To The Stars

“So we can capture them!” Auguste Blanc was exuberant, his earlier fears forgotten for the moment. “A genius of a plan, Thurgood-Smythe, may I congratulate you. They brought this war upon themselves and now they will pay. We will take the food and give them starvation in return.”

“Exactly what I had in mind, Auguste. Exactly.”

They smiled at each other with sadistic pleasure.

“They have only themselves to blame,” Thurgood-Smythe said. “We gave them peace and they gave us war. We will now show them the high price that must be paid for that decision. When we are done with them there will be peace in the galaxy forever. They have forgotten that they are the children of Earth, that we built the commonwealth of planets for their sakes. They have forgotten what it cost to terraform all of their planets to make them suitable for occupation by mankind, the cost in lives and money. They have rebelled against our gentle hand of rule. We shall now clench this hand into a fist and they shall be punished. They started this rebellion, this war — but we will finish it.”

Three

“You’re going now,” Alzbeta said. She spoke calmly, almost emotionlessly, but her hands were clenched hard on Jan’s. They stood in the shadow of a great bulk grain carrier, one of the shining cylinders of metal that rose up high behind them. He looked down into her gentle features and could find no words to answer with; he simply nodded. The love in her face, the yearning there, they were too much for him and he had to turn away.

It was the irony of life that after all his lonely years on this twilight planet, now, married and a father-to-be, with a measure of peace and happiness at last, now was the time he had to leave. But there were no alternatives. He was the only one here who would fight for the rights of the people of this agricultural world, who might possibly see to it that some day a complete and decent society might grow on this planet. Because he was the only one on Halvmork who had been born on Earth and who knew the reality of existence there and in the rest of the Earth Commonwealth. Halvmork was a dead-end world now, where the inhabitants were agricultural slaves, working to feed the other planets for no return other than their bare existence. In the present emergency the rebel planets would expect them to keep on working as they always had. Well they would farm still — but only if they could be free of their planetary prison. Free to be part of the Commonwealth culture, free to have their children educated — and finally free to change the stunted and artificial society forced upon them by Earth. Jan knew that he would not be thanked, or even liked, for what he was going to do. He would do it still. He owed it to the generations to come. To his own child among others.

“Yes, we must leave now,” he said.

“You are needed here.” She did not want to plead with him, but it was in her voice.

“Try to understand. This planet, big as it is to us, it’s really only a very small part of the galaxy. A long time ago I lived on Earth, worked there very successfully, and was happy enough until I discovered what life was really like for most of the people. I tried to help them — but that is illegal on Earth. I was arrested for this, stripped of everything, then shipped out here as a common laborer. It was that or death. Not too hard a choice. But while the slow years passed here, the rebellion that I was a part of has succeeded. Everywhere but on Earth. For the moment my work here is done, the corn has been saved and will go out to the hungry planets. But now that we have fed the rebellion I want to make sure that we share in the victory as well. Do you understand? I must go. And it is time. The orbits have been calculated and these ships will have to lift very soon.

Alzbeta looked steadfastly into Jan Kulozik’s face as he spoke, memorizing those thin, taut features. She put her arms about his wiry and hard-muscled body then, pressing tight against it, so that the child within her was between them, in the sheltered warmth of their bodies, clutching hard as though when she released him she might never hold him again. It was a possibility she did not consider, yet it was lurking just out of sight all of the time. There was a war being fought among the alien stars and he was going to it. But he would come back; that was the only thought she would let her brain hold on to.

“Come back to me,” she whispered aloud, then pulled away from him, running toward their home. Not wanting to look at him again, afraid that she would break down and make him ashamed.

“Ten minutes,” Debhu called out from the foot of the boarding ladder. “Let’s get aboard and strap in.”

Jan turned and climbed up the ladder. One of the crewmen was waiting in the airlock and he sealed the outer hatch as soon as they had passed through.

“I’m going to the bridge,” Debhu said. “Since you’ve never been in space you’ll strap in on deck.”

“I’ve worked in free fall,” Jan said.