But of all of them, 61 Cygni IV had been perfect, truly a paradise planet. After him scientific and exploratory crews had gone to 61 Cygni, checking out what Robert did not have the means or knowledge to check. Then a test colony had gone out, backed by the knowledge that they could return to Earth in an instant by way of a starjump Threshold station in the event of any trouble, and the test colony had found no trouble.
It was a perfect planet, so perfect that half the test colony thumbed their noses at the Joint Conference’s request that they return for examination, electing to stay right there. Mike Janner was one of them, soon to become a leader and administrator of the colony, and within two years five thousand others had joined them, working to make way for the potential fifty million colonists that the planet could eventually absorb.
“It was fine,” Mike Janner was saying now, in his dry, cracked voice. “Plenty of building materials there, plenty of men to work, so we built. Some thought they didn’t like it and came back, but most of them spent about three days on Earth and then petitioned to return to Cygni, and plenty of room for them, too. Then I came back for the Joint Conference meeting on other star colonies, with two other delegates, and starjumped back after the meeting—and the whole colony was gone! People, buildings, livestock, everything. It looked as though nobody had ever been there before—the ground wasn’t even broken, even though the Threshold station was still there.”
Robert stared at him. “Just…gone?”
“Gone. We thought maybe the time-slip was playing tricks on us, or that maybe the station had been moved, even though it was in the same valley, with the same background, the same trees, the same mountains. But all was empty. Nothing there, nobody…”
“What did you do?” Robert asked.
“We started searching. For the colony.” The man shrugged weakly. “I know, we should have turned back right then and checked with the commission first, but we never thought of it. All we wanted was to find the colony, so we started looking. And then the heat began.”
“The heat?” Robert said. “You mean the temperature went up?”
Janner looked at him, his sunken eyes frightened. “I don’t know. It looked like the temperature stayed just the same as it ever was, a nice, comfortable 75 degrees. Bright sun. Nice breeze, like always. No, we were the ones that started getting hot. We thought at first it was just the contrast with things back home, thought maybe our blood had gotten thicker. But we started panting, and sweating, and pretty soon it seemed like we were roasting alive and we couldn’t get cool. And hungry! Within two hours we were so hungry we could hardly stand it. I swear that in two more hours we’d started to lose so much weight you could notice the skin sagging. But it wasn’t hot outside. And then Stevie starting going barmy, babbling like he had a fever, and I felt his forehead and saw that he was burning up, and I wasn’t feeling too good then myself, and began to feel like I was going crazy.”
The medic shook his head in warning, waved the agitated man back, but Janner crawled up to sit on the edge of the bed, his arms so skinny they looked like bones covered with parchment. “I tell you, doc—no, you’re not doc—but I tell you, we weren’t there four hours before we were roasting in our own skins! Our hearts were pounding like crazy, and no sign of the others anywhere, and losing weight and getting so weak we could hardly drag ourselves into the station again, and all the time that beautiful sun smilin’ down on us like nothing was wrong.”
“I’m sorry,” the doctor broke in, nodding to a nurse standing by. “He isn’t in condition—”
“Just one more question, Mr. Janner,” Robert said. “What do you think was happening to you? What do you think was wrong?”
“I don’t know, it just didn’t make sense, but I do know one thing—”
Somebody opened the cubicle door, handed Hank Merry a blue memo sheet. He looked at it and grimaced as Robert asked: “What do you know, Mr. Janner?”
“I know what Cygni is like!” the man choked. “I’ve lived there five years, now, and you can’t fool me. I don’t know where your Threshold dumped me, but it wasn’t on any Cygni I ever saw before, or else I’m losing my mind.”
Robert looked at the doctor. “How much weight did he lose?”
“Seventy pounds,” the doctor said. “And not just water, either. Fat and protein as well.”
Hank handed Robert the blue memo. “Read that,” he said.
Robert started, then looked at the memo sheet. It was signed by Margie, marked urgent to Hank Merry. “Need you back at the office fast,” it read. “The colony on 61 Cygni IV just radioed a general alarm. Delegate Mike Janner and two others never returned to the colony.
Twelve hours overdue, and the colony is up in arms. All five thousand of them.”
Hank and Robert looked at each other. The messenger waited. “Any reply, Dr. Merry?”
“Yes, yes. Send somebody out there…oh, my. No, don’t. Send them a message that their delegates were delayed because of—illness—and are safe at Ironstone. And tell them to acknowledge the signal but not to send anyone back. Get that?”
The messenger nodded and hurried out. The doctor was already in the cubicle with the nurse, helping to restrain the agitated man in the bed, who was insisting upon setting up on his spindly legs, gesticulating wildly and still talking, even less coherently than before. “Well,”
Hank said finally, “we’ve got a mess on our hands.”
“That’s the right word,” Robert said glumly. “I’m afraid that man hit it right on target.
Whenever the Threshold dumped him, it wasn’t any Cygni he ever saw before—or anybody else, I’m afraid.”
—7—
Later, in Hank’s office, they tried to piece it together. At first they had Jonathan Tarbox to deal with, waving his yellow cigar and threatening unmentionable things, but Robert dispatched a brief call to Earth, and within twenty minutes had two heavy-jawed Security men waiting in the anteroom to escort Tarbox back to Earth for interrogation, a development the little man had not anticipated. “It may be some years before they get through interrogating him,” Robert said dryly. “Security can be very thorough when it wants to be. But Tarbox and his pipeline are only part of the picture. Right now there are more important things to think about. Like a man who has lost seventy pounds of weight in four hours, for a start.”
Alone in the office, Hank and Robert stared at each other in moody silence.
“I don’t get it,” Robert said finally. “I don’t know where he could have been sent to. But Mike Janner obviously didn’t get back to where he thought he was going.”
“How can you be sure?” Hank said.
“Because colonies don’t disappear overnight,” Robert returned. “On the other hand, the odds of some other planet somewhere having the same physical appearance and characteristics as Cygni—enough to fool a resident of the place—are so slender they’re ridiculous. And the alarm message, too. Obviously, there’s a colony out there on 61 Cygni IV
wondering why Mike Janner failed to arrive on schedule. Mike Janner just didn’t get to where the colony is, that’s all.”
“Then where did he get to?” asked Hank.
“I don’t know. Maybe the Thresholders made a mistake. They never have understood routing, as far as I can tell. That’s why I had to work with them so long; finding the routes was a hit and miss proposition. Once I had a given route established, they could follow it all right, or seemed to. But suppose now they’ve gotten the angle just a whisker off? They must have, somehow. But even so, I don’t see how the thing Mike Janner told us could have happened, Anywhere. Much less on Cygni.”