Many machine operators, as agile in the air as bats, met the bombs in midair and hurled them out into and along the corridor through the already-breached wall, where they exploded harmlessly. Harmlessly, that is, except for a considerable increase in the relatively unimportant structural damage already wrought.
Two knives were buried to their hilts in the huge flying muscles of the Llanzlan’s chest.
His left wing hung useless, its bones shattered by bullets. So did his right arm.
Nevertheless, he made it at speed to his consoles — and the battle was over.
Beams of force lashed out, immobilizing the human beings where they stood. Curtains of force closed in, pressing the Jelmi together into a tightly packed group. An impermeable membrane of force confined all the Jelman air and whatever Llurdan atmosphere had been mixed with it.
The Llanzlan, after glancing at his own wounds and at the corps of surgeons already ministering to his more seriously wounded fellows, resumed his place at the conference table.
He said, “This meeting will resume. The places of those department heads who died will be taken by their first assistants. All department heads are hereby directed to listen, to note, and to act. Since Project University has failed, it is to be closed out immediately. All Jelmi — I perceive that none of those present is dead, or even seriously wounded — will be put aboard the ship in which they intended to leave Llurdiax. They will be given all the supplies, apparatus, and equipment that they care to requisition and will be allowed to take off for any destination they please.”
He glanced at the captured Jelmi, imprisoned in their force-bubble of atmosphere. To them it reeked of methane and halogens, but they stood proudly and coldly listening to what he said.
He dismissed them from his mind and said. “A recess will now be taken so that those of us who are wounded may have our wounds dressed. After that we will consider in detail means of inducing the Jelmi to resume the production of breakthroughs in science.”
3. FREE [?]
SOME hours later, far out in deep space, the ex-Llurdan scout cruiser — now named the Mallidax, after the most populous Jelman planet of the Realm — bored savagely through the ether. Its crew of late revolutionaries, still dazed by the fact that they were still alive, recuperated in their various ways.
In one of the larger, more luxurious cabins Luloy of Mallidax lay prone on a three-quarter-size-bed, sobbing convulsively, uncontrollably. Her left eye was swollen shut.
The left side of her face and most of her naked body bore livid black and blue bruises — bruises so brutally severe that the marks of Kalton’s sense-whip punishment, incurred earlier for insubordination, were almost invisible. A dozen bandages showed white against the bronzed skin of her neck and shoulders and torso and arms and legs.
“Oh, snap out of it, Lu, please!” Mergon ordered, almost brusquely. He was a burly youth with crew-cut straw-colored hair; and he, too, showed plenty of evidence of having been to the wars. He had even more bruises and bandages than she did. “Don’t claim that you wanted to be a martyr any more than I did. And they can engrave it on a platinum plaque that I’m damned glad to get out of that fracas alive.”
Stopping her crying by main strength, the girl hauled herself up into a half-sitting position and glared at the man out of her one good eye.
“You… you clod!” she stormed. “It isn’t that at all! And you know it as well as I do. It’s just that we… they… he… not a single one of them so much as… why, we might just as well have been merely that many mosquitoes — midges — worse, exactly that many perfectly innocuous saprophytic bacilli.”
“Exactly,” he agreed, sourly, and her glare changed to a look almost of surprise. “That’s precisely what we were. It’s humiliating, yes. It’s devastating and it’s frustrating. We tried to hit the Llurdi where it hurt, and they ignored us. Agreed. I don’t like it a bit better than you do; but caterwauling and being sorry for yourself isn’t going to help matters a—”
“Caterwauling! Being sorry for myself! If that’s what you think, you can…”
“Stop it, Lu!” he broke in sharply, “before I have to spank your fanny to a rosy blister!”
She threw up her head in defiance; then what was almost a smile began to quirk at the corners of her battered mouth. “You can’t, Merg,” she said, much more quietly than she had said anything so far. “Look — it’s all red, green, blue, yellow, and black already. That last panel I bounced off of was no pillow, friend.”
“Llenderllon’s favor, sweetheart!” Bending over, he kissed her gingerly, then drew a deep breath of relief. “You scared me like I don’t know when I’ve been scared before.” he admitted. “We need you too much — and I love you too much — to have you go off the deep end now. Especially now, when for the first time in our lives we’re in position to do something.”
“Such as what?” Luloy’s tone was more lifeless than skeptical. “How many of our whole race are worth saving, do you think? How many Jelmi of all our worlds can be made to believe that their present way of life is anything short of perfection?”
“Very few, probably,” Mergon conceded. “As of now. But — ?”
He paused, looking around their surroundings. The spaceship, which had once been one of the Llurdi’s best, might have a few surprises for them. It was a matter for debate whether the Llurdi might not have put concealed spy devices in the rooms. On balance, however, Mergon thought not. The Llurdi operated on grander scales than that.
He said, “Luloy, listen. We tried to fight our way to freedom by attacking the Llurdi right where it hurts, in center of their power. We lost the battle. But we have what we were fighting for, don’t we? Why do you think they let us go, perfectly free?”
Luloy’s eye brightened a little, but not too much. “That’s plain enough. Since they couldn’t make us produce either new theories or children in captivity, they’re giving us what they say is complete freedom, so that we’ll produce both. How stupid do they think we are? How stupid can they get? If we could have wrecked their long eyes, yes, we could have got away clean to a planet in some other galaxy, ’way out of their range; but now? If I know anything at all, it’s that they’ll hold a tracer beam — so weak as to be practically indetectable, of course — on us forever.”
“I think you’re right,” Mergon said, and paused. Luloy looked at him questioningly and he went on, “I’m sure you are, but I don’t think it’s us they are aiming at. They’re probably taking the long view — betting that, with a life-long illusion of freedom, we’ll have children of our own free will…
Luloy nodded thoughtfully. “And we would,” she said, definitely. “All of us would. For, after all, if we on this ship all die childless what chance is there that any other Jelmi will try it again for thousands of years? And our children would have a chance, even if we never have another.”
“True. But on the other hand, how many generations will it take for things now known to be facts to degenerate into myths? To be discredited completely, in spite of the solidest records we can make as to the truth and the danger?”
Luloy started to gnaw her lip, but winced sharply and stopped the motion. “I see what you mean. Inevitable. But you don’t seem very downcast about it, so you have an idea. Tell me, quick!”
“Yes, but I’m just hatching it; I haven’t mentioned it even to Tammon yet, so I don’t know whether it will work or not. At present a sixth-order breakthrough can’t be hidden from even a very loose surveillance. Right?”