laugh, and savage, unrelenting purpose was in a position to become ruler of the entire populatedgalaxy.

'Hey, Pat,' a boisterous voice said fromSkim­mer'scommunicator. 'You there, boy?' 'I'm here, sir,' Pat answered. For a while hewouldsay sir to a dictator.

'You might wanta see this,' the Brenden said.'I've got all my young studs assembling on theparade ground. Gonna give 'em one big pep talk.'

'I'll be there, sir,' Pat said.

The young men of Dorchlunt were marching incompany-size units on a flat, hard-packed area tothe north of the temple. The Brenden had comedown in a launch and was seated under a sun­shade on a wooden platform. Pat joined him there.

The ranks of young men marched in perfect uni­son, the troops arranged by height to give perfect symmetry to each file. Pat recognized one of theofficers bellowing out orders as his friend Gorben.

With over two thousand young men standing atrigid attention, the Brenden used a hailer, in order to be heard, and spoke to them of duty, honor, and a return to their rightful glory. When he was fin­ished a mighty cheer went up. The dictator baskedin it, smiled, laughed, waved his hands, and thenstood at attention and saluted as the men marchedoff the parade ground.

'Magnificent,' the Brenden said. 'God, boy, whatan army. Makes me almost wish that I'd lived inhistoric times when men fought each other toe totoe and tooth to tooth, right, boy?'

'I'm more the lover type,' Pat said, and that gota huge laugh.