Cities in Flight

“The cities have been like the bee for a long time. The governments of the advanced planets, Earth in particular, know it, even if the cities generally don’t. The planets distrust the cities, but they also know that they’re vital and must be protected. The planets are tough on bindlestiffs for the same reason. The bindlestiffs are diseased bees; the taint that they carry gets fastened upon innocent cities, cities that are needed to keep new techniques and other essential information on the move from planet to planet. Obviously, cities and planets alike have to protect themselves from criminal outfits, but there’s the culture as a whole to be considered, as well as the safety of an individual unit; and to maintain that culture, the free passage of legitimate Okies throughout the galaxy has to be maintained.”

“The King knows this?” Carrel said.

“Of course he does. He’s eight hundred years old; how could he help but know it? He wouldn’t put it like this, but all the same, it’s the essence of what he’s depending upon to carry through his March on Earth.”

“It still sounds risky to me,” Carrel said dubiously. “We’ve all been conditioned almost from birth to distrust Earth, and Earth cops especially—”

“Only because the cops distrust us. That means that the cops are conditioned to be strict with cities about the smallest violations; so, since small violations of local laws are inevitable in a nomadic life, it’s smart for an Okie to steer clear of cops. But for all the real hatred that exists between Okies and cops, we’re both on the same side. We always have been.”

On the underside of the city, just within the cone of vision of the three men, the big doors to the main hold swung slowly shut.

“That’s the last one,” Hazleton said. “Now I suppose we go back to where we left the all-purpose city we stole from Murphy, and relieve it of its drivers, too.”

“Yes, we do,” Amalfi said. “And after that, Mark, we go on to Hern Six. Carrel, ready a couple of small fission bombs for the Acolyte garrison there—it can’t be large enough to make us much trouble, but we’ve no time left to play patty-cake.”

“Is Hern Six the planet we’re going to fly?” Carrel said.

“It has to be,” Amalfi said, with a trace of impatience. “It’s the only one available. Furthermore, this time we’re going to have to control the flight, not just let the planet scoot off anywhere its natural converted rotation wants it to go. Being carried clean out of the galaxy once is once too often for me.”

“Then I’d better put a crack team to work on the control problem with the City Fathers,” Hazleton said. “Since we didn’t have them to consult with on He, we’ll have to screen every scrap of pertinent information they have in stock. No wonder you’ve been so hot on this project for corralling knowledge from other cities. I only wish we could have gotten started on integrating it sooner.”

“I haven’t had this in mind quite that long,” Amalfi said. “But, believe me, I’m not sorry now that it turned out this way.”

Carrel said, “Where are we going?”

Amalfi turned away toward the airlock. He had heard the question before, from Dee, but this was the first time that he had had an answer.

“Home,” he said.

CHAPTER SEVEN: Hern VI

MOUNTING Hern VI—as desolate and damned a slab of rock as Amalfi had ever set down upon—for guided spindizzy flight was incredibly tedious work. Drivers had to be spotted accurately at every major compass point, and locked solidly to the center of gravity of the planetoid; and then each and every machine had to be tuned and put into balance with every other. And there were not enough spindizzies to set up a drive for the planet as a whole which would be fully dirigible when the day of flight came. The flight of Hern VI, when all the work was finally done, promised to be giddy and erratic.

But at least it would go approximately where the master space stick directed it to go. That much responsiveness, Amalfi thought, was all that was really necessary—or all that he hoped would be necessary.

Periodically, O’Brian, the proxy pilot, reported on the progress of the March on Earth. The mob had lost quite a few stragglers along the way as it passed attractive-looking systems where work might be found, but the main body was still streaming doggedly toward the mother planet. Though the outsize drone was as obvious a body as a minor moon, so far not a single Okie had taken a pot shot at it. O’Brian had kept it darting through and about the marchers in a double-sine curve in three dimensions, at its top speed and with progressive modulations of the orbit. If the partial traces which it made on any individual city’s radar screen were not mistaken for meteor tracks, predicting its course closely enough to lay a gun on it would keep any ordinary computer occupied full time.