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Inside Earth - Poul William Anderson · Captives of the Thieve-Star

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  Speaker 1: Part one of Inside Earth. This is a liver vox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit librevox dot org. Recording
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: by Phil Shinevert Inside Earth by Poul Andersen, Part one.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: The biotechnicians had been very thorough. I was already a
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: little undersized, which meant that by height and build were suitable.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: I could pass for a big Earthling, and of course
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  Speaker 1: my face and hands and so on were all right,
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  Speaker 1: the Earthlings being a remarkably humanoid race. But the technicians
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: had had to remodel my ears, blunting the tips and
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: grafting on lobes and cutting the muscles that move them.
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  Speaker 1: My crest had to go, and a scalp covered with
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  Speaker 1: revolting hair was now on the top of my skull. Finally,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and most difficult, there had been the matter of skin color.
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  Speaker 1: It just wasn't possible to eliminate my natural coppery pigmentation,
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  Speaker 1: so they had injected a substance akin to melanin, together
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  Speaker 1: with a virus which would manufacture it in my body,
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  Speaker 1: the result being a leathery brown. I could pass for
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: a member of the so called white subspecies, one who
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  Speaker 1: had spent most of his life in the open. The
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  Speaker 1: mimicry was perfect. I hardly recognized the creature that looked
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  Speaker 1: out of the mirror. My lean, square, blunt nosed face,
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  Speaker 1: gray eyes, and big hands were the same, or nearly so,
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  Speaker 1: but my black crest had been replaced with a shock
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  Speaker 1: of blonde hair. My ears were small and immobile, my
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  Speaker 1: skin a dull bronze, and several of Earth's languages were
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  Speaker 1: hypnotically implanted in my brain, together with a set of
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  Speaker 1: habits and reflexes, making up a pseudo personality which should
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  Speaker 1: be immune to any tests that the rebels could think of.
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  Speaker 1: I was Earthling, and the disguise was self perpetuating. The
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  Speaker 1: hair grew and the skin color was kept permanent by
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  Speaker 1: the artificial disease. The biotechnicians had told me that if
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  Speaker 1: I kept the disguise long enough till I began to age,
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  Speaker 1: say in a century or so, the hair would actually
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  Speaker 1: thin and turn white, as it did with the natives.
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  Speaker 1: It was reassuring to think that once my job was over,
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  Speaker 1: I could be restored to normal. It would need another
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  Speaker 1: series of operations and as much time as the original
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  Speaker 1: transformation but it would be as complete and scarless. I'd
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  Speaker 1: be human again. I put on the clothes they had
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  Speaker 1: furnished me, typical earthly garments, rough trousers and shirt of
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  Speaker 1: bleached plant fibers, jacket and heavy shoes of animal skin,
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  Speaker 1: a battered old hat of matted fur known as felt.
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  Speaker 1: There were objects in my pockets, the usual money and papers,
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  Speaker 1: a clasp knife, the pipe, and tobacco. I had trained
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  Speaker 1: myself to smoke, and even to like it. All fitted
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  Speaker 1: into my character of a wondering outdoors sort of man,
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  Speaker 1: an educated atavist. I went out of the hospital with
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  Speaker 1: a long, swinging stride of one accustomed to walking great distances.
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  Speaker 1: The center was busy around me. Behind me, the hospital
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  Speaker 1: and laboratories occupied a fairly small building, some eight stories
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  Speaker 1: of stone and steel and plastic. On either side loomed
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  Speaker 1: the great warehouses, military barracks, officers apartments, civilian concessions, filled
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  Speaker 1: with the vigorous life of the starways. Behind the monstrous
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  Speaker 1: wall a mile to my right was the spaceport, and
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  Speaker 1: I knew that a troop ship had just lately dropped
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  Speaker 1: from Valgolia herself. The center swarmed with young recruits off
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  Speaker 1: duty gaping at the sites, swaggering in their new uniforms.
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  Speaker 1: Their skins shone like polished copper in the blistering sunlight,
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  Speaker 1: and their crests were beginning to wilt a little. All
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  Speaker 1: Earth is not the tropical jungle most Valgolians.
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  Speaker 2: Think it is.
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  Speaker 1: Northern Europe is very pleasant, and Greenland is even a
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  Speaker 1: little on the coal side, but it gets hot enough
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  Speaker 1: At North American Center in midsummer to fry a she list,
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  Speaker 1: a cosmopolitan throng filled the walkways. Soldiers predominated, huge, shy dcors,
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  Speaker 1: little slant eyed young Tucsons, brawling goads, all the manhood
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  Speaker 1: of Valgolia. Then there were other races, blue skinned vagans,
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  Speaker 1: furry proximons, completely nice, humanoid Syrians, and antarians. They were hears, traitors, observers, tourists,
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  Speaker 1: whatever else of a non military nature one can imagine.
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  Speaker 1: I made an absent minded way through the crowds. A
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  Speaker 1: sudden crack on the side of my head, nearly bulling
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  Speaker 1: me over, brought me to awareness. I looked up into
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  Speaker 1: the arrogant face of one of the new recruits and
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  Speaker 1: heard him rasp.
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  Speaker 2: Watch where you're going, Terry.
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  Speaker 1: The young blood in the Valgolian military is deliberately trained
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  Speaker 1: to harshness, even brutality, for our militarism must impress such
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  Speaker 1: backward colonies as Earth. It goes against our grain. But
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  Speaker 1: it is necessary that another time this might have annoyed me.
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  Speaker 1: I could have pulled rank on him. Not only was
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  Speaker 1: I an officer, but such treatment must be used with
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  Speaker 1: intelligent deliberation. The occasional young garrison trooper who comes here
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  Speaker 1: with the idea that the natives are an inferior breed
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  Speaker 1: to be kicked around misses the whole point of empire.
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  Speaker 1: If indeed Earth's millions were an inferior breed, I wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: have been here at all. Valgall needs and economic empire.
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  Speaker 1: But if all we had in mind was serfdom, we'd
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  Speaker 1: be perfectly content with the plotting animal life of Deneb
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: seven or a hundred other worlds. I cringed appropriately as
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  Speaker 1: if I didn't understand Valgonian universal, and slunk past him.
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  Speaker 1: But it griped me to be taken for a terry.
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  Speaker 1: If I was to become an Earthling, I would at
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  Speaker 1: least be a self respecting one. There were plenty of terries.
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  Speaker 1: Terrestrials around, of course, moving with their odd combination of
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  Speaker 1: slavish deference toward Valgonians and arrogant superiority toward mere Earthlings.
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  Speaker 1: They have adopted the habits and customs of civilisation, entered
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  Speaker 1: the Imperial service, speak Valgonian even with their families. Many
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  Speaker 1: of them shave their heads save for a scalp lock
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  Speaker 1: in imitation of the crest, and wear white robes, suggesting
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  Speaker 1: those of civil functionaries at home. I've always felt a
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  Speaker 1: little sorry for the class.
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  Speaker 2: They work and.
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  Speaker 1: To study and toady to us and try so hard
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  Speaker 1: to be like us. It is frustrating, because that's exactly
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  Speaker 1: what we don't want. Valgonians are Valgonians, and Earthlings are
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  Speaker 1: men of Earth.
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  Speaker 2: Well.
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  Speaker 1: Terryes are important to the ultimate aims of the Empire,
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  Speaker 1: but not in the way they think they are. They
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  Speaker 1: serve as another symbol of Valgonian conquest for Earth to hate.
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  Speaker 1: I entered the Administration building. They expected me there and
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  Speaker 1: took me at once to the office of General Vorka,
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  Speaker 1: whose a general only as for as this solar system
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  Speaker 1: is concerned. Had there been any Earthlings around, I would
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  Speaker 1: have saluted to conform to the show of militarism. But
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  Speaker 1: General Vorka sat alone behind his desk, and I merely
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  Speaker 1: said hello, Coordinator. The sleeves of his tunic rolled up
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  Speaker 1: the heat of North America, beating his forehead with sweat.
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  Speaker 1: The big man looked up at me. Ah, yes, I'm
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  Speaker 1: glad you're finally prepared. The sooner we get this thing started.
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  Speaker 1: He extended a silver Galla dust box. Sniff, have a seat,
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  Speaker 1: conru I inhaled gratefully and relaxed. The Coordinator picked up
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  Speaker 1: a sheaf of papers on his desk and leafed through them.
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  Speaker 1: Uh huhm, only fifty two years old, and a captain
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  Speaker 1: already remarkably able. A young man like you, and your
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: work hitherto has been outstanding. That vague business, I said, Yes,
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  Speaker 1: I knew, but could he please get down to be business.
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  Speaker 1: You couldn't blame me for being a little anxious to begin.
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  Speaker 1: Disguised as I was as an ertman, I felt uncomfortable, embarrassed,
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  Speaker 1: almost at being with my ex countrymen. The Coordinator shrugged, Well,
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  Speaker 1: if you can carry this business off, fine, If you fail,
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  Speaker 1: you may die quite unpleasantly. That's their trouble. Knrue, you
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  Speaker 1: wouldn't be regarded as an individual, but as a Valgonian.
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  Speaker 1: Did you know that they even make such distinctions among themselves,
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  Speaker 1: I mean races and sub races, and.
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  Speaker 2: Social castes and the like.
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  Speaker 1: It's keeping them divided and impotent, knru It's also keeping
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  Speaker 1: them out of the empire.
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  Speaker 2: A shame.
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  Speaker 1: I knew all that, of course, but I merely nodded.
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  Speaker 1: Coordinator Vorka was a wonderful man in his field, and
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  Speaker 1: if he tended to on the garrulous side, what could
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  Speaker 1: I do? I said, I know that, sir. I also
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  Speaker 1: know I was picked for a dangerous job because you
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  Speaker 1: thought I could fill the role. But I still don't
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  Speaker 1: know exactly what the job is. Coordinator Vorkus smiled. I'm
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  Speaker 1: afraid I can't tell you much more than you must
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  Speaker 1: already have guessed.
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  Speaker 2: He said. The anarch movement here, the Rebels, that.
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  Speaker 1: Is, is getting no place, primarily because of internal difficulties.
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  Speaker 1: When members of the same group spit epithets at each
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  Speaker 1: other referring to what they consider racial or national distinctions
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  Speaker 1: which determine superiority or inferiority, the group is bound to
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  Speaker 1: be an insecure one. Such insecurity just does not make
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  Speaker 1: for a strong rebellion, Kanrue.
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  Speaker 2: They try, and we goad them.
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  Speaker 1: But dissension splits them constantly, and their revolutions fizzle out.
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  Speaker 1: They just can't unite against us, can't unite at all, Kanru.
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  Speaker 1: You know how we've tried to educate them. It's worked too,
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  Speaker 1: to some extent. But you can't educate three billion people
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  Speaker 1: who have a whole cultural pattern behind them. I winced
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  Speaker 1: three billion. Certainly, Earth is a rich planet, Kanru, and
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  Speaker 1: a fairly crowded one at the same time. Bickering is inevitable.
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  Speaker 1: It's a part of their culture as much as cooperation
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  Speaker 1: has been a part of ours. I nodded. We learned
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  Speaker 1: the hard way. The old Vagol was a poor planet,
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  Speaker 1: and we had to unite to conquer space or we
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  Speaker 1: would not have survived. The coordinator sniffed again at his
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  Speaker 1: silver box. Of course, And we're trying to help these
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  Speaker 1: people unite. They don't have to make the same mistakes
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  Speaker 1: we did long ago. They don't have to at all.
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  Speaker 1: Get them to hate us enough, get them to hate
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  Speaker 1: us until all their clannish hatreds don't count at all. Well,
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  Speaker 1: you know what happened on Samtrack.
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  Speaker 2: I knew.
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  Speaker 1: The Samtracks are now the entrepreneurs of the Empire, really
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  Speaker 1: ingenious traders. But within the memory of some of our
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  Speaker 1: older men, they were a sore spot. They didn't understand
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  Speaker 1: the meaning of empire anymore than Earth does, and they
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  Speaker 1: never did understand it until we goaded them into open rebellion,
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  Speaker 1: the very reverse of divide and rule, you might say.
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  Speaker 2: And it worked.
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  Speaker 1: We withdrew trading privileges one by one until they revolted,
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  Speaker 1: successfully thus educating themselves sociologically, and only a few generations.
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  Speaker 1: Vorka said, the problem of Earth is not quite that simple.
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  Speaker 1: He leaned back, made a bridge of his fingers and
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  Speaker 1: peered across them at me. Do you know precisely what
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  Speaker 1: a provocator job is?
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  Speaker 2: Kunru?
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  Speaker 1: I said that I did, but only in a hazy way,
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  Speaker 1: because until now my work had been pretty much restricted
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  Speaker 1: to social relations on the more advanced Empire planets. However,
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  Speaker 1: I told him that I did know. The idea was
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  Speaker 1: to provoke discontent and ultimately rebellion. The coordinator smiled, well,
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  Speaker 1: that's just the starter, Kunru. It's a lot more complex
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  Speaker 1: than that. Each planet has its own special problems. The
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  Speaker 1: sam Tracks, for example, had a whole background of cutthroat competition.
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  Speaker 1: That was easy. We eliminated that by showing them what
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  Speaker 1: real cutthroat competition could be like. But Earth is different.
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  Speaker 1: Look at it this way. They fight among themselves because
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  Speaker 1: of their mythical distinctions, not realizing that there are no
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  Speaker 1: inferior races, only more or less advanced ones, and that
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  Speaker 1: individuals must be judged as individuals, not as members of groups, nations,
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  Speaker 1: or races. A planet like Earth can be immensely valuable
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  Speaker 1: to the Empire, but not if it has to be garrisoned.
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  Speaker 1: Its contribution must be voluntary and wholehearted. A difficult problem,
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  Speaker 1: I said. My opinion is that we should treat all
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  Speaker 1: exactly alike, force them to abandon their unrealistic differences exactly.
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  Speaker 1: The coordinator seemed pleased, but actually this was pretty elementary stuff.
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  Speaker 1: We are never too rough on the eager lads who
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  Speaker 1: come here from Valgol and kick the natives around a bit.
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  Speaker 1: We even encourage it when a spirit of rebelliousness dies down,
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  Speaker 1: I told him, I admit one irritating, wasn't it Gunru humiliating?
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  Speaker 1: Of course, these lads will be reconditioned to civilization when
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  Speaker 1: they finish their military service and prepare for more specialized work. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: treating all earthings alike is the solution. We put restrictions
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  Speaker 1: on these colonials. They can't hold top jobs and so on,
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  Speaker 1: and we encourage wild stories about brutality on our part.
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  Speaker 1: Not enough to make everybody mad at us, or even
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  Speaker 1: a majority. The rumored tyranny has always happened to someone else.
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  Speaker 1: But there's a certain class of beings who'll get fighting mad,
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  Speaker 1: and that's the class we want. The leaders, I chimed in,
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  Speaker 1: the idealists, brave, intelligent, patriotic, the kind who probably wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: be a part of this racial bickering anyway, said the coordinator.
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  Speaker 1: We'll give them the ammunition for their propaganda. We've been
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  Speaker 1: doing it. Result, the leaders get mad. Races, religions, nationalities.
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  Speaker 1: They hate us worse than they hate each other. The
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: way he painted it, I was hardly needed at all.
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  Speaker 1: I told him that, ideally that would be the situation conrue.
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  Speaker 1: Only it doesn't work that way. He took out a
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: soft cloth and wiped his forehead. Even the leaders are
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  Speaker 1: too involved in this myth of differences, and they can't
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: concentrate all their efforts Lauren, of course, would be the
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: other alternative. That was a very logical statement. But sometimes
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: logic is a way of making you laugh, and I
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: was laughing now. Lourn considered itself our arch enemy. With
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: a few dozen allies on a path of conquest, Lauren
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: thought it could wrest empire from our hands. Well, we
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: let them play, And each time Loron swooped down on
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: one of the more primitive planets, we let them, for
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Lourn would serve as well as ourselves in goading backward
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: people to unite and advance. Perhaps Lurn, as a social
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: entity grew wiser each time. Certainly the primitive colonials did.
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  Speaker 1: Lourn had started a chain reaction which threatened to overthrow
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: the tyranny of superstition on a hundred planets. Good old Lourn,
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  Speaker 1: our arch enemy, would see the light itself someday. The
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: coordinator shook his head.
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  Speaker 2: Can't use Lurn here.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Technologies are entirely too similar. It might shatter both planets,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: and we wouldn't want that. So what do we use you? Conrue,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: You get in with the revolutionaries, you make sure that
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: they want to fight you. I see, I told him.
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  Speaker 1: Then I try to stop it at the last minute,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: not so soon that the rebellion doesn't help at all. The
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: coordinator put his hand down flat. Nothing of the sort.
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  Speaker 1: They must fight, and they must be defeated again and
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: again if necessary, until they are ready to succeed. That
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: will be, of course, when they are totally against us.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: I stood up. I understand. He waved me back into
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: the chair. You'll be lucky to understand it by the
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: time you're finished with this assignment and transferred to another.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: That is, if you come out of this one alive.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: I smiled a bit sheepishly and told him to go ahead.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: We have some influence in the underground movement, as you
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: might logically, the leader is a man. We worked very
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: hard to have elected a member of one of the
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: despised races. I guessed the best we could do at
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: this point was to help elect someone from a minority
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: subgroup of the dominant white race. The leader's name is Levinson.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: He is of the white subgroup known as Jews. How
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: well is this Levinson accepted by the movement considerable resistance
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: and hostility, the coordinator said, that's to be expected. However,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: we've made sure that there is no other organization the
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: minority haters can join, so they have to follow him
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: or quit. He's able, all right, one of the most
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: able men they have, which helps our aims. Even those
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: who discriminate against Jews reluctantly admire him. He's moved the
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: headquarters of the movement out into space, and the man
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: so brilliant that we don't even nowhere. We'll find out,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: mainly through you, I hope. But that isn't the important thing.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: What is I asked, baffled to report on the unification
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: of Earth. It's possible that the anarch movement can achieve
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: it under Levinson. In that case, we'll make sure they
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: win or think they win, and will gladly sign a
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: treaty giving Earth equal planetary status in the Empire. And
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: if unity hasn't been achieved, we simply crush this rebellion
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: and make them start all over again. They'll have learned
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: some degree of unity from this revolt, and so the
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: next one will be more successful. He stood up, and
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: I got out of my chair to face him. That's
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: for the future, though. We'll work out our plans from
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: the results of this campaign. But isn't there a lot
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: of danger in the policy of fomenting rebellion against us,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: I asked.
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  Speaker 2: He lifted his shoulders.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Evolution is always painful, forced evolution even more so. Yes,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: there are great dangers, but advance information from you and
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: other agents can reduce the risk. It's a chance we
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: must take. Conrude Conrad, I corrected him, smiling, Plain mister
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Khan Radhaugen of Earth. End of Part one, Part two
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: of Inside Earth by Paul Andersen. This LibriVox recording is
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. Part two. A few days later,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: I left North America Center, and in spite of the
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: ominous need to hurry, my eastward journey was a ramble.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: The anarchs would be sure to check my movements as
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: far back as they could, and my story had better
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: rain true for the present. I must be my role
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: a vagabond. The city was soon behind me. It was
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: far from other settlement. It is good policy to keep
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: the centers rather isolated, and we could always contact our
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: garrisons in native towns quickly enough. Before long I was
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: alone in the mountains. I liked that part of the trip.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: The rockies are huge and serene. A fresh cold wind
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: blows from their peaks and roars in the pines, brawling rivers,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: foam through their dales and canyons. It is a big landscape,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: clean and strong and lonely. It speaks with silence. I
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: hitched a ride for some hundreds of miles with one
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: of the great truck trains that dominate the Western highways.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: The driver was Earthling, and though he complained much about
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: the Valgolian tyranny, he looked well fed, healthy secure. I
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: thought of the wars which had been laying the planet waste,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: the social ruin and economic collapse which the Empire had mended,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: and wondered if terror would ever be fit to rule itself.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: I came out of the enormous mountain lands into the
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Sage plains of Nevada. For a few days I worked
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: at a native ranch, listening to the talk and keeping
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: my mouth shut. Yes, there was discontent. Their taxes are
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: killing me, said the owner. What the hell incentive do
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: I have to produce? If they'd take it away from me?
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: I nodded, but thought your kind was paying more taxes
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: than the old days and had less to show for it.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Here you get your money back in public works and
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: universal security. No one on Earth is cold or hungry,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: can you only produce for your own private gain?
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: Earthling?
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: The labor draft got my kid the other day, said
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: the foreman. He'll spend two good years of his life
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: working for them, and probably come back hop headed about
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: the good old Empire. There was a time, I thought,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: when millions of Earthlings clamored for work or spent years
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: fighting there wars gave their youth to a god of
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: battle who only clamored for more blood. And how can
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: we have a stable society without educating its members to
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: respect it? I want another kid, said the female cook.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Two ain't really enough. They're good boys, but I want
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: a girl too. Only the Iridian law says if I
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: go over my quota, if I have one more, they'll
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: sterilize me.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: And they do it.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: The metal in devils a billion Earthlings or all the
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Solar system can hold under decent standards of living without
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: exhausting what natural resources their own coacher left us. I thought,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: we aren't ready to permit immigration. Our own people must
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: come first. But these beings can live well here only
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: now that we've eliminated famine, plague, and war. They'd breed
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: beyond reason, breed till all the old evils came back
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: to throttle them. If we didn't have strict population control. Yeah,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: said her husband bitterly. They never even let my cousin
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: have kids. Sterilized him, damn roight near after he was born.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Then he's a moron, or carries hemophilia, or has some
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: other hereditary taint. I thought, can't they see we're doing
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: it for their own good. It costs us fantastically in
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: money and trouble, but the goal is a level of
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: health and sanity such as this race never in its
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: history dreamed possible. They're strangling faith muttered someone else. Anyone
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: in the Empire may worship as he chooses, but should
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: permission be granted to preach demonstrable falsehoods, archaic superstitions, or
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: anti social nonsense. The old Free Earth was not noted
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: for liberalism. We want to be free, free, free, for
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: want to loose the thousand earthly races and creeds and
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: nationalisms on each other and on the galaxy, to wallow
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: in barbarism and slaughter and misery. As before we came
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: to let our works and culture be thrown in the dust,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: the labor of a century be demolished, not because it
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: is good or bad, but simply because it is Valgonian
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: epsilon Eridenian.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: We'll be free.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Not too long to wait either. That's up to nobody
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: else but you. I couldn't get much specific information, but
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: then I hadn't expected to. I collected my pay and
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: drifted on eastward, talking to people of all classes, farmers, mechanics,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: shop owners, tramps, and such data as I gathered tallied
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: with those of intelligence. About twenty five percent of the
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: population in North America at least. It was higher in
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: the Orient in Africa was satisfied with the imperium. Felt
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: they were better off than they would have been in
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: the old days. The Eridanians are pretty decent on the whole.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Some of them come in here and act nice and
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: human as you please. Some fifty percent was vaguely dissatisfied.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Wanted freedom without troubling to define the term. Didn't like
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: the taxes or the labor draft, or the enforced disarmament,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: or the legal and social superiority of Valgonians, or some
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: such thing had perhaps suffered in the reconquest. But this
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: group constituted no real threat. It would tend to be
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: passive whatever happened. Its greatest contribution would be sporadic rioting.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: The remaining twenty five percent was bitter, waiting its chance,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: muttering of a day of revenge. And some portion of
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: this segment was spreading propaganda, secretly manufacturing and distributing weapons,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: engaging in clandestine military drill, and maintaining contact with the
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: shadowy Legion of Freedom. Childish, melodramatic name, but it had
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: been well chosen to appeal to a certain type of mind.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: The real organized core of the anarch movement was highly efficient.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: In those months I spent wandering and waiting. Its activities
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: mounted almost daily. The illegal radio carried unending programs propaganda,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: fabricated stories of Elgolian brutality. I knew from personal experience
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: that some were false, and I knew the whole imperial
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: system well enough to spot most of the rest, at
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: least partly invented. I realized we couldn't trace such a
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: well organized set up of mobile and co ordinated units,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: and jamming would have been poor tactics. But even so,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: the day is coming. Earthmen, freemen, be ready to throw
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: off your shackles. Stand by for freedom. I stuck to
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: my roll. When autumn came, I drifted into one of
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: the native cities, New Chicago, a warrant of buildings near
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: the remains of the old settlement, the same gigantic slum
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: that its predecessor had been. I got a room in
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: a cheap hotel and a job in a steel mill.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: I was Conrad Haugen, Norwegian American, assigned to a spaceship
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: by the labor Draft and liking it well enough to
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: re enlist when my term was up. I had wandered
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: through much of the Empire and had had a great
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: deal of contact with Eridanians, but was most emphatically not
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: a terry. In fact, I thought it would be well
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: if the red skin yoke could be thrown off, both
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: because of liberty and the good pickings to be had
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: in the galaxy if the Empire should collapse. I had
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: risen to second mate on an interstellar tramp, but could
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: get no farther because of the law that the two
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: highest officers must be Valgolian. That had embittered me, and
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: I returned to Earth footloose and looking for trouble. I
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: found it. With officers training and the strength due to
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: a home planet with a gravity half again that of Earth.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: I had no difficulty at all becoming a foreman. There
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: was a big fellow named Mike Riley, who thought he
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: was entitled to the job. We settled it behind a
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: shed with the workmen looking on, and I beat him
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: unconscious as fast as possible. The raw, sweating savagery of
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: it made me feel ill inside. They'd let this loose
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: among the stars. After that, I was one of the boys,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: and Riley was my best friend. We went out together,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: winching and drinking, raising hell in the cold, dirty canyons
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: of steel and stone, which the natives called streets Valglia valgolia,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: the clean, bare, wind swept heights of your mountains, sowing
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: trees and thunderous waters, and Mara waiting for me to
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: come home. Riley often proposed that we find an Irridanian
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: and beat him to death, and I would agree, you're cupping,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: because I knew they didn't go alone into native quarters anymore.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: I sat in the smoky reek of the bar, half
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: deafened by the clatter and raucousness called music, trying not
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: to think of a certain low ceiling quite tavern amid
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: the gardens of Colorijo, and sobbed the bitterness of Conrad Hogan.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Into my beer.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Dirty redskins, I muttered, dirty sticking, ball headed.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Sons of bitches.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: Them in there, goddamn empire. Why you know, if hadn't
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: been for their laws, I'd be skipper of my own ship.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: Now I knew more In that slowbar cap'n he was
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: born erid denin God. To get my hands on his throat,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Riley nodded through the haze of smoke.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: I saw that his eyes had narrowed.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: He wasn't drunk when he didn't want to be, And
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: at times like this he was suddenly as sober as
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: I was. And in spite of not having a Valgolian liver,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: I bided my time, not too obviously anxious to contact
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: the legion. I thought they were swell fellows, the only
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: brave men left in the rotten, stinking empire. I'd sure
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: be on their side. When the day came. I worked
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: in the mill and went out with the boys. Lamented
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: the fact that we were really producing for the damned Eridanians.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: We couldn't even keep the products of our own sweat.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: I wasn't obstrusive about it, of course, most of the
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: time we were just boozing but when the talk came
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: to the Empire, I made it clear just where I stood.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: The winter went, I continued the dreary round of days,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: wondering how long it would take, wondering how much time
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: was left. If the Legion was at all interested, they
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: would be checking my background right now. Let them. There
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be much to check, but what there was had
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: been carefully manufactured by the experts of the intelligence Service.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Riley came into my room one evening. His face was tight,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: and he plunged into business. Gon, do you really mean
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: all you said.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: About the Empire? Why?
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Of course, I glanced out the window as if expecting
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: to see a spy. If there were any, I knew
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: he would be native. The Empire just doesn't have enough
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: men for a secret police, even if we wanted to
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: indulge in that sort of historically ineffective control. You like
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: to fight them, like, really, to help the Legion of Freedom?
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: When they strike, you bet your obscenity life, I snarled.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: When they land on earth, I'll get a gun somewhere
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: and be right there in the middle of the battle
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: with them.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Riley puffed a cigarette for a while, then he said, look,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: I can't tell you much. I'm taking a chance just
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: telling you this. It could mean my life if you
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: passed it on to the Iridanians.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: I won't.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: His eyes were bleak. You damn well better not if
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: you're caught at that. He drew a finger sharply across
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: his throat. Quit talking like a B class stereo, I bristled.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: If you've got something to tell me, let's have it.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Otherwise get out.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Sure, we checked up on you, Khn, and we think
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: you're as good a prospect as we ever came across.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: If you want to fight the Iredanians, now join the legion.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Now here's your chance. My god, you know I do,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: but who I can't tell you a thing, But if
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: you really want to join, memorize this. Riley gave me
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: a small card on which was written a name and address.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Destroy it thoroughly. Then quit at the mill and drift
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: to this other place as if you've gotten tired of
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: your work and wanted to hit the road again. Take
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: your time, don't make a beeline for it. When you
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: do arrive, they'll take care of you. I nodded grimly.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: I'll do it, Mike, and thanks.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: Just my job.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: He smiled, relaxing, and pulled a flask from his overcoat. Okay, gon,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: that's that we'd better not go out to drink after this,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: But nothing's to stop us from getting stink o here.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: End of Part two, Part three of Inside Earth by
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Poul Anderson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Part three Spring had come and almost gone what I
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: wandered into the little main town, which was my destiny.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: It lay out of the way, with forested hills behind
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: it and the sea at its foot. Most of the
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: houses were old, solidly built, almost like parts of the land,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: and the inhabitants were slow spoken, steady folk. Fishermen and
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: artisans and the like, settled here and at home with
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: the darkling woods and the restless sea and the high
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: windy sky. I walked down a narrow street with a
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: cool salt breeze ruffling my hair, and decided that I
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: liked Portsborough. It reminded me of my own home twenty
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: light years away on the wide beaches of Keelwig. I
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: made my way to Nat Hawkins's store and asked for work,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: like any drifter. But when we were alone in the
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: back room, I told him I'm Conrad Hoggan. Mike Riley said,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: you'd be looking for me. He nodded calmly, I've been
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: expecting you. You can work here a few days, sleep
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: at my house, and we'll run the tests after. He
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: was old for an earthling, well over sixty, with white
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: hair and lined, leathery face, But his blue eyes were
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: as keen and steady, his gnarled hands as strong and
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: sure as those of any young man. He spoke softly
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: and steadily around the pipe which rarely left his mouth.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: And there was a serenity in him which I could
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: hardly associate with anarch fanaticism. But the first night he
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: led me into his cellar and through a well hidden
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: trap door to a room below, and there he had
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: a complete psychological laboratory. I gaped at the gleaming apparatus.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: How off earth it came, piece by piece, much of
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: it from Epsilon Eridani itself.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: He smiled. There is, after.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: All, no man on humans owning such material. But to
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: play safe, we spread the purchases over several years and
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: made them in the names of many peace. But you,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: I took a degree in psychiatry. Once I can handle this,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: he could. He put me through the mill in the
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: next few nights, intelligence tests, psychometry, encephalography, narcosis, psychoprobing, everything
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: his machine and his skill could cover. He did not
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: find out anything we hadn't meant to be found out.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: The Service has ways of guarding its agents with counter blocks.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: But he got a very thorough picture of Conrad Hougan.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: In the end, he said, still calmly, this is amazing.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: You have an IQ well over the borderline of genius,
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: an astonishing variety of assordid knowledge about the Empire and
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: about technical subjects, and an implacable hatred of Eridanian rule
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: based on personal peauk and containing self seeking elements, but
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: no less firm for that. You're out for yourself, but
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: you'll stand by your comrades and your cause. We'd never
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: hope for more recruits of your caliber. When do I start,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: I asked impatiently. Easy, easy, he smiled, there's time. We've
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: waited fifty years. We can wait a while longer. He
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: rifled through the dossier. Actually, the difficulty is where to
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: assign you a man who knows astrogation, the use of
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: weapons and machines and the empire, who is physically strong
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: as a bull can lead men, and has a dozen
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: other accomplishments. Really seems wasted on any single job. I'm
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: not sure, but I think you'll do best as a
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: roving agent, operating between main base and the planets where
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: we have cells, and helping with the work of the
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: base when you're there. My heart fairly leaped into my throat.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: This was more than I had dared hope for. I think, said,
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: Nat Hawkings, you'd better just drop out of sight. Now,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: go to Hood Island and stay there till the spaceship
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: comes next time. You can spin the interval profitably, resting
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: and getting a little fattened up. You look half starved,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: and Barbara can tell you about the legion. His leathery
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: face smiled itself into a mesh of fine wrinkles. I
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: think you deserve that, Conrad, and so does Barbara. Mentally,
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: I shrugged. My stay in New Chicago had pretty well
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: convinced me that all Earthling females were sluts, and what
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: of it. The following night, Hawkings and I rode out
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: to Hood Island. It lay about a mile off shore,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: a wooded, rocky piece of land on which a moon
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: whitened surf boomed and rattled. The place had belonged to
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: the Hood family since the first settlements there, but Barbara
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: was the last of them. Hawkins's voice came softly to
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: me above the crash of surf, the surge of waves,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: and windy roar of trees as we near the dock.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: She has more reason than most to hate the Eridanians.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: The Hoods used to be great people around here. They
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: were just about ruined when the Redskins first came. A
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: conquering space bombardment wiped out their holdings, but they made
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: a new start.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: Then.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: Her grandfather and his brothers were killed in the revolt
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: ten years ago. Her father was caught while trying to
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: hijack a jetload of guns, and her mother didn't live
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: long after that. Then her brother was drafted into a
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: road crew and reported killed in an accident. Since then,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: she hasn't lived from much except the legion.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: I don't blame her.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: I said, My voice was a little tight for indeed
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: I didn't, but somebody has to suffer. Civilization has a
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: heavy price. I couldn't help adding, but the Empire's lately
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: been paying pensions to cases like that. I know she
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: draws hers too, and uses it for the legion That,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: of course, was the reason for the pensions. The boat
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: bumped against the dock. Hawkings threw the painter up to
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: the man who suddenly emerged from the shadow. I saw
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: the cold silver moonlight gleam off the rifle in his hand.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: You know me, Ebb, said Hawkins. This hears Khan Hoggin.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: I slipped you the word about him. Glad to know
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Yu Khan. Ebb's horny palm clasped mine. I liked his looks,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: as I did those of most of the higher up legionnaires.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: They were altogether different from the low caste barbarians who
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: were all the rebels I'd seen before. They had a
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: great load of ignorance to drag with them. We went
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: up a garden path to a rambling stone house. Inside
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: it was long and low and filled with the memories
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: of more gracious days, art and fine furniture, books lining
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: the walls. A fire crackling ruddily in the living room.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: Barbara Hood Conrad Haugen almost. I gaped at her. I
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: had expected some gaunt, dowdy fanatic, a little mad, perhaps,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: but she was well. She was tall and supple, and
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: clad in a long dark blue evening gown that shimmered
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: against her white skin. She was not conventionally pretty, her
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: face was too strong for all its fine lines, but
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: she had huge blue eyes and a wide soft mouth
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: and a stubborn chin. The light glowed gold on the
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: hair that tumbled to her shoulders. I blurted something out,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: and she smiled with a curious little twist that somehow
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: caught in me, and said merely, Hello, Conrad. Glad to
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: be here, I mumbled. The spaceship should arrive in a
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: month or so. She went on, I'll teach you as
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: much as I can in that time, and you'd better
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: get your own special knowledge onto a record wire, just
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: in case. I understand you've been in the Vagan system,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: for instance, which nobody else in the legion knows very
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: much about. Her tone was cool and business like, but
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: with an underlying warmth. It was like the sea wind
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: which blew over the islands, and as reviving. I recovered
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: myself and helped mix some drinks. The rest of the
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: evening passed very pleasantly. Later, a servant showed me to
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: my room, a big one.
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: Overlooking the water.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: I lay for a while, listening to the waves, thinking
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: drowsily how rebellion, when its motives were honest, drew in
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: the best natives of any world. And presently I fell asleep.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: The month passed all two quickly and agreeably. I learned
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: things which intelligence had spent the last three years trying
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: to find out, and dared not attempt to transmit the
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: information That was maddening, though I knew there was time.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: But otherwise I puttered about the place. There were only
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: three servants, old family retainers who had also joined the Anarchs.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: They had little modern machinery, and of course earthlings weren't
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: allowed robots, so there was need for an extra man
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: or two. I cut wood and repaired the roof, and
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: painted the boat house, spaded the garden and cleaned out brush,
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: and set up a new picket fence. It was good
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: to use my hands and muscles again. And then Barbara
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: was around to help with most of what I did.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: In jeans and jersey, the sun ablaze on her hair,
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: laughing at my clumsy jokes or frowning over some tough
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: bit of work. She was another being than the cool,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: lovely woman who talked books, in music, in history with
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: me in the evenings. Are the crisp, bitter, anarch who
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: spat facts and figures at me like an angry machine,
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: and yet they were all her. I remembered Edith, who
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: was dead, and the old pain stirred again. But Barbara
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: was alive. She was more alive to me than most
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: of Algolia. I make no apologies for my feelings.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: I had been.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: Away from anything resembling home for some two years now,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: but I was careful to remain merely friendly with Barbara.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: She didn't know a great deal about the rebel movement.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: No one agent on Earth did, but her knowledge was
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: still considerable. There was a fortified base somewhere out in space,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: built up over a period of four years with the
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: help of certain unnamed elements or planets outside the Empire.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: I suspected several rival states of that Weapons of all
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: kinds were manufactured there in quantities sufficient to arm the
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: million or so rebels of the regular force, the twenty
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: million or so in the Solar System and elsewhere who
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: held secret drills and conducted terrorist activities, and the many
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: millions more who were expected to rise spontaneously when the
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: rebel fleet struck. There was close coordination and a central
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: command at Main base for the undergrounds of all dissatisfied planets,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: a new formidable feature which had not been present in
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: the earlier uprisings. There were rumors of a new and
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: terrible weapon being developed. In any case, the plan was
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: to assault Epsilon Eridani itself simultaneously with the uprisings in
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: the colonies, so that the Imperial fleet would be recalled
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: to defend the mother world. The anarchs hoped to blast
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: Valgolia to ruin in a few swift blows, and expected
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: them the empire's jealous neighbors would sweep in to complete
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: the wreckage. This gentle girl spoke of the smashing of worlds,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: the blasting of helpless humans, and the destruction of a culture,
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: as if it were a matter of insect extermination. Have
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: you ever thought, i asked casually once, that the Geranians
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: and the Slies and our other hypothetical allies may not
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: respect the integrity of Saul any more than the Eridonians do.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: We can handle them, She answered, confidently. Oh, it won't
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: be easy that time of transition, but we'll be free.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: And what then? I went on, I don't want to
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: be defeatist, Barbara, Do you know as well as I
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: do that the Eridonians didn't conquer all mankind at a
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: single swoop. When they invented the interstellar engine and arrived here.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Man was tearing the Solar System apart in a war
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: between supernations that rapidly reducing him to barbarism. The Redskins
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: traded for a while, souled arms, and some of their
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: adventurers took sides in the conflict. The government stepped in
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: to protect Eridanian citizens and investments. The side which the
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: Eridanians helped won the war then found its allies were
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: running things and tried to revolt against the Protectorate, and
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: without really meaning to, the strangers were conquering and ruling Earth.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: But the different factions of man still hate each other's guts.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: There are still capitalists and communists, Blacks, whites and Browns,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: Hindus and Moslems, Germans and Frenchmen, city people and country people,
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: a million petty divisions. There'll be civil war as soon
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: as the Eridonians are gone. Some perhaps she agreed, but
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: I think it can be handled. If we have to
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: have civil wars, well let's get them over with and
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: live as free men. Personally, I could see nothing in
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: the sort of military dictatorship that would inevitably arise, which
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: was preferable to an alien firm, but just rule that
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: insured stability and a reasonable degree of individual liberty. But
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: I didn't say that aloud. Another time we talked of
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: the de industrialization of Earth, Barbara was of course venomous
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: about it. We were rich once, she said, all Earth was.
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: We have one of the richest.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: Planets in the galaxy. But because their own world is poor,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: the Redskins have to take the natural resources of their conquests.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: Earth is a granary and a lumber yard for Valgolia,
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: and the iron of Mars and the petrolyte of Venus.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Go back to their industry. What few factories they allow us,
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: they take their fat percentage of the product. Certainly they've
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: made us economically dependent, I said, And their standard of
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: live is undoubtedly higher than ours.
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: But ours has.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: On the whole gone up since the conquest. We eat better,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: we're healthier, we aren't burdened with the cost of past
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: and present and future wars. Our natural resources aren't being squandered.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: The forests and watersheds and farmlands we ruined are coming
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: back under Eridanian supervision. She gave me an odd look.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: I thought you didn't like the empire. I don't, I growled.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: I don't want to be held back just because I'm
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: white skinned. But I've known enough readies personally so that
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: I try to be fair. It's all right with me,
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: she said. I can see your point intellectually, though I
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: can't really feel it. But not many of the people
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: will out at main base. Free men, I muttered sardonically.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: We went fishing and swam in the tumbling surf, and
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: stretched lazily on the beach with the sun pouring over us.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: We might go tramping off into the woods on a
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: picnic to run laughing back when a sudden rain rushed
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: out of the sky, and afterward sit with beer and
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: cheese sandwiches, listening to a wire of Beethoven, our Mozart
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: or Tchaikowski. The old earthlans could write music if they
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: did nothing else, and to the rain shouting on the roof.
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: We might have a.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: Little highly illegal target practice or a game of chess.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: Our long conversations which wandered off every which way. I
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: began to have a sneaking hope that the spaceship would
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: be delayed. We went out one day in Barbara's little
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: cat boat. The waves danced around us, chuckling against the hull,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: glittering with sunlight, and the sail was like a snow
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: mountain against the sky. For a while we chatted dreamily
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: ate our lunch through the scraps to the hovering gulls.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: Then Barbara fell silent. What's the matter, I asked, Oh, nothing,
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: a touch of Velschmeer maybe. She smiled at me. You know,
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: con you don't really belong in the legion. Also, I
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: raised my eyebrows. You well, you're so darned honest, so
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: really decent under that carefully rough surface, so reasonable, you'll
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: never make a good fanatic, honest.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: I looked away from her.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: The bright day seemed suddenly to darken. End of Part three,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: Part four of Inside Earth by Paul Anderson. This LibriVox
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Part four spaceships from
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: main Base had little trouble coming to Earth with their
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: cargoes of guns, propaganda, instructors, and whatever else the rebels
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: on the planet needed. They would take up an orbit
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: just beyond the atmosphere and sit boats to the surface
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: after dark. There was little danger of their being detected
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: if they took the usual precautions. A world is simply
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: too big to blockade completely. Ours dropped on noiseless gravitic
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: beams into the knighted Island woods. We had been watching
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: for it the last few days, and now eb came
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: running to tell us it was here. The pilot followed
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: after him. Harry Kane, Conrad Hogen, Barbara introduced us. I
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: shook hands, sizing him up. He was tall for an earthling,
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: almost as big as I, dark haired, with good looking,
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: young features. He wore some approximation of a uniform, dark
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: blue tunic and breeches peaked cap captain's insignia, which gave
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: him a rather dashing look. It shouldn't have made any
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: difference to me, of course, but I didn't like the
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: way he smiled at Barbara. She explained my presence, and
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: he nodded eagerly, glad to have you, Hogan. We need
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: good men, and badly. Then to her get hawkings. You
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: and he are recalled to main base. What but a
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: dark exultation lit his face. The time for action is near,
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: very near. We're pulling all our best agents off the planets.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: They can work more effectively with the fleet now. I
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: tried to look as savagely gleeful as they, but inwardly
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: I groaned, How in all the hells was I going
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: to contact Vorka if I were stranded out in space
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: when the fleet got underway. No, they must have an
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: ultra beam. I'd managed somehow to call on that, even
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: if they caught me at it. We sent Ebb in
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: a boat to get Hawkings. While Barbara and I packed
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: a few necessities. Cain paced back and forth, spilling out
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: the news from main base, word of mighty forces, gathering
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: rumors of help promise from outside. It was like the
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: thunder which muttered just before a gale. Presently Hawkings arrived.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: The old man's calm was undisturbed. He puffed his pipe
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: and said quietly. I called up my housekeeper, told her
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: my sister in California was suddenly taken sick, and I
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: was leaving at once for the Transcontinental Jetport, just to
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: a comfort disappearing. You know, there aren't any Eridanians or
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: Terry's hereabouts, but we desperate carricters, he grinned briefly.
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: Can't be too careful brought by equipment. Along.
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: Of course, I suppose they want me to do psychometry
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: on the fleet personnel. Something on that order, I don't know.
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: We made our way through a fine drizzle of rain
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: to the little torpedo of the spaceboat. I looked around
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: into the misty dark and breathed a deep lungful of
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: the cool, wet wind, and I saw that Barbara was
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: doing the same. She smiled up at me through the
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: night and the thin, sad rain. Earth is a beautiful world, Cohn,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: she whispered. I wonder if we'll ever see it again.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: I squeezed her hand silently, and we crowded into the boat.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: Caine made a smooth take off. In minutes we were
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: beyond the atmosphere. Earth was a great glowing shield of
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: cloudy blue behind us, and the stars were bitter bright
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: against darkness. We sent a coated call signal and got
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: a directional beam from the ship. Before long we were
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: approaching it. I studied the lean black cruiser.
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: She seemed to.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: Be of about the same design as the old Solarian
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: into planetary ships, modified somewhat to accommodate the star drive.
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: Apparently she was one of those built at Main Base.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: Her bow guns were dark shadows against the clotted, cold
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: silver of the Milky Way. I thought of the death
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: and ruin which could flame from them. I thought of
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: the hell she and her kind bore atomic bombs, radio
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: dust bombs, chemical bombs, disease bombs, gravity snatchers, needle beams,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: disintegrated shells, darkness and doom, and the new barbarism. And
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: felt a stiffening within me. Fostering this murderousness was a
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: frightful risk. The main defense against it was intelligence, and
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: that depended on agents like myself, perhaps only myself. The
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: crew was rather small, no battles being anticipated, but they
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: were well disciplined, uniformed, and trained, a new Solarian army
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: built up from the fragments of the old. The captain
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: was a stiff gray German who had been a leader
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: in the earlier revolt and since fled to space, but
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: most of the offen, such as Cain, were young and
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: violent in their eagerness. We orbited around the planet for
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: another day or so, till all the boats had returned.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: There was tension in the ship. If the Imperial Navy
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: should happen to spot us, we were done off duty.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: We would sit around, talking, smoking, playing games with little concentration.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: Cain spent most of his free hours with Barbara. They
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: had much to talk about. I swallowed a certain irrational
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: jealousy and wandered around, cautiously, pumping as many men as
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: I could.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: We got under way at last.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: By this time I had learned that Main Base was
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: a planet, but no more. Only the highest leadership of
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: the legion knew its location, and they were pledged to
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: swallow the poison they always carried if there seemed to
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: be any danger of capture. For several days, by the clocks,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: we ran outward, roughly toward Draco. Our velocity was not revealed,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: and the slow shift in the outside view didn't help much.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: I guessed that we had come perhaps ten parsecs, but
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: that was only a guess. Approaching Main Base stand by,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: when the call rang hollowly down the ship's passageways, I
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: could feel the weariness and tauntness easing. I could see
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: home coming in the faces around me. I stole a
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: glance at Barbara. Her eyes were wide and her lips parted.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: She looked ahead, as if to stare through the metal walls.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: She had never been here either, here where all her
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: dreams came home.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: So we landed.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: We slipped down out of the dark and the cold
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: and the void, and I heard the rattle and groan
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: of metal easing into place. When the ship's interior grab
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: feel was turned off, I felt a sudden heaviness. This
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: world had almost a quarter again the pull of Earth.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: But people got used to that quickly enough. It was
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: the landscape which was hard to bear. They had told
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: us that even though Boreus had a breathable atmosphere and
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: a temperature not always fatally low, it was a bleak place.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: But to one who had never been far from the
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: lovely lands of Earth, its impact was like a blow
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: in the face. Barbara shuddered close to me as we
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: came out of the airlock, and I put an arm
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: about her waist, knowing the sudden feeling of loneliness which
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: rose in her. Save for the spaceport and other installations,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: main base was underground. There was no city to relieve
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: the grimness of the scene. We were in a narrow
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: valley between sheer, ragged cliffs that soared crazily into a
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: murky sky. The sun was low, a smoldering disc of
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: dull red like curdling blood. Its sullen light glimmered on
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: the undying snow and ice, and seemed only to make
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: the land darker. Stars glittered here and there in the
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: dusky heavens, hard and bright and cruel, almost as in space,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: dark sky, dark land, dark world, with the sheer terrible
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: mountains climbing gauntly for the upper gloom, crags and glaciers
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: like fangs against the dizzy cliffs, with the great shadows
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: marching across the bloody snow toward us, with a crazed wind,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: muttering and whining and chewing at our flesh.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: It was cold.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: The cold was like a knife, pain stung with every breath,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: and eyes watered with tears that froze on suddenly numbed cheeks.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: A great shutter ripped through us, and we ran toward
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: the entrance to the city. The snow crunched dry and
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: old under our boots, the cold ate up through the sun,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: and the wind whistled its scorn. Even when an elevator
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: had taken us a mile down into the warmth and
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: light of the base, we could not forget. It was
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: a city for a million men and other beings, and
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: more than a few women and children. A city of
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: long streets and small, neat apartments, hydroponic farms and food synthesizers, schools,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: shops and amusement places, factories, military barracks, and arsenals, even
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: an occasional little flower garden. Its people could live here
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: almost indefinitely, working and waiting for their day of rising.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: There was little formality in the civilian areas. Everyone who
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: had come this far was trusted. A man came to us,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: new arrivals from Earth, asked about conditions there, and then
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: said he would show us to our quarters later we
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: would be told to whom we should report for duty.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: Let's go, then, con said Barbara, and slipped a cool
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: little hand into mine. I could not refrain from casting
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: a smug backward glance at the somewhat chap fallen Kane.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: End of Part four, Part.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: Five of Inside Earth by Poul Anderson. This librevox recording
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: Part five.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: We slipped quickly into the routine of the place. It
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: was a taut nerved, hard working daily round. I could
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: feel the savage expectancy building up, like a physical force.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: But intelligent life is adaptable, and we got used.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: To it there was work to do.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: Hawkings was second in command of the Psychological Service, testing
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: and screening and treating personnel, working on training and indoctrination,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: and with a voice in the general staff where problems
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: of unit co ordination and psychological warfare were concerned. Barbara
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: worked under him, secretary and records keeper and general troubleshooter.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: Those were high posts, but both were allowed to retain
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: the nominally civilian status which they preferred. Their influence and
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: my own test scores got me appointed assistant supervisor of
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: the ship yards. That suited me very well. I was
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: reasonably free from direct orders and discipline, with authority to
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: come and go pretty much.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: As I pleased.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: They kept me busy sometimes I worked the clock around,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: and I did my best to further production of the
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: weapons which might destroy my planet, for whatever I did
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: would make a little difference. At this late date. A
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: good deal of my time also went to drill with
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: the armed forces, of which, like every able bodied younger man,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: I was a reserve member. They put me in an
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: engineer unit, and I soon had command of it. I
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: did my best here, too, whipping my grim young charges
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: into a sapper unit comparable to the Empires, for I
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: had to be above all suspicion, even of incompetence. We
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: worked at our learning. We went topside and shivered, and
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: manned our guns, set our minds, and threw up our
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: bridges in the racking cold of Boreeus over ancient snow
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: and ice. We trotted lost in the jumbled wilderness of
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: cruel peaks and railing wind, peeling the skin from our
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: fingers when we touched metal, camped under scornful stars and
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: a lash of drifting ice dust.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: But we learned.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: My own more private education went on apace I found
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: where we were. It was a forgotten red dwarf star
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: out near the shadowy border of the Empire, listed in
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: the catalogs having one Class three planet of no interest
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: or value. That was a good choice. No spaceship whatever
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: happened into this system by accident or exploration. The Anarchs
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: had built their hopes on the one lonely planet, and
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: had named it Beaeus, after the god of the north
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: wind in one of their mythologies. My company called it
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: less complimentary things. The base, including the attached city, was
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: under military command, which ultimately led up to the general
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: staff of the Legion. This was a council of officers
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: from half a score of rebellious planets, though Earthlings predominated,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: and of course Simon Levinson held the supreme authority. I
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: met him a few times, a gaunt, lonely man, enormously able,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: ridden by his cause as by a nightmare, but not
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: unkindly on a personal level. With just that indomitable heart,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: the mac of Bees had faced Rome's iron legions. Valgolia
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: was greatly interested in the ancient history of a conquered province,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: knowing how often it held the key to current problems.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: There was also a liaison officer from Lourn sitting at staff,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: beatings loorn. When I first saw him, this Colonel Wirgel,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: I stood stiff and cold, and felt the bristling along
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: my spine. He looked as humanoid as most of the
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: races at the base, hairless, faintly scaled, greenish yellow skin,
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: six fingers to a hand, and flat, chinless face. Don't
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: make that breed hideous to me. I have reckoned Genelons
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: and Margery among my friends. But Loorn, the old and
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: deadly rival, the lesser empire, watching its chance to pounce
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: on us, hating us for the check we are on
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: the ambi of their militarists. Loron. I have no race prejudices,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: and am willing to take the word of our comparative
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: psychologists that there is no more inherent evil in the
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: Lauronians than in any other stock. That the peculiar, cold
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: viciousness of their civilization is a matter of unfortunate cultural
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: rather than biological evolution, and could be changed in time.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: But none of this alters the fact that at present
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: they are what they are, brilliant, greedy, heartless, and a
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: menace to the peace of the galaxy. I have been
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: too long engaged in the struggle between my nation and
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: theirs to think otherwise. Other states had sent some clandestine
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: help to the Legion, weapons and money in vague promises.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: Lurn I soon found had said it would attack us
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: in full strength if the uprising showed a good chance
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: of success. And meanwhile they gave assistance credits and materiel
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: and the still more important machine tools. And Wergel's military
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: advice was useful. I know now, as I suspected even then,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: that Levinson and his associates were not fooled as to
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: Loron's ultimate intentions. Indeed, They planned to make a common
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: cause with what remained of Valgolia, as well as certain
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: other traditional foes of their present ally as soon as
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: they had gained their objectives of independence and stop any
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: threat of aggression from Loron. It was shrewdly planned, but
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: such a shaky coalition, still bleeding with the hurts and
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: hatreds of a struggle just ended, would be weaker than
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: the Empire, and Loron almost certainly would have sowed further
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: dissension in it and waited for its decay before striking.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: The Earthlings have a proverb to the effect that he
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: who SUPs with the devil must use a long spoon,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: but they seemed to have forgotten it now. The attack
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: I learned was scheduled for about four months from the
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: time the agents were recalled. The rebels were counting on
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: the Algolian power being spread too thinly over the Empire
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: to stand off their massed assaults on a few key points. Then,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: with the home planet a radioactive ruin, with revolt in
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: a score of planetary systems and the ensuing chaos and
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: communications breakdown, and with the Lauronians invading, the imperial fleet
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: and military would have to make terms with the anarchs.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: It would work.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: I knew with a dark chill that it would work
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: unless somehow I could get a warning out. That had
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: to be done for more than the protection of epsilon Eridani,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: which even in a surprise attack, could defend itself better
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: than these conspirators realized. But all bloodsheds should be spared
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: if possible, and the rebellion did not yet deserve to succeed,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: for the unity achieved thus far had been the unity
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: of a snake pit against a temporary enemy. Did it
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: all rest on me? God of space? Had the whole
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: burden of history suddenly fallen on my shoulders? I didn't
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: dare think about it. I forced the consequences of failure
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: out of my forebrain, back down into the unconscious, the
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: breeding ground of nightmares, and live from one day to
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: the next. I worked and waited, learned what I could,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: and watched for my chance. But it was not all
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: grimness and concentration.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: It couldn't be. Intelligent. Life just isn't built that way.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: We had our social activities, small gatherings are big parties.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: We relaxed and played.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: At first.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: I found that gratifying, for it gave me a chance
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: to pump the others. Then I found it maddening because
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: they kept me from snooping and laying plans. Finally it
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: began to hurt. I was coming to know the anarchs.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: They lived and laughed and loved even as humans do.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: They were basically as decent and reasonable as any similar
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: group of Algolians. Many were as tormented as I by
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: the thought of the slaughter they readied. There were embittered
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: ones who had lost all they held dear, and I
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: realized that while civilization has its price, you can't be
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: objective about it when you are the one who must pay.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: There were others who had been well off and had
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: chucked all their hopes to join a desperate cause in
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: which they happened to believe there were children, and what
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: had they done to deserve having their parents gambling away life?
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: In spite of their appearance to which I was now accustomed,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: they were human. When I had laughed and talked and sung,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: and drunk beer and danced and arranged entertainments with him,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: they were my friends. Moodily, I began to see that
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: I would be one of the price payers. I saw
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: most of hawkings and Barbara and after them. Because of
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: her Kine, the old psychologist and I got along famously.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: He would drop into my room for a smoke and
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: a cup of coffee and a drawled conversation whenever he
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: had the chance. His slow, gentle voice, his trenchancy, the
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: way the little crinkles appeared around his eyes when he
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: smiled reminded me of my father. I often wish those
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: two could have met. They would have enjoyed each other.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: Then Barbara would stop by on her way from work,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: or better yet, she would ask me over to her
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: apartment for a home cooked dinner.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, she could cook too. We would sometimes.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: Take long walks down the corridors of the city. We
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: even went up once in a while to the surface
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: for a breath of cold air and loneliness. And it
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: was the most natural thing in the world for us
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: to go hand in hand. There was no sunlight underground,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: but when the Floro tube glow shone on her hair,
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: I thought of sunlight on earth, the high keen light
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: of the Colorado Plateaus, the morning light stealing through the
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: trees of Hood Island. Idis Idis, I said, once, your
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: violet eyes were like the skies over Coloriho over Kilvigar home, pasture,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: land of winds. But it has been so long, It
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: has been ten years since you died.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: I fought.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: May all the gods spare witness that I fought myself,
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: and I thought I was winning. End of Port five,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: Part six of Inside Earth by Poul Andersen. This LibriVox
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Part six. I will
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: never forget. One certain evening, Hawkings and I had come
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: over to Barber's for supper, and the three of us
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: were sitting now talking Wheniovski's violin concerto cried its sorrow
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: muted in the background, and the serene home she had
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: made of the bare, little functional apartment folded itself around us.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: Then Kane dropped in, as he often did, with a
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: casualness that fooled nobody, and sat with all his soul
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: in his eyes, looking at Barbara. He was a nice kid.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: I didn't know why he should annoy me. So the
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: talk shifted to Valgolia. I found myself taking the side
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: of my race. It wasn't that I hoped to convert anyone,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: but well, it was wrong that we should be monstrous
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: in the sight of these friends.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: Brutes, said Kane.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: Two legged animals, damned ball headed, copper skinned giants wouldn't
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: be so bad if they were octopi or insects. But
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: they're just enough different from us to be a caricature.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: It's obscene.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: Sartons look like a dirty joke on mankind, I said,
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: why don't you object to them? They're in the same
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: boat as us. Then why mix political and esthetic prejudices?
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: And have you ever thought that you looked just as
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: funny to an erdanium? No race should look odd to another,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: said Nat Hawkins. He puffed blue clouds. Even by our standards,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: the Redskins are handsome in a more spectacular way than humans.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: Baby and Barbara, I smiled with a curious little pang
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: inside me, would look good to any humanoid. I should
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: think so, said Kin sulkily. The Redskins took enough of
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: our women well, I said. Their original conquistadores were young
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: and healthy, very far from home, and had just finished
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: a hard campaign where they lost many friends.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: At least there were.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: No half breeds afterward, and since the reconquest, none of
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: their soldiers had been permitted to have anything to do
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: with an earth woman against her consent. It's not their
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: fault if the consent is forthcoming oftener than you idealists think.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: That sort of thing was more or less standard procedure
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: at home with them, wasn't it, asked Hawkins.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: I nodded.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: The harshness of their native world forced them to develop
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: their technology faster than on Earth, so they kept a
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: lot of barbarian customs well into the Industrial age. For instance,
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: the rulers of the state that finally conquered all the
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: others and unified the planet took the title Wasting Emperor.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: And it's still a monarchy in theory, but a limited
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: monarchy these days, with parliamentary democracy and even local self
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: government of the town meeting sort. They're highly civilized. Now,
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't call that spree of conquest they went on
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: exactly civilized. Well, just for argument's sake, let's try to
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: look at it from their side, I answered. Here, their
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: explorers arrived at Saul, found a system richer than they
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: could well imagine, and all the wealth being burned up
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: in fratricidal war. Their technical power was sufficiently beyond ours,
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: so that any band of adventurers could do pretty much
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: as it wanted in the solar system, and all native
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: states were begging for their help. It was inevitable that
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: they'd mix in. Sure, the Iridanians have been exploiting solarian resources,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: though perhaps more wisely than we did. Sure they garrison
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: unwilling planets. But from their point of view, they're slowly
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: civilizing a race of atomic powered savages and taking no
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: more than their just reward for it. Sure they've done
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: hideous things, or were supposed to have, but there have
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: been plenty of reforms in their policy since our last revolt.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: They've adopted the red man's burden. Could be, but Saul
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: wasn't their only conquer. Oh well, of course they had
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: their time of all out imperialism. There are still plenty
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: of old school around Starward. The course of empire, keep
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: the lesser breeds in their places, and so on. That's
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: one reason why the highest posts are still reserved for
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: members of their own race. Another being that even the
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: liberal ones don't trust us.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: That far yet.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: Their first fifty years or so saw plenty of aggression,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: but then they stabilized. They had as much as they
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: could manage. To put it, badly, the empire is glutted
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: and now without actually admitting they ever did wrong. They're
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: trying to make up what they did to.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: Many of their victims.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: They could do that easily enough. Just let us go free.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: I've already told you why they don't dare apart from
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: fearing us. They're economically and militarily dependent on their colonies.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: You're an American net Why didn't our nation let the
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: South go its own way when it wanted to succeed.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: Why don't we all go back to Europe and let
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: the Indians have our country? And of course epsilon Eridani
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: honestly thinks it has a great civilizing mission and is
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: much better for the natives than any lesser independence could
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: ever be. In some cases, you've got to admit they're right.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: Have you ever seen a real simon pure native king
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: in action? All read the history of nations like Germany
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: and Russia? And why do we have to segregate races
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: and minorities even in our own organization to prevent clashes.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: We're getting there, said nat Hawkins. It's not easy, but
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: we'll make it. Only you're not there yet, I thought,
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: and for that reason you must be stopped. You claim
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: they're sated.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: Said Barbara.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: But they've kept on conquering here and there to this
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: very day, believe it or not, But with rare exceptions,
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: that's been done reluctantly. Peripheral systems have learned how to
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: build starships, become nuisances or outright menaces, and the Empire
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: has had to swallow them. Modern technology is simply too
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: deadly for anarchy. A full scale war can sterilize whole planets.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: That's another function of empire. So the Eridanians claim just
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: to keep civilization going till something better can be worked out,
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: such as what well, Well, several worlds already have donegondor status,
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: self government under the emperor, representatives in the Imperial Council,
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: and no restrictions on personal advancement of their citizens. Virtue
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: equality with the Valgolians, and their policy is to grant
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: such status to any colony they think is ready for it.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: Hawkings shook his head.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: Won't do con It sounds nice, but old Tom Jefferson
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: had the right idea. If men must wait in slavery
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: until they are ready for freedom, they will wait long. Indeed,
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: who said we were slaves? I began you talk like
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: a damn ready yourself said Cain, you seem to think
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: pretty highly of the empire. I gave him a cold Look,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: what do you think I'm doing here? I snapped, Yeah, yeah, Sorry,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of tired. Maybe i'd better go now. Before long,
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: Kin made some rather moody good nights and went out.
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: Nat Hawkings twinkled at me. I'm a little bushed myself,
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: he said, yes, I'll hit the bunk too. When he
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: was gone, I sat smoking and trying to gather up
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: the will to leave. There was a darkness in me, What,
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: after all was I doing here? God's I believed I
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: was in the right, But why is right so pitiless.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: On earth?
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: They represent the Goddess of justice as blind on Valgolia?
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: She has fangs. Barbara came over and sat on the
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: arm of my chair. What's the matter, con she asked,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: you look pretty grim these days. My work's developing some complications,
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: I said, tonelessly. My mind added it sure is no
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: way to call headquarters. The rebellion gathering enormous momentum, and
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: on a basis of treachery and racial hatred. Barbara's fingers
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: rumpled my hair, the grafted hair, which by now felt
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: more a part of me than my own lost crest.
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: You're an odd fellow, she said quietly, on the surface,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: so frank and friendly and cheerful, and down underneath your
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: hiding yourself and your private unhappiness. Why I looked up
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: at her, astonished. Even the psychologists their limited con They
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: can measure, but they can't feel. Not the way she stopped,
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: and the light glowed in her hair, and her eyes
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: were wide and serious on mine, and one small hand
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: stole over to touch my fingers blindly. I wrenched my
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: face away. Her voice was low. It's some other woman,
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: isn't it other? Well, no, there was one, but she's
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: dead now. She died ten years ago. Idis your wife,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: I nodded. We were married for three years. Our daughter
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: is still alive. She's going on twelve now, but I
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: haven't seen her for over two years. She's not on earth.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: I wonder if she even thinks of me, con said Barbara,
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: very softly and gravely. You can't go on mourning a
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: woman forever. I'm not forget it. I shouldn't have spoken
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: about it. You need it to that's all right. My
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: girl ought to have a mother. The words came out
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: of themselves. What followed thereafter seemed also to happen without
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: my willingness. Presently, Barbara stood back from me. She was laughing,
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: low and sweet and joyous. Con you, old souerpuss, cheer up.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: It isn't that bad, you know. I managed a wry grin,
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: though it seemed to need all the energies left in me.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: You look so happy, your fool self that I have
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: to counterbalance it. Con if you knew how I'd been hoping.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: We talked for a long time, but she did most
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: of it. The plans, the hopes, the trip we were
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: going to take, and the house we were going to
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: build down by the seashore. Mary, my daughter was going
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: to have a home, along with a dozen brothers and
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: sisters she'd have in due course after the war. I left, finally,
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: stumbling like a blind man toward my quarters. Oh yes,
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: I loved her, and she loved me, and we were
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: going to have a home and a sailboat and a
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: dozen children after the war, when Earth was free. What
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: more could a man ask for? It had been many
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: years since I'd needed autohypnosis to put myself to sleep,
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: but I used it now. End of Part six, Part
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: seven of Inside Earth by Poul Andersen. This LibriVox recording
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. Part seven A month passed.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: The delay was partly due to the slowness with which I.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: Had to work.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: Even after a plan had been laid, I could only
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: do a little at a time, and the times had
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: to be well separated. Each day brought the moment of
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: onslaught closer, but I dared not hurry myself. If they
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: caught me at my work, there would be an end
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: of all things. But I cannot swear that my own
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: mind did not prompt me to an unnatural slowness and caution.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: I was only human, and every day was one more memory.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: They had all been very.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: Good to us.
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: Our friends had a party to celebrate our engagement, and
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: we were universally congratulated, and all the rest of it. Yes,
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: Kin was there too, shaking my hand and wishing me
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: all the luck in the world. Afterwards, he went back
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: to his work and his pilots practice with a strange fierceness.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: If at times I fell into glum abstraction, well, I
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: had always been a little moody, and Barbara could tease
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: me out of it. Most of the times I was
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: with her. I didn't think about the future at all.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: There had been a certain, deep, inward coldness to her.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: She had carried the old wounds of her losses with
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: bitter dignity, But as the days went on I saw
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: less and less of it. She would even admit that
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: individual Valgolians might be fine fellows, and that the Empire
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: had done a few constructive things for Earth. But it
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: was more than a change of attitude. She was thawing
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: after a long winter. She laughed more. She was wholly human,
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: now human. We sat one evening, she and I in
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: one of the big lounges the bass had for its personnel.
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: There were only one or two muted lights in the long,
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: quiet room, a breathing of music, snatches of whispering like
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: our own. She sat close against me, and my lips
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: kept straying down to brush her hair and her cheek.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: When we're married, she said, dreamily, Then all at once
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: con what are we waiting for? I looked at her
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: in some surprise. Con Why do you assume we can't
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: get married.
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 2: Before the war's over.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: Her voice was low and hurried, shaking just a little.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: The basier has chaplains, It's less than a month now
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: till the business starts. God knows what'll happen. Then either
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: of us might get killed.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: I heard her gulp.
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: Con if they killed you, they won't, I said, I'm
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: kill proof. No, No, we have so little time, and
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: it may be all we'll ever have. Marry me now,
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: darling dearest, at least there'll be something to remember. Whatever comes,
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: we'll have had that while I tell you, I insisted
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: with a sudden, hideous dismay, there's nothing to worry about.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: Forget it. Oh, I'm not asking for pity. I've more
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: happiness now than is right. Maybe that's why I'm afraid.
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: But con they killed my father, and they killed my mother,
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: and they killed Jimmy, and if they take you too,
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: it'll be more than I can stand. The savage woe
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: of an old earthly poet lanced through my brain. The
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: time is out of joint, Oh, cursed sprite that ever
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: I was to set it right. And then, just for
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: a moment, there came the notion of yielding. You loved
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: the girl, conrue, you love her so much as a
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: pain to you, We'll take her, marry her.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 2: No.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: I was not excessively tender of heart or conscience, but
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: neither was I that kind of scoundrel. I kissed her
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: words away. Afterward, alone in the darkness of my room,
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: I realized that Konrad Hougan had no good reason to
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: hang back.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: It was true.
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: All she said was true, and no other couple was
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: waiting for an uncertain future. It was the time for action.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: I had been ready for days now, postponing the moment,
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: and those days were marching to the time of war.
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: The rebels were quivering to go a skin, and few
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: weeks at most lay between me and the ruin of
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: Belgolian plans and work and hope. In my steadily expanding
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: official capacity, I could go anywhere and do almost anything
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: in an engineering line. So, bit by bit I had
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: tinkered with the base's general alarm system. We had scout
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: ships posted, of course, but by the very nature of things,
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: they had to be close to the planet or an
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: approaching enemy would slip between them without detection, and the
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: substantial vibrations of a ship traveling faster than light do
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: not arrive much ahead of the ship itself. Whatever warning
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: we had of a hypothetical assault would be very short.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: It would be signaled to all of us by a
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: siren on the intercommunications system, and after that it would
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: be battle stations, naval units to their ships, and all
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: others to such ground defenses as we had. But modern
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: warfare is all to the offense. There was no way
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: of stopping an attack from space except by meeting it
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: and annihilating it before it gets to its destination. The
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: rebels were counting on that fact to aid them when
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: they struck, but it would of course work against them
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: if their enemy should happen to hit first. Everyone was
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: understandably nervous about the chance of our being discovered and assailed.
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: Working a little at a time, I had put a
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: special switch in the general alarm circuit. It showed up
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: merely as one of many on a sector callboard near
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: my room. No one was likely to notice it, and
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: my quarters were not those originally given me. I had
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: moved to a smaller place farther from Barbara, ostensibly to
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: be near my work at the shipyards, actually to be
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: near the base's ultrabeam shack. Now it was time to act.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: I needed an excuse for not going going to the
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: gun Torrent, where I was assigned. That involved faking a
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: serious fever, but Like all intelligence men, I had been
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: trained to full psychosomatic integration. The same neural forces that
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: in hysteria produced paralysis, stigmata, and other real symptoms were
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: under my conscious control. I thought myself sick. By morning,
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: I was half delirious and my veins were on fire.
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: The surgeon general came to see me. What the hell's
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: the trouble, he wondered, this place is supposed to be sterile.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's too damn sterile. I murmured, with a perfectly
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: genuine weakness. Then, fighting the lightheadedness that hummed and buzzed
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: in me, set boo fever.
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: Doc. I'm sure that's what it is. Can't say I've
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 2: ever heard of it. You'll find it in your.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: Medical books, he would too. It's found on the place,
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: and it's serious. Five where I once visited filter passing
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: virus transmitted by our born spores. Not contagious here in humans.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: It becomes chronic, no ill effects except the few days
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: fever like this every few years. Now go away and
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: let me die in peace. I closed my eyes on
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: the distorted and unreled whirl of sickness. Later, barber came in,
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: pale and with her hair like a rumpled halo.
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 2: I had to assure her.
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: Many times that I was all right and would be
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: on my feet in two or three days. Then she
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: smiled and sat down on the bunk and passed a
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: cool palm over my forehead. Poor Khan, she said, poor
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: square head. I feel fine as long as you're here.
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: I whispered, don't talk, She said, just go to sleep.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: She kissed me and sat quiet. Hers was the rare
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: gift of being a definite personality, even when silent and motionless.
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: I clasped her hand and pretended to fall into uneasy sleep.
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: After a while, she kissed me again, very softly, and
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: went out. I told my body to recover. It took time,
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: hours of time while these stubborn cells retreated to a
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: normal level of activity. I lay there, thinking of many things,
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: most of them unpleasant. It was well into the night,
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: the logical time to act, even if the factories did
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: go on a twenty four hour basis. I got up,
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: still swaying a little with weakness, the dregs of the
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: fever ringing in my head. After I had vomited and
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: swallowed a stimulant tablet, I felt better. I put on
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: my uniform, but substituted a plain service jacket without insignia
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: of rank for the tunic. That sh should make me
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: fairly inconspicuous. In the confusion, strength came. I glanced cautiously
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: along the dim lick corridor, and it was empty and silent.
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: I stole out and hurried toward the ultra beam shack.
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: My hidden switch was.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 2: On the way.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: I threw it and ran on with lowered head. The
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: sirens screamed behind me, before me, around me, the howling
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: of all the devils in.
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: Hell, hoo hoo.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: Battle stations, strange ships approaching battle stations, all hand to
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: battle stations, hoo hoooo. I could imagine the pandemonium that erupted.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: Men boiling out of factories and rooms, cursing and yelling,
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: and dashing frantically for their posts, children screaming in terror,
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: women white faced with sudden numbness, weapons manned instruments sweeping
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: the skies. Spaceships roared heavenward incoherent yelling on the intercoms
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: to find out who had given that signal. With luck,
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: I would have fifteen minutes or half an hour of
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: safe insanity. A few men raced by me on their
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: way to the nearest missile rack. They paid me no heed,
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: and I hurried along my own path. The winding stair
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: leading up to the ultra beam shack loomed before me.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: I went its length, three steps at a time, bounding
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: and gasping with my haste up to the transmitter. It
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: was the tenuous link binding together a score of rebel planets,
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: the only communication with the stars that glittered so coldly overhead.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: The ultra beam does not have an infinite velocity, but
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: it does have an unlimited speed, one depending solely on
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: the frequency of the generating equipment. And since it only
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: goes to such receivers as are tuned to its pattern,
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: there must be at least one such tuned unit for
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: the generator to work. It has a virtually infinite range,
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: so men can talk between the stars. But are there
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: words the wiser for that? Up and up and up,
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: round and round, up and up. Metal clanging underfoot in
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: all ways the demon screech of the siren up. I
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: sprang from the head of the stairs and crossed the
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: areaway in one leap to the open door of the shack.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 2: There was only one.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: Operator on duty, a slim, boyish figure before the glittering panel.
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: He didn't hear me as I came behind him. I
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: knocked him out with a calculated blow to the base
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: of the skull. He'd be unconscious for at least fifteen minutes,
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: and that was time enough. I heaved his body out
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: of the chair and sat down. The unit was set
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: for the complicated secret screenimbler pattern of the Legion, one
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: which was changed periodically just in case I twirl the
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: dials adjusting for the pattern of the set I knew
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: was kept tune for me at Vorka's headquarters. The set hummed,
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: warming up. I lifted my eyes and stared into the
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: naked face of Boreus. The shack was above ground itself,
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: dominated by the skeletal tower of the transmitter, and a
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: broad port revealed land and sky. Overhead. The stars were glittering,
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: bright and hard and cruel, flashing and flashing out of
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: the crystal dark. The peaks rose on every side, soaring
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: dizziness of cliffs and ragged snarls of crags hemming us
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: in with our tiny works and struggles. It was bitterly,
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: ringingly cold out there. The snow screamed when you walked
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: on it. The snapping thush under a frost split rock woke,
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: the dull roars of avalanches. And there was the wind,
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: the old immortal wind, moaning and blowing and wondering under
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: the stars. I saw them running, little ant like men,
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: spelling from their nests and racing across the snow before
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: they froze. I saw the ship's rise, one after the other,
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: and rush darkly skyward. The base had come alive and
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: was reaching up to defy the haughty stars. The set
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: buzzed and whistled, warming up, muttering with the cosmic interference,
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: whose source nobody knows. I began to speak into the microphone,
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: softly and urgently, calling intelligence h Q saw three North
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: America Center. Captain Hulgan knru calling North American Center, Come
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: in Center, Come in. The receiver rustled with a thin,
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: dry voice of the stars. Dimly, I could hear the
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: wind outside snarling around the walls. Come in Center, Come
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: in Center, Captain Hogan. The voice rattled into the waiting
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: stillness of the check. Captain Hogan, is it really you
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: get General Vorka?
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 2: At once?
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: I said, Meanwhile, are you recording all right? Be sure
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: you get this? I told them everything I knew. I
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: told them what planet this was, and where we were
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: on its surface, and what our strength and plans were.
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: I gave them the disposition of the scout ship pickets,
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: as far as those were known to me, and the
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: standard legion recognition signals. I finished with an account of
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: the savage differences still existing between Earthman and earthmen, and
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: Earth and its treacherous allies. And all the time I
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: was talking to a recording machine, nobody was listening. When
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: I was through, I waited a minute, not feeling any
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: particular emotion.
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 2: I was too tired.
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: I sat there, listening to the wind and the interstellar
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: whistling till Vorka spoke.
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: To me, Hoggan Hogen, you've done it.
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: Shut up, I said, what's coming now? I checked the
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: fleet status. We have a supernova with escort at Bramgar,
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: about fifteen light years from where you are. You are
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: at their base, aren't you? Can you hold out for
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: two days more? I think so. Better get into the hills.
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: We may have to bomboard go to Hell. I turned
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: off the set now to get back. They must already
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: know it was a trick. They must be scouring the
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: base for the saboteur. As soon as all the loyal
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: men were back, the hunt would really be on. I had,
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: of course worn gloves, there would be no finger prints,
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: and the operator wouldn't know who had attacked him. I
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: changed the scrambler setting to one picked at random and
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: in a corner, as if it had fallen there by accident.
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: I dropped a handkerchief stolen from workle of Loron. The
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: tiny fragments of tissue which adhere to such a thing
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: could easily be proven to be from him or one
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: of his associates. For the basic Lauronian life molecules are
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: all level rotatory. It was over. The base was as
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: good as taken, but there was more to be done.
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: Apart from the saving of my own life, there was
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: still a desperate need for secrecy. For if the rebels
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: knew what was coming, they might choose to stand and fight,
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: or they might flee into the roadless wildernesses of space.
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: Whichever it was, all our work and sacrifice would have
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: gone for a little. The provocateur policy is the boldest
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: and most foresighted enterprise ever undertaken. It is the first
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: attempt to make history, as we choose to control the
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: great social forces we are only dimly beginning to understand,
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: so that intelligence may ultimately be its own master. Sure
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: very fine and idealistic, and no doubt fairly true as well,
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: But there is death and treachery in it, loneliness and heartbreak,
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: and the bitterness of the betrayed. Have we the right
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: to set ourselves up as God? Can we really say
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: in our omniscience that every one but us is wrong?
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: There were sane, decent, intelligent folk here on Breus, the
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: ones we needed so desperately for all civilization? Did we
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: have to make them our enemies so that their grandchildren
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: might be our friends? I didn't know. Wherever I turned
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: there were treason and injustice. However hard I tried to
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: do right, I had to wrong somebody. I ran on
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: back to my cabin. I peeled off my clothes and
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: dived into bed, and by the time they looked in
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: on me, I had worked back most of my fever.
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: Don't think conru Don't think of this new victory and
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: the safety of the empire and perhaps a step closer
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: to the harshly won unity of Earth. Don't think of
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: the way the light catches in Barbara's hair and gets
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: turned into molten gold. You've got a fever to create. Man,
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: you've got to think yourself sick again. That ought to
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: be easy. End of Part seven, Part eight of Inside
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: Earth by Pool Andersen. This LibriVox recording is in the
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: public domain.
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 2: Part eight.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: Barbara came in. She was white and still, and presently.
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: She leaned her head against my breast and cried quietly.
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: For a long time, there is a spy here, she
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: told me. I heard about it. I stroked her hair
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: and held her to me clumsily. Do you know who
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: it was? I don't know. Somehow they seemed to think
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: the Lauronians may be guilty, but they aren't sure. They
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: arrested them, and two were killed resisting. Colonel Worgil is
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: in the brig now, while they decide if Loren can
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: be trusted, it can't. I said, Earth must win alone.
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: We'al win, she said, dauntlessly, with Loren or without it.
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: We'al win then, like a little frightened girl, creeping close
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: to me. But we needed that help so much. I
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: kissed her and remained silent. The next day I got
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: on my feet again, weak but recovered. I wandered aimlessly
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: around the base, waiting.
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 2: For Barbara to get through work.
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: Listening to people talk, it was ugly, the fear and
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: tension and wolfish watchfulness. Whom can we trust? Who is
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: the enemy? Mostly they thought the Lauronians were guilty. After all,
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: those were the only beings on the planet who had
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: not had to pass a rigorous investigation and psychological examination.
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: But nobody was sure. Levinson spoke over the televisor his
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: gaunt lined face had grown very tired, yet there was
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: metal in his voice. The new situation necessitated a change
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: of plans, but the time of assault would, if anything,
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: be moved ahead. Be of good heart, stand by your comrades.
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: We'll still be free. I went to Barber's apartment and
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: we sat up very late. But even in this private record,
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: I do not wish to say what we talked about.
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: And the next day the empire came. There was one
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: supernova ship with light escort.
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 2: But that was enough.
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: Such vessels have the mass of a large asteroid, and
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: one of them can sterilize a planet, two or three
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: can take it apart. Theoretically, a task force comprising twenty
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: nova class battleships with escorts can reduce one of those
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: monsters if it is willing to lose most of its units.
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: But nothing less can even do significant damage, and the
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: rebel base did not have that much, nor could they
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: get even what they had into full act. These ships
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: rushed out of interstellar space, flashing the recognition signals I
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: had given before the picket vessels suspected what was wrong.
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: The Valgolians were on them. One managed to bleed a
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: call to base, and the alarm screamed again. Men rushed
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: to battle stations. Then the Imperials blanketed all communications with
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: a snarl of interference, through which nothing the rebels had
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: could drive. So naturally they were thought to have been
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: annihilated in a few swift blazes of fire and steel,
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: a quick clean death and forgetfulness of defeat. But only
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: the drivers were crippled, And then the supernova yanked the
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: vessels to its titan flanks and held them in unbreakable
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: gravity beams. The crews would be taken later with narcotic
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: gas or paralyzer beams alive. For the Empire knew it's rebels.
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: I knew the uselessness of going to battle stations, so
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: I hung behind, seeking out Barbara, whose place was with
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: the missile computer bank. I met her and kin in
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: the hallway. The boy's face was white and there were
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: tears running down his cheeks. This is the end, he said.
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: They've found us out and there's nothing left but to die. Goodbye, Barbara.
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: He kissed her wildly and ran for his ship moodily.
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: I watched him go. He expected death, and he would
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: only get capture and afterward. What are you doing here,
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: Khan asked Barbara. I'm too shaky to be any good
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: in the artillery. Let me go with you. I can
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: pinch your computer. She nodded silently, and we went off together.
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 2: The floor shook under.
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: Us, and a crash of rock roared down the halls.
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: The heavy weapons on the super Nova were bloodlessly reducing
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: our ground installations and our ships, not yet in action
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: to smashed rubble. They would not kill a single one
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: of us except by uncontrollable accident, and save many Valgolian
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: and Earth lives that way. But it wasn't pleasant to
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: be slugged. The girl and I staggered ahead. When the
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: lights went out, I stopped and held her. It's no use,
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: I said, they've got us.
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 2: Let me go. She cried.
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: I hung on, and suddenly she collapsed against me, crying
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: and shaking. We stood there, with the city rumbling and
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: shivering around us, waiting. Presently, the Valgolian commander released the
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: interference and contacted Levinson, offering terms of surrender. It seemed
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: to Levinson, and it was meant to seem that further
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: resistance would be useless. Pushery, his ships were gone, and
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: his foes need only bombard him to ruin. He capitulated,
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: and one by one we laid down our arms and
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: filed to meet the victors. The terms, as announced by
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: messengers the intercom was out of action, were generous. Leading
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: rebels and those judged potentially dangerous would go to penal
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: colonies on various earthlike planets, except that they weren't penal
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: colonies at all. But of course the earth things wouldn't
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: know this. They were indoctrination centers. And with all my bitterness,
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: I longed to observe a man like Levinson. After five
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: years in one of the centers, he'd see things in
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: a different perspective. He'd see the empire for what it was,
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: even if I sometimes had a little trouble seeing that
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: now and he'd be a better rebel for it. Someday
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: Levinson and his kind would be back on Earth, the
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: new leaders, ready to lead the way to a new tomorrow,
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: and I would be with them. I'd be back with
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: Levinson and the rest, and with Barbara too, and we'd
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: try to pave the way to the peace and friendship.
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: But meanwhile, there'd be other revolutions, striving and hoping and
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: breaking their hearts, daring what they thought would be death
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: to win what they call freedom and what we hoped
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: would be evolution. It was the fire to temper a
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: new civilization. We walked down the hall, Barbara and I
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: hand in hand, alone, in spite of all the people
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: who were shuffling the same way. Most of them were weeping,
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: but Barbara's head was high. Now what will happen to us,
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: she asked. I don't know, I said, But Barbara, whatever
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: happens after this, remember that I love you. Remember that
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: I'll always love you. I love you too. She smiled
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: and kissed me. We'll be together, Khan, That's all that matters.
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: We'll be together. That was important, and it made me
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: feel good. Yes, we'd be together. I'd see to that.
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: But for a while. Barbara would hate me through all
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: the long years of the indoctrination. Some day perhaps she
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: would understand the indoctrination would do it, and I could help.
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: But by the gods of space, how would it be
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: to take that hate? All that while we came out
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: into the central chamber, where the prisoners were gathering to
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: be herded up to the ships. Armed Valgolian guards stood
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: under the glare of improvised lights. Other imperials were going
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: through the city, flushing out those who might be hiding
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: and removing whatever our armed forces could use. The equipment
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: would do no one any good here, and Boreus would
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: be left to its darkness. It was cold in the
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: vast shadowy room. The heating plant had broken down, and
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: the ancient cold of Boreus was seeping in. Barbara shivered
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: and I held her close to me. Nat Hawkings moved
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: over to join us wordlessly. I was questioned in a
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: locked room by one of the big Valgolian officers. He
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: looked at a stereograph in his hand, and he took
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: me aside. But it was not unusual. Many of the
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: starbound prisoners were being questioned by their guards, and I
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: was merely one of them, Colonel Houlgan, the officer asked,
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: with an eagerness close to hero worship. He was obviously
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: fresh from school, and military terminology came from his lips,
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: as if it really meant something to a Valgolian. The colonel,
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: of course, meant that in a titulus sense, I had
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: been elevated for my work. Funny, if you use the
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: language enough, you get to believe it yourself. Sir, the
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: young officer continued, this is one of the greatest pieces
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: of work I've ever seen. I am to extend the
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: official congratulations of I let him talk for a while,
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: and then I raised my hand peremptorily, and I told
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: him that the girl with the earthly hawkings was to
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: go along for indoctrination, despite the fact that her name
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: did not appear on his lists. He nodded, and I
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: went back to Barbara. But half a dozen men had
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: come between us, Levinson and five guards. The man's carriage
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: was still erect, the old, unbreakable pride and courage were
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: still in him. Some one among the prisoners broke loose
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: and rushed at him, cursing, till the Valgolians thrust him
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: back into line. Levinson screamed, the man leventh, and you
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: dirty jew, you selled us out there. You see why
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: this rebellion had to be crushed. Earth still had a
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: long way to go. The Levinson's, the Barbers, the more
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: promising of the anarchs, would be educated and returned, and
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: the civilizing process would go on. Earth's best and bravest
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: would unite and fight us, and with each defeat they
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: would learn something of what we had to teach them,
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: that all races, however divergent, must respect each other and
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: work together learn it with an intensity which the mere
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: intellectual teachings of schools and propaganda could not achieve alone
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: or at any rate soon enough. Valgolia is the great
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: and lonely enemy, the self appointed devil. Since none of
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: us can be angels. It is the source of che
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: challenge and adversity, such as has always driven intelligence onward
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: and upward in spite of itself. Sooner or later, generations
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: hints perhaps all the subject worlds will have attained internal
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: unity forgetting their very species in a common bond of intelligence,
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: And on that day Valgolia's work will be done. She
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: and her few friends, her Dona gangors will seemingly capitulate
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: without a fight and become simply part of a union
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: of free and truly civilized planets.
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 2: And such a union.
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: Will be firmer and more enduring than all the tyrant
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: empires of the past. It will have the strength of
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: a thousand or more races working together in the harmony
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: which they achieved in struggling against us. That is the goal,
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 1: but it is a long way ahead. There may be
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: centuries near, and meanwhile, Valgolia is alone. Barbara would understand
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 1: in times, She would understand what she as yet did
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: not even know. But first would be the hatred, the cold,
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: stark hatred that must come of knowing who and what
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: I really am. I could only wait for that hatred
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: to come after she learned, and then wait for it
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: to go slowly, slowly. Lines of the Earthlings were filing forward,
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: and with nat Hawkins, Barbara waited for me. I walked
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: to her and took her hand. Her head was high,
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 1: as high as Levinson's. She expected all of us to die,
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: but she'd meet the relatives and friends she thought were dead.
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: It would be a great, a crushing humiliation to know
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: one's martyrs were alive and being well treated and intensively
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: educated by the foe, who was supporting and encouraging one
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: supposedly dangerous revolution. It won't be so bad as long
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: as we're together, Darling, I said, She smiled, misunderstanding, and
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: kissed me defiantly before our of Algolian guards. End of
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: Part eight End of Inside Earth by Poul Anderson. This
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: book recorded by Phil Shinever