The Stars, Like Dust

He strode toward the door and pulled at the lever. It descended smoothly and he heard the click that meant the door release had been activated. Except that it wasn’t. And although his biceps tightened into lumps, nothing was accomplished.

He stepped away. This was ridiculous. Had there been a general power failure? There couldn’t have been. The clock was going. The visiphone was still receiving properly.

Wait! It could have been the boys, bless their erratic souls. It was done sometimes. Infantile, of course, but he’d taken part in these foolish practical jokes himself. It wouldn’t have been difficult, for instance, for one of his buddies to sneak in during the day and arrange matters. But, no, the ventilation and lights were working when he had gone to sleep.

Very well, then, during the night. The hall was an old, outmoded structure. It wouldn’t have taken an engineering genius to hocus the lighting and ventilation circuits. Or to jam the door, either. And now they would wait for morning and see what would happen when good old Biron found he couldn’t get out. They would probably let him out toward noon and laugh very hard.

“Ha, ha,” said Biron grimly, under his breath. All right, if that’s the way it was. But he would have to do something about it; turn the tables some way.

He turned away and his toe kicked something which skidded metallically across the floor. He could barely make out its shadow moving through the dim visiphone light. He reached under the bed, patting the floor in a wide arc. He brought it out and held it close to the light. (They weren’t so smart. They should have put the visiphone entirely out of commission, instead of just yanking out the sending circuit.)

He found himself holding a small cylinder with a little hole in the blister on top. He put it close to his nose and sniffed at it. That explained the smell in the room, anyway. It was Hypnite. Of course, the boys would have had to use it to keep him from waking up while they were busy with the circuits.

Biron could reconstruct the proceedings step by step now. The door was jimmied open, a simple thing to do, and the only dangerous part, since he might have wakened then. The door might have been prepared during the day, for that matter, so that it would seem to close and not actually do so. He hadn’t tested it. Anyway, once open, a can of Hypnite would be put just inside and the door would be closed again. The anesthetic would leak out slowly, building up to the one in ten thousand concentration necessary to put him definitely under. Then they could enter—masked, of course. Space! A wet handkerchief would keep out the Hypnite for fifteen minutes and that would be all the time needed.

It explained the ventilation system situation. That had to be eliminated to keep the Hypnite from dispersing too quickly. That would have gone first, in fact. The visiphone elimination kept him from getting help; the door jamming kept him from getting out; and the absence of lights induced panic. Nice kids!

Biron snorted. It was socially impossible to be thin-skinned about this. A joke was a joke and all that. Right now, he would have liked to break the door down and have done with it. The well-trained muscles of his torso tensed at the thought, but it would be useless. The door had been built with nuclear blasts in mind. Damn that tradition!

But there had to be some way out. He couldn’t let them get away with it. First, he would need a light, a real one, not the immovable and unsatisfactory glow of the visiphone. That was no problem. He had a self-powered flashlight in the clothes closet.

For a moment, as he fingered the closet-door controls, he wondered if they had jammed that too. But it moved open naturally, and slid smoothly into its wall socket. Biron nodded to himself. It made sense. There was no reason, particularly, to jam the closet, and they didn’t have too much time, anyway.

And then, with the flashlight in his hand, as he was turning away, the entire structure of his theory collapsed in a horrible instant. He stiffened, his abdomen ridging with tension, and held his breath, listening.

For the first time since awakening, he heard the murmuring of the bedroom. He heard the quiet, irregular chuckling conversation it was holding with itself, and recognized the nature of the sound at once.

It was impossible not to recognize it. The sound was “Earth’s death rattle.” It was the sound that had been invented one thousand years before.

To be exact, it was the sound of a radiation counter, ticking off the charged particles and the hard gamma waves that came its way, the soft clicking electronic surges melting into a low murmur. It was the sound of a counter, counting the only thing it could count—death!

Softly, on tiptoe, Biron backed away. From a distance of six feet he threw the white beam into the recesses of the closet. The counter was there, in the far corner, but seeing it told him nothing.

It had been there ever since his freshman days. Most freshmen from the Outer Worlds bought a counter during their first week on Earth. They were very conscious of Earth’s radioactivity then, and felt the need of protection. Usually they were sold again to the next class, but Biron had never disposed of his. He was thankful for that now.

He turned to the desk, where he kept his wrist watch while sleeping. It was there. His hand was shaking a little as he held it up to the flashlight’s beam. The watch strap was an interwoven flexible plastic of an almost liquidly smooth whiteness. And it was white. He held it away and tried it at different angles. It was white.

That strap had been another freshman purchase. Hard radiation turned it blue, and blue on Earth was the color of death. It was easy to wander into a path of radiating soil during the day if you were lost or careless. The government fenced off as many patches as it could, and of course no one ever approached the huge areas of death that began several miles outside the city. But the strap was insurance.

If it should ever turn a faint blue, you would show up at the hospital for treatment. There was no argument about it. The compound of which it was made was precisely as sensitive to radiation as you were, and appropriate photoelectric instruments could be used to measure the intensity of the blueness so that the seriousness of the case might be determined quickly.

A bright royal blue was the finish. Just as the color would never change back, neither would you. There was no cure, no chance, no hope. You just waited anywhere from a day to a week, and all the hospital could do was to make final arrangements for cremation.

But at least it was still white, and some of the clamor in Biron’s thoughts subsided.

There wasn’t much radioactivity then. Could it be just another angle of the joke? Biron considered and decided that it couldn’t. Nobody would do that to anyone else. Not on Earth, anyway, where illegal handling of radioactive material was a capital offense. They took radioactivity seriously here on Earth. They had to. So nobody would do this without overpowering reason.

He stated the thought to himself carefully and explicitly, facing it boldly. The overpowering reason, for instance, of a desire to murder. But why? There could be no motive. In his twenty-three years of life, he had never made a serious enemy. Not this serious. Not murder serious.

He clutched at his clipped hair. This was a ridiculous line of thought, but there was no escaping it. He stepped cautiously back to the closet. There had to be something there that was sending out radiation; something that had not been there four hours earlier. He saw it almost at once.

It was a little box not more than six inches in any direction. Biron recognized it and his lower lip trembled slightly. He had never seen one before, but he had heard of them. He lifted the counter and took it into the bedroom. The little murmur fell off, almost ceased. It started again when the thin mica partition, through which the radiation entered, pointed toward the box. There was no question in his mind. It was a radiation bomb.

The present radiations were not in themselves deadly; they were only a fuse. Somewhere inside the box a tiny nuclear bomb was constructed. Short-lived artificial isotopes heated it slowly, permeating it with the appropriate particles. When the threshold of heat and particle density was reached, the pile reacted. Not in an explosion, usually, although the heat of reaction would serve to fuse the box itself into a twist of metal, but in a tremendous burst of deadly radiation that would kill anything living within a radius of six feet to six miles, depending on the bomb’s size.

There was no way of telling when the threshold would be reached. Perhaps not for hours, and perhaps the next moment. Biron remained standing helplessly, flashlight held loosely in his damp hands. Half an hour before, the visiphone had awakened him, and he had been at peace then. Now he knew he was going to die.

Biron didn’t want to die, but he was penned in hopelessly, and there was no place to hide.

He knew the geography of the room. It was at the end of a corridor, so that there was another room only on one side, and, of course, above and below. He could do nothing about the room above. The room on the same floor was on the bathroom side, and it adjoined via its own bathroom. He doubted that he could make himself heard.

That left the room below.

There were a couple of folding chairs in the room, spare seats to accommodate company. He took one. It made a flat, slapping sound when it hit the floor. He turned it edgewise and the sound became harder and louder.

Between each blow, he waited; wondering if he could rouse the sleeper below and annoy him sufficiently to have him report the disturbance.

Abruptly, he caught a faint noise, and paused, the splintering chair raised above his head. The noise came again, like a faint shout. It was from the direction of the door.

He dropped the chair and yelled in return. He crushed his ear up against the crack where door joined wall, but the fit was good, and the sound even there was dim.

But he could make out his own name being called.

“Farrill! Farrill!” several times over, and something else. Maybe “Are you in there?” or “Are you all right?”

He roared back, “Get the door open.” He shouted it three or four times. He was in a feverish sweat of impatience. The bomb might be on the point of letting loose even now.

He thought they heard him. At least, the muffled cry came back, “Watch out. Something, something, blaster.” He knew what they meant and backed hurriedly away from the door.

There were a couple of sharp, cracking sounds, and he could actually feel the vibrations set up in the air of the room. Then there followed a splitting noise and the door was flung inward. Light poured in from the corridor.

Biron dashed out, arms flung wide. “Don’t come in,” he yelled. “For the love of Earth, don’t come in. There’s a radiation bomb in there.”

He was facing two men. One was Jonti. The other was Esbak, the superintendent. He was only partly dressed.

“A radiation bomb?” he stuttered.

But Jonti said, “What size?” Jonti’s blaster was still in his hand, and that alone jarred with the dandyish effect of his ensemble, even at this time of night.

Biron could only gesture with his hands.

“All right,” said Jonti. He seemed quite cool about it, as he turned to the superintendent. “You’d better evacuate the rooms in this area, and if you have leadsheets anywhere on the university grounds, have them brought out here to line the corridor. And I wouldn’t let anyone in there before morning.”

He turned to Biron. “It probably has a twelve-to-eighteen-foot radius. How did it get there?”

“I don’t know,” said Biron. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “If you don’t mind, I’ve got to sit down somewhere.” He threw a glance at his wrist, then realized his wrist watch was still in the room. He had a wild impulse to return after it.

There was action now. Students were being hustled out of their rooms.

“Come with me,” said Jonti. “I think you had better sit down too.”

Biron said, “What brought you out to my room? Not that I’m not thankful, you understand.”

“I called you. There was no answer, and I had to see you.”

“To see me?” He spoke carefully, trying to control his irregular breathing. “Why?”

“To warn you that your life was in danger.”

Biron laughed raggedly. “I found out.”

“That was only the first attempt. They’ll try again.”

“Who are ‘they’?”

“Not here, Farrill,” said Jonti. “We need privacy for this. You’re a marked man, and I may already have endangered myself as well.”

The student lounge was empty; it was dark as well. At four-thirty in the morning it could scarcely have been otherwise. Yet Jonti hesitated a moment as he held the door open, listening for occupants.

“No,” he said softly, “leave the lights out. We won’t need them to talk.”

“I’ve had enough of the dark for one night,” muttered Biron.

“We’ll leave the door ajar.”

Biron lacked the will to argue. He dropped into the nearest chair and watched the rectangle of light through the closing door narrow down to a thin line. Now that it was all over, he was getting the shakes.

Jonti steadied the door and rested his little swagger stick upon the crack of light on the floor. “Watch it. It will tell us if anyone passes, or if the door moves.”

Biron said, “Please, I’m not in a conspiratorial mood. If you don’t mind, I’d appreciate your telling me whatever it is you want to tell me. You’ve saved my life, I know, and tomorrow I’ll be properly thankful. Right now, I could do with a short drink and a long rest.”

“I can imagine your feelings,” Jonti said, “but the too-long rest you might have had has been avoided, momentarily. I would like to make it more than just momentarily. Do you know that I know your father?”

The question was an abrupt one, and Biron raised his eyebrows, a gesture lost in the dark. He said, “He has never mentioned knowing you.”

“I would be surprised if he did. He doesn’t know me by the name I use here. Have you heard from your father recently, by the way?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because he is in great danger.”

“What?”

Jonti’s hand found the other’s arm in the dimness and gripped it firmly. “Please! Keep your voice as it has been.” Biron realized, for the first time, that they had been whispering.

Jonti resumed, “I’ll be more specific. You father has been taken into custody. You understand the significance?”

“No, I certainly don’t understand. Who has taken him into custody, and what are you getting at? Why are you bothering me?” Biron’s temples were throbbing. The Hypnite and the near death had made it impossible to fence with the cool dandy sitting so close to him that his whispers were as plain as shouts.

“Surely,” came the whisper, “you have some inkling of the work your father is doing?”

“If you know my father, you know he is Rancher of Widemos. That is his work.”

Jonti said, “Well, there is no reason you should trust me, other than that I am risking my own life for you. But I already know all that you can tell me. As an example, I know that your father has been conspiring against the Tyranni.”

“I deny that,” said Biron tensely. “Your service to me this night does not give you the right to make such statements about my father.”

“You are foolishly evasive, young man, and you are wasting my time. Don’t you see that the situation is beyond verbal fencing? I’ll say it outright. Your father is in the custody of the Tyranni. He may be dead by now.”

“I don’t believe you.” Biron half rose.

“I am in a position to know.”

“Let’s break this off, Jonti. I am in no mood for mystery, and I resent this attempt of yours to——”

“Well, to what?” Jonti’s voice lost some of its refined edge. “What do I gain by telling you this? May I remind you that this knowledge of mine, which you will not accept, made it plain to me that an attempt might be made to kill you. Judge by what has happened, Farrill.”

Biron said, “Start again and tell it straight. I’ll listen.”

“Very well. I imagine, Farrill, that you know me to be a fellow countryman from the Nebular Kingdoms, although I’ve been passing myself off as a Vegan.”

“I judged that might be a possibility by your accent. It didn’t seem important.”

“It’s important, my friend. I came here because, like your father, I didn’t like the Tyranni. They’ve been oppressing our people for fifty years. That’s a long time.”

“I’m not a politician.”

Again Jonti’s voice had an irritated edge to it. “Oh, I’m not one of their agents trying to get you into trouble. I’m telling you the truth. They caught me a year ago as they have caught your father now. But I managed to get away, and came to Earth where I thought I might be safe until I was ready to return. That’s all I need to tell you about myself.”

“It is more than I have asked for, sir.” Biron could not force the unfriendliness out of his voice. Jonti affected him unfavorably with his too-precise mannerisms.

“I know that. But it is necessary to tell you so much at least, for it was in this manner that I met your father. He worked with me, or, rather, I with him. He knew me but not in his official capacity as the greatest nobleman on the planet of Nephelos. You understand me?”

Biron nodded uselessly in the darkness and said, “Yes.”

“It is not necessary to go into that further. My sources of information have been maintained even here, and I know that he has been imprisoned. It is knowledge. If it were merely suspicion, this attempt on your life would have been sufficient proof.”

“In what way?”

“If the Tyranni have the father, would they leave the son at large?”

“Are you trying to tell me that the Tyranni set that radiation bomb in my room? That’s impossible.”

“Why is it impossible? Can’t you understand their position? The Tyranni rule fifty worlds; they are outnumbered hundreds to one. In such a position, simple force is insufficient. Devious methods, intrigue, assassination are their specialties. The net they weave across space is a wide one, and close-meshed. I can well believe that it extends across five hundred light-years to Earth.”

Biron was still in the grip of his nightmare. In the distance there were the faint sounds of the lead shields being moved into place. In his room the counter must still be murmuring.

He said, “It doesn’t make sense. I am going back to Nephelos this week. They would know that. Why should they kill me here? If they’d wait, they’d have me.” He was relieved to find the flaw, eager to believe his own logic.

Jonti leaned closer and his spiced breath stirred the hairs on Biron’s temple. “Your father is popular. His death—and once imprisoned by the Tyranni, his execution becomes a probability you must face—will be resented even by the cowed slave race the Tyranni are trying to breed. You could rally that resentment as the new Rancher of Widemos, and to execute you as well would double the danger for them. To make martyrs is not their purpose. But if you were to die in a faraway world, by accident, it would be convenient for them.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Biron. It had become his only defense.

Jonti rose, adjusting his thin gloves. He said, “You go too far, Farrill. Your role would be more convincing if you pretended to no such complete ignorance. Your father has been shielding you from reality for your own protection, presumably, yet I doubt that you could remain completely uninfluenced by his beliefs. Your hate for the Tyranni cannot help being a reflection of his own. You cannot help being ready to fight them.”

Jonti said, “He may even recognize your new adulthood to the point of putting you to use. You are conveniently here on Earth and it is not unlikely you may be combining your education with a definite assignment. An assignment, perhaps, for the failure of which the Tyranni are ready to kill you.”

“That’s silly melodrama.”

“Is it? Let it be so, then. If the truth will not persuade you now, events will later. There will be other attempts on your life, and the next one will succeed. From this moment on, Farrill, you are a dead man.”

Biron looked up. “Wait! What’s your own private interest in the matter?”

“I am a patriot. I would like to see the Kingdoms free again, with governments of their own choosing.”

“No. Your private interest. I cannot accept idealism only, because I won’t believe it of you. I am sorry if that offends you.” Biron’s words pounded doggedly.

Jonti seated himself again. He said, “My lands have been confiscated. Before my exile it was not comfortable to be forced to take orders from those dwarfs. And since then it has become more imperative than ever to become once again the man my grandfather had been before the Tyranni came. Is that enough of a practical reason for wanting a revolution? Your father would have been a leader of that revolution. Failing him, you!”

“I? I am twenty-three and know nothing of all this. You could find better men.”

“Undoubtedly I could, but no one else is the son of your father. If your father is killed, you will be Rancher of Widemos, and as such you would be valuable to me if you were only twelve and an idiot besides. I need you for the same reason the Tyranni must be rid of you. And if my necessity is unconvincing to you, surely theirs cannot be. There was a radiation bomb in your room. It could only have been meant to kill you. Who else would want to kill you?”

Jonti waited patiently and picked up the other’s whisper.

“No one,” said Biron. “No one would want to kill me that I know of. Then it’s true about my father!”

“It is true. View it as a casualty of war.”

“You think that would make it better? They’ll put up a monument to him someday, perhaps? One with a radiating inscription that you can see ten thousand miles out in space?” His voice was becoming a bit ragged. “Is that supposed to make me happy?”

Jonti waited, but Biron said nothing more.

Jonti said, “What do you intend doing?”

“I’m going home.”

“You still don’t understand your position, then.”

“I said, I’m going home. What do you want me to do? If he’s alive, I’ll get him out of there. And if he’s dead, I’ll—I’ll——”

“Quiet!” The older man’s voice was coldly annoyed. “You rave like a child. You can’t go to Nephelos. Don’t you see that you can’t? Am I talking to an infant or to a young man of sense?”

Biron muttered, “What do you suggest?”

“Do you know the Director of Rhodia?”

“The friend of the Tyranni? I know the man. I know who he is. Everyone in the Kingdoms knows who he is. Hinrik V, Director of Rhodia.”