Beyond Another Sun

249 Pages·2016·0.54 MB·English

by  Godwin Tom

Beyond Another Sun
(1971)*
Tom Godwin

Norman Grey watched the sun grow in the viewscreen until the lonely little
control room of his ship was flooded with its light. It was a yellow sun, like the
one that warmed Earth and would so soon destroy it, and the fourth planet was
Earth-type. He decelerated, feeling the familiar eagerness to know if this would
at last be the world he had came across a hundred and fifty light-years to find.

The Davis Field's warning light was a bright orange as he decelerated, touching
danger red, and he wondered again if his ship might not be a flying bomb with
an increasingly shorter fuse. However, there was absolutely nothing he could do
about it. The Davis Field enclosed the ship and all it contained in a permeating
protective force that permitted extremely rapid acceleration to near the speed of
light and equally rapid deceleration. Interstellar journeys without the Field
would require lifetimes.

He passed under the small, bright moon and made a swift orbit around the
planet, still decelerating. Instruments aboard the ship surveyed and mapped as he
did so.

He saw, with the old disillusionment, that it was not the world he sought. But it
would serve as a vitally important way station for the Emigrant ships coming
across the great void behind him.
He dropped down near the sea, on the green eastern portion of a vast continent,
and the ship settled its broad tail fins in the grassy sod. He switched off the
Davis Field. The warning light continued to burn, as he had expected. On Rona,
the last world behind him, he had had to wait ten minutes for the malfunctioning
unit's cumulative charge to drain away and let the Field collapse.

He switched on the hyperspace communicator that would connect him with the
Advance Ship Board on Earth, a hundred and fifty light-years behind him. The
output gauges of the ship's convertors swung far over as the tremendous energy
needed to break through into hyperspace was produced.

The communicator beeped in reply almost at once and a blue light flashed on
above it.

"Advance Ship Board," a voice said, one too young to be that of a Board
Supervisor. "Your signal shows you to be Advance Ship Two—and your last
world was Tone—"

It was a statement rather than a question and Grey thought: To Earth I'm not a
human being. I'm a ship with neither body nor soul which speaks to them a few
times out of a century ...

"Just a moment," the voice said. "Mr. Gault is coming now."

So Gault would be his new supervisor? Baker had been the one before. He had
last talked to Baker from Rona, a fraction more than twenty weeks ago—which
would have been twenty years for Baker. Before Baker there had been Lafayette
would have been twenty years for Baker. Before Baker there had been Lafayette
—but Lafayette and the Board had not found it necessary to use the whips on
Gnome ...

"Hello Grey," A voice spoke from the communicator, mature and assured. "My
name is Gault and I'll take all your reports from now on. What have you found?"

Gault waited for him to commence his report and Norman Grey thought: Go
ahead, Advance Ship Two. Report. We'll not waste time with any preliminary
amenities such as, "Glad to hear from you again—gets pretty lonesome out
there, doesn't it, old boy? ..."

He put the thought from his mind as childishly illogical. By the nature of the
roles each had to play, there could be no camaraderie between an Advance Ship
pilot and his Board Supervisor.

"Yellow Class G sun," Grey said. "This fourth planet is Earth-type but for being
almost entirely desert in the land areas. There is only one ocean of any size—I
set down near the western shore of it. There is a fairly large section of the
eastern portion of this continent which seems to be ideal. In fact, it's the only
green area of any size on the entire world.

"It seems that the only inhabited section is a valley at the north-east corner of
this continent. A very high mountain range, running east and west, has the valley
isolated from all this country. But someone has lived here in the past—I set
down by the remains of a small village that has been abandoned for a long time."

"And you have found no reason for the abandonment?"
"None. All conditions here are ideally Earth-type. It's odd that the only
inhabitants of this world should be in that hungry-looking valley to the north
instead of here."

"Have you yet been outside your ship?" Gault asked.

"I'm going as soon as the warning light goes off. Has anything new been learned
about that trouble? All Baker could tell me on Rona was that they felt sure that
certain elements had deteriorated in the outside molecular-permeation field unit
and the cure would be to install a new unit—which, of course, I didn't and won't
have."

"Unfortunately, that is true. But you have not been alone with that trouble—
Gonzales reported the same experience just after you left Rona."

"Is he still going on?"

"So far as we know, he is dead."

"Dead?" He looked again at the orange light. "Do you mean it killed him!"

"There is no evidence that the Field had anything to do with his disappearance."

"Do you have any idea what might have happened to him?"
"Do you have any idea what might have happened to him?"

"There is a possibility that he was injured much more severely than he thought
on Ursa. Ursa is the remotely-Earth-type world he was approaching when his
own warning light came on; so named by him because the dominant form of life
was a very large and ferocious creature resembling a grizzly bear of Earth. A
band of them caught him by surprise while he was inspecting an outcropping of
radium ore and he barely escaped ahead of them into his ship, with what he
reported as relatively minor injuries. He lifted ship as soon as he had given
himself first-aid—there was no reason to stay any longer since Ursa had an
atmosphere that would kill a human within a few days and could be used only as
an emergency refueling station.

"When he reached the next world, four light-years further on, he reported his
injuries to be healing well. He reported his survey of the new world to show it to
be Earth-type essentially, possessing very little in the way of arable land,
however—but also possessing nothing harmful. Human inhabitants consisted of
a few small bands of nomads. But Gonzales was sure that with their help he
could make that world into a way station of some value. He landed, to go out and
get some soil and plant specimens as a final check before he contacted the
natives.

"As soon as t he Davis Field collapsed he walked out of his ship, never to come
back. We waited a hundred days, then recalled his ship by remote control."

"It's already been examined, of course?"

"Oh, yes," Gault answered. "It met the foremost Emigrant ship years ago and
went on again with a new pilot as soon as the Field unit was replaced. But a very
thorough inspection of the ship gave no clue as to what might have caused
Gonzales not to return."
Gonzales not to return."

"And you're sure the Field unit had nothing to do with it?"

"Such appears impossible since the unit is concerned only with the Field's outer
shell—and the entire Field had collapsed before Gonzales left the ship. And, so
far as these faulty units go: the technicians who examine Gonzales' unit said that
there would have been no further deterioration in it, nor will there be in yours.
So there is nothing to worry about in that respect."

There was a pause, then Gault continued:

"As I said, there is a possibility that Gonzales was more severely injured than he
realized. But we of the Board fear that there was some danger on this new world
that was too well hidden for him to detect until it was too late. The replacement
pilot will land there in a few months—we hope that he will be able to avoid
Gonzales' fate so he can make that world in to a way station. Success or failure
can mean life or death for those on the Emigrant ships behind."

"None of the Advance men have found anything of much value, then?" Grey
asked.

"Only a few worlds that can be used as way stations—and too few of those. The
situation is becoming very critical."

"There is an area in space—beginning about two hundred light-years from here
—where yellow suns are much more numerous. Maybe the world we're all
looking for will be there."
looking for will be there."

"I hope so," Gault said. "But the Emigrant ships behind you will have to have
food and fuel long, long before they can go that far. It is imperative that your
present world be made into a way station."

"I know—that's why I'm here," he said, then asked the hopeful question he
always asked, "Have the new observations given any chance for Earth?"

"No, Earth's sun and that wandering dark star will collide twenty-five years from
now. It is inevitable."

"I was hoping ..." He sighed and said, "When the warning light goes off, I'll go
outside. By the way, what would happen if I should walk out into the Field
now?"

"So far as we know," Gault answered, "you would be transformed into
disassociated atoms. Don't do it."

"I don't intent to. I'll report later, when I have something definite to report."

When the orange light vanished he took the elevator down to the airlock. He
pushed the buttons that would drop the boarding ramp and open the airlock.
A few seconds later he stepped out onto the top of the ramp, into the sweet-
scented air of early summer. He stood for a little while, observing the green,
flowering beauty of the land before him. It was an Earth-type paradise—but
there was not enough of it to give a home to what would soon be all that were
left of the human race on Earth ...

Then he heard the lark and for a moment he had the wild conviction that he had
travelled in a circle and returned to Rona.

It was suddenly singing to him from a tree nearby—the same golden lark that
had sung so gayly that emerald dawn on Rona when Thorlita had held to him
crying, and said: "I wish I was as small as it so I could hide on your ship and go
with you ..."

Then he shook his head, as though that would drive away the lonely memories of
that morning, and said aloud, "Coincidence. Similar environments produce
similar life forms. That other lark died long ago."

It was true that there were strange things in the galaxy, such as the fact that
human life upon Earth-type worlds, no matter what that world might be, would
be essentially the same as human life upon all other Earth-type worlds. There
was a theory that all human life had originated on some distant world of the past
and that some approaching catastrophe, such as a sun about to go into the nova
stage, had caused that world to send out small ships in all directions to establish
colonies upon all suitable worlds found.

Animal life upon Earth-type worlds, however, was only similar from one world
to the next and not identical. Except the lark—
It was only somewhat similar to t he larks of Earth but it was exactly the same as
the one he had seen on Rona so many years ago.

He went on down the boarding ramp and toward the nearest stone building,
passing under the tree where the lark was still singing.

It was also strange that the song should be exactly the same, note for note, as that
of the lark on Rona.

He went into the ruined village area. Vegetation grew as thickly inside the
tumbled stone walls as outside, including large trees, and he estimated the
village had been abandoned for almost two hundred years. He found numerous
flint arrow heads and much pottery, most of it still unbroken. The metal locator
he had brought with him disclosed a large number of artifacts hammered from
native copper. All of it indicated a very sudden and unanticipated abandonment
but he found nothing to show the reason for such a sudden flight.

He went back to the ship and set down at several other points farther inland to
procure soil and plant specimens. He had taken his last specimen and was in the
ship again when a nagging subconscious feeling of something wrong resolved
itself into a question:

Animal life was abundant in the green land—why had he seen no birds of any
kind other than the golden lark?