Chapter Four

 

 

Afterward, whenever he recalled that meeting, Noren found it hard to believe that he could have sat through it so impassively. Yet impassive he was. Already in shock from the impact of the fear that had overpowered him during Orison, he was incapable of feeling the shock that the prospect of another city would otherwise have aroused in him—and did arouse in those of his fellow Scholars who weren’t on the committee that had engaged in advance discussion. A new city had not been thought possible prior to the success of the research. They had barely enough equipment to keep the existing one going; how could any be diverted? There was nothing most Scholars would like better than to be in on such a project, but how could it be justified?

“As heretics, you were warned before the secrets were revealed to you that you would be confined here for life,” the council chairman reminded them. “It was repeated at your sentencing and again later, when the conditions of your confinement were explained. No release was anticipated. Never since the First Scholar’s expedition arrived has a Scholar been farther than the platform outside the Gates: at first because the risk of disclosing the Six Worlds’ destruction was too great, and then because for us to mingle with the villagers—even when we wouldn’t be recognized as former heretics—would rob us of the remoteness we need both for maintaining general respect and for recruiting people with inquiring minds. And those weren’t the only reasons.”

The traditional sacrifice of physical freedom could not be abandoned lightly, they knew. For one thing, it prevented distraction from the desperate urgency of human dependence on timeworn machines and the vital need to solve basic technological problems. And there had been no constructive purpose in abandoning it. Technicians had been exploring beyond the Tomorrow Mountains since soon after the Founding, using as many of the precious aircars as could be spared from the top-priority task of transporting land treatment machines to the villages. Scholars might have gone along, since no contact with villagers was involved, but they had not done so, not only because of tradition but because they couldn’t take time from their own vital work in the City. It was more efficient for Technicians to survey the land, verifying the detailed orbital surveys that had been made prior to the Founding, and bringing back minerals for analysis. Never till now had there been talk of a permanent outpost.

Like anything involving a major policy change, the idea must be put to a vote among all the fully committed. Even relatively small matters, like whether a particular tool should be melted down and its elements allocated to research, were so decided; for such things were of far-reaching significance. The disposition of one kilo of metal might conceivably determine whether future generations lived or died. The disposition of enough materials to set up an outpost could very easily determine it. Yet no one could be sure, Noren thought in horror. How could they dare to vote on an issue when they were not sure? It was fortunate that he, as an uncommitted novice, had neither the right nor the responsibility to do so.

“Normally, so great a decision as this would demand many weeks of deliberation,” the chairman said. “For reasons I’ll explain presently, we must hold the vote tonight—”

An astonished gasp from the assembled Scholars made him pause. Then, calmly, he continued, “But before I go into that, I think we should consider the less urgent factors, those related to the status of our work.”

Noren had not yet acquired the technical background to follow the discussion fully. The emphasis of his study had been on understanding the fundamental basis of the research, for details, when needed, could be quickly memorized under hypnosis. He’d been told that to be creative, one must have a thorough comprehension of a task’s nature—and that had to be gained slowly.

At first he had been impatient with the slowness of the way the work had progressed over the years. He hadn’t been able to see why the current experimentation was designed not to produce metal, but simply to verify certain aspects of the theory that seemed most promising. Wasn’t there some shortcut? he’d demanded. Wouldn’t it be quicker to try out the theory by actually attempting fusion of heavy elements?

It would not, Grenald had explained. If they proceeded that way and failed, no one would be able to tell what had gone wrong. The various ideas involved must be tested separately. Moreover, having no materials to waste, they could not build the equipment for a full-scale experiment until they were sure that the theory was sound. Everything done so far showed that it was, for it had been developed gradually as, one by one, the conflicting theories had been eliminated. All the same, no matter how many things pointed to a theory’s accuracy, a single demonstrated fact that didn’t fit would be enough to disprove it.

Although Noren did not have a full grasp of the theory itself, he was familiar with the mathematics involved in it; he always absorbed rapidly any math he encountered. And he was well aware of what was at stake in the experimentation in progress. If it verified everything it had been planned to verify, an attempt to achieve fusion might conceivably be made soon. Experiments rarely worked out that well, however. It was likely that more would be needed. To progress directly to the synthesization of usable metal would require a true breakthrough: an outcome even better than could be foreseen, one that revealed facts nobody had guessed. And if by any chance some facet of the theory proved to be not merely unverified, but definitely wrong, then the theory would have to be modified. That could take years of work. No one talked about that.

At least they hadn’t talked about it until the meeting.

As he listened to the discussion, Noren soon saw that the Scholars were divided into three factions: one that favored sticking to the Founders’ original plan; one that felt a breakthrough might be close enough to justify getting a head start on another city; and one that feared a setback would occur, a setback too serious to be dealt with except by drastic measures. It was this last group that had first proposed that preparation for the establishment of a distant outpost should begin. “We must be ready,” its spokesmen declared, “because if our current theory proves inadequate, there is only one way we can turn—toward techniques that will eventually entail experimentation too risky to be tried in an inhabited area.”

That nuclear fusion was potentially dangerous was something that had astonished Noren when, soon after beginning his studies, he had been shown a film of something called a “thermonuclear bomb.” It had been quite horrifying, especially when the purpose of the bomb—for which nothing in his own world had prepared him—had become clear. He’d been thankful that he had not been introduced to it through a dream. There were no such dreams, since thermonuclear bombs had not existed in the time of the Founders and had in fact been abolished long before thought recording had been invented. But the film had been preserved, for there were lessons in it, and among them one of particular importance to potential experimenters: extreme care must be taken lest in the effort to achieve controlled nuclear reactions they produce an uncontrolled one.

The danger had not been great so far. Long ago the scientists of the Six Worlds had learned to control nuclear fusion and had harnessed it for the generation of power. The City’s main power plant was a fusion reactor, as those of the mother world had been after its supply of organic fuel was exhausted. Fusion power was clean and safe; it did not even create radioactive wastes. But nuclear fusion of heavy elements was far more difficult and complex than the type of fusion employed in a power plant. If it could be achieved at all, it would be achieved only through methods unlike the proven ones, and the approaches as yet untried were not without peril.

To men of the Six Worlds, it would have seemed obvious that all nuclear experimentation ought to be done far away from the City. It wasn’t that simple, however. The facilities necessary for such experimentation did not exist anywhere but in the City, and they couldn’t be moved without dangerous depletion of its reserves. The villagers were dependent upon the City for weather control, purified water to supplement rain catchment, and the periodic soil treatment and seed irradiation—without those things they would perish. The hazards of splitting the City’s resources had until now been greater than the chances of a serious accident. Yet if new failures were to affect those odds. . . .

The Founders had expected failures. They had realized that they and their successors were facing a task considered impossible by the science of their own era. This, after all, was why they’d set up a social system that was in most respects morally repugnant to them. It had been the only way to buy time, enough time for the impossible to be accomplished.

Transmutation of the elements . . . it was an old dream; before the dawn of science, men had tried to transform base metals into gold. Later men had laughed. No one had imagined a situation in which human survival would hinge upon a variation of the alchemists’ laughable, impossible goal: the changing of other elements into metals.

The very existence of a planet without usable metals had been a surprise to the Six Worlds’ scientists when, after the initial fruitless explorations that had followed the perfection of the stardrive, they had come upon it. They’d been looking for worlds to colonize, and had previously found none with suitable gravity, climate and atmosphere. At first, this one had elated them. Its soil contained poisons, but technology could deal with poisons. There had been no expectation of discovering planets where advanced technology would be unnecessary—it had been assumed that if such planets existed, intelligent life forms would have evolved upon them, making them unavailable for claim. A species that had fully populated its own solar system could continue to survive only by means of technology: the technology to build starships, and the technology to utilize otherwise-uninhabitable worlds. That was the natural way of things. When survival was threatened, technology developed to meet the threat. Even the nova could not have endangered the survival of a starfaring race, had it not been for the unfortunate chance that the sole refuge located before tragedy struck lacked the metal on which all technology depended.

Astronomers had long known that some stars were metal-poor; whether their planets were also metal-poor—or even whether they had planets—could be determined only by exploration. Some had been found to have planets without solid ground. This world, however, had been a puzzle at the beginning. It was solid, composed primarily of silicon, yet its proportion of metallic elements was even lower than that of its sun. There was no metal ore at all; the orbital surveys, made with sensitive and trustworthy instruments, showed that clearly. Only traces were present, traces too small to be extracted without prohibitively complex equipment. Baffled, the first landing parties had investigated further, and had come to an awesome conclusion: what little usable metal the planet had once had was already exhausted. It had been mined in past ages by visitors from some other solar system who had depleted the ore and gone on.

Nothing was known of these mysterious visitors of the past, for though the signs of their excavations were unmistakable, they had left no artifacts. No one could tell where they’d come from or where they had gone. Since this was the first proof of intelligence elsewhere in the universe, the scientists of the Six Worlds had been excited. Such a find had seemed ample compensation for the fact that the planet could never become a self-supporting colony. But that, of course, had been before the nova wiped out all sources of off-world support.

The Founders had known in advance that the Six Worlds’ sun would nova—but only a few weeks in advance. The starfleet had been small, and there were frustrating limits to what it could carry. Life support equipment had first priority; the computers with their irreplaceable store of knowledge second; facilities for conducting research, although also vital, had of necessity been confined to an absolute minimum. No expansion of those facilities was possible without metal.

It was a vicious circle. By scouring the planet, the remaining traces of suitable metal might have been located; but such traces could not be utilized without equipment that wasn’t obtainable. Once the breakthrough occurred—once even a small amount of metal had been synthesized—it would become possible to manufacture the equipment. Then the world’s limited resources could be tapped. Perhaps metal could then be reached by drilling into the planet’s core. But would there ever be any breakthrough when the laboratories weren’t adequately outfitted?

Never before had Noren heard pessimism from the scientists, but at the meeting there were some who expressed it openly. “We’re fools if we don’t recognize that our present line of thought may have to be modified,” one of them asserted. “Within weeks—half a year at the most—this series of experiments will be finished, and without better facilities we’ll find ourselves facing a dead end—”

“No!” Grenald interrupted, rising to his feet in anger. “It’s not a dead end. This time we will succeed.”

There was silence, Everyone respected Grenald, and he had been head of the nuclear physics department for many years. Yet he looked old, tired; it was obvious to all that with the culmination of his work close at hand, he himself had become uncertain and afraid. Stefred’s words came back to Noren: He is an old man who has devoted most of his life to research that he won’t live to see completed. Stefred knew, he thought sadly. Stefred knew that Grenald’s hope of an imminent breakthrough was based on wishful thinking.

“We will succeed,” Grenald repeated, “and because we will, we should take the preliminary steps toward founding a second city. We betray our trust if we delay by a single week the Transition Period’s beginning.”

The Transition Period was the time during which the groundwork would be laid for the keeping of the Prophecy’s promises. They couldn’t be fulfilled all at once, of course. The people had been told that when the Mother Star appeared there would be machines and cities for everyone, and most pictured those cities rising out of the ground overnight—but it would not happen that way. Building would be a slow process even after metal was available and factories had been established. Furthermore, villagers who stood in awe of machines would not be ready to move into cities, much less to share the job of construction. During the Transition Period, villagers who so wished would be given the opportunity to become Technicians; they would be free to enter training centers, work on the new cities, and then move there. People who preferred to remain farmers, but were willing to sell their land and start farms near the new cities, would rank as Technicians, too. By the time the Star became visible, the promised things would indeed be available to all.

At Grenald’s words, there was a murmur of agreement; all Scholars were anxious for the Transition Period to begin. Moreover, the Inner City was crowded. Though no children were reared there, the population outside had grown rapidly over the years, and that meant the number of people who became heretics steadily increased; before long no more doubling up in quarters would be feasible. Then one of the Outer City’s domes would have to be taken—an unthinkable step, for it would mean imposing hardship on the Technicians who would be ousted. Some Scholars felt a new city could be justified on those grounds alone.

Others, however, were cautious. “You speak to bolster your own confidence,” they told Grenald. “Do you think acting as if the research has already succeeded will somehow bring it to pass? It won’t! If we weaken this City by a premature attempt to establish another, we’ll certainly betray our trust. The equipment we’ve safeguarded so long will be lost.”

The proponents of this view outnumbered Grenald’s supporters, but the proposal for the new city was also backed by the third faction—the group that believed failure of the current experiments would demand an outpost for more dangerous ones. “We know there’s risk in weakening the City’s reserves,” they maintained, “but it’s less than that of nuclear accident if we must turn to the avenues saved for a last resort. So in either case the project makes sense. If we succeed soon, we’ll have a head start on the Transition Period, and if we don’t, well be prepared for what may have to be tried next.”

Back and forth went the argument, until at last someone suggested, “Wouldn’t it be simpler just to wait and see? It will be no more than half a year until we know the outcome of Grenald’s work. Surely we could make a much wiser decision then; I fail to understand why the committee has brought up the matter at this point.”

It was then that the chairman rose once more. “I did not wish to reveal this until all sides had been considered,” he said, “since if there had been a strong majority either for or against the proposal, it would have outweighed the immediate considerations. But the fact is that if we’re going to set up an outpost beyond the Tomorrow Mountains, we should do it now. A new base will require retrieval of a starship from orbit, and the starships can be reached only if the space shuttle homes in on their electronic beacons, beacons that have been monitored by the computers since the time of the Founders. Three days ago there was a signal failure alarm. The solar-powered beacon in one of the starships is no longer functioning at full strength—and the computers have warned us that if we do not retrieve that ship at once, it will be lost to us forever.”

*  *  *

In the end, when the meeting was over and Noren and Brek walked back to their lodgings to spend the few hours until morning, there could be little doubt that the outpost would be established. The vote had been cast by secret ballot and was not yet counted; but the prevailing opinion had been clear. The beacon failure alarm had become the deciding factor.

The two looked up at the stars, faint dots speckling the gaps between towers that almost touched overhead. Noren thought of them as they had been in the dream: blazing points of pure, unfiltered light. He would perhaps see them so in reality! But Brek knew nothing of that, and so they could not talk of it.

Elated, Brek began, “To go beyond the Tomorrow Mountains—”

“You don’t know that you’ll be one to go. They said that except for certain specialists, the choice would be made by lot.”

“They also said that the place would be staffed on a rotation basis, that no one would stay there permanently. We’re young, Noren Sooner or later we’ll get there even if we’re not among the first! It’s life imprisonment against . . . hope.”

“Does it bother you that much—the confinement, I mean?”

“I—I don’t know. I haven’t had as long as you have to get used to the idea. I’m willing, certainly. But I can’t pretend that it doesn’t matter to me.”

Noren was detached, numb. “I don’t think I ever felt that way, even at first,” he reflected. “The Inner City has everything I was seeking—”

“It’s different for you. You’re gifted; someday you’ll be a top scientist.”

“Where did you hear that?” Noren demanded.

“In the computer room today, when you were off with Stefred. Everyone knows it. If Grenald’s work should fail conclusively, it would take years to prepare for a new series of experiments, and you’re the best prospect for coming up with some brand-new approach.”

But that was awful, Noren thought. They were counting on him for something that might not even exist! He did not doubt his ability to learn; he would surely seek out whatever truth was accessible to him; but suppose the truth was that there were no new approaches? He would not become like Grenald, defending an unproven theory with the idea that sheer stubbornness would make it true.

The next morning Brek was summoned to see Stefred, and after supper Noren too was called. He was relieved, for though he’d planned to spend the evening with Talyra, sharing the day’s meals with her had been a strain. She had not understood his preoccupation; she’d been confused, thinking him tormented by some lingering result of heresy, and had plied him with questions he could not answer. For more reasons than one, he found himself eager to be involved in the retrieval of the starship.

A small group had gathered in Stefred’s office, all young men who had experienced the dream. Brek had been through it and was as excited as the rest; an opportunity for space flight was beyond the wildest hopes any of them had ever cherished.

It was not as fantastic as it seemed, Stefred explained. The space shuttle had an automatic pilot, which, as they’d heard at the meeting, was programmed to dock with the starship’s electronic beacon—no piloting skill was needed. The crewmen’s task would be to dismantle the ship so that it could be brought down piece by piece. They would, to be sure, have to work in spacesuits under zero gravity conditions. No one living had ever done anything like that. But neither had the first men to walk in space, back in ancient times when five of the Six Worlds had yet to be colonized. And those men hadn’t had the advantage of a detailed and accurate introduction to it through dreams.

The Founders had planned well. As Noren had guessed, the shuttlecraft pilot had recorded his thoughts not from memory, but in real time during an actual flight, knowing that those who would make such flights again would have no prior experience even with high-speed aircraft, let alone spaceships. “On the Six Worlds boys of your age would not have been given this job,” Stefred said, “since years of training would have been required. We have no trained astronauts. The older Scholars are engaged in other work for which they’re vitally needed, and besides, they’re not in condition physically. Your youth is an advantage in both those respects; the only other qualification is that you be willing to risk your lives.” He eyed them intently. “You must understand from the beginning that it’s dangerous. The space shuttle has been unused for generations. It has been maintained according to the instructions left us by the Founders, but we have no guarantee that it will perform. And that’s not the only hazard—”

“Do you really think any of us would turn down a chance to fly into space?” someone interrupted indignantly.

“I don’t,” Stefred admitted. “That’s why I’m not happy about offering it.” Sighing, he continued, “I will tell you frankly that I voted against the proposed new city both in the executive committee and at last night’s meeting. The majority was with me until the matter of the beacon failure arose; I suspect that those who changed their minds on that basis were following emotion, not reason.”

“But surely, if an outpost is likely to be needed soon anyway, we shouldn’t waste the last chance to get this starship!” Noren exclaimed. There were no materials left for constructing domes like those of the Outer City, and certain vital equipment could not be installed in village-type buildings of rough stone or brick, which couldn’t be air-conditioned; so a prefabricated “tower” would be needed in every city until the planet’s industry was well established. Moreover, to villagers, a city without any of the unique and spectacular towers would not be a City at all. They would not consider the Prophecy fulfilled unless their own area had one. “There’ll be barely enough towers for the Transition Period as it is,” he argued. “Losing one could affect the outcome of the Founders’ plan.”

“Some of us,” Stefred said soberly, “feel that it may affect it more if we risk six promising young Scholars in attempts to home in on a signal that’s known to be unreliable.”

Noren drew breath. “You mean it may fail completely . . . while we’re in space.”

“It may. In that case the automatic pilot may abort the mission successfully—or it may not. Have you wondered why I made the test dream so rough, Noren? Why I plunged you alone into a blackness you could not comprehend, leading you to think you might be confronting death? If that shuttlecraft fails to dock, it may go into an extrasolar orbit, an endless orbit! Have you any conception of what that means?”

The thought, though sobering, did not alter anyone’s enthusiasm. Stefred, convinced that they were genuine volunteers, went on to discuss the details of their preparation, setting up schedules for intensive use of the Dream Machine. But it was plain that he was not really comfortable about the project. Noren was uncomfortable also, but for a different cause; when Brek and the others left, he stayed behind a few minutes.

“Stefred,” he asked, “why, when you knew I’d be away erecting the tower at the new outpost, did you bring Talyra in yesterday? Why did you say that the decision could not wait?”

Stefred hesitated for a long time. “Someday I’ll tell you, Noren,” he said finally. “It’s complicated.” He made a gesture of dismissal; then, abruptly, burst out, “If you have any reservations about what you said yesterday during our talk, any doubts about preferring to know more than can be learned through exclusive concentration on science, then you should not join the space crew.”

Numerous though Noren’s doubts had become, there were none on that score. He said nothing, realizing that no reply was expected.

“Grenald begged me to disqualify you arbitrarily, but it wouldn’t have been fair to do that. The choice had to be yours. Nevertheless, he does have logic on his side; the risk, in your case, is perhaps excessive—”

Slowly, Noren shook his head. “It won’t do, Stefred,” he said. “You’ve been trying to scare me, but you know I won’t back out no matter how scared I am. We both know that the Scholars who voted in favor of this project are just as concerned about the risking of life as you are, and that it’s basic policy to respect the decisions of volunteers. You’ve admitted you can’t bar me from volunteering. You can’t even tell me to consider my potential as a scientist; yesterday you advised the exact opposite! There’s some other issue that’s worrying you, and you still aren’t giving me all the facts.”

“Maybe I’m not,” Stefred conceded. “But did it ever occur to you that perhaps I don’t have them all?” He stared out into the night, where the glowing windows of the adjacent tower obscured the stars. “I don’t know why I blame myself,” he muttered, more to himself than to Noren. “If I followed Grenald’s urgings and my own best judgment, you would hate me for it. You’ve got too independent a mind to want protection from the perils to which skepticism can lead—and you also have youth. That’s a dangerous combination. Yet if salvation of the world lay solely in old men’s caution, why would young people be born?”

Noren left the room quietly, pressing the point no further. Though the reply he’d received was cryptic, it was obviously not meant to be otherwise. Always before he had felt secure under Stefred’s guidance. Now he sensed that something was wrong, terribly wrong—something Stefred himself was disturbed by. This time the challenge was not a planned lesson. It was real and unavoidable, and Stefred trusted him to find a way to meet it.

*  *  *

From then on the days were too busy for brooding over anything. The training dreams, unlike the edited one Stefred had devised as a test, had no element of nightmare; both Noren and Brek found them fascinating. Dreaming, they experienced not only zero gravity and the techniques of maneuvering in a spacesuit, but the specific process of dismantling starships—which, having been originally assembled in orbit, were designed to come apart. The starships were made not of metal, but of a semi-metal alloy that could not be reshaped by any means available on the planet. Had it been possible to melt them down, the material would have been used long before to make tools and machines. As it was, special tools were needed to separate the sections of airtight shell, and only a few had been kept, enough for two men to use at a time. That meant the job would be a slow one. Many trips would be required to get an entire starship down using a single small shuttle, and since only two men could work, only two would go on each flight. The fact that this also appeared to minimize the risk seemed of little comfort to Stefred.

Noren did not see Stefred often; the Dream Machine was turned over to the young women who normally operated it, and the six prospective astronauts used it in rotation, day and night. In between, they scrutinized the Inner City’s towers closely, tried on the carefully preserved spacesuits, and—following the detailed instructions of the computers—checked out the shuttlecraft itself. It was stored in its original bay in a tower that had not been fully converted. The first ascent was to be made under cover of darkness so that the villagers would not observe it. After that, of course, all traffic would be on the other side of the Tomorrow Mountains.

Ten days were allotted to preparation, the maximum number that could elapse, according to the computers’ projections, if the starship beacon was to function until all the work was finished. Lots were drawn whereby Scholars not held back by essential duties were designated for the first staff of the outpost; they too began to get ready. Until the tower was assembled, only a few would go; but more would follow, and with them, Inner City Technicians. That was necessary because some of the chosen Scholars were married to Technicians, and also because others, like Noren and Brek, were uncommitted. The secret of the outpost’s existence could not be kept from the Inner City Technicians, and once they saw people not known to be Scholars going there, they would want an equal chance for themselves.

Everybody wanted to go beyond the mountains. Yet life in the settlement would be anything but easy. There would be backbreaking work with an absolute minimum of equipment, not only in construction, but in the raising of food. Aircars couldn’t be spared to transport food indefinitely; the Scholars would have to spend part of their time farming by the primitive Stone Age methods they’d been taught in the villages as children. Noren was not looking forward to that, though he considered the founding of a new city well worth it.

Meanwhile, whatever free time he had he spent with Talyra. He had thought she would be lonely and frightened in the City, that she would seek not only his love, but his comfort; yet it didn’t work out that way. To his astonishment, Talyra did not seem to have any difficulty adjusting to her new situation. She liked it. When she was unhappy it was not for her own sake, but because he could not convince her that he himself was all right.

Talyra had been given a job in the nursery, which horrified Noren when he first heard of it; it seemed unnecessarily cruel. Talyra didn’t agree. She informed him that this was the first assignment for all Technician women. They were supposed to be under no illusions as to what they would face if they married: the bearing of children they could not rear. Because Talyra had been trained to deliver babies, she worked mainly as a midwife; but she also took care of the babies as the other nursery attendants did, and she didn’t mind at all. “But Noren,” she declared, “I like babies! Why shouldn’t I enjoy the work?”

“Doesn’t it bother you to see the mothers come in to nurse their children, loving them, yet knowing they’ll have to give them up when they’re old enough to be weaned?”

“That is the High Law,” she answered soberly. “How else could it be? There is no room for families in the Inner City, and we who are privileged to serve here must accept it. It’s hard, but everyone knows that Wards of the City go only to homes where their new parents will love them, too.”

Noren could understand that view in the Scholar women—who knew why the sacrifice was necessary—although in one way it was worse for them because they also knew that on the Six Worlds, where it had been possible to get milk from animals, babies whose mothers couldn’t keep them had been adopted at birth. It was more difficult for him to see why Talyra took it so calmly. Was she covering up on his account? he wondered. Or did she still trust the High Law blindly? She had remained as devout as ever, certainly; like most Technicians she attended the Inner City’s open-air Vespers daily. When he could, Noren went with her, telling himself that he did it to make her happy, yet knowing inside that it was to avoid accompanying Brek to Orison, which was held at the same hour.

As a nurse, Talyra occasionally assisted in the medical research laboratory, a fact that appalled Noren still more until he realized that she was completely unaware of the true nature of what went on there. She did not know that the people she tended had volunteered to be made sick. Technicians, of course, were not permitted to do that, The volunteers were all Scholars. He himself had already been through it once, and it wouldn’t be the last time. Medical research was, after all, the only type that could be of benefit to the present generation of villagers, and it would be unthinkable to try things out on them. There were no animals with a biological resemblance to human beings, as there had been on the Six Worlds. Some diseases that had been conquered there were no longer curable, because of a lack of drugs and facilities; then too, there were still local ills for which no help existed. Noren had tried to exact a promise that if they ever found an antidote for the poison that had killed his mother, they would test it on him; but since the same one had also killed the First Scholar, his name was far down on the volunteer list.

Inner City customs were so unlike village ones that Noren marveled at Talyra’s quick adaptation to them. It was strange to see her dressed in City women’s trousers instead of the skirts she had always worn, but she found them comfortable, she told him. She was awed by the quality of garments cut with scissors and stitched with metal needles; villagers had only bone. Because there weren’t enough scissors and needles to go around, all City clothes were made by seamstresses, and Talyra declared that she hated sewing anyway. That surprised him, for she had never complained as he had about farm chores. He was also surprised to learn that she disliked cooking and thought the arrangement whereby even married couples lived in tiny rooms, taking all their meals in the refectory, was a fine system. Talyra was not one to rage against the world; she simply went ahead with what had to be done. Yet though she’d seemed satisfied in the village, she found the Inner City more truly satisfying—or would have, Noren saw, had it not been for his own evident turmoil.

He hadn’t quite realized how hard it would be to conceal his problems if he and Talyra saw each other every day. And the problems had intensified. His feeble attempts to hide them did little good. Repeatedly he asserted that he had not been punished for his heresy, yet Talyra remained doubtful. Finally, after nearly a week of her desperate probing for reassurance, he said sharply. “Have you ever known me to lie? You broke our betrothal because I wouldn’t lie about being a heretic; you defended me before the Scholar Stefred on the grounds that I’d always been honest. Why should you think I’m lying now?”

She raised her eyes to meet his, saying in a low voice. “Will you swear to me by the Mother Star that they have given you no punishment?”

“Yes,” he maintained. “By the Mother Star, Talyra.” As he said it, he recalled the day long before when they had quarreled over his refusal to hold such an oath sacred, thinking that on that point at least, they no longer differed.

To his amazement, she burst into tears. “Then it’s as I feared,” she whispered. “You—you still don’t believe, Noren, I see it in your face. You’re still a heretic; that’s why you aren’t able to accept all they offer you.”

Later, lying sleepless on his bunk, it occurred to Noren that Talyra’s keen intuition had again brought her very close to the truth; but at the time he was outraged. “Are you suggesting I lied at my recantation?” he demanded angrily.

“No, you wouldn’t do that. You’d been forced to concede that the Scholars are wise; yet in your heart you have no faith.”

“You’re not being reasonable,” he insisted. “Faith? What is that but to be content with ignorance? I know, Talyra! I know that the Mother Star exists, that it will someday appear as the Prophecy says—”

“And that we need fear nothing as long as its spirit remains with us?”

He turned away, knowing that although he could scarcely acknowledge such a belief, he was not free to deny it; and suddenly it came to him that perhaps the book of the Prophecy would not be “true in its entirety” even if the research succeeded. “So long as we believe in it, no force shall destroy us, though the heavens themselves be consumed. . . .” He had not lied. He had believed it; he had supposed that human survival was certain. The First Scholar had been certain! If he hadn’t been, he could never had done what he did, nor could he possibly have borne what he had to bear. Moreover, the feeling of certainty had been strong in the dreams. Had the First Scholar, a scientist who must surely have known that, himself been deluded?

“You still can’t be happy,” Talyra said sorrowfully, “because you aren’t whole. Before, you were sure what you believed, so sure . . . and I used to think that once you saw how mistaken you were, that would fix everything. I—I’ve been stupid, Noren. Heresy isn’t a sin, it’s something you’re born with, and recanting can’t give you faith you just don’t have. The Scholars don’t punish; that’s not their way—you simply have to live with the consequences of what you are.”

Noren did not try to talk about it again. Although more than once after that night Talyra sought statements from him to allay her fears, he found that his own fears led him invariably to anger. That was not her fault and he had only a few days left to be with her, so he stifled it, kissing her instead of speaking. And when they kissed he could not regret her entrance to the City, unlikely though it seemed that the barrier to their marriage would ever fall. He now felt that the revelation of his Scholar status must be postponed indefinitely; nothing short of concrete proof that the Prophecy’s promises were fulfillable would make him willing to assume the robe. How could he have imagined that his misgivings would lessen with time?

Rooming with Brek did not help, for although Noren welcomed his friendship, shared problems couldn’t be pushed into the back of one’s mind as easily as those not constantly discussed. “This is good, what we’re doing now,” Brek declared. “To build a new city, one that will eventually be open to everybody—that’s fine, and rank won’t make much difference there. But as far as commitment to priesthood’s concerned, we’re just evading the issue. When our shift at the outpost is finished, we’ll have to come back . . . and probably the Transition Period can’t begin that soon.”

That it might never begin was something Noren had not mentioned to Brek; he could not bring himself to mention it to anyone, for once he did, he’d feel compelled to take some stand. He did not know what stand to take. As a result, he shared little more openness with Brek than with Talyra, and to be less than frank had always been painful for him. Day by day the pressure built up until he found himself counting the hours until the shuttlecraft’s ascent. In space, at least, he would be free!

The space crew had been divided into teams by Stefred. Noren and Brek were paired, and when the lots were cast to decide who would make the first trip, they won. The computers monitored the starship’s orbit and set the time of departure at three hours past midnight. No announcement was to be made to the Technicians before the tower was assembled, since its source couldn’t be explained; they would later assume that it had been “called down from the sky,” as the Book of the Prophecy described. So when Noren bid Talyra goodbye he told her only that he’d been chosen for special service that would prevent him from seeing her for some time. The possibility that he might not return he refused even to consider. The perils of the undertaking seemed unreal beside his desire to escape to a place where there’d be no abstract problems.

Talyra had no reason to suspect that he was leaving the Inner City, of course. “You look more cheerful than usual,” she observed. “I know I mustn’t ask about the things people do when they serve inside the Hall of Scholars, but if what you’ve been called to do makes you look this way, it must be good.” Her voice faltered briefly. “It—it must be worth another separation, even though we’ve just found each other—”

“It’s good, darling,” he agreed quickly. “‘It can’t bring anything but good.” Then, because he knew it would please her, he sought words that fit the formal religion she cherished. “The Scholar Stefred does me honor in judging me qualified,” he added. “You must think of it as—as a journey, though the service to which I go is not like any journey in the world. I shall glimpse mysteries that few ever see, Talyra.”

“Then I’ll say farewell as for a journey,” she told him, her face lighting with joy. “May the spirit of the Mother Star go with you!”

“And may its blessings be spread through my service,” he replied gravely. He took her in his arms then, and they said less solemn things. Not till he’d left her did he realize that for a few minutes he had spoken sincerely and naturally in the language a priest would use.

He’d been advised to get a few hours of sleep, but he could not imagine doing so. Instead he went on up to his lodging tower’s top level, where, in a small compartment that had been the observation deck of the starship, windows looked out on all sides. Each tower had such an area, used as a lounge and normally crowded; but at midnight he had it to himself. He sat gazing out at the stars, tingling with the thought that he would soon be seeing them from an identical compartment that floated free in space.

A quiet voice broke in on his growing exhilaration. “Since you weren’t in your room, I thought I’d find you here,” Stefred said.

Noren turned, startled. If Stefred had any last-minute instructions, why hadn’t he sent for him earlier? Often enough they’d talked informally at meals and in the recreation areas, but never before had the Chief Inquisitor sought him out in his own quarters.

Stefred’s face was worn, almost harrowed, though in the dim light of the observation lounge it couldn’t be seen clearly. “You go to hazards of which you know nothing,” he said with evident distress. “I can’t explain them; yet you trust me, and I owe you honest warning.”

“Look, you don’t need to say anything else,” protested Noren. “I’ve already been told how hazardous it is, and even if I hadn’t, the hazards are pretty obvious.”

“Not all of them.”

“I’ve risked my life before, Stefred,” Noren exclaimed impatiently. “At least I thought I was risking it, as we all did when we became heretics. Haven’t I proved that I’m not going to panic?”

Stefred sat on the molded white seat that encircled the room, leaning against the window next to Noren; for a while neither of them spoke. This tower was not central like the Hall of Scholars, and nothing stood between it and the stars. None of the moons were up, not even Little Moon, so the silhouette of the Tomorrow Mountains wasn’t discernible. The world was empty, Noren thought suddenly . . . empty except for the City and the cluster of villages surrounding it. He had never pictured it that way, but from space he would see how empty it really was.

“You’ve proved your courage,” Stefred said slowly. “You’ve shown more than one kind: the courage to risk death, to face unknown horrors, to stand up for what you believe against various sorts of opposition—I could list quite a few others. You know them. But there are kinds of courage you don’t know, Noren.” He paused, groping for words that he apparently could not find. “The demands of this job may be greater than they seem at first.”

They could hardly, Noren felt, be greater than those of coping with the problems that had descended on him in the past two weeks, from which any diversion—even danger—would be a relief. “Must we keep on talking about it?” he burst out.

“No,” said Stefred, sounding oddly apologetic. “You’ve made your decision, and I’ve made mine; I shouldn’t have come. As long as I’m here, though, I’ll say one thing more.” He faced Noren, declaring decisively, “In the past I’ve tested you sometimes, taught you a good deal, and I’ve never led you into anything beyond your ability to handle; you’ve learned to rely on that. You must not rely on it now. I believe you’ll come through this all right, yet it’s possible that you’ll meet experiences you’re unready for. If the going gets rough, you will need more than courage.”

Puzzled, Noren asked, “What? Further knowledge?”

“In a sense.”

Hot anger flashed through Noren, overriding the apprehension that had begun to grow in him. “You’re deliberately withholding information that would help me? Stefred, you’ve no right—”

“I’m withholding information,” Stefred admitted. “It would not help you; at this stage it would do the reverse. The kind of knowledge that will help is one you must gain for yourself. It exists, and you will have access to it—whatever else happens, Noren, don’t let yourself forget that.”

*  *  *

They had been through it so often in dreams that it seemed they were dreaming still: donning their spacesuits, settling into the padded seats of the shuttlecraft, strapping themselves down, and then the waiting. . . .

It would be soundless, they knew, and they would hardly feel the motion. The shuttlecraft was not a rocket; Noren and Brek had read of the rockets used in ancient times, but the nuclear-powered shuttles that had been carried aboard starships were far more advanced. The craft would simply move out of the tower’s bay and rise vertically into the dark. The liftoff would be totally out of their control. They would be in the hands of the automatic pilot and of the City’s computers, which for countless years had held the program for this maneuver in unchanging memory. To the computers the passage of generations had no meaning; the last docking with an orbiting starship might have been yesterday.

Noren trusted the computers implicitly, for they were, after all, the repository of all knowledge, and if they were fallible in anything, the whole cause of human survival might as well be given up. Brek too was confident, although the role of passive crewman seemed less natural to him than to Noren because as a Technician he’d occasionally flown aircars. Neither of them had any real doubt as to their safety; the computers had checked the failing beacon signal and had pronounced it strong enough to home in on. In preprogrammed sequence, they had tested every circuit in the shuttlecraft and had certified its functioning. There was nothing tangible to worry about.

Nevertheless, as he waited through the automatic countdown, Noren was more terrified than ever before in his life.

He had not been seriously alarmed by Stefred’s warning. When they’d taken leave of each other, he’d been angry, and he still was; if Stefred had purposely tried to infuriate him, he could scarcely have done a better job of it, Noren thought bitterly. To be challenged was one thing, a thing he’d always enjoyed, but to be told that this was not mere challenge and then to be denied full knowledge of the facts—it wasn’t fair! He’d arrived at the shuttlecraft hot with the desire to get on with the job.

There had been a sizable group gathered to see them off—the other space teams, their tutors and closest acquaintances, Scholars with whom they’d be working at the outpost—and at first Noren had felt a sense of belonging that he’d never had occasion to experience. Having been a loner throughout boyhood, he hadn’t formed many relationships in the City, despite people’s friendliness. He found the warmth of their send-off surprisingly moving. But then had come a bad moment: a small incident, unimportant, yet somehow of sufficient impact to change his enthusiasm to dread.

The council chairman had been present, clad, strangely, in his blue robe, which seemed inappropriate since it was the middle of the night and not a ceremonial occasion. At least Noren hadn’t anticipated any ceremony. But just before he and Brek entered the space shuttle, the group had fallen silent. People had stood, eyes lifted, and the chairman—a down-to-earth man who a short while before had been talking casually to Noren about the aircar expedition that had previously been dispatched to pinpoint the landing site—had suddenly become all priest. “We embark this night on a mission of utmost gravity,” he’d said. “May the Star’s spirit abide with us, and in committing ourselves to its guidance, may we be mindful that only in trusting have we any hope of success. We have made all preparations that are within our power to make. We have calculated the risks and herewith incur them, though there has been honest division among us as to whether they are justified. It is possible that only our descendants can judge. We can do no more than act in the light of such knowledge as is accessible to us. . . .”

They were frightening words, yet Noren sensed that in some way they were meant to comfort. If so, it was cold comfort, certainly. The robed priest continued into ritual: “. . . There is no surety save in the light that sustained our forefathers . . . our future is vain except as we have faith. . . .” followed by some of the Prophecy. The memory of that last Orison engulfed Noren, and he recalled with vivid clarity the dream-image that had shaken him so. In the training dreams he’d concentrated on the ship, not the view of the desolate planet, and he had shared enough of the original astronaut’s thoughts to be unaffected by the sight of it. Confronting that sight in reality would be less easy.

“. . . May the spirit of the Mother Star safeguard you,” the High Priest had concluded, clasping Noren’s hands and then Brek’s. Now, strapped down inside the sealed cabin, Noren was kept from panic only by determined pride. This was the most thrilling opportunity he would ever have, he told himself. Space . . . zero gravity . . . the stars . . . all the things he’d been looking forward to with such eagerness—was he losing his sanity? How could he be chilled, shaking, unmanned not by fear of death but by some nameless foreboding he could not even define?

Unable to endure the silence, he said the first thing that came to mind, hoping that his voice revealed no tremor. “Did Stefred talk to you tonight, Brek? Alone, I mean?”

“Yes,” Brek said. “He came by our room; he wanted to see us both. I’m sure he was sorry to miss you, though the ceremony just now was much the same as what he said.”

That was an odd comparison, Noren reflected, for the ceremony had been mostly ritual, and he’d never known Stefred to use ritual terms in private conversation. “How do you mean?” he questioned.

“Why, he wished me the Mother Star’s protection—that sort of thing.”

“Stefred spoke to you privately . . . as a priest?” Noren asked incredulously.

“Not exactly; it was more like any two people saying a formal goodbye.”

“But he used the symbolic phrasing.”

“Of course. Didn’t you and Talyra use it?”

“Talyra doesn’t know any other kind,” Noren pointed out.

“Noren, there isn’t any other kind, not for this. Would you have expected him to say just ‘good luck, and I hope the shuttle works’? To invoke nothing greater than his personal friendship for me?”

He’d have expected Stefred to be honest, Noren thought in bafflement; one couldn’t conceive of his being anything else. The protection of the Mother Star . . . well, that could be translated as the protection of the Founders’ knowledge in building the shuttlecraft and programming the computers, or perhaps as the protection of their own knowledge passed down from the Six Worlds. But Brek hadn’t interpreted it that way; like Talyra, Brek had read in some sort of magic. And Stefred knew Brek’s mind too well not to have foreseen that he would do so.

A vibration, noiseless but powerful enough to penetrate their bones, spread through the craft, passing into their firmly restrained bodies. “We’re moving,” Brek whispered. They looked at each other, and Noren’s terror receded, replaced by excitement.

Yet as the vibration intensified a new thought struck him. He was leaving the City—the City, the citadel of knowledge he’d sought so long and finally reached. He would be in the wilderness for many weeks to come, and though he wanted to go, he found himself once again torn. The City had never seemed a prison to him. He would miss it.

To rendezvous with the starship did not take long. As in the dreams, Noren and Brek felt the abrupt shift to weightlessness when the engines cut off; they saw the series of colored lights that told them they were docking; they felt the bump that meant the shuttlecraft had come to rest in a bay like the one it had recently left. They put on their helmets, marveling at the feel of moving under their own volition in a realm without gravity, a realm where up and down did not exist. They threw the switch to start cabin depressurization, waited for the large green light, unfastened the hatch . . . and emerged into a “tower” vestibule whose outer doors stood open to a vast black sky.

No stars were visible, for the faceplates of their helmets had been darkened lest on exiting, they confront the sun. It was like the test dream, where he’d fallen blindly and in utter silence. To Noren it was silent, anyway, for there was only one radiophone for communication with the City, and Brek—whose job as a Technician had been the servicing of radiophone equipment—was carrying it. There had been no real justification for allocating two, although Stefred had seemed to feel that two were needed. He’d been overruled, since radiophones were vital for intervillage communication and like everything else had to last until the Time of the Prophecy. Noren did not mind. He could talk to Brek when necessary by touching helmets with him, and anything he might wish to say to the ground team could be relayed.

He was no longer afraid. He felt free, euphoric, just as he’d expected he would. To float in limitless vacuum, restricted only by the thin tether that anchored him to the ship; to move almost without effort by means of a skill that had become familiar to him in dreams; to take up the tools and use them upon a Machine more awesome than any from which village taboos had once barred him—that these things were possible filled him with elation. He and Brek, grasping the handholds, made their way out to the tail of the starship where dismantling was to begin. The sun at their backs, they worked without speaking. There was no need for speech. Absorbed by the task and by the wonders of their situation, secure in their trust of each other and of the technology that enabled them to do what no one had done since the Founding, they encountered no difficulty in performing the job assigned to them.

They had been told to work steadily but unhurriedly; Brek was to report their progress at intervals over the radiophone. Noren could hear neither the reports nor the replies, but he knew that if any exchange of significance took place, Brek would tell him. Each section of hull, once unjoined, was to be fastened to a line and pulled into the shuttlecraft bay. The plan was to stow them all aboard later, when there were enough to fill the hold. Brek motioned that he would take the first one in. The thing wasn’t heavy, of course, since it too lacked weight, and a slight push from Noren was enough to give it momentum.

While Brek was gone Noren paused to rest. He was not really tired, but he’d never been one to stick unceasingly to a task when there was something interesting to think about—and in space there certainly was. He pulled himself around the ship to the side away from the sun, not wanting to miss this chance to adjust his helmet’s filters for one quick look at the stars.

They were overwhelming. He had seen them in the dream, but not like this, not immediate, tangible, many of them brighter and more splendid than Little Moon. He was no longer dreaming. The stars were real.

And all at once everything else became unreal. The villages . . . the City . . . the Six Worlds that were now mere space dust . . . those were no part of reality! He was detached from them. It was they that were dreams; he, Noren, was alone in space, unshielded from the boundless void and the stars that burned with a beauty he could not bear. Suns . . . all of them suns . . . how many of them had worlds where peoples beyond contact lived and worked and sought knowledge? How many still had worlds? They were light-years away; some, like the Mother Star itself, might have gone nova long ago . . . he might be seeing only their ghosts . . . but if so, was anything in the universe less illusory?

He turned cold, for it was an appalling thought. Always he had trusted in the existence of truth that was firm and absolute. He had searched for it unceasingly, and had supposed he was on his way to finding it. Yet if all was illusion, if the uncertainty he’d found so dismaying involved not only human survival but the very nature of things, then he had no more of an anchor to true reality than to the planet from which he was adrift. He could not even depend on the workings of his own mind.

Once again Noren was engulfed by terror he could not understand. He wanted to cry out, to call and be answered by Brek or by someone, but there was no means of doing so. He wanted to run, to feel air touch his face, to feel life surge through his weightless body; but that was impossible too. He was paralyzed. He was cut off from life. In desperation, knowing himself powerless to combat what was happening to him, he reached out for the next handhold. At first he could not make his arm move. But in time—he was not sure whether it was a long time or a short one—he was floating in a place where he saw not only stars, but the immense rim of the gray, mist-shrouded world.

It was, as he had known it would be, empty. He had always known that no one lived anywhere but in the one small settlement maintained through the Founders’ wisdom, but he had not sensed it as he did now, isolated from all contact with that settlement—that island in a huge expanse of emptiness. And there might well come a time when there would be no island! The human race would have no refuge once the City’s equipment gave out. Somewhere in the immeasurably great region of dark, Noren thought, were the rays of light from the nova—the Mother Star—traveling at inconceivable speed but not yet close to him. He would die before they came close; soon after their arrival, his people might all be dead. If there was no scientific breakthrough . . .

Had other human races perished also? Abruptly, as he looked out into the depths, new horror assailed him; he questioned in a different way from before. Those blazing suns . . . uncounted billions, he had been told, in the whole universe . . . why did some become novas? He had heard the facts in terms of astrophysics; he knew what triggered the change physically—but that was not the answer he sought now. Why did such facts exist? Why should a star consume its worlds, its people, exiling the escapees to an alien land where the attempt to survive might be futile? For that matter, why did either stars or people come into being at all?

For the first time since learning the truth about the Mother Star, it occurred to Noren to ask not how things happened, but why.

His mind could not cope with such questions. Yet it had never failed him in the past! He’d relied on it to reason things out, to find meanings. . . . Maybe there were no meanings. Or maybe no effort of his mind was valid. He had broken away from the world; he was drifting, falling, into a black starlit cosmos he could not comprehend. There was nothing solid or concrete to hold to. In the grip of panic, Noren lost touch with the starship itself. A remote part of him knew that if he could clutch the safety tether, he could pull himself back; at least, he should shut out the view that was so unnerving.

But this time his hand would not obey his will. This time he was truly paralyzed and could not turn the knob to remove the stars from his sight. He could not even close his eyes. He remained staring, no longer in command of either his body or his thoughts, while his panic overmastered him.