Part 13 (2/2)

Twelve hours after Earth's last missile had been destroyed, two-hundred-odd persons met in the main lounge of the flags.h.i.+p of the fleet. Maynard, his face haggard and drawn, called the meeting to order. After the preliminaries were over, he said: ”One part of the operation, the prevention of damage to any important part of Earth, was one hundred percent successful. Second, the replacement of EastHem's dictators.h.i.+p by a board of directors was also successful at least, the first objectives were attained. Third, our attempt to replace WestHem's government by a board of directors which, together with that of EastHem, would form a unified and properly-motivated government of all Earth, was a failure. The Westerners did not try to leave Earth, but decided to stay and fight it out. For that reason many key men changed their minds at the last minute and remained loyal to WestHem's government instead of supporting us. Thus, while we succeeded in evacuating most of our personnel, we lost one hundred four very good men.

”The fault, of course, was mine. I erred in several highly important matters. I underestimated the power of nationalism and patriotism; of loyalty to a government even though that government is notoriously inefficient, unjust, and corrupt. I underestimated the depth and strength of the anti-Galaxian prejudice that has been cultivated so a.s.siduously throughout the great majority of Earth's people; I failed to realize how rigidly, in the collective mind of that vast group, Galaxianism is identified with Capitalism. I overestimated the intelligence of that group; its ability to reason from cause to effect and its willingness to act for its own good. I thought that, when the issue was squarely joined, those people would abandon their att.i.tude of Let George do it' and take some interest in their own affairs.

”Because of these errors in judgment I hereby tender my resignation, effective as of now, from the position of Chairman of this Board. I turn this meeting over to Vice-Chairman Bryce for the election of my successor.”

He left the room; but was recalled in five minutes. ”Mr. Maynard, your tendered resignation has been rejected by an almost unanimous vote,” Bryce told him. ”It is the concensus that no one else of us all could have done as well. You will therefore resume your place and the meeting will proceed.”

Maynard sat down and said, ”I thank you, fellow Galaxians, for your vote of confidence; which, however little deserved, I am constrained to accept. Mr. Eldon Smith will now speak.”

The meeting went on for hours. Discussion was thorough and heated; at times acrimonious. Eventually, however, the main areas of discord were hammered out to substantial agreement. The Board of Directors of the Galactic Federation concluded its first really important meeting.

Earth's communications systems were restored to normal operating conditions and Maynard, after ample advance notice, spoke to every inhabitant of Earth who cared to listen. He covered the situation as it then was; what had brought it about, and why such drastic action had been necessary. Then he said: ”At present there are ninety five planets in the Galactic Federation. Earth will be admitted to the Federation if and when it adopts a planetary government acceptable to the Federation's Board of Directors. We care nothing about the form of that government; but we insist that its prime concern must be the welfare of the human race as a whole. Earth now has two directors on our board, Li Hing Wong and Feodr Ilyowicz. Earth is ent.i.tled to three more directors, to represent the regions now being so erroneously called the Western Hemisphere. They must be chosen by an honest, stable, and responsible authority, not by your present government of corrupt, greedy, and self-serving gangsters and plunderers.

”We will allow enough freighters to land on WestHem's s.p.a.ceports to supply WestHem's people with its usual supply of food and of certain other necessities, but that is all. Our milk-truck drivers have been recalled and we will do nothing whatever about the general strike. If you wish to let an organized minority starve you to death, that is your right. You got yourselves into this mess; you can get yourselves out of it or not, as you please.

”We will not broadcast again until three qualified representatives of WestHem have been accepted by us as members of the Board of Directors of the Galactic Federation. Until then, do exactly as you please. That is all.”

There is no need to go into what happened then throughout the nations of WestHem; the many nations whose only common denominator had been their opposition to the East. Too much able work has been done, from too many different viewpoints, to make any real summary justifiable. It suffices to say here that the adjustment was not as simple as Maynard's statement indicated that it should be, nor as easy as he really thought it would be. The strife was long, bitter, and violent; and, as will be seen later, certain entirely unexpected events occurred.

In fact, many thousand persons died and the Galaxians themselves had to straighten WestHem out before its three directors were seated on the Board.

There is no agreement as to whether or not the course that was followed was the right course or the best course. Many able scholars hold that the Directorate was just as much of a dictators.h.i.+p, and just as intolerant of and just as inimical to real liberty and freedom, as was any dictators.h.i.+p of old.

It is the chronicler's considered opinion, however, that what was done was actually the best thing-for humanity as a whole-that could have been done; considering what the ordinary human being intrinsically is. By ”ordinary” is meant, of course, the person to whom the entire field of psionics is a sealed realm; the person in whose tightly closed and rigidly conventional mind no supra-normal phenomenon can possibly occur or exist. And the present state of galactic civilization seems to show that if what was done was not the best that could have been done it was a very close approximation indeed thereto.

At what exact point does liberty become license? What is Freedom? Is Ethics an absolute? Can any system of ethics ever become an absolute? The conclusion seems unavoidable that until human beings have progressed much farther than they have at present-until supra-normal abilities have become normal-the ”liberties” and the ”freedoms” of many will have to be abridged if the good of all is to be served.

Newmars was the first planet to be colonized and it was designed from the first to become completely independent of Earth in as short a time as possible. Thus, as well as being longer-established than the other planets, it grew faster in population. Therefore Newmars had a population of about a billion, whereas the next most populous planet, Galmetia, had scarcely half that many people and all the rest of the colonized planets together did not have many more people than did Earth alone.

Geographically, Newmars had somewhat more land than Earth and somewhat less water, but the land ma.s.ses were arranged in an entirely different pattern. There was one tremendous continent, Warneria; which, roughly rectangular in shape and lying athwart the equator, covered on the average about ninety degrees of lat.i.tude and about one hundred fifty of longitude. There were half a dozen other, much smaller continents, and many hundreds of thousands of islands ranging in size from coral atolls up to near-continents as large as Australia.

Most of Nevmars' people lived on ”The Continent,” and some seven millions of them lived in and around the coastal city of Warnton, the planet's only real business center and the capital city of both the Continent and the whole Warner-owned world.

In establis.h.i.+ng the University of Psionics, then, Adams did not have to think twice to decide where to put it. Earth, even though it would furnish most of the students, was out of the question; the U of Psi would have to be in Warnton, Newmars.

Within a day of landing, however, Adams realized that the business of starting such a project as that was not his dish. He simply could not spend important money. He had never bought even an expensive scientific instrument; he had always requistioned them from some purchasing department or other. He had never in his life written a check for more than a few hundred bucks; he had no knowledge whatever of the use of money as a tool. Wherefore the Explorer landed at Warnton s.p.a.ceport and Barbara Deston took over. It had been Adams' idea to buy-or preferably to rent-a small apartment house to start with, but Barbara put her foot down hard on that.

She bought outright a brand-new forty-story hotel that covered half of a square block, saying, ”We don't want large cla.s.s-rooms-the smaller the better, since it will be small-group work-so this will suit us well enough until the architects get our real university built. Then we can either sell it or form an operating company and merge it into the hotel chain.”

When the project was running smoothly, and after the eight had developed a nucleus of some fifty psiontists, the Destons took the Explorer to Earth and the Joneses and the Trains, in two Warner-owned subs.p.a.cers, started out to cover the other planets, in descending order of population.

The Destons took up residence in their suite in the Hotel Warner and went to work. They scanned colleges and universities, whether or not any such inst.i.tution of learning had ever shown any interest in psionics. They scanned Inst.i.tutes of this and that, including several of Psychic Research. They scanned science fiction fan clubs and flying-saucer societies and crackpot groups and cults of all kinds and psychic mediums and fortune-tellers. They attended-unfelt-meetings of the learned societies. They scanned the trades and the professions, from aardvark keepers and aerialists through electricians and jewelers and ophthalmologists and s.p.a.cemen to zymurgists. Detecting a psionic latent, however weak, was now easy enough. There was an aura, if not an actual radiation, that was perceptible to the triggered mind at almost any distance. Any mind possessing that unique and unmistakable characteristic could and did feel and respond to the touch of a directed thought. Or, more exactly perhaps, a focused or tuned thought. Any such mind could and did (under such expert tutelage as theirs now was) learned telepathy in seconds; and, with very few exceptions, all persons with such minds became Galaxians and went to Newmars.

Since the operators knew what to do and exactly how to do it, the work went fast; and, very shortly after its beginning, a definite pattern began to form. Every possessor of a strong latent talent was at or near the top of his or her heap. If a performer, he or she had top billing. If a milliner, she got a hundred dollars per copy for her hats. If a mechanic, he was the best mechanic in town.

It need scarcely be said that Maynard, Lansing, Dann, Smith, Phelps, DuPuy, Hatfield, Spehn, Miss Champion, the seven leaders of the Planetsmen and their a.s.sistants and hundreds of others of the Galaxians were found to be very strong latents. Or that, even though most of them were too busy to go to Newmars to study, each was given everything that he could then take that his teachers could then give.

On the other hand, not even the Adamses could at that time get into touch with a non-psionic mind. It was not that that mind refused contact or blocked the exploring feelers of thought; it was as though there was nothing there to feel. It was like probing with sentient fingers throughout the reaches of an unbounded, undefined, completely empty and utterly dark s.p.a.ce.

And the conservative (”Hidebound”, according to Deston), greedy capitalists of Earth were non-psionic to a man.

The response to this psionic survey was so tremendous that the hotel building, immense as it was, was jammed to overflowing before the first real University building was ready for use.

As Barbara had foreseen, the psionics cla.s.ses were small, but there were plenty of teachers; people whose former t.i.tles ranged from Instructress-In-Kindergarten to Professor Emeritus of Advanced Nucleonics. And these cla.s.ses were being driven. They wanted to be driven. Each person there had been-more or less unconsciously -unhappy, discontented, frustrated. The few who had known that they had psionic power had been hiding it or disguising it; the others had known, either definitely or vaguely, that they wanted something out of life that they were not getting. Thus, when their minds were opened to the incredible vistas of psionics, they wanted to be driven hard and they drove themselves hard. They graduated fast, and either went right to work or formed advanced-study groups-and in either case they kept on driving hard.

When the Explorer emerged near Newmars, Barbara did not wait for the slow maneuvering of landing at the s.p.a.ceport and then taking the monorail into town, but 'ported herself directly into the main office of the University. Five minutes later she drove a thought to her husband. ”Babe, come here, quick! Here's something you're simply got to sec!”

He appeared beside her and she went on, ”I knew they were working fast, but I certainly didn't expect anything like that so soon.” Her mind took his up into a small room on the thirtieth floor. ”Just look at that!”

Deston ”looked” at the indicated group of four; who, heads almost touching, were seated at a small square table. One was a gangling, coltish, teen-age girl in sweater, slacks, and loafers, with braces on her teeth and her hair in a ponytail. The second was an old friend of Deston's-a big, taut, trim s.p.a.ce-officer in a uniform sporting the insignia of a full captain. The third was a lithe and lissome brunette made up to the gills; the fourth was a bald and paunchy ex-banker of seventy.

”And that combination picked itself out?” Deston marveled.

”Uh-huh,” she said, gleefully, pressing his arm tightly against her side. ”All out of their own little pointed heads and Stella says they're the prize group of the whole University. Dig in. Look. Just see what they're actually doing.”

”Uh-uh. I don't want to derail their tram of thought.” You won't. Maybe if you grabbed 'em by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the pants and slammed 'em against the wall a few times you could, but nothing any gentler than that.”

”They're that solid?” He went in and looked, and his whole body stiffened. He stayed in for five long minutes before he came back to Barbara and whistled through his teeth. ”Wow and wow and WOW!” he said then. ”All of us Big Wheels are going to have to look a little bit out-we're going to have compet.i.tion. We may have to demonstrate our fitness to lead-if any.”

”That's what I mean, and isn't it just wonderful? The University doesn't need us any more, so we can start doing whatever it is that we're going to do right now instead of waiting so long, like we thought we'd have to.”

”They've done a grand job, that's sure. Let's do some long-distance checking-see how Spehn and Dann are making out.”

They were making out all right. Since both were now psiontists, Intelligence and Navy were barreling right along. Graduates from the University of Psionics had been pouring into both services for weeks. Both services were expanding rapidly, in both numbers and quality; and, since the opposition was practically non-psionic, the Galaxians' advantage (Spehn and Dann agreed) was increasing all the time. Also, the opposition was not really united and could never be united except superficially because its factions were, by their very natures, immiscible. How effective could such opposition be?

Unfortunately, Spehn and Dann were wrong; and so were the Destons. It is a sad but true fact that a college graduate at graduation knows more than he ever did before or ever will again; and so it was with these young new psiontists. They thought they knew it all, but they didn't. They had a long way to go.

Chapter 16 STRATEGIC WITHDRAWAL.

Since the Galactic Federation claimed authority over all explored off-planet s.p.a.ce, and since InStell still wanted to get rid of the job of policing all that s.p.a.ce, GaIFed took the navy over. (It had a tremendous war-chest, and the financial details of the transaction are of no importance here.) What had been the Interstellar Patrol was now the Grand Fleet of the Galactic Federation.

Fleet Admiral Guerdon Dann, being a psiontist, could understand and could work in subs.p.a.ce. Therefore he could perceive subs.p.a.ce-going vessels before they emerged into normal s.p.a.ce, a feat no non-psionic observer could perform. Thus he perceived a very large number of vessels so maneuvering in subs.p.a.ce as to emerge in a roughly globular formation well outside his own globe of wars.h.i.+ps. He perceived that they were warcraft and really big stuff-super-dreadnougbts very much like his own-and that there were four or five hundred of them. That wasn't good; but, since their purpose was pellucidly clear, he'd have to do something. What could he do? His mind raced.

He wasn't a war admiral-pirates didn't fight in fleets. He didn't know any more about fleet action in s.p.a.ce than a pig did about Sunday. There'd never been any. Missile-killers were new and had extreme range, and no repulsor except a planet-based super-giant could stop one after fifteen seconds of flight at 175,000 gravities. However, they carried no screen, so they'd be duck soup for beams, especially lasers-if they could spot them soon enough, and he'd have to a.s.sume that they could.

Torps had plenty of screen, but they were slow; hence they were duck soup for repulsors. What he ought to have, dammit, was something with the legs of a killer and the screens of a torp, and there was nothing like that even on the drawing boards. Before leybyrdite nothing like that had been possible.

Beams, then? Uh-uh! They'd englobe s.h.i.+pwise, four or five to one. His s.h.i.+ps could then immerge-if they were fast enough-or get whiffed out.

He got into telepathic touch with his officers. ”I don't know whether we can do anything to those boys or not. Probably not. We certainly can't if we let them get close to us-they'll englobe us four or five to one if we make like heroes, so we won't. Be ready to immerse when I give the word. Try killers at fifteen seconds range as they emerge and send out some torps on general principles, but that's all. We're going to execute a strategic withdrawal-in other words, run like h.e.l.l.”

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