Conan Lang took a long pull on his pipe and set the desk panel for manual-type questioning and visual-screen reception. He hesitated a moment, almost afraid of the machine at his disposal. He didn’t want to know, he suddenly realized. It wasn’t like that. It was rather that he had to know.

  Framing his words carefully, Conan Lang typed out the question that had been haunting him for years:

  Is the Earth itself the subject of process manipulation?

  He waited nervously, sure of the answer but fearful of it nevertheless. There was a faint, all but inaudible hum from the machine and Conan Lang could almost feel the circuits closing in the great walls around him. The air was filled with tension. There was a brief click, and one word etched itself blackly on the clear screen:

  Yes.

  Conan Lang leaned forward, sure of himself now, and typed out another question.

  HOW LONG HAS THE EARTH BEEN MANIPULATED, AND HAS THIS CONTROL BEEN FOR GOOD OR EVIL?

  The machine hummed and answered at once.

  THE EARTH HAS BEEN GUIDED SINCE EARTH YEAR NINETEEN HUNDRED A.D. THE SECOND PART OF YOUR QUESTION IS MEANINGLESS.

  Conan Lang hesitated, staggered in spite of himself by the information he was getting. Then he typed rapidly:

  WITH REFERENCE TO GOOD, EQUATE SURVIVAL OF THE HUMAN RACE.

  The screen clouded, cleared, and the words formed.

  THE CONTROL HAS BEEN FOR GOOD.

  Conan Lang’s breathing was shallow now. He typed tensely:

  HAS THIS CONTROL COME FROM WITHIN THIS GALAXY? IF SO, WHERE? IS THERE USUALLY AN AGENT OTHER THAN EARTH’S IN CHARGE OF THIS MACHINE?

  The hum of the machine filled the blood-red room, and the screen framed the answers.

  THE CONTROL HAS COME FROM WITHIN THE GALAXY. THE SOURCE IS A WORLD KNOWN AS RERMA, CIRCLING A STAR ON THE EDGE OF THE GALAXY WHICH IS UNKNOWN TO EARTH. THE MAN KNOWN AS GOTTLEIB IS A HERMAN AGENT.

  Conan Lang’s pipe had been forgotten and gone out. He put it down and licked his dry lips. So far so good. But the one prime, all-important question had not yet been asked. He asked it

  IF THE PLAN IS FOLLOWED, WHAT WILL BE THE FINAL OUTCOME WITH RESPECT TO RERMA AND THE EARTH?

  The machine hummed again in the red glow, and the answer came swiftly, with a glorious, mute tragedy untold between its naked lines:

  RERMA WILL BE DESTROYED. THE EARTH WILL SURVIVE IF THE PLAN IS CAREFULLY FOLLOWED.

  Conan Lang felt tears in his eyes, and he was unashamed. With time forgotten now, he leaned forward, asking questions, reading replies, as the terrible, wonderful story unfolded.

  Far out on the edge of the galaxy, the ancient planet of Rerma circled her yellow sun. Life had evolved early on Rerma—had evolved early and developed fast. While the other humanoid peoples of the galaxy were living in caves, the Rerma were building a great civilization. When Earth forged its first metal sword, the Rerma split the atom.

  Rerma was a world of science—true science. Science had eliminated war and turned the planet into a paradise. Literature and the arts flourished hand in hand with scientific progress, and scientists worked surrounded by cool gardens in which graceful fountains splashed and chuckled in the sun. Every man was free to develop himself as an individual, and no man bent his head to any other man.

  The Rerma were the human race in full flower.

  But the Rerma were few, and they were not a warlike people. It was not that they would not fight in an emergency, but simply that they could not possibly win an extended encounter. Their minds didn’t work that way. The Rerma had evolved to a point where they were too specialized, too well adjusted to their environment.

  And their environment changed.

  It was only a question of time until the Rerma asked the right questions of their thinking machines and came up with the knowledge that their world, situated on the edge of the galaxy, was directly in the path of a coming cultural collision between two star systems. The Rerma fed in the data over and over again, and each time the great machines came up with the same answer.

  Rerma would be destroyed.

  It was too late for the equation to be changed with respect to Rerma—she had gone too far and was unfortunately located. But for the rest of the human race, scattered on the far-flung worlds that marched along the star trails, there was a chance. There was time for the equation to be changed for them—if only someone could be found to change it! For the Rerma had the knowledge, but they had neither the manpower nor the driving, defiant spirit to do the job themselves. They were capable of making heroic decisions and sticking by them, but the task of remolding a star system was not for them. That was a job for a young race, a proud and unconquerable race. That was a job for the men of Earth.

  The ships of the Rerma found Earth in the earth year 1900. They knew that in order for their plan to succeed the Rerma must stand and fight on that distant day when galaxies collided, for their power was not negligible despite their lack of know-how for a long-range combat. They must stand and fight and be destroyed—the plan, the equation, was that finely balanced. Earth was the only other planet they found that was sufficiently advanced to work with, and it was imperative that Earth should not know that she was being manipulated. She must not suspect that her plans were not her own, for a young race with its pride wounded is a dubious ally and an ineffective fighting mechanism.

  The Rerma set to work—willing even to die for a future they had already lived. The scientists of Rerma came secretly to Earth, and behind them, light-years away, their crystal fountains still sparkled sadly in the sun.

  Rerma would be destroyed—but humanity would not die.

  Conan Lang sat alone in the red room, talking to a machine. It was all clear enough, even obvious, once you knew the facts. Either there were no advanced races in the galaxy, which would account for Earth having no record of any contact—or else the Earth had been contacted secretly, been manipulated by the very techniques that she herself was later to use on undeveloped worlds.

  He looked back on history. Such profound and important changes as the Neolithic food revolution and the steam engine had been produced by Earth alone, making her the most advanced planet in the galaxy except for the Renna. Earth had a tradition of technological skill behind her, and she was young and pliable. The Rerma came—and the so-called world wars had followed. Why? Not to avenge the honor of insulted royalty, not because of fanatics, not because of conflicting creeds—but in a very real sense to save the world. The world wars had been fought to produce atomic power.

  After 1900, the development of Earth had snowballed in a fantastic manner. The atom was liberated, and man flashed upward to other planets of the solar system. Just as Conan Lang himself had worked through the ancestor gods of the Oripesh to bring about sweeping changes on Sirius Ten, the Rerma had worked through one of the gods of the Earthmen—the machine.

  Cybernetics.

  Man swept out to the stars, and the great thinking machines inevitably confronted them with the menace from beyond that drew nearer with each passing year. Young and proud, the men of Earth accepted the most astounding challenge ever hurled—they set out to reshape a galaxy to give their children and their children’s children a chance for life.

  And always, behind the scenes, beneath the headlines, were the ancient Rerma. They subtly directed and hinted and helped. With a selflessness unmatched in the universe, these representatives of a human race that had matured too far prepared Earth for galactic leadership—and themselves for death on the edge of the galaxy. They had unified Earth and pushed and prodded her along the road to survival.

  When the Rerma could have fled and purchased extra time for themselves, they chose instead—these peace-loving people—to fight for another chance for man.

  Conan Lang looked up, startled, to find the black figure of Fritz Gottleib standing by his side. He looked old, very old, in the blood-red light and Conan Lang looked at him with new understanding. Gottlieb’s impatience with others and the vast, empty loneliness in those strange eyes—all that was meaningful now. What a life that man had led on Earth, Conan Lang thought with wonder. Alone, wanting friendship and understanding—and having always to discourage close personal contacts, having always to fight his lonely battle alone in a sterile little room, knowing that the very men he had dedicated his life to help laughed behind his back and compared him to a bird of prey.

  “I’ve been a fool, sir,” Conan Lang said, getting to his feet “We’ve all been fools.”

  Fritz Gottleib sat down again behind his desk and turned the machine off. The red glow vanished, and they were left in the semidarkness.

  “Not fools, Dr. Lang,” he said. “It was necessary for you to feel as you did. The feelings of one old man—what are they worth in this game we are playing? We must set our sights high, Dr. Lang.”

  Conan Lang waited in the shadows, thinking, watching the man who sat across from him as though seeing him for the first time. His mind was still groping, trying to assimilate all he had learned. It was a lot to swallow in a few short hours, even when you were prepared for it beforehand by guesswork and conjecture. There were still questions, of course, many questions. He knew that he still had much to learn.

  “Why me?” Conan Lang asked finally. “Why have I been told all this? Am I the only one who knows?”

  Fritz Gottleib shook his head, his face ghost-white in the darkened room. “There are others who know,” he said sibilantly. “Your superior officer, Nelson White, has known for years of course. You were told because you have been selected to take over his command when he retires. If you are willing, you will work very closely with him here on Earth for the next five years, and then you will be in charge.”

  “Will I…leave Earth again?”

  “Not for a long time, Dr. Lang. The integration-acceleration principle will keep you busy—we are in effect lifting Earth another stage, and the results will be far-reaching. But you will be home, Dr. Lang—home with your family and your people.

  “That is all, Dr. Lang,” Gottleib hissed.

  Conan Lang hesitated. ‘1’ll do my level best,” he said finally.

  “Good-bye, sir…I’ll see you again.”

  Conan Lang put out his hand to the man he had called the Buzzard and Gottleib shook it with a firm, powerful grip.

  “Good-bye, Conan,” Fritz Gottleib said softly.

  Conan Lang turned and walked from the dark room, leaving the man from Rerma sitting alone in the shadows of the Nest.

  The little bullet rose vertically on her copter blades through the evening sky, hovered a moment in the cool air under the frosty stars, and then flashed off on her jets into the west Conan Lang set the controls and leaned back in the seat, at peace with himself at last. There was meaning to it all, there was a purpose—and Andy and all the others like him on the far trails had not sacrificed their lives for nothing.

  Conan Lang breathed the clean air of Earth and smiled happily. Ahead of him, waiting for him, were Kit and Rob, and he would never have to leave them again. He opened the lateral ports and let the wind hurl itself at his face.

  Noise

  Jack Vance

  * * *

  Jack Vance is a writer who enjoys working on the grand scale, producing long novellas, novels, and even clusters of novels such as his multipaneled Demon Princes series, all marked by enormous vitality and fertility of invention. Several of the most vivid and colorful of these adventures have brought him Hugo and Nebula awards. But Vance is no less vivid, no less visionary, when he works within a smaller compass, as can be seen from this short and dreamlike tale of a planet of hallucinatory beauty.

  * * *

  Captain Hess placed a notebook on the desk, and hauled a chair up under his sturdy buttocks. Pointing to the notebook, he said, “That’s the property of your man Evans. He left it aboard the ship.”

  Galispell said in faint surprise, “There was nothing else? No letter? We haven’t heard a word from him.”

  “No, sir, not a thing. That notebook was all he had when we picked him up.”

  Galispell rubbed his fingers along the scarred fibers of the cover. “It’s understandable, I suppose, when you consider what he’d been through.” He flipped back the cover. “Hmmmm.”

  Hess said tentatively, “I suppose—you’ve always thought of Evans as, well, rather a strange chap?”

  “Howard Evans? No, not at all. He’s been a very valuable man to us.” He considered Captain Hess reflectively. “Exactly how do you mean ‘strange’?”

  Hess frowned, searching for the precise picture of Evans* behavior. “I guess you might say erratic, or maybe emotional.”

  Galispell was genuinely startled. “Howard Evans?”

  Hess’s eyes went to the notebook. “I took the liberty of looking through his log, and—well—”

  “And you got the impression he was—strange.”

  Hess flushed stubbornly. “Maybe everything he writes is true. But I’ve been poking into odd comers of space all my life, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Peculiar situation,” said Galispell in a neutral voice. He looked thoughtfully at the notebook.

  Journal of Howard Charles Evans

  I commence this journal without pessimism but certainly without optimism. I feel as if I have already died once. My time in the lifeboat was at least a foretaste of death. I flew on and on through the dark, and a coffin could be only slightly more cramped. The stars were above, below, ahead, astern. I have no clock, and I can put no duration to my drifting. It was more than a week, it was less than a year.

  So much for space, the lifeboat, the stars. There are not too many pages in this journal. I will need them all to chronicle my life on this world which, rising up under me, gave me life.

  There is much to tell and many ways in the telling. There is myself, my own response to this rather dramatic situation. But lacking the knack for tracing the contours and contortions of my psyche, I will try to detail events as objectively as possible.

  I landed the lifeboat on as favorable a spot as I had opportunity to select. I tested the atmosphere, temperature, pressure, and biology; then I ventured outside. I rigged an antenna and dispatched my first SOS.

  Shelter is no problem; the lifeboat serves me as a bed and, if necessary, a refuge. From sheer boredom later on I may fell a few of these trees and build a house. But I will wait; there is no urgency.

  A stream of pure water trickles past the lifeboat; I have abundant concentrated food. As soon as the hydroponic tanks begin to produce, there will be fresh fruits and vegetables and yeast proteins—

  Survival seems no particular problem.

  The sun is a ball of dark crimson, and casts hardly more light than the full moon on Earth. The lifeboat rests on a meadow of thick black-green creeper, very pleasant underfoot. A hundred yards distant in the direction I shall call south lies a lake of inky water, and the meadow slopes smoothly down to the water’s edge. Tall sprays of rather pallid vegetation—I had best use the word “trees”—bound the meadow on either side.

  Behind is a hillside, which possibly continues into a range of mountains; I can’t be sure. This dim red light makes vision uncertain after the first few hundred feet.

  The whole effect is one of haunted desolation and peace. I would enjoy the beauty of the situation if it were not for the uncertainties of the future.

  The breeze drifts across the lake, smelling pleasantly fragrant, and it carries a whisper of sound from off the waves.

  I have assembled the hydroponic tanks, and set out cultures of yeast. I shall never starve or die of thirst. The lake is smooth and inviting; perhaps in time I will build a little boat. The water is warm, but I dare not swim. What could be more terrible than to be seized from below and dragged under?

  There is probably no basis for my misgivings. I have seen no animal life of any kind: no birds, fish, insects, Crustacea. The world is one of absolute quiet, except for the whispering breeze.

  The scarlet sun hangs in the sky, remaining in place during many of my sleeps. I see it is slowly westering; after this long day how long and how monotonous will be the night!

  I have sent off four SOS sequences; somewhere a monitor station must catch them.

  A machete is my only weapon, and I have been reluctant to venture far from the lifeboat. Today (if I may use the word) I took my courage in my hands and started around the lake. The trees are rather like birches, tall and supple. I think the bark and leaves would shine a clear silver in light other than this wine-colored gloom. Along the lake shore they stand in line, almost as if long ago they had been planted by a wandering gardener. The tall branches sway in the breeze, glinting scarlet with purple overtones, a strange and wonderful picture which I am alone to see.

  I have heard it said that enjoyment of beauty is magnified in the presence of others: that a mysterious rapport comes into play to reveal subtleties which a single mind is unable to grasp. Certainly as I walked along the avenue of trees with the lake and the scarlet sun behind, I would have been grateful for companionship—but I believe that something of peace, the sense of walking in an ancient abandoned garden, would be lost.

  The lake is shaped like an hour-glass; at the narrow waist I could look across and see the squat shape of the lifeboat. I sat down under a bush, which continually nodded red and black flowers in front of me.

  Mist fibrils drifted across the lake, and the wind made low musical sounds.

  I rose to my feet and continued around the lake.

  I passed through forests and glades and came once more to my lifeboat

  I went to tend my hydroponic tanks, and I think the yeast has been disturbed, prodded at curiously.