Irving E. Cox

“ Mryna had never seen a clear sky. She had no visual data to tie her new concept to.
For six years she kept the secret. She hid the papers and the astronomy text which she found in the Old Village. Later, after the metal men came, she destroyed everything so none of the other women would know the Earth-god was a man.
At first she kept the secret because she was afraid. For some reason the man who played at being god wanted the kids to believe Rythar was Earth, the totality of the universe enveloped in a cloud of mist. She knew that because she once asked god what a planet was. ”

“ Mryna Brill intended to ride the god-car above the rain mist. For a long time she had not believed in the taboos or the Earth-god. She no longer believed she lived on Earth. This paradise of green-floored forests and running brooks was something called Rythar.
Six years ago, when Mryna was fourteen, she first discovered the truth. She asked a question and the Earth-god ignored it. A simple question, really: What is above the rain mist? God could have told her. Every day he answered technical questions that were far more difficult. ”

“ Mryna made her second find when she was fifteen, a textbook in astronomy. For the first time in her life she read about the spinning dust of the universe lying beyond the eternal rain mist that hid her world.
The solid, stable Earth of her childhood was solid and stable no longer, but a sphere turning through a black void. Nor was it properly called Earth, but a planet named Rythar. The adjustment Mryna had [p55] to make was shattering; she lost faith in everything she believed. ”

“ The government of Earth had originally planned a migration of ten million persons.
“But after twelve months the survey colony was destroyed by an infection,” Mryna read on the projection screen, “which has never been identified. It is called simply the Sickness. The origin of this plague is unknown. No adult in the survey colony survived; children born on Rythar are themselves immune, but are carriers of the Sickness. The first rescue team sent to save them died within eight hours. No human being, aside from these native-born children, has ever survived the Sickness.” ”

“ Now Mryna had the whole truth. She knew the motivation for their madness of self-destruction. It was not insanity, but the sublime courage of a few human beings sacrificing themselves to save the rest of their civilization. They smashed the Guardian Wheel to keep the Sickness there. And Mryna had already [p64] escaped before that happened! She was being hurled through space toward Earth and she would destroy that, too. ”

“ Mryna broke down and began to cry hysterically. The senator put his hand under her arm—none too gently. “Let’s have no more dramatics, please. You don’t know how fortunate you are, young lady. If the politicians were as addle-witted as you scientists claim we are, we might have believed that nonsense and blasted your ship out of the sky. You scientists have to give up the notion that you’re our guardians; we’re quite able to look out for ourselves.” ”

“ Our chemical analysis has been thorough, and we find nothing that could be remotely harmful to human life. Atmospheric samples produce the same negative results. On the other hand, we have direct evidence that no animal life has ever evolved on Rythar; the life cycle is exclusively botanical.”
The soil samples, Mryna realized, would be the vials of Earth which the Earth-god had requested so often. Were the Earthmen planning to move their hospital down to Rythar? That idea disturbed her. Mryna did not want her garden world cluttered up with a lot of sick, old men discarded by Earth. ”

“ Mryna gasped.
“Of course not. If a plague carrier escaped from Rythar, we would have heard about it long before this. The trouble with you scientists is you don’t grant the rest of us any common sense. And Jameson’s the worst of the lot. He’s always contended that the sociologists should determine our Rytharian policy, not the elected representatives of the people.” ”

“ Mryna felt a twist of vertigo as the shuttle shifted from conventional speed into a time warp. And then the sound [p63] was gone. The ship was floating in an impenetrable blackness.
Mryna had no idea how much time passed subjectively. When she became hungry, she took food from the cabinet. She slept when she was tired. To pass the time, she turned the reading films through the projector.
Most of the film stored in the shuttle covered material Mryna already knew. The Earthmen, clearly, had not denied any information to Rythar. Only one thing had been restricted—astronomy. ”

“ The face on the screen in the answer house became frigid with anger—or was it fear?—and the Earth-god said:
“The word means nothing.”
But late that night a very large god-car brought six metal men down through the rain mist. They were huge, jointed things that clanked when they walked. Four of them used weapons to herd the kids together in their small settlement. The two others went to the Old Village and blasted the ruins with high explosives.
Vaguely Mryna remembered that the metal men had been there before, when the kids were still very small. ”

“ When the ship touched Earth, the fatal poison would escape.
Dully Mryna turned up another frame on the film, and she read what the Earthmen had done to help Rythar. They built the Guardian Wheel to isolate the Sickness. Sealed in metal immunization suits, volunteers had descended to the plague world and reared the surviving children of the colonists until they were old enough to look out for themselves. The answer house had been set up as an instructional device. ”

“ We always faced the possibility that one of them would escape. If we’d been allowed to use a different policy of education—but the politicians wouldn’t permit that. The Wheel has to be destroyed, and we must die with it. ”

“ Mryna knew she had to get back to the god-car quickly. Since the Earthmen had built up the taboos in order to get their sacrifice ores from Rythar, they would do everything they could to prevent her return. She ran toward an intersecting spoke corridor. An alarm bell began to clang, and the sound vibrated against the metal walls. An armed man sprang from a side room and fired his weapon at Mryna. ”

“ The Sickness in the Old Village developed only after the first harvest of Rytharian-grown food. It is more and more evident that the botanical cycle of Rythar must be examined before we find the answer. To do that adequately, we shall have to send survey teams to the surface; that requires much larger appropriations for research than we have had in the past. ”

“ Most of the kids preferred to farm the fields or dig the sacrificial ore.
[p56] A request for equipment was granted just as promptly. Tools, machines, seeds, fertilizers, packaged buildings, games, clothing—everything came in a god-car. It was a large cylinder which hissed down from the rain mist on a pillar of fire. The landing site was a flat, charred field near the answer house. Unless the equipment was unusually heavy, the attendant stationed in the house was expected to unload the god-car and pile aboard the sacrifice ores mined on Rythar. ”