Her face was tense, the pugnacity of her jaw more noticeable. With a flash of intuition which surprised him, Complain thought, ‘She’s getting an occupational disease like Scoyt’s, because she’s identifying her job with him.’ Then he doubted his own perceptions and, with a terrifying mental picture of the great ship with them all in it hurtling forever on its journey, had to admit the facts were enough to worry anyone. But it was still with the idea of checking her reactions that he asked Vyann, ‘Are you and Master Scoyt the only ones working on this problem?’
‘For hem’s sake, no!’ she said. ‘We’re only subordinates. A group calling itself the Survival Team has recently been constituted, and it and all other Forwards officers apart from guard officers are also devoting attention to the problem. In addition, two of the Council of Five are in charge of it; one of them you met, Priest — Councillor Zac Deight, the tall, longhaired man. The other of them I’m taking you to see now — Councillor Tregonnin. He is the librarian. He must explain the world to you.’
So it was that Roy Complain and the priest came to their first astronomy lesson. Tregonnin, as he talked to them, hopped about the room from object to object; he was almost ludicrously small and nervous. Although he was neat in a womanish way, the room he ruled over was heaped with lookers and miscellaneous bric-à-brac in disorderly fashion. Confusion had here been brought to a fine art. Tregonnin explained first that until very recently in Forwards — as was the rule still in Quarters — anything like a looker or a video had been destroyed, either from superstition or from a desire to preserve the power of the rulers by maintaining the ignorance of the ruled.
‘That, no doubt, was how the idea of the ship became lost to begin with,’ Tregonnin said, strutting in front of them. ‘And that is why what you see assembled round you represents almost all the records intact in the area of Forwards. The rest has perished. What remains allows us only a fragment of the truth.’
As the councillor began his narrative, Complain forgot the odd gestures with which he accompanied it. He forgot everything but the wonder of the tale as it had been pieced together, the mighty history patched up in this little room.
Through the space in which their world moved, other worlds also moved — two other sorts of worlds, one called sun, from which sprang heat and light, one called planet. The planets depended on the suns for heat and light. At one planet attached to a sun called Sol lived people; this planet was called Earth and the people lived all over the outside of it, because the inside was solid and had no light.
‘The folk did not fall off it, even when they lived on the bottom of it,’ Tregonnin explained. ‘For they had discovered a force called gravity. It is gravity which enables us to walk all the way round a circular deck without falling off.’
Many other secrets the men discovered. They found a way to leave their planet and visit the other planets attached to their sun. This must have been a difficult secret, for it took them a long while. The other planets were different from theirs, and had either too little light and heat or too much. Because of this, there were no men living on them. This distressed the men of Earth.
Eventually they decided they would visit the planets of other suns, to see what they could find there, as their Earth was becoming exceptionally crowded. Here the scanty records in Tregonnin’s possession became confusing, because while some said that space was very empty, others said it contained thousands of suns — stars, they were sometimes called.
For some lost reason, men found it hard to decide which sun to go to, but eventually, with the aid of instruments in which they were cunning, they picked on a bright sun called Procyon to which planets were attached, and which was only a distance called eleven light years away. To cross this distance was a considerable undertaking even for the ingenious men, since space had neither heat nor air, and the journey would be very long: so long that several generations of men would live and die before it was completed.
Accordingly, men built this ship in which they now were, built it of inexhaustible metal in eighty-four decks, filled it with everything needful, stocked it with their knowledge, powered it with charged particles called ions.
Tregonnin crossed rapidly to a corner.
‘See!’ he exclaimed. ‘Here is a model of the planet our ancestors left long ago — Earth!’
He held up a globe above his head. Chipped by careless handlers, obnubilated by the steep passage of time, it still retained on its surface the imprint of seas and continents.
Moved, he hardly knew why, Complain turned to look at Marapper. Tears were pouring down the old priest’s cheeks.
‘What… what a beautiful story,’ Marapper sobbed. ‘You are a wise man, Councillor, and I believe it all, every word of it. What power those men had, what power! I am only a poor old provincial priest, jeezers nose, I know nothing, but…’
‘Stop dramatizing yourself, man,’ Tregonnin said with unexpected severity. ‘Take your mind off your ego and concentrate on what I am telling you. Facts are the thing — facts, and not emotions!’
‘You’re used to the magnificence of the tale, I’m not,’ Marapper sobbed, unabashed. ‘To think of all that power…’
Tregonnin put the globe carefully down and said in a petulant tone to Vyann, ‘Inspector, if this objectionable fellow doesn’t stop sniffing, you will have to take him away. I cannot stand sniffing. You know I cannot.’
‘When do we get to this Procyon’s planets?’ asked Complain quickly. He could not bear the thought of leaving here till everything had been told him.
‘A sound question, young man,’ Tregonnin said, looking at him for what was practically the first time. ‘And I’ll try to give you a sound answer. It seems that the flight to Procyon’s planets had two main objectives. The ship was made so big because not only would the confinement of a small ship be unendurable on such a long journey, but it had to carry a number of people called colonists. These colonists were to land on the new planet and live there, increasing and multiplying; the ship transported a lot of machines for them — we have found inventories of some of the things — tractors, concrete mixers, pile drivers — those are some of the names I recall.
‘The second objective was to collect information on the new planet and samples from it, and bring it all back for the men of Earth to study.’
In his jerky fashion, Councillor Tregonnin moved to a cupboard and fumbled about inside it. He brought out a metal rack containing a dozen round tins small enough to fit in a man’s hand. He opened one. Crisp broken flakes like transparent nail parings fell out.
‘Microfilm!’ Tregonnin said, sweeping the flakes under a table with his foot. ‘It was brought in to me from a far corner of Forwards. Damp has ruined it, but even if it were intact it would be of no use to us: it needs a machine to make it readable.’
‘Then I don’t see –’ Complain began puzzledly, but the councillor held up a hand.
‘I’ll read you the labels on the tins,’ he said. ‘Then you’ll understand. Only the labels survive. This one says, “FILM: Survey New Earth, Aerial, Stratospheric, Orbital. Mid-Summer, N. Hemisphere.” This one says, “FILM: Flora and Fauna Continent A, New Earth”. And so on.’
He put the cans down, paused impressively and added, ‘So there, young man, is the answer to your question; on the evidence of these tins, it is obvious the ship reached Procyon’s planets successfully. We are now travelling back to Earth.’