The interruption was just what we needed. We were calm again.
Dr. Schein said quietly, “Dihn Ruuu asks us to follow him to the planet of the High Ones. I’ll call for a vote. All in favor — ?”
Guess how that vote turned out.
But certain practical difficulties keep us from blasting off at once for Mirt, which is what the home world of the High Ones is called. Such as the fact that Mirt is seventy-eight light-years from McBurney IV, and the only transportation available to us at the moment is Nick Ludwig’s ship, which can’t travel at ultradrive speeds. If we set out tomorrow for Mirt in Nick’s ship, I’d celebrate my hundredth birthday before we got there.
So we have to go through the cumbersome business of waiting for our ultradrive cruiser to come back this way on the prearranged checkup flight. That’ll be a month from now. And then to charter a flight to Mirt, if we have the stash to swing it.
Actually, that isn’t too bad. It gives us some time to explore McBurney IV before we rush off to the next wonderworld. It’s unhealthy to gulp down a surfeit of miracles; gives one indigestion of the imagination. Whole careers could be spent just in this one place. Not archaeological careers, I suppose; the story of the High Ones has exploded out of archaeology now. But McBurney IV holds a million times as much to dazzle us as did the cave on the asteroid in the 1145591 system; and we thought that was a high-spectrum load!
The robots here have been very cooperative. Dihn Ruuu explained to them that we were stranded here until our ultraspace ship picked us up, and they accepted that. Whereupon we became honored guests and tourists, instead of prisoners. For the past week we’ve been using the ship as our base, and taking off each day on a sightseeing trip through the Mirt Korp Ahm’s outpost here.
It’s clear now why this place is so different, architecturally, from what we saw in our globe. The cities shown by the globe were a billion years old. McBurney IV was still inhabited by the Mirt Korp Ahm less than a hundred million years ago. Even among so conservative a race as the High Ones, architectural styles do change in hundreds of millions of years. Dangling cities went out of fashion here.
We are only skimming the surface of this world of course. Hairy primitives that we are, we can hardly begin to understand what we see. The power accumulators, draining energy from McBurney’s Star and socking it away underground. The master brain centers that run the transit systems. The automatic repair mechanisms that come scuttling out to fix any mechanical difficulty instantly. The great scanners that tirelessly search the sky for a hint of a signal from the Mirt Korp Ahm — a signal that never comes, alas! The robots themselves, the Dihn Ruuu, self-lubricating, self-repairing, seemingly immortal. The aircars: do they run on antigravity engines? Everything dazzles and bewilders.
Fantastic as their cities are, though, the Mirt Korp Ahm aren’t really a billion years ahead of us in technological development. Considering the head start they had, the High Ones actually seem a little backward, as though consciously or otherwise they froze their culture at this level long ago. I mean, this super-civilization of theirs is just about what I’d expect Earth to have in, say, the year 10,000, if I projected our technological growth forward on the same curve as it’s been following since about A.D. 1700. But it’s not what I’d expect Earth to have in the year 1,000,-002,376. Not by plenty.
I don’t think I can even imagine what a culture that’s been developing steadily for a billion years ought to be like. Disembodied electrical essences, maybe. Ghostly creatures flitting in and out of the eighth, ninth, and tenth dimensions. Cosmic minds that know all, perceive all, understand all.
Maybe I’m being unfair to the Mirt Korp Ahm. Perhaps the growth curve of our technology in the years 1700-2300 was wildly atypical; perhaps the growth curve of any civilization inevitably flattens out once it reaches a certain level. I can’t help feeling that the Mirt Korp Ahm should have gone farther than they did, with all the time they had to evolve, but possibly they bucked up against the absolute limits of ingenuity and went static. Possibly the same thing will happen to us, two or three thousand years up the line. I wonder.
In any case, we’re having a glorious time, in an unreal and dreamy way. Did any of this seem probable when we set out to grub in the dirt on Higby V?
Same cube, four days later. Much confusion.
Scene: our ship. Hour: late. Cast of characters: me, Jan, Pilazinool. Everyone else asleep.
Mysterious bleeping sounds emerge from ship’s audio system. Who calls us here? Local robots tuning in on our channel? Unlikely. Maybe some Earth ship calling. No Earth ships within a dozen light-years, at least. None expected here for several weeks. What spins? Pilazinool says, unworried, “Tom, see what’s happening over there.”
Tom Rice, Boy Radioman, goes to audio panel, ponders its intricacy a moment, taps buttons and spins dials, meanwhile making official-sounding noises like, “Come in, come in, I’m not reading you, come in.” And so forth. Simultaneously does his best to improve reception so that unknown message from space can be detected. Also switches on recorder, in case anything important is arriving, though he knows innate improbability that someone would call us here.
Out of the receptor comes male human voice, reciting the call numbers of our ship. “Confirm,” voice says. “Do you read me?” it inquires.
“I read you,” I say, feeling like a minor character in a bad tridim film. “Who’s calling? What’s going on?”
“Ultradrive cruiser Pride of Space, Commander Leon Leonidas, calling Captain Nicholas Ludwig.”
“Ludwig’s asleep,” I reply. “So’s just about everybody else. My name’s Tom Rice, and I don’t really have much authority, but—”
Jan, coming over to listen, nudges me and whispers, “Maybe they’re in distress, Tom!”
Thought seems logical. Unscheduled arrival of unknown ultradrive cruiser — emergency landing, maybe — difficulties on board —
I say, “Are you in trouble, Pride of Space?”
“We aren’t. You are. We have orders from Galaxy Central to place you under arrest.”
It dawns on me that the conversation is not going well.
I boost the gain so Pilazinool can catch what’s being said.
“Arrest?” I repeat loudly. “There’s some mistake. We’re an archaeological expedition conducting research in—”
“Exactly. We have instructions to pick up a team of eleven archaeologists and bring the bunch of you back to Galaxy Central at once. I advise cooperation. We’re right upstairs, in orbit around McBurney IV, and we want you to wrap up your work within two hours and get up here into a matching orbit so we can bring you on board. If you don’t cooperate, I’m afraid we’ll have to come down and get you. Please take down the following orbital coordinates—”
“Wait,” I say. “I’ve got to notify the others. I don’t understand anything of what’s going on.”
Jan is already scurrying toward the cabins to wake people up. Pilazinool has removed several limbs. The voice out of the receptors, sounding terribly calm and very, very military, asks me to find one of my superiors and put him on the line right away. I stammer something apologetic and ask my caller to wait.
Dr. Schein, looking sleepy and grim, stumbles into the room.
“It’s a Navy ultradrive ship,” I say. “Sent here by Galaxy Central to arrest us. We’ve got two hours to get off this planet and turn ourselves in.”
Dr. Schein makes a face of disgust, squinting eyes, clamping lips. Goes to audio. “Hello,” he says. “Schein speaking. What’s all this nonsense about?”