Dark Benediction

would win, but now he saw that Hulgruv would let him destroy the ship. And—if the situation were reversed, Roki knew that he would do the same. He had mistakenly refused to concede honor to an enemy. The commander seemed to sense his quiet dismay, and he leaned forward to speak softly.

“We are a new race, Roki—grown out of man. We have abilities of which you know nothing. It’s useless to fight us. Ultimately, your people will pass away. Or become stagnant. Already it has happened to man on Earth.”

“Then—there are two races on Earth.”

“Yes, of course. Did apes pass away when man appeared? The new does not replace the old. It adds to it, builds above it. The old species is the root of the new tree.”

“Feeding it,” the Cophian grunted bitterly.

He noticed that Talewa was becoming disturbed. Her eyes fluttered from one to the other of them.

“That was inevitable, manthing. There are no other animal foodstuffs on Earth. Man exhausted his planet, overpopulated it, drove lesser species into extinction. He spent the world’s resources getting your ancestors to the denser star-clusters. He saw his own approaching stagnation on Earth. And, since Sol is near the rim of the galaxy, with no close star-neighbors, he realized he could never achieve a mass-exodus into space. He didn’t have the C- drive in its present form. The best he could do was a field-cancellation drive.”

“But that’s the heart of the C-drive.”

“True. But he was too stupid to realize what he had. He penetrated the fifth component and failed to realize what he had done. His ships went up to five-hundred C’s or so, spent a few hours there by the ship’s clock, and came down to find several years had passed on Earth. They never got around that time-lag.”

“But that’s hardly more than a problem in five-space navigation!”

“True again. But they still thought of it in terms of field-cancellation. They didn’t realize they’d actually left the four-space continuum. They failed to see the blue-shift as anything more than a field-phenomenon. Even in high-C, you measure light’s velocity as the same constant—because your measuring instruments have changed proportionally. It’s different, relative to the home continuum, but you can’t know it except by pure reasoning. They never found out.

“Using what they had, they saw that they could send a few of their numbers to the denser star-clusters, if they wanted to wait twenty thousand years for them to arrive. Of course, only a few_ years would pass aboard ship. They knew they could do it, but they procrastinated. Society was egalitarian at the time. Who would go? And why should the planet’s industry exhaust itself to launch a handful of ships that no one would ever see again? Who wanted to make a twenty thousand year investment that would impoverish the world? Sol’s atomic resources were never plentiful.”

“How did it come about then?”

“Through a small group of men who didn’t care about the cost. They seized power during a ‘population rebellion’—when the sterilizers were fighting the euthanasiasts and the do-nothings. The small clique came into power by the fantastic promise of draining off the population-surplus into space. Enough of the stupid believed it to furnish them with a strong backing. They clamped censorship on the news agencies and imprisoned everyone who said it couldn’t be done. They put the planet to work building ships. Their fanatic personal philosophy was: ‘We are giving the galaxy to Man. What does it matter if he perishes on Earth?’ They put about twelve hundred ships into space before their slave-structure collapsed. Man never developed another technology on Sol III. He was sick of it.”

“And your people?”

Hulgruv smiled. “A natural outgrowth of the situation. If a planet were glutted with rabbits who ate all the grass, a species of rabbits who learned to exploit other rabbits would have the best chance for survival. We are predators, Cophian. Nature raised us up to be a check on your race.”

“You pompous fool!” Roki snapped. “Predators are specialists. What abilities do you have—besides the ability to prey on man?”

“I’ll show you in a few minutes,” the commander muttered darkly.

Daleth had lost color slowly as she listened to the Solarian’s roundabout admission of Roki’s charge. She suddenly moaned and slumped in a sick heap. Hulgruv spoke to the guard in the soundless facial language. The guard carried her away quickly.

“If you were an advanced species, Hulgruv—you would not have let yourself be tricked so easily, by me. And a highly intelligent race would discover the warp locks for themselves.”

Hulgruv flushed. “We underestimated you, manthing. It was a natural mistake. Your race has sunk to the level of cattle on earth. As for the warp locks, we know their principles. We have experimental models. But we could short-circuit needless research by using your design. We are a new race, new to space. Naturally we cannot do in a few years what you needed centuries to accomplish.”

“You’ll have to look for help elsewhere. In ten minutes, I’m quitting the key—unless you change your mind.”

Hulgruv shrugged. While Roki answered the signals, he listened for sounds of activity throughout the ship. He heard nothing except the occasional clump of boots, the brief mutter of a voice in the corridor, the intermittent rattling of small tools. There seemed to be no excitement or anxiety. The Solarians conducted themselves with quiet self-assurance.

“Is your crew aware of what is happening?”

“Certainly.”

As the deadline approached, his fingers grew nervous on the key. He steeled himself, and waited, clutching at each second as it marched past. What good would it do to sacrifice Daleth and himself? He would succeed only in destroying one ship and one crew. But it was a good trade—two pawns for several knights and a rook. And, when the Solarians began their march across space, there would be many such sacrifices.

For the last time, he answered a signal, then leaned back to stare at Hulgruv. “Two minutes, Solarian. There’s still time to change your mind.”

Hulgruv only smiled. Roki shrugged and stood up. A pistol flashed into the commander’s hand, warning him back. Roki laughed contemptuously.

“Afraid I’ll try to take your last two minutes away?” He strolled away from the table toward the door. “Stop!” Hulgruv barked.

“Why? I want to see the girl.”

“Very touching. But she’s busy at the moment.”

“What?” He turned slowly, and glanced at his watch. “You don’t seem to realize that in fifty seconds—”

“We’ll see. Stay where you are.”

The Cophian felt a sudden coldness in his face. Could they have found a flaw in his net of death?—a way to circumvent the sudden application of the Idiot’s C-drive, with its consequent ruinous stresses to both ships? Or had they truly memorized the Cophian symbols to a one second reaction time?

He shrugged agreeably and moved in the general direction of the transmitter tuning units. There was one way to test the possibility. He stopped several feet away and turned to face Hulgruv’s suspicious eyes. “You are braver than I thought,” he growled.

The admission had the desired effect. Hulgruv tossed his head and laughed arrogantly. There was an instant of relaxation. The heavy automatic wavered slightly. Roki backed against the transmitters and cut the power switch. The hum died.

“Ten seconds, Hulgruv! Toss me your weapon. Shoot and you shatter the set. Wait and the tubes get cold. Toss it!”

Hulgruv bellowed, and raised the weapon to fire. Roki grinned. The gun quivered. Then with a choking sound, the Solarian threw it to him. “Get it on!” he howled. “Get it on!”

As Roki tripped the switch again, the signals were already chirping in the loud-speaker. He darted aside, out of view from the corridor. Footsteps were already racing toward the control room.

The signals stopped. Then the bleat of an answer! Another key had been set up in the adjoining room! With Daleth answering the challenges?

The pistol exploded in his hand as the first crewman came racing through the doorway. The others backed out of sight into the corridor as the projectile-weapon knocked their comrade back in a bleeding sprawl. Hulgruv made a dash for the door. Roki cut him down with a shot at the knee.