Murray Leinster

“ Kim answered slowly.
"Count, man," the man with the bearskin hat cried. "There are three hundred million inhabited planets! All of them but Ades are ruled by Disciplinary Circuits. If we set out to liberate them, it would take one thousand years, and there are only twenty millions of us. We'll designate just one of us to stay on each planet to teach the people to be free again. Otherwise we wouldn't do a tenth of the job and we'd destroy ourselves by scattering. Why, hang it all, we'd be tyrants! No! We go on and start on a new galaxy. ”

“ The brutal acceleration began again, at an angle to the former line of motion.
Ten minutes later there was another moment of intolerable pain. Every nerve in their bodies jumped in a tetanic convulsion. Had it continued, their muscles would have torn loose from their bones and their hearts would have burst from the violence of the fearful contraction. The "Starshine" would have gone on senselessly as a speeding coffin. But again the searing torment lasted for only the fraction of a second.
Back on Alphin III, great projectors swept across the sky. They were ancient devices, those projectors. ”

“ Suddenly the communicator-speaker spoke in a gabble of confusing voices. Dona tuned it down to one. All the galaxy spoke the same language, of course, but this dialect was strangely accented. Presently they grew accustomed and could understand.
"We all take pride in the perfection of our life," the voice said unctuously. "Ten thousand years ago perfection was attained upon this planet, and it is for us to maintain that perfection. Unquestioningly, we obey our rulers, because obedience is a part of perfection. Sometimes our rulers give us orders which, to all appearances, are severe. ”

“ The universe as seen at two hundred light-speeds was not a reassuring sight. All stars behind had vanished. All those on either hand were dimmed to near-invisibility. Ahead, where the very nose of the space-ship pointed, there were specks of light in a recognizable star-pattern, but the colors and the magnitudes were incredible.
"We're heading now for Cetis Alpha," Kim said slowly, after a long time. "It's the next nearest solar system. Our fuel-tanks are one-twelfth full. We have power to travel a distance of fifty light-years, no more, and it would take us three months to cover that. ”

“ Kim made a furious gesture.
"It's recognized, everywhere, that the population of a planet has the right to make all the laws of that planet. We are the population here. We could be married by our own act. But suppose we had children? When our fuel gives out they'd die with us. I think we'd go mad anticipating that. We can't even have each other. We're imprisoned here as they used to imprison criminals. For life. We can have no hope. There is nothing we can work at. We can't even try to do anything."
He clenched his hands inside his space-gloves. Dona looked at him. ”

“ Worshipfully, Dona looked up at him. She probably hoped that he would kiss her again, but he mistook it for interest.
He explained at length. There could be, of course, no measure of distance traveled in emptiness. Astrogation has always been a matter of dead reckoning plus direct observation. But at such immeasurably high speeds there could be no direct observation. At matter-transmitter speeds, no manual control could stop a ship in motion within any given galaxy!
So Kim had planned a photo-gauge, which would throw off the transmitter-field when a specific amount of radiation had reached it. ”

“ Like a silver arrow, the "Starshine" continued to bore on through a weird, synthetic universe, two hundred times faster than light. In the space-ship Kim worked angrily, making desperate attempts to devise a method of nullifying the non-individualized fighting-beams with which—now that he was in free space in a space-ship—any attempt to land upon an inhabited planet might be frustrated. ”

“ They had spent half their store of fuel in the desperate effort to find a planet on which they could land.
Their attempt to approach Cetis Alpha VI had been the exact type of all their fruitless efforts. They came in for a landing, and while yet millions of miles out, recently reinstalled detector-screens searched them out. Newly stepped-up long distance psychographic finders had identified the "Starshine" as containing living human beings. Then projectors, taken out of museums, had hurled at them the deadly pain-beams which had made war futile a thousand years before. ”

“ Kim said savagely. "On Alphin Three there's a pretense that all men are free, and we know it's a lie. But on other planets they don't even pretend. On Loré Four they have a king. On Markab Two the citizens wear collars of metal—slave-collars—and members of the aristocracy have the right to murder social inferiors at pleasure. On Andrometa Nine the Disciplinary Circuit, and so the government, is in the hands of a blood-thirsty lunatic. The Circuit backs all governments alike, the supposedly free and the frankly despotic governments impartially. We're a danger to all of them. ”

“ Out in clear space again, on interplanetary drive, Kim looked at Dona with brooding eyes.
"It looks as if we can't find a home, Dona," he said quietly. "The human race is finished. We completed a job, we humans. We conquered a galaxy and we occupied it, and the job was done. Then we went downhill. You and I, we came from the newest planet of all, and we didn't fit. We're criminals there. But the older planets, like these, are indescribably horrible." He stopped, and asked wryly, "What shall we do, Dona? ”

“ Then she pressed down his finger on the control-stud.
Incredible, glaring light burst into the viewports, blinding them. Relays clicked loudly. Alarms rang stridently. The "Starshine" bucked frantically, and the vision-screens flared with a searing light before the light-control reacted....
There was a sun in view to the left. It was a blue-white giant which even at a distance which reduced its disk to the size of a water-drop, gave off a blistering heat. To the right, within a matter of a very few millions of miles, there was a cloud-veiled planet. ”

“ Dona smiled at him.
"There's one place yet. The Prime Board called us criminals. Let's look up the criminals on Ades. Maybe—and it's just possible—people who have mustered energy and independence enough to commit political crimes would be bearable. If we don't find anything there, why, we'll go to another galaxy, choose a planet and settle down. And I promise I won't be sorry, Kim!"
Kim made his computations and swung the "Starshine" carefully. He was able to center the course of the space-ship with absolute precision upon the sun around which Ades circled slowly in lonely majesty. ”

“ Kim scowled. "Yes?" he said. "I've been here half an hour. The ship's circuits were cut, but I've put the communicator back in working order. I can broadcast over the entire planet, telling the truth. I won't destroy your power, but I'll make your slaves begin to realize what they are. Sooner or later, one of them will kill you."
Malby bleated. It was not necessarily panic, but there are some minds to whom public admiration is necessary. Such persons will commit any crime to get admiration which they crave with a passionate desire. Burt held up his hand again. ”

“ The synthesizer was not the equivalent of those magnificently complex food-machines which in public dining-halls provide almost every dish the gourmets have ever invented from raw materials. But it did make a palatable meal from the tasteless vegetation of the small planet.
Kim said quietly, when they had finished eating, "Now we'll find out for certain what Burt intends to do about us." He grimaced. "He's dangerously intelligent. He underestimated me before. He may consider us dead, or he may overestimate us. I think he'll play it safe. ”

“ It had been of the last and best type, though by no means the largest, ever constructed, and by three small changes in its overdrive mechanism Kim had made it into something of which other men had never dreamed.
For the first time in the history of the human race, other galaxies were open to the exploration and the colonization of men. It was probably possible for the cosmos itself to be circumnavigated in the "Starshine." But its crew of two humans could find no planet of their own race on which they dared to land. ”