before. Some distance from this compelling crescent, tiny by comparison, the sun burned brighter than life itself.
Marapper pointed at it in fascination.
‘What’s that? A sun?’ he asked.
Complain nodded.
‘Holy smother!’ Marapper exclaimed, staggered. ‘It’s round! Somehow I’d always expected it would be square — like a big pilot light!’
Zac Deight had gone over to the radio. As he picked it up, tremblingly, he turned to the others.
‘You may as well know now,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens, I may as well tell you. That planet — it’s Earth!’
‘What?’ Complain said. A rush of questions assailed him. ‘You’re lying, Deight! You must be. It can’t be Earth! We know it can’t be Earth!’
The old man was suddenly weeping, the long salt tears raining down his cheeks. He hardly tried to check them.
‘You ought to be told,’ he said. ‘You’ve all suffered so much… too much. That’s Earth out there — but you can’t go to it. The Long Journey… the Long Journey has got to go on forever. It’s just one of those cruel things.’
Complain grabbed him by his scrawny throat.
‘Listen to me, Deight,’ he snarled. ‘If that’s Earth, why aren’t we down there, and who are you — and the Outsiders — and the Giants? Who are you all, eh? Who are you?’
‘We’re — we’re from Earth,’ Zac Deight husked. He waved his hands fruitlessly before Complain’s contorted face; he was being shaken like an uprooted ponic stalk. Marapper was shouting in Complain’s ear and wrenching at his shoulder. They were all shouting together, Deight’s face growing crimson under Complain’s tightening grasp. They barged into the space suits and sent two crashing to the floor, sprawling on top of them. Then finally the priest managed to pry Complain’s fingers away from the councillor’s throat.
‘You’re crazy, Roy!’ he gasped. ‘You’ve gone crazy! You were throttling him to death.’
‘Didn’t you hear what he said?’ Complain shouted. ‘We’re victims of some dreadful conspiracy –’
‘Make him speak to Little Dog first — make him speak first — he’s the only one who can work this radio thing! Make him speak, Roy. You can kill him and ask questions after.’
Gradually the words filtered into Complain’s comprehension. The blinding anger and frustration ebbed like a crimson tide from his mind. Marapper, as always canny where his own safety was concerned, had spoken wisely. With an effort, Complain gained control of himself again. He stood up and dragged Deight roughly to his feet.
‘What is Little Dog?’ he asked.
‘It’s… it’s the code name for an institute on the planet, set up to study the inmates of this ship,’ Zac Deight said, rubbing his throat.
‘To study!… Well, get on to them right quick and say — say some of your men are ill and they’ve got to send a ship straight away to fetch them down to Earth. And don’t say anything else or we’ll tear you apart and feed you to the rats. Go on!’
‘Ah!’ Marapper rubbed his hands in appreciation and gave his cloak a tug down at the back. ‘That’s spoken like a true believer, Roy. You’re my favourite sinner. And when the ship gets here, we overpower the crew and go back to Earth in it. Everyone goes!
Zac Deight cradled the set in his arm, switching on power. Then, braving their anger, he mustered his courage and turned to face them.
‘Let me just say this to you both,’ he said, with dignity. ‘Whatever happens — and I greatly fear the outcome of all this terrible affair — I’d like you to remember what I am telling you. You feel cheated, rightly. Your lives are enclosed in suffering by the narrow walls of this ship. But wherever you lived, in whatsoever place or time, your lives would not be free of pain. For everyone in the universe, life is a long, hard journey. If you –’
‘That’ll do, Deight,’ Complain said. ‘We’re not asking for paradise: we’re demanding to choose where we suffer. Start talking to Little Dog.’
Resignedly, his face pale, Zac Deight started to call, all too aware of the dazer a yard from his face. In a moment, a clear voice from the plastic box said: ‘Hullo, Big Dog. Little Dog here, receiving you loud and clear. Back.’
‘Hullo, Little Dog,’ Zac Deight said, then stopped. He painfully cleared his throat. The sweat coursed down his forehead. As he paused, Complain’s weapon jerked under his nose, and he began again, staring momentarily out at the sun in anguish. ‘Hullo, Little Dog,’ he said. ‘Will you please send up a ship to us at once —
He took Complain’s blast in the teeth, Marapper’s in the small of his back. He crumpled over, the radio chattering as it fell with him. He did not even twitch. He was dead before he hit the deck. Marapper seized the instrument up from the floor.
‘All right!’ he bawled into it. ‘Come and get us, you stinking scab-devourers! Come and get us!’
With a heave of his arm, the priest sent the set shattering against the bulkhead. Then, with characteristic change of mood, he fell on his knees before Zac Deight’s body, in the first gesture of prostration, and began the last obsequies over it.
Fists clenched, Complain stared numbly out at the planet. He could not join the priest. The compulsion to perform ritual gestures over the dead had left him; he seemed to have grown beyond superstition. But what transfixed him was a realization which evidently had not occurred to Marapper, a realization which cancelled all their hopes.
After a thousand delays, they had found Earth was near. Earth was their true home. And Earth, on Zac Deight’s admission, had been taken over by Giants and Outsiders. It was against that revelation Complain had burnt his anger in vain.
V
Laur Vyann stood silent and helpless, watching the furious activity on Deck 20. She managed to stand by wedging herself in a broken doorway: the gravity lines on this deck had been severed in the assaults of Master Scoyt’s stormtroopers. Now directions in the three concentric levels had gone crazy; ups and downs existed that had never existed before, and for the first time Vyann realized just how ingeniously the engineers who designed the ship had worked. Half the deck, under these conditions, would be impossible to live in: the compartments were built on the ceilings.
Near Vyann, equally silent, were a cluster of Forwards women, some of them clutching children. They watched, many of them, the destruction of their homes.
Scoyt, clad only in a pair of shorts, black as a pot, had fully recovered from his gassing and was now dismantling the entire deck, as earlier he had begun to dismantle Deck 25. On receiving Complain’s message from Vyann, he had flung himself into the work with a ferocity terrible to watch.
His first move had been to have executed without further ado the two women and four men whom Pagwam, with some of the Survival Team, had found wearing the octagonal ring of the Outsiders. Under his insensate direction, as Complain had predicted, the turbulence of Hawl and his fellow brigands had been curbed — or, rather, canalized into less randomly destructive paths. With Gregg, his face and arm stump bandaged, out of the way, Hawl readily took his place; his shrunken face gleamed with pleasure as he worked the heat gun. The rest of Gregg’s mob worked willingly with him, unhampered by the lack of gravity. It was not that they obeyed Hawl, but that his demoniac will was theirs.
What had once been a neat honeycomb of corridor and living accommodation, now, in the light of many
