The Chaos Weapon Read Online Free PDF Page A

answers to something to which no one was able to supply even the questions.
    “Look into time, Roamer. What see you there?”
    “Sparks in the brain, bidding the muscles. Mind versus Chaos; entropy lessened.”
    Chief-Marshal Delfan, alone among those in the room to have decorations on his otherwise strictly functional uniform, brought the assembly to swift order.
    “I expect you’re wondering why we took the undoubted risk of calling all twelve space-marshals off-station and having them report to Terra. The fact that we found it necessary indicates the extreme gravity of the situation. Gentlemen, the truth is that the Galactic Federation is under attack by a weapon so serious and insidious that ten years of its action threatens to destroy all we’ve built in two thousand years in space.”
    A ripple of dissension swept through the audience. Marshal Tun Tse voiced the disagreement.
    “I find that concept difficult to swallow. I’ve personal knowledge of three space sectors, and my colleagues cover the rest. If any such threat existed, we’d be the first to be aware of it.”
    “You
are
aware of it. It’s just that you don’t see it for what it is. Take the death of General Caligori near Harmony, for instance.”
    “A sunflare sterilized his ship. An act of God.”
    “Then God must have changed sides with remarkable alacrity. In the past year alone, one hundred andeighty specific individuals have died as the result of substantial natural disasters.”
    “A hundred eighty?” Tun Tse was enraged. “Galaxy wide, the death toll from substantial disasters must be in the billions.”
    “I’m not disputing that. But I said specific individuals. Specifically, these are the top intellects of our time—the scientists and administrators whose genius sets the direction for the whole human race. They’ve a statistical death rate greater than chance by over a thousand times. Gentlemen, our investigations leave no doubt that the best of those who shape our future are being deliberately culled. Humanity in space is being killed off from the top downward.”
    “By natural disasters?” Tun Tse was trying to make sure of his ground.
    “General Caligori was caught by a sunflare. Nobody ever had a more potent effect on the development of our space-weapons potential. President Bruant was killed by a major meteorite strike on Barbec. Without his administrative genius, the Hundred Worlds threaten to lapse back into mutual warfare. Julius Orain’s ship was destroyed in a tachyon storm. His brain took with it some theories of relativity that promised us access to unlimited energy for all eternity. The list is endless. Our entire occupation of space is threatened by this selective pattern of disasters.”
    “Look to the sky, Roamer. What see you there?”
    “Beyond the cloudrace and the great storm’s eye, there run the long, slow tides of entropy, peaked with sharp wavefronts of catastrophe.”
    “To me that seems a contradiction in terms. How can you have a selective pattern of random events?” asked Tun Tse, whose bafflement mirrored that of his comrades. “And what was that you mentioned about a weapon?”
    “To answer that I’m going to hand this discussion over to Saraya, director of ChaosCenter. The things he’ll tell you may seem hard to accept. But I ask you to listen carefully and with an open mind, because theshape of the future for humanity could well depend on your understanding.”
    The dark man ruffled his cloak as if it contained wings with which he intended to fly.
    “Gentlemen, Marshal Delfan has outlined the problem. ChaosCenter, aided by Marshal Hover, has for some time been trying to find the answers. We haven’t gotten very far, but what we have found we don’t like. I’m going to start by asking you to make a rather subtle mental inversion: it’s not that great disasters happen to important men—but that important men are present when great disasters happen.”
    “A subtlety which eludes me