Suddenly Erx and Berx were paying attention again.
“Now, that’s a word I have not heard spoken in at least a hundred years,” Berx said.
“If ‘instinct’ is the right term, I guess that would be correct,” Hunter replied. “Is that so unusual?”
Multx just shook his head. “You really are from someplace else,” he mumbled.
“What he’s trying to say is that ‘instinct’ is a very rare commodity these days,” Erx explained to him.
“Our social scientists claim it was bred out of the human race a long time ago. Even a touch of it should be considered a gift.”
“You, however, seem to possess it in spades,” Multx went on. “I have many soldiers under my command. I believe every one of them would gladly give his life if it meant saving one of his comrades or even an innocent civilian. But none of them would have done what you did today simply because… well, I just don’t think it would have dawned on them to do it.”
Hunter sipped from his goblet again. More clouds flowing down his gullet. He seemed to be getting both lighter and stronger by the moment.
“The Galaxy is actually a very small place, Mister Hunter,” Multx went on. “And any word of heroics spreads very fast. My report on this incident has already been flashed to Space Command headquarters.
Everything, including the fact that a Blackship somehow got into Supertime, is all regarded as top secret now. But I’m afraid it will be impossible to keep a lid on this thing forever. When word of what you did gets out, every one of my esteemed colleagues will inquire about your availability. I’m sure you would shoot right to the top of any admiral’s personal Air Guard squadron.”
“That would be quite a jump for someone who’s just been drafted,” Hunter told him.
“Well, yes,” Multx replied with a nervous grin. “But actually we think you have much more important things to do than that.”
“I do? Like what?”
Multx smiled for the first time in a long time.
“I’ve made arrangements for you to continue on to Earth as soon as we reach the Pluto Cloud,” he told Hunter. “I hope you don’t mind…”
Hunter nearly dropped his goblet. Earth? After what Erx and “Berx had told him about the exclusivity of the mother planet? Why would he be going there?
“I don’t understand,” he finally replied.
Multx checked to make sure the room’s hum beam was at full power. It was.
“Mister Hunter, you’ve never heard of the Earth Race, I suppose,” he asked.
Hunter could only shake his head no.
Multx glanced over at his coconspirators. Both Erx and Berx were trying very hard not to make eye contact with him now.
“Well, do either of you want to tell him?” Multx asked them wryly. “Or should I?”
9
Its official name was the Inner-System Defense Array.
It was made up of nearly one million man-made moons set in various configurations on the edges of the solar system. Most were orbiting the same distance out as the planet Pluto, thus the unofficial title of
“Pluto Cloud.”
Each moon served as a military garrison and a security checkpoint. The swarm enveloped the solar system within a perfect bubble, demarcating the inner sanctum of Earth, its planets, and the sun. In the days before the Ancients, the Pluto Cloud would have been considered the wall around the castle, the trench before the cave. No one got through without the proper connections.
Luckily, Zap Multx had connections.
This was how Hunter found himself on a hyper-shuttlecraft heading toward the holy inner planets.
No sooner had the BonoVox arrived here, at the gates of the stellar kingdom, than he’d been summoned from his old billet to the shuttle bay. Once there, he, Erx, and Berx were quietly put aboard Multx’s personal launch and sent on their way.
This region of space was literally jammed with starships. Most of them were military, but many cargo and scientific ships were on hand as well. One could hardly look in any direction without seeing several hundred spacecraft either docked or moving slowly about. All of them being scrutinized by security personnel. Yet the hyper-shuttle was allowed to pass through a gauntlet of robot guns and Z-beam platforms unencumbered.
Even the shuttle pilot was amazed. “I guess the magic word around here today is ‘Multx,’ ” he said.
“Bingo,” Erx and Berx agreed.
As luck would have it, an alignment of sorts was in the offing. The shuttle pilot was able to buzz all of the outer planets, a diversion that added only minutes to the length of their trip inward.
Pluto was burning bright green these days. The gas giants Neptune and Uranus were violet and cobalt blue. Jupiter and Saturn were like minisuns, fantastically multicolored, with hundreds of moons, most of them man-made, spinning around them. The asteroid belt had long ago been cleared away. Mars was now on its own, glowing like a neon-red sapphire, the warmth of the sun obvious on its face.
Then came Earth.
It was a diamond floating among brilliant stones. An enormous blue, shimmering jewel, outstanding against the blackness of space. Mouth agape, his nose nearly pressing against the shuttle’s main window, Hunter imagined he could see a white-hot glaze surrounding the planet, almost like a halo. There was no mistaking that one was in the presence of something great here. This place looked like the center of the Galaxy.
“The first spaceship left it five thousand, two hundred thirty-nine years ago,” Erx told him. “And that was only to orbit. A lot has happened since then. The first outward expansion. Puffing the planets. Three empires rise, three empires fall. Countless wars, civil conflicts, rebellions… you name it. And that’s just from the history we know about.”
Much of Earth’s surface was now covered with huge triangular sections known as triads; they were what made the home planet shine. Some of these massive sections measured more than one hundred miles in length. They were made of a superhard material known as terranium. Similar to electron steel, terranium was also able to feed an earthy crust and was thus amenable to growing flora.
The triads had been built more than two millennia before by the mysterious people known as the Ancient Engineers. Just why they chose to lay down these huge sections was lost in the haze of time. An attempt to reclaim surface area lost due to rising ocean levels was one guess. The triads covered more than half the planet and were arranged so that Earth now supported just two enormous continents — one in the east, the other in the west.
What remained of the oceans was in between. Water drained off from the poles traveled along huge canals that separated the triads in some places. Besides feeding the terranium, these artificial waterways also provided landing areas for some of the Empire’s largest starships. Another result of this massive engineering project was that every coastline on Earth was now uniform, every river and lake drawn perfectly straight.
The triads were connected by more than five thousand bridges. Some were thousands of miles long and linked the two continents at their closest points. But these spans were never used — at least not anymore.
They, too, were ancient, but unlike the triads, no one was quite sure who built them. All that was known was they’d appeared after the triads had been put in place and before the rise of the Third Empire. In any case, they were considered sacred and therefore off-limits to all.
Earth’s Moon still hung in the sky, bright as ever, a pearl orbiting a diamond. But it, too, was considered sacred and thus wisely avoided.
In fact, no one had set foot on the lunar satellite in more than three thousand years.