want it said that I take undue advantage of my position.'
'Your fairness to our people has never been in doubt.' Rei said.
'But not the Artonuee, huh?' Argun said, laughing. 'My boy, you’re too soft.'
'I was the first to land on an Artonuee world,' Rei said softly. 'I have worked closely with them for twenty years. They are an admirable people.'
'Ah, that Artonuee cunt,' Argun said. 'Now that is admirable.' He drained his mug and set it down with a clank. 'But I have six billion people to worry about.'
Sir—
'Six billion,' Argun said. 'And I watched twenty-four billion die. I saw it, damn it. I was there. I heard my own son cry when he was told that he had not been selected. I had to deny his last minute plea. I gave the orders which brought instant death to thousands in the port riots. I saw my men turn their weapons on their own people, brothers, sisters, lovers. Have you ever seen flesh after it’s hit with a burner? It stinks. It’s the color of dirt. And when the ray hits, the flesh crawls and jumps and moves even after the brain is dead. And I had to say, 'open fire!' I had to give the order.'
'It was a tragedy, sir,' Rei said.
'Tragedy? Damn, man, it was horror. Can you comprehend the death of twenty-four billion people? No one can. It staggers the imagination. We can understand the death of a man, or a few men. You helped in the post- mortem of the first expedition, didn’t you? I thought so. You saw the way the limbs were torn from bodies. Did it affect you?'
'It affected me,' Rei said.
'Think of two billion more bodies. Think of them dying slowly from radiation and then being seared by flame. Is that a pleasant picture?'
'No, it is not. But neither—'
'There is no alternative,' Argun said, standing. 'Of course, if you should volunteer to stay—' He grinned as Rei shifted uneasily. 'Goodnight, then, my boy. It is not pleasant for any of us. We must do as we think best for all of our people. In the meantime, we drink, no?'
'We drink,' Rei said, gulping the jenk.
'And our geneticist wants another chip off the old Rei block,' Argun said, showing his teeth suggestively. 'Up to another session tonight?'
'I think not, sir.'
'Soon, then. She’s a knockout. A farm girl from old Tagour. Knockers out to here. Huh?'
'Yes,' Rei said. 'Soon.'
Later, fanned by Miaree’s ecstatically fluttering wings, hearing her love
Chapter Twenty-One
You read well, my dear. Thank you. We have covered much ground today, and there is little time. I hope that all of you have been thinking ahead toward the paper which I told you I would ask you to write giving your conclusions and your feelings toward the fable. Now. In form, the section of the fable we have covered today is somewhat episodic. By slaps and starts, it covered a period of how many years, Tomax?
Twenty, sir.
Are there any among you who have not been stimulated to the point of being forced to finish the final portion? Ah? Elizabeth? LaConius. But LaConius knows, eh, LaConius?
Sir?
Elizabeth, no curiosity?
Sir, I was dying to finish it, to find out what happens, but the dorm matron forced me to observe lights-out, and the charger in my privacy light has failed, so I could not read under the sheets.
Then we will allow you to read the conclusion tomorrow. Now, in the brief time remaining before we partake of sauteed olix steak, fresh in from Alaxender's home on Trojan, I would like you to consider this passage, or this series of excerpts, from a paper done by our sleepy LaConius. For which, incidentally, he has earned the honors in this particular project. LaConius has handed me the paper, a project undertaken in his astrophysics class, with a request for proofreading. I fear that our LaConius is a rather atrocious speller. Nonetheless, the paper is of some interest. The subject is the Q.S.S. phenomenon. Q.S.S. or Quasi-stellar Radio Sources, are rather puzzling astronomical objects located—as determined by the calculations of the red shift—some one billion light years away from our galaxy in the general direction of the constellation Cygnus.
But let me quote young LaConius: 'Radio generation in the Q.S.S's, broadcast on every frequency known to man, is thought to be the result of acceleration of ultra-high-speed electrons moving in a powerful magnetic field. Although a thorough and lengthy study of the Q.S.S's has failed to provide a range of answers, it is believed by authorities in the field that the electrons were freed in some cataclysmic explosion. The release of energy is not a strange happening in a universe built on the explosive energy of the hydrogen atom, but the amount of energy radiating from a Q.S.S. has led astrophysicists to believe that the energy originated from an entirely new type of energy source. The power generated by a typical Q.S.S. is measured in the area of 4 X10 to the 46th power ergs per second, or ten times the amount of energy radiated by the largest known galaxy.
'The bafflng thing about the Q.S.S. is that a typical diameter measures only fifty light years. When we consider that our own galaxy is eighty thousand light years in diameter, the amount of power emanating from the relatively tiny Q.S.S. becomes even more astounding. Estimating mass from the observed size of a typical Q.S.S., the amount of energy released totals more than the energy in all of the available electrons. If a small galaxy were exploded by thermonuclear processes, the energy released would not equal that of a Q.S.S. Spectrography indicates that the Q.S.S.'s are moving away from our galaxy at a uniform speed. Emission lines in the optical spectrum indicate the presence of hydrogen, magnesium, ionized neon, oxygen, and other gases.'
There is more, but I think that much will give you the idea. Questions? Alexender?
I can only conclude, sir, that a Q.S.S. cannot possibly exist, and yet it does.
Yes. Ah. The dining hall signals its readiness.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Miaree, First Lady of five worlds, had a tendency to calculate time from
the arrival of Rei. The calendar systems of both races were bulky and unwieldy, both measuring years, as they did, into six figures, seven in the case of the Delanians. There were shortened forms of writing a date, of course, but it was convenient to think in simple terms. Rei plus twenty.
Rei plus twenty-five.
In the year of Rei, twenty-five, the Mother of the Artonuee received a request from an old friend, Bertt the builder, Star Fleet Overlord.
'Feeling the approach of my time,' Bertt wrote, 'it is with much regret that I request to be relieved of my duties.'
Sadly, she sent her permission. 'It would be a great honor, my dear Bertt, to have you stay in my dwelling on your way home.'
Since the jobs were so interconnected, it seemed logical to appoint her consort Rei to fill Bertt’s position. This meant, of course, that they were often apart, and separations were agony for her. It was a time of sacrifice, however, for the distant astronomical observatories in space sent daily reports of the swelling explosions in the constellation of Delan, The Delanian scientists had been accurate to within twenty percent in their predictions of the multiplication effects of the violent coming together of the two giant clusters. Their margin of error was on the conservative side. In the path of the expanding jets of energy, stars, fed by the debris, joined in the paroxysm. The
