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want to kill you.
It s our choice. Casey shrugged. When you have to jump across hundreds of
years of space and time, don t you always take a risk?
Not like this one. She shrugged unhappily. Enthel Two is toward the
galactic core. So is this new one. If the killer is coming from the core
Pale face set, she shook her fair-haired head.
We ll take the risk. Casey glanced again at us and gave her a stiff little
grin. You might remind him that we weren t cloned to live forever. He has
more at stake than we do.
Her body stiffened, fading slowly white.
The Ultimate Earth by Jack Williamson
54
Tling and I have begged him. Her voice was faint. But he feels commanded.
By his nanorobs? Can t he think of you and Tling?
Her answer took a long time to come.
You don t understand them. She seemed composed again; I wondered if her own
nanorobs had eased her pain.
You may see them as micromachines, but they don t make us mechanical. We ve
kept all the feelings and impulses the primitives had. The nanorobs simply
make us better humans.
Sandor is going not just for the colonists, but for me and
Tling, for people everywhere.
If the odds are as bad as they look Casey squinted doubtfully. What can
one man hope to do?
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Nothing, perhaps. She made a bleak little shrug. But he has an idea. Long
ago, before he ever left Earth to search for his brother, he worked with his
mother on her nanorob research. He has reprogrammed himself with the science.
If the killer is some kind of virulent organism, he thinks the nanorobs might
be modified into a shield against it.
Speak to him, Casey begged her. Get him to take us with him. We ll help him
any way we can.
You? Astonishment widened her eyes. How?
We put you here on Earth, he told her. Even with no nanorobs at all.
So you did. Golden color flushed her skin. I ll speak to him. Silent for a
moment, she shook her head. Impossible.
He says every seat on the ship is filled.
The Ultimate Earth by Jack Williamson
55
She paused, frowning at the ceiling. The robot was moving around the table,
offering a bowl of huge flesh-colored mushrooms that had a tempting scent of
frying ham.
We are trying to plan a future for Tling. Her face was suddenly tight, her
voice hushed with feeling. A thousand years will pass before he gets back. He
grieves to leave
Tling.
I saw her this morning, I said. She s terribly hurt.
We are trying to make it up. I ve promised that she will see him again.
Pepe looked startled. How can that happen?
She took a mushroom, sniffed it with a nod of approval, and laid it on her
plate.
We must plan the time, she told him. Tling and I will travel. I want to see
what the centuries have done to my own homeworld. It will take careful
calculation and the right star flights, but we ll meet him back here on the
date of his return.
If
Casey swallowed his voice. Her face went pale, but after a moment she gave us
a stiff little smile and had the robot offer the mushrooms again. They had a
name I never learned, and a flavor more like bittersweet chocolate than ham.
The meal ended. She left us there alone with the robots, with nowhere to go,
no future in sight.
A thousand years! Pepe muttered. I wish we had nanorobs.
Or else
Casey turned to the door.
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56
News for you. Lo stood there, smiling at us. News from the emigrant ship.
Uneasy passengers have arranged for new destinations, leaving empty places.
Sandor has found seats for you.
The Ultimate Earth by Jack Williamson
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57
7.
Sandor took us to our seats on the emigrant ship. Wheel-
shaped and slowly spinning, it held us to the floors with a force weaker than
Earth s gravity, stronger than the Moon s.
A blue light flashed to warn us of the space-time slide.
Restraints folded around us. I felt a gut-wrenching tug. The restraints
released us. With no sense of any other change, we sat uneasily waiting.
The big cabin was hushed. Watching faces, I saw eager expectation give way to
disappointment and distress. I heard a baby crying, someone shouting at a
robot attendant, then a rising clamor of voices at the brink of panic. Sandor
sat looking gravely away till I asked him what was wrong.
We don t know. He grinned at our dazed wonderment.
At least we ve made the skip to orbit. Five hundred light-
years. You re old men now.
He let us follow him to the lounge, where a tall ceiling dome imaged a new
sky. The Milky Way looked familiar. I
found the Orion Nebula, but all the nearer stars had shifted beyond
recognition. I felt nothing from the ship s rotation; the whole sky seemed to
turn around us. Two suns rose, set close together. One was yellow, smaller and
paler than our own, the brighter a hot blue dazzle. The planet climbed behind
them, a huge round blot on the field of unfamiliar stars, edged with the blue
sun s glare. Looking for the glow of cities, all I saw was darkness.
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Anxious passengers were clustering around crew members uniformed in the ship s
blue-and-gold caps and sashes. Most of their questions were in the silent
language of the nanorobs, but their faces revealed dismay. I heard voices
rising higher, cries of shock and dread.
We turned to Sandor.
The telescopes pick up no artificial lights. His lean face was bleakly set.
Radio calls get no answer. The electronic signal spectrum appears dead. He
shook his head, with a heavy sigh. I was thinking of my brother. I d hoped to
find him here.
With gestures of apology to us, uneasy people pushed to surround him. He
looked away to listen, frowning at the planet s dark shadow, and turned
forlornly to go. He spoke his final words for us.
We ll be looking for survivors.
We watched that crescent of blue-and-orange fire widen with each passage
across the ceiling dome till at last we saw the planet s globe. Swirls and
streamers of high cloud shone brilliantly beneath the blue sun s light, but
thick red dust dulled everything under them.
One hemisphere was all ocean, except for the gray dot of an isolated island. A
single huge continent covered most of the other, extending far south of the
equator and north across the pole. Mountain ranges walled the long west coast.
A
single giant river system drained the vast valley eastward.
From arctic ice to polar sea it was all rust-red, nothing green anywhere.
The Ultimate Earth by Jack Williamson
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