They had completed the tour of the classrooms when Skorta turned into the entrance to a long, high-ceilinged chamber whose far wall was more than two hundred meters distant. Against the wall Martin could see, dimly by the light of the ever present luminous vegetation, a raised dais or altar with a cloth draped across it.
“This is the Hall of Honor,” Skorta said, and began a slow march toward the opposite wall. “Here the slaves renew their promises of service and obedience to our Masters every day, or assemble for punishment or censure and, once a year, to graduate to higher levels.”
It had not always been the slaves’ Hall of Honor, Martin thought excitedly as he looked up at the great, curving ceiling and along the regularly spaced tunnel mouths where it arched down to meet the floor on both sides. He asked for and obtained Skorta’s permission to use his helmet spotlight.
It showed lines and patterns of corrosion running along the floor and into the tunnels. The marks were widely spaced and suggested heavy metal rail supports rather than wiring conduits. The walls and ceiling were also covered by strips and patches of corrosion, and as they walked toward the dais they passed shallow trenches in the floor which were filled with powdered rust. Suddenly, Martin’s mouth felt so dry that it was difficult to speak.
“This… this place is old” he said. “What was its purpose before it became the Hall of Honor?”
He already knew the answer.
“It is recorded only as hearsay.” the Teldin replied, “But the hearsay is unapproved, forbidden as a matter for discussion by all levels of slaves. I know nothing other than that it was our first protection against the Scourge.”
Suddenly Beth’s voice was in his other ear.
“It was probably one of the causes of the Scourge in the first place,” she said angrily. ‘That hall was once a storage and distribution facility which supplied missiles via the tunnels to less deeply buried launching silos. But you must have spotted that yourself. It certainly answers a lot of my questions.”
“I spotted it,” Martin said. “But causing the Scourge… I don’t understand you.”
“That’s because you haven’t been trying to make sense of the things the computer is saying about this ring system.”
Normally such a system was formed as a result of a satellite or satellites approaching too closely to the primary and being pulled apart by gravitational stresses, she went on, and the debris being strewn along the plane of the moon’s original orbit. Continuing collisions would eventually cause the pieces to grind themselves into a uniformly small size. But at the present stage of the process many large pieces should have survived the collisions with the small stuff, since the probability of the relatively few large chunks of the moon colliding with each other was small.
The material orbiting Teldi contained no large pieces of debris.
“Then the ring has been forming for a long time,” Martin said, “and the process is far advanced.”
“No,” Beth said firmly. “The Scourge has been in existence for an extremely short time, astronomically speaking. The process began one thousand one hundred and seventeen years and thirty-three days ago, and was completed forty-seven years and one hundred and two days later.”
“Are you surre?”
Beth laughed. “For a moment I thought you were accusing me of using hearsay. The computer is sure and I’m sure, and you know which one of us is omniscient.”
“Are there any missiles left?” Martin asked. “Any traces of radioactivity in a forgotten silo somewhere?”
“None,” she replied. “The sensors would have detected them. They must have used them all.”
She resumed talking as the slow march toward the dais continued, but Martin’s thoughts were leaping ahead of her words as piece after piece of the Teldin jigsaw puzzle fitted into place. The reason for the Scourge and the fatalistic acceptance of it was now plain, as was the cause of the pathological distrust of everything which was not experienced first-hand, the rigid stratification of the slaves, and the thinking done from the top which was so characteristic of the military mind. Finally there was the planet-wide catastrophe which had driven the surviving population to shelter in such installations as this, and brought about a situation which was in essence a military dictatorship.
The Hall of Honor and one-time missile arsenal was certainly a key piece of the puzzle, but the picture was not complete.
“I must speak with a Master,” Martin said.
“But there’s no need!” Beth protested. “Sensor probes have been dropped on this and other cities. We have more than enough data on the ordinary people of this frightful planet. They are resourceful, ethical, hardworking, long-suffering, and, to my mind, wholly admirable. We should say so without delay. Our assessment can be based on an interview with one Teldin, remember, and we were not expected to spend a long time on this assignment. I” say that the slave levels are hi all respects suitable and should be offered Citizenship following reorientation training to neutralize the conditioning of the Masters.
“The slave owners, from what we’ve learned of them, don’t stand a snowball’s chance. Our Masters, the Federation, will not abide dictators who…”
“Wait,” Martin said.
They had stopped before the dais which, now that he could see it clearly, consisted of a single cube of polished rock measuring just under two meters a side, with a large flag apparently covering the top and hanging down in front. The section of the flag visible to him was dark blue and bore the same design as that which appeared on Skorta’s bracelet. The stone was too high for him to see the top surface, until he was suddenly grasped above the knees and under the elbows by four large hands and hoisted into the air…
… And saw the symbol of ultimate authority.
Unlike the richly embroidered flag, the sword looked excessively plain and functional. Simply and beautifully proportioned, it measured nearly two meters long and had a broad, double-edged blade which came to a fine point. Its only decoration was a small, engraved plate on the guard, which reproduced the design on the flag. Martin stared at it until the Teldin’s arms began to quiver with the strain of holding him aloft, then he gestured to be put down.
“It is the sword of the Master of Education,” Skorta said very quietly. “My Master died recently and a new one has yet to be chosen.”
Martin was remembering the long, sharp blade of the weapon and the staining he had seen at its tip. He wet his lips and said, “Has it ever been… used?”
“The sword of a Master,” it replied in a voice Martin could barely hear, “must draw blood at least once.”
“Is it possible,” Martin asked once again, “to speak with a Master?”
“You are an off-world slave,” the Teldin replied, emphasizing the last word.
It was the last word, in fact, because neither of them spoke during the long walk back to the base of the cliff where Beth had already moved the lander. Martin had a lot on his mind.
Chapter 9
HE had programmed the force shield to interdict inanimate objects and remain pervious to living beings. As a result, it was not the timer which awakened him but the excited voices of more than two hundred young Teldins who were surrounding the lander. The cliff-face and city were still shrouded in pre-dawn darkness, except for the intermittent illumination provided by the Scourge as it drew incandescent lines across the sky. He increased the intensity of die exterior lighting and went outside.
“I can’t answer all of your questions at once,” he said as his translator signaled overload, “so I will tell you about my vessel and some of the worlds it has visited…”
Except for a few of the older ones who muttered “Hearsay” they became very quiet and attentive. He began talking about planetary environments which were beautiful, terrifying, weird but always wonderful, and on the subject of the Federation he said only that it was a collection of people of many different shapes and sizes and degrees of intelligence who helped each other and who wanted to help Teldi.