Then he tightened up again, bent forward stiffly from the hips. His steel eyes narrowed. "Are you loyal to the Plan of Man?" he asked softly.
"Yes, sir!"
The general nodded. "I hope so," he said bleakly. "For the sake of the Plan—and for your own sake, too. For I am going to tell you something that cannot ever be told again. If you whisper a word of it, Machine Major Boysie Gann, your death will come at once. At once.
"You see, the Planning Machine is not unique. There is another one."
Gann's eyes widened. "Another . . ." he stopped, and had to begin again. It was like being told there were two Jehovahs, a second Christ. "Another Planning Machine, sir? But where is it?"
The general shook his head. "Lost," he said somberly. "Another Machine—as great, as powerful, as complete as the one that guides the Plan of Man. And we do not know where it is.
"Or what it is doing."
There was a man named Ryeland, the general told Boysie Gann. A great mathematician. A brilliant scientist. The husband of the daughter of the then-Planner, and close to the center of power surrounding the Planning Machine itself. And decades before he had gone into space, just as Gann himself had done, and seen the Reefs of Space, and come back with the tale of countless thousands of unplanned humans living their lives out on the fusorian worldlets, outside the scope of the Plan.
"What he said," rasped General Wheeler sternly, "was false! But the Machine wisely determined to test it out. The Planning Machine does not leap to conclusions! It weighs the evidence—learns the facts—makes a plan!"
"Yes, sir," said Boysie Gann. "I've heard of this Ryeland, I think. A leading scientist even today!"
The general nodded. "Today," he said cryptically, "Ryeland has abandoned error. A loyal servant of the Plan. And so is the former Planner, Creery, who also has turned away from falsity. But then . . ." He sighed, like the wheezing of a high-vacuum pump.
Then, he told Gann, both men had been duped—and had caused the Machine to commit. . . not an error, of course—that was impossible to the Machine—but to conduct an experiment that failed.
The experiment was to bring the Plan of Man to the Reefs.
The Machine had directed the construction of a mighty spacecraft called the Togethership. The biggest space-going vessel ever built, a mobile spacefort, it was fabricated at the yards on Deimos, and powered with six detachable jetless drive units that were themselves great fighting ships. And more than half of its hull was filled with a slave unit of the Planning Machine—a linked bank of computers and storage banks, as advanced as the Machine itself, lacking only the network of communications and implementation facilities that the Machine had developed out of the race of Man.
The Togethership was built, launched, tested, and fitted out. A selected crew was assembled and came aboard. Supplies were loaded for a ten-year cruise. The slave Machine assumed control ... the Togethership flashed out past Orbit Pluto—passed the Spacewall—and was gone.
Days later a message came back via laser relay chain. All was going well. The Togethership had sighted a major cluster of the Reefs of Space.
No other message was ever received.
Machine General Wheeler paused, his steel-gray eyes on Gann. "No other message," he repeated. "It has never been heard from again. Scouting vessels, attempting to locate it, came back without having found any trace. Or did not come back at all. Or returned early, damaged, having been attacked by pyropods or something worse.
"That is the story of the Togethership, Major Gann. Except for one thing: the cluster of Reefs it last reported sighting was in the same position as what you have called Freehaven. And you were there, Major. What did you learn?"
Wonderingly, Gann shook his head. "Nothing, sir. Believe me. Not even a rumor."
The general looked at him for a long second. Then he nodded. "Gann," he said bleakly, "I will tell you one more thing." Abruptly he snapped three switches on his desk, glanced at a monitoring dial, nodded. "We are cut off," he declared. "Not even the Planning Machine can look in on us now. What I have to tell you is for no ears but your own.
"You see, Gann, it is not only the welfare of the Plan of Man that is involved here. I have a special interest in solving these mysteries. Solving them myself.
"Major Gann, I intend to be the next Planner."
Boysie Gann was adrift in dangerous waters, and he knew it. He had heard rumors of the power struggle of the human leaders who surrounded the great central power-fact of the Machine, jockeying for position, seeking personal advantage. The Technicorps Academy had been filled with sly jokes and blazing-eyed, after-dark discussions of it. Some had viewed the political strife as treason (though they dared only whisper the thought). Some had taken it as a joke, or as a natural law of human affairs which they proposed to follow for their own advancement. Gann remembered the brother of the girl he had left at Playa Blanca, a white-hot idealist—remembered one of his instructors, a cynical humorist whose japes had seemed half in earnest and had set his classes wriggling with astonishment and something like fear. The instructor had disappeared one day. The young cadet who was Julie Martinet's brother had become an honor student at the academy. He had even gone on to spy school on Pluto, just as Gann himself was leaving.
But idealist or cynic, whatever the attitude of the individual, the whole question of political maneuvering had been remote. It was something that took place far off, high up—not in the life of Boysie Gann.
Not until now.
Machine General Abel Wheeler leaned forward from his desk and rapped out the words: "I must know this. Do you know who sent the Writ of Liberation?"
Gann shook his head. "Sir, I've never even seen it. I don't know what it says."
"Foolish threats, Major Gann! An insane promise to stop the sun's light. A warning to the Planner and to the Machine that freedom must be restored—hah! And yet"—the man's steel eyes grew colder and more distant still, as he contemplated something far away—"it seems that there is something behind the threats. For the sun is indeed stopped."
He paused. Boysie Gann blinked. "Stopped? The sun? Sir, I don't understand . . ."
"Nor do I," rasped the general, "but that does not matter. What matters is the security of the Machine. It matters particularly to me, since I am entrusted with its defense. This Writ of Liberation is a threat; I must protect the Machine against it. If I am successful, I will receive ... a suitable reward. To those who can help me . . ." He glanced about his spy-tight room, leaned farther forward still, and merely mouthed the words: "I can offer them rewards, too, Major Gann."
His steel eyes stabbed restlessly about the room, then returned to Gann. "Major," he said. "I need you for a friend."
Gann was still turning over in his mind what the general had said about the stoppage of the sun. The sun? No longer shining in the sky? It was hard to believe. He shook himself free from the questions that were burning at him and said uneasily, "I hope to be your friend, sir. But I still know nothing of the Starchild!"
The general nodded like a metronome. "You will be questioned again," he rapped out. "This time, directly by the Machine, through one of its servitors—a human who has taken the Machine's communion and speaks directly to it. This will perhaps help you to remember certain things. It may even be that from the questions the acolyte asks, you may be able to deduce other things—perhaps even make a guess at things that are stored in the memory banks of the Machine that even I do not know. If so," he said, his face a bronze mask, "I will be interested. The choice is yours. My friend or my foe—and even now," he added, his bronze jaws hardening, "I have power enough to punish my foes."