Islands of Space
XVIII
Hundreds of years ago, on Nansal, there had lived a wise and brilliantteacher named Norus. He had developed an ideal, a philosophy of life, acode of ethics. He had taught the principles of nobility withoutarrogance, pride without stubbornness, and humility without servility.
About him had gathered a group of men who began to develop and spreadhis ideals. As the new philosophy spread across the planet, more andmore Nansalians adopted it and began to raise their children accordingto its tenets.
But no philosophy, however workable, however noble, can hope to converteveryone. There always remains a hard core of men who feel that "the oldway is the best way". In this case, it was the men whose lives had beenbased on cunning, deceit, and treachery.
One of these men, a brilliant, but warped genius, named Sator, had builtthe first spaceship, and he and his men had fled Nansal to set up theirown government and free themselves from the persecution they believedthey suffered at the hands of the believers of Norus.
They fled to the second planet, where the ship crashed and the builder,Sator, was killed. For hundreds of years, nothing was heard of theemigrants, and the people of Nansal believed them dead. Nansal was atpeace.
But the Satorians managed to live on the alien world, and they built acivilization there, a civilization based on an entirely differentsystem. It was a system of cunning. To them, cunning was right. The manwho could plot most cunningly, gain his ends by deceiving his friendsbest, was the man who most deserved to live. There were a fewrestrictions; they had loyalty, for one thing--loyalty to their countryand their world.
In time, the Satorians rediscovered the space drive, but by this time,living on the new planet had changed them physically. They were somewhatsmaller than the Nansalians, and lighter in color, for their world wasalways sunless. The warm rays of the sun had tanned the skins of theNansalians to a darker color.
When the Satorians first came to Nansal, it was presumably in peace.After so many hundreds of years without war, the Nansalians acceptedthem, and trade treaties were signed. For years, the Satorians tradedpeacefully.
In the meantime, Satorian spies were working to find the strengths andweaknesses of Nansal, searching to discover their secret weapons andprocesses, if any. And they rigorously guarded their own secrets. Theyrefused to disclose the secrets of the magnetic beam and the magneticspace drive.
Finally, there were a few of the more suspicious Nansalians who realizedthe danger in such a situation. There were three men, students in one ofthe great scientific schools of Nansal, who realized that the situationshould be studied. There was no law prohibiting the men of Nansal fromgoing to Sator, but it seemed that Nature had raised a more impenetrablebarrier.
All Nansalians who went to Sator died of a mysterious disease. A methodwas found whereby a man's body could be sterilized, bacteriologicallyspeaking, so he could not spread the disease, and this was used on allSatorians entering Nansal. But you can't sterilize a whole planet.Nansalians could not go to Sator.
But these three men had a different idea. They carefully studied thespeech and the mannerisms and customs of the Satorians. They learned toimitate the slang and idioms. They went even further; they picked threeSatorian spaceship navigators and studied them minutely every time theygot a chance, in order to learn their habits and their speech patterns.The three Satorians were exceptionally large men, almost perfect doublesof the three Nansalians--and, one by one, the Nansalians replaced them.
They had bleached their faces, and surgeons, working from photographs,changed their features so that the three Nansalians were exact doublesof the three astrogators. Then they acted. On three trips, one of themen that went back as navigator was a Nansalian.
It was six years before they returned to Nansal, but when they finallydid, they had learned two things.
In the first place, the 'disease' which had killed Nansalians who hadcome in contact with Satorians on Nansal was nothing but a poison whichacted on contact with the skin. The Nansalians who had gone to Sator hadsimply been murdered. There was no disease; it had simply been aSatorian plot to keep Nansalians from going to Sator.
The second thing they had learned was the secret of the Satorianmagnetic space drive.
It was common knowledge on Sator that their commander would soon leadthem across space to conquer Nansal and settle on a world of clear airand cloudless skies, where they could see the stars of space at night.They were waiting only until they could build up a larger fleet andlearned all they could from the Nansalians.
They attacked three years after the three Nansalian spies returned withtheir information.
During those three years, Nansal had secretly succeeded in building up afleet of the magnetic ships, but it went down quickly before the vastlygreater fleet of the Satorians. Their magnetic rays were deadly, killingeveryone they struck. They could lift the iron-boned Nansalians highinto the air, then drop them hundreds of feet to their death.
The buildings, with their steel and iron frames, went down, crushinghundreds of others. They practically depopulated the whole planet.
But the warnings of the three spies had been in time. They had enlargedsome of the great natural caverns and dug others out of solid rock. Herethey had built laboratories, factories, and dwelling places farunderground, where the Satorians could never find them.
Enough men reached the caverns before the disaster struck to carry on.They had been chosen from the strongest, healthiest, and mostintelligent that Nansal had. They lived there for over a century, whilethe planet was overrun by the conquerors and the cities were rebuilt bythe Satorians.
During this century, the magnetic ray shield was developed by the hiddenNansalians. Daring at last to face their conquerors, they built a cityon the surface and protected it with the magnetic force screen.
By the time the Satorians found the city, it was too late. A battlefleet was mobilized and rushed to the spot, but the city wasimpregnable. The great domed power stations were already in operation,and they were made of nonmagnetic materials, so they could not be pulledfrom the ground. The magnetic beams were neutralized by the shield, andno ship could pass through it without killing every man aboard.
That first city was a giant munitions plant. The Nansalians builtfactories there and laughed while the armies of Sator raged impotentlyat the magnetic barrier. They tried sending missiles through, but theinduction heating in every metal part of the bombs either caused them toexplode instantly or to drop harmlessly and burn.
In the meantime, the men of Nansal were building their fleet. TheSatorians stepped up production, too, but the Nansalians had developed amethod of projecting the magnetic screen. Any approaching Satorian shiphad its magnetic support cut from under it, and it crashed to theground.
It took nearly thirty years of hard work and harder fighting for theNansalians to convince the people of Sator that Nansal and thephilosophy of Norus had not only not been wiped out, but was capable ofwiping out the Satorians.
With their screened and protected fleet, the followers of Norus smashedthe Satorian cities, and drove their enemy back to Sator.
There were only three enemy cities left on Nansal when, somehow, theymanaged to learn the secret of the magnetic screen.
By this time, the forces of Nansal had increased tremendously, and theydeveloped the next surprise for the Satorians. One after another, thethree remaining cities were destroyed by a barrage of poison gas.
The fleet of Sator tried to retaliate, but the Nansalians were preparedfor them. Every building had been sealed and filters had been built intothe air conditioning systems.
Shortly, the men of Nansal were again in control of their planet, andthe fleet stood guard over the planet.
The Satorians, beaten technologically, were still not ready to give up.Falling back on their peculiar philosophy of life, they pulled a trickthe Nansalians would never have thought of. They sued for peace.
The government of Nansal was willing; they had had enough of bloodshed.They pe
rmitted a delegation to arrive. The ship was escorted into thecity and the parleying began.
The Satorian delegation asked for absolutely unreasonable terms. Theydemanded fleet bases on Nansal; they demanded an unreasonable rate ofexchange between the two powers, one which would be highly favorable toSator; they wanted to impose fantastic restrictions on Nansalian traveland none whatsoever on their own.
Month followed month and months became years as the diplomats of Nansaltried, patiently and logically, to show the Satorians how unreasonabletheir demands were.
Not once did they suspect that the Satorians had no intention of tryingto get the conditions they asked for. Their sole purpose was to drag theparleying on and on, bickering, quarreling, demanding, and concedingjust enough to give the Nansalians hope that a treaty might eventuallybe consummated.
And during all that time, the factories of Sator were working furiouslyto build the greatest fleet that had ever crossed the space between thetwo planets!
When they were ready to attack, the Satorian delegation told Nansalfrankly that they would not treaty with them. The day the delegationleft, the Satorian fleet swept down upon Nansal!
The Nansalians were again beaten back into their cities, safe behindtheir magnetic screens, but unable to attack. But the forces of Satorhad not won easily--they had, in fact, not won at all. Their supply linewas too long and their fleet had suffered greatly at the hands of thedefenders of Nansal.
For a long while, the balance of power was so nearly equal that neitherside dared attack.
Then the balance again swung toward Nansal. A Nansalian scientistdiscovered a compact method of storing power. Oddly enough, it wassimilar to the method Dr. Richard Arcot had discovered a hundredthousand light centuries away! It did not store nearly the power, andwas inefficient, but it was a great improvement over their older methodof generating energy in the ship itself.
The Nansalian ships could be made smaller, and lighter, and moremaneuverable, and at the same time could be equipped with heavier, morepowerful magnetic beam generators.
Very shortly, the Satorians were again at the mercy of Nansal. Theycould not fight the faster, more powerful ships of the Nansalians, andagain they went down in defeat.
And again they sued for peace.
This time, Nansal knew better; they went right on developing their fleetwhile the diplomats of Sator argued.
But the Satorians weren't fools; they didn't expect Nansal to swallowthe same bait a second time. Sator had another ace up her sleeve.
Ten days after they arrived, every diplomat and courier of the Satoriandelegation committed suicide!
Puzzled, the government of Nansal reported the deaths to Sator at once,expecting an immediate renewal of hostilities; they were quite sure thatSator assumed they had been murdered. Nansal was totally unprepared forwhat happened; Sator acknowledged the message with respects and saidthey would send a new commission.
Two days later, Nansal realized it had been tricked again. A horribledisease broke out and spread like wildfire. The incubation period wastwelve days; during that time it gave no sign. Then the flesh began torot away, and the victim died within hours. No wonder the ambassadorshad committed suicide!
Millions died, including Torlos' own father, during the raging epidemicthat followed. But, purely by lucky accident, the Nansalian medicalresearch teams came up with a cure and a preventive inoculation beforethe disease had spread over the whole planet.
Sator's delegation had inoculated themselves with the disease and, atthe sacrifice of their own lives, had spread it on Nansal. Although theSatorians had developed the horribly virulent strain of virus, they hadnot found a cure; the diplomats knew they were going to die.
Having managed to stop the disease before it swept the planet, theNansalians decided to pull a trick of their own. Radio communicationwith Sator was cut off in such a way as to lead the Satorian governmentto believe that Nansal was dying of the disease.
The scientists of Sator knew that the virus was virulent; in fact, toovirulent for its own good. It killed the host every time, and the viruscould not live outside a living cell. They knew that shortly after everyNansalian died, the virus, too, would be dead.
Their fleet started for Nansal six months after radio contact had brokenoff. Expecting to find Nansal a dead planet, they were totallyunprepared to find them alive and ready for the attack. The Satorianfleet, vastly surprised to find a living, vigorous enemy, was totallywiped out.
Since that time, both planets had remained in a state of armed truce.Neither had developed any weapon which would enable them to gain anadvantage over their enemy. Each was so spy-infested that no move couldpass undiscovered.
Stalemate.