Anthropol by Louis Trimble

Author:Louis Trimble [Trimble, Louis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780020080596
Publisher: Not Available
Published: 1968-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

XII

In the days that oozed themselves away while we waited for news of Lori's whereabouts, I learned a great deal about the past history of Ujvila and why Rosid remained hesitant in trusting me.

Gal-Mil's earlier expeditions to Ujvila had brought back some information, enough to give Federation researchers a starting point in hunting through the early starship records. They had found that one of die first of the great floating cities had been christened Ujvila by the one hundred thousand colonists who sailed in it. Most of them were from Central Europe, a pre-Inundation political division that had succumbed to the Inundation early in the twenty-second century.

I had that information and all that could be gotten from the man whose place I took in Ujvilan society. As a result, I knew the basic history of Ujvila and the quasi-religious concept the ancestors of the present Kalauz had built their power on. Once Tiska filled me in with what she had learned as a child, when her family was still part of the hierarchy, I was able to reconstruct the history of not only the Ujvilan culture on the planet but what had taken place during the millennium the starship wandered through the stars.

It was not a unique history. Over the centuries, the same kinds of changes that had always been part of the pattern of man's development took place in the ship. Within a century after sailing, revolt displaced the descendants of the first group of officers. After that, a series of power struggles-political, religious, economic—kept generation after generation in a state of chaos. And when one group finally became dominant long enough to bring stability and to found a dynasty, much of the technology and political theory that was to aid the colonists in establishing a bit of Earth on a new world had been irrevocably lost.

As was the case with many of the early starships, only the automatic devices that provided basic foods and air, utilized wastes, and generally saw to the necessities of life prevented the loss of the colony. And when planetfall was made, it was more fortuitous than deliberate. The starship went into orbit about a planet, scanned it for suitability in terms of Earth-originated life, and then either remained in orbit or—if the planet was unsuitable—moved on. All of this was automatic. But there the starship's responsibility ended. It was not designed to land; shuttles were provided, for that purpose.

Apparently the ancestor of the Kalauz had access to enough information so that she ai'td the members of her court could make use of the shuttles. But without skilled pilots, many of the little ships crashed. Others landed their human cargoes safely enough but at widely scattered spots. Ultimately all of the shuttles crashed, probably from lack of fuel.

Finally the rulers, according to Tiska, wanting to retain the power that having Ujvila itself would give them, tried to land the massive starship. The automatic controls slowed it down enough to prevent its burning up in the atmosphere but beyond that there was no way of controlling it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.