Nemesis Read Online Free PDF Page A

bringing with them all the hatreds and misfittings of Earth’s dismal history. Give us time to be here alone and we can build a system of Settlements that will be uniform in culture and ecology. It will be a far better situation—less chaotic, less anarchic.”
    “Less interesting. Less variegated. Less alive.”
    “Not at all. We’ll diversify, I’m sure. The different Settlements will have their differences, but there will, at least, be a common base from which those differences will spring. It will be a far better group of Settlements for that. And even if I am wrong, surely you see that it’s an experiment that must be tried. Why not devote one star to such a reasoned development and see if it works? We can take one star, a red dwarf throwaway that no one would be ordinarily interested in, and use it to see if we can build a new kind of society and possibly a better one.
    “Let us see what we can do,” he went on, “if we don’t have our energies worn out and broken by useless cultural differences, and our overall biology constantly perverted by alien ecological inroads.”
    Insigna felt herself moved. Even if it didn’t work, humanity would have learned something—that this wouldn’t work. And if it
did
work?
    But then she shook her head. “It’s a useless dream. The Neighbor Star will be independently discovered, no matter how we try to keep it secret.”
    “But how much of your own discovery, Eugenia, was accidental? Be truthful now. You just happened to notice the star. You just happened to compare it with what you could see on another map. Might you not have missed it altogether? And might not others have missed it under similar circumstances?”
    Insigna did not answer, but the expression on her face was satisfactory to Pitt.
    His voice had grown softer, almost hypnotic. “And if there is a delay of only a hundred years. If we are given only a hundred years to ourselves to build our new society, we would be large enough and strong enough to protect ourselves and make the others pass by and go onto other worlds. We won’t have to hide any longer than that.”
    Again Insigna did not answer.
    Pitt said, “Have I convinced you?”
    She seemed to shake herself. “Not entirely.”
    “Then think about it, and I’ll ask you just one favor. While you think about it, don’t say a word to anyone about the Neighbor Star and let me have all the data in connection with it for safekeeping. I won’t destroy it. My promise. We will need it if we are going to go to the Neighbor Star. Will you go that far at least, Eugenia?”
    “Yes,” she said at last in a small voice. Then she fired up. “One thing, though. I must be able to name the star. If I give it a name, then it’s my star.”
    Pitt smiled briefly. “What do you want to call it? Insigna’s Star? Eugenia’s Star?”
    “No. I’m not
that
foolish. I want to call it Nemesis.”
    “Nemesis? N-E-M-E-S-I-S?”
    “Yes.”
    “But why?”
    “There was a brief period of speculation back in the late twentieth century about the possibility of a Neighbor Star for the Sun. It came to nothing at that time. No Neighbor Star was found, but it had been referred to as ‘Nemesis’ in the papers devoted to it. I would like to honor those daring thinkers.”
    “Nemesis? Wasn’t there a Greek goddess of that name? An unpleasant one?”
    “The Goddess of Retribution, of Justified Revenge, of Punishment. It entered the language as a rather flowery word. The computer called it ‘archaic’ when I checked.”
    “And why would those old-timers have called it Nemesis?”
    “Something to do with the cometary cloud. Apparently, Nemesis, in its revolution about the Sun, passed through the cloud and induced cosmic strikes that killed off large portions of Earth life every twenty-six million years.”
    Pitt looked astonished. “Really?”
    “No, not really. The suggestion didn’t survive, but I want Nemesis to be the name just the same. And I want it to go on