IN LIEU OF SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS, IT IS NECESSARY TO TAP SUBCONSCIOUS SOURCES.
“Tap away.”
The computer did just that. And if it could have been surprised, it would have been at the wishes buried deep in Holman’s inner mind. But instead, it merely correlated those wishes to its single-minded purpose of the moment, and relayed a set of navigational instructions to the ship’s guidance system.
Run to the moon: O Moon, won’t you hide me?
The Lord said: O sinner-man, the moon’ll be a-bleeding
All on that day.
The Final Battle had been lost. On a million million planets across the galaxy-studded universe, mankind had been blasted into defeat and annihilation. The Others had returned from across the edge of the observable world, just as man had always feared. They had returned and ruthlessly exterminated the race from Earth.
It had taken eons, but time twisted strangely in a civilization of light-speed ships. Holman himself, barely thirty years old subjectively, had seen both the beginning of the ultimate war and its tragic end. He had gone from school into the military. And lighting inside a ship that could span the known universe in a few decades while he slept in cryogenic suspension, he had aged only ten years during the billions of years that the universe had ticked off in its stately, objective time-flow.
The Final Battle, from which Holman was fleeing, had been fought near an exploded galaxy billions of light-years from the Milky Way and Earth. There, with the ghastly bluish glare of uncountable shattered stars as a backdrop, the once-mighty fleets of mankind had been arrayed. Mortals and Immortals alike, men drew themselves up to face the implacable Others.
The enemy won. Not easily, but completely. Mankind was crushed, totally. A few fleeing men in a few battered ships was all that remained. Even the Immortals, Holman thought wryly, had not escaped. The Others had taken special care to make certain that they were definitely killed.
So it was over.
Hotman’s mind pictured the blood-soaked planets he had seen during his brief, ageless lifetime of violence. His thoughts drifted back to his own homeworld, his own family: gone long, long centuries ago. Crumbled into dust by geological time or blasted suddenly by the overpowering Others. Either way, the remorseless flow of time had covered them over completely, obliterated them, in the span of a few of Holman’s heartbeats.
All gone now. All the people he knew, all the planets he had seen through the ship’s electroptical eyes, all of mankind. . . extinct.
He could feel the drowsiness settling upon him. The ship was accelerating to lightspeed, and the cyrogenic sleep was coming. But he didn’t want to fall into slumber with those thoughts of blood and terror and loss before him.
With a conscious effort, Holman focused his thoughts on the only other available subject: the outside world, the universe of galaxies. An infinitely black sky studded with islands of stars. Glowing shapes of light, spiral, ovoid, elliptical. Little smears of warmth in the hollow unending darkness; dabs of red and blue standing against the engulfing night.
One of them, he knew, was the Milky Way. Man’s original home. From this distance it looked the same. Unchanged by little annoyances like the annihilation of an intelligent race of star-roamers.
He drowsed.
The ship bore onward, preceded by an invisible net of force, thousands of kilometers in radius, that scooped in the rare atoms of hydrogen drifting between the galaxies and fed them into the ship’s wounded, aching generators.
Something. . . a thought. Holman stirred in the couch. A consciousness—vague, distant, alien—brushed his mind.
He opened his eyes and looked at the computer view-screen. Blank.
“Who is it?” he asked.
A thought skittered away from him. He got the impression of other minds: simple, open, almost childish. Innocent and curious.
It’s a ship.
Where in it. . . oh, yes. I can sense it now. A beautiful ship.
Holman squinted with concentration.
It’s very far away. I can barely reach it.
And inside of the ship. . .
It’s a man. A human!
He’s afraid.
He makes me feel afraid!
Holman called out, “Where are you?”
He’s trying to speak.
Don’t answer!
But. . .
He makes me afraid. Don’t answer him. We’ve Heard about humans!
Holman asked, “Help me.”
Don’t answer him and he’ll go away. He’s already so far off that I can barely hear him.
But he asks for help.
Yes, because he knows what is following him. Don’t answer. Don’t answer!
Their thoughts slid away from his mind. Holman automatically focused the outside viewscreens, but here in the emptiness between galaxies he could find neither ship nor planet anywhere in sight. He listened again, so hard that his head started to ache. But no more voices. He was alone again, alone in the metal womb of the ship.
He knows what is following him. Their words echoed in his brain. Are the Others following me? Have they picked up my trail? They must have. They must be right behind me.
He could feel the cold perspiration start to trickle over him.
“But they can’t catch me as long as I keep moving,” he muttered. “Right?”
CORRECT, said the computer, flashing lights at him. AT A RELATIVISTIC VELOCITY. WITHIN LESS THAN ONE PERCENT OF LIGHTSPEED, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THIS SHIP TO BE OVERTAKEN.
“Nothing can catch me as long as I keep running.” But his mind conjured up a thought of the Immortals. Nothing could kill them. . . except the Others.
Despite himself, Holman dropped into deepsleep. His body temperature plummeted to near-zero. His heartbeat nearly stopped. And as the ship streaked at almost lightspeed, a hardly visible blur to anyone looking for it, the outside world continued to live at its own pace. Stars coalesced from gas clouds, matured, and died in explosions that fed new clouds for newer stars. Planets formed and grew mantles of air. Life took root and multiplied, evolved, built a myriad of civilizations in just as many different forms, decayed and died away.
All while Holman slept.
