Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Endless Universe

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—Baby Stealers —

Monsters —Perverts

—Immortals

Those are some of the names the planet-

siders have for them. They call themselves

THE EXPLORERS

And the contempt of the earth-grubbers

means nothing to them, compared to the

lure of the stars. Because they are the last

pioneers, the frontiersmen of space. For the

Explorers, a metal ship is their one true

home, its crew their only family, their lives a

constant adventure in an

ENDLESS

UNIVERSE

Ace Science Fiction Books by Marion Zimmer Bradley

THE BRASS DRAGON

DOOR THROUGH SPACE

ENDLESS UNIVERSE

SEVEN FROM THE STARS

SURVEY SHIP

Darkover series

STAR OF DANGER THE

WINDS OF DARKOVER

THE BLOODY SUN

THE PLANET SAVERS/THE SWORD OF ALDONES/

DARKOVER RETROSPECTIVE

THE WORLD WRECKERS

universe

endless

MARION

ZIMMER

BRADLEY

ACE SCIENCE FICTION BOOKS

NEW YORK

A shorter version of this novel was originally

published as ENDLESS VOYAGE.

ENDLESS UNIVERSE

An Ace Science Fiction Book / published by arrangement with

the author

PRINTING HISTORY

Ace edition / May 1975

Fifth printing / April 1983

1975, 1979 by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Cover art by Attila Hejja

This book may not be reproduced in whole

or in part, by mimeograph or any other means,

without permission. For information address: Ace Science Fiction Books,

200 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016

ISBN: 0-441-20668-9

Ace Science Fiction Books are published by Charter Communications, Inc.,

'200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

" 'Tis not too late to seek a better world."

Tennyson

CONTENTS

I. PLANETS ARE FOR SAYING 1

GOODBYE

II. A TIME TO MOURN 49

III. HELLWORLD 129

IV. COLD DEATH 229

V. A WORLD WITH YOUR NAME

ON IT 295

Part One PLANETS ARE

FOR SAYING GOODBYE

Planets are for saying goodbye.

That's an old saying in the Explorers. I never

believed it before. It never really hit me.

Never again. You never really realize what

never means. It's a word you use all the time but it

means ... it means never. NEVER. Not in all the

millions of billions of trillions of . . .

Get hold of yourself, dammit.'

Everything on this planet had changed, but not

the pattern of the Explorer Ship: it was lighted

now from inside, and outlined in silver; a chained

Titan, shadowed against the dark mass of the

mountain that rose behind the new city.

The city was still raw, a mass of beams and scars

in the wounded red clay of the planet's surface.

Gildoran had first seen the great ship outlined

against the mountain two years ago, planetside

time—before the city had risen there, before any-

thing had risen there—and every day since, but

now it felt as if he hadn't ever seen it before. There

were strange sharp edges on everything, as if the

air had dissolved and he saw them hard-edged in

space.

Never again, I was a fool to think anything

could be different.

How could Janni have done this to me?

I thought she was different. Every fool kid

thinks that about the first woman he cares about.

Gildoran passed through the gates. They were

still guarded, but that was only a formality. On

every planet Gildoran had known—he could re-

member four in twenty-two years of biological

time—the earthworms kept away from Explorer

ships.

I took Janni. I thought she'd have to feel the way

I did. Wonder, and awe. But she was bored. I

should have known then, but instead I was flat-

tered, I thought it was just that she'd rather be

alone with me. Maybe she would. Then.

That seems a long time ago now.

The guard didn't bother checking the offered

ident disk. It was a formality anyhow. Gildoran's

identity was on his face, like all Explorers. He

knew what was whispered about them, but

lifelong training made it beneath Gildoran's dig-

nity to notice it or seem to remember it.

But I remember. Keep away, they say. Keep

away from the Explorers. Keep your children

away. They'll steal your children, steal your

women.

I wouldn't have stolen Janni. But I might have

stayed with her.

He walked with the arrogant pride of all the

Explorers, conscious, and proud, of the differ-

ences that set him off—set him off cruelly, a

planetman might have said—from the rest of the

swarming humanity around the city, the crews

working to load the ships. He stood seven feet

seven, although he was tall even for an Explorer,

due to a childhood and youth spent at mini-

mal gravity. The white—paper-white—skin and

bleached white hair were colorless from years of

hard radiation. He knew there were other dif-

ferences, bone-deep, marrow-deep, cell-deep.

Gene-deep. He never thought about them. But he

had known from childhood that no one else ever

forgot them.

Janni hadn't forgotten them.

Not for a moment.

The crews around the ship parted to let him

through, edging faintly back as he passed. But this

was at the edge of his consciousness. He would

have noticed it only if they hadn't.

Had she only wanted an exotic? Was it only his

strangeness that had attracted her? Not romance,

but a perverse desire for the bizarre, the alien, the

freakish?

Did women like Janni boast of an Explorer

lover, as they might boast the romantic conquest

of a gladiator from Vega 16?

Feeling faintly sick, Gildoran moved toward

the refuge of the ship.

It's beautiful, more beautiful than anything else

they'll ever build here. But it doesn't belong, and

neither do I, and now I know it.

Behind him the new city was swarming with

life, multiplex human, parahuman and nonhu-

man life, the life of a Galaxy which had achieved

the Transmitter and was no longer limited any-

where by space or time. Life showed all sizes,

shapes, colors, and integuments. Isolation and

differences had vanished. All through history,

from the first stirrings of consciousness in man

and nonman, transportation—of people, of goods

and services and ideas—had been the one

bottleneck jamming mankind to an even rate of

growth. But with the advent of the Transmitter,

consciousness in the Galaxy had outstripped that

limitation, and now there were no such limita-

tions.

Or only one limitation. The speed of the

Explorers.

Without us, none of this would be here. But

we're still the freaks. We live in time and

distance. They live free of them.

But only because of us.

The hint of a new planet to be opened, a new

world to be developed and explored, the creation

of new labor markets, new projects and products,

new work of every kind from running ditch-

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摘要：

—BabyStealers—Monsters—Perverts—ImmortalsThosearesomeofthenamestheplanet-sidershaveforthem.TheycallthemselvesTHEEXPLORERSAndthecontemptoftheearth-grubbersmeansnothingtothem,comparedtothelureofthestars.Becausetheyarethelastpioneers,thefrontiersmenofspace.FortheExplorers,ametalshipistheironetruehome,i...

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Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Endless Universe

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