— until Krupp himself came back into view. The big man stared, amazed. Then he strode up behind Ballantine and gave him a shove that sent him sprawling. The desk tumbled in the air; Krupp caught it neatly.
Ballantine hauled himself stiffly to his feet and brushed purple dust from his suit.
Krupp laughed at him. “Leave men’s work to the men,” he said harshly. “Turn that gravity thing off, Ballantine, and I’ll carry the desk back to the ship.”
Ballantine knelt and deftly turned the switch to its second setting.
Krupp gasped; his knees buckled. With a grunting effort he straightened up. I watched, bewildered. Ballantine approached Krupp and stared up into his face. “What’s the matter, big man? Can’t hold a little weight?”
Krupp looked as if he might drop the desk — but while Ballantine taunted he had to stand there, legs shaking.
Something was wrong, I realized. Shouting for help I ran to the wreck; I brushed Ballantine aside and turned the switch. As the weight lifted from him, Krupp sighed. His blood-swollen face smoothed over and he fell back into the dust.
It took three of us to carry him back to the ship.
The Captain spent a long time grilling Ballantine, but she came away frustrated. What was there to find out? Krupp had hoisted one load too many, crushed a few vertebrae—
The Captain filed a report, and Krupp started to learn to use crutches.
I spent a long time thinking it all over.
We lifted off, and I found myself standing once more with Ballantine, this time at a port. We watched the planet recede. I began: “You were saying?”
His bony head swiveled towards me.
“On the ramp,” I prompted. “Remember? You said that switch wasn’t on-off…”
He turned away, but I grabbed one sharp-boned shoulder. “You see, I’ve worked it out. You said there were three gravity forces, two positive and one negative. One setting of the switch canceled out the positive Yukawa, leaving zero overall.
“But the other setting didn’t switch the device off. It canceled out the other Yukawa. The negative one. And that left two positives…”
Ballantine grinned abruptly, showing crooked teeth.
I went on, “The first time you turned that switch you watched the data desk fall twice as fast as it should have done. That was your clue… And that’s how you got Krupp. The data desk suddenly came down on him at two gravities—”
“I had to abandon the nullifier on the planet,” he cut in harshly. “So you’ll never know for sure, will you, Gorman?” His head rotated and his pale eyes locked onto mine.
I knew he was right.
I had nothing else to say. I broke the stare and walked away. Ballantine stayed at the port, teeth bared.
The only law governing the squabbling junior races of the Galaxy was the iron rule of economics.
The second Occupation of the worlds of mankind was far more brutal than the first.
Because there were so few of them, the species called the Qax weren’t naturally warlike — individual life was far too precious to them. They were instinctive traders, in fact; the Qax worked with each other like independent corporations, in perfect competition.
“The Qax enslaved mankind simply because it was an economically valid proposition,” Eve said. “They occupied Earth because it was so easy — because they could. They had to learn the techniques of oppression from humans themselves. Fortunately for the Qax, human history wasn’t short of object lessons…”
PART 3
ERA: Qax Occupation
Blue Shift
Blue shift!
My fragile ship hovered over the tangled complexity of the Great Attractor. From across a billion light years worlds and galaxies were tumbling into the Attractor’s monstrous gravity well, arriving so fast they were blue-shifted to the color of fine Wedgewood.
I could have stared at it all until my eyes ached. But I had a problem. Swirling round me like dark assassins’ hands were a hundred Xeelee ships. They would close on me within minutes.
My hand hovered over the control that would take me home — but I knew that the Qax, who had sent me to this fantastic place, were waiting there to kill me.
What a mess. And to think it had all come out of a sentimental journey to a breaker’s yard in Korea…
Of course I should have been looking for a job before my creditors caught up with me, not getting deeper into debt with travel costs. But there I was on the edge of that floodlit pit, watching gaunt machines peel apart the carcass of a doomed spaceship.
A wind whipped over the lip of the pit. The afternoon light started to fade; beyond the concrete horizon the recession-dimmed lights of Seoul began to glow. It was a desperate place. But I had to be there, because what they were breaking that day was the last human-built spacecraft. And my life…
A shadow moved over the pit; workmen paused and looked up as the mile-wide Spline ship drifted haughtily past the early stars. There was a Spline ship looming over every human city now, a constant reminder of the power of the Qax — the ships’ owners and our overlords.
The shadow moved on and the wrecking machines worked their way further into the ship’s corpse. Finally, after three centuries of Occupation, the Qax had shut down human space travel. The only way any human would leave the Solar System in the future was in the alien belly of a Spline. I began to think about finding a bar.
“Like watching the death of a living thing, isn’t it?”
I turned. An elegant stranger had joined me at the pit’s guard rail. Gray eyes glittered over an aquiline nose, and the voice was rich as velvet.
“Yeah,” I said, and shrugged. “Also the death of my career.”
“I know.”
“Huh?”
“You’re Jim Bolder.” The breeze stirred his ash-tinged hair and he smiled paternally. “You used to be a pilot. You flew these things.”
“I am a pilot. I don’t know you. Do I?” I studied him warily; he looked too good to be true. Did he represent a creditor?
He spread callus-free palms in a soothing gesture. “Take it easy,” he said. “I don’t want anything from you.”
“Then how do you know my name?”
“I’m here to make you an offer.”
I turned to walk away. “What offer?”
“You’ll fly again.”
I froze.
“My name’s Lipsey,” he said. “My… clients need a good pilot.”
“Your clients? Who?”
He glanced about the deserted apron. “The Qax,” he said quietly.
“Forget it.”
He exhaled sadly. “Your reaction’s predictable. But they’re not monsters, you know—”
“Who are you, Lipsey?”
“I… was… a diplomat. I worked with a man called Jasoft Parz. I helped negotiate our treaty with the Qax. Now I try to do business with them.”
I stared at him, electrified.
The Qax, during the long Occupation, had withdrawn Anti-Senescence technology. Death, illness, had returned to our worlds.
If he remembered Jasoft Parz, Lipsey must be centuries old. Unlike the rest of Occupied mankind, Lipsey was AS-preserved.
He saw the look on my face.
“I know it’s hard to sympathize, but I believe we have to be pragmatic. They’re just like us, you see. Looking out for number one, scrabbling for Xeelee artifacts—”
I jammed my hands in my pockets and turned away once more. “Maybe, but I don’t have to fly one of their damn Spline ships for them.”