Everyone looked about in surprise. “Well, Jinny,” said her father slowly. “Just because there is the Blight doesn’t mean that all the stories about it are true. There never was any planet called Earth. It’s just a, well, a fable, a legend. A fairy story to make you laugh.”
Caradine said, “How does one laugh over blowing up a million suns and their planets?”
“I think it’s time for bed, young lady,” said Rita Jiloa firmly. She stood up. Jinny put both arms around Napier’s neck.
“Don’t wanna go to bed. I want to hear about Earth.”
“Well, five minutes, then.” Her mother glanced at Harold Jiloa, sighed, and sat down. Jinny snuggled closer to Napier.
“Well, as I remember it,” Napier said, “there were a lot of bad men in those days. And they were all different colors. They had this terrible and wicked war. And they were so blind to all the things that matter that they went about blowing up each other’s worlds.” He paused. A quietness had fallen in the lounge.
“Like we’re going to do to Ahansic if they don’t behave?” chirped Jinny innocently.
“Lord, what these kids pick up off the TV,” said her father, embarrassed.
“Well, I’m from Erinmore,” said Lobengu puffily. “And we have better than seven hundred suns.”
Oddly, the most burning topic in introductions hadn’t come up before this. Napier said, “Belmont.” Caradine said, “Shanstar.” The thin woman with the eyes and beads said, “Delavue.”
Napier went on with the old story of how the war had raged throughout the explored galaxy, and then had burnt itself out and men had broken through to this section, near the center, leaving behind the legacy of hate and broken suns, and leaving behind, too, their own home world called the Earth, which was still there, spinning around its little sun. Earth’s sons and daughters had gone into fresh pastures, and the best had survived. But only the best, only those with a fresh golden tan. All the others, the wicked, depraved, the white and black and yellow and brown and red, had died out. And in the end, a man with a white face had blown up the Earth.
“Why?” asked Jinny.
“No one knows, my dear. But, as there never was an Earth, it doesn’t really matter.”
“Daddy said he did it out of a broken heart. And he had a funny name to go with his funny white face, too.” She shut her eyes, trying to remember.
Napier said quickly, “No one wanted to bother about what was behind the Blight, Jinny. All that was cleaned away, and we all started off afresh. And no one ever goes into the Blight and nothing ever comes out of it.”
Lobengu stirred. “Now there’s a funny thing. When I was on the Blight perimeter last year there was a story current that a ship had come out of the Blight.”
“No!” You’re kidding!”
“Well,” Lobengu said. “It takes some believing, I know. But the story was going the rounds. A ship had come in out of the Blight and disappeared in our portion of the galaxy.”
“Last year?” Caradine said. “Whose year, Mr. Lobengu?”
“Why, Erinmore’s of course. Let me see, about five hundred days of Horakah’s, I’d say.” Caradine did the sum.
Jinny was bouncing about, not interested in this. “That man who blew up the Earth a million years ago,” she said. “That man with the funny white face. What was his name?”
Napier held the little girl close to him, so that Caradine couldn’t see his face. But he heard what he said.
“His name, Jinny, was Caradine.”
X
Dave Carradine sat on the edge of his bunk. The Beatty one millimeter needle-beam, duration one-hundredth of a second, model of Fifty-eight, made on Ragnar, lay on an oiled piece of plastic cloth, in pieces. He methodically cleaned every part, with the sensitive-fingered touch that might have been better suited in playing some musical instrument than in making very sure that a weapon of destruction would not fail in time of need. He whistled soundlessly through his teeth as he worked.
He had excused himself from the little group in the lounge, retiring under cover of the almost-tearful operation of packing Jinny Jiloa off to bed. Now he was trying to sort out a few facts, to put alongside the mountain of speculation.
How far back into the mists of time the name Caradine went, he had no idea. He wasn’t even sure that the Caradine who had spread the report that the Earth had been blown up was in reality an ancestor. It was a nice thought, no more.
One thing, though, would have pleased that long-dead holder of his name. The Earth, instead of being merely reported through the new empires of mankind in the galaxy as being destroyed, had achieved the status of a legend, a fable, a fairy story for children. No one believed that Earth had even existed.
Which, at the time, would have made that old Caradine chuckle with pleasure. His ploy had worked better than he could have imagined.
The trouble was that now, in the present time, the ghosts of that dead Earth were rising to haunt the modern Caradine. He finished putting the Beatty together, clicked the safety on and slid it under the white shirt. He did not fasten that convenient magneclamp.
When Carson Napier came in, Caradine said, “Were you the only one, Napier? Or did they send a David Innes and a Greystoke, too?”
Napier shut the door carefully. His broad, powerful figure moved in the little cabin like some caged animal. He sat down.
“Nope, Caradine. They sent me. You’ll notice I call you merely that. Without the frills.”
“So you found me. Now what?”
Napier leaned back. The man who had paled and sweated when he had been told that his search was over had gone; in his place was a cool, confident, calculating operative.
“I like you, Cara—”
“You’ve been listening to too many fairy stories, Napier. Caradine was the name of the man who blew up the Earth in the old legends of a million years ago. I’m plain Mr. John Carter. Don’t forget that.”
Napier understood. Tapping was probably well in his line, too.
“As I was saying. I like you, Carter. Sorry about the name. That little girl—mischievous, lovable little monster. She’ll twist some man around her fingers one day.”
“I dare say. I’m tired. You can curse your luck you weren’t born thirty years later. Me, I’m for bed.”
The hesitation was minuscule. Then Napier grunted and bent down, began to pull off his shoes.
“You’re right. We can talk tomorrow. We’re going to have our work cut out to amuse that kiddie for a week.”
They both prepared for bed. Turning and plumping to make himself comfortable, Caradine snapped the photocell and turned off the cabin lights. Well, they could probably find someplace to talk, somewhere on this confounded Hor-akah ship that was tapped to the gills.
Unless Napier had been sent to kill him.
That made sense; too much sense.
A lot depended on the type of man Napier was. If he was the fanatical type, then he might kill Caradine here and now and to hell with the consequences. A brawl between passengers of different stellar groupings aboard a Horakah ship would arouse little interest in the breasts of die Horakah officials; they might boredly take the matter into their own hands and try and condemn the murderer in their own courts or they might send him back to his home group for their justice. Either way, justice being what it was, Napier wouldn’t get away with it.
So he might wait until a better opportunity afforded itself On AIpha-Horakah.
Or, he might arrange it to look like murder by someone else, or an accident.
Caradine closed his eyes and went to sleep.
Napier was under orders. Somehow, Caradine thought those orders would include talking to the putative victim before the execution.