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Ebook has 135 lines and 8902 words, and 3 pages

THE NEW AVATAR and The Destiny of the Soul

THE FINDINGS OF NATURAL SCIENCE REDUCED TO PRACTICAL STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY

The yellow sands of the spaceport stretched, glaring and empty, in every direction. There was no sign of life from the little group of buildings a mile away.

In the control room of the tall, round-nosed starship, technicians labored and officers conferred while the red needles that showed rocket tube temperatures sank slowly toward zero on their dials.

"Maybe Earth's depopulated, Tom," suggested John Gray, the executive officer. He ran his fingers through close-cropped red hair and peered through the port with thoughtful gray eyes.

"Hardly, John," replied Commander Tom Wallace, frowning. "The scout rockets showed some good-sized cities, with smoke."

"I was off duty then and haven't had time to read the log," apologized John. "What gets me is that they should have a robot-controlled space relay station orbiting outside the atmosphere, and a deserted spaceport. It just doesn't jibe."

"That's why we have to be just as careful as though we were landing on an alien planet," said the commander. "We don't know what the conditions on Earth are now. How long has it been, John?"

"Two hundred and fifty-eight years," answered John. "Ten years, our time."

"Pick three for briefing, John. This is going to be a disappointing homecoming for the crew, but we'll have to send out an exploration party."

The landing ramp slid out from just above the rocket tubes, and the armored car clanked down to the sand. John steered it across the wide expanse of the spaceport toward the group of buildings. Above and behind him, a woman swept the terrain with binoculars from the car's observation turret. In the body of the car, another woman and a man stood by the guns.

The buildings were just as lifeless when they drew near, but there was an ominous atmosphere about them. They were windowless, of heavy concrete. Through slits in their domed roofs, the noses of a dozen cannon angled toward the ship.

"John, there's someone there," said the girl in the turret, tensely. "You can't see it through the windshield, but there are some smaller guns poking out near the ground and they're following us."

John stopped the car and switched on the loudspeaker.

"Hello, the spaceport!" His amplified voice boomed out across the sand and reverberated against the buildings. "Is anybody there? We come in peace."

There was no reply. The big guns still angled toward the starship, the little ones focussed on the car.

"They may be robot-controlled," suggested Phil Maxwell, the gunner on the side of the car toward the forts. "Any sign of an entrance, Ann?"

"Nothing but the gunports," replied the girl in the turret.

"Don't fool with them, John," said Commander Wallace, who was tuned in from the ship on the car's communications system. "If they're robot-controlled, they'll be booby-trapped. Move out of range and continue with your exploration."

Two days later, the car emerged from the desert into comparatively fertile country. The four explorers found a broken concrete highway and followed it between rolling, treeless grasslands. Near dusk, they saw smoke on the horizon--and ran into a roadblock.

A segment of the highway had been thrown up into a ten-foot wall, barring their progress. Over the edge of the wall, the muzzles of heat-guns pointed at them as they brought the car to a halt some distance away. John got the commander on the car radio.

"We could swing around it, but we don't know whether they have vehicles that could outrun us," he reported. "And my conception of our mission is to establish contact."

"That's right," agreed Tom. "But stay in the car until you get a friendly reaction. Then you're on your own--and I'm afraid you're expendable, John."

John switched on the loudspeaker and made overtures to the roadblock. After a moment, a lone figure stepped around the edge of the mound of earth and concrete and approached the car slowly. The man was dressed in the drab, baggy uniform of a professional soldier.

"If you come in peace, leave your vehicle and identify yourself," called the soldier. "You will not be harmed."

"Take over, Phil," ordered John. He slipped from the driver's seat and climbed through the turret. Jumping to the ground, he approached the soldier, his arms swinging freely at his sides.

The soldier ignored the out-stretched hand, saluting formally instead.

"Arrive in peace," he said. "If you will leave your vehicle here, you will be escorted as deevs to Third Sarge Elfor, commander of the town of Pebbro."

John returned to the car and held a brief consultation with his companions. Although he was in command of the exploration party, planetary operations of the starship's personnel were conducted on a somewhat democratic basis. The commander listened in, but left them to their own judgment.

"Communications blackout for a while then, commander," said John. "I see no reason to let them know about the personal radios right now."

The quartet emerged from the car wearing small packs of emergency rations and equipment. Behind the roadblock, the sight that met their eyes was unexpected.

The robot-controlled space relay station, the heavily armed pillboxes at the spaceport and the heat-guns poked across the roadblock at them, all had made it logical to anticipate a powerfully equipped task force. Instead, they found a troop of 19th century cavalrymen, armed for the most part with 13th century weapons. There were no more than a dozen heat-guns in evidence, and their bearers also carried short swords and long-bows with quivers of arrows.

The four from the starship were given mounts and, with no outward indications of hostility, were escorted to the town whose smoke they had seen.

The town was another surprise. They had expected either a fortress or an outpost of brick and log buildings. It was neither. The buildings were tremendous cubes and domes of steel and concrete, sleek and modern, windowed with heavy glass bricks. Skeins of cables, coils and loops of aerials bespoke the power that must be at their command.

But the people walked.

Not a car or a truck was to be seen. Men and women in the gray military uniforms walked or trotted up and down the broad paved streets. Occasionally a horse-drawn wagon passed, hauling a load of vegetables or manure. It was as though a cavalry post of the old West carried on its slow-moving duties in a super-modern setting.

Third Sarge Elfor was a middle-aged man of military bearing, with a sandy handle-bar mustache. He sat behind a huge desk in one of the town's biggest buildings. There were elevators, open and deserted, in the lobby, but they had to climb ten flights of stairs to reach his gleaming office.

"You are the descendents of the ship's original crew, then?"

"No," said John. He explained as well as he could the extension of subjective time at near-light speeds.

"Mmm. And you have left a colony on a planet of another star." They could not tell from the Third Sarge's tone what he thought. After a moment's meditation, he said:

"We shall talk again tomorrow. Tonight you are our guests and will be accorded all courtesy as deevs. Are you husbands and wives, or shall we billet men and women separately?"

"However it suits your convenience," answered John. "You may billet us all together if you prefer."

Third Sarge Elfor took them at their word. They were conducted to a single room, evidently in the heart of officers' quarters. Here again they ran into the same anomaly that had impressed them since they landed.

There were gleaming electric fixtures, but orderlies brought them tallow candles as dusk fell. There was plumbing of the most advanced order, but when they turned the taps no water came. The orderlies brought buckets full of hot water for their baths in the bright-tiled tub.

"I don't understand this at all, Ann," said John. He was towelling himself vigorously, while she brushed the quartet's clothing clean of the dust of the road. Phil lolled in luxurious undress on one of the four beds, reading a book from the well-stocked bookcase. Fran, preparing for her bath, was binding up her hair before a full-length mirror. "Even the cold water doesn't run a drop."

"Plumbing gets out of order in the best of families, John," Ann reminded him with a smile.

"Electricity, too, at the same time?" he asked. "And it's not just that. The whole place reeks of latent power and high science, but they use an absolute minimum of it."

"I've got a partial solution to the garrison state of affairs and the military set-up, anyhow," said Phil from the bed. "They've had a war since we've been gone."

"That's no surprise," commented Fran. Chubby, blonde Fran and dark, stocky Phil had been companions for a year aboard the Discovery. They had volunteered jointly for the exploration mission. "They should have had several of them in 250 years."

"This was an interplanetary war," retorted Phil mildly. "Or rather, it wasn't war, but occupation of the Earth by the enemy. The Jovians were smart enough not to attack Earth directly, but threw their strength at the crucial moment behind the weaker side in the war between Eurasia and the American Alliance. Then they moved in to take over the war-weakened victors."

"The classic role of the strong neutral," commented John drily. "What were the Jovians like?"

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