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that it might refuse to obey him.
"Open the study door!" he commanded, fixing his gaze on the machine's
glowing slits.
The machinery of the Faetians was so sophisticated that it detected
their moods. This height of development had its vulnerable side.
The secretary-box, manufactured in Dan-jab, was simply a machine always
obedient to the will of its owner, the Dictator of Powermania. It now
recognised this will in Kutsi and obeyed it.
The door to Yar Jupi's study opened.
Yar Jupi jumped up from the table and stared in terror at the burly
stranger with a wrestler's neck and a sneer on his face.
"Who are you?" shouted the Dictator, shaking from head to foot.
"Your judge," replied Kutsi coldly, advancing on him.
If Yar Jupi had not been in such a panic fear of living Faetians and
had not kept them at a distance, Kutsi's plan would not have worked. But
this time Kutsi was face to face with the Dictator in person.
"Robots! Security robots!" yelled Yar Jupi in a voice hoarse with
terror.
The robots ran in, ready for action.
"Tie his hands together!"
It was not Yar Jupi, but Kutsi who gave the order in a voice full of
hatred.
Yar Jupi raged, screamed and ordered the robots to obey him, but his
brain was radiating terror, not the hatred so familiar to the robots.
The robots unthinkingly bound the Dictator's hands.
"You are the greatest criminal of all time!" announced Kutsi Merc,
standing before the helpless Dictator. He considered himself the only one
who had survived to act on behalf of all the victims. "I bear within me the
hatred of all the victims of your criminal doctrine, whose goal you made
destruction and whose meaning was hatred. But there is a hatred greater than
yours. I bring that hatred down on you in the name of the history of
Reason!"
"I pray you for mercy," whined the Dictator. "Not many are left alive
on Faena. I shall work humbly, like the last roundhead; I shall acknowledge
the Doctrine of Justice, I shall grow flowers. Just look at the beauty I
have raised. Let us go to the niche, let us savour the fragrance of those
blossoms together."
"Silence. I shall not let you breathe the scent of your own flowers.
Prepare yourself for the most shameful execution of all. I am going to
switch on all the monitor screens and before the eyes of your fellows / am
going to hang you!"
Kutsi Merc tore down the curtains covering the screens. The monitors
lit up.
The terrified military leaders and members of the Blood Council watched
helplessly from them.
Kutsi deftly pulled a cord out of the curtains, deftly tied a noose,
jumped onto the desk and attached the cord to the chandelier hook. The noose
dangled directly under the lamps. The table had to be moved aside.
Then Kutsi stood Yar Jupi, who was shaking with terror, on the
Dictator's chair as if he were no more than a will-less puppet.
The robots moved away, watching the proceedings impassively. Kutsi
noticed that on several screens the military leaders had covered their eyes
with their hands, while on the others, the Faetians, with their cowls thrown
back, were watching the progress of the execution with malignant glee.
"In the name of History," announced Kutsi Merc, and he kicked the chair
from under the Dictator's feet.
Dobr Mar only came round from time to time, half-recumbent in the
Ruler's chair and in a far from comfortable position.
All the screens in the bunker were dead. The lamps of the emergency
lighting glowed dully.
The military leaders and the anguished Sister of Health were still
fussing over the Ruler. Her name was, Vera Fae. All her family had perished
up above: father, mother, husband, three daughters-all except her son, who
had flown to Terr with a space expedition. Vera Fae was in despair. She
could find strength only in attending to the sick Ruler.
Dobr Mar had lost the power of speech. His tongue, right hand and right
leg were paralysed. He could only communicate with his eyes. Vera Fae alone
could understand him.
Haggard, her hair turned white in the last few hours, with tear-stained
eyes, she had not lost the gentle touch and warm voice of the doctor-all
that the Ruler could respond to.
There was no one to take over from him. The "Ruler's friend", who was
supposed to do so according to the law, had been killed up above, like
millions of other Faetians.
The military leaders announced through Vera Fae that the reserve
torpedoes had been expended. But barbarians' torpedoes were still showering
down on their own continent, leaving a scene of total devastation.
The Ruler made an attempt to move. The Sister of Health looked into his
eyes, trying to read his thoughts.
The chief of the disintegration weapons came up. He had been entrusted
with that terrible means of aggression because of his known cowardice and
reluctance to make his own decisions. Even this time he, too, wanted at all
costs the Ruler's written consent to the detonation of the last,
superpowerful underwater disintegration device which had been delivered
under Kutsi Merc's supervision to the Great Shore, almost to the very place
where Ave and Mada had once been surf-riding.
Dobr Mar could not understand the showily overdressed general who, his
voice rising to a falsetto, tried to convince the Sister of Health by
saying, "The destruction of the Dictator's underground Lair is our only
salvation. Such is the will of the Great Circle."
Dobr Mar wearily closed his eyes.
"He agrees! He agrees!" said the hunchbacked general delightedly.
But Dobr Mar opened his eyes again and, in an effort to say something,
stared at his desk.
Vera Fae took some inscribed tablets off it and held them in front of
his eyes.
On seeing one of them, Dobr Mar looked down.
Vera Fae showed the tablet to the general.
"I know that!" he screeched like a cockerel. "When he invented the
disintegration weapon, the honoured Elder Dm Sat wanted to restrict its use
and frightened the Faetians with the apparent prospect of all the planet's
oceans being blown up."
Dobr Mar closed his eyes.
"Does Ruler Dobr Mar agree?" persisted the general. "Can the Sister of
Health sign on his behalf a document authorising the detonation of the
underwater disintegration device?"
"How can I do that if the Ruler himself has reminded us of the great
Elder's warning?"
"A naive fabrication! As if all the waters of the oceans, in the event
of a superpowerful explosion, would immediately disintegrate, releasing
their energy like a supernova. And as if our whole planet would be turned
into a tiny supernova."
"Don't you find that terrifying?" asked the Sister of Health.
"What could be more terrifying than what's already happened? The
Dictator of Powermania must be stopped at all costs. An underwater explosion
by the Great Shore will start an earthquake; it will destroy his bunker down
there. The oceanic tidal wave will rise to the heavens, crash down on the
Lair and flood it. If the Sister of Health can convince the Ruler, he will
agree. His written order is needed for the explosion. He alone is
responsible for everything."
The Sister of Health looked into the dim eyes of the sick man. He
closed them.
"He agrees, at last he agrees!" howled the general, seizing the Ruler's
lifeless hand and applying it to the plate. "Explode it!" shouted the
general in a thin voice and, his leg dragging, he ran out of the study,
plate in hand.
Dobr Mar watched him go with a frightened look. He wanted to say
something, but was unable to.
The Sister of Health came to her senses and tried to stop the general,
but the Ruler felt worse and she had to help him, wiping his face that was
twisted in a grimace and was covered with beads of sweat.
The general returned. The order had been passed on. The explosion would
take place...
"I take no responsibility for anything!" he shouted.
Chapter Seven
Every Sister of Health has something of the mother in her.
Her desire to help a sick man, her maternal attitude to a suffering
person, now helpless as a child and therefore as dear to her as if he were
her own, were struggling in Mada with a keen, unjustified, as she
considered, homesickness.
Unable to understand this feeling and rejecting it, she looked
devotedly after Um Sat, whose life was now fading...
With his large beard, his piercing, yearning (for Faena, of course!)
eyes, he was lying motionless on his couch. His illness was delaying the
return of Quest and intensifying the homesickness that Mada and her
colleagues felt for Faena.
As a Sister of Health, however, she had to rise above her personal
sufferings and she looked after the Elder, trying to cure his mysterious
illness, since a speedy return might mean his salvation. But there could be
no thought of that with Um Sat so seriously ill. Mada looked after him
devotedly; she was not only a Sister of Health to him, but a spiritual
confidante. She admitted to him her yearning for Faena and received in
return the Elder's terrible confession that all the oceans on Faena might
blow up as a result of a disintegration war. Mada shuddered, frowned and
shook her head in protest.
By shouldering part of the Elder's alarm, she eased his condition,
affirming that matters could not go as far as such a catastrophe and they
would surely go back to their Faena where they were so eagerly awaited.
On Mada's instructions, Ave and Gor Terr went hunting in the forest.
She would not let them touch the provisions intended for the return journey.
Return journey! It was a goal, a dream, a passionate desire, and it was
not felt by Mada alone.
She told Toni Fae to stay by the electromagnetic communications
apparatus which, for some strange reason, had gone silent. The thread
linking Quest and their native planet had snapped. Mada reassured Toni Fae
that the atmosphere of Terr was to blame: it was blanketing off the
electromagnetic waves from Faena and Mar.
Toni Fae was desperate to go home. He could not sleep. He would doze
off at the apparatus, then wake up in a cold sweat, now hearing his mother,
Vera Fae, calling him, now imagining that it was Ala Veg laughing at him.
But the apparatus remained silent. There were times when Toni Fae couldn't
bear it any more. Then Jvlada's gentle hand would rest on his trembling
shoulder and her calm, soft voice would assure him that the state of Terr's
atmosphere would change; they need only wait, and he would hear the
longed-for signal.
Um Sat, however, was not so easily pacified. Mada knew what he thought
about a disintegration war and how it had been tormenting him even before
they had left Faena.
Ave was gloomy for the same reason.
He was no longer the sensitive youth who had made such an impression on
Mada as he rode the ocean waves. He had changed inwardly and outwardly.
After growing a moustache and a beard on Terr, he looked much older, calmer,
more self-assured and stronger.
Mada knew that by sending her husband out hunting, she was subjecting
him to danger. But as she thought about all the crew, she could not act
otherwise, for she had faith in his strength, agility and courage.
Consequently, when, apart from a reindeer rescued from a beast of prey,
Ave brought back a spotted hide with its jaws fixed in a snarl, Mada was not
surprised, seeing it as only natural.
Ave was morose. He said nothing to Mada, but she knew everything! And
she feared not so much the something terrible that could happen out there,
perhaps somewhere far away, as for her "children" whom she was looking after
here, although these children were Ave, Um Sat, Toni Fae and Gor Terr.
The long-armed and stooping Faetian giant was missing his native planet
as badly as everyone else. The primitive mode of life which he and Ave, as
the main providers, had to lead here was unpleasant and even offensive to a
skilled engineer.
As he wandered through the densely packed tree-trunks on the alien
planet, Gor Terr never ceased making grandiose plans for technical
improvements that there was no one to implement on Terr: there were neither
workshops, nor assistants, and so there could not be any progress or
civilisation.
Around them lay the alien, primeval forest. From time to time, they
would glimpse antlers or the spotted hide of a predator. Who was going to
win?
Gor Terr stubbornly shook his head. No! This life was not for him! He
didn't want to be like his ancestors with their clubs and stone axes,
however much he might resemble them physically. He was not going to be like
the savages of the Stone Age. Let other Faetians colonise other planets, but
he was going to return to workshops, steamcars, rockets and skyscrapers!
One starry night, in despair of ever hearing a signal over the
electromagnetic communications, Ton! Fae began searching among the stars for
the faintly visible Faena, as if hoping to see a light signal.
And then he saw one!
The young astronomer couldn't believe his eyes and rushed to the star
map. Was he looking at the right place? No, he hadn't made a mistake. Faena
should be passing through that particular constellation between Alt and Veg.
The little star had evidently been swamped by the brilliant flare of a
supernova. Somewhere immeasurably far away, beyond the fringe of the Galaxy,
the latest cosmic disaster had taken place and the light of a once exploding
star had finally reached Sol and its planets. And only by chance had the
supernova blotted out Faena. He must now wait until the planet, travelling
across the sky on a complex path divergent from that of the stars, emerged
from the brilliant light of the supernova and began to shine at a distance
with its usual faint, but so very dear and appealing light.
The supernova, however, shining more brightly than all the other stars,
except for Sol in the daytime, seemed not to want Faena to get away. It was
moving across the sky, not like a star, but like a planet...
Ton! Fae caught his breath. He started rousing Gor Terr, who simply
wouldn't wake up and merely bellowed in his sleep.
Ave Mar woke up and applied his eye to the eyepiece.
Yes, an unusually bright star was blazing in the night sky. It was
clearly visible to the naked eye; it was like a lantern in the sky. But
there was something in its effulgence that made Ton! Fae's heart beat faster
in alarm.
Ave understood everything at once. He had long been keeping to himself
the secret that Dm Sat had entrusted to him about the danger hidden in the
oceans. And now out there...
Mada came in from the big cabin in which Um Sat slept. She was as white
as a sheet. She had only been suspecting it, but when she looked at her
husband, she understood everything.
"My dear Toni Fae," said Mada. "Prepare yourself for the worst. Tell
me, is your new star moving across the sky the way Faena should be moving?"
"It doesn't make sense, but it's true."
"Faena doesn't exist any more," said Ave Mar gloomily, and he put his
arm round Mada's shoulders.
"To be more precise, the former inhabited Faena doesn't exist any
more," corrected Mada. "A star has lit up in its place, but not for long."
Toni Fae looked at Mada and Ave with frightened eyes. He took off his
spectacles and methodically wiped the lenses.
"So Faena doesn't exist? And what about Mother?" The young astronomer
looked with childlike eyes at Mada, as if she ought to dispel a terrible
dream. "Why hasn't it lit up for long? No! Isn't it just that they've found
a way of signalling to us?"
"My dear Toni Fae, it really is a signal to us..."
"Just as I said!" exclaimed the young Faetian happily.
Ave stood with bowed head.
"It's a signal that there is nowhere for us to return to," he said with
an effort.
"What's going on here?" came Gor Terr's rolling bass voice.
Ave Mar took a deep breath.
"The disintegration war, which we have all been so afraid of, has
evidently taken place on our unhappy Faena. And its civilisation has
committed suicide."
"What utter r-rubbish!" yelled Gor Terr. "Leave our civilisation in
peace. It gave us all we have here."
"That's not enough for us to carry on living here."
"That's the last thing I'm aiming to do!"
Toni Fae rushed to his friend as he had done that time in the cave...
"They're saying that..." he whimpered like a child, "that life has
perished on Faena, that the planet has flared up for a time like a star."
"That's impossible," objected the engineer calmly. "There's been some
kind of observation error here. A disintegration war can wipe out a planet's
inhabitants, I'm not disputing that. But it can't annihilate a planet as a
heavenly body. Mass is mass, it can't just disappear. And what does 'has
flared up for a time' mean?"
Mada looked inquiringly at Ave.
"We must go down to Um Sat," he said. "Back on Faena, he told me about
one of the secrets of the disintegration of matter. If a superviolent
explosion should take place in the depths of the sea and if the heat level
should reach the critical limit, then all the water in the oceans would
instantly split into oxygen and hydrogen, and the hydrogen would become
helium, in this way releasing so much energy that the planet would flare up
like a star during the reaction."
"Damnation!" whispered the engineer.
"Um Sat warned both Dobr Mar and Yar Jupi of this. They wouldn't listen
to him."
"If all the oceans blow up at the same time, then the planet shouldn't
just flare up," said the engineer. "Under the impact of shock from all
directions, it should be broken up into pieces..."
"To be scattered later," confirmed Ave Mar. "And countless cycles
later, its fragments, colliding and breaking up, would spread out along
Faena's former orbit."
"How can you say all that?" shouted Toni Fae, clenching his fists. "My
mother was there, and my little sisters..."
"My mother was there too," replied Ave Mar sadly.
Toni Fae began sobbing. Gor Terr drew him towards himself, patting him
on the shoulder.
Ave and Mada exchanged glances and said more by doing so than could
ever have been conveyed in words. Then they held hands.
"So that's why there were no electromagnetic communications," said Toni
Fae, still sobbing. "War had started up there."
"And on the Mar stations?" boomed Gor Terr.
"Perhaps on them too," confirmed Ave Mar sadly.
"No, no!" protested Toni Fae, looking in terror at Ave with eyes full
of tears. "It can't be possible out there too!"
Ave shrugged his shoulders.
"There are Faetians on them as well."
"Ala Veg is there!" shouted Toni Fae. "She's not one of them!"
"Calm yourself, Toni Fae," said Mada gently. "I think we should still
tell Dm Sat about the end of Faena."
"Wretched carr-rion-eaters! Why couldn't they value what they had?
They've destroyed thousands of millions of lives! How much higher and more
humane the local Faetoids are!"
As he shouted this, Gor Terr charged round the cabin in a frenzy.
"Calm down, friend Gor Terr," said Ave. "It's hard for us to bear the
horror that's come down on all of us when we've not only lost our dear ones,
but..."
"Towns, fields, r-rivers, forests, seas, oceans!" wailed Gor Terr.
"Yes. And oceans," confirmed Ave Mar sadly.
Gor Terr glared at him almost with hatred.
Then he sighed and said very quietly this time:
"Yes, it's easier for you. There are two of you."
"There are five of us," said Mada.
"If the Elder survives the shock."
"He has been readying himself for it too long," replied Mada. "He saw
it all coming."
"I was the one who didn't see anything coming. I was dreaming about new
spaceships, about wonderful cities on new planets, about incredible machines
that I was inventing in my mind."
"It will all have to be done on Terr," said Mada softly.
Gor Terr burst into a roar of forced laughter.
"Forget about civilisation once and for all, forget about technology.
Make clubs and stone axes. If you have children, you won't be able to teach
them anything that the unhappy Faetians knew. Civilisation means workshops
and Faetians toiling in them. Civilisation means writings that preserve the
treasures of thought. All that is gone, gone, gone! And it cannot exist here
either!"
Gor Terr was shouting in a frenzy. Toni Fae was frightened by this fit
of fury, but his attention was distracted by a signal from the
electromagnetic apparatus. The indicator lamp was winking on and off. The
astronomer rushed to the set.
"At last! Now the nightmare is over! You see, they're worried about us,
they want to tell us that it was a supernova, not Faena at all. How could we
have assumed such a thing?"
The Faetians watched Ton! Fae, each trying to retain at least a glimmer
of hope.
Finally the chesty voice of a Faetess was heard in the cabin. Toni
recognised it as Ala Veg's.
"Quest! Quest! Quest! Can you hear me? There has been a dreadful
catastrophe! We shall never have a homeland again. Faena has blown up for
some unaccountable reason, although it was recently intact, in spite of a
disintegration war that broke out on it. Quest! Quest! Quest! Hostilities
between Deimo and Phobo have ceased. If you too have been fighting amongst
yourselves, stop the conflict. There aren't any more Gutturals and there
aren't any more Superiors. There are only three small groups of unhappy
Faetians who have lost their homeland. Are you alive? If only you are still
alive! Can we live on Terr?"
Ave Mar put out the light in the observation cabin. The starry sky was
now clearer than ever, and so was the new star blazing in it, the malignant
Star of Hatred.
End of Part Two
________________________________________________________
Did an exploded planet actually exist in the Solar System?
In 1596, when he was investigating the laws governing the structure of
the Solar System, Kepler suspected there might be a planet missing between
Mars and Jupiter. At the end of the 18th century, the scientists Titius and
Bode gave a series of numbers: 0.4-0.7-1.0-1.6-2.8-5.2... It reflected the
distance of the planets from the Sun. The distance of the Earth from the Sun
was taken as unit. But there was no fifth planet with an Earth-Sun distance
of 2.8. The astronomers searched and began discovering, one after another,
the "minor planets" and even smaller bodies, or asteroids, which were moving
on a common orbit. They were fragmentary in shape and seemed to have formed
during the DISINTEGRATION of a destroyed planet. The German astronomer
Hermann Oberth 150 years ago expressed the hypothesis that such a planet had
once existed. In our own times, Professor Sergei Orlov, analysing this
hypothesis, gave the planet the romantic name of Phaeton. His work was
continued by Academicians Alexander Zavaritsky and Leonid Kvasha. Soviet
research, notably that of Yekaterina Gusakova, has shown that the residual
magnetism of the meteorites could be explained only by their magnetisation
as parts of a big mother planet. Felix Zigel (1963) determined its size as
approaching that of the Earth. However, neither the advocates nor the
opponents of this hypothesis have successfully accounted for the destruction
of the planet. If Phaeton blew up like a high-explosive bomb, its fragments
would have flown apart in elongated elliptical orbits round the Sun, but
they have remained in their old circular orbit... If two cosmic bodies had
collided in space, then their fragments would also have flown in elliptical
orbits and would not have formed a ring on the former orbit of the planet.
It is suggested that meteorite swarms form in at least ten places on the
ring of asteroids. It is possible that they are created by the collision and
disintegration of the former planet's fragments. Meteorites are falling on
Earth to this day, but they include so-called tektites which, perhaps, fell
on Earth only once as a consequence of a colossal nuclear explosion in
space. All the more so that the form, composition and dehydration of the
tektites are identical with nuclear slag.
Thus, a supposition about the cause of its destruction has been added
to the hypothesis of a Phaeton that existed in the past.
Fragments
Where be these enemies?- Capulet! Montague!
See what a scourge is laid upon your hate...
W. Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet
Chapter One
The new star shone ominously in Quest's porthole.
The Faetians maintained a shocked silence.
Suddenly, Gor Terr jumped to his feet.
"Technology! Damned technology! It's to blame for everything. I, Gor
Terr, the last of Faena's engineers, am the first to r-renounce
civilisation! To the forests! To the forests! To the caves! Wild Faetians on
a wild Terr!" he boomed, foaming at the mouth. ."If anyone r-refuses to
leave the r-rocket. I'll wring his neck. Let not a single metal part
r-remind wretched people that they were once cultured. Beasts are much
higher and nobler!"
His friends tried to calm the engineer down, still unwilling to admit
to themselves that his mind had become clouded.
"Please try to understand, Gor Terr," said Ave reassuringly, "that the
five Faetians left on Terr can only have one purpose-not just to survive,
but to preserve civilisation, to hand down the heritage of reason to future
generations..."
"R-really?" roared Gor Terr with a glare at Mada.
Embarrassed, Mada turned away.
"There must be cultured Faetians after us," confirmed Ave Mar, "and our
duty is to preserve for them the knowledge we possess."
"High-flown r-rubbish!" bellowed Gor Terr. "I hate those words and I
hate all those instruments. Even touching the damned metal drives me
frantic."
"Gor Terr will have to pull himself together," said Ave Mar, raising
his voice. "He's an engineer, and he'll stay an engineer to the end of his
days."
Gor Terr roared with laughter.
"So that your sons can learn how to make r-rockets out of wall
partitions? So that they can learn to slaughter animals, and then their own
kind?"
"Never shall the Faetians on Terr learn how to kill their own kind!"
exclaimed the outraged Ave Mar. "It will be the most terrible thing if we
bow down in our grief. No! Only energy, faith in ourselves and
resourcefulness will save what is left of the Faetian race."
"For what?" asked Gor Terr gloomily.
"For the triumph of reason!"
"High-flown words again! What d'you want?"
"I want you to think about what kind of building the Faetians are going
to use when they're in the forest, what apparatus and parts will have to be
taken from here to the new house, and how we can gradually dismantle the
rocket: it's the only source of metal on Terr."
"Dismantle?" echoed Toni Fae in fright.
"Yes," confirmed Ave Mar. "We won't need a spaceship any more. The
Faetians will use its walls for axes, knives, spear-points and arrows. We
have enough metal to last us several generations for that purpose. By that
time, Gor Terr's pupils and their descendants will have learned to prospect
for ore here and to smelt it. Civilisation must be preserved!"
Mada looked at her husband with rapture. How many times had he
presented himself to her in a new aspect, stronger, firmer, as one who knew
which course to adopt!
"Filthy despot!" roared Gor Terr. "He wants to make us serve his unborn
offspring! I've had enough of blind obedience to a Dictator who aimed for a
disintegration war and achieved it! No! I won't tolerate any authority over
me! I don't want to obey anybody's orders, least of all those of an
offspring of Danjab's R-ruler!"
"Gor Terr, my dear," intervened Mada gently, putting her hand on his
massive hairy arm. "Think what you are saying. We have no dictators here, or
rulers, or their children. There are only Faetians, united by common grief
and a common fate. Weren't you the one who dreamed of workshops on Terr? You
shall have workshops here in which we, your comrades, shall work for you,
and then..." She looked into his eyes and added, "I shall raise helpers for
you."
Gor Terr scowled, glaring malevolently from under his beetling brows.
Mada's maternal tone soothed him a little. But not for long. He soon
relapsed into his former fury and, without listening to anyone, began
smashing up the spaceship's control levers, bending them, trying to wrench
them out of their sockets.
To save the Faetians, the madman himself and keep the ship's equipment
intact, Mada ordered Gor Terr to be confined to the airlock which was used
for going out into space.
The noisy struggle with the Faetian strong man distracted the Faetians
from their common misfortune. The immediate blotted out what was far away.
And only after the hatch had been fastened down behind Gor Terr did Ave Mar
and Toni Fae, exhausted and shattered, collapsed into the armchairs at the
control panel. They stared dismally in front of them, panting for breath.
Mada was busy near the dispensary. She had decided to give Gor Terr an
injection and administer a shock that would bring him to his senses.
All attempts to go into the airlock, however, merely provoked further
attacks of frenzy. They could not even serve him his food.
Such was the unhappy way in which the Faetians spent the first days of
their permanent exile. Below, in the common cabin, Faena's most
distinguished scientist lay dying; above, in the airlock, the last surviving
engineer had gone raving mad.
Toni Fae was deeply depressed.
He heard Ala Veg's voice again during a routine session of
electromagnetic communication with Deimo. It was remote and sad. She talked
about the meaninglessness of existence, about her husband's serious illness,
about the total lack of change and how the station chief, as before, hated
the roundhead couple. She said that she despised life. She was terrified at
the thought of the distance that separated her from Toni Fae. Was life worth
living? She suggested that Toni Fae and she should both put an end to their
own lives during the next communications session.
Toni Fae could not hold out against this and agreed. He stole from
Mada's dispensary an ampoule of stupefying gas, a large dose of which could
be fatal. After he had inhaled a little of it, he felt blissfully happy,
could not stay on his feet, swayed and sang a silly song about a lizard
which ate its own tail. He then collapsed and went to sleep. Mada guessed
what had happened, found the ampoule hidden on his person and confiscated
it. When he came round, he made the discovery that Mada's language could be
far from endearing.
Toni Fae succumbed to apathy. Everything around him seemed dismal and
wretched. Even the world of nature had changed. There were no more colourful
sunsets on Terr. Night gave way to dull daylight. It never stopped
drizzling, and a patchy grey pall of mist clung to the tree-tops level with
the portholes of the control cabin. There were no golden apples left in the
forest.
When twilight descended on Terr, it reminded them of their own gloomy
planet.
Misery and homesickness seemed capable of destroying the will to live
in all the other Faetians, as had happened with Toni Fae.
Mada, however, in whom nature had stirred a sense of responsibility for
all, sick and well alike, could not give in to despair. She had to look
after Um Sat, feed everybody, keep an eye on Toni Fae and encourage Ave with
an affectionate glance from time to time.
Ave Mar was conducting himself with dignity. He had obligations which
none but he could fulfil: it was necessary to go hunting in the forest. Gor
Terr couldn't help him now. Ave would go out of the ship, leaving Mada in a
state of permanent anxiety, but he always returned before dark, and with his
kill. By the will of circumstances, Ave, a passionate believer in the
preservation of the lost Faena's civilisation, was having to lead a very
primitive mode of life. He had stopped using firearms, saving the ammunition
for more urgent occasions. He had made a bow and he practised archery. Using
his natural strength, he could draw a bowstring so that the arrow with its
hand-made head could pierce a stout tree-branch right through.
Once, Ave Mar brought back a big fat bird hit by one of his arrows.
Careful not to disturb Dm Sat, the astronauts assembled in the control
cabin, talking quietly amongst themselves. Mada began inexpertly plucking
the hunting trophy, pleased that it would make a good bouillon for the sick
man.
Toni Fae was adjusting the electromagnetic communications set, hoping
for a session with Ala Veg. Mada warned him that if he made a fool of
himself again, she would ban communications with Deimo. Toni sheepishly
bowed his head.
Ave Mar was relaxing after his hard day in the rain while hunting in
the forest.
Mada looked round at the porthole and screamed. The snarling face of a
Faetoid was staring into the cabin. His shoulders and chest were matted with
curly hair, his skin showing through underneath. No thought was readable in
the crazy eyes.
Only Ave Mar realised that this was Gor Terr lowering himself by rope,
not a wild beast that had made its way to them. The madman had evidently
torn his clothes into strips and knotted them together to make a rope. He
had opened the outer airlock hatch, climbed outside and was now descending
the ship's fuselage.
In an attempt to head him off, Ave Mar rushed to the transition hatch,
tore through the common cabin and disappeared into the lower airlock. He
shinned down the vertical ladder, hardly touching the rungs on the way.
But however agile Ave Mar may have been, Gor Terr had time on his side.
Ave Mar was only just getting out of the lower airlock when the escapee
was already clinging to the end of the home-made rope. No rational Faetian
would ever have risked jumping from such a height. But Gor Terr was not
being rational. He dropped to the ground in front of Ave Mar, jumped up
below him, as if on springs, and made a dash for the forest.
Without realising what he was doing, Gor Terr ran into the forest
straight on to the path beaten by the animals on their way to the watering
place. It was sodden after the rain and his feet slipped and slithered
apart. But he was conscious of only one thing: he was being pursued. He
leaped aside into a small glade, unrecognisable after the rain, since it was
covered with muddy puddles that disappeared into the mist. Gor Terr never
suspected that there was a bog hidden underneath the wet green surface. He
dived into a cloud of mist hanging over the grass and disappeared.
Ave Mar, who had been following on his heels, stopped dead. Then he
immediately dashed forward. His feet sloshed through the slime. He took
several careful, squelching steps and suddenly saw Gor Terr in the mist. He
looked as if he was sitting down on the green grass. Only his head and torso
were visible above it. It took Ave Mar a moment to realise that Gor Terr had
sunk waist-deep into a quagmire.
Until recently, Ave Mar, used to dwelling in the civilised cities of
Faena and to driving a steamcar along magnificent highways, had never
suspected that it might be possible to sink up to the waist in the soil like
that. Ave had wandered into this bog a few days back when the rain had
started pouring down. But his instinctive caution, aroused by the foul,
stinking mud that was squelching underfoot, had saved him, making him skirt
the deceptive glade with its murky puddles. This time, however, he could not
back away; he rushed to Gor Terr's assistance. He immediately sank knee-deep
into the quagmire. He made a movement to extricate himself and realised that
he was sinking into the mire himself. Fortunately, he was not as heavy as
Gor Terr; moreover, he was nearer to the edge of the bog. Avoiding sudden
movements, he lay down and began to extricate himself by crawling, as if
swimming over a shallow surface covered with wet grass.
Once he felt himself on firmer ground, Ave stood up, glanced over his
shoulder and saw Gor Terr. Now only his head was showing above the grass and
his outstretched hands, with which he was clutching at some roots. Gor
managed to turn his head and look at Ave Mar, his bulging, glazed eyes
staring out of the mist. Every movement he made sucked him down still
further.
Ave Mar felt his horror physically and stopped in spite of himself, but
read such reproach in the doomed man's eyes that he shuddered. Ave abruptly
turned back, crawled out a little way and, although he hardly felt himself
on firm ground, jumped to his feet, ran to the nearest tree and tore off a
dangling liana.
When he returned to the cloud of mist hanging over the grass, he had
some difficulty in making out the shaggy head and the outstretched hands.
At the sight of Ave Mar, Gor Terr's rounded eyes came to life again and
shone with entreaty, hope and even joy.
Ave Mar threw the end of the liana to the sinking man. Understanding
glimmered in Gor Terr's eyes and he grabbed at the line.
Ave Mar was now faced with the impossible-to drag the gigantic Gor Terr
out of the quagmire. Ave Mar had nothing like the strength to do such a
thing. But with the liana he had brought a crooked branch which he had
broken off a tree. He drove it into a firm mound and began winding the liana
onto it as if onto a windlass.
Turn by turn, he gradually pulled Gor Terr out so that the latter
finally managed to lie flat and crawl along, as Ave had done before him. At
last, a mud-plastered Gor Terr rose to his full height in front of Ave.
"You're not bad as an engineer, Ave Mar," he said. "Thank you."
These words meant more to Ave Mar than any diagnosis. He now realised
that the deadly danger to which Gor Terr had been subjected in the bog had
administered the nervous shock needed to save him from insanity. Gor Terr
had come back to his senses.
"What happened? How did I end up here? Weren't we out hunting together?
Who undressed me? Your wife will take me for a Faetoid."
"She'll be happy! You've been seriously ill."
"R-really?" Gor Terr was astonished. "But I've certainly been having
nightmares. I dreamt the Dictator had thrown me into prison."
"That's all over. Don't think about it any more. There are more
important things to be done. We can't live in the rocket any longer. We have
to deliver food and water to the top. The Elder can't go outside."
"Then we'll have to build a house in the forest."
"I must admit I don't know how to do that. I'm only a theoretician."
"But the theoretician figured out how to rig up a windlass quickly
enough. With a helper like you, it would be easy to knock up a house in the
forest. I can already see how to set about it."
Mada couldn't believe her eyes when she saw Ave Mar and the recently
crazed Gor Terr chatting amiably together on the way back.
"I don't understand this at all," whispered Toni Fae. "Oughtn't we to
help Ave Mar tie him up?"
"No, certainly not!" exclaimed Mada.
With the instinct of a Sister of Health, she had grasped that years of
training and care couldn't have given as good a result as what had happened
in the forest.
...The unfamiliar thudding of axes was heard in the forest.
The enormous, round-shouldered Dzin, wringing out her wet ginger hair
with her long hands, crept up to the spot where the mighty stranger, who had
put paid to a Spotted Horror and to many of Dzin's fellow tribesmen, was now
slaying trees. And yet he wasn't eating them.
Hidden in a thicket, squatting on her haunches and holding her heels
with her forepaws, she was watching as he and another, who had hair only on
his head, were hitting the trees with strange sticks that had what looked
like wet, glittering ends. Their strength was so great that the tree fell
down like a slain beast. Then the strangers skinned the trees with their
clubs, breaking off all the branches, and the tree became straight and
smooth. They shortened the tree with a screaming stick, then dragged it over
to the other slain trees and forced them to fit together.
In this way, they helped to raise from the ground a huge tree that was
empty inside. It looked like a cave.
Almost as soon as the strangers had finished banging their sticks, Dzin
would hide in a thicket so as to come to the summons of the thudding noise
on the next day.
Ave Mar and Gor Terr never suspected that their work was being watched.
They knocked together a frame thought up by Gor Terr without any metal
fixings. The work was nearing its end.
Many instruments and much equipment had to be transferred to the house
into which the astronauts had to move.
Gor Terr and Ave Mar went to the ship to fetch all these things. So as
not to disturb Dm Sat by hammering in the common cabin, they went straight
up to the control cabin. Assisted by Ave Mar, Gor Terr began breaking off
the levers and rods on which the electromagnetic communications apparatus
was secured.
At this point, the always quiet and tactful Toni Fae flew off the
handle.
"Gor Terr and Ave Mar can kill me first," he screamed hysterically,
"but I won't let anything in the spaceship be damaged."
Gor Terr bellowed with laughter, as during his recent crazy spell.
"D'you want me to pay you off, kid, tie your hands together and dump
you in an empty airlock? I feel sorry for you. Just get this into your head:
no one needs my Quest any more. I shall be the first to break it up. So out
of the way, my dear Toni Fae."
"Kill your old friend first!"
Ave Mar turned to Mada in his astonishment.
Her face was troubled and her eyes were sad.
"Get out of the way!" roared Gor Terr.
"Stop," came a feeble voice from the hatch. Overcoming his weakness, Um
Sat climbed up into the control cabin. (Gor Terr involuntarily froze in
front of Toni Fae, not thrusting him aside after all.) "Stop," repeated Um
Sat. "The spaceship Quest is inviolable. Everything is changing in the life
of the Faetians. They must choose a new way."
Again Ave Mar looked at the alarmed, saddened Mada.
Gor Terr stood still in bewilderment.
Toni Fae rushed to the electromagnetic communications apparatus.
Chapter Two
Ala Veg realised that her husband was going to die. When she made the
mutual suicide pact with Toni Fae, she prepared for the forthcoming
electromagnetic communications session by stealing from Mrak Luton a pistol
loaded with a poisoned bullet.
Tycho Veg was fading away. Completely bald, without even eyebrows and
beard, he was lying on the bed in the Vegs' common cabin and was staring
intently at his wife as if from somewhere far way. Ala Veg could not stand
that anguished stare and fled into the observatory.
She went over to the electromagnetic communications apparatus and
looked for a long time at the bullet with the brown prickles which she had
hidden on the control panel among the instruments.
She was afraid that she might not be able to squeeze it in her fist,
although somewhere out there, on faraway Terr, young Toni Fae, who loved
her, must depart this life at the same time. She was afraid of inflicting
this last blow on her dying husband. Ala Veg was torn by contradictory
feelings. She could not recover from the knowledge that her children had
perished. The starry distance that separated her from them, however, was
dulling her despair. And yet the starry distance to Terr, which brought her
the young man's voice after a long delay, had not prevented her from turning
his head and even persuading him to commit suicide with her. But Tycho Veg
was here, close to her, was suffering, and was looking at her out of
non-existence with huge sad eyes. Ala Veg wept a great deal and stopped
observing the stars altogether. What was the point of all that now?
Engineer Tycho Veg died at dinner-time as quietly as he had lived. His
wife remained at his side, unable to do anything to help. His naked head
with the shadows of the sunken eyes, the taut skin of the face and the grin
of the sagging lower jaw were indeed reminiscent of a skull.
"Open the study door!" he commanded, fixing his gaze on the machine's
glowing slits.
The machinery of the Faetians was so sophisticated that it detected
their moods. This height of development had its vulnerable side.
The secretary-box, manufactured in Dan-jab, was simply a machine always
obedient to the will of its owner, the Dictator of Powermania. It now
recognised this will in Kutsi and obeyed it.
The door to Yar Jupi's study opened.
Yar Jupi jumped up from the table and stared in terror at the burly
stranger with a wrestler's neck and a sneer on his face.
"Who are you?" shouted the Dictator, shaking from head to foot.
"Your judge," replied Kutsi coldly, advancing on him.
If Yar Jupi had not been in such a panic fear of living Faetians and
had not kept them at a distance, Kutsi's plan would not have worked. But
this time Kutsi was face to face with the Dictator in person.
"Robots! Security robots!" yelled Yar Jupi in a voice hoarse with
terror.
The robots ran in, ready for action.
"Tie his hands together!"
It was not Yar Jupi, but Kutsi who gave the order in a voice full of
hatred.
Yar Jupi raged, screamed and ordered the robots to obey him, but his
brain was radiating terror, not the hatred so familiar to the robots.
The robots unthinkingly bound the Dictator's hands.
"You are the greatest criminal of all time!" announced Kutsi Merc,
standing before the helpless Dictator. He considered himself the only one
who had survived to act on behalf of all the victims. "I bear within me the
hatred of all the victims of your criminal doctrine, whose goal you made
destruction and whose meaning was hatred. But there is a hatred greater than
yours. I bring that hatred down on you in the name of the history of
Reason!"
"I pray you for mercy," whined the Dictator. "Not many are left alive
on Faena. I shall work humbly, like the last roundhead; I shall acknowledge
the Doctrine of Justice, I shall grow flowers. Just look at the beauty I
have raised. Let us go to the niche, let us savour the fragrance of those
blossoms together."
"Silence. I shall not let you breathe the scent of your own flowers.
Prepare yourself for the most shameful execution of all. I am going to
switch on all the monitor screens and before the eyes of your fellows / am
going to hang you!"
Kutsi Merc tore down the curtains covering the screens. The monitors
lit up.
The terrified military leaders and members of the Blood Council watched
helplessly from them.
Kutsi deftly pulled a cord out of the curtains, deftly tied a noose,
jumped onto the desk and attached the cord to the chandelier hook. The noose
dangled directly under the lamps. The table had to be moved aside.
Then Kutsi stood Yar Jupi, who was shaking with terror, on the
Dictator's chair as if he were no more than a will-less puppet.
The robots moved away, watching the proceedings impassively. Kutsi
noticed that on several screens the military leaders had covered their eyes
with their hands, while on the others, the Faetians, with their cowls thrown
back, were watching the progress of the execution with malignant glee.
"In the name of History," announced Kutsi Merc, and he kicked the chair
from under the Dictator's feet.
Dobr Mar only came round from time to time, half-recumbent in the
Ruler's chair and in a far from comfortable position.
All the screens in the bunker were dead. The lamps of the emergency
lighting glowed dully.
The military leaders and the anguished Sister of Health were still
fussing over the Ruler. Her name was, Vera Fae. All her family had perished
up above: father, mother, husband, three daughters-all except her son, who
had flown to Terr with a space expedition. Vera Fae was in despair. She
could find strength only in attending to the sick Ruler.
Dobr Mar had lost the power of speech. His tongue, right hand and right
leg were paralysed. He could only communicate with his eyes. Vera Fae alone
could understand him.
Haggard, her hair turned white in the last few hours, with tear-stained
eyes, she had not lost the gentle touch and warm voice of the doctor-all
that the Ruler could respond to.
There was no one to take over from him. The "Ruler's friend", who was
supposed to do so according to the law, had been killed up above, like
millions of other Faetians.
The military leaders announced through Vera Fae that the reserve
torpedoes had been expended. But barbarians' torpedoes were still showering
down on their own continent, leaving a scene of total devastation.
The Ruler made an attempt to move. The Sister of Health looked into his
eyes, trying to read his thoughts.
The chief of the disintegration weapons came up. He had been entrusted
with that terrible means of aggression because of his known cowardice and
reluctance to make his own decisions. Even this time he, too, wanted at all
costs the Ruler's written consent to the detonation of the last,
superpowerful underwater disintegration device which had been delivered
under Kutsi Merc's supervision to the Great Shore, almost to the very place
where Ave and Mada had once been surf-riding.
Dobr Mar could not understand the showily overdressed general who, his
voice rising to a falsetto, tried to convince the Sister of Health by
saying, "The destruction of the Dictator's underground Lair is our only
salvation. Such is the will of the Great Circle."
Dobr Mar wearily closed his eyes.
"He agrees! He agrees!" said the hunchbacked general delightedly.
But Dobr Mar opened his eyes again and, in an effort to say something,
stared at his desk.
Vera Fae took some inscribed tablets off it and held them in front of
his eyes.
On seeing one of them, Dobr Mar looked down.
Vera Fae showed the tablet to the general.
"I know that!" he screeched like a cockerel. "When he invented the
disintegration weapon, the honoured Elder Dm Sat wanted to restrict its use
and frightened the Faetians with the apparent prospect of all the planet's
oceans being blown up."
Dobr Mar closed his eyes.
"Does Ruler Dobr Mar agree?" persisted the general. "Can the Sister of
Health sign on his behalf a document authorising the detonation of the
underwater disintegration device?"
"How can I do that if the Ruler himself has reminded us of the great
Elder's warning?"
"A naive fabrication! As if all the waters of the oceans, in the event
of a superpowerful explosion, would immediately disintegrate, releasing
their energy like a supernova. And as if our whole planet would be turned
into a tiny supernova."
"Don't you find that terrifying?" asked the Sister of Health.
"What could be more terrifying than what's already happened? The
Dictator of Powermania must be stopped at all costs. An underwater explosion
by the Great Shore will start an earthquake; it will destroy his bunker down
there. The oceanic tidal wave will rise to the heavens, crash down on the
Lair and flood it. If the Sister of Health can convince the Ruler, he will
agree. His written order is needed for the explosion. He alone is
responsible for everything."
The Sister of Health looked into the dim eyes of the sick man. He
closed them.
"He agrees, at last he agrees!" howled the general, seizing the Ruler's
lifeless hand and applying it to the plate. "Explode it!" shouted the
general in a thin voice and, his leg dragging, he ran out of the study,
plate in hand.
Dobr Mar watched him go with a frightened look. He wanted to say
something, but was unable to.
The Sister of Health came to her senses and tried to stop the general,
but the Ruler felt worse and she had to help him, wiping his face that was
twisted in a grimace and was covered with beads of sweat.
The general returned. The order had been passed on. The explosion would
take place...
"I take no responsibility for anything!" he shouted.
Chapter Seven
Every Sister of Health has something of the mother in her.
Her desire to help a sick man, her maternal attitude to a suffering
person, now helpless as a child and therefore as dear to her as if he were
her own, were struggling in Mada with a keen, unjustified, as she
considered, homesickness.
Unable to understand this feeling and rejecting it, she looked
devotedly after Um Sat, whose life was now fading...
With his large beard, his piercing, yearning (for Faena, of course!)
eyes, he was lying motionless on his couch. His illness was delaying the
return of Quest and intensifying the homesickness that Mada and her
colleagues felt for Faena.
As a Sister of Health, however, she had to rise above her personal
sufferings and she looked after the Elder, trying to cure his mysterious
illness, since a speedy return might mean his salvation. But there could be
no thought of that with Um Sat so seriously ill. Mada looked after him
devotedly; she was not only a Sister of Health to him, but a spiritual
confidante. She admitted to him her yearning for Faena and received in
return the Elder's terrible confession that all the oceans on Faena might
blow up as a result of a disintegration war. Mada shuddered, frowned and
shook her head in protest.
By shouldering part of the Elder's alarm, she eased his condition,
affirming that matters could not go as far as such a catastrophe and they
would surely go back to their Faena where they were so eagerly awaited.
On Mada's instructions, Ave and Gor Terr went hunting in the forest.
She would not let them touch the provisions intended for the return journey.
Return journey! It was a goal, a dream, a passionate desire, and it was
not felt by Mada alone.
She told Toni Fae to stay by the electromagnetic communications
apparatus which, for some strange reason, had gone silent. The thread
linking Quest and their native planet had snapped. Mada reassured Toni Fae
that the atmosphere of Terr was to blame: it was blanketing off the
electromagnetic waves from Faena and Mar.
Toni Fae was desperate to go home. He could not sleep. He would doze
off at the apparatus, then wake up in a cold sweat, now hearing his mother,
Vera Fae, calling him, now imagining that it was Ala Veg laughing at him.
But the apparatus remained silent. There were times when Toni Fae couldn't
bear it any more. Then Jvlada's gentle hand would rest on his trembling
shoulder and her calm, soft voice would assure him that the state of Terr's
atmosphere would change; they need only wait, and he would hear the
longed-for signal.
Um Sat, however, was not so easily pacified. Mada knew what he thought
about a disintegration war and how it had been tormenting him even before
they had left Faena.
Ave was gloomy for the same reason.
He was no longer the sensitive youth who had made such an impression on
Mada as he rode the ocean waves. He had changed inwardly and outwardly.
After growing a moustache and a beard on Terr, he looked much older, calmer,
more self-assured and stronger.
Mada knew that by sending her husband out hunting, she was subjecting
him to danger. But as she thought about all the crew, she could not act
otherwise, for she had faith in his strength, agility and courage.
Consequently, when, apart from a reindeer rescued from a beast of prey,
Ave brought back a spotted hide with its jaws fixed in a snarl, Mada was not
surprised, seeing it as only natural.
Ave was morose. He said nothing to Mada, but she knew everything! And
she feared not so much the something terrible that could happen out there,
perhaps somewhere far away, as for her "children" whom she was looking after
here, although these children were Ave, Um Sat, Toni Fae and Gor Terr.
The long-armed and stooping Faetian giant was missing his native planet
as badly as everyone else. The primitive mode of life which he and Ave, as
the main providers, had to lead here was unpleasant and even offensive to a
skilled engineer.
As he wandered through the densely packed tree-trunks on the alien
planet, Gor Terr never ceased making grandiose plans for technical
improvements that there was no one to implement on Terr: there were neither
workshops, nor assistants, and so there could not be any progress or
civilisation.
Around them lay the alien, primeval forest. From time to time, they
would glimpse antlers or the spotted hide of a predator. Who was going to
win?
Gor Terr stubbornly shook his head. No! This life was not for him! He
didn't want to be like his ancestors with their clubs and stone axes,
however much he might resemble them physically. He was not going to be like
the savages of the Stone Age. Let other Faetians colonise other planets, but
he was going to return to workshops, steamcars, rockets and skyscrapers!
One starry night, in despair of ever hearing a signal over the
electromagnetic communications, Ton! Fae began searching among the stars for
the faintly visible Faena, as if hoping to see a light signal.
And then he saw one!
The young astronomer couldn't believe his eyes and rushed to the star
map. Was he looking at the right place? No, he hadn't made a mistake. Faena
should be passing through that particular constellation between Alt and Veg.
The little star had evidently been swamped by the brilliant flare of a
supernova. Somewhere immeasurably far away, beyond the fringe of the Galaxy,
the latest cosmic disaster had taken place and the light of a once exploding
star had finally reached Sol and its planets. And only by chance had the
supernova blotted out Faena. He must now wait until the planet, travelling
across the sky on a complex path divergent from that of the stars, emerged
from the brilliant light of the supernova and began to shine at a distance
with its usual faint, but so very dear and appealing light.
The supernova, however, shining more brightly than all the other stars,
except for Sol in the daytime, seemed not to want Faena to get away. It was
moving across the sky, not like a star, but like a planet...
Ton! Fae caught his breath. He started rousing Gor Terr, who simply
wouldn't wake up and merely bellowed in his sleep.
Ave Mar woke up and applied his eye to the eyepiece.
Yes, an unusually bright star was blazing in the night sky. It was
clearly visible to the naked eye; it was like a lantern in the sky. But
there was something in its effulgence that made Ton! Fae's heart beat faster
in alarm.
Ave understood everything at once. He had long been keeping to himself
the secret that Dm Sat had entrusted to him about the danger hidden in the
oceans. And now out there...
Mada came in from the big cabin in which Um Sat slept. She was as white
as a sheet. She had only been suspecting it, but when she looked at her
husband, she understood everything.
"My dear Toni Fae," said Mada. "Prepare yourself for the worst. Tell
me, is your new star moving across the sky the way Faena should be moving?"
"It doesn't make sense, but it's true."
"Faena doesn't exist any more," said Ave Mar gloomily, and he put his
arm round Mada's shoulders.
"To be more precise, the former inhabited Faena doesn't exist any
more," corrected Mada. "A star has lit up in its place, but not for long."
Toni Fae looked at Mada and Ave with frightened eyes. He took off his
spectacles and methodically wiped the lenses.
"So Faena doesn't exist? And what about Mother?" The young astronomer
looked with childlike eyes at Mada, as if she ought to dispel a terrible
dream. "Why hasn't it lit up for long? No! Isn't it just that they've found
a way of signalling to us?"
"My dear Toni Fae, it really is a signal to us..."
"Just as I said!" exclaimed the young Faetian happily.
Ave stood with bowed head.
"It's a signal that there is nowhere for us to return to," he said with
an effort.
"What's going on here?" came Gor Terr's rolling bass voice.
Ave Mar took a deep breath.
"The disintegration war, which we have all been so afraid of, has
evidently taken place on our unhappy Faena. And its civilisation has
committed suicide."
"What utter r-rubbish!" yelled Gor Terr. "Leave our civilisation in
peace. It gave us all we have here."
"That's not enough for us to carry on living here."
"That's the last thing I'm aiming to do!"
Toni Fae rushed to his friend as he had done that time in the cave...
"They're saying that..." he whimpered like a child, "that life has
perished on Faena, that the planet has flared up for a time like a star."
"That's impossible," objected the engineer calmly. "There's been some
kind of observation error here. A disintegration war can wipe out a planet's
inhabitants, I'm not disputing that. But it can't annihilate a planet as a
heavenly body. Mass is mass, it can't just disappear. And what does 'has
flared up for a time' mean?"
Mada looked inquiringly at Ave.
"We must go down to Um Sat," he said. "Back on Faena, he told me about
one of the secrets of the disintegration of matter. If a superviolent
explosion should take place in the depths of the sea and if the heat level
should reach the critical limit, then all the water in the oceans would
instantly split into oxygen and hydrogen, and the hydrogen would become
helium, in this way releasing so much energy that the planet would flare up
like a star during the reaction."
"Damnation!" whispered the engineer.
"Um Sat warned both Dobr Mar and Yar Jupi of this. They wouldn't listen
to him."
"If all the oceans blow up at the same time, then the planet shouldn't
just flare up," said the engineer. "Under the impact of shock from all
directions, it should be broken up into pieces..."
"To be scattered later," confirmed Ave Mar. "And countless cycles
later, its fragments, colliding and breaking up, would spread out along
Faena's former orbit."
"How can you say all that?" shouted Toni Fae, clenching his fists. "My
mother was there, and my little sisters..."
"My mother was there too," replied Ave Mar sadly.
Toni Fae began sobbing. Gor Terr drew him towards himself, patting him
on the shoulder.
Ave and Mada exchanged glances and said more by doing so than could
ever have been conveyed in words. Then they held hands.
"So that's why there were no electromagnetic communications," said Toni
Fae, still sobbing. "War had started up there."
"And on the Mar stations?" boomed Gor Terr.
"Perhaps on them too," confirmed Ave Mar sadly.
"No, no!" protested Toni Fae, looking in terror at Ave with eyes full
of tears. "It can't be possible out there too!"
Ave shrugged his shoulders.
"There are Faetians on them as well."
"Ala Veg is there!" shouted Toni Fae. "She's not one of them!"
"Calm yourself, Toni Fae," said Mada gently. "I think we should still
tell Dm Sat about the end of Faena."
"Wretched carr-rion-eaters! Why couldn't they value what they had?
They've destroyed thousands of millions of lives! How much higher and more
humane the local Faetoids are!"
As he shouted this, Gor Terr charged round the cabin in a frenzy.
"Calm down, friend Gor Terr," said Ave. "It's hard for us to bear the
horror that's come down on all of us when we've not only lost our dear ones,
but..."
"Towns, fields, r-rivers, forests, seas, oceans!" wailed Gor Terr.
"Yes. And oceans," confirmed Ave Mar sadly.
Gor Terr glared at him almost with hatred.
Then he sighed and said very quietly this time:
"Yes, it's easier for you. There are two of you."
"There are five of us," said Mada.
"If the Elder survives the shock."
"He has been readying himself for it too long," replied Mada. "He saw
it all coming."
"I was the one who didn't see anything coming. I was dreaming about new
spaceships, about wonderful cities on new planets, about incredible machines
that I was inventing in my mind."
"It will all have to be done on Terr," said Mada softly.
Gor Terr burst into a roar of forced laughter.
"Forget about civilisation once and for all, forget about technology.
Make clubs and stone axes. If you have children, you won't be able to teach
them anything that the unhappy Faetians knew. Civilisation means workshops
and Faetians toiling in them. Civilisation means writings that preserve the
treasures of thought. All that is gone, gone, gone! And it cannot exist here
either!"
Gor Terr was shouting in a frenzy. Toni Fae was frightened by this fit
of fury, but his attention was distracted by a signal from the
electromagnetic apparatus. The indicator lamp was winking on and off. The
astronomer rushed to the set.
"At last! Now the nightmare is over! You see, they're worried about us,
they want to tell us that it was a supernova, not Faena at all. How could we
have assumed such a thing?"
The Faetians watched Ton! Fae, each trying to retain at least a glimmer
of hope.
Finally the chesty voice of a Faetess was heard in the cabin. Toni
recognised it as Ala Veg's.
"Quest! Quest! Quest! Can you hear me? There has been a dreadful
catastrophe! We shall never have a homeland again. Faena has blown up for
some unaccountable reason, although it was recently intact, in spite of a
disintegration war that broke out on it. Quest! Quest! Quest! Hostilities
between Deimo and Phobo have ceased. If you too have been fighting amongst
yourselves, stop the conflict. There aren't any more Gutturals and there
aren't any more Superiors. There are only three small groups of unhappy
Faetians who have lost their homeland. Are you alive? If only you are still
alive! Can we live on Terr?"
Ave Mar put out the light in the observation cabin. The starry sky was
now clearer than ever, and so was the new star blazing in it, the malignant
Star of Hatred.
End of Part Two
________________________________________________________
Did an exploded planet actually exist in the Solar System?
In 1596, when he was investigating the laws governing the structure of
the Solar System, Kepler suspected there might be a planet missing between
Mars and Jupiter. At the end of the 18th century, the scientists Titius and
Bode gave a series of numbers: 0.4-0.7-1.0-1.6-2.8-5.2... It reflected the
distance of the planets from the Sun. The distance of the Earth from the Sun
was taken as unit. But there was no fifth planet with an Earth-Sun distance
of 2.8. The astronomers searched and began discovering, one after another,
the "minor planets" and even smaller bodies, or asteroids, which were moving
on a common orbit. They were fragmentary in shape and seemed to have formed
during the DISINTEGRATION of a destroyed planet. The German astronomer
Hermann Oberth 150 years ago expressed the hypothesis that such a planet had
once existed. In our own times, Professor Sergei Orlov, analysing this
hypothesis, gave the planet the romantic name of Phaeton. His work was
continued by Academicians Alexander Zavaritsky and Leonid Kvasha. Soviet
research, notably that of Yekaterina Gusakova, has shown that the residual
magnetism of the meteorites could be explained only by their magnetisation
as parts of a big mother planet. Felix Zigel (1963) determined its size as
approaching that of the Earth. However, neither the advocates nor the
opponents of this hypothesis have successfully accounted for the destruction
of the planet. If Phaeton blew up like a high-explosive bomb, its fragments
would have flown apart in elongated elliptical orbits round the Sun, but
they have remained in their old circular orbit... If two cosmic bodies had
collided in space, then their fragments would also have flown in elliptical
orbits and would not have formed a ring on the former orbit of the planet.
It is suggested that meteorite swarms form in at least ten places on the
ring of asteroids. It is possible that they are created by the collision and
disintegration of the former planet's fragments. Meteorites are falling on
Earth to this day, but they include so-called tektites which, perhaps, fell
on Earth only once as a consequence of a colossal nuclear explosion in
space. All the more so that the form, composition and dehydration of the
tektites are identical with nuclear slag.
Thus, a supposition about the cause of its destruction has been added
to the hypothesis of a Phaeton that existed in the past.
Fragments
Where be these enemies?- Capulet! Montague!
See what a scourge is laid upon your hate...
W. Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet
Chapter One
The new star shone ominously in Quest's porthole.
The Faetians maintained a shocked silence.
Suddenly, Gor Terr jumped to his feet.
"Technology! Damned technology! It's to blame for everything. I, Gor
Terr, the last of Faena's engineers, am the first to r-renounce
civilisation! To the forests! To the forests! To the caves! Wild Faetians on
a wild Terr!" he boomed, foaming at the mouth. ."If anyone r-refuses to
leave the r-rocket. I'll wring his neck. Let not a single metal part
r-remind wretched people that they were once cultured. Beasts are much
higher and nobler!"
His friends tried to calm the engineer down, still unwilling to admit
to themselves that his mind had become clouded.
"Please try to understand, Gor Terr," said Ave reassuringly, "that the
five Faetians left on Terr can only have one purpose-not just to survive,
but to preserve civilisation, to hand down the heritage of reason to future
generations..."
"R-really?" roared Gor Terr with a glare at Mada.
Embarrassed, Mada turned away.
"There must be cultured Faetians after us," confirmed Ave Mar, "and our
duty is to preserve for them the knowledge we possess."
"High-flown r-rubbish!" bellowed Gor Terr. "I hate those words and I
hate all those instruments. Even touching the damned metal drives me
frantic."
"Gor Terr will have to pull himself together," said Ave Mar, raising
his voice. "He's an engineer, and he'll stay an engineer to the end of his
days."
Gor Terr roared with laughter.
"So that your sons can learn how to make r-rockets out of wall
partitions? So that they can learn to slaughter animals, and then their own
kind?"
"Never shall the Faetians on Terr learn how to kill their own kind!"
exclaimed the outraged Ave Mar. "It will be the most terrible thing if we
bow down in our grief. No! Only energy, faith in ourselves and
resourcefulness will save what is left of the Faetian race."
"For what?" asked Gor Terr gloomily.
"For the triumph of reason!"
"High-flown words again! What d'you want?"
"I want you to think about what kind of building the Faetians are going
to use when they're in the forest, what apparatus and parts will have to be
taken from here to the new house, and how we can gradually dismantle the
rocket: it's the only source of metal on Terr."
"Dismantle?" echoed Toni Fae in fright.
"Yes," confirmed Ave Mar. "We won't need a spaceship any more. The
Faetians will use its walls for axes, knives, spear-points and arrows. We
have enough metal to last us several generations for that purpose. By that
time, Gor Terr's pupils and their descendants will have learned to prospect
for ore here and to smelt it. Civilisation must be preserved!"
Mada looked at her husband with rapture. How many times had he
presented himself to her in a new aspect, stronger, firmer, as one who knew
which course to adopt!
"Filthy despot!" roared Gor Terr. "He wants to make us serve his unborn
offspring! I've had enough of blind obedience to a Dictator who aimed for a
disintegration war and achieved it! No! I won't tolerate any authority over
me! I don't want to obey anybody's orders, least of all those of an
offspring of Danjab's R-ruler!"
"Gor Terr, my dear," intervened Mada gently, putting her hand on his
massive hairy arm. "Think what you are saying. We have no dictators here, or
rulers, or their children. There are only Faetians, united by common grief
and a common fate. Weren't you the one who dreamed of workshops on Terr? You
shall have workshops here in which we, your comrades, shall work for you,
and then..." She looked into his eyes and added, "I shall raise helpers for
you."
Gor Terr scowled, glaring malevolently from under his beetling brows.
Mada's maternal tone soothed him a little. But not for long. He soon
relapsed into his former fury and, without listening to anyone, began
smashing up the spaceship's control levers, bending them, trying to wrench
them out of their sockets.
To save the Faetians, the madman himself and keep the ship's equipment
intact, Mada ordered Gor Terr to be confined to the airlock which was used
for going out into space.
The noisy struggle with the Faetian strong man distracted the Faetians
from their common misfortune. The immediate blotted out what was far away.
And only after the hatch had been fastened down behind Gor Terr did Ave Mar
and Toni Fae, exhausted and shattered, collapsed into the armchairs at the
control panel. They stared dismally in front of them, panting for breath.
Mada was busy near the dispensary. She had decided to give Gor Terr an
injection and administer a shock that would bring him to his senses.
All attempts to go into the airlock, however, merely provoked further
attacks of frenzy. They could not even serve him his food.
Such was the unhappy way in which the Faetians spent the first days of
their permanent exile. Below, in the common cabin, Faena's most
distinguished scientist lay dying; above, in the airlock, the last surviving
engineer had gone raving mad.
Toni Fae was deeply depressed.
He heard Ala Veg's voice again during a routine session of
electromagnetic communication with Deimo. It was remote and sad. She talked
about the meaninglessness of existence, about her husband's serious illness,
about the total lack of change and how the station chief, as before, hated
the roundhead couple. She said that she despised life. She was terrified at
the thought of the distance that separated her from Toni Fae. Was life worth
living? She suggested that Toni Fae and she should both put an end to their
own lives during the next communications session.
Toni Fae could not hold out against this and agreed. He stole from
Mada's dispensary an ampoule of stupefying gas, a large dose of which could
be fatal. After he had inhaled a little of it, he felt blissfully happy,
could not stay on his feet, swayed and sang a silly song about a lizard
which ate its own tail. He then collapsed and went to sleep. Mada guessed
what had happened, found the ampoule hidden on his person and confiscated
it. When he came round, he made the discovery that Mada's language could be
far from endearing.
Toni Fae succumbed to apathy. Everything around him seemed dismal and
wretched. Even the world of nature had changed. There were no more colourful
sunsets on Terr. Night gave way to dull daylight. It never stopped
drizzling, and a patchy grey pall of mist clung to the tree-tops level with
the portholes of the control cabin. There were no golden apples left in the
forest.
When twilight descended on Terr, it reminded them of their own gloomy
planet.
Misery and homesickness seemed capable of destroying the will to live
in all the other Faetians, as had happened with Toni Fae.
Mada, however, in whom nature had stirred a sense of responsibility for
all, sick and well alike, could not give in to despair. She had to look
after Um Sat, feed everybody, keep an eye on Toni Fae and encourage Ave with
an affectionate glance from time to time.
Ave Mar was conducting himself with dignity. He had obligations which
none but he could fulfil: it was necessary to go hunting in the forest. Gor
Terr couldn't help him now. Ave would go out of the ship, leaving Mada in a
state of permanent anxiety, but he always returned before dark, and with his
kill. By the will of circumstances, Ave, a passionate believer in the
preservation of the lost Faena's civilisation, was having to lead a very
primitive mode of life. He had stopped using firearms, saving the ammunition
for more urgent occasions. He had made a bow and he practised archery. Using
his natural strength, he could draw a bowstring so that the arrow with its
hand-made head could pierce a stout tree-branch right through.
Once, Ave Mar brought back a big fat bird hit by one of his arrows.
Careful not to disturb Dm Sat, the astronauts assembled in the control
cabin, talking quietly amongst themselves. Mada began inexpertly plucking
the hunting trophy, pleased that it would make a good bouillon for the sick
man.
Toni Fae was adjusting the electromagnetic communications set, hoping
for a session with Ala Veg. Mada warned him that if he made a fool of
himself again, she would ban communications with Deimo. Toni sheepishly
bowed his head.
Ave Mar was relaxing after his hard day in the rain while hunting in
the forest.
Mada looked round at the porthole and screamed. The snarling face of a
Faetoid was staring into the cabin. His shoulders and chest were matted with
curly hair, his skin showing through underneath. No thought was readable in
the crazy eyes.
Only Ave Mar realised that this was Gor Terr lowering himself by rope,
not a wild beast that had made its way to them. The madman had evidently
torn his clothes into strips and knotted them together to make a rope. He
had opened the outer airlock hatch, climbed outside and was now descending
the ship's fuselage.
In an attempt to head him off, Ave Mar rushed to the transition hatch,
tore through the common cabin and disappeared into the lower airlock. He
shinned down the vertical ladder, hardly touching the rungs on the way.
But however agile Ave Mar may have been, Gor Terr had time on his side.
Ave Mar was only just getting out of the lower airlock when the escapee
was already clinging to the end of the home-made rope. No rational Faetian
would ever have risked jumping from such a height. But Gor Terr was not
being rational. He dropped to the ground in front of Ave Mar, jumped up
below him, as if on springs, and made a dash for the forest.
Without realising what he was doing, Gor Terr ran into the forest
straight on to the path beaten by the animals on their way to the watering
place. It was sodden after the rain and his feet slipped and slithered
apart. But he was conscious of only one thing: he was being pursued. He
leaped aside into a small glade, unrecognisable after the rain, since it was
covered with muddy puddles that disappeared into the mist. Gor Terr never
suspected that there was a bog hidden underneath the wet green surface. He
dived into a cloud of mist hanging over the grass and disappeared.
Ave Mar, who had been following on his heels, stopped dead. Then he
immediately dashed forward. His feet sloshed through the slime. He took
several careful, squelching steps and suddenly saw Gor Terr in the mist. He
looked as if he was sitting down on the green grass. Only his head and torso
were visible above it. It took Ave Mar a moment to realise that Gor Terr had
sunk waist-deep into a quagmire.
Until recently, Ave Mar, used to dwelling in the civilised cities of
Faena and to driving a steamcar along magnificent highways, had never
suspected that it might be possible to sink up to the waist in the soil like
that. Ave had wandered into this bog a few days back when the rain had
started pouring down. But his instinctive caution, aroused by the foul,
stinking mud that was squelching underfoot, had saved him, making him skirt
the deceptive glade with its murky puddles. This time, however, he could not
back away; he rushed to Gor Terr's assistance. He immediately sank knee-deep
into the quagmire. He made a movement to extricate himself and realised that
he was sinking into the mire himself. Fortunately, he was not as heavy as
Gor Terr; moreover, he was nearer to the edge of the bog. Avoiding sudden
movements, he lay down and began to extricate himself by crawling, as if
swimming over a shallow surface covered with wet grass.
Once he felt himself on firmer ground, Ave stood up, glanced over his
shoulder and saw Gor Terr. Now only his head was showing above the grass and
his outstretched hands, with which he was clutching at some roots. Gor
managed to turn his head and look at Ave Mar, his bulging, glazed eyes
staring out of the mist. Every movement he made sucked him down still
further.
Ave Mar felt his horror physically and stopped in spite of himself, but
read such reproach in the doomed man's eyes that he shuddered. Ave abruptly
turned back, crawled out a little way and, although he hardly felt himself
on firm ground, jumped to his feet, ran to the nearest tree and tore off a
dangling liana.
When he returned to the cloud of mist hanging over the grass, he had
some difficulty in making out the shaggy head and the outstretched hands.
At the sight of Ave Mar, Gor Terr's rounded eyes came to life again and
shone with entreaty, hope and even joy.
Ave Mar threw the end of the liana to the sinking man. Understanding
glimmered in Gor Terr's eyes and he grabbed at the line.
Ave Mar was now faced with the impossible-to drag the gigantic Gor Terr
out of the quagmire. Ave Mar had nothing like the strength to do such a
thing. But with the liana he had brought a crooked branch which he had
broken off a tree. He drove it into a firm mound and began winding the liana
onto it as if onto a windlass.
Turn by turn, he gradually pulled Gor Terr out so that the latter
finally managed to lie flat and crawl along, as Ave had done before him. At
last, a mud-plastered Gor Terr rose to his full height in front of Ave.
"You're not bad as an engineer, Ave Mar," he said. "Thank you."
These words meant more to Ave Mar than any diagnosis. He now realised
that the deadly danger to which Gor Terr had been subjected in the bog had
administered the nervous shock needed to save him from insanity. Gor Terr
had come back to his senses.
"What happened? How did I end up here? Weren't we out hunting together?
Who undressed me? Your wife will take me for a Faetoid."
"She'll be happy! You've been seriously ill."
"R-really?" Gor Terr was astonished. "But I've certainly been having
nightmares. I dreamt the Dictator had thrown me into prison."
"That's all over. Don't think about it any more. There are more
important things to be done. We can't live in the rocket any longer. We have
to deliver food and water to the top. The Elder can't go outside."
"Then we'll have to build a house in the forest."
"I must admit I don't know how to do that. I'm only a theoretician."
"But the theoretician figured out how to rig up a windlass quickly
enough. With a helper like you, it would be easy to knock up a house in the
forest. I can already see how to set about it."
Mada couldn't believe her eyes when she saw Ave Mar and the recently
crazed Gor Terr chatting amiably together on the way back.
"I don't understand this at all," whispered Toni Fae. "Oughtn't we to
help Ave Mar tie him up?"
"No, certainly not!" exclaimed Mada.
With the instinct of a Sister of Health, she had grasped that years of
training and care couldn't have given as good a result as what had happened
in the forest.
...The unfamiliar thudding of axes was heard in the forest.
The enormous, round-shouldered Dzin, wringing out her wet ginger hair
with her long hands, crept up to the spot where the mighty stranger, who had
put paid to a Spotted Horror and to many of Dzin's fellow tribesmen, was now
slaying trees. And yet he wasn't eating them.
Hidden in a thicket, squatting on her haunches and holding her heels
with her forepaws, she was watching as he and another, who had hair only on
his head, were hitting the trees with strange sticks that had what looked
like wet, glittering ends. Their strength was so great that the tree fell
down like a slain beast. Then the strangers skinned the trees with their
clubs, breaking off all the branches, and the tree became straight and
smooth. They shortened the tree with a screaming stick, then dragged it over
to the other slain trees and forced them to fit together.
In this way, they helped to raise from the ground a huge tree that was
empty inside. It looked like a cave.
Almost as soon as the strangers had finished banging their sticks, Dzin
would hide in a thicket so as to come to the summons of the thudding noise
on the next day.
Ave Mar and Gor Terr never suspected that their work was being watched.
They knocked together a frame thought up by Gor Terr without any metal
fixings. The work was nearing its end.
Many instruments and much equipment had to be transferred to the house
into which the astronauts had to move.
Gor Terr and Ave Mar went to the ship to fetch all these things. So as
not to disturb Dm Sat by hammering in the common cabin, they went straight
up to the control cabin. Assisted by Ave Mar, Gor Terr began breaking off
the levers and rods on which the electromagnetic communications apparatus
was secured.
At this point, the always quiet and tactful Toni Fae flew off the
handle.
"Gor Terr and Ave Mar can kill me first," he screamed hysterically,
"but I won't let anything in the spaceship be damaged."
Gor Terr bellowed with laughter, as during his recent crazy spell.
"D'you want me to pay you off, kid, tie your hands together and dump
you in an empty airlock? I feel sorry for you. Just get this into your head:
no one needs my Quest any more. I shall be the first to break it up. So out
of the way, my dear Toni Fae."
"Kill your old friend first!"
Ave Mar turned to Mada in his astonishment.
Her face was troubled and her eyes were sad.
"Get out of the way!" roared Gor Terr.
"Stop," came a feeble voice from the hatch. Overcoming his weakness, Um
Sat climbed up into the control cabin. (Gor Terr involuntarily froze in
front of Toni Fae, not thrusting him aside after all.) "Stop," repeated Um
Sat. "The spaceship Quest is inviolable. Everything is changing in the life
of the Faetians. They must choose a new way."
Again Ave Mar looked at the alarmed, saddened Mada.
Gor Terr stood still in bewilderment.
Toni Fae rushed to the electromagnetic communications apparatus.
Chapter Two
Ala Veg realised that her husband was going to die. When she made the
mutual suicide pact with Toni Fae, she prepared for the forthcoming
electromagnetic communications session by stealing from Mrak Luton a pistol
loaded with a poisoned bullet.
Tycho Veg was fading away. Completely bald, without even eyebrows and
beard, he was lying on the bed in the Vegs' common cabin and was staring
intently at his wife as if from somewhere far way. Ala Veg could not stand
that anguished stare and fled into the observatory.
She went over to the electromagnetic communications apparatus and
looked for a long time at the bullet with the brown prickles which she had
hidden on the control panel among the instruments.
She was afraid that she might not be able to squeeze it in her fist,
although somewhere out there, on faraway Terr, young Toni Fae, who loved
her, must depart this life at the same time. She was afraid of inflicting
this last blow on her dying husband. Ala Veg was torn by contradictory
feelings. She could not recover from the knowledge that her children had
perished. The starry distance that separated her from them, however, was
dulling her despair. And yet the starry distance to Terr, which brought her
the young man's voice after a long delay, had not prevented her from turning
his head and even persuading him to commit suicide with her. But Tycho Veg
was here, close to her, was suffering, and was looking at her out of
non-existence with huge sad eyes. Ala Veg wept a great deal and stopped
observing the stars altogether. What was the point of all that now?
Engineer Tycho Veg died at dinner-time as quietly as he had lived. His
wife remained at his side, unable to do anything to help. His naked head
with the shadows of the sunken eyes, the taut skin of the face and the grin
of the sagging lower jaw were indeed reminiscent of a skull.