Clay made a wry sad grimace. "No one on the Etruria thought of that. The ship left the known universe and finally passed close to a plante that seemed capable of sustaining life. The sixty-three aboard took to the life-boats and so landed on Haven.
"Thirty-four men, twenty-five women, four children-ranging in age from Dorothy Pell, eight, to Vladimir Hocha, seventy-four, with representatives of every human race. We're the descendants of the sixty-three, three hundred million of us."
"Fast work," said Betty, with admiration.
"Large families," returned Clay. "I have nine children, sixteen grandchildren. From the start our guiding principle has been to keep the culture of Earth intact for our descendants, to teach them what we knew of human tradition.
"So that when rescue came-as it must finally-then our children or our children's children could return to Earth, not as savages but as citizens. And our invaluable source has been the Ten Books, the only books brought down from the Etruria. We could not have been favored with books more inspiring. ..."
Clay's gaze went to the black bound books at the end of the room, and his voice lowered a trifle.
"The Encyclopedia of Human Achievement. The original edition was in ten little plastrol volumes, none of them larger than your hand-but in them was such a treasury of human glory that never could we forget our ancestry, or rest in our efforts to achieve somewhere near the level of the great masters. All the works of the human race we set as our standards-music, art, literature-all. were described in the Encyclopedia."
"Described, you say," mused Welstead.
"There were no illustrations?" asked Betty.
"No," said Clay, "there was small compass for pictures in the original edition. However"-he went to the case, selected a volume at random-"the words left little to the imagination. For example, on the music of Bach-'When Bach arrived on the scene the toccata was tentative, indecisive-a recreation, a tour de force, where the musician might display his virtuosity.
"In Bach the toccata becomes a medium of the noblest plasticity. The theme he suggests by casual fingering of the keyboard, unrelated runs. Then comes a glorious burst into harmony-the original runs glow like prisms, assume stature, gradually topple together into a miraculous pyramid of sound.*
"And on Beethoven-'A God among men. His music is the voice of the world, the pageant of all imagined splendor. The sounds he invokes are natural forces of the same order as sunsets, storms at sea, the view from mountain crags.'
"And on Leon Bismarck Beiderbecke-'His trumpet pours out such a torrent of ecstasy, such triumph, such overriding joys that the heart of man freezes in anguish at not being wholly part of it.'" Clay closed the book, replaced it. "Such is our heritage. We have tried to keep alive, however poorly, the stream of our original culture."
"I would say that you have succeeded," Welstead remarked dryly.
Betty sighed, a long slow suspiration.
Clay shook his head. "You can't judge until you've seen more of Haven. We're comfortable enough though our manner of living must seem unimpressive in comparison with the great cities, the magnificent palaces of Earth."
"No, not at all," said Betty but Clay made a polite gesture.
"Don't feel obliged to flatter us. As I've said, we're aware of our deficiencies. Our music for instance-it is pleasant, sometimes exciting, sometimes profound, but never does it reach the heights of poignancy that the Encyclopedia describes.
"Our art is technically good but we despair of emulating Seurat, who 'out-lumens light,' or Braque, 'the patterns of the mind in patterns of color on the patterns of life, or Cezanne-'the planes which under the guise of natural objects march, merge, meet in accord with remorseless logic, which wheel around and impel the mind to admit the absolute justice of the composition.'"
Betty glanced at her husband, apprehensive lest he speak what she knew must be on his mind. To her relief he kept silent, squinting thoughtfully at Clay. For her part Betty resolved to maintain a noncommittal attitude.
"No," Clay said heavily, "we do the best we can, and in some fields we've naturally achieved more than in others. To begin with we had the benefit of all human experience in our memories. The paths were charted out for us-we knew the mistakes to avoid. We've never had wars or compulsion. We've never permitted unreined authority. Still we've tried to reward those who are willing to accept responsibility.
"Our criminals-very few now-are treated for mental disorder on the first and second offense, sterilized on the third, executed on the fourth-our basic law being cooperation and contribution to the society, though there is infinite latitude in how this contribution shall be made. We do not make society a juggernaut. A man may live as integrally or as singularly as he wishes so long as he complies with the basic law."
Clay paused, looking from Welstead to Betty. "Now do you understand our way of living?"
"More or less," said Welstead. "In the outline at least. You seem to have made a great deal of progress technically."
Clay considered. "From one aspect, yes. From another no. We had the lifeboat tools, we had the technical skills and most important we knew what we were trying to do. Our main goal naturally has been the conquest of space. We've gone up in rockets but they can take us nowhere save around the sun and back. Our scientists are close on the secret of the space-drive but certain practical difficulties are holding them up."
Welstead laughed. "Space-drive can never be discovered by rational effort. That's a philosophical question which has been threshed back and forth for hundreds of years. Reason-the abstract idea-is a function of ordinary time and space. The space-drive has no qualities in common with these ideas and for this reason human thought can never consciously solve the problem of the overdrive. Experiment, trial and error can do it. Thinking about it is useless."
"Hm," said Clay. "That's a new concept. But now your presence makes it beside the point, for you will be the link back to our homeland."
Betty could see words trembling on her husband's tongue. She clenched her hands, willed-willed-willed. Perhaps the effort had some effect because Welstead merely said, "We'll do anything we can to help."
All of Mytilene they visited and nearby Tiryns, Dicte and Ilium. They saw industrial centers, atomic power generators, farms, schools. They attended a session of the Council of Guides, both making brief speeches, and they spoke to the people of Haven by television. Every news organ on the planet carried their words.
They heard music from a green hillside, the orchestra playing from under tremendous smoke black trees. They saw the art of Haven in public galleries, in homes and in common use. They read some of the literature, studied the range of the planet's science, which was roughly equivalent to that of Earth. And they marveled continually how so few people in so little time could accomplish so much.
They visited the laboratories, where three hundred scientists and engineers strove to force magnetic, gravitic and vor-tigial fields into the fusion that made star-to-star flight possible. And the scientists watched in breathless tension as Welstead inspected the apparatus.
He saw at a single glance the source of their difficulty. He had read of the same experiments on Earth three hundred years ago and of the fantastic accident that had led Roman-Forteski and Gladheim to enclose the generatrix in a dodecahedron of quartz. Only by such a freak-or by his information-would these scientists of Haven solve the mystery of space-drive.
And Welstead walked thoughtfully from the laboratory, with the disappointed glances of the technicians following him out. And Betty had glanced after him in wonder, and the rest of the day there had been a strain between them.