By POUL ANDERSON
Illustrated by ED EMSH
A mutiny had given the Whites control
of the starship—but that meant they
could never return to Red-ruled Earth!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity June 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
CHAPTER I
When he first saw the planet, green and blue and cloudy white acrossmany cold stars, Eben Holbrook had a sense of coming home. He turnedfrom the viewport so that Ekaterina Ivanovna should not see the quicktears in his eyes. Thereafter it became a long waiting, but his hopeupbore him and he stayed free of the quarrels which now flared in theship. Nerves were worn thin, three parsecs and fifty-eight years fromEarth; only those who found a way to occupy their hands could endurethis final unsureness. Because it might not be final. Tau Ceti mighthave no world on which men could walk freely. And then it would be backinto the night of suspended animation and the night of unending space,for no man knew how long.
Holbrook was not a scientist, to examine how safe the planet was forrhesus monkeys and human volunteers. He was a nucleonics engineer.Since his chief, Rakitin, had been killed in the mutiny, he was incharge of the thermonuclear ion-drive. Now that the Rurik swung inorbit, he found his time empty, and he was too valuable for CaptainSvenstrup to accept him as a guinea pig down on the surface. But he hadan idea for improving the engines of the great spaceship's auxiliaryboats, and he wrapped himself in a fog of mathematics and made testsand swore and returned to his computations, for all the weeks it took.In spare moments he amused himself with biological textbooks, an oldhobby of his.
That was one way to stay out of trouble, and to forget the scorn incertain hazel eyes.
The report came at last: as nearly as could be told, this world wassuitable for humans. Safer than Earth, in that so far no diseases hadseemed able to attack the newcomers; yet with so similar a biochemistrythat many local meats and plants were edible and the seeds and frozenlivestock embryos on the ship could surely thrive. Of course, it wasalways possible that long-range effects existed, or that in some otherregion—
"To hell with it," said Captain Svenstrup. "We're going down."
After such a word, he would have faced a mutiny himself had he decreedotherwise.
They left the Rurik in orbit and the boats gleamed through a highblue heaven—with just the faintest tinge of purple, in this slightlyredder sunlight—to land on grass twin-bladed but soft and green, neartrees which swayed almost like poplars above a hurried chill river. Notfar away lifted steep, darkly forested hills, and beyond them a fewsnow-peaks haunted the sky. That night fires blazed among temporaryshelters, folk danced and sang, accordions mingled with banjos, thevodka bottle worked harder than the samovar, and quite likely a few newhuman lives were begun.
There were two moons, one so close that it hurtled betweenconstellations not very different from those of home (what was tenlight-years in this god-sized cosmos?) and one stately in a clearcrystal dark. The planet's period of rotation was 31 hours, its axialtilt 11°; seasons here would not be extreme. They named it New Earthin their various languages, but the Russian majority soon had everyoneelse calling it Novaya Zemlya, and that quickly became a simple Novaya.Meanwhile they got busy.
There had been no sign of aborigines to dispute Paradise, but onecould never be certain, nor learn too m