Echoes of an Alien Sky by James P. Hogan Page A

feeling he was looking for approval.

    "If you say so," he replied noncommittally.

    "Don't you think Venus could learn something from Earth?" Jenyn persisted. "How to stand up and fight for the right to be independent, for instance. To reject these constraints we have to live under, that say you can only be what the approval of others allows you to be." His tone moved a notch toward being conciliatory. "I would have thought that would appeal to someone like you. You seem like an independent kind of spirit. I'm pretty good at sensing a potential rebellious streak in people—the instinct to be one's own person."

    Yorim showed his teeth, drawing a plant stem between them that he had picked up somewhere and was still chewing. "What are we talking about here, Progressives and traditionals? That kind of stuff?"

    "Yes. It's no secret that I believe very strongly in the Progressives. Naseena said it in Rhombus, when we met."

    Yorim shook his head. "You've got me wrong. I just get on with my life and try to enjoy it without spoiling anybody else's. There's probably some truth on both sides. I figure it will all come together in its own time without people needing to blow each other up the way the Terrans did."

    Jenyn was not being put off so easily. "You must be the adventurous type at heart, who has to test limits. Why else would you come to Earth?"

    "I'm just on my way to Luna with Kyal to do a job. We're electromagnetics specialists. Propulsion and gravity. That's what interests me. The other business isn't worth getting tension sickness over. Life's too short."

    "But it's not quite that simple, is it? Holding back when you could play a part is no different than working against us. Changes are going to happen. Will you be happy to just sit on the side and the accept the freedoms and rights that others won?" Jenyn paused for an instant. "Maybe even died for?"

    Yorim looked at him disbelievingly. "Died for? You're not seriously suggesting that what's going on back home could come to armed conflict?"

    "Who knows?" Jenyn shrugged. "Anything is possible. Terrans wouldn't have shrunk from the thought of it. . . . But tell me, out of curiosity, if it did come to that, where would you stand, do you think?"

    Yorim sighed and shook his head. "You just don't give up, do you?"

    Jenyn's face remained serious. "The Terrans taught us never to give up. Study their history. In any social order, the top level eventually becomes complacent and idle, set in their ways. When that happens, somebody else displaces them. Venus is ripe for such a change today. So now it's our turn. But it took the Terrans to show us. They were attuned to it. They created a world of ideas, passions, crusade, and conflict that makes ours look tame and timid."

    Yorim snorted. "Sure. And look what happened to it."

    "We don't know that they were responsible for whatever happened."

    "Oh, I wouldn't think there's much doubt about it from the way they were heading." Yorim smiled crookedly. "Tell me, just out of curiosity, if you had to, which way would you bet?"

    Jenyn was unfazed. "Even if so, it doesn't change anything. Nothing worthwhile comes without its risks. They knew it too, but they were prepared to take those risks. They didn't shrink from them. The lives they lived, they lived to the full."

    Just then, Naseena and Mowrak appeared, clambering carefully back down from above to rejoin them. "These constructions are incredible!" Naseena exclaimed as she perched herself by the pack that she had left earlier. They're from long before there were any machines. How did they build them? And Whylen says there are others with even bigger blocks in them at other places."

    Yorim sat back and stretched his legs, happy to change the subject. "Well, maybe it wasn't as difficult as you think," he said. "It looks as if Earth's gravity might have changed several times in the past. So things might not have been so heavy then."

    Mowrak sat down heavily by Naseena and