Star Bridge Read Online Free Page B

separated him from the Cluster. Six hours by Tube; half-a-dozen lifetimes by the next quickest means. And the Tubes led through Eron; he had barred himself from Eron by what he had done and what he was going to do.
    Why am I here? Horn wondered, and pushed the thought away.
    â€œGoodnight, idealist,” Wu whispered, and was gone.
    Horn shrugged and scooped up the coins in front of him.
    Whatever you have done to earn these coins was worthwhile.
    He reached for the pistol under his left arm and pulled it down easily. He held it between his knees, pointing toward the desert.
    He hadn’t earned them yet. He would earn them tomorrow.

 
    THE HISTORY
    Civilization.…
    Like everything else, it has a price. The down payment is freedom. For the privilege of living together, men surrender the right to do as they please; they make laws and restrict themselves within them.
    When civilization is conferred from outside, the price is even steeper: someone else makes the laws.
    Only the Tube made possible an interstellar civilization. And only Eron knew the secret of the Tube.
    Some people will not pay the price. They buy freedom instead and pay for it with toil and hardship.
    So men fled before Eron. They fled down the starways in rusty ships ahead of the expanding sphere of civilization and empire.
    In the star cluster once called the Pleiades, freedom stopped running. The stars were close enough for loose federation and trade but too far apart for conquest. Slow ships could link them together into the Quarnon League. Instead of a ship, its symbol was a man.
    And there in the Cluster, freedom died, crushed by Eron in two great wars. For freedom is contagious, and bridges are profitable.
    The news traveled fast: Peter Sair was dead.
    But Sair was a symbol. And symbols, like freedom, cannot die as long as one man still believes in them.…
    Â 
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    3
    THE NARROW BRIDGE
    Horn came awake instantly, his nerves tingling with alarm.
    The pistol was in his hand as he glanced out over the desert. The eastern horizon was beginning to gray. The stars had faded there. But the danger wasn’t in the desert. It was lifeless.
    He looked to the left, but the depression was still dark. Dark and still. But something had changed.
    A man in constant danger learns to depend on his intuition, that subtle analyzer of unconscious perceptions. He has to. Danger will not wait for judgment.
    Stiffened muscles protesting, Horn crept silently down the slope. The hollow was deserted. Only the black ashes in the dust were evidence that someone had been there.
    Wu and the parrot were gone. They had picked up their few belongings and left soundlessly in the night while he slept.
    That was the disturbing factor. For longer than he could remember he hadn’t allowed himself the luxury of real sleep. His sleep was only a step below consciousness, a drowsing broken by the slightest change of environment. How could they have gone without waking him?
    He hadn’t planned to sleep at all. The closer he got to the goal, the greater the pitch of danger. Had it been the rebellion of a body driven beyond endurance? That was ridiculous. And yet he had slept. He felt more rested, more alert than he had since leaving the cruiser.
    If he had been drugged, in spite of his caution, Wu had been clever. Horn added another stroke to the implausibility of their presence here and the greater implausibility of their appearance.
    Horn finished the automatic process of covering the ashes and shrugged. He felt no aftereffects.
    It was unfortunate, nevertheless. The old man would have been useful; Horn was convinced that Wu had known a way to the mesa top. But anger was pointless. To Horn, Wu was a thing to be used. Wu had a right to avoid being used, if he could.
    Horn considered the problem of climbing the mesa. By the growing daylight, he could see no break in the wall. It was likely that the search would take him all day. That was too long.
    Horn ran up the slope