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harsh blue sunlight pouring in through the windows that surrounded the docking port like a
beaded halo.
Ian gasped with amazement as, like a field of steely wheat, a wavering shimmer of metal
rippled up over the multitude. Until all human forms were blotted out beneath ten million
upraised swords.
"Father, Father, Father..."
Smith pushed off from the golden ring and reentered the golden room.
"That is power, Ian Lacklin," he said with a cold glimmer of menace. "Think of that
power when, in vengeance for what we suffered, I unleash it across the world that so
cruelly drove us out into the night."
Ian was silent as together they reboarded the shuttle.
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C H A P T E R 14
Not a word was said between the two as the same performance was repeated at half a
dozen other colonies.
Ian knew he had been invited to the ritual display to be impressed. But for what
purpose? Part of it, he guessed, was to judge his reaction. But by the informal way that he
was treated, Ian suspected that Smith was looking for a contact that was not filled with
ritual, nor blood kin, for that matter.
Finally a question almost anthropological in nature broke the silence.
"Why the swords? I mean, I've been observing your technological level and it's simply
astounding. Why this anachronism? Now, don't take offense, but in my eyes swords are
rather ridiculous in a technological level anywhere beyond the Napoleonic. It's even
stranger when I can't trace any useful cultural lineage out of it. I mean, swords were
never used in space in your time, at least, not in anything above a poorly written video
thriller."
"But there is a cultural lineage," Smith replied. "There's a direct historical linkage that
centers our society around the sword and the mystique of the warrior. One more stop,
Ian Lacklin, and then I shall explain."
The adulation seemed to have put Franklin Smith in a jovial mood, and he laughed as
he entered through the airlock into yet another golden room. Ian sat in the shuttle and
waited as the waves of noise washed the interior. For several minutes he looked across
the star-studded night, the familiar formations now changed, with some brighter, and
others dimmed, or lost altogether. Finally he found the one he was looking for, almost
lost in the harsh glare of Delta.
The chanting would soon be heard there, as well, Ian realized, and he, more than
anyone else alive, would be the one responsible for the devastation to come. He, a
historian, a studier of others, a bookworm lost in fantasies of the heroic past would be the
cause. Ian suddenly realized that in this movement he might very well be the prime
ingredient in the fate of an entire world.
As his eyes scanned the shuttle, Ian recognized the superior technology. Hell, they
had a thousand-year head start, a thousand years without the long night, the plagues, the
convulsive wars that followed. Only in the last two hundred years had Earth reemerged
into the enlightenment. For all practical purposes the only technological advantage his
people had was the translight capability. In all others, they were sadly lacking. So now,
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thanks to his damnable curiosity, Earth's one small advantage would allow Smith to
cross space in a matter of months bringing with him the fire and sword of vengeance.
The chants were still thundering as Smith slipped into the seat next to him, closed the
airlocks, and broke free and away.
"The day we left Earth orbit," Smith suddenly stated, picking up on a question that
Ian had already half forgotten, "we numbered just over one hundred thousand. The
bastards who started the wars knew that we were trapped we who were on that colony.
Even if we made the engines, produced the sails, or deployed our ion packs, we were still
trapped."
"Why?"
"Because the Earthside government forced one hundred thousand people aboard a colony
designed for twenty-five thousand. It was such a crude analogy. Earth with her twelve
billion had exceeded her carrying capacity, and those of us who protested and tried to alter
that equation without resorting to war were forced onto a colony that had far exceeded its
closed eco-capacity, as well. They knew we could only stay alive through massive trans-
shipments from Earth. Those bastards reasoned that if they were defeated, they could still
destroy us outright or leave us in space to linger a slow death until we finally destroyed
ourselves.
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