Starmasters Gambit Page 3

  In order to survive, Man had to know the Galaxy well. The greatest risk he ran was overlooking danger. He had to get used to the idea of danger without ever forgetting its presence. A frighteningly large number of the early explorers had died either because they had not seen the threat to their safety or because they had been too panic-stricken to react defensively. The task of the central government was to set up a training program that would insure the survival of the largest possible number of explorers.

  At first Algan thought that he would not survive the training program. Before he had even left the port, while he was working in huge caves, he thought he’d never again see Dark. But the biologists and psychologists had carefully worked out their programs to conform to the limits of human endurance. Space itself has little to do with those limits.

  The tests dealt with both the physical and mental endurance of the trainees.

  The first time that Algan was tied up in a large armchair he thought it was funny. By the end of the third minute he was yelling: “Let me out of here. Stop the machine.”

  But they went right on while he damned them. They knew how Algan felt because they too had gone through it. They also knew what was Algan’s only hope of escaping madness in certain situations, and were aware that later he would consider these conditions pleasant and restful compared to what was still to be endured. They hoped for his sake that they had not made a mistake when they had examined him.

  Algan felt as though he had fallen into an endless dark space where not a single star shone. He kept falling. His stomach turned over. His heartbeats, regulated by the chair’s electrodes, sped up.

  Algan yelled: “Let me out. Stop.”

  He kept falling. It was a simple fall, but into the void. There was nothing to catch hold of, to claw at. He was conscious, every moment, that he was going to crash on an immense dark body which he sensed was just under him. But the end of the fall, delayed second by second, never came. He thought he’d gone blind.

  At about the fourteenth minute he stopped yelling because his throat had become too dry to let out a sound. He knew he had just crossed the limits of the universe. He knew now that he would go on falling. There was no longer any point in his being afraid because something worse than fear had taken its place in his mind.

  At about the sixteenth minute he felt as though he had become a mere point. He tried to remember the time when he had had hands and legs he could move, but it was too long ago and too unreal.

  At about the eighteenth minute, he thought he was swelling up.

  Being a point of expansion was an intolerable sensation. He felt as though he were occupying, as he kept falling, an infinite amount of space, and all the while his nerves were being stretched in every direction.

  At about the twenty-first minute he felt himself exploding. Countless particles of himself flew about beyond imaginable space. He became an infinitely stretched fog. His mind tried to follow each of those particles and to hold them, but he wore himself out in vain; he could not do it. Then he gave up.

  There was no longer anything coherent or ordered about Algan. He was nothing but chaos and confusion. Something less than half an hour of total falling had been too much for him. He felt destroyed, disintegrated. With what little consciousness remained to him, he understood that the universe was hostile, and this understanding restored some strength to him. A core of intelligence, supported by this last recognition, began to reorganize his scattered memories, his old experiences. A flicker of hatred began to bum in his brain. Suddenly the fall seemed unimportant to him. He slowly found the path back to his own nerves. Hatred was forcing him to discover, deep down within him, new reserves of strength and equilibrium.

  This was what the experts had wanted. There were several ways of achieving the same result. Some trainees had survived the tests, centuries earlier, with nothing but their enthusiasm for new worlds to support them.

  In others, fear alone had acted, forcing them to find within themselves defenses against it.

  But the paths of darkness had led Algan to other regions, around other bends. Had the experts been able to read Jerg Algan’s mind they might have felt less complacent.

  For at the very moment when he reached the core of his being, hatred took over every ounce of his energy. His nerves obeyed. His glands poured out complex secretions into his veins.

  At about the thirty-sixth minute he rediscovered himself through his hatred. During the last five minutes he had learned more about man and the universe than he had during the preceding thirty-two years of his life.

  He relaxed, allowed himself to fall. He suddenly came out of the night.

  When they rushed forward to help him as he staggered from the great chair, they neglected to notice, just before he fainted, the cold glint in his eyes.

  The big armchair was the end-all of the art of illusion. Its electrodes took the place of the real world and could conjure up any imaginable grotesque or terrifying universe. Simplified versions of the chair were in use in auditoriums on some of the planets. On others, or sometimes on the same ones, the chairs became instruments of torture. They were used in all ports to test pilots and pioneers.

  The chair was the result of three centuries of research on the nervous system. It made possible the control of every fiber, the linking or unlinking of a multitude of synapses. For complex nervous systems it was the sole existing treatment—that is, if the patient survived.

  The chair constituted a universe in itself. There was a legend that the great Tulgar himself, who had built the first chair according to specifications made ten centuries earlier by his brilliant precursor Bergier, had committed suicide after trying bis creation because he had found no other use for it except as a potential paradise or hell, both of which were inextricably entwined. Scarcely one century later, at the beginning of the conquest, someone remembered Tulgar; the chair which was the repository of all the wonders and horrors of the universe was found in the attic of a university.

  Algan learned to fall, without flinching, into darkest night and still retain his awareness of the immensity of space.

  Hatred was his lifeline. Because at first he did not know on whom to concentrate it, the feeling was a rough and shapeless, but vital one. Then he began to hate the port, that alien element which had been imposed on the Old Planet, and to think up, in a cool detached manner, the means of destroying it. But his cold anger was soon transferred to those who had built the port. It was during his second week of training, when he was feeling as though he had spent at least ten years in the subterranean regions of the Stellar Port, that he decided to destroy the central government.

  Conquering stars and strange new worlds meant nothing to him. All he knew was that it had taken brute force to detach him from the Earth. He decided to become the cog that would slowly and methodically cause the breakdown of the great human machinery that had been set up to conquer the stars.

  After he had learned to control the night and his descent into it, he was sent off alone on worlds that were either hostile or different from anything he had ever known. One day, he flew down and hovered over an enormous shiny surface. He suddenly found himself stretched out on the ground, unable to move. He knew he had to get up and walk, but he was glued to a huge metal sphere larger than the Earth. The heavy black sky, studded with stars, seemed to crush him.

  Painfully he got up on his knees. The air was dry and icy, so dry and icy that it burned and tore his lungs.

  Algan knew he had to walk in a given direction, but he couldn’t even move, let alone take a step. He was engulfed, drowned in fear, yet he could see nothing anywhere that would account for the terror that paralyzed him.

  The fear was within him. He was alone. He had never before been afraid of solitude. He had traveled, alone, across enormous distances on the oceans and continents of the Earth. But that solitude was nothing compared to what he was experiencing here.

  He had learned, as the technicians who were in charge of his training had intend
ed he should, that the only survival possible in a strange world is group survival; death for a single individual was inevitable.

  But the lesson did not stop there. One had to learn to survive alone, if one happened to stray off, temporarily, from the rest of an expedition.

  He started to creep along the icy surface. Some unknown force was spurring him toward a particular point on the horizon. Trying to slow the rhythm of his breathing, he dragged himself forward along a few hundred yards. Just then the entire surface of the planet tipped and he was thrown forward, slipping faster and faster. His hands feverishly sought something to cling to, but there was nothing.’ He finally let himself slide along the smooth plain, his hands in front ready to break a possible shock.

  His fall accelerated. He saw the sky slowly change and the color of the plain grow lighter. The polished steely surface slowly became luminous. At the same time an enormous red sun rose on the clear horizon.

  He knew he was falling toward that sun and that nothing could save him. The red sun seemed glued to the horizon. But just as Algan was drawing near, it climbed up and floated amid the stars, eclipsing the nearer ones, devouring the night.

  Then the wind bore him off.

  He was blown about like a straw by the gentle breeze that brushed the polished plain which was now growing red. Then a storm _blew up and began to roar. He was lifted up into the air, helpless to control his course. He flew over the surface of the planet and had the impression it was flying past him at a dizzying speed. He saw a huge dark shape looming up on the plain, which appeared to be sending out shapeless tentacles toward him. He tried to cry out, but he had no breath left.

  Then he realized that it was only his shadow, that he was passing under the giant red sun.

  He was climbing. The storm bore him so high that he could see the entire planet; it was like a disk unbelievably large and concave, rather like the inside of a bowl. Then the wind suddenly died down. He could no longer breathe. He was at the same height as the stars and as his lungs collapsed, his heart gave out, his blood ebbed away; he knew that he was going to die as he flew over the frontiers of emptiness.

  He made an effort. He tried to escape from that deadly balance. But his reflexes were gone; his mind was blank.

  He rolled up into a ball, then violently stretched. He began to hate the red sun which had started to disappear behind the steel disk. And suddenly he plunged.

  Algan had the impression of a closed trap. He could get back to the ground and crawl again and rediscover the red sun and be swept up by another cyclone, or by the same one on its way back. He began to fume with rage as he fell uncontrollably, damning the chair, the technicians, the port, the Earth and Dark, space, interstellar ships and, above all, the central government of Betelgeuse.

  I’m nothing but a toy, a puppet, he said to himself. 77/ get the one who is holding the strings.

  There was nothing here for him to attack or destroy. But behind that hostile and cold facade of the universe someone was watching.

  Someone who was laughing at his vain efforts.

  Someone who made fun of men.

  Someone who set the stage.

  I’ll get him, Algan said to himself. He noticed that he did not want to die.

  Not in this desolate icy world. Not before he had destroyed this odious setup.

  He found himself again on the icy surface, in darkness. The red sun had disappeared.

  He began to crawl with a cold determination. He saw another sunrise, this one blue, surrounded by fog and circled by three smaller revolving suns whose colors changed with their positions.

  A shadow loomed up on the horizon and slowly grew bigger.

  He crept along faster. Was it a new stage set? A new trap? He broke out in a fine sweat. The ground seemed to warm up, the closer he came to the shadow. The steel grip which had clutched him loosened. He got up on his knees and slowly stood up. Stretching to his full height, he scanned the horizon, then turned around. The multiple shadow cast by his body, from the light of the midget sun and from its satellites, was the only interruption on the plain.

  He began to run.

  There was a city stretching out the edge of this world. A dream city. Its crystal towers dominated the steel plain; its high walls looked like luminous cliffs defying cold and the night of the desert. Ancient bridges connected the palaces which stood silhouetted against the black background of emptiness.

  There were people inside, a whole population ready to welcome him and celebrate his arrival. Flags were flying from turrets. Festival music rang in his ears.

  He began to shout and dance with the intention of alerting the watchman on the turrets of his presence. He stopped, expecting some sound: the crack of a pistol shot, the noise of a rocket opening in the sky.

  Nothing. No one.

  He began to run again. He was filled with a terrifying premonition. There loomed before him, under the cold light of the blue sun, the high bronze gates of the city. A blurred memory stirred within him. These gates were not unknown to him. The high wall was very near. He hurled himself against the huge doors which were ten times his height, and he beat on them steadily. The bronze gates resounded like great gongs.

  No one. Nothing.

  He pushed forward with all his might; surprisingly, the huge bronze doors slowly gave. He slipped through the crack he had made.

  I’ve done it, he thought. I’ve done it.

  He walked out in the shadow of the huge porch, then continued forward under the cold light of the blue sun, onto a huge deserted square enclosed by tall white polished walls. Opposite him were the high towers and a building so tall that it seemed to touch the stars.

  Silence.

  I’ve seen this before, he thought.

  He stepped onto the middle of the square and looked all around. No one.

  He began to laugh. He remembered. He had come back to the port from which he had set forth thousands of years ago and now everyone had died, the planet was dead and so were the stars. He would never leave the Earth. He was the last man on a cold planet.

  Algan wiped the sweat from his forehead. He dropped to the ground, stretched out on his back, and looked at the blue sun and its satellites that were slowly shrinking in the sky.

  It isn’t true, he thought, and he closed his eyes, trying to find the dark and to fall into a starless space. In a way, he found a certain peace. He began to hate, coldly and methodically, and filled space with a myriad stars of hatred.

  He felt better.

  It was then that they woke him up. *

  The training program in the underground of the Stellar Port lasted five weeks. Algan lived alone the entire time as part of the training. He saw only the shadows of the technicians, who never spoke a word to him. Thanks to his reflexes, he managed to survive a species of mental night, haunted by the adventures he had in the chair: he was parachuted onto water planets and swam for hours on the surface of oceans saltier than those of the Earth; dragged himself through countless marshes; climbed sharp cliffs; crossed chasms; balanced on an almost invisible cord; jumped down from terrifyingly high peaks; was slowly swallowed up by moving sands; was blinded by burning suns; was smothered by storms; was asphyxiated by clouds of red sand; was crushed by spongy soft rocks that were sickening to the touch.

  Then, toward the end of the fifth week, when the look in his eyes had hardened, their sockets deepened and the experience of ten years in space could be read in his emaciated features, he was allowed to come up to the surface.

  It was only then that he discovered the Stellar Port. He lived in the huge building under the control tower that challenged space with its antennas. He roamed at will among the rockets, questioned pilots, sailors, and explorers. He gradually discovered what mark man had made among the stars.

  The stars stored up incalculable wealth and almost infinite sources of power. They were heaven and hell combined, just as the chair had hinted. But, inhuman though they were, the stars were the universe, a glittering irresist
ible prize which men repeatedly tried to ensnare in the web of their voyages.

  The names of the ships evoked foreign lands. Their shapes varied according to whether they came from the edges of the Galaxy or from its more central regions. Only the black outmoded ships of Betelgeuse remained unchanged; their powerful engines still enabled them to give chase to any stellar craft or to reach any inhabited world.

  The contents of the storehouses came from all the corners of the Galaxy. The scent of zotl roots embalmed one area of the port while piles of Aldragor’s weightless furs, quivering in the lightest breeze, filled another area. There were transparent cages filled with splendid or repellent animals awaiting their fate: giant spiders with bodies as shiny and pink as a human skull, vampires with red wings, amphibians from Zuna in shapes that were changeable and vaguely nauseating, animated stones from Alzol, which sparkled like braziers enclosed in a block of changeable glass.

  Algan learned to tell where the sailors came from by their accents, the color of their skin, the shape of their skulls, the color of their eyes. He soon learned to tell a ship’s year and model from its hull. Some of the hulls had been built on the Earth itself, four centuries earlier, at the beginning of the conquest. They were still plowing the cold currents of space.

  Algan spent days on end walking along the lookouts on the battlements, discovering anew the old city as it looked from the Stellar Port. It seemed oddly distant, alien. He felt almost as though he had just landed from a ship and was seeing, for the first time, the teeming city with its apartment houses stacked close together and its narrow, sordid little streets. He knew he would not go down into the city again before his departure. The Stellar Port was as remote and distant as a ship; he might just as well have already left the Earth. The Stellar Port was like a foreign growth on the city, a meteor from the sky, deeply bedded in the planet but barely tolerated. Algan knew he belonged to the old city and looked upon himself as a prisoner of the port. It was not a pleasant impression.