and his bones. “The Nebula may do that for us.”
“We go back there?” Wocha stirred uneasily. “I don’t like, boss. It’s toombar. Bad.”
“Yeah, so it is.”
“Better we stay home. Manor needs repair. Peasants need our help. I need beer.”
“So do I. I’ll see if we can’t promote some from the quartermaster. Old John can look after the estate while we’re away, and the peasants will just have to look after themselves. Maybe it’s time they learned how.” At a knock on the door: “Come in.”
Tetsuo Takahashi, the ship’s exec, brought his small sturdy form around Wocha and sat down on the edge of the bunk. “Your slave has the Old Lady hopping mad,” he grinned. “He’ll eat six times a man’s ration.”
“And drink it.” Donovan smiled back; he couldn’t help liking the cocky little Terran. Then, with a sudden renewed bitterness: “And he’s worth it. I couldn’t be without him. He may not be so terribly bright, but he’s my only proof that loyalty and decency aren’t extinct.”
Takahashi gave him a puzzled look. “Why do you hate us so much?” he asked.
“You came in where you weren’t asked. Ansa was free, and now it’s just another province of your damned Empire.”
“Maybe so. But you were a backwater, an underpopulated agricultural planet which nobody had ever heard of, exposed to barbarian raids and perhaps to nonhuman conquest. You’re safe now, and you’re part of a great social-economic system which can do more than all those squabbling little kingdoms and republics and theocracies and God knows what else put together could ever dream of.”
“Who said we wanted to be safe? Our ancestors came to Ansa to be free. We fought Shalmu when the greenies wanted to take what we’d built, and then we made friends with them. We had elbow room and a way of life that was our own. Now you’ll bring in your surplus population to fill our green lands with yelling cities and squalling people. You’ll tear down the culture we evolved so painfully and make us just another bunch of kowtowing Imperial citizens.”
“Frankly, Donovan, I don’t think it was much of a culture. It sat in its comfortable rut and admired the achievements of its ancestors. What did your precious Families do but hunt and loaf and throw big parties? Maybe they did fulfill a magisterial function—so what? Any elected yut could do the same in that simple a society.” Takahashi fixed his eyes on Donovan’s. “But rights and wrongs aside, the Empire had to annex Ansa, and when you wouldn’t come in peaceably you had to be dragged in.”
“Yeah. A dumping ground for people who were too stupid not to control their own breeding.”
“Your Ansan peasants, my friend, have about twice the Terran birth rate. It’s merely that there are more Terrans to start with—and Sirians and Centaurians and all the old settled planets. No, it was more than that. It was a question of military necessity.”
“Uh-huh. Sure.”
“Read your history sometime. When the Commonwealth broke up in civil wars two hundred years ago it was hell between the stars. Half savage peoples who never should have left their planets had learned how to build spaceships and were going out to raid and conquer. A dozen would-be overlords scorched whole worlds with their battles. You can’t have anarchy on an interstellar scale. Too many people suffer. Old Manuel I had the guts to proclaim himself Emperor of Sol—no pretty euphemisms for him, an empire was needed and an empire was what he built. He kicked the barbarians out of the Solar System and went on to conquer their home territories and civilize them. That meant he had to subjugate stars closer to home, to protect his lines of communication. This led to further trouble elsewhere. Oh, yes, a lot of it was greed, but the planets which were conquered for their wealth would have been sucked in anyway by sheer economics. The second Argolid carried on, and now his son, Manuel II, is finishing the job. We’ve very nearly attained what we must have—an empire large enough to be socio-economically self-sufficient and defend itself against all comers, of which there are many, without being too large for control. You should visit the inner Empire sometime, Donovan, and see how many social evils it’s been possible to wipe out because of security and central power. But we need this sector to protect our Sagittarian flank, so we’re taking it. Fifty years from now you’ll be glad we did.”
Donovan looked sourly up at him.
“Why are you feeding me that?” he asked. “I’ve heard it before.”
“We’re going to survey a dangerous region, and you’re our guide. The captain and I think there’s more than a new radiation in the Black Nebula. I’d like to think we could trust you.”
“Think so if you wish.”
“We could use a hypnoprobe on you, you know. We’d squeeze your skull dry of everything it contained. But we’d rather spare you that indignity.”
“And you might need me when you get there, and I’d still be only half conscious. Quit playing the great altruist, Takahashi.”
The exec shook his head. “There’s something wrong inside you, Donovan,” he murmured. “You aren’t the man who licked us at Luga.”
“Luga!” Donovan’s eyes flashed. “Were you there?”
“Sure. Destroyer North Africa, just come back from the Zarune front—Cigarette?”
They fell to yarning and passed a pleasant hour. Donovan could not suppress a vague regret when Takahashi left. They aren’t such bad fellows, those Impies, They were brave and honorable enemies, and they’ve been lenient conquerors as such things go. But when we hit the Black Nebula—
He shuddered. “Wocha, get that whiskey out of my trunk.”
“You not going to get drunk again, boss?” The Donarrian’s voice rumbled disappointment.
“I am. And I’m going to try to stay drunk the whole damn voyage. You just don’t know what we’re heading for, Wocha.”
Stranger, go back.
Spaceman, go home. Turn back, adventurer.
It is death. Return, human.
The darkness whispered. Voices ran down the length of the ship, blending with the unending murmur of the drive, urging, commanding, whispering so low that it seemed to be within men’s skulls.
Basil Donovan lay in darkness. His mouth tasted foul, and there was a throb in his temples and a wretchedness in his throat. He lay and listened to the voice which had wakened him.
Go home, wanderer. You will die, your ship will plunge through the hollow dark till the stars grow cold. Turn home, human.
“Boss. I hear them, boss. I’m scared.”
“How long have we been under weigh? When did we leave Ansa?”
“A week ago, boss, maybe more. You been drunk. Wake up, boss, turn on the light. They’re whispering in the dark, and I’m scared.”
“We must be getting close.”
Return. Go home. First comes madness and then comes death and then comes the spinning outward forever. Turn back, spaceman.
Bodiless whisper out of the thick thrumming dark, sourceless all-pervading susurration, and it mocked, there was the cruel cynical scorn of the outer vastness running up and down the laughing voice. It murmured, it jeered, it ran along nerves with little icy feet and flowed through the brain, it called and gibed and hungered. It warned them to go back, and it knew they wouldn’t and railed its mockery at them for it. Demon whisper, there in the huge cold loneliness, sneering and grinning and waiting.
Donovan sat up and groped for the light switch. “We’re close enough,” he said tonelessly. “We’re in their range now.”
Footsteps racketed in the corridor outside. A sharp rap on his door. “Come in. Come in and enjoy yourself.”