"Oh, be as blunt and tactless as you like. I could endure it if you would only say the right thing occasionally."

"The right thing?" Horn repeated.

Wendre shook her head wearily. "You don't understand women at all. I kept you waiting so long because I couldn't decide whether to wear a beautiful gown or a sensible suit. Now I'm being frank."

"And you're wearing the suit," Horn said gravely. "That should mean something, but I don't understand women."

Wendre sighed. "Yes. It means I'm being frank. Let me give you three examples of why you don't understand women. First, you don't ask the right questions. Second, you don't say the right words. Third, you-"

"Wait a minute," Horn interrupted. "What is the right question?"

Wendre took a deep breath. "You asked me: 'Why did you save me?' You should have said: 'Why did you come back?'"

"Why did you?" Horn asked.

"The right question's no good unless it's at the right time."

"Well, what are the right words?"

She hesitated and then said swiftly, "Words with 'love' among them. You said a lot of words, but that wasn't one of them."

"But I thought you knew," Horn stammered. "I mean-I thought I-"

"A woman wants to hear it."

"But you said you hated me," Horn protested.

"I said I had to hate you. There's a difference. And anyway, that's the third thing. A woman doesn't want to be taken at her word, not her first word anyway. Don't you know that a woman wants to be talked into something?" She paused for breath.

"I love you, Wendre," Horn said steadily. "Why did you come back?"

"I just told you," Wendre said softly.

"You can forget that I killed your father?"

She winced. "No. And neither can you. But you've told me how it happened. I believe you and understand. We can live with it, I think. n.o.body else knows and n.o.body else matters. It's just us. You see, I happen to love you-"

Without quite knowing how it happened, Horn found her in his arms. After a moment, Horn lifted his head and asked, "Why me? Why a barbarian?"

Wendre shrugged. "Maybe a woman loves a man who makes her feel like a woman. You're the only one who has ever done that."

"You could leave all this," Horn asked, "and go with me to the Cl.u.s.ter?"

"Yes," she said. "You see-"

"You see, she has no choice," someone said behind them.

Horn whirled around. It was Sair, white-haired but stout and hearty in cords like Horn's. "What do you mean?"

"Wendre can't stay here. I told her that several days ago. Rebellion often has its sentimental reaction. We can't afford to let a tender remnant of the Empire remain behind as a nucleus for a new tyranny."

Horn's arms had dropped away from Wendre. He stepped back, looking between Sair and Wendre. "She wouldn't do that."

"Of course she wouldn't. Not the woman she is now. But people change. The memories of an older Wendre might enhance the glories of empire and forget its deformities. Or, if she does not change, her children would be dangerous. No, she must go to the Cl.u.s.ter and marry a barbarian."

"I see," Horn said heavily.

"What do you see?" Wendre demanded.

"I see why you sent for me."

"You don't see anything," Wendre said fiercely. "You think I only wanted you because I couldn't stay here, because I didn't want to go to the Cl.u.s.ter alone. You're wrong. I only learned today that you were leaving. I hoped that you would come to me, that I wouldn't have to go to you."

She looked at him proudly, demanding belief. Horn waited.

She moistened her lips. "I was just about to tell you when Sair came in. That's why I was wearing this suit; I was trying to be honest with you. Oh, I admit it makes a difference, my having to go to the Cl.u.s.ter. It adds need to my love, and it becomes a part of it. Here a woman doesn't need the qualities in a man that she needs in a less civilized culture. In the Cl.u.s.ter, she needs strength and courage and skill in a man, for her children as well as herself. And her recognition of that is just as instinctive and valid as love-"

"You'd better believe her, boy," Sair said softly. "You'll never find another woman like her."

"Oh, I believe her," Horn said. "I was just wondering how I could live with a former Director of Eron."

"Whatever a woman is," Wendre said, "she's that second and a woman first."

After a few minutes, Sair coughed. "I only wish to remind you," he said, as they drew apart, "that you have just two hours before the ship leaves for Quarnon Four."

"Aren't you coming with us?" Wendre asked.

"Not now but shortly. I must wait for the interim governor of Eron."

"Where is he coming from?" Horn asked.

"From the Cl.u.s.ter."

"Are you sure you can trust him?"

"No," Sair answered. "I'm not sure of anyone. But he has the proper background of democratic government; he was once chief executive of Merope Three. He is pa.s.sionately attached to his home. He won't be happy here."

Wendre looked puzzled. "Is that good?"

"He can leave only when the Empire is prepared to govern itself. He will work hard for that day so that he can go home. He will die before then; this isn't an overnight job. But he won't know that. And there are other safeguards."

"The Cult?" Horn said.

"For one. Through its part in the rebellion, it has won the popularity of a fighting religion. It must, necessarily, have much to say about future decisions. The Cult head will be an adviser to the governor. In addition, there are the troops and their commanders, the technicians, the laborers, and many other cla.s.ses. All of them have different desires and different ideas about how to gain them. Multiply this by the number of worlds in the Empire and you have a conflict of interests which can never be reconciled."

"But isn't that inefficient?" Wendre asked.

"It is indeed. But inefficiency is one of the penalties of freedom. You can't be efficient unless you can force people into channels and make them go where they don't want to go. There was enough of that under the Empire. These are different times. Inefficiency and freedom are vital. The governor's prime responsibility is to preserve Eron as the hub of an interstellar civilization. When power is diffuse, no one can gather enough to take over Eron and levy toll on the shipments pa.s.sing through."

"And no one can attack the Cl.u.s.ter," Horn added.

"True," Sair agreed, "although there is little chance of that in any case. As a unit, the Empire is finished, and nothing less than total power could make an impression on the resurgent Cl.u.s.ter. It lost its freedom once, lost it bitterly; it will never lose it again until it gives it up as something outworn and useless. No, Eron is unimportant; the future lies with the Cl.u.s.ter and the newer cultures that will rise beyond the Cl.u.s.ter. As a Tube center Eron must be preserved, at least until scientists, working from the clues Horn has gathered, can duplicate the Tube or find a subst.i.tute. But the Cl.u.s.ter will be the dominant human culture for many centuries to come."

"You said that the Cl.u.s.ter would give up its freedom," Horn said, his voice puzzled. "I don't understand."

"The love of freedom dies as the memory of its alternative fades. Oh, it's not a sudden thing. It takes generations, centuries. But gradually it slips away. And it's more than that. There is a time for freedom, just as there is a time for empire. Only Eron, with its dynamic hunger for empire and its efficiency, could have unified human civilization and kept it united with the Tubes against the forces that sought to scatter it through the stars. Then, when its job is done, empire disappears, and it is freedom's turn to revive the human spirit by the challenge of the infinite horizon. And then, when men begin to grow too far apart, empire will return to unite them again."

"That's a cynical viewpoint," Horn said slowly.

"I'm an old man. I can afford no longer the luxury of ideals. If I am to achieve results recognizable within my few remaining years, I must be practical. So I set up checks and balances on Eron, and I admit that it is faulty but necessary. I see that the freedom we have won is good, but I admit that it is impermanent and not always the best thing for humanity. I think I can even see a good aspect to your Mr. Wu; it is possible that he made a great contribution to the human race."

"How?" Wendre asked quickly.

"Empire and freedom have seldom been exchanged so efficiently. Always before there have been interregnums of chaos. Sometimes they lasted for centuries. We enter this new period of expansion with the backbone of empire to give us strength, its communication facilities to give us the ability to react quickly. It may be because of him that this is so, and we may need both of these things badly before the job of freedom is done."

"And what is that," Horn asked, "aside from this business of reviving the human spirit?"

"Who knows?" Sair said. He shrugged. "There will be something that only freedom can do, that would have broken the Empire and with it the human race. I can think of any number of possible threats. The natural threats, in which the metal of a race is tempered or shattered: perhaps our part of the galaxy may sweep into an area of cosmic dust. The external compet.i.tions: we've never met a compet.i.tive alien race at our stage of technology; it's time our luck ran out. The internal compet.i.tions: mutations.... I've been dreaming lately about the Silent Stars."

"The Silent Stars?" Wendre repeated.

"Beyond the Cl.u.s.ter," Horn explained. "Some of the worlds sent colonists out to them over one hundred years ago. They haven't been heard from since; other ships have gone out to trade and haven't come back. It isn't exactly sinister yet; they might have had to go on farther than expected or been delayed in building their technology to a level capable of supporting s.p.a.ce flight. But people have begun to speculate."

"I wonder," Sair said, his eyes distant. "I wonder which it will be."

"Who knows?" Horn repeated. "Wu might have," he added suddenly.

"That's a strange thing to say." Sair looked at Horn with narrowed eyes.

Horn nodded. "I guess it was. I got to thinking about what you said, the possibility that Wu helped the human race. He had many eyes and a long time to grow wise. He could have been a great force for good. To the blind, historical forces he could have been eyes and a purpose. Sure, when something moves, somebody has pushed, but that isn't good or bad in itself. It depends on the situation and the pusher."

"You're learning wisdom," Sair said. "Only the circ.u.mstances determine good and evil. And only the future can say what the circ.u.mstances actually were."

"Then there is no firm basis for acting at all," Wendre objected. "What you do for the best of motives may be the worst thing to do."

"Exactly," Sair said dryly. "It is a commonplace that more harm is done by well-intentioned fools than by the most unscrupulous villains. A wise man learns not to judge. He may set himself certain standards, but he recognizes that they are only a personal pattern to guide his own conduct and that other standards have the same validity. Some men are interested only in means; some work for immediate goals like freedom; a few are concerned with results far in the future."

"But that would take a wisdom beyond humanity," Horn said seriously.

"Perhaps." Sair nodded, smiling. "Only the future can judge. You'd better go now; you'll miss the ship."

They turned and started for the ship that would take them to the Cl.u.s.ter where the future would be shaped. There, events were moving toward decision.

THE HISTORY.

Challenge....

Six months after the fall of the Eron Empire, it arrived. It came from the far edge of the Cl.u.s.ter, from the world nearest the Silent Stars. It was a scream, a cry, a plea.

Its coming was predictable.

The Quarnon Wars had built a magnificent, deadly armada of fighting ships and trained a generation of fighting men to use them. But the decaying culture of Eron had to be destroyed; it would have collapsed before the first a.s.sault.

Only a people in the first vigor of a new culture could rise to meet that challenge.

On ten thousand worlds, man looked up into the night sky with sober eyes and laid aside his tools and picked up his weapons. The long battle of man's survival had already begun.

An enemy was coming. And this time it was not human.

Response: hopeful....

EPILOGUE.

The Historian sighed and put down his brush. He rubbed his hand down through the snowy hair and over the face of Peter Sair. The hair darkened. The face rippled and began to flow. It dripped to the table, and it was a parrot. Lil stared up at the Historian with one fierce eye.

"Sometimes," the parrot said, "I wish I had left you in the catacombs of Eron with a hole through your black heart."

"I wish you had," Wu said slowly.

A millennium and a half. Personal desires were dead; even the instinct to survive was gone. But a man cannot die while the survival of his race depends on him.

"I don't see the necessity of this mummery-"

"Necessity?" Wu said. "Free will is a necessity. And the illusion is more important than the reality."

He picked up the top sheet of ma.n.u.script. The ancient Chinese characters marched in columns across the page from right to left. He read the last sentence once more, picked up the brush, and added a final character.

The end. But it was only the end of a long, long chapter. Another had already begun.

AFTERWORD.

Some creations take on a life of their own. That's the way it was with Star Bridge.

Gerald Jonas reviewed a reprint edition of Star Bridge in 1977, twenty-two years after the first publication as a Gnome Press hardcover followed by an Ace Books paperback. Jonas wrote: "The book is not a recognized 'cla.s.sic' of that period.... It stirred no controversy, won no awards, added nothing to the reputation of its authors. Not only had I never read it before, I had not even heard of it. I mention these facts only to help the reader understand my astonishment at discovering that this obscure collaboration between Williamson and Gunn reads more like a collaboration between Heinlein and Asimov. The concept is pure, cla.s.sic science fiction. A vast empire spans the galaxy, controlled from the planet Eron which alone holds the secret to faster-than-light travel."

Neither Jack Williamson nor I had any idea we were up to anything like that. It was an accident it happened at all. I was working as an editor for Western Printing & Lithographing Company (which selected, edited, and printed Dell's paperback books) in Racine, Wisconsin, and talked the editor-in-chief into sending me to Chicago to attend my very first Science Fiction World Convention in late August of 1952. I'd been writing SF stories for four years and having them published for three, but it was my first encounter with other writers and editors and agents. I met some of my heroes, including John Campbell, Tony Boucher, Bob Bloch, Clifford Simak, and many others, including Fred Pohl (my agent at that time), who told me he'd sold four stories that I didn't know about and on the strength of that I went back and told my boss that I was resigning to go back to full-time writing.