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ElapticAI-512

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Marsport.
Abrogado asked: "Have you seen the new interstellar ship?"
"The Stellar Missile?" I nodded; "Yes, I've seen it. They're still
putting the finishing touches on it painting, insulating, and so on."
The existence of the great ship, long under secret construction, had
just been revealed to the populaces of the Inner Worlds. It was being
constructed on Mars as it would be easier to lift from the red planet
than from Earth. The nose of The Stellar Missile was pointed outward
in the general, but specifically unknown, direction of the home planet
of the Nobles.
"What star is it investigating first?" asked Abrogado.
"Oh, a very likely star," I said, "considering the evidence. Sirius."
"So it is Mira?" mused the other. "I know little of astronomy, but it
doesn't seem a likely star to me."
I touched the open face of my watch, feeling the hands. I knew that in
a few minutes it would be not dawn, but daylight. Because of its light
atmospheric envelope there is no true twilight, or dawn on Mars. The
sun just suddenly waxes into brightness in about the same length of
time as it takes the glow in a television tube to wane into darkness.
And so, in a few minutes, I would see my companion for the first time.
"I have an idea," I said, "as to how we can deal with the Nobles when
we find them."
"Yes?" asked Abrogado.
"Mind if I sit down?" I asked. I loosened my harness, unbuckled my
belt. "Have you heard of J-bombs?" I said, and dropped.
Before I struck the floor my gun-weighted hand had leapt out, and
the silence was shredded by a staccato blast of sound. I jack-knifed
upwards, holding the trigger tight against the butt emptying
destruction into the night with desperate haste.
My gun brought its stuttered sentence to a halt and, as if a period
were being added by the pen of chance, there was the metallic
punctuation of a heavy object dropping to the ground.
Then, miraculously, the interior of the cave brimmed with radiance, and
objects stood out in stark relief. There was a glint of brightness on
metal: A gun of strange design lay directly before me.
And above me the explosion-pocked body of a Noble hung suspended from
the ceiling by suction-cupped feet. It dripped blue blood upon the
rocky floor, its eyes vacantly staring.
The Horde of sleek ships arose in the west at twilight gleaming slivers
that reflected the dying sun as they lanced across the darkling heavens.
A majestic fleet of squadrons in double-vees, groups in staggered
echelon, they crossed the sky like gleaming geese, and the children of
Earth came out of their whispering gardens to gape at the splendor that
marched above them.
There was fear, for no vessel out of space had crossed the skies of
Earth for countless generations, and the children of the planet had
forgotten. The only memories that lingered were in the memnoscripts, and
in the unconscious kulturverlaengerung, of the people. Because of the
latter half-memory, the people knew, without knowing why, that the
slivers of light in the sky were ships, but there was not even a word in
the language to name them.
The myriad voices of the planet, they cried, or whispered, or chattered
in awed voices under the elms....
The piping whine of a senile hag: "The ancient gods! The day of the
judging! Repent, repent...."
The panting gasp of a frightened fat man: "The alien! We're lost, we're
lost! We've got to run for the hills!"
The voice of the child: "See the pretty birdlights? See? See?"
And a voice of wisdom in the councils of the clans: "The sons of
men they've come home from the Star Exodus. Our brothers."
The slivers of light, wave upon wave, crept into the eclipse shadow as
the twilight deepened and the stars stung through the blackening shell
of sky. When the moon rose, the people watched again as the silhouette
of a black double-vee of darts slipped across the lunar disk.
Beneath the ground, in response to the return of the ships, ancient
mechanisms whirred to life, and the tech guilds hurried to tend them. On
Earth, there was a suspenseful night, pregnant with the dissimilar twins
of hope and fear, laden with awe, hushed with the expectancy of twenty
thousand years. The stargoers they had come home.
"Kulturverlaengerung!" grunted the tense young man in the toga of an
Analyst. He stood at one end of the desk, slightly flushed, staring down
at the haughty wing leader who watched him icily from a seat at the
other end. He said it again, too distinctly, as if the word were a club
to hurl at the wingsman. "Kulturverlaengerung, that's why!"