Campbell, John W Jr - Forgetfullness

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FORGETFULNESS

DONA. STUART

RON THULE, the astronomer, stood in the. lock gate and looked down across the sweep of gently rolling land.

Slowly, he breathed in the strange, tangy odors of this planet. There was something of a vast triumph in his eyes, and

something of sorrow. They had been here now scarcely five hours, and the sun was still low in the east, rising slowly.

Out beyond, above the western horizon, a pale ghost of the strange twin world of this planet, less than a third of a

million miles distant, seemed a faint, luminous cloud in the deep, serene blue of the sky.

It was triumph, for six long years of travel, at a speed close to that of light, lay behind them; three and a half light

years distant was Pareeth, and the crowding people who had built and launched the mighty two-thousand-five-

hundred foot, interstellar cruiser that had brought this little band of one hundred. Launched in hope and striving,

seeking a new sun with new planets, new worlds to colonize. More

than that, even, for this new-found planet was a stepping-stone to other infinities beyond. Ten years of unbroken

travel was the maximum any ship they could build would endure. They had found a planet, in fact, nine planets.

Now, the range they might explore for new worlds was extended by four light years.

And there was sorrow there, too, for there was a race here now. Ron Thule turned his eyes toward the little clustering

village nestled in the swale of the hills, a village of simple, rounded domes of some opalescent, glassy material. A

score of them straggled irregularly among the mighty, deep-green trees that shaded them from the morning sun,

twenty-foot domes of pearl and rose and blue. The deep green of the trees and the soft green of the mosslike grass

that covered all the low, rounded hills gave it a certain beauty; the sparkling colors of the little gardens about the

domes added color and further beauty. It was a lovely spot, a spot where space-wearied, interstellar wanderers might

rest in delight. A village, indeed, where anyone might rest in ease and enjoyment, after long, long labors.

Such it was. There was a race on this planet the men of Pareeth had found after six long years of space, six years of

purring, humming atomic engines and echoing gray steel fabric that carried and protected them. Harsh utility of giant

girders and rubbery flooring, the snoring drone of forty quadrillion horse power of atomic engines. It was replaced

now by the soft coolness of the grassy land; the curving steel of the girders gave way to the brown of arching trees;

the stern ceiling of steel plates gave way to the vast, blue arch of a planet's atmosphere. Sounds died away in

infinitudes where there was no steel to echo them back; the unending drone of the mighty engines had become

breezes stirring, rustling leaves—an invitation to rest.

The race that lived here had long since found it such, it seemed. Ron Thule looked across the little village of domes

to the largest of them, perhaps thirty feet across. Commander Shor Nun was there with his archeologist and

anthropologist—and a half score men of this planet. Rhth, they called it.

The conference was breaking up now. Shor Nun appeared, tall and powerful, his muscular figure in trim Interstellar

Expedition uniform of utilitarian, silvery gray. Behind him came the other two in uniform —young, powerful men of

Pareeth, selected for this expedition because of physical and mental perfection, as was every man of them.

Then came Seun, the man of Rhth. He was taller, slimmer, an almost willowy figure. His lean body was clothed in an

elastic, close-fitting suit of golden stuff, while over his shoulders a glowing, mag-

nificently shimmering cape of rich blue was thrown. Five more of these men came out, each in a golden suit, but the

draped capes glowed in deep reds, and rich greens, blues and violets. They walked leisurely beside the men of

Pareeth. An unconscious force made those trimly uniformed men walk in step between the great, arching trees.

They came near, and Shor Nun called out, "Is the expedition ready?"

From the forward lock, Toth Mour replied, "Aye, commander. Twenty-two men. What do these people say?"

Shor Nun shook his head slightly. "That we may look as we wish. The city is deserted. I cannot understand them.

What arrangements have you made?"

"The men you mentioned are coming. Each head of department, save Ron Thule. There will be no work for the

astronomer."

"I will come, Shor Nun," called out the astronomer, softly. "I can sketch; I would be interested."

"Well enough, as you like. Toth Mour, call the men into formation; we will start at once. The day varies in length,

but is some thirteen hours long at this season, I am told."

Ron Thule leaped down to the soft turf and walked over toward the group. Seun looked at him slowly and smiled.

The man of Rhth looked taller from this distance, nearly six and a third feet in height. His face was tanned to a

golden color that came near to matching the gold of his clothing. His eyes were blue and very deep. They seemed

uncertain—a little puzzled, curious about these men, curious about the vast, gray bulk that had settled like a grim

shadow over the low hill. Half a mile in length, four hundred feet in diameter, it loomed nearly as large as the age-

old, eroded hills it had berthed on. He ran a slim-fingered hand through the glinting golden hair that curled in unruly

locks above a broad, smooth brow.

"There is something for an astronomer in all this world, I think." He smiled at Ron Thule. "Are not climate and soils

and atmospheres the province of astronomy, too?"

"The chemists know it better," Ron Thule replied, and wondered slightly at his replying. He knew that the man of

Rhth had not spoken, simply that the thought had come to be in his mind. "Each will have his special work, save for

me. I will look at the city. They will look at the buildings and girders and the carvings or mechanisms, as is their

choice. I will look at the city."

Uneasily, he moved away from the group, started alone across the field. Uneasiness settled on him when he was near

this Seun, this descendant of a race that had been great ten millions of years before his own first sprang from the

swamps. Cheated heir to a glory five million years lost.

The low, green roll of the hill fell behind him as he climbed the grassy flank. Very slowly before his eyes, the city

lifted into view. Where the swelling curve of the hill faded softly into the infinite blue of the sky, first one little point,

then a score, then hundreds appeared, as he walked up the crest—the city.

Then he stood on the crest. The city towered before him—five miles away across the gently rolling green swale.

Titan city of a Titan race! The towers glowed with a sun-fired opalescence in the golden light of the sun. How long,

great gods of this strange world, how long had they stood thus? Three thousand feet they rose from the level of age-

sifted soil at their bases, three thousand feet of mighty mass, stupendous buildings of the giants long dead.

The strange little man from a strange little world circling a dim, forgotten star looked up at them, and they did not

know, or care. He walked toward them, watched them climb into the blue of the sky. He crossed the broad green of

the land, and they grew in their uncaring majesty.

Sheer, colossal mass, immeasurable weights and loading they were —and they seemed to float there on the grace of a

line and a curve, half in the deep blue of the sky, half touching the warm, bright green of the land. They floated still

on the strength of a dream dreamed by a man dead these millions of years. A brain had dreamed in terms of lines and

curves and sweeping planes, and the brain had built in terms of opal crystal and vast masses. The mortal mind was

buried under unknown ages, but an immortal idea had swept life into the dead masses it molded—they lived and

floated still on the memory of a mighty glory. The glory of the race—

The race that lived in twenty-foot, rounded domes.

The astronomer turned. Hidden now by the rise of the verdant land was one of the villages that race built today. Low,

rounded things, built, perhaps, of this same, strange, gleaming crystal, a secret half remembered from a day that must

have been—

The city flamed before him. Across ten—or was it twenty—thousand millenniums, the thought of the builders

reached to this man of another race. A builder who thought and dreamed of a mighty future, marching on, on forever

in the aisles of time. He must have

looked from some high, wind-swept balcony of the city to a star-sprinkled sky—and seen the argosies of space:

mighty treasure ships that swept back to this remembered home, coming in from the legion worlds of space, from far

stars and unknown, clustered suns; Titan ships, burdened with strange cargoes of unguessed things.

And the city peopled itself before him; the skies stirred in a moment's flash. It was the day of Rhth's glory then!

Mile-long ships hovered in the blue, settling, slow, slow, home from worlds they'd circled. Familiar sights, familiar

sounds, greeting their men again. Flashing darts of silver that twisted through mazes of the upper air, the soft, vast

music of the mighty city. The builder lived, and looked out across his dream———

But, perhaps, from his height in the looming towers he could see across the swelling ground to the low, rounded

domes of his people, his far descendants seeking the friendly shelter of the shading trees—

Ron Thule stood among the buildings of the city. He trod a pavement of soft, green moss, and looked behind to the

swell of the land. The wind had laid this pavement. The moving air was the only force that maintained the city's

walks. A thousand thousand years it has swept its gatherings across the plain, and deposited them as an offering at

the base of these calm towers. The land had built up slowly, age on age, till it was five hundred feet higher than the

land the builder had seen.

But his dream was too well built for time to melt away. Slowly time was burying it, even as, long since, time had

buried him. The towers took no notice. They dreamed up to the blue of the skies and waited. They were patient; they

had waited now a million, or was it ten million years? Some day, some year, the builders must return, dropping in

their remembered argosies from the far, dim reaches of space, as they had once these ages gone. The towers waited;

they were faithful to their trust. They had their memories, memories of a mighty age, when giants walked and worlds

beyond the stars paid tribute to the city. Their builders would come again. Till then— naught bothered them in their

silence.

But where the soft rains of a hundred thousand generations had drained from them, their infinite endurance softened

to its gentle touch. Etched channels and rounded gutters, the mighty carvings dimming, rounding, their powerful

features betrayed the slow effects. Perhaps—it had been so long—so long—even the city was forgetting what once it

was. They had waited, these towers, for....

And the builders walked in the shade of the trees, and built rounded domes. And a new race of builders was come, a

race the city did not notice in its age-long quiet. Ron Thule looked up to them and wondered if it were to be that his

people should carry on the dream begun so long ago.

Softened by the silence, voices from the expedition reached him. "—diamond won't scratch it, Shor Nun—more

elastic than beryl steel. Tough——" That was Dee Lun, the metallurgist. He would learn that secret somehow. They

would all learn. And Shor Nun, commander, executive, atomic engineer, would learn the secrets that their power

plants must hold. The dream—the city's life—would go on!

Ron Thule wandered on. No duty his, today, no responsibility to study carefully the form and turn of sweeping line,

the hidden art that floated ten millions of tons of mass on the grace of a line. That for the archeologist and the

engineer. Nor his to study the cunning form of brace and girder, the making of the pearly walls. That for metallurgist

and chemist.

Seun was beside him, looking slowly about the great avenues that swept away into slim canyons in the distance.

"Your people visited ours, once," said Ron Thule softly. "There are legends, the golden gods that came to Pareeth,

bringing gifts of fire and the bow and the hammer. The myths have endured through two millions of our years—four

and a half millions of yours. With fire and bow and hammer my people climbed to civilization. With atomic power

they blasted themselves back to the swamps. Four times they climbed, discovered the secret of the atom, and blasted

themselves back to the swamps. Yet all the changes could not efface the thankfulness to the golden gods, who came

when Pareeth was young."

Seun nodded slowly. His unspoken thoughts formed clear and sharp in the astronomer's mind. "Yes, I know. The city

builders, it was. Once, your sun and ours circled in a system as a double star. A wandering star crashed through that

system, breaking it, and in the breaking making planets. Your sun circled away, the new-formed planets cooling; our

sun remained, these worlds cooling till the day life appeared. We are twin races, born of the same stellar birth. The

city builders found that, and sought your worlds. They were a hundred thousand light years distant, in that time,

across all the width

of the galaxy, as the two suns circled in separate orbits about the mass of the galaxy.

"The city builders went to see your race but once; they had meant to return, but before the return was made they had

interfered in the history of another race, helping them. For their reward the city builders were attacked by their own

weapons, by their own pupils. Never again have we disturbed another race."

"Across the galaxy, though. The Great Year—how could they— so many stars——"

"The problem of multiple -bodies? The city builders solved it; they traced the orbits of all the suns of all space; they

knew then what sun must once have circled with ours. The mathematics of it—I.have forgotten—I cannot develop it.

I am afraid I cannot answer your thoughts. My people have forgotten so many things the city

builders knew.

"But your people seek entrance to the buildings. I know the city, all its ways and entrances. The drifting soil has

covered every doorway, save those that once were used for the great airships. They are still unblocked. I know of one

at this level, I think. Perhaps———"

Ron Thule walked slowly back toward the group. Seun was speaking with Shor Nun, and now they angled off across

the city. Their voices hushed; their footfalls were lost in the silence that brooded forever over the towers. Down

timeless avenues they marched, a tiny band in the valley of the Titans. The towers marched on and on, on either side,

up over low hills, beyond the horizon. Then, before them, in the side of one of the milky walls a great opening

showed. Some five feet above the level of the drifted soil, it led into the vast, black maw of the building. The little

party grouped at the base, then, laboriously, one of the engineers boosted and climbed his way to the threshold and

dropped a rope to a companion.

Seun stood a bit apart, till Shor Nun lifted himself up to the higher level and stood on the milky floor. Then the man

of Rhth seemed to glow slightly; a golden haze surrounded him and he floated effortlessly up from the ground and

into the doorway.

The engineers, Shor Nun, all stood frozen, watching him. Seun stopped, turned, half smiling. "How? It is the lathan,

the suit I wear."

"It defies gravity?" asked Shor Nun, his dark eyes narrowing in keenest interest.

"Defies gravity? No, it does not defy, for gravity is a natural law. The city builders knew that. They made these suits

shortly before they left the city. The lathan simply bends gravity to will. The mechanism is in the filaments of the

back, servant to a wish. Its operation—I know only vague principles. I—I have forgotten so much. I will try to

explain———"

Ron Thule felt the thoughts parading through his mind: Nodes and vibrations, atoms and less than atoms, a strange,

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FORGETFULNESSbyDONA.STUARTRONTHULE,theastronomer,stoodinthe.lockgateandlookeddownacrossthesweepofgentlyrollingland.Slowly,hebreathedinthestrange,tangyodorsofthisplanet.Therewassomethingofavasttriumphinhiseyes,andsomethingofsorrow.Theyhadbeenherenowscarcelyfivehours,andthesunwasstilllowintheeast,risi...

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Campbell, John W Jr - Forgetfullness

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