“I don’t understand,” he said, almost weeping.
The voice corrected him: “You do. But you do not—yet—know that you do. Consider the facts:
“Your planet. Sterile and slowly dying.
“The planets you have seen. One sterile because it is imprisoned by ancients, one sterile under an in-driven matriarchal custom, one sterile because all traces of divergence have been wiped out.
“Earth. Split into an incurable dichotomy—the sterility of brainless health, the sterility of sick intellect.
“Humanity, then, imprisoned in a thousand sterile tubes, cut off each from the other, dying. We feared war, and so we isolated the members with a wall of time. We have found something worse to fear. What if the walls are cracked?”
“Crack the walls? How? Is it too late?”
Somehow the image of Helena was before him.
“Is it too late?” they gently mocked. “Surely you know. How? Perhaps you will ask her.”
The image of Helena was blushing.
Ross’s heart leaped. “As simple as that?”
“For you, yes. For others there will be lives spent over the lathes and milling machines, eyes gone blind in calculating and refining trajectories, daring ones lost screaming in the hearts of stars, or gibbering with hunger and pain as the final madness closes down on them, stranded between galaxies. There will be martyrs to undergo the worst martyrdom of all—which is to say, they will never know of it. They will be unhappy traders and stock-chasers, grinding their lives to smooth dull blanks against the wearying routine so that the daring ones may go forth to the stars. But for you—you have seen the answer.
“Old blood runs thin. Thin blood runs cold. Cold blood dies. Let the walls crack.”
There was a murmuring in the shadows that Ross could not hear. Then the voice again, saying a sort of goodbye.
“We have had a great deal of experience with children, so we know that they must not be told too much. There is nothing more you need be told. You will go back now—”
Ross dared interrupt. “But our ship—the others have taken it away—”
Again the soundless laughter. “The ship has not been taken far. Did you think we would leave you stranded here?”
Ross peered hard into the shadows. But only the shadows were there, and then he and Jones were in the shadows no longer.
“Ross!” Helena was hysterical with joy. Even Bernie was stammering and shaking his head incredulously. “Ross, dearest! We thought—And the ship acted all funny, and then it landed here and there just wasn’t anybody around, and I couldn’t make it go again—”
“It will go now,” Ross promised. It did. They sealed ship; he took the controls; and they hung in space, looking back on a blue-green planet with a single moon.
There were questions; but Ross put an end to questions. He said, “We’re going back to Halsey’s Planet. Haarland wanted an answer. We’ve found it; we’ll bring it to him. The F.T.L. families have kept their secret too well. No wars between the planets—but stagnation worse than wars. And Haarland’s answer is this: He will be the first of the F.T.L. traders. He’ll build F.T.L. ships, and he’ll carelessly let their secrets be stolen. We’ll bridge the galaxy with F.T.L. transports; and we’ll pack the ships with a galaxy of crews! New genes for old; hybrid vigor for dreary decay!
“Do you see it?” His voice was ringing loud; Helena’s eyes on him were adoring. “Mate Jones to Azor, Halsey’s Planet to Earth. Smash the smooth, declining curve! Cross the strains, and then breed them back. Let mankind become genetically wild again instead of rabbits isolated in their sterile hutches!”
Exultantly he set up the combinations for Halsey’s Planet on the Wesley board.
Helena was beside him, proud and close, as he threw in the drive.
Colophon
Search the Sky
was published in 1954 by
Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth.
This ebook was produced for
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Internet Archive.
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Man on a Balcony,
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