The Indulgence of Negu Mah Read online

  He gestured with one plump hand toward the silhouetted ship.

  "I believe they have entered the Vulcan," he announced. "I saw light as the entrance port opened then."

  The amphibian's great, frog head nodded agreement.

  "So," Negu Mah continued, "I have decided to exercise what indulgence I can in the face of the injury they would do me. They shall have their chance."

  He fell silent again. Sliss leaned forward in his tub. Both of them watched intently. A flare of greenish light had sprung up beneath the black pillar that was the Vulcan. For just an instant the freighter stood there, green radiance expanding around her. Then she leaped into the sky.

  With her leap, she seemed to suck the radiance along. It became a great cone of glowing light that, arrow-like, raced away upward. For a long instant the black length of the ship, and the greenish fan of flame, were outlined against the scarlet background of Jupiter. Then the freighter rocket, flinging herself upward at three gravities or better, passed the edge of the planet and vanished.

  Negu Mah sat very quiet for some moments. But at last he stirred again. Sliss' eyes turned toward him, immobile.

  "Sometimes love transforms the weak," the uranium merchant said slowly. "Like fire giving temper to soft metal. Sometimes a mutual love will endure for all eternity, and the two who share it will gain from it a soul they did not have before. Nanlo and Hugh Neils have this chance. Both said they wanted only the other, and their love, for all eternity. To gain this, both were willing to cheat, to steal, to dishonor me and themselves.

  "So, Sliss, my understanding friend, they have paid the price, they shall have what they ask for.

  "As the man, Hugh Neils, said, there is fuel and food in the holds of the Vulcan to run the motors and last the lifetime of a man—or a man and a woman. Indeed, two lifetimes, or three, for I was aware of their plans, and secretly I placed aboard the craft many additional supplies. Fuel, and food, and books, and tools. And one additional thing the two who flee now there in space have not counted upon.

  "Into the controls of the Vulcan one of my engineers has placed a small device. After two hundred hours, or when they are well beyond Jupiter, this device will swing the Vulcan straight toward Proxima Centauri, the nearest star. In that position the controls will lock. And for twenty years, a generation, it will be impossible either to alter the course of the Vulcan or to shut her blast motors off.

  "At the end of that time the last tank of reserve fuel will be exhausted, and they will cease automatically. Then once more the Vulcan may be controlled by those aboard. They may switch the motors onto the tanks of fuel in the cargo holds, and continue onwards. If they were celestial navigators, they might try to turn, and seek earth again. But they are not navigators, and the sun will be but a tiny spark in the limitless darkness, one with a million others, not to be told apart. They will know that only Proxima Centauri in all space may the Vulcan hope to reach in their lifetime, or perhaps even in that of their descendants, for a message to that effect they will find presently.

  "So it may be that they will continue onward of their own choice. If they make no choice, momentum will carry them onward, perhaps forever.

  "But in any case, Nanlo and Hugh Neils will have exactly what they have asked for—each other, for all eternity. If truly that was what they wanted, a great destiny may be theirs. A lifetime of travel can bring them to the stars. They or their descendants can be the first humans to bridge the gap of nothingness that has thus far daunted the stoutest hearts."

  As they watched, the green dart of light dwindled and was gone. And quite invisible at last in the arms of outer darkness, the Vulcan sped its two passengers onward toward the stars.

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  Document creation date: 15.7.2013

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  Robert Jay Arthur

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