Harry Harrison - To the Stars 2 - Wheelworld

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Harry Harrison

Book Two - WHEELWORLD

One

The sun had set four years ago and had not risen since.

But the time would be coming soon when it would lift over the horizon again.

Within a few short months it would once more sear the planet's surface with

its blue-white rays. But until that happened the endless twilight prevailed

and, in that half-light, the great ears of mutated corn grew rich and full. A

single crop, a sea of yellow and green that stretched to the horizon in all

directions~xcept one. Here the field ended, bounded by a high metal fence, and

beyond the fence was the desert. A wasteland of sand and gravel, a shadowless

and endless plain that vanished into dimness under the twilight sky. No rain

fell here and nothing grew here-in sharp contrast to the burgeoning farmland

beyond. But something lived in the barren plains, a creature that found its

every need in the sterile sands.

The flattened mound of creased gray flesh must have weighed at least six

tonnes. There appeared to be no openings or organs in its upper surface,

although close examination would have revealed that each of the nodules in the

thick skin contained a silicon window that was perfectly adapted to absorb

radiation from the sky. Plant cells beneath the transparent areas, part of the

intricate symbiotic relationships of the lumper, transformed the energy into

sugar. Slowly, sluggishly, by osmotic movement between cells, the sugar

migrated to the lower portion of the creature, where it was transformed into

alcohol and stored in vacuoles until needed. A number of other chemical

processes were also taking place on this lower surface at the same time.

The lumper was draped over a particularly rich outcropping of copper salts.

Specialized cells had secreted acid to dissolve the salts, which had then been

absorbed. This process had been going on for a measureless time, for the beast

had no brain recognizable as such, or any organs to measure time with. It

existed. lt was here, eating, cropping the minerals as a cow would grass.

Until, as in a grazed field, the available supply of food was gone. The time

had come to move on. When the supply of nourishment fell away, chemoreceptors

passed on their messages and the thousands of leg muscles in the lumper's

ridged lower surface began to retract. Fueled now by the carefully stored

alcohol, the muscles were actuated in a single, orgasmic spasm that sent the

six tonnes of thick, carpetlike hulk hurtling over thirty meters through the

air.

It cleared the fence that ringed the farm, and fell with an immense thudding

impact into the two-meter high Gammacorn, crushing it flat, vanishing from

sight behind the screen of green leaves and arm-long, golden ears. At its

thickest point the lumper was only a meter through, so it was completely

hidden from the view of the other creature that rumbled toward it.

Neither of them had a brain. The six-tonne organic beast was controlled

completely by the reflex arcs that it had been born with some centuries

earlier. The metallic creature weighed twenty-seven tonnes, and was controlled

by a programmed computer that had been installed when it was built. Both of

them had senses-but were not sentient. Each was tQtally unaware of the other

until they met.

The meeting was very dramatic. The great form of the harvester approached,

clanking and whirring industriously. It was cutting a swathe thirty meters -

wide through the evenly aligned rows of corn that marched away to the horizon.

In a single pass it cut the corn, separated the ripe ears from the stalks,

chopped the stalks to small bits, then burnt the fragments in a roaring oven.

The water vapor from this instant combustion escaped from a high chimney in

white trails of vapor, the ash billowed out in a black cloud from between the

clanking treads to settle back to the ground. It was a very efficient machine

at doing what it was supposed to do. It was not supposed to detect lumpers

hidden in the corn field. It ran into the lumperand snapped off a good two

hundred kilos of flesh before the alarms brought it to a halt.

As primitive as its nervous system was, the lumper was certainly aware of

something as drastic as this. Chemical signals were released to activate the

jumping feet and within minutes, incredibly fast for a lumper, the muscles

contracted and the beast jumped again. It wasn't a very good leap though,

since most of the alcohol had been exhausted. The effort was just enough to

raise it a few meters into the air to land on top of the harvester. Metal bent

and broke, and many more alarm signals were tripped to add to the ones already

activated by the beast's presence.

Wherever the gold plating of the harvester had been torn or scratched away the

lumper found toothsome steel. It settled down, firmly draped over the great

machine, and began placidly to eat it.

"Don't be stupid!" Lee Ciou shouted, trying to make himself heard above the

babble of voices. "Just think about stellar distances before you start talking

about radio signals. Sure I could put together a big transmitter, no problem

at all. I could blast out a signal that could be even received on

Earth-someday. But it would take twenty-seven years to reach the nearest

inhabited planet. And maybe they wouldn't even be listening...."

"Order, order, order," Ivan Semenov called out, hitting the table with the

gavel in time to the words. "Let us have some order. Let us speak in turn and

be recognized. We are getting nowhere acting in this fashion."

"We're getting nowhere in any case!" someone shouted. "This is all a waste of

time."

There were loud whistles and boos at this, and more banging of the gavel. The

telephone light beside Semenov blinked rapidly and he picked up the handpiece,

stiH banging the gavel. He listened, gave a single word of assent and hung the

instrument up. He did not use the gavel again but instead raised his voice and

shouted.

"Emergency!"

There was instant silence and he nodded. "Jan Kulozik-are you here?"

Jan was seated near the rear of the dome and had not taken part in the

discussion. Wrapped in his own he was scarcely aware of the shouting men, or

of the silence, and had been roused only when he heard his name spoken. He

stood. He was tall and wiry, and would have been thin but for the hard

muscles, the result of long years of physical work. There was grease on his

coveralls, and more smeared on his skin, yet he was obviously more than just a

mechanic. The way he held himself, ready yet restrained, and the way he looked

toward the chairman spoke as clearly as did the golden cogwheel symbol on his

collar.

"Trouble in the fields at Taekeng-four," Semenov said. "Seems a lumper tangled

with a harvester and knocked it out. They want you right away.

"Wait, wait for me," a small man called out, fighting his way through the

crowd and hurrying after Jan. It was Chun Taekeng, head of the Taekeng family.

He was as ill-tempered as he was old, wrinkled, and bald. He punched one man

who did not get out of his way fast enough, and kicked ankles of others to

move them aside. Jan did not slow his fast walk, so that Chun had to run,

panting, to catch up with him.

The maintenance copter was in front of the machine shop, and Jan had the

turbines fired and the blade turning as Chun Taekeng climbed arthritically in.

"Ought to kill the lumpers, wipe out the species," he gasped as he dropped

into the seat by Jan. Jan did not answer. Even if there were any need, which

there was not, wiping out the native species would be next to impossible. He

ignored Chun, who was muttering angrily to himself, and opened the throttle

wide as soon as they had altitude. He had to get there as 50()fl as possible.

Lumpers could be dangerous if they weren't handled right. Most of the farmers

knew little about them-and cared even less.

The countryside drifted by below them like an undulating and yellow specked

green blanket. Harvesting was in its final stages so that the fields of corn

no longer stretched away smoothly in all directions, but had been cut back in

great gaps by the harvesting machines. Rising columns of vapor marked the

places where the machines were working. Only the sky was unchanging, a deep

bowl of unrelieved gray stretching from horizon to horizon. Four years since

he had seen the sun, Jan thought, four endless and unchanging years. People

here didn't seem to notice it, but at times the unchanging halflight was more

than he could bear and he would reach for the little green jar of pills.

"There, down there," Chun Taekeng called out shrilly, pointing a clawlike

finger. "Land right there."

Jan ignored him. The shining gold hulk of the harvester was below them, half

covered by the draped mass of the lumper. A big one, six, seven tonnes at

least. It was usually only the smaller ones that reached the farms. Trucks and

track-trucks were pulled up around it; a cloud of dust showed another one on

its way. Jan circled slowly, while he put a call through on the radio for the

Big Hook, not heeding Chun's orders to land at once. When he finally did set

down, over a hundred meters from the harvester, the little man was beginning

to froth. Jan was completely unafl~cted; it was the members of the Taekeng

family who would suffer.

There was a small crowd gathered around the flattened harvester, pointing and

talking excitedly. Some of the women had chilled bottles of beer in buckets

and were setting out glasses. It was a carnival atmosphere, a welcome break

from the monotony and drudgery of their lives. An admiring circle watched

while a young man with a welding torch held it close to the draping curtain of

brown flesh that hung down the side of the machine. The lumper rippled when

the flame touched it; greasy tendrils of foul-smelling smoke rose from the

burnt flesh.

"Turn off that torch and get out of here," Jan said.

The man gaped up slackly at Jan, mouth hanging 6pen, but did not turn off the

torch or move. There was scarcely any distance between his hairline and his

eyebrows and he had a retarded look. The Taekeng family was very small and

inbred.

"Chun," Jan called out to the Family Head as he tottered up, wheezing. "Get

that torch away before there is trouble."

Chun shrieked with anger and emphasised his remarks with a sharp kick. The

young man fled with the torch. Jan had a pair of heavy gloves tucked into his

belt and he pulled them on. "I'll need some help," he said. "Get shovels and

help me lift the edge of this thing. Don't touch it underneath though. It

drips acid that will eat a hole in you."

With an effort a flap was lifted and Jan bent to look under. The flesh was

white and hard, wet with acid. He found one of the many jumping legs, the size

and roughly the same shape as a human leg. It was folded into a socket in the

flesh and it pulled back when he dragged on it. But it could not resist a

continuous tension and he drew it out far enough to see the direction of bend

of the stocky knee. When he released it it slowly returned to position.

'All right, let it drop." He stepped away and scratched a mark on the ground,

then turned and sighted along it. "Get those trucks out of there," he said.

"Move them off to left and right, at least as far away as the copter. If this

thing jumps again it will land on top of them. After the burning it might just

do that."

There was some confusion as to what he meant, but no confusion when Chun

repeated the orders at the top of his lungs. They moved quickly. Jan wiped his

gloves on the stubble then climbed on top of the harvester. A sound of loud

fluttering announced the arrival of the Big HOQk. The big copter, the largest

on the planet, rumbled up and hovered overhead. Jan took his radio from his

belt and issued orders. A square opening appeared in the belly and a lifting

bar dropped slowly down at the end of the cable. The downdraft of the rotors

beat at Jan as he placed the bar carefully, then set the large hooks, one by

one, into the edge of the lumper. If the creature felt the sharp steel in its

flesh, it gave no indication. When the hooks were set to his satisfaction, Jan

circled his hand over his head and the Big Hook began to slowly lift.

Following his directions, the pilot put tension on the cable, then began

carefully to reel it in. The hooks sank deep and the lumper began to shiver

with a rippling motion. This was the bad time. If it jumped now it could wreck

the copter. But the edge came up, higher and higher, until the moist white

underside was two meters in thc air. Jan chopped with his hand and the Big

Hook moved slowly away, towing the edge of the creature behind it level with

the ground. It was like taking a blanket by the edge and turning it back.

Smoothly and easily the lumper rolled until it was lying on its back on the

ground, its underside a great expanse of glistening white flesh.

In a moment it changed, as the thousands of legs shot suddenly into the air,

an instantly grown forest of pale limbs. They stood straight up for long

seconds, then slowly dropped back to rest.

"It's harmless now," Jan said. "It can't get off its back."

"Now you will kill it," Chun Taekeng said warmly.

Jan kept the distaste from his voice. "No, we don't want to do that. I don't

think you really want seven tonnes of rotting flesh in your field. We'll leave

it there for now. The harvester is more important:' He radioed the Big Hook to

land, then detached the lumper from the lift bar.

There was a bag of soda ash in the copter, kept there for just this kind of

emergency. There was always some kind of lumper trouble. He climbed on top of

the harvester again and threw handfuls of soda ash into the pools of acid.

There did not seem to be much pitting, but there could be trouble inside if

the acid had dripped into the machinery. He would have to start taking the

plates off at once. A number of the covers were buckled and some of the bogie

wheels torn free, so that it had shed one track. It would be a big job.

With the one track still powered, and four trucks towing the other side, he

managed to back the harvester a good two meters away from the lumper. Under

the critical eye, and even more critical comments, of Chun Taekerig, he had

the Big Hook drag the lumper into position and turn it over.

"Leave the ugly beast here! Kill it, bury it! Now it is right side up again

and will jump again and kill us all."

"No it won't," Jan said. "It can only move in one direction, you saw how the

legs were aligned. When it jumps again it will-be headed back for the

wastelands."

"You can't be sure, accurate....

'Accurate enough. I can't aim it like a gun, if that's what you mean. But when

it goes it is going out of here."

Right on cue the lumper jumped. It had no reasoning power and no emotions. But

it did have a complex set of chemical triggers. They must all have been

activated by the rough handling it had had, the apparent reversal of gravity,

burning, and having pieces removed. There was a heavy thud as all the legs

kicked out at once. Some of the women screamed and even Chun Taekeng gasped

and fell back.

The immense form was hurled into the air, soaring high. It cleared the field

and the sensor beams and fell heavily into the sand outside. A heavy cloud of

dust rolled out on all sides of it.

Jan took his toolbox from the copter and set to work on the harvester, pleased

to lose himself in his work. As soon as he did this, when he was left alone,

his thoughts returned instantly to the ships. He was tired of thinking about

them and talking about them, but he could not forget them. No one could forget

them.

Two

"I don't want to talk about the ships," Alzbeta Mahrova said. "That's all

anyone ever talks about now.

She --sat on the bench on the public way, very close to Jan with the length of

her thigh pressed hard against his. He could feel the warmth of her body

through the thin fabric of her dress and the cloth of his coveralls. He wrung

his hands tightly together so that the tendons stood out like cables in his

wrists. This- was as close as he was ever going to get to her, here on this

planet. He looked at her out of the corners of his eyes; the smooth tanned

skin of her arms, the black hair to her shoulders, her eyes wide and dark too,

her breasts...

"The ships are important," he said, taking his eyes from her with an effort,

looking with disinterest at the thick-walled storage building across the width

of the lava road. "They are six weeks late today, and we are four weeks late

in leaving. Something must be decided tonight. Have you asked The Hradil again

about our getting married?"

"Yes," Alzbeta said, turning toward him and taking his hands in hers, even

though people walking by could see them. Her eyes were dark and sorrowful.

"She refused to hear me out. I must marry someone from the Semenov Family, or

I must not marry. That is the law?'

"Law!" He grated the word out like an oath, pulling his hands from hers,

moving away from her on the bench, tortured by her touch in a way she did not

know. "This is no law, just custom, stupid custom, peasant superstition. On

this peasant planet around a blue-and-white star that can't even be seen from

Earth. On Earth I could be married, have a family."

"But you are not on Earth." She spoke so softly he barely heard her:

It drained the anger from him, making him suddenly weary. Yes, he was not on

Earth and would never return to Earth. He had to make his life here and find a

way of bending the rules. He could not break them. His watch read twenty

hours, though the endless twilight still prevailed. Though the twilight was

four years long, men still measured time with their watches and clocks, with

the rhythms in their bodies of a planet light-years distant.

"They've been in that meeting and going at it for over two hours now, going

-over the same ground again and again. They should be tired." He rose to his

feet.

"What will you do?" she asked. -

"What must be done. The decision cannot be put oil any longer."

She took his hand briefly in hers, letting go quickly, as though she

understood what the touch of her skin did to him. "Good luck."

"It's not me that needs the luck. My luck ran out when I was shipped from

Earth on a terminal contract."

She could not go with him, because this was a meeting of the Family Heads and

the technical officers only. As Maintenance Captain he had a place here. The

inner door to the pressurized dome was locked and he had to knock loudly

before the lock rattled and it opened. Proctor Captain Ritterspach looked out

at him suspiciously from his narrow little eyes.

"You're late."

"Shut up, Hem, and just open the door." He had very little respect for the

Proctor Captain, who bullied those beneath him in rank, toadied to those

above.

The meeting was just as demoralized as he had expected. Chun Taekeng, as

Senior Elder, had the chair, and his constant hammering and screaming when he

was ignored did nothing to help quiet things. There was cross talk and bitter

denunciation, but nothing positive was being proposed. They were repeating the

same words they had been using for over a month, getting no place. The time

had come.

Jan walked forward, holding up his hand for attention, but was ignored by

Chun. He walked closer still until he stood before the small man, looming over

him. Chun waved him away angrily and tried to peer ar6und him, but Jan did not

move.

"Get out of here, back to your seat, that is an order."

"I am going to speak. Shut them up.

The voices. were dying down, suddenly aware of him. Chun hammered loudly with

the gavel, and this time there was silence.

"The Maintenance Captain will speak~' he called out, then threw the gavel down

with disgust. Jan turned to face them

am going to tell you some facts, facts you cannot argue with. First-the ships

are late. Six weeks late. In all the years the ships have been coming, they

have never been this late. Only once in all that time have they been more than

four days late. The ships are late and we have used up all our time waiting.

If we stay we burn. In the morning we must stop work and begin preparations

for the trip."

"The last corn in the fields someone shouted.

"Will be burned up. We leave it. We are late already. I ask our Trainmaster

Ivan Semenov if this is not true."

"What about the corn in the silos?" a voice called out, but Jan ignored that

question for the moment. One step at a time.

"Well, Semenov?"

With reluctance the gray head nodded solemnly. "Yes, we must leave. We must

leave to keep to our schedule."

"There it is. The ships are late, and if we wait any longer we will die

waiting. We must begin the trip south, and hope they will be waiting for us

when we get to Southland. It is all we can do. We must leave at once, and we

must take the corn with us.

There was stunned silence. Someone laughed briefly, then shut up. This was a

new idea, and they were only confused by new ideas.

"It is impossible," The Hradil finally said, and many heads nodded in

agreement. Jan looked at the angular face and thin lips of the leader of

Alzbeta's family, and kept his voice toneless and flat so his hatred of her

would not show.

"It is possible. You are an old woman who knows nothing of these matters. I am

a captain in the service of science and I tell you it can be done. I have the

figures. If we limit our living space during the trip we can carry almost a

fifth of the corn with us. We can then empty the trains and return. If we go

fast, this can be done. The empty trains will be able to carry two-fifths of

the corn. The rest will burn-but we will have saved almost two-thirds of the

crop. When the ships come they must have the food. People will be starving. We

will have it for them."

They fotind their voices and shouted questions at him and at each other,

derision and anger on all sides, with the gavel banging unnoticed. He turned

his back and ignored them. They would have to talk it out, walk around the new

idea and spit on it a bit. They were reactionary, stubborn peasants, and they

hated anything new. When they quieted down he would speak to them, now he kept

his back turned and ignored them, looking at the great map of the planet that

hung from the dome, the only decoration in the big hall.

Halvmo~rk, that's what the first discovery team had called it. Twilight, the

twilight world. Its name in the catalogues was oflicially Beta Aurigae III,

the third planet out and the only one that was habitable of the six worlds

that circled the fiercely hot blue-and-white star. Or barely habitable. For

this planet was an anomaly, something very interesting to the astronomers who

had studied it and entered the facts into their records, and passed on. It was

the great axial tilt of the world that made it so fascinating to the

scientists, almost habitable to the people who lived there. - The axial tilt

of forty-one degrees and the long, flattened ellipse of the orbit created a

most singular situation. Earth had an axial tilt of only a few degrees, and

that was enough to cause the great change in the seasons. The axis is the line

about which a planet revolves; the axial tilt the degree that the axis

deviates from the vertical. Forty-one degrees is a very dramatic deviation,

and this, combined with the long ellipse of its orbit, produced some very

unusual results.

Winter and summer were each four Earth years long. For four long years there

was darkness at the winter pole, the planetary pole that faced away from the

sun. This ended, suddenly and drastically, when the planet turned the brief

curve at one end of the elliptical orbit and summer came to the winter pole.

The climatic differences were brutal and dramatic as the winter pole became

the summer one, to lie exposed to sun for four years, as it had done to the

winter darkness.

While in between the poles, from 40 degrees north to 40 degrees south, there

was endless burning summer. The temperature at the equator stayed above 200

degrees most of the time. At the winter pole the temperature remained in the

thirties and there was even an occasional frost. In the extremes of

temperature of this deadly planet there was only one place where men could

live comfortably. The twilight zone. The only habitable place on -Halvm6rk was

this zone around the winter pole. Here the temperature varied only slightly,

between 70 degrees and 80 degrees, and men could live and crops could grow.

Wonderful, mutated crops, enough to feed a half-dozen crowded planets.

Atomic-powered desalination plants supplied the water, turning the chemicals

from the rich sea into fertilizer. The terrestrial plants had no enemies,

because all the native life on the planet was based on copper compounds, not

carbon. Each flesh was poison to the other. Nor could the copper based plant

life compete for physical space with the faster growing, more energetic carbon

forms. They were squeezed out, eliminated-and the crops grew. Crops adapted to

the constant, muted, unending light, and unchanging temperature. They grew and

grew and grew.

For four years, until the summer came and the burning sun rose above the

horizon and made life impossible again. But when summer arrived at one

hemisphere, winter fell in the other and there was another habitable twilight

zone at the opposite pole. Then it would be possible to farm the other

hemisphere for four years, until the seasons changed again.

The planet was basically very productive once the water and the fertilizer

were supplied. The local plant life presented no problems. The Earth's economy

was such that getting settlers was no problem either. With the FTL drive,

transportation costs were reasonable. When the sums had been carefully done

and checked it was clear that food crops could be produced most reasonably,

and transported cheaply to the nearest inhabited worlds, while the entire

operation was designed to show a handsome profit as well. It could be done.

Even the gravity was very close to Earth norm, for while Halvmo~rk was larger

than Earth it was not nearly as dense. Everything was very possible. There

were even two large land masses around the poles that contained the needed

twilight zones. They could be farmed turn and turn about, for four years each.

It could be done.

Except how did you get your farmers and equipment from zone td zone every four

years? A distance of nearly twenty-seven thousand kilometers?

Whatever discussions and plans had been proposed were long since buried in

forgotten files. But the few options open were fairly obvious. Simplest, and

most expensive, would be to provide for two different work forces. While

duplicating machinery and buildings would not be excessively expensive, the

thought of a work force loafing in air conditioned buildings for five years

out of every nine was totally unacceptable. Unthinkable to work managers who

wrung every erg of effort from their laborers with lifetime contracts.

Transportation by sea must have been considered; Halvm6rk was mostly ocean,

except for the two polar continents and some island chains. But this would

have meant land transportation to the ocean, then large, expensive ships that

could weather the violent tropical storms. Ships that had to be maintained and

serviced to be used just once every four and a half years. Also unthinkable.

Then was there a possible solution?

There was. The terraforming engineers had much experience in making planets

habitable to man. They could purify poison atmospheres, melt icecaps and cool

tropics, cultivate deserts and eliminatejungles. They could even raise land

masses where desired, sink others that were not needed. These latter dramatic

changes were brought about by the careful placing of gravitronic bombs. Each

of these was the size of a small building, and had to be assembled in a

specially dug cavern deep in the ground. The manner of their operation was a

secret carefully kept by the corporation that built them-but what they did was

far from secret. When activated, a gravitronic bomb brought about a sudden

surge of seismic activity. A planet's crust would be riven, the magma below

released, which in turn brought about normal seismic activity. Of course this

could only be effective where the tectonic plates overlapped, but this

ustially allowed for a wide enough latitude of choice.

The gravitronic bombs had brought a chain of flaming volcanoes from the ocean

deeps of Halvm6rk, volcanoes that vomited out lava that cooled and turned to

stone to form an island chain. Before the volcanic activity died down, the

islands became a land bridge connecting the two continents. After this it was,

relatively speaking, a simple matter to lower the tallest mountains with

hydrogen bombs. Even simpler still was the final step of leveling the

rough-shaped land with fusion guns. These same guns smoothed the surface to

make a solid stone highway from continent to continent, reaching almost from

pole to pole, a single road 27,000 kilometers in length.

Doing this could not have been cheap. But the corporations were all-powerful,

and controlled the Earth's wealth completely. A consortium could have been

formed easily enough, was formed, for the returns would be rich and continue

forever.

The forced settlers of Halvm6rk were migrant farmers with a vengeance. For

four years did they labor, raising and storing their crop against the day when

the ships came. It was the long awaited, highly exciting, most important event

in the cycle of their existence. The work ended when the ships signaled their

arrival. The standing corn was left in the field and the party began, for the

ships also brought everything that made life possible on this basically

inhospitable world. Fresh seed when needed, for the mutated strains were

unstable and the farmers were not agricultural scientists who could control

this. Clothing and machine parts, new radioactive slugs for the atomic

engines, all the thousand and one parts and -supplies that maintained a

machine-based culture on a nonmanufactu ring planet. The ships stayed just

long enough to offload the supplies and fill their holds with the grain. Then

they left and the party ended. All the marriages were consummated, for this

was the only time when marriage was allowed, all the celebrations finished,

all the liquor drunk.

Then the trip began.

They moved like gypsies. The only permanent structures were the machine

storage buildings and the thick-walled grain silos. When the partitions had

been taken down and the tall doors levered open, the trucks and copters, the

massive harvesters, planters and other farm machinery were wheeled inside.

With their vitals cocooned and their machinery sealed in silicon grease, they

would wait out the heat of the summer until the farmers returned the following

fall.

Everything else went. The assembly hall and the other pressurized dome

structures were deflated and packed away. When the jacks were retracted, all

the other narrow, long buildings settled onto the springs and wheels beneath

them. The women had been canning and storing food for months, the slaughter of

the sheep and cows haef filled the freezers with meat. Only a few chicks, ewe

lambs and cow calves would be taken; fresh herds and flocks would be raised

from the sperm bank.

When everything was in place the farm tractors and trucks would haul the units

into position to form the long trains, before being mothballed and sealed into

the permanent buildings and silos themselves. The engines, the main drive

units, would be unjacked after four years of acting as power plants, and would

rumble into place at the head of each train. With the couplings and cables

connect ed, the train would come to life. All the windows would be sealed and

the air conditioning switched on. It would not be turned off again until they

had reached the twilight zone of the southern hemisphere, and the temperatures

were bearable again. The thermometer could easily top 200 degrees when they

crossed the equator. Though the night temperatures sometimes fell as low as

130 degrees this could not be counted upon. Halvm6rk rotates in eighteen

hours, and the nights are too short for any real temperature drop.

"Jan Kulozik, there is a question for you. Your attention here, Kulozik, that

is an order!" Chun Taekeng's voice was beginning to crack a bit after a good

evening of shouting.

Jan turned from the map and faced them. There were a lot of questions but he

ignored them all until the noise died down.

"Listen to me," Jan said. "I have worked out in detail what must be done, and

I will give you the figures. But before I do you must decide. Do we take the

corn or not, it is just that simple. We must leave, you cannot argue about

that. And before you decide about the corn, remember two things. If and when

the ships come they will need that corn because people will be starving.

Thousands, perhaps millions, will die if they do not get it. If we do not have

that corn waiting, their lives will be on our heads.

"If the ships do not come, why then we will die too. Our supplies are low,

broken parts cannot be replaced, two of the engines already have lowered

output and will need refueling after thi~ trip. We can live for a few years,

but we are eventually doomed. Think' about that, then decide.

"Mr. Chairman, I ask for a vote."

When The Hra4il rose and signaled for attention, Jan knew that it would be a

long, dragged-out battle. This old woman, leader of the Mahrova Family,

represented the strength of reaction, the force against change. She was

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HarryHarrisonBookTwo-WHEELWORLDOneThesunhadsetfouryearsagoandhadnotrisensince.Butthetimewouldbecomingsoonwhenitwouldliftoverthehorizonagain.Withinafewshortmonthsitwouldoncemoreseartheplanet'ssurfacewithitsblue-whiterays.Butuntilthathappenedtheendlesstwilightprevailedand,inthathalf-light,thegreatears...

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Harry Harrison - To the Stars 2 - Wheelworld

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