selection procedure, or its equivalent. As long as Lindstromland can accept immigrants only in regulated quantities the quality of the stock which arrives will be higher.”
“Do you think the concept of stock and breeding would have been familiar to them?”
“Perhaps not.” Elizabeth realized she had used an unfortunate trigger-word, one to which the upstart of a civil servant reacted unfavourably. It struck her that things had already gone too far when she, President of Starflight, was being forced to placate an obscure official in the weakest government in human history. The circumstances surrounding the discovery of Lindstromland, she was beginning to appreciate, had been ill omens.
Devereaux apparently was not satisfied. “It would be a tragedy if Earth were to export attitudes such as nationalism and…”
“What I’m saying,” Elizabeth cut in, “is that it would be an even bigger tragedy if we were to empty every slum and gutter on Earth into this green land.”
“Why?” Devereaux met her eyes squarely and she made the discovery that his greyness had a steely quality. “Because the transportation task would be too great to be handled by a private concern?”
Elizabeth felt her mouth go dry as she fought to restrain herself. Nobody had ever been allowed to speak to her in this manner before, with the possible exception of Captain Garamond — and he had paid. It was infuriating how these small men, nonentities, tended to lapse into insolence the moment they felt secure.
“Of course not,” she said, marvelling at the calmness of her voice. “There are many sound reasons for regulating population flow. Look at the squalid difficulties there were when the first settlers here encountered those creatures they call Clowns.”
“Yes, but those difficulties could have been avoided. In fact, we think they may have been engineered.”
For one heady moment Elizabeth considered burning Devereaux in two where he stood, even if it led to a major incident, even if it meant turning Lindstromland into a fortress. Then it came to her that Devereaux — in abandoning all the rules of normal diplomacy — was laying his cards on the table. She regarded him closely for a moment, trying to decide if he was offering himself for sale. The approach, in greatly modified form, was a familiar one among government employees — show yourself to be dangerous and therefore valuable in proportion. She smiled and moved closer to Devereaux, deliberately stepping inside his proximity rejection zone, a psychological manoeuvre she had learned at an early age. His face stiffened momentarily, as she had known it would, and she was about to touch him when Secretary Robard appeared on the edge of the stair-well. He was carrying a headset and feeding wire out of a reel as he walked.
Elizabeth frowned at him. “What is this, Robard?”
“Priority One, My Lady. Your flagship is picking up a radio message which you must hear.”
“Wait there.” She moved away from Devereaux. The brusqueness of her man’s voice, so out of keeping with his normal manner, told her something important had happened. She silently cursed the obtuse physics of Lindstromland which had denied her easy radio contact with the outside universe. A voice was already speaking when she put on the headset. It was unemotional, with an inhuman steadiness, and the recognition of it drained the strength from her legs. Elizabeth Lindstrom sank to her knees, and listened.
“…using the resources of the
“The entrance was not discovered during the equatorial survey because it is sealed with a metal diaphragm. The metal employed has nothing in common with the material of the Orbitsville shell. I believe it is the product of a civilization no further advanced than our own. This belief is strengthened by the fact that we had no difficulty in cutting a hole in it to let us extend a radio antenna.”
There was a crackling pause, then the voice emerged strongly in its relentless measured tones. “The fact that we were able to find a second entrance so quickly, with such limited resources, can only mean that there must be many others. Many hundreds. Many thousands. It is logical to assume that all the others have been similarly blocked, and it is equally logical to assume that it was not done by the builders of the sphere.
“This raises questions about the identity and motivation of those who sealed the entrances. The evidence suggests that the work was carried out by a race of beings who found Orbitsville long before we did. We may never know what these beings looked like, but we can tell that they shared some of the faults of our own race. They, or some of them, decided to monopolize Orbitsville, to control it, to exploit it; and the method they chose was to limit access to the interior of the sphere.
“The evidence also shows that they succeeded — and that, eventually, they failed.
“Perhaps they were destroyed in the battle we know to have taken place at the Beachhead City entrance. Perhaps in the end they lost out to Orbitsville itself. By being absorbed and changed, just as we are going to be absorbed and changed. The lesson for us now is that the entire Starflight organization — with its vested interest in curbing humanity’s natural expansion — must be set aside. All of Orbitsville is open to us. It is available as I speak…”
Elizabeth removed the headset, cutting herself off from the dreadful didactic voice. She put her hands on the smooth surface of the roof and sank down until she was lying prone, her open mouth pressed against the foot- printed plastic.
“My Lady, are you ill?” The voice reached her across bleak infinities. Elizabeth raised her head and, with effort, identified the grey anxious face of Charles Devereaux. She got to her feet.
“How dare you!” she said coldly. “What are you suggesting?”
“Nothing. I…”
“Why did you let this…
Robard bowed nervously. “If you will excuse me…”
“Not yet,” Elizabeth snapped. “Get me Doctor Killops on that thing.”
“Yes, My Lady,” Robard murmured into the instrument, listened for a moment, and then handed it to her. He began to withdraw but she pointed at a spot nearby, silently ordering him to stay.
Elizabeth raised the communicator to her lips. “Tell me, Doctor Killops, has Mrs Garamond had her sedative today yet? No? Then don’t give it to her. Captain Garamond is returning, alive, and we want his wife to be fully conscious and alert for the reunion.” She threw the instrument down and Robard stooped to pick it up.
“Never mind that,” Elizabeth said quietly. “Get my car ready to leave in five minutes. I have urgent business in Beachhead City.”
The shock of hearing by radio that his wife and son were still alive had stormed through Garamond’s system like a nuclear fireball. In its wake had come relief, joy, gratitude, bafflement, renewal of optimism — and finally, as a consequence of emotional overload, an intense physical reaction. There was a period of several hours during which he experienced cold sweats, irregular heartbeat and dizziness; and the symptoms were at their height when the little transit boat from fleet headquarters arrived underfoot.
As had happened once before, he felt disoriented and afraid on seeing a spacesuited figure clamber upwards through a black hole in the ground. The figure was followed by others who were carrying empty spacesuits, and — even when the faceplates had been removed and the two parties were mingling — they still looked strange to him. At some time in the preceding months he had come to accept the thin-shouldered shabbiness of his own crew as the norm, and now the members of the rescue party seemed too sleek and shiny, too alien.
“Captain Garamond?” A youthful Starflight officer approached him and saluted, beardless face glowing with pleasure and health. “I’m Lieutenant Kenny of the
