The Earth Gods Are Coming (3 page)

Beneath them, like the stippled globe of Earth seen from one of the weather satellites forever circling their widespread orbits, the alien planet spun on her course around her parent Sun. Not the Earth. Earth was an unimaginable distance away, lost among the writhing arms of the Galaxy.

Hair fine wires made a cross. Alongside the cross two selections of figures flitted past on illuminated screens, slowing, ticking slower and slower, matching as
Swallow
lost speed. The light cruiser pulled up from her space consuming gallop, easing into an orbit, and the hair fine cross passed over a certain darkly shadowed area of the surface as the two sets of illuminated figures both showed zero.

"Well, Colonel, that's it. Now it's up to photography to tell us what's down there."

"A most efficient operation, Commander. Very refreshing."

The sparks still flew from these two men. Inglis deprecated this; but he could understand the way Varese's mind was working and he felt himself to be an outsider. Pick up poor old Abdul what's his name from this unknown planet and hare back to base to pick up a fresh, undamaged ship, and stride back into deep space again—with a new commander.

And
he'd
probably feel the same way about the situation, too.

The personal conflict between two men arising through perfectly valid motives on either side was of no consequence when considered against the overpowering authority of space and the stars and the challenges to man that lay therein. Man had grown up to the extent of achieving a universal religion—whether that was right or wrong now no longer affected the issue—and his next step was to grow up in the environment of space.

Lieutenant Chung walked in, smiling, holding the brand new, dried prints.

The three heads bent above the shots. A little cloud obscured most of the frames; but the general picture was clear.

"Blow-ups, Chung?" asked Varese.

"Coming along directly, skipper. They look interesting."

This long range photography was always exciting. You pointed your gear at a planetary surface that was a mere blur in your eyes, and when you developed the negs all manner of detail was shown, all kinds of exciting possibilities were feasible. These shots were no exception.

Inglis used a magnifying glass on the microgram, waiting for the blow ups. Here he felt far more at ease than racing about space in a light cruiser. As a marine he could judge terrain, planetary surfaces, conditions—the whole chancy business of what a drop might entail. Varese and Chung studied other frames of the surface.

Chung, naturally, held his opinion. It was quite evident to Inglis, however, that the young lieutenant was bursting with the desire to go into explanations.

Inglis said, "Well, it is a city.
Isabella
was right there, at least."

"What sort of a city do you call that?" Varese thumped the prints.

Lieutenant Chung said, "It is a floating city."

"So it floats." Varese didn't like what he was looking at. "So we all grow water wings. This character, Abdul, coming in from space, adding load to a Prophet of Earth—who knows what happened to the capsule?"

So he's one of those!
Inglis let the thought fester in his mind. He hadn't realized it before. Strangely enough, you found few religious fanatics actually in the space service, connected with the CDB, disseminating Prophets.

Mostly, the religious fanatics confined themselves to TV hookups on planet, fulminating against delays in the Dissemination Project, exhorting people to pay more voluntary taxes, generally rooting—if that was the right word in this context—on the bylines. The farthest into deep space they would venture would be to systems a few light years distant, drumming up the wherewithal. Admittedly, they performed a useful function. The CDB and the space services were not unaware of the increased appropriations flowing their way.

But, actually to discover a relifan—ugly word, in such common usage now as to be ineradicable—aboard ship and in command was rather unsettling. Luigi Varese was a very good man. Inglis knew that, it was self-evident. But, to add to his own chagrin at not being given overall command of the expedition was now added the relifan's personal worry-that a Prophet of Earth had not been delivered properly-had been wasted.

A nasty combination. Reminiscent, Inglis considered sourly, of the powder barrel and the lighted fuse.

"Someone will have to go down," Varese was saying, his anger only just below simmering level. "Someone will have to check that the Prophet was delivered correctly and functioning."

"What about Abdul?" asked Inglis, mildly.

Varese was caught off balance. Quite evidently, he had forgotten all about Abd al-Malik ibn-Zobeir.

"Of course. The despatch chief, too, will have to be found."

Lieutenant Chung said soberly but eagerly, "I'll go." Remembering, he added, "Sir."

Both Inglis and Varese spoke together. They stopped, and Inglis wondered with a hint of impatience why he got himself caught up in this sort of situation. Soft. He'd been worrying if he was going soft. Varese was the very man to hone him up; put an edge on him.

"You were about to say, Commander?"

"I was about to offer my services."

"I see."

Inglis had already almost decided that he was going himself. He had worked that one out on the basis of sheer experience. But if both Chung and Varese wanted to go, and as Varese was a relifan, there seemed little option. The relifans didn't worship the Prophets, of course, but their enthusiasm came too damn near that for Inglis' comfort. He shut down his expression, killing both his frown and his sigh of impatient resignation.

This situation would either toughen him into an unthinking martinet or squeeze him into a soft lump of spineless dough.

"Very well. Commander, you may consider yourself in charge of the landing party. Take whomever you like; Lieutenant Chung also if you wish. But get Abdul back up here fast, if he's still alive."

"And the Prophet of the Earth?"

"Good Lord, Varese! Of course you must look out for the capsule! But that can take care of itself. I doubt that Abdul can."

"Very well, Colonel." Varese was very stiff, very formal about it. No doubt he would report unfavorably. So all right! Hell's bells, he was growing sick of this situation where an honest standup row was denied him. Even Laura could let her hair down and scream. Varese was too polite, too cool, too good. Well. Back at the base lay another ship and another commander. Inglis made up his mind to start off on an altogether different foot with those.

-

The whaler—why it was called that had never been very clear— left the lock, curving away to drop neatly on her anti grav and jets onto the planet.

And, so far as Colonel Roy Inglis was concerned, that was that. Now he had to wait.

Commander Varese, beside" Lieutenant Chung, had taken a third of the ship's complement. Colonel Inglis was now in actual and not just nominal command. He knew that he should not have let Varese go. That had been a serious misjudgment, for which he would have no adequate defense at any possible court martial if anything went wrong. He hoped nothing would. He prowled the ship, checking up, throwing his mind back to watches kept aboard
Zeus
and her sister ships.
Swallow,
of course, was less than a quarter the size of
Zeus.
Inglis brought a comprehensive although self-unacknowledged grasp of cruisers to bear; in four hours he felt he could handle
Swallow
in an emergency.

But he did not want to do that. He wanted no emergency.

They went onto a slow orbit, with the worry riding him.

Inevitably, his thoughts reverted to Varese. The man had, to any outside observer, been scrupulously polite to Inglis; he had observed every decency. Perhaps the whole feeling of friction lay in Inglis' mind, self-induced? Even the suspicion that Varese was a relifan could be a fantasy conjured from an overwrought mind? Perhaps, throughout, this feeling stemmed straight from his own fears of failure?

The ship completed another orbit, and Inglis crammed down food and went back to the bridge to brood before the controls.

Lieutenant Bergquist, communications officer, was standing watch for Lieutenant Chung. Inglis stood directly before the scanner on the port side, well away from her, staring moodily at the pictured surface of the planet, slowly rotating beneath. By this time the terminator had passed the postulated landing point of Varese and his crew, and the area was in darkness, stippled by minute specks of yellow light that, coalescing in clumps, gave the impression of a virus culture all lit up and raring to go. Just where, Inglis was in too anxious, angry and frustrated a mood to enquire.

Lieutenant Bergquist said pleasantly, "Everything running to order, Colonel."

"Thank you, Lieutenant."

"Hope that the Commander picks up that poor despatch chief. Being thrown out onto an alien planet must be bad enough; but to know you'd be left there—" She shivered. "I hope he didn't do anything ... silly."

All the courtesy in Inglis struggled to prevent him from being insufferably rude to the girl. She was nice. She was slim and lissom, with dark hair neatly combed, a figure that, despite the uniform and her rank, elicted invariable low whistles of appreciation from the crew—the male half, that was—and a softly inviting mouth ripe for thoughts that had no place in a married colonel of marines.

"The Commander will do a job," Inglis said. He walked away from the port scanner, over to the chart desk, idly looked at the snakelike line recording their progress in the galaxy. Hell's bells, they were a long way out!

"I do hope he'll call in soon." Lieutenant Bergquist sounded as though she was suppressing a great deal. Inglis looked at her. Then he looked away. Now, if only Laura ...

"Don't fret, Lieutenant. They'll do okay."

The red contact alarm buzzed and flashed.

At once the control room crew went into that controlled frenzy of highly trained reflexes that ended up with Bergquist excitedly calling across to Inglis: "No recognition on the contact, sir!"

"No recognition?" Inglis was at the girl's side, staring at the screen. Boring in from space, heading on a bearing that would take it slap into the planet, a single chip of light denoted a stranger ship in space. A stranger!

"Cut jets," Inglis ordered. "Free fall around planet. The mass should conceal us from her detectors. We may be unobserved. Sound the call for action stations.

At that the rest of the ship went into a controlled frenzy that resulted in the ship's depleted crew manning all weapons, screens and detectors, keyed up, tense and waiting.

He'd been searching for the Evil Ones. He'd been out into deep space, sticking his neck out, casting around, sniffing like a hound on the trail, hoping that he would pick up the scent that would lead him onto discovering who the aliens were and from which far star system they came.

And now he'd found them. Or, to be more accurate, they'd found him.

He stood there in the control room of the under-powered cruiser and wondered. Perhaps, after all, it would be best if he and
Swallow
and all her crew had been merely bait, decoys, paddling along so that a powerful Commonwealth Fleet could surge up and take over when trouble came.

Because, quite obviously, trouble had hit them now.

The alien changed course, swinging up at a prodigious pace, barreling in from the stars. The detector crew got a clear sight and blew up the picture on the screens. Inglis stared somberly at what he saw limned on that hateful screen.

"Big," he heard Bergquist saying. "She's big."

She was as large as a battleship. She probably was a battleship. And she had not been built on Earth or any world or artificial satellite construction yard that was known by men.

"Do not open fire until I give word," Inglis heard himself saying. To fire at all was hopeless; a minute's action with that brute would finish
Swallow
completely.

But, because men were built the way they were, they'd go on fighting past the time when it was clear that all hope had gone.

Even then, Inglis was hoping that the big stranger would miss them. It had always been a chance. In the shadow of the planet and shielded by that mass, merging with it and losing themselves against the rolling bulk, then he straightened, seeing that it was a hopeless sort of chance, after all.

The alien had both the speed and range of them. She came swinging in from space and, it was obvious to Inglis, the moment she spotted them, opened fire. There was just that betraying flicker on the telltales which indicated that feeling rays were reaching out and picking them up, and the next microsecond the alien opened fire.

She didn't even wait to make contact, to find out who she was shooting at, to parley. Inglis shouted, "Open fire!"

All the cruiser's weapons flamed. They fired just the once.

After that the cruiser was swatted from the sky, flattened, crushed, bruised and kicked aside. She died in the time it took Inglis' mouth to close after that last, futile order.

As for Inglis—all that he was aware of was a terrifying and nauseating sensation of falling.

-

Laura Inglis was forced to wait in the cab, hanging poised on its anti grav, while a bond raising procession wound past.

She glanced almost continuously at her wristwatch. Admiral Rattigan had at last consented to grant her an interview after weeks of pleading, lobbying and just plain female persistence. Now, because the relifans were thumping along with all their usual blah, fanfaronade and charlatanism, she was going to be late. She used delicate, pointed, technical language as she waited, fuming, in the hanging cab.

From the window she could see the procession quite clearly. Had she planned a grandstand seat, she could not have contrived a better one. Men and women thronged the windows of the tall office blocks, hanging over the parapets of the walkways, filling fliers and magne coaches, craning to see.

How long the procession had been trailing through the many levels of the city Laura did not know. She didn't care, either; she just wanted the inane thing to finish. Every attempt on the part of the cabby—a robot driving mech— to select a fresh route had been baulked by traffic control. They did not want the inevitable snarls that would develop if every impatient traveler was allowed to find a different route.

Directly ahead a tremendous plastic replica of a capsule supported on anti gravs was bobbing along. The sun caught vagrant gleams from the pseudo metal surface. Laura shuddered. Following the capsule, the heart of the procession, around which the thousands of singers and musicians, the displays and the collecting boxes had been designed, floated the Prophet of Earth.

Again, it was a many times life-size plastic model. The face with all its stern beauty turned blind eyes upon the crowds. The right hand was raised as though in benediction. Flowing white robes, which in certain lights were ochre yellow—the Earth was wise now in the ways of its forbears —fell in cunningly held folds, maintained against the wind of progress by magnetic fields.

Despite her buried revulsion, Laura could not but be impressed.

When, at last, the procession passed and her cab could resume the interrupted journey, she was in a more chastened mood. She was still the same impatient, intolerant, diamond hard Laura; but she felt more near to understanding a point of view which heretofore had seemed to her to be atavistic, childish and impious.

This had been the first relifan procession she had seen in years.

Laura was shown into a small, decorous and simply furnished office. There was here none of the high hope, the machine-like efficiency and the very human workshop atmosphere of the room in which her husband had been received by Admiral Rattigan.

"Mrs. Inglis," Rattigan said pleasantly. They shook hands. "Please sit down."

"I feel I must thank you for seeing me, Admiral. Even though it was a most painful process—"

"Forgive me. I am busy, and my people sometimes think they know better than I do. You know about Roy."

Laura was surprised. "Yes. Yes, I came to ask about my husband, Colonel Inglis."

Rattigan maintained his smile. "I sent Roy off on a special mission. I did not expect to hear from him for some time."

"You are not concerned? Was the mission dangerous?"

The idea was borne in on Rattigan that this woman did not have to be treated with kid gloves; she was tough, and he was tired of covering up for other people. He said; "The mission might have been a simple jaunt around, Mrs. Inglis. On the other hand, it could have turned into the most dangerous assignment any man of Earth has been asked to undertake."

"Could have," Laura said. "You don't know?"

Rattigan shook his head. "We have had no word from Roy. None." He cleared his throat, unnecessarily. "Forgive me, Mrs. Inglis. But were you ever with CDB?"

Laura was taken completely off guard. "Why, I would have thought that you would have checked up on that."

"Why? There was no need."

"If you insist on my telling you—"

"There is no insistence. I merely feel that you keep alive something that prejudices you against us."

"I may." Laura spoke now without worrying about her smart sophistication. "I was with a CDB ship. My crowd thought it fashionable to put in a stint. We didn't know how long we would be out, no one ever does, of course. You take your regulation five thousand Prophets and off you go from system to system, dropping them. And then, when your bays are empty, you are graciously allowed to come home." She closed her eyes; they were violet shaded and made her face look old. "Well, I couldn't stand it. I was lucky. A patrol cruiser made a routine call and I was shipped home after six months."

"You were lucky, Mrs. Inglis. Very lucky."

"I know, I know. But those hypocrites aboard, spouting lies about the manifest destiny of humanity to spread the word of Man among the stars, using fake messiahs, tampering with powers and forces of which they knew nothing! It wasn't just the thought of spending part of my life cooped up in a metal shell of air so far from all that I know as home that the terms of distance are meaningless—"

"It was that you considered that we blasphemed?"

"Yes!" Laura said, defiantly and cuttingly.

Gus Rattigan did not sigh. He'd encountered this method of thinking enough times in his career that now it merely made him think, regretfully, of the hours of argument he'd spent in trying to show doubters the other side of the story. This smart, sophisticated, beautiful and hard woman sitting opposite to him was the very last he'd have catalogued in the brackets of those who felt true religious persuasion. The free thinkers, the agnostics—no man with a thinking brain could ever be an atheist, of course—the humanists, the man for Man do-gooders; all these weighed the scales of modern society down so that those who, whilst professing the universal religion and who were not relifans, were able to believe sincerely, every year shrank in numbers and influence.

Rattigan said, gently, "I respect your views, Mrs. Inglis. But in this matter of capsule dropping, every instinct of a man or woman of Earth—of the Solar Commonwealth of Stars—must, it seems to me, march in harmony. Earth is a small planet, old Sol a minor sun. We have ventured into the great deeps of the Galaxy, spreading out in a thin trickle of ships and men—"

"You don't have to tell me that we are explorers. I know."

"—but how can a single planet, a single solar system, a single small grouping of stellar systems, hope to explore, and possibly colonize the thousands upon thousands of planets put there?"

Laura made a small impatient movement with her slender hand. "I do not quarrel with the basic idea or assumptions of the CDB," she said brusquely. The topic obscurely embarrassed her. "I merely believe that the methods adopted are hysterical, hypocritical and blasphemous.

"And, my dear, you are very probably right. Hysterical —there was a relifan parade scheduled for today—"

"I saw it."

"—which debases my conception of man as a rational being, however much psychologists tell us we must have outlets. Hypocritical—I'm not sure on that one. If by that you mean that those engaged on CDB activity don't believe in what they are doing, I would suggest no person is going to spend up to ten years flitting about space doing something he doesn't believe in. People return from the CDB missions fuller human beings, with better outlooks, balanced against the needs of all of us. They mature out there."

Laura ignored that. Her own admission of failure on the CDB mission had bothered her for years; she had shut it down among other unwelcome memories. "And the blasphemy?"

"Do you believe in God, Mrs. Inglis?"

"Of course. Do you?"

Gus Rattigan smiled. He should have anticipated the riposte. "Yes, Mrs. Inglis, I do. And that is why I believe that we are not impious when we send down an android and call it the Prophet of Earth. That is only a tag, a name, a label that is convenient. We could have called it a mechanical android, human appearance idealized, powered for extended life, programed to preach, equipped with a built-in martyr complex for use if required, added a whole lot of figures and numbers describing its functions and working parts, and then finished by dubbing it a Mark Four Star, or something similar. Instead, it was called a Prophet of Man, or Prophet of Earth, and the name has stuck. There's no blasphemy in that. Rather, a great humility."

"That may be. But you're arguing over a name."

"To a man who has no profound beliefs, the Galaxy is a mere collection of particles and radiation, spinning along and heading nowhere, from nowhere. A cold philosophy. Really, a hopeless one. But even those people call the CDB androids, Prophets of Earth. How much more powerful must the concept be for those who believe, who feel that to spread the Word of Man is a fine thing?" Rattigan knew he'd gone off the rails somewhere in this argument. He glanced at his watch. "However, Mrs. Inglis. You came to enquire for news of your husband."

"Yes. The sort of discussion we've had flares up very easily these days. Heavy taxes sort of spark off arguments." She folded her hands in her lap. "What can you tell me?"

"He went on a mission, the details of which I cannot divulge. However, as soon as we hear—"

"Save me that, please, Admiral." Laura made up her mind to unlimber her heavy weapons. "You mentioned that your aides made difficulties for people wishing to see you? Well, I was able to bulldoze them into putting my appointment at the head of the queue. You mentioned that you haven't checked on me. If you had done so, you would have realized that my maiden name is Chalmers-Wong-Berkely."

That rattled Gus Rattigan's rear dentures. "CWB!" Then he jerked his head forward, like a relay slapping over.

"Laura. Laura CWB. Well, I'll be! I helped pin one of the first pairs of three-cornered trousers you ever wore!"

Laura did not flush; she was too firmly set in the smart mould of sophistication among the fashionables to allow that sort of plebian betrayal of her emotions. During the evasions that Admiral Rattigan had been going through, she had been growing closer and closer to a conviction that her husband was dead. When she at last allowed herself to look at it squarely, it made no impact on her emotions.

And now this old dodderer was babbling about pinning trousers. She said, icily, "I cannot call to mind that no doubt refreshing experience, Admiral. I naturally had no idea that you knew my father. But you do understand that my family—"

"I haven't seen Jack CWB in, what is it, five or six years. As a marine colonel-admiral, he hasn't been in my orbit for years. Your brothers? Chuck and Hsi and Pierre? Are they—?

"Chuck is a' marine general, Hsi is a marine colonel, Pierre is a marine colonel. Also there is Andy; but he's a mere space navy captain ... so ..."

"I take your point, Laura. Well, well!" Rattigan, despite the knife this girl had slipped in under his ribs, was beaming fatuously. Friendships made in" space endure. Even so
_;
he hadn't anticipated that old Jack CWB's girl would turn out quite so—quite so—what, case hardened?

"So you see, Admiral, I intend to know what has happened to my husband. And if you refuse to tell me, then I shall take the matter elsewhere."

Rattigan sat forward in his chair and steepled his fingers.

"Mrs. Inglis ... Laura," he said, staring hard at her and trying to pierce beneath that smart shell. "I will tell you this. Roy was on a dangerous mission in deep space." Rattigan was again grim, gray, broadside-battering space navy admiral. "Tell me, how do you stand space? This business you mentioned with the CDB Disseminator ship. Could you stand up to a long haul in space?"

Laura did not flinch—that would have been common; but she felt the whiplash of insufficiency within her. "I do not intend to go trailing about the Galaxy after Roy. I just want to know what's happened to him."

"Is that why Roy has a desk job?"

"What if it is? I see no reason to be ashamed of it. Roy was too high in the marines just to go space-hopping for the sheer love of boyish adventure. It was time he settled down."

Rattigan, remembering Inglis' cold comment that there would be no trouble from his wife in his going off on a deep space trip, wondered where they'd come unstuck. Marriages smash easily if space hunger bites deep in one partner and cannot touch, except with fear, the mind and feelings of the other.

"I'll tell you everything I'm allowed to," he said, at last, heavily. "Even if you could overcome your reluctance to space travel, Laura, I doubt that there'd be much use in going anywhere. We should have had reports in from his ship long since. There has been none. Only silence from out there in the lonely wastes beneath the stars."

"You mean—he's lost? He's never coming back? He's dead?"

Rattigan lowered his head.

"Yes, Laura. This is what I believe."

She stood up, her chic slimness out of place in the office. "I had anticipated it. I am, of course, deeply shocked. Very much upset. However, it does free me from bothering the family with divorce. They'd never approve of divorce in the CWB clan."

Rattigan cocked his head back and looked at her. He was thinking of Inglis, and the lines on his face, and the way he'd taken the job and his understanding of what might be necessary.

"Yes," he said. "There are so many things people don't approve of. It's lucky they don't have to meet very often."

-