Clarke, Arthur C - Fall of Night 02 (21 page)

 
          
 
He waited in the ship while Theon went to see
his friends. It was amusing to watch the consternation and amazement of the
people crowding round, unaware of the fact that he was observing them from
inside the machine. Theon was gone only a few minutes and had some difficulty
in reaching the airlock through the inquisitive crowds. He breathed a sigh of
relief as the door closed behind him.

 
          
 
"Mother will get the message in two or
three minutes. I've not said where we're going, but she'll guess quickly enough.
And I've got some news that will interest you."

 
          
 
"What is it?"

 
          
 
"The Central Council is going to hold
talks with Diaspar."

 
          
 
"What!"

 
          
 
"It's perfectly true, though the
announcement hasn't been made yet. That sort of thing can't be kept secret."

 
          
 
Alvin could appreciate this: he never
understood how anything was ever kept secret in Lys.

 
          
 
"What are they discussing?"

 
          
 
"Probably ways in which they can stop us
leaving.
That's why I came back in a hurry."

 
          
 
Alvin smiled a little ruefully.

 
          
 
"So you think that fear may have
succeeded where logic and persuasion failed?"

 
          
 
"Quite likely, though you made a real
impression on the councillors last night. They were talking for a long time
after you went to sleep."

 
          
 
Whatever the cause of this move, Alvin felt
very pleased. Diaspar and Lys had both been slow to react, but events were now
moving swiftly to their climax. That the climax might have unpleasant
consequences for him, Alvin did not greatly mind.

 
          
 
They were very high when he gave the robot its
final instructions. The ship had come almost to rest, and the Earth was perhaps
a thousand miles below, nearly filling the sky. It looked very uninviting:
Alvin wondered how many ships in the past had hovered here for a little while
and then continued on their way.

 
          
 
There was an appreciable pause, as if the
robot was checking controls and circuits that had not been used for geological
ages. Then
came
a very faint sound, the first that
Alvin had ever heard from the machine. It was a tiny humming, which soared
swiftly octave by octave until it was lost at the edge of hearing. There was no
sense of change or motion, but suddenly he noticed that the stars were drifting
across the screen. The Earth reappeared, and rolled past—then appeared again,
in a slightly different position. The ship was "hunting," swinging in
space like a compass needle seeking the north. For minutes the skies turned and
twisted around them, until at last the ship came to rest, a giant projectile
aimed at the stars.

 
          
 
Centered in the screen the great ring of the
Seven Suns lay in its rainbow-hued beauty. A little of Earth was still visible
as a dark crescent edged with the gold and crimson of the sunset. Something was
happening now, Alvin knew, beyond all his experience. He waited, gripping his
seat, while the seconds drifted by and the Seven Suns ghttered on the screen.

 
          
 
There was no sound, only a sudden wrench that
seemed to blur the vision—but Earth had vanished as if a giant hand had whipped
it away. They were alone in space, alone with the stars and a strangely
shrunken sun. Earth was gone as though it had never been.

 
          
 
Again came that wrench, and with it now the
faintest murmur of sound, as if for the first time the generators were exerting
some appreciable fraction of their power. Yet for a moment it seemed that
nothing had happened: then Alvin realized that the sun itself was gone and that
the stars were creeping slowly past the ship. He looked back for an instant and
saw—nothing. All the heavens behind had vanished utterly, obliterated by a
hemisphere of night. Even as he watched, he could see the stars plunge into it,
to disappear like sparks falling upon water. The ship was traveling far faster
than light, and Alvin knew that the familiar space of Earth and Sun held him no
more.

 
          
 
When that sudden, vertiginous wrench came for
the third time, his heart almost stopped beating. The strange blurring of
vision was unmistakable now: for a moment, his surroundings seemed distorted
out of recognition. The meaning of that distortion came to him in a flash of
insight he could not explain. It was real, and no delusion of his eyes. Somehow
he was catching, as he passed through the thin film of the present, a glimpse
of the changes that were occurring in the space around him.

 
          
 
At the same instant the murmur of the
generators rose to a roar that shook the ship—a sound doubly impressive, for it
was the first cry of protest that Alvin had ever heard from a machine. Then it
was all over, and the sudden silence seemed to ring in his ears. The great
generators had done their work: they would not be needed again until the end of
the voyage. The stars ahead flared blue-white and vanished into the
ultraviolet. Yet by some magic of Science or Nature the Seven Suns were still
visible, though now their positions and colors were subtly changed. The ship
was hurtling toward them along a tunnel of darkness, beyond the boundaries of
space and time, at a velocity too enormous for the mind to contemplate.

 
          
 
It was hard to believe that they had now been flung
out of the solar system at a speed which unless it
were
checked would soon take them through the heart of the Galaxy and into the
greater emptiness beyond. Neither Alvin nor Theon could conceive the real
immensity of their journey: the great sagas of exploration had completely
changed Man's outlook toward the Universe, and even now, millions of centuries
later, the ancient traditions had not wholly died. There had once been a ship,
legend whispered, that had circumnavigated the Cosmos between the rising and
the setting of the sun. The billions of miles between the stars meant nothing
before such speeds. To Alvin this voyage was very little greater, and perhaps
less dangerous, than his first journey to Lys.

 
          
 
It was Theon who voiced both their thoughts as
the Seven Suns slowly brightened ahead.

 
          
 
"Alvin," he remarked, "that
formation can't possibly be natural."

 
          
 
The other nodded.

 
          
 
"I've thought that for years, but it
still seems fantastic."

 
          
 
"The system may not have been built by
Man," agreed Theon, "but intelligence must have created it. Nature
could never have formed that perfect circle of stars, one for each of the
primary colors, all equally brilliant. And there's nothing else in the visible
Universe like the Central Sun."

 
          
 
"Why should such a thing have been made,
then?"

 
          
 
"Oh, I can think of many reasons. Perhaps
it's a signal, so that any strange ship entering the Universe will know where
to look for life. Perhaps it marks the center of galactic administration. Or
perhaps— and somehow I feel that this is the real explanation—it's simply the
greatest of all works of art. But it's foolish to speculate now. In a little
while we'll know the truth,"

 
          
 
So they waited, lost in their own dreams,
while hour by hour the Seven Suns drifted apart until they had filled that
strange tunnel of night in which the ship was riding. Then, one by one, the six
outer stars vanished at the brink of darkness and at last only the Central Sun
was left. Though it could no longer be fully in their space, it still shone
with the pearly light that marked it out from all other stars. Minute by minute
its brilliance increased, until presently it was no longer a point but a tiny
disk. And now the disk was beginning to expand before them—

 
          
 
There was the briefest of warnings: for a
moment a deep, bell-like note vibrated through the room.
Alvin
clenched the arms of his chair, though it
was a futile enough gesture.

 
          
 
Once again the great generators exploded into
life, and with an abruptness that was almost blinding, the stars reappeared.
The ship had dropped back into space, back into the Universe of suns and
planets, the natural world where nothing could move more swiftly than light.

 
          
 
They were already within the system of the
Seven Suns, for the great ring of colored globes now dominated the sky. And
what a sky it was! All the stars they had known, all the familiar
constellations, had gone. The Milky Way was no longer a faint band of mist far
to one side of the heavens: they were now at the center of creation, and its
great circle divided the Universe in twain.

 
          
 
The ship was still moving very swiftly toward
the Central Sun, and the six remaining stars of the system were colored beacons
ranged around the sky. Not far from the nearest of them were the tiny sparks of
circling planets, worlds that must have been of enormous size to be visible
over such a distance. It was a sight grander than anything Nature had ever
built, and
Alvin
knew that Theon had been correct. This
superb symmetry was a deliberate challenge to the stars scattered aimlessly
around it.

 
          
 
The cause of the Central Sun's nacreous light
was now clearly visible. The great star, surely one of the most brilliant in
the whole Universe, was shrouded in an envelope of gas which softened its
radiation and gave it its characteristic color. The surrounding nebula could be
seen only indirectly, and it was twisted into strange shapes that eluded the
eye. But it was there, and the longer one stared the more extensive it seemed
to be.

 
          
 
Alvin
wondered where the robot was taking them.
Was it following some ancient memory, or were there guiding signals in the
space around them? He had left their destination entirely to the machine, and
presently he noticed the pale spark of light toward which they were traveling.
It was almost lost in the glare of the Central Sun, and around it were the yet
fainter gleams of other worlds. Their enormous journey was coming to its end.

 
          
 
The planet was now only a few million miles
away, a beautiful sphere of multicolored light. There could be no darkness
anywhere upon its surface, for as it turned beneath the Central Sun, the other
stars would march one by one across its skies.
Alvin
now saw very clearly the meaning of the
Master's dying words: "It is lovely to watch the colored shadows on the
planets of eternal light."

 
          
 
Now they were so close that they could see
continents and oceans and a faint haze of atmosphere. Yet there was something
puzzling about its markings, and presently they realized that the divisions between
land and water were curiously regular. This planet's continents were not as
Nature had left them—but how small a task the shaping of a world must have been
to those who built its suns!

 
          
 
"Those aren't oceans at all!" Theon
exclaimed suddenly. "Look—you can see markings in them!"

 
          
 
Not until the planet was nearer could
Alvin
see clearly what his friend meant. Then he
noticed faint bands and lines along the continental borders, well inside what
he had taken to be the limits of the sea. The sight filled him with a sudden
doubt, for he knew too well the meaning of those lines. He had seen them once
before in the desert beyond Diaspar, and they told him that his journey had
been in vain.