CHAPTER ONE

BANISHMENT

THERE had come a time in the affairs of men when absolute dictatorship was not only being questioned, but completely destroyed. The people of Earth were no longer inclined to accept one man and his retinue of chosen adherents as the deciders of their habits, actions, and future. As a direct consequence of this there had been revolution—not the ruthless massacre of bombs and blood—but the insidious inroads of clever politics, which, by vote alone had deposed the Dictator and his retinue from absolute power, and instead placed them at the mercy of the Supreme Court of Earth.

This master of the Earth who had gained such absolute control was known as Rigilus I. By the dual use of politics and resort to arms be had not only conquered the World but had gained the complete mastery of every colonized body in the Solar System…. At least for a time. Now had come the inversion of policy with Rigilus I called to account.

Not that he looked particularly troubled on this summer morning in the twenty-third century, as with the dozen men and women who had been his loyal supporters he sat in the Box of the Accused and surveyed the grim faces of his persecutors with a complete and proud arrogance. Rigilus the First looked and had been every inch a ruler. There was no sentiment in that ruggedly cut face; very little sign of the more delicate of human feelings in that harshly chiselled mouth. Here was a man born to dominate, and dominate he had until his decrees had gone beyond what the peoples of the Earth and the Solar System considered reasonable. Now there was a People’s Government intent on only one thing—the dispensation of just punishment for the twenty odd years of power which Rigilus I had maintained.

“For such as you,” said the People’s Prosecutor, from his position high up in the mighty amphitheatre, “Nothing less than complete banishment will suffice. Your high position and that of those who have been gathered about you make it necessary that you should be granted a certain amount of clemency and for that reason the ultimate sentence of Death is not passed upon you. We feel, after due deliberation among ourselves, that banishment is quite the most fitting punishment that can be meted out to such as you. You who love power and authority and the control of helpless millions will be utterly subjected if forced to lead the rest of your life in comparative solitude, unable to dominate, isolated completely from those worlds which you have ruled so long.

“For the effectual implication of your sentence, therefore, we have decided that you shall be banished to the Deeps of Outer Space in the region of the nearest Star—Alpha Centauri. You are being sent, Rigilus I, on a journey which, for you at least, there can be no end. Alpha Centauri being so far away that you cannot possibly reach it in your lífetime, or indeed in a dozen lifetimes. Have you anything to say as to why this sentence should not be passed upon you?”

Rigilus rose to his feet, an insolently erect figure. With proud disdain he surveyed the faces all turned in his direction.

“I have only this to say,” he said, quietly, “that the banishment of my colleagues and myself to the distant regions of Alpha Centauri only means the ridding of Earth of myself and the sect in which I believe for something like fifteen generations. For believe me the power of Rigilus I will not be broken merely by banishing me to Alpha Centauri. Others will come after me, my sons and daughters and their sons and daughters, all of whom will be educated to believe that this monstrous injustice must one day be avenged.

“Putting it more briefly there will come a time, maybe fifteen, twenty, or maybe thirty generations hence, when the sentence you have passed here this day will recoil upon you, or at least your descendants, with such shattering effect that those who follow you will bemoan the fact that you ever dared to tear down the dictatorship of myself and my colleagues. Speaking less personally, I find it difficult to conceive what you find so wrong about me and those that have been so loyal to me. We have served you well, we have given you every amenity, we have built up science to a supreme peak and given you a civilisation of which you can be justifiably proud.

“Add to this the fact that every colonised body in the Solar System from our Moon to the largest moon of Saturn has been brought under our aegis, and yet you are still not satisfied and must tear down the mind and the hands that conceived it. Why? At least, I am surely entitled to know that.”

Upon which Rigilus sat down again and his comrades around him nodded in silent confirmation.

The People’s Prosecutor looked about him and cleared his throat. It was obvious that for the moment he did not quite know what he ought to reply, and the sardonic smile being directed towards him from Rigilus did not altogether help matters, either.

“Our reason for deposing you,” he said at length, “is one that should be more or less evident to you. You have, in the course of your many years of office, paid little heed to the individual desires of the men and women you controlled, with the result that they have become little better than robots. Any attempt at them exerting an individuality of their own has been ruthlessly snuffed out, and whatever progress we have made has been entirely the work of yourself or those immediately under you. For that reason, that men and women may regain their own initiative before it is too late, we have felt it necessary to remove from you the absolute power that you have wielded. There is nothing more that can be said, Rigilus I. We are decided what shall be done, and the details relevant to your banishment are given you herewith....”

There was a rustle of paper as the Prosecutor went through his notes, then after considering them carefully he looked up again and across the vast space where Rigilus sat waiting in stony calm.

For Rigilus this whole thing was vastly disturbing. Much that the Prosecutor had said had been nothing else but lies—or if not that, a trumped-up story. No man could have done more in the past twenty years than Rigilus for the advancement of science and the comfort of the human race in general. The main reason for his deposition had not been because of the ruthless nature of his edicts, but because of that jealous strain in human nature that refuses to give credit to anything cleverer than itself. For that reason and none other, Rigilus and his comrades were now faced with the ultimate punishment—banishment.

“It has been decided,” the People’s Prosecutor continued after a moment or two, “that you will have placed at your disposal one of our largest space machines. As far as accommodation is concerned it equals the size of any small city, and has therein every amenity one would expect to find in such a city. This, together with all the necessary synthesising apparatus for the making of foods, clothes and other essentials should prove entirely suitable for your practically endless voyage. You will be permitted to take with you whomever you choose from amongst your own retinue, but nobody else. Since your retinue is composed of men and women, all of them married, you will perceive therein a certain clemency in our sense of justice. In other words, there can be future generations to carry on the colossal voyage that you will start, and which, providing you make the entire trip without any cosmic disaster, will take you 1,000 years! There is surely nothing in that, Rigilus, with which you can find fault?”

“One thousand years seems an absurdly long time,” Rigilus commented. “Surely if our ship was to maintain a constant acceleration, it could in time build its speed up to an appreciable fraction of that of light itself? With such a velocity that time could be vastly reduced, even allowing for deceleration at the other end.”

“If is the operative word,” replied the People’s Prosecutor, with a certain acid satisfaction. “However, the acceleration will not be constant! It will build up to a certain speed, and when that speed is reached, the atomic engine will be switched off. Thereafter your vessel will coast in free space at a constant velocity, until you near your destination. The controls are mathematically pre-set to carry you through the void straight to the region of Alpha Centauri. The distance and the time taken to cover that distance—one thousand years—has been mathematically calculated and linked by an electronic brain to the controls. That means that the controls will only become free when you are within measurable distance of the Alpha Centauri System. That is something that you will have to teach your successors, for the time will inevitably come when they will be compelled to understand the controlling of the vessel if they are to make a safe landing and not crash upon some infinitely distant world. The main thing that we are concerned about is that you never return.”

Rigilus digested this shattering information for a moment or two, then gave a shrug. “I can only repeat what I said earlier, namely—that the day will come when you will deeply regret the dispensation of sentence now accorded to me. Since my colleagues are completely allied to me there can be no doubt that I am also expressing their sentiments.”

Rigilus looked round upon his immediate retinue and they nodded their heads in silent assent, High up on his seat of office the People’s Prosecutor looked somewhat relieved that he had managed to hurdle this most difficult of all situations. In himself he did not entirely agree either with the sentence or with the deposition of Rigilus, but he was in the unfortunate position of having to do exactly as he was told.

“There is nothing further then to be said,” the People’s Prosecutor commented after a while. “The decision has been taken and nothing remains but for it to be carried out. For the time being, Rigilus, you and your colleagues will be under what is technically known as House-arrest—insofar as you will be confined to your particular dwellings under close guard—and at midnight tomorrow you will assemble aboard the space liner which will carry you to your destination unknown.”

“Just one more thing,” Rigilus said, rising to his feet again. “Have I your permission to ask a question of the First in Astronomy?”

“Permission granted,” the Prosecutor assented.

Rigilus turned and looked towards the man who was acknowledged to be the leading authority on astronomical subjects throughout the world.

“Of late years,” Rigilus said, “I have not found it possible to conduct a very thorough study of astronomy—having left all of it to the experts in that particular field. But it now becomes essential that I know of certain facts before I am launched out into the void along with my colleagues. I am, of course, an expert in the control of a space machine, but my knowledge of the void is limited to the Solar System. What lies beyond I do not know. I therefore call upon you, the First in Astronomy, to tell me whether at the end of this colossal 1,000-year voyage, there is likely to be any goal that we may seek—any resting place where we may at last cease our eternal vigil in the void. Or, at least, that our successors might find?”

The First in Astronomy did not hesitate over giving his reply.

“According to our close examination of the spatial regions around Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri, there does exist the possibility of a planetary system and even the added possibility of worlds not unlike Earth. By that, I mean that their atmospheres and general gravity correspond fairly closely to that of this world. It should be possible for you to locate one of those worlds and land upon it. What you do after that is no concern of ours—indeed it can never be since 1,000 years hence we who are here today will no longer be concerned with the situation.”

“Thank you,” Rigilus responded, with regal calm. “And now, People’s Prosecutor, one other question. Are we to be allowed absolute freedom in the space machine which has been assigned to us?”

“Certainly, but there is the one proviso I have already mentioned. You can have all the liberty that you require and may mould your lives exactly as you wish, but you will never be able to interfere with the controls of the space machine itself. By that I mean that you will not be able to guide it in any way, to perhaps return in due course to wreak this vengeance that you speak of.”

“In the course of years, and with very little else to do,” Rigilus said, slowly, “there will be nothing to prevent us taking the electronic brain to pieces and thereby gaining control of the space machine to do with as we will. Had you, in your supreme wisdom, considered that possibility?”

“Definitely we had,” the Prosecutor replied, “and for that reason we have taken special precautions. Each part of the electronic brain is so designed that if any part of it is removed, that part will inevitably be destroyed. The design is such that there are no machine-instruments aboard the vessel for you to make a fresh piece, therefore, any tampering with the electronic brain will mean that you automatically destroy it.

“Further, if you do destroy the electronic brain the ship will be completely out of control and consequently at the mercy of any meteorites or foreign bodies there may be in space. Also it would make it impossible for you to make a landing upon another planet. You would simply crash and that would be the end. From all of this you will have gathered that tampering with the electronic brain is not to be recommended.”

Rigilus said no more. Everything had evidently been thought out well in advance and there was nothing that he and his colleagues could do to alter the situation....

Just how completely everything had been planned they realised the following night at midnight, when they were conducted aboard the space liner. It was one of the biggest and latest machines in the huge Earth-Space Travel Combine, and, as the People’s Prosecutor had said, was supplied with every possible necessity for an indefinite journey. Entering its airlock, Rigilus and his colleagues found themselves within a tremendous control room from which led the main passageway off which again were the doors of the ship’s various departments. The space machine was indeed a travelling city within itself, and containing everything that the banished travellers could possibly need.

Present at the departure ceremony were the People’s Prosecutor and the small gathering who had formed themselves into the Government that had deposed Rigilus himself. They now stood in the great control room face to face with the ex-ruler and his colleagues, their animosity typified by the cold barrier that had fallen between them.

“I have executed my duty as I was directed to do,” the People’s Prosecutor said, briefly, merely mouthing the words of the legal formula usually meted out to banished travellers, “and thereby, my responsibility ends. You know exactly where your destination will be and no power of yours will alter it. Should you die on the way the ship will continue its journey carrying corpses. And may the Cosmos have mercy upon you….”

Such was the brief, formal ceremony, and then the People’s Prosecutor turned and stepped back through the airlock, followed by his colleagues. Rigilus watched them go, a grave smile on his ruggedly-hewn face. He glanced at his comrades for a moment, then turned and crossed to the switchboard moving the lever that quickly closed the immense airlock. The moment the sound of the bolts gliding into place had ceased Rigilus turned and looked about him.

“Upon the injustice of this situation there is very little comment that we can make,” he said, quietly. “The only thing that we can do is make the best of it, and being intelligent men and women, fully gifted with the knowledge of scientific resources we will certainly do that. We are not even burdened with the piloting of the machine since it will pilot itself, so then, let us be on our way. There is just one thing that must be understood before we make our departure, and that is, that within this vessel I am still the ruler.”

The others nodded but did not comment. For a reason that Rigilus did not quite comprehend they looked at each other momentarily as though they were exchanging confirmations of some hidden thought. In any case Rigilus was not particularly concerned with his colleagues at the moment, his main objective was to be free of the Earth and out in space where he would be able to plan more freely.

He glanced enquiringly at his comrades. Understanding exactly what he meant they crossed to the airbed racks set against the walls and one by one settled themselves down, buckling the straps across them. Rigilus waited until every one of them was securely bedded down, then he gave his slow, grave smile.

“This, my friends,” he said, quietly, “is quite the most impressive moment in our career. We are abandoning the world of our birth and the Solar System itself, to enter upon a journey the end of which we shall never see. I want each of you to promise now—yes, even before we lift from the surface of the Earth—that you will inculcate into your children nothing but hatred for the world of Earth and the people who now rule it. This moment of monstrous injustice must be avenged no matter how long it takes and no matter how many generations have to be inoculated with the poison of revenge. Do I have promise from each one of you?”

All told there were eleven others besides Rigilus—five men and six women—and although none of them actually spoke each one of them nodded an assent. Rigilus could not help feeling that there was something very perfunctory about that acquiescence, but nevertheless he had to be satisfied with it. He turned to the switchboard, settled in the massive driving seat and then switched on the atomic power engines. Immediately their droning rhythm pervaded the enormous vessel.

As Rigilus well knew there was enough power in atomic form to carry the vessel not for one thousand years but for five thousand if need be, so if by some fluke there ever was a chance of turning back, even when the absolute limit of the journey had been made, the attempt would not be stillborn for lack of fuel.

Such was the final thought that passed through Rigilus’ mind before he closed the contact that transferred the enormous potential of power into the rocket jets. The moment that happened the ship lifted with superlative ease, a creation of the finest engineering genius which Earth possessed—which was only another way of saying that Rigilus himself had been the original designer of modern space travel propulsion systems. Because of him space travel had been changed from the dangerous fuel-hungry rocketry that it had been in the beginning to a sublime journeying without any danger between one world and another. True there had been other engineers who had made modifications, but the basis of perfected space travel could always be ascribed to Rigilus I.

Swift as a bird for all its colossal weight, the space liner hurtled far above the master city of the world, the gravity nullifiers operating perfectly to counteract the tremendous drag of the acceleration. Efficient though they were they could not entirely negate that sense of smothering pressures which remained until the vessel was at last clear of the Earth’s atmosphere and with every second was beginning to lose the counteracting pull of Earth’s own mass.

Rigilus sat on at the controls glancing only occasionally at his supine colleagues. Thus he remained until at last the last traces of gravitational drag had disappeared and the vessel was sweeping onwards into space following the course that the now operative electronic brain had already devised for it. Once free of the Earth’s pull, the ship continued to accelerate steadily, and this, combined with the activation of the gravity-plates under the deck, combined to give the effect of an Earth-normal gravity to the travellers.

Rigilus checked the instruments and then got up from his chair, moving thoughtfully into the centre of the control room. He stood there debating whilst his comrades released themselves from their airbeds. One by one they came across to him and there was something in their expressions that he could not quite understand, particularly in the faces of the women.

“Something is troubling you, my friends,” he remarked, towering amongst them, “unfortunately we have plenty of time in which to debate whatever it might be. Perhaps you would care to tell me?”

“That is precisely our purpose. If you will be so good as to come into the lounge, Rigilus,” one of the men responded, “we will make clear what is in our minds.”

Rigilus gave a long, searching look, then with a shrug he complied leading the way down the long corridor into the enormous lounge through the window of which the great rim of the receding Earth loomed against the black void.

With his usual majestic movements Rigilus seated himself and then raised tufted eyebrows enquiringly. Like a debating society the men and women drew up chairs and settled themselves regarding him steadily. He could not escape the certain air of accusation that hung around.

“Rigilus,” one of the men said, at length, looking at him steadily, “you know me well enough to understand that I am well entitled to speak for the others?”

“Well of course, Randos,” Rigilus responded, smiling. “You have been my first in command for long enough. What is it that you wish to tell me?”

“Just this. We have been considering among ourselves the scheme of vengeance that you insist must be inculcated into whatever generations follow us. I am speaking for everybody here when I say that we are not in agreement with your suggestion.”

“Since when,” Rigilus asked calmly, “have you taken it upon yourselves to question my edicts? I have said what must be done, Randos, and done it shall be.”

“Not in this instance. You are forgetting, Rigilus, that you are no longer master of the world and ourselves the members of your immediate clique. You are simply the commander of a space machine on a one thousand year journey. Or, to reduce things to a more common denominator, you are one of us! Ten of us are against your decision and no power that you possess can make us change it!”

“All else apart,” Rigilus said, puzzled, “I’m quite at a loss to understand why you should be willing to bow to the so-called justice of Earth people and do absolutely nothing about it. Am I to understand that you consider the sentence passed upon us was entirely justified?”

“That,” Randos replied, “is neither here nor there. For one thing we can never live to see the result of this scheme of vengeance and therefore it has little or no attraction for us. You have only one supporter in your desire for revenge, Rigilus, and that is Merva Ansof.”

Randos nodded towards her, a slim, dark, intensely sophisticated woman, one who had been Rigilus’ right hand through the latter years of his Earthly campaign. She was still only young, but as cool, efficient, and as ruthless as an electronic brain itself.

“At least,” Rigilus remarked, glancing towards her and giving a slight inclination of his head, “it is pleasant to know that I have one supporter.”

“Two against ten,” Randos pointed out. “All the rest of us here are married couples, only you and Merva Ansof are not married. Obviously if the far flung destination of the Alpha Centauri is ever to be reached we must have children, and they in turn must have their children and so on and so on generation after generation until there finally comes that generation which will end the voyage. But we none of us propose to bring into this space machine children who will be brought up on nothing else but the gospel of vengeance.

“We prefer to look upon what has happened to us as something which is entirely connected with our generation and with that, let it die. Let our children’s children find a world on which to start again and not be clouded with the knowledge that they must return across this awful waste of space to deal with the successors of those who banished us.”

Rigilus mused, his massive face thrown half into shadow by the brilliance of sunlight on one side and the pale orange glow of the ceiling lights on the other. Merva Ansof stirred very slightly, her cold green eyes surveying the rest of the assembly with a shattering contempt.

“Fools, all of you,” she said at length, in her low contralto voice. “You are content to let these idiots of Earth do what they will to us and not exact any payment for it? I would be prepared to have children—yes, by Rigilus if need be and if he were willing—and into them I would inculcate day and night by every possible human and mechanical means, the need for revenge! I would educate them upon nothing else but revenge and the scientific powers necessary to accomplish that revenge. That all of you can so lightly set aside the monstrous injustice that has been done to us is something that I cannot understand!”

“One as soulless as you never will understand,” one of the women answered quietly.

“I am not soulless,” Merva answered, coolly. “I am merely efficient. But I am the last one to attempt to judge my own character. I will leave it to you, Rigilus, to say what kind of a woman I am.”

“Hard, my dear,” Rigilus smiled. arising from his deep meditations. “Hard as a diamond, yet just as brilliant. Like you, though, I am somewhat puzzled by this humane streak which has developed in the rest of our friends. And not for one moment do I accede. I have stated what must be done and as the commander of the ship I order that there be no diversion from that instruction. You will see to it that progeny are produced and that the necessary doctrine is inoculated in them.”

“No,” Randos said, shaking his head. “We are firmly resolved on that, and any attempt on your part to force the issue, Rigilus, will make things decidedly unpleasant all round.”

Merva Ansof sprang to her feet, a tall lioness of a woman, her fists clenched at her sides. Fiercely she looked round on her colleagues, her marble-white face set with the most ferocious determination.

“Do all of you dare suggest that we crawl out into the void like spineless amoeba, without intelligence, or without the capacity to inflict reprisal upon those who have condemned us to this fate?

“Can you, as men and women of the past regime, so completely forget that Rigilus gave us all the power of the solar system and yet now, when he asks you for the means to give strength back to the future generations, you refuse to comply? You should be ashamed of yourselves, every one of you!”

Rigilus had risen too, standing beside the incensed woman. His massive hand gently touched her arm.

“This is a matter which cannot be done by compulsion,” he said, quietly, “only by co-operation. The fact remains that if no progeny are produced our plan of vengeance is useless anyway, because we shall all die in this space machine long before the journey is completed and with our dying, the tale will have been told.

“Consider it another way, my friends,” he continued, looking on the serious faces around him. “Supposing you follow out the course which you wish—supposing children are born aboard this vessel. They are bound, in course of time, to ask many questions, many of them awkward ones, especially as to why they are living aboard a space ship when they ought to be living on the surface of a planet.”

“They will never know that they should be living on the face of a planet unless we tell them so,” Randos pointed out.

Rigilus shook his head. “You know better than that, my friend. Inherent in every human being is the instinct of where he ought to live, and if he is not in the conditions which are normal to his environment, he is bound sooner or later to wonder why, and inevitably he will ask those whom he feels do know the answer. You will be forced to the point finally of admitting that you have been banished from the world where you ought to be and I hardly think I need add what your children’s reactions will be to that.

“They will have within them, knowing you as I do, the proud arrogance of those who have been masters, and they will not be inclined to lie down to the simple truth that their parents have been banished from a planet and nothing has been done about it. It is then that you will appreciate the wisdom of my doctrine. So I beg of you to forget this sentimentality—this archaic inclination to forgive your enemies—and bring into the world future men and women who can hand on to their children the knowledge of how to hit back. We have done nothing of which we need be ashamed. If that were so I would not be so insistent on this scheme of revenge. All that we did was build up the civilisations of Earth from the lowliest beginnings to the greatest of heights. For that we have been banished to the furthest deeps of the Universe and for that we rightly demand a price. Now my friends, make your choice!”

“It is not a case of making a choice, Rigilus,” one of the men responded, pondering. “If we refuse to accede to your demand there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Even if we have children after that, your doctrines need not necessarily be inculcated into them. We can stop that if we choose.”

“How?” Merva Ansof snapped. “You seem to have overlooked the fact that Rigilus I is the commander of the vessel and still your Ruler. There is nothing that you dare do to him!”

“Why not?” Randos asked pointedly. “He is flesh and blood the same as us. There are ten of us against him so we can destroy him if we wish and if the circumstances were sufficiently serious we would do. What you do not seem to appreciate is, that now we have cut adrift from Earth and all its associations and so-called civilised fabric, we want to live like normal human beings without the need to dominate others, to have our own children, to live together and to teach those children whatever we feel they should know. We don’t want to begin on the deadly basis that only vengeance is worth having.”

Rigilus sighed heavily and turned aside. He moved slowly across to the great window and stood looking down on the receding Earth. Already it was no more than a globe as the enormous space liner fled with an apparent complete lack of movement through space. Then Merva Ansof moved also, an epitome of feline grace as she swept across the floor, pausing at length at the Ruler’s side.

“You can’t let them get away with this, Rigilus,” she murmured, quietly, “you know you can’t!”

“Ten of them against me,” he said with a brief glance. “What am I supposed to do about that? A man can only enforce his will if he has a certain amount of co-operation and a certain amount of backing. I have only got you, apparently. Two of us against ten?” He shrugged his enormous shoulders. “We have to accept circumstances sometimes, Merva.”

“I never accept circumstances.” Merva looked down on the Earth for a few moments, her green eyes seeming even greener with the emerald reflections cast back from the Mother planet. Rigilus glanced towards her. She was an extraordinarily beautiful woman—that fact he had always known—but the repellent coldness of her and the merciless logic of her mind had always turned him against her from the emotional standpoint. Otherwise he and Merva Ansof would long ago have been joined in a union of world control.

“The solution,” Merva said, presently, her voice deep and quiet, “is far more simple than you think, Rigilus. Let these fools who were once all for us have their progeny. Even let these children be educated for several years as exactly as their parents wish. Let them think that they’re getting away with it…. Whenever necessary there is nothing to stop the removal of the parents!”

Rigilus gave a start. “You cleverly avoid the use of the word ‘murder’, my dear,” he commented.

“Murder is a silly, simple word, which dates back over a centuries. In these days murder is classed as elimination and that is not a matter of the passions: it is a matter of necessity. If anybody or anything stands in the way of achieving a certain objective, destroy it! That has always been my policy, Rigilus, and it has placed me beside you and there I have remained as long as I have been mature. Even as a child I eliminated the things that annoyed me. I sometimes think I am one of the few people who are gifted with a complete lack of conscience.”

With that, using a typical feminine cunning, Merva Ansof turned and walked to another window to survey the unholy prominences of the blinding sun. She knew she had left behind a very undecided ex-ruler. She had dropped into his mind the seed that she knew must flourish. Rigilus loved power every bit as much as she did, and his desire for vengeance was something he was prepared to bring to fruition no matter what the cost. And presently he turned. Majestic as an eagle, his keen eyes peering out from under the overhanging brows.

“I am inclined to think,” he said, slowly, “that perhaps you have a better grasp of the situation than I on this occasion, Randos.”

Randos gave a start of hope and glanced quickly at the others. Immediately every face turned towards Rigilus as he came forward once again into the centre of the lounge.

“Yes,” Rigilus continued, “have your children, by all means. I give you my word that I will make no attempt to indoctrinate them, but will give you absolute freedom to do as you wish with them, until they reach the age of maturity. When, however, they have reached the time when they are capable of assessing the situation for themselves I insist that it must be put to them whether or not reprisal should be sought upon those who have driven us into outer space.

“In that way they will not be influenced by me or by you, but will make their own decision. I do not for a single moment doubt what their decision will be, because as I said earlier they will have an inherited instinct concerning the situation and the sense of domination which they will inherit from you, will I think, make them determined to hand on to their own children the doctrine of which I have spoken.... But that is in the future. For the time being continue as you will. We cannot afford in this small circle here—for although you may not have realised it yet—each one of us is bound to be with the other until the day we die—any sign of friction whatever. The more we are compelled to be in each other’s company the more necessary it is that we keep things on an even keel.”

By the window as she looked out towards the Moon, Merva Ansof smiled to herself. Rigilus I had done exactly as she had anticipated he would.