The Altar at Asconel Read Online Free PDF Page B

in the act of turning his head when the older man erupted.
    “And this is supposed to be the great place for knowledge and science and everything! Here we are, going on foot in blistering sunshine, dust kicking up fit to make you choke—not a skyboat to be had in that primitive town there!”
    “It was—uh—deliberate policy,” Spartak sighed. “You might not think it, but it’s possible to get from any point on Annanworld to anywhere else within one full day, elapsed time. And there are spaceports at the corners of an imaginary dodecahedron, providing twelve equally-spaced points from which you can go off-world. That was deemed to be fast enough for a planet whose chief concern is the accumulation of knowledge.”
    “Yes, but—” Vix shrugged. “Galaxy, what am I doing raising complaints? I got started late enough on this whole business; the fact that I have to walk to the nearest transport terminus is just an extra irritation. I have this feeling that I ought to be doing everything at maximum speed.”
    Spartak didn’t answer, and they trudged some half-mile or so further before he did speak again.
    “How—uh—how did you come here? By the regular spacelines?”
    “Blazes, no. In this corner of the galaxy, shipping schedules are down to monthly, sometimes bi-monthly frequencies. I should sit on my butt while they get around to organizing a crew and lifting their creaky old tubs? No, I have my own ship now.”
    “Your own ship?” Spartak echoed in surprise. “You’ve done well. I’ve not heard of a privately-owned starship before.”
    “Don’t picture any ship of the line,” Vix grunted. “I have an Imperial scout, probably one of the original ships they tell me we found when we came out into space the very first time. I’ve never dared compute how old she must be.”
    “Twenty thousand years,” Spartak said positively.
    “Twenty—?” It was Vix’s turn to be astonished. “Oh, never!”
    “If it’s one of the original Imperial vessels, it must be. According to what events you take as marking the establishment and the collapse of the Empire, it lasted something between eight and a half and nine and a half thousand years. By the time we came out to collect them, the various artifacts our predecessors left behind were already at least as old as the whole lifespan of the Empire.”
    “This is something I’ve never got straight in my mind,” Vix said slowly. He seemed to be groping for some subject of conversation which would be sufficiently neutral to let him get to know this stranger-brother of his, who had adopted a way of life so alien to his temperament and yet now had to be his companion and confidant. “I guess you must have put in a deal of study on it—hm?”
    “I did when I first came to Annanworld,” Spartak agreed. “I had this over-ambitious idea that I was going to find out how the Empire originally arose. But the records simply don’t exist; no one had much time for documentation whenwe first stormed through the galaxy, and later on, what little had been recorded was either destroyed or simply rotted away. We’ve never had the skills required to build something to last ten thousand years. Even an Empire!”
    “But—well, at least you can tell me how it is we’re still flying ships supposed to be as old as you just said?”
    “We’ve made some intelligent guesses, The best and most likely is that at some time late in their own history the people who left the ships behind lost interest in physical activity, and built sufficient ships and some few other items to last out their—well, maybe their life span. Or else they went to another galaxy because they’d studied this one from rim to rim and exhausted it and themselves. But they’d built well, and it took us ten thousand years to use up What they left behind.”
    “It’s not used up yet, not by a long way,” Vix countered.
    “Yes, but what time couldn’t do to those ships, we’ve done deliberately. It costs