The Watcher decided on immediate action. Orders traveled swiftly along sensitive ganglia. On a mountainside, where the ice cover was relatively thin, melting occurred. Long dormant circuits were activated. A
hum of power came from the fusion engine of an extension. A door rolled away and the extension soared, hovered, and flashed out of existence to travel the long route traced by both of the aliens' ships. Those ships, the first to disturb the sleep of the ice planet in millennia, had come a long way, not only in space but in time. The mission of the extension was twofold.
The minds of the aliens, drugged by hormone stimulated electrochemical activity in the synapses of the brain, were open for the taking. The Watcher knew all.
The silencing was not designed or intended to be merciful, for that concept was unknown to the Watcher. Silencing was simply quick. In the throes of mindless, artificially stimulated passion the male and female stiffened as one. Cold lanced through soft flesh. The flow of blood ceased.
Liquids solidified. Cells burst. The aliens died so quickly that their lastthoughts were storms of erotic fulfillment.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The space arm of the Department of Exploration and Alien Search traced many of its traditions back to Terra II, the planet that was also called New Earth. There the stranded travelers from Old Earth, having lost all stored data in the crash landing of their primitive ship, had begun the long, arduous climb back into space. With only the knowledge held in the frail chalice of memory, their task was to rebuild the technological culture that had sent man into the near space of Old Earth on bellowing pillars of explosive fire. They had the good seeds of Old Earth, wheat and corn and other grains, root vegetables and leaf vegetables, fruits, nuts, and berries; and they had the living embryos of the familiar and useful animals of their world, sheep, cattle, and horses. Where man went there was the animal that he had first domesticated, the dog. And with his old friend beside him man began the long journey back.
According to those who held the belief put forward by the one piece of Old Earth knowledge that survived the first and only Terran settlement among the stars, the Bible, God had chosen the rich, friendly planet that was to be called New Earth. The soils were fertile, the land masses extensive. There were mountains and oceans and native flora that was not hostile to the transplanted animals and Earth vegetation. The raw materials were there for the eventual rise of industry and technology.
The way back was not to be traveled swiftly, although the result of the crash of the starship was not a return to savagery. Crude metal tools were made from the broken shell of the ship and from the intact laboratory came draft animals to pull wooden plows. So the culture fell not to barbarism but to the level of subsistence farming. Many of those who survived knew the theory of refining iron from ore, but the ship's metallurgist, and most of the other scientific specialists, had been killed in the crash. The technical library had disappeared forever, along with the rest of the electronically stored knowledge of mankind, with the destruction of the ship's computer system.
Everyone knew that there was such a thing as an electric light bulb, butthe technology needed to make it possible to push a switch and say, "Let there be light" had to begin with something as basic as making a wheel.
When you have only crude tools, and you haven't the means or the skills to work metals, you can make wooden wheels and mount them on wooden axles and build a frame atop them and you have a wagon, but that's just one tiny step toward the generation of electricity.
As the centuries came and went, progress was faster than it had been in the rise of mankind on Old Earth, because it was known that it was possible to push a switch and flood a room with light, because the knowledge of what once was— although dimmed by time and dilution—was both a goal and a goad. The relatively small group of space travelers had obeyed the biblical injunction to go forth and multiply.
Explorers mapped a continent. Ships sailed the oceans and spread man to the other land masses. With the growth of technical knowledge the resources of the planet were utilized. Steam engines replaced sails on the seas and the internal combustion engine was not far behind.
And then man was back in the sky, reaching with accelerated eagerness toward space. Somewhere out there, its exact location long since forgotten, was Home. Earth. The Mother Planet. The myth. All knowledge of the original planet had been passed down by word of mouth in the beginning, and the telling had been colored by the fears and bitterness of the original exiles. Old Earth was a place of savagery. It was a world of war and death. Diverse peoples who spoke languages understood only by themselves sought to dominate others, to take spoils and exact tribute.
Old Earth was a planet of carnivores. Man, himself, was the most dangerous of all. The cities of Old Earth were walled and men had to be ready at all times to defend what was theirs. It was to escape the cycle of wars and destruction that the original settlers had set forth into the unknown. To prevent the reinstitution of war as policy, the old ones taught peace, but they remembered. Although there was no threat to man on New Earth from members of his own race or from carnivorous animals, the first settlement had a thorn barricade. On Old Earth a nation had to be capable of defending itself or fall prey to the first aggressor who came along. This basic philosophy was so much a part of man that as technology developed and population grew New Earth organized an army and a navy.
In defense of having armed forces on a planet populated by one unified people those who were elected to govern pointed upward, toward the darkness of space. "We came through the distances," they said. "Othersmight, as well."
The most common explanation for the army and the navy was that it gave the young ones something to do during two to four critical years in their development. When, as they had on Old Earth, the thundering rockets began to maul their way out of the atmosphere, a new service was organized. The space arm became The Service. Members of The Service tested the first ship to be equipped with a blink generator. Man had managed, once again, to reach out to the stars.
Later, when a small explorer ship happened into the sac in which swam the Dead Worlds, xenophobia was given new impetus. The people who had destroyed an entire family of worlds, actually cooling the interior fires of planets, were out there somewhere. Those fearsome beings with weapons which man could only imagine could come sweeping out of the depths of space at any time. X&A ships went armed, and because of the Dead Worlds there was developed a weapon as awesome as that which the killer race had used to cool the fires of the Dead Worlds, the planet buster. One missile, one planet. One titanic convulsion and there was a new asteroid belt where once there had been a world.
To man's eternal shame, the planet buster was used in the Zede War, a conflict that pitted man against man once more. The Zede worlds boasted the finest technology in the galaxy, and, although they were outnumbered by those loyal to the United Planets Confederation, they were close to victory when "in the interest of freedom and the dignity of mankind" the United Planets began to fire the deadly, planet destroying missiles.