Project Pope Read Online Free Page B

out, dumps them off, packs in the ones he hauled on the previous trip and takes them back to Gutshot.”
    â€œThey all come from Gutshot? I never heard of any pilgrims there.”
    â€œProbably none from Gutshot, which is just the port of entry to End of Nothing. They come from all over this sector of the galaxy, flying in from everywhere, gathering and waiting for the ship to End of Nothing. Then our captain herds them aboard and flies them out to Project Pope.”
    â€œYou’re not a pilgrim?”
    â€œDo I look like one?”
    â€œNo, you don’t. How about the loan of that bottle for a moment?”
    She handed him the bottle.
    â€œI don’t know the entire story,” she said. “I’m going out to have a look at it. It should provide material for several articles. Perhaps even a book.”
    â€œBut you must have some idea, which is more than I have.”
    â€œJust the basic rumor. Just the tangled stories that one hears. Actually rumor may be all, but I think not. There must be something out there, with all this pilgrim traffic. I tried first to track down where the pilgrims were coming from, but that proved a dead end. There is no concentration of them. A few come from one planet, a few from still another, one or two from yet a third. All of them non-human—maybe specific kinds of aliens, although of that I’m not sure. Apparently all members of obscure cults or sects. Maybe each sect has a different faith—if you can call what they have a faith—but all of them are somehow tied in with this Pope project. That doesn’t necessarily mean they know anything about it. It may just be something on which they can base a shaky faith. Creatures of all kinds reaching for a faith, willing to grab at almost anything just so it’s mysterious or spectacular, preferably both. The thing that bothers me, the thing that sends me out, is that the whole business has a human ring to it. The site of Project Pope, as I understand it, is called Vatican-17 and—”
    â€œHold up a minute,” said Tennyson. “That does have a human ring. There was a Vatican on Earth …”
    â€œThere still is,” she said. “The center of the Roman Catholic faith, which still exists on Earth and on several other human planets, is still headed by a pope and is still as strong as ever, perhaps stronger, its people still as devout as ever. But I doubt that this Vatican-17 has anything to do with the one on Old Earth. It sounds like some sort of take-off. For one thing, there are robots—”
    â€œWhat would robots have to do with an Old Earth religion?”
    â€œI don’t know and I don’t think it is an Earth religion. Someone, perhaps the robots, borrowed the terminology …”
    â€œBut robots?”
    â€œI know. I know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
    â€œAnd End of Nothing?”
    â€œEnd of Nothing,” she said, “is out on the Rim. Among the Rim stars, of which there are not many. A lot of space. Not much of anything else. At the very edge of intergalactic space. So far as the planet is concerned, I know nothing except that it is Earthlike. No trouble for humans to live there. This ship, I am told, gets there in a standard month or less. How many times the speed of light that is, I have no idea. The old crate is equipped with an inertial drive, which one would not suspect in such a wreck. No great danger involved. It mostly crosses empty space. The ship makes six round trips a year, which spells out to an awful lot of pilgrims hauled. The captain is an enigma. He probably could have command of one of the proudest interstellar liners; he has the required status. But here he is, running pilgrims he despises.”
    â€œBut making a barrel of money. Told me five more years and he can retire to a planet named Apple Blossom.”
    â€œYes, he told me that, too. Apparently he tells everyone. I don’t