The Sirian Experiments

And then the groans ceased. But the whips went on. And on. The punished ones were three bundles of bloody rags slumped by the stakes.

Tafta let out a shout. The company of pirates turned their backs on what they had been forced to watch, and shouldered their loads of gold. They made their way to boats tied to some rocks. A vessel with sails awaited them. The beasts they had used to carry these loads were being left on the shore to die or save themselves. I signalled my Space Traveller to wait, and walked down, past the butchered men, to the crowd of thieves. They all became immobile when they saw me, their jaws dropping. It was their silence that caused Tafta to turn, with brutalities already on his lips, before he even knew why they were silent.

There was a moment of indecision when he saw me. Then a gri

We looked at each other, across the small sandy space that separated us.

“Tafta,” I said, “were you punishing those men because they disliked the savagery of your behaviour with the Indian kingdom? Was that it?”

From the men around him arose a deep assenting moan, at once stilled at his look. And in a moment they had recovered their air of greedy confidence.

“Tafta,” I said, “there will be an account made. There will come a time when you will suffer as you now make others suffer.”

Again the minutest flicker of indecision, and then his swagger was back. He smiled. This handsome coarse brute smiled, and strengthened the cocky thrust of his shoulders. And I was looking at this stage of the creature’s evolution, holding in my mind the stages of what he had been, and crying out to Canopus in my mind, Why, why why do you allow it?

“It must be a long time since you were on Rohanda,” he said. “It is mine, from end to end.”

“No, Tafta, it is not. And you will see that it is not.”

He let out a guffaw, which was even indulgent, as if I were an inferior in mentality. This was the change in him: and, looking at him, seeing this in him, I glanced around at his company and the same in them. It was conceit. They were all thickened and stupefied by it. Their intoxication was of many strands, and conceit was as strong as their greed.

I walked away from them back to the small eminence on which I had been before, and stayed watching as they put themselves and their loot into their boats and rowed themselves out to their winged vessel. Oh, yes, it was aesthetically very pleasing, this galleon of theirs: I had not before seen sailing craft at this precise stage of technology. And the scene was beautiful, as the light faded, leaving the dark acres of the ocean, crisping with light from a thin slice of moon. The Rohandan moon, which was my next assignment.

Having made sure the poor wretches at their stakes were in fact dead and having called to the mules and horses to follow me from off the beaches into the forests where they could find food and water, I took off for the planet’s planet.

Since I had been there last, there had been considerable changes. The Shammat stake was still the largest and had been spreading rapidly. Mining operations were predominant. Everywhere the crawlers could be seen at work in the craters, and new craters were visible. That was on the surface: underground, we knew, every kind of technological operation was in progress. But we, Sirius, had placed ourselves all around the perimeter of the Shammat area in an arc on one side: Canopus had done the same on the other. Our crawlers were plentiful, some of them the largest we had, five or six miles in diameter. We were mining; and we proposed to make use of what we produced: but let me put it this way: I have never seen in one of our operations so great a proportion of visible effect to what was actually produced. And Canopus had placed vast domes, and ma

Visible, too, were the observational towers of the three planets, and the pylons used by one of them to anchor their aircraft. The moon was now furiously active, but the inhabitants of Rohanda were only just begi

I made sure that our policy of friendly co-operation among the three planets was being maintained, and paid a short visit to each station myself.

After consultation with the Canopean station, I ordered a Demonstration, first class, over the surface of the whole planet. It was interesting to me, underlining certain developments, that it was so long since we had had to use any such show of force, that our Mother Planet was hard put to it to raise enough craft and perso

The Four called me to a meeting.

The perso

I shall now take the liberty of making a short observation. It is that a certain law clearly to be observed on Rohanda is not exactly unknown elsewhere. There, a geographical area, or nation, would criticise another for faults it committed itself. To such lengths was this tendency developed in the last period of Rohanda that this planet, at this time, has become the exemplar for us, and descriptions may be found plentifully in our technical literature. But for my own part I must say I have never been more amazed as when observing full-scale, all-global conferences on Rohanda, where all the nations hurled accusations at each other for practices that they were apparently incapable of seeing in themselves.

My colleagues and I were facing first-class crisis—not immediately evident as one, but with the potentialities of social ferment that could affect everything.

And my request for the thirty-seven Battalions, and the resulting re-organisation and rapid re-training, had not gone unobserved by our people.

What was Rohanda, why was she of such importance to us, that so much disturbance was being allowed on her account?

We, the Five, sat together, now Four and One, as on the last occasion, and they wanted to know if I had seen Klorathy again. I said I had not, and that that was not the point. But how could I expect them to understand what had taken me so long?

They waited, regarding me with an expectation not untinged with anxiety. They were feeling, even if they had not formulated this, that their destinies, Sirian destinies, were in other hands. That this had always been so, they did not suspect. Nor could I easily think along these lines, even now.

They were waiting for me to say something as simple as “I believe this Canopean bond will benefit us in such and such a way.”

At last, they demanded, having heard of the developments on the Rohandan moon, if I proposed to send a report to Klorathy. This was because they wished to read it and to assess our relationship from it. I said I did not believe a report was indicated yet.