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and that the time had come for them to be destroyed.
* * * *
"Good morning, people!" said Elka brightly. "Oh, please, you must sit at
our table. Just for once."
Bran looked up sharply from the breakfast he was eating with Elka in the
restaurant as the four sat at the opposite side of the table. "What's the
matter? Have we got a disease or something?"
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"You know how it is, son," said Telson evenly. "We'd hate to put
temptation in your way and have you trying to grab a PD weapon."
"That's odd," commented Darv, pulling the clear cover off his meal. "None
of us have any cutlery. I'll go and get some." He moved off to accost one of
the restaurant's service units.
"You know," said Elka as she ate her meal, "the farm gallery must've got
back to normal production while we were in suspended animation. This is the
biggest breakfast we've had for ages."
Sharna looked down at her own over-generous helping. "You're right.
Either that or my stomach shrunk during SA. I can't possibly eat all this."
"Suspended animation wasn't nearly as bad as we thought it would be, was
it, Bran?" Elka prattled on. "I say, if you can't eat that, Sharna, I'll have
some of it." Without waiting for Sharna's consent, Elka spooned some food off
Sharna's plate and raised it to her mouth.
Darv returned with some packets of cutlery which he gave out to the other
three.
"No, Elka!" said Angel Two's voice suddenly. "You must not eat that!"
Elka hurriedly dropped the spoonful of food that she was about to eat.
"What's the matter with it?" she protested.
"No one is to eat anything!" snapped Telson.
The others dropped their cutlery in surprise.
"We're sorry," said Angel One. "But a galley android has just detected
some contamination in the food. Fresh meals are being prepared now. There is
nothing to worry about."
Sharna managed to save a sample of food from each of the six plates
before a service unit trundled the table to clear them away.
* * * *
An hour later in the farm gallery, Astra bit in a fresh apple, picked
straight from tree while Sharna finished her study of the samples on a
portable analysis machine that had been recovered from a shuttle. It was a
simple machine, designed for use on alien planets to determine whether unknown
foods were safe for human consumption.
The four had gathered in a part of the gallery that was not overlooked by
the guardian angels' optical sensors. After the disaster of the previous year,
the gallery was operating normally and there was plenty of vigorous young
growth on the laden fruit trees.
Sharna sat back and looked expectantly up at Telson when the analysis
machine's indicator showed that four of the samples were unsafe and that the
other two were safe. "Our food is unsafe and Bran's and Elka's food is okay,"
she announced.
"So our beloved angels are up to their old tricks again," said Astra,
keeping her voice as calm as she could.
"Not a very effective trick," commented Darv.
Telson scowled. "But it could have been. Therefore we have to be extra
careful until we're in Earth orbit. From now on we eat only food that had been
taken directly from this gallery. Sharna and I will move into Darv's and
Astra's quarters from tonight all will maintain a continuous watch."
Darv looked disappointed. "That's put paid to a little plan I had in mind
for tonight."
Astra gave an embarrassed laugh.
"I suggest," said Telson coldly, "that we concentrate our efforts into
putting paid to the angels' plans."
* * * *
Bran summoned up all his will power to avoid looking up. From long
experience he knew that once he looked up into Elka's compelling eyes, his
new-found resolve would be shattered.
"Well, Bran?" Elka's voice was soft and persuasive. There was none of the
hardness that he was used to.
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Bran wanted to looked up, to try and read her mind, but the certain
knowledge that he would be finished if he did so helped keep his gaze directed
at the floor of her room. "I don't want to kill your parents," he said. "And I
certainly don't want to kill my mine."
"Your father deprived you of power, Bran. He took away what was
rightfully yours."
"What was yours, don't you mean? And even if it was taken away from me,
I'm not certain I wanted it in the first place. I've had a week to think
things over and I've come to the conclusion that I'm glad my father has taken
over command of the Challenger."
The vehemence of Bran's answer took Elka by surprise although she was
careful not to show it. Her voice became even more icy. "How can you expect to
rule the Earth if you're not prepared to command the Challenger?"
This time Bran looked up. To his astonishment and delight, he discovered
that he had unsuspected reserves of strength that enabled him to meet Elka's
unwavering gaze without his stomach turning to water.
"You're the one who wants power, Elka. Not me. If you want it, you go
ahead and try to grab it. But if anything goes wrong, I won't be there to take
the blame for you. You're on your own."
"You realise what the angels could do to you if they so wished?"
"What could they do, Elka? They're helpless against my father. And even
if they did try to destroy me, I would rather that than have to live with the
knowledge that I killed my parents."
Bran didn't realise it until later, but with those simple words he had
irrevocably broken the hold that Elka had over him all his life.
* * * *
It was Earth.
A yellow planet whose mountains and plains matched the topographical
holograms of Earth in the Challenger's library. There the similarity ended: of
the thousands of lakes that the ancient records showed as covering the Earth's
surface, only one, the largest, remained: a frozen, five-hundred mile long
ribbon that wove a twisting path between two barren ranges of mountains in the
extreme south. A lacework of parched rills marked what had been a complex
pattern of rivers that had linked the lakes. Where the records showed there
had been verdant forests, there were now arid deserts where nothing moved
except frequent dust storms which seemed to die out as quickly as they began.
There were no roads, no cities, no reservoirs. The sites of cities were
scanned using the Challenger's optical surveillance systems and nothing was
found except faint discolorations of the endless sand and bushlands.
But the most significant geographic finding by the mighty starship was
that the atmosphere of the desolate planet it was orbiting contained very
little water vapour and no clouds.
Once the preliminary survey was completed from a high orbit, Telson
ordered the necessary manoeuvres that brought the Challenger into a low polar
orbit. On the third such orbit, the tower was detected by radar in the
northern temperate region and there followed a hurried series of fine
reorientating manoeuvres so that the ship passed directly over the tower at a
height of 300 miles.
The tower was a stupendous architectural achievement: each of the four
sides of its pyramid-shaped base were four miles long from which sprang the
graceful but featureless sides of the tower itself, soaring to a height of ten
miles above the desert. Two diagonal corners of the tower's base were
perfectly aligned so that they were pointing at the north and south poles
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