I watched the uncountable myriad stars on the Starfire's viewscreen, the brilliant reds and yellows and blues like intense points of light, and thought much of what had happened to me in the past few days. Of the scars that I would bear on my body for the rest of my life from the battle with the insane Lorr that had sought my life. The same creature that had sought to kill Raspa. I recalled how Raspa had once bragged about how superior her race was to mine. I had decided not to remind her of such statements. She was a friend. One does not do such things to one's friends. I thought too of the things Aurora had "hinted" at, but would not now speak "further" of. Darlanis and Janis had not been truly of the same "flesh" after all, and perhaps Tulis' "rejection" of the teenaged Darlanis made sense if you considered everything here...
During the days I had spent flat on my back recovering from injuries that probably would have left me almost crippled in the 20th Century, I was given the privilege of tapping into the Lorr's central computer system. Into their awesome data banks. Of learning from myself the truths, the realities of their history and our own for the last fifty thousand years. I wondered what certain groups in the 20th Century would have thought of what I had learned. Of the fact that the Lorr had used the black race of Mankind as a "control group" while they practiced their intelligence boosting genetic manipulations upon the white and yellow races. Only the women from these races having been used on Mars to serve. One supposes that they looked upon us much as scientists of the 20th and 21st Centuries would have looked upon experimental laboratory animals. We were the "test animals" they used for their own purposes. Our civilizations are of their doing. Otherwise we would still be living in grass huts and dancing around blazing fires at night chanting prayers to our pagan gods. The blacks of Africa "proof" of what we would have become. I wonder too about the cultural bias towards "blondes" we have? Many Lorr Servitors are "blonde". Have they too played their "role" in our history? One wonders a bit about such things...
I had been quite surprised at An'na's reaction to my suggestion that she travel to Earth with me and meet her true mother, Darlanis Marden, Queen of Sarn and Empress of Imperial California. An'na saying to me that she had no interest in being an Imperial Princess when she could live with Aurora on Mars and see sights that no person on Earth would ever see. An'na having told me of her ideas to rejuvenate the old Lorr starship that now orbited the Earth and use it to capture comets which could be dropped on the polar ice caps to increase the amount of water in Mars' atmosphere! I smiled to myself as An'na told me how nervous such ideas made the Lorr, and what "old ants" they were for not going ahead with such a great idea! Ah youth! Raspa having admitted to me that she thought it was a rather good idea, but too dangerous to try until it was proven that the comet could be guided accurately to a safe point of impact on Mars without endangering the lives of either Mars' own human inhabitants living on the surface or the Lorr who had enough bad experiences with a "directed" comet to last them for the lifespan of their own race!
The ship we were traveling in was of a different design, using both anti-gravity and perfected plasma rocket engines. Anti-matter mixed with water on an variable weight basis provided the rocket thrust. A flame far hotter than the surface of the sun, perhaps rivaling its own core! Its design being based upon that of an older ship that had once been stolen by a Mars woman who had attempted to flee to Earth with her small child, the ship exploding over Siberia in 1908 due to failure of its anti-matter power core. It is noteworthy here that some Russian scientists of the 20th Century did actually manage to determine from the remains of the vaporized space ship that it was an alien spaceship, and not a gigantic meteor or mini-comet as had once been thought!
The Lorr themselves had used such engines in a somewhat similar design as the main propulsion system of their starships in their flight from their burning dying world to their eventual destination in our solar system. Reaching a speed of 12,000 miles per second, or slightly less than one sixteenth the velocity of light! The Starfire could do far better than that! I could understand why An'na had no desire to return to Darlanis if she could travel about the solar system in something like this! Especially since the Lorr had never really bothered exploring the solar system despite the fact they had lived in it for fifty thousand years! It being a racial trait of the Lorr that they have little interest in anything that is of no "practical value" to them. They lack the "curiosity" that will drive Mankind to the stars or destroy him. Doubtlessly the Lorr would have never developed space travel in the first place if their sun hadn't started to grow into a red giant and forced them to do the necessary research to save at least a small portion of their race!
"We could reach your world in a couple days if only Raspa would allow me the anti-matter to do it," An'na complained as we stood side by side watching the stars. I smiled again to myself. Anti-matter was expensive stuff, difficult to make, dangerous to store, and burning up large qualities of it just to "go a bit faster" didn't make any sense to the First Princess of the Lorr.*
* The Lorr have naturally longer life spans than humans, some living as long as three hundred years where humans seldom live past a hundred and fifty at the very best. (Lorraine)
"I'm content with our speed," I assured her, happy to travel in a state where I might enjoy seeing the stars and exploring the ship, the Lorr having originally brought me to Mars in a state of near suspended animation, which is the way they use to travel between the worlds. Relying on their computers for the safe operation of their ships while traversing the void between the worlds.
"Why did Humanity hate us so?" An'na asked. I had read the histories of the events that led up to The War. Millions of the lovely women of Mars had died along with the Lorr when Earth re- directed that gigantic comet so that it would strike Mars. Janet Rogers had given Men the "unity" necessary to meet the Lorr on an even footing, but Mankind saw only the "monster", not the intelligence, and could think of nothing but destruction. Even now it is commonly accepted as truth that the world government of that time did the right thing, their only failure having been that the comet didn't destroy all the Lorr as was hoped! Not that educated people like Darlanis actually believed such, but I do suspect that the majority of the people living under her rule would feel that killing off all the Lorr would be a very excellent idea yet!
"Man has a history going back into the Old Stone Age of hating anything that is 'different'," I answered, slipping my arm around her, my body still a bit sore in places from what Sisa had done to me with her clawed limbs. With a good sword in my hand I would not be afraid to face a Lorr, but in a hand to claw fight, no human ever would stand a chance. It would be like fighting a dire wolf or some other wild animal that now roams the Earth.
"But we are just as `human' as you are!" An'na protested, turning, looking me directly in the eye, "And your world killed `us' just as they killed the Lorr!" I did not really have an answer for her. I still don't. I suppose the best answer would be the one they used during the Vietnam War when it was necessary to destroy villages in order to "save" them from the enemy. Raspa blames Janet Rogers for designing such a "dangerous" civilization as she did, although I don't think it was her fault that certain people within her government took it upon themselves to rid the solar system of the Lorr. One thinks of "wheels within wheels". Of similar incidents in the 20th Century where one part of the government acted against the wishes of another branch of the same government. The actual command of the expedition to the comet having been under the control of the World Defense Council, who no doubt was responsible for what happened. Janet Rogers tended to be a bit too trusting at times, and doubtlessly she was here.*
* Just exactly "who" was responsible has never been determined, although it is commonly thought now to have been the "fault" of Domino Tremaine, who was Janet Rogers' "successor" at the time.
"This is 2565, not 2047," I answered. "It is up to us now to bury the past and see that it stays properly buried." That was the best answer that I could give her. I think that perhaps someday Man and the Lorr will seek the stars together. The Starfire was proof of that. Its drive and rocket power spoke of Lorr technology, but its crew and builders the lovely women of Mars. I did however wonder why it was so heavily armed, the Starfire also being the greatest engine of destruction that the Lorr had ever built! An'na having smiled and said to me that it was best to "be prepared". But for what? A couple dozen Mars women armed with blaster rifles could have routed one of Darlanis' Legions. And the Tarls of Talon and their lovely riders certainly didn't justify such an awesome engine of destruction like this? Were there other forms of alien "life" out there threatening us? Some "threat from the stars" that the Lorr now defended Earth from? I wondered if all the "flying saucers" that men had seen were Lorr?
There had been nothing in the Lorr's own data banks to indicate anything such, but I knew that such data might not be accessible to just anyone, and it would have been easy enough to conceal such information from me. Why did the Lorr maintain such a military presence around the Earth? Why did they respond so swiftly whenever a "Gateway" opened up? Why wouldn't An'na answer my questions? Why did she just smile and change the subject? What were the Lorr afraid of? What threat did they face?
Earth grew larger ahead of us, the Moon a gleaming crescent moving away to the right, my own world a great blue-green ball clouded ball much like the photographs I have seen back in the 20th Century before Sharon and I were transported into this, the 26th Century. It gave me a strange feeling, as if it had been just all a dream. A dream from which I would soon wake to see Jack there at the breakfast table opposite me, his nose stuck in the morning paper. There had been little left of our marriage at the end. I understand that he died in a car crash that night, his blood alcohol far over the legal limit, never knowing that both Sharon and I had disappeared into time never to return. Perhaps it was for the best for all of us that things ended as they did. Janet Rogers wrote much of me. Too much in a way, I suppose. Perhaps it would have been far better for two worlds if she had never followed up on some of my wilder ideas as she did.
I suppose that by the standards of the 20th Century my life really wasn't that bad, but in comparison to that which I live now here in the 26th Century, it was indeed stale and dull. Here there is a sense of adventure, of "newness" here in the post-War world that one of the 20th Century would have a hard time understanding, a sense that the world is what you want to make of it. True, there is danger and risk, but on the other hand you are the master of your fate in a way that those of 20th Century America would not understand. I am not sorry that I flew through the "GATEWAY". Here I am in a world where my heart is and shall forever be. Where my sword is pledged to the beautiful Empress of California. Where I can look up into the sky and remember the adventures I had there upon another planet. Recall the features of one who shall forever be my friend. Remember the night when I spoke for a few brief precious moments with SHE, whose memory I will never forever regardless of how many incarnations I must yet perhaps pass through before I can finally be united with HER.
I saw the wooded mountains of coastal California race by beneath the silvery three hundred foot cylinder that was the Starfire as An'na took the controls of her beloved ship then for our landing. Our speed slowing down to subsonic levels, and there ahead of us was the lovely city of Sarn gleaming brightly in the noon-day sun! I could see on the viewscreen the city unfold before us, the ship slowing as An'na brought it down lower, flying only a few hundred feet above the harbor as before us rose the lovely Imperial Palace. In my mind's eye I could see a lovely tall golden Empress now being told of the approaching craft, her azure eyes perhaps glowing with anticipation as beside her stood a lovely young Princess who had once been mine. My eyes studying the viewscreen for every detail as An'na brought the Starfire to a halt there before the Palace, letting it hover for a moment on its anti-gravity drive before letting it ease down on the walkway before the great marble monument to human vanity there before us!
"This is your chance, An'na." I said to her, knowing that it would be the first meeting between her and her own true mother since she had drifted away helplessly clinging to a life ring from her some twelve years before when Sarnian Queen went down. I saw the tears glisten in An'na's eyes as there on the viewscreen we saw Darlanis walking towards us, Sharon at her side. I knew that it would have to be a decision she would have to make.
"We both live in different worlds, Lorraine," An'na sobbed, one of the women now touching the button that opened the ship's inner door to the ship's airlock for my recompression to Earth's heavier atmosphere. "It would never work out." I thought I understood, although Darlanis certainly wouldn't! An'na had made her decision as painful as it might be. Perhaps, I thought to myself, it was for the best. On Earth An'na would be almost like an alien, taken away from her own world she had now grown to love. Taken away from everything that now held meaning to her!
"It is good to have you back," Darlanis said to me. It felt good to be back despite my headache from my recompression to an atmosphere ten times thicker than the one I had grown used to on Mars. To again be able to breath without an oxygen mask. I felt the heat of the sun on my body, my eyes dazzled by its rays. I took her hands in mine, looked into her azure eyes. Thought of another I probably would never see again. I was no longer the woman I had been before. I hoped that Darlanis could understand. Behind me the Starfire lifted into the sky with a soft hum of almost infinite power. At its controls a young woman, tears in her eyes as she watched the Earth fall away beneath her awesome ship.
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