Murray Leinster

“ Dona went out. Kim paced up and down the living quarters of the ship. There was something in the back of his mind that would not quite come out. The disappearance of Ades was impossible. Men had conquered one galaxy and now started on a second, but never yet had they destroyed a planet. Never yet had they even moved one. But nevertheless, only thirty-six hours ago the planet Ades had revolved about its sun and men and women had strolled into its matter-transmitter with no hint of danger, and between two seconds something had happened. ”

“ But the starveling little planet was the only place in all the Galaxy, save one, where no Disciplinary Circuit held the human race in slavery.
Nothing happened visibly upon the planet during many days. There were nights in which the hoarfrost glistened whitely, and days in which the frozen waterfall thawed and splashed valiantly. The sluggish, stupid animals ignored the space-ship. It was motionless and they took it for a rock. Only twice did its two occupants emerge, to gather the vegetation which was raw material for their food-synthesizer. ”

“ But the two citizens were frightened at the idea. They fled when Dona would have urged 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." ”

“ There was no planet. There was no sunlight on tall and stately structures built by men long murdered from the skies. The vision-ports showed remote and peaceful suns and all the tranquil glory of interstellar space. The Starshine floated in emptiness.
It was, of course, the result of that very small device that Kim had built into the Starshine before even the invention of the transmitter-drive. It was a relay which flung on faster-than-light drive the instant fighting-beams struck any living body in the ship. The Starshine had been thrown into full interstellar drive while still in atmosphere. ”

“ She flung open the outer as murderous projectors warmed. She clattered along the outer hull of the Sinabian ship on her magnetic shoes, and saw the Starshine drifting helplessly away, even the grapples powerless to hold the two bodies together.
At that sight, Dona gasped. She leaped desperately, with star-filled nothingness above and below and on every hand. She caught the Starshine's airlock door.
And Kim cut out the Disciplinary-Circuit beams and the flow of current to the grapples and, with a complete absence of hope, pressed the transmitter-drive button. ”

“ In the Empire of Greater Sinab there was merely the novelty that the rulers craved adulation—and got it. The rulers of Sinab were without doubt served by the most enthusiastic, most loyal, most ardently cooperative subjects ever known among men.
Every member of the male population of Sinab—where women were considered practically a lower species of animal—could look forward confidently to a life of utter ease on one planet or another, served and caressed by solicitous females, with no particular obligation save to admire and revere his rulers and to breed more subjects for them. ”

“ Kim answered slowly.
"Count, man," the man with 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 million of us. 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. But, hang it all, we'd be tyrants! No! We go on and start on a new galaxy. ”

“ There are probably ten thousand royal courts where ambitious men rack their brains for some plausible way to wipe out Ades as a menace and take over our twenty-one planets for loot. Ades is already full of spies, sent there in the guise of exiles. There've been men found murdered after torture,—seized and tortured by spies hoping to find out the secrets by which we whipped Sinab. There's one bomb-crater on Ades already, where a bomb smuggled through the transmitter was set off in an effort to wipe out all the brains on the planet. ”

“ Unquestioningly, we obey our rulers, because obedience is a part of perfection. Sometimes our rulers give us orders which, to all appearances, are severe. It is not always easy to obey. But the more difficult obedience may be, the more necessary it is for perfection. The Disciplinary Circuit is a reminder of that need as it touches us once each day to spur us to perfection. The destruction of a family, even to first and second cousins, for the disobedience of a single member, is necessary that every seed of imperfection shall be eliminated from our life."
Kim and Dona looked at each other. ”

“ The fighting-beams killed in thousandths of seconds. The robot gunners aimed with absolute precision. The two fleets joined battle and the robots fixed their targets and every ship became a coffin in which all living things were living no longer, which yet fought on with beams which could do no further harm.
With every man in both fleets dead the warships raged through emptiness, pouring out destruction from their unmanned projectors. It was a hundred years before the last war-craft, its fuel gone and its crew mere dust, was captured and destroyed. ”

“ There was something odd about her in the eyes of women of Khiv Five. Their faces were unlike the faces of the women of a normal world. On a world with men and women, all women wear masks. Their thoughts are unreadable. But where there are no men, masks are useless. The women of Khiv Five saw plainly that Dona was unlike them, but they were willing to talk to her.
She came back to the Starshine as Kim reached a state of complete bewilderment. Ades could not have been destroyed. ”

“ And the transmitter couldn't have been knocked out by something that only killed people. It looks as if Ades may have been destroyed."
There was an instant's uncomprehending silence. Then the realization struck home. In all of human history no planet had ever been completely destroyed. Dozens, even hundreds, had been devastated, before wars came to an end by the discovery of a weapon too terrible to be used. Four had been depopulated by that weapon, the fighting-beam. But never before had it even been imagined that a planet could be wiped out of existence. ”

“ Perhaps it was inevitable that conquest should again become possible, revolt conceivable, and crime once more feasible even to individuals, so that hope could return to men. And perhaps it was the most natural thing imaginable that hope first sprang from the prison world of Ades. ”

“ For hundreds of years nothing happened at all. And then Kim Rendell came in the Starshine, and shortly thereafter tiny ships began to take off from Ades, and they fought valorously on distant star-systems, and at last a squadron of war-craft came to subjugate Ades for the beastly Empire of Sinab. Finally there was a battle in the bright beams of the lonely sun itself. And after that, for a time, little space-ships swam up from the planet and darted away, and darted back, and darted away, and back. ”

“ There are other considerations which make it certain that any immaterial weapon that could destroy a planet would have infinite speed and therefore infinite range. If Ades has been destroyed, all the human race, including us, must sooner or later be subject to those who control such a weapon." Kim Rendell paused and cleared his throat. "If they start off by destroying the only world on which men are free, I don't think I like it. Now I must go back home. I'd better get over to the First Galaxy in the Starshine and find out what's happened." ”

“ Burt said pleasantly. "The Disciplinary Circuit is the basis of civilization nowadays. All discipline and hence all civilization would cease if the Circuit were nullified. Naturally, you must be disposed of."
"But carefully, so if there is anyone who shares my secret, he'll be betrayed by trying to help me!" said Kim. "And quietly, too, so those amiable sheep, my fellow-citizens, won't suspect there's anything wrong. They don't realize that they're slaves. They don't know of your pleasure-palaces on the other side of the planet. ”

“ When slaves on Utbeg began to tell each other in murmurs that there was a place where people weren't slaves? Don't you see that such things would alarm the rulers of such planets? How can people be held as slaves unless you keep them in despair?"
The Colony Organizer corrected his course a trifle. Far away the walls of the capital city of Terranova glinted in the sunlight.
"And there are the twenty-one planets which fell into our laps when we had to smash Sinab," said Kim. "Ades became the subject of dreams. Peasants and commoners think of it yearningly, as a sort of paradise. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was developed. Everything was built. Every man was rich and with a harem. A darned clever way to build an empire! Who'd want to revolt—and who could?"
He stopped. The two moons of Terranova floated tranquilly, higher in the sky. The soft sweet unfamiliar smells of a Terranovan night came to the small group on the terrace of Kim Rendell's house.
"That's what's ahead on Ades!" raged the Mayor of Steadheim. "And I've four sons! A woman of Thom Four smashed the lock on the new matter-transmitter, which set it to send only to Sinab, and traveled to Khiv Five to warn them. ”

“ A sun with no satellites—save for giant pulsing Cepheids and close-coupled double suns—is almost unknown. But for billions upon billions of years that sun and Ades had kept each other company. Then men had appeared. For a thousand years great space-ships had grimly trundled back and forth to unload their cargoes of criminals upon the chilly small world. ”

“ Instantly the silvery film was formed again behind it and another shape developed on the film's surface.
Only seconds before, these people and these objects had been on another planet in another island universe, across unthinkable parsecs of space. Now they were here. Bales and bundles and parcels of merchandise. Huge containers of foodstuffs—the colony on Terranova was still not completely self-sustaining—and drums of fuel for the space-ships busy mapping the new galaxy for the use of men, and more people, and a huge tank of viscous, opalescent plastic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”