The Fugitive Worlds (5 page)

The thought of his son reminded Cassyll that the boy had been commander of the airship which had arrived only the previous aftday with advance dispatches from the Land expedition. In theory the contents of the dispatches were secret, but Cassyl's secretary had already been able to pass him the word that the Old World had been found to be uninhabited and free of the deadly strain of ptertha which had forced humanity to flee across the interplanetary void. Queen Daseene had been quick to call a meeting of selected advisers, and the fact that Cassyll was required to attend was an indication of the direction in which her thoughts were turning. Manufacture was his field of expertise, and in this context the concept of manufacturing led inexorably towards skyships—which implied that Daseene wanted to reclaim the Old World and thus become the first ruler in history to extend her sway to two planets.

Cassyll had an instinctive distaste for the notion of conquest, reinforced by the fact that his father had died in a monumentally futile attempt to claim the third planet of the local system, but in this case none of the usual philosophical or humanitarian restraints applied. Overland's sister world belonged to his people by right of birth, and if there was no indigenous population to be subjugated or slaughtered he could see no moral objection to a second interplanetary migration. As far as he was concerned, the only questions would relate to scale. How many skyships would Queen Daseene want, and how soon would she need them?

Toller will want to take part in the expedition,
Cassyll thought.
The crossing is bound to have its dangers, but that will only serve to make him more determined to go.

The carriage soon reached the river and turned west in the
direction of the Lord Glo Bridge, which was the principal
crossing for the palace. In the few minutes that he was on the
curving boulevard Cassyll saw two steam-driven carriages,
neither of which had been produced by his own factory, and
again he found himself wishing he had more time for practical
experimentation with that form of transport. There were
many improvements yet to be made, particularly with regard
to power transmission, but all his time seemed to be taken
up with the administration of the Maraquine industrial
empire.

As the carriage was crossing the ornate bridge the palace
came into view directly ahead, a rectangular block which was
rendered asymmetrical by the east wing and tower which Daseene had recently built as a memorial to her husband.
The guards at the main gate saluted as Cassyll passed
through. Only a few vehicles were waiting in the main fore
court at this early hour, and at once he noticed the official
Sky Service coach which was used by Bartan Drumme, senior
technical adviser to the Chief of Aerial Defense. To his
surprise, he saw that Bartan himself was loitering by the
coach. At the age of fifty, Drumme still retained a lean and wiry figure, and only a slight stiffness in his left shoulder—
the result of an old battle wound—prevented him from
moving like a young man. A whisper of intuition told Cassyll
that Bartan was waiting to see him in advance of the official
meeting.

"Good foreday!" Cassyll called out as he stepped down from his carriage. "I wish I could afford the time to dawdle
around and take the air."

"Cassyll!" Bartan smiled as he came forward to shake
hands. The years had scarcely altered the boyishness of his
round face. Its permanent expression of humorous irreverence often deceived people who were meeting him for the
first time into thinking he was an intellectual lightweight, but
over the years Cassyll had learned to respect him for his
mental agility and toughness.

"Are you waiting to see me?" Cassyll said.

"Very good!" Bartan replied, raising his eyebrows. "How
did you know?"

"You were as furtive as an urchin dallying by the bakery
window. What is it, Bartan?"

"Let's walk for a minute—there is time before the meet
ing." Bartan led the way into an empty quarter of the
forecourt where they were partially screened from view by a
bed of spearblooms.

Cassyll began to chuckle. "Are we going to conspire
against the throne?"

"In a way it is almost as serious as that," Bartan said,
coming to a halt. "Cassyll, you know that my position is
officially described as scientific adviser to the head of the Sky
Service. But you also know that—simply because I survived
the Farland expedition—I'm somehow expected to have a
magical awareness of all that goes on in the heavens and to advise her Majesty of anything of import, anything which
might constitute a threat to the realm."

"Suddenly you make me uneasy," Cassyll said. "Is this
anything to do with Land?"

"No—another planet."

"Farland! Say what you've got to say, man! Out with it!"
Cassyll felt a coolness on his brow as the dread thought
heaved in his mind. Farland was the third planet of the local
system, orbiting at roughly twice the distance from the sun as
the Land-Overland pair, and throughout most of Kolcorron's history it had been nothing more than an insignificant green speck amid the splendors of the night sky. Then, twenty-six
years ago, a bizarre set of circumstances had led to a single ship venturing out from Overland and crossing millions of miles of hostile vacuum to reach the outer world. The ex
pedition had been ill-fated—Cassyll's father had not been
the only one to die on that dank, rainy planet—and three of
its members had returned to the home world with disturbing
news.

Farland was inhabited by a race of humanoids whose technology was so advanced that they had the capability of annihilating the Overlanders' civilization at a stroke. It was fortunate indeed for the humans that the Farlanders were an insular, inward-looking race with no interest in anything beyond the perpetual cloud-cover of their own world. That attitude of mind had been difficult for the territorially acquisitive humans to comprehend. Even after years had merged into decades with no sign of aggression from the enigmatic third planet, the fear of a sudden devastating attack from the skies had continued to lurk in some Overlanders' minds. It was, as Cassyll Maraquine had just discovered, never far beneath the surface of their thoughts. . . .

"Farland?" Bartan gave him a strange smile. "No—I'm talking of yet
another
planet. A fourth planet."

In the silence that followed, Cassyll studied his friend's face as though it were a puzzle to be solved. "This isn't some manner of jest, is it? Are you claiming to have discovered a new planet?"

Bartan nodded unhappily. "I didn't discover it personally. It wasn't even one of my technicians. It was a woman—a copyist in the records office at the Grain Quay—who pointed it out to me."

"What does it matter who actually saw it first?" Cassyll said. "The point is that you have a really interesting scientific discovery to—" He broke off as he realized he had not yet been told the whole story. "Why do you look so glum, old friend?"

"When Divare told me about the planet she said it was blue in color, and that made me think she could have made a mistake. You know how many blue stars there are in the sky—hundreds of them. So I asked her what size of telescope was needed to see it properly, and she said a very small one would do. In fact, she said it could be seen well with the naked eye.

"And she was right, Cassyll. She pointed it out to me last
night
...
a blue planet. . . quite easy to see without optical
aid . . . low in the west soon after sunset. ..."

Cassyll frowned. "And you checked it with a telescope?"

"Yes. It showed an appreciable disk even with an ordinary
nautical instrument. It's a planet, all right."

"But . . ." Cassyll's bafflement increased. "Why has it not
been noticed before now?"

Bartan's strange smile returned. "The only answer I can think of is that it wasn't
there
to be observed before now."

"That goes against everything we know about astronomy,
doesn't it? I have heard that new stars appear now and then,
even if they don't last very long, but how can another
world
simply materialize in our skies?"

"Queen Daseene is bound to ask me that selfsame ques
tion," Bartan said. "She will also ask me how long it has
been there, and I'll have to say I don't know; and she will
then ask me what should be done about it, and I'll have to
say I don't know that either; and then she will start wondering
about the value of a scientific adviser who doesn't know
anything. ..."

"I think you're fretting too much on that score," Cassyll
said. "The Queen is quite likely to regard it as nothing more than a mildly interesting astronomical phenomenon. What
makes you think the blue planet poses any threat to us?"

Bartan blinked several times. "It's a feeling I have. An
instinct. Don't tell me you're not disturbed by this thing."

"I'm deeply interested in it—and I want you to show the planet to me tonight—but why should I feel any sense of
alarm?"

"Because
..."
Bartan glanced at the sky as though seek
ing inspiration. "Cassyll, it isn't
right!
It's unnatural
...
an
omen . . . There is something afoot."

Cassyll began to laugh. "But you're the least superstitious
person I know! Now you are talking as though this errant
world has appeared in the firmament for the sole purpose of
persecuting
you."

"Well ..." Bartan gave a reluctant smile, reclaiming his youthful appearance. "Perhaps you're right. I suppose I should have gone to you immediately. It wasn't until Berise died that I realized how much I depended on her to keep me on an even keel."

Cassyll nodded sympathetically, as always finding it difficult to accept that Berise Drumme had been dead for four years. Black-haired, vivacious, indomitable, Berise had given the impression that she would live forever, but she had been swept away within hours by one of those mysterious, sourceless ailments which brought it home to medical practitioners just how little they knew.

"It was a big blow to all of us," Cassyll said. "Are you drinking?"

"Yes." Bartan detected the concern in Cassyll's eyes and touched his arm. "But not the way I was doing when I first met your father. I wouldn't betray Berise in that way. A glass or two of wryberry in the evening is enough for me these days."

"Come to my house tonight and bring a good telescope with you. We'll have a beaker of something warming and take a look at it. . . There's another job for you—we'll need a name for this mysterious world." Cassyll slapped his friend on the back and nodded towards the arched entrance of the palace, signifying that it was time to go in for their meeting with the Queen.

Once inside the shady building they went straight to the audience chamber through corridors which were almost empty. In King Chakkell's day the palace had been very much the seat of government, and it had usually been thronged with officials, but Daseene's policy had been to disperse general administration into separate buildings and to treat the palace as her private residence. Only matters such as aerial defense, in which she took a special interest, were considered important enough to merit her personal attention.