The Terra Data

Book 0: DUMAREST SAGA

by E.C. Tubb

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

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Release date: April 1, 1980

Publisher: DAW

Print pages: 172

Sample

The Dumarest Saga:

1: The Winds of Gath (1967)

2: Derai (1968)


3: Toyman (1969)


4: Kalin (1969)


5: The Jester at Scar (1970)


6: Lallia (1971)


7: Technos (1972)


8: Veruchia (1973)


9: Mayenne (1973)


10: Jondelle (1973)


11: Zenya (1974)


12: Eloise (1975)


13: Eye of the Zodiac (1975)


14: Jack of Swords (1976)


15: Spectrum of a Forgotten Sun (1976)


16: Haven of Darkness (1977)


17: Prison of Night (1977)


18: Incident on Ath (1978)


19: The Quillian Sector (1978)


20: Web of Sand (1979)


21: Iduna’s Universe (1979)


22: The Terra Data (1980)


23: World of Promise (1980)


24: Nectar of Heaven (1981)


25: The Terridae (1981)


26: The Coming Event (1982)


27: Earth is Heaven (1982)


28: Melome (1983)


29: Angado (1984)


30: Symbol of Terra (1984)


31: The Temple of Truth (1985)


32: The Return (1997)


33: Child of Earth (2008)


The Cap Kennedy (F.A.T.E.) Series (E.C. Tubb writing as Gregory Kern)

Galaxy of the Lost (1973)


Slave Ship from Sergan (1973)


Monster of Metelaze (1973)


Enemy Within the Skull (1974)


Jewel of Jarhen (1974)


Seetee Alert! (1974)


The Gholan Gate (1974)


The Eater of Worlds (1974)


Earth Enslaved (1974)


Planet of Dread (1974)


Spawn of Laban (1974)


The Genetic Buccaneer (1974)


A World Aflame (1974)


The Ghosts of Epidoris (1975)


Mimics of Dephene (1975)


Beyond the Galactic Lens (1975)


The Galactiad (1983)


Alien Dust (1955)


Alien Impact (1952)


Journey Into Terror (originally published as Alien Life (1954, rev 1998))


Atom War on Mars (1952)


Fear of Strangers (first published as C.O.D. – Mars (1968))


Century of the Manikin (1972)


City of No Return (1954)

Death God’s Doom (1999)

Death is a Dream (1967)

Dead Weight (first published as Death Wears a White Face (1979))

Escape into Space (1969)

Footsteps of Angels (2004) (previously unpublished work written c.1988)

Hell Planet (1954)

Journey to Mars (1954)

Moon Base (1964)

Pandora’s Box (1996) (previously unpublished work written 1954)

Pawn of the Omphalos (1980)

S.T.A.R. Flight (1969)

Stardeath (1983)

Starslave (2010) (previously unpublished work written 1984)

Stellar Assignment (1979)

Temple of Death (1996) (previously unpublished work written 1954)

Fifty Days to Doom (first published as The Extra Man (1954))

The Life-Buyer (1965, 2008)

The Luck Machine (1980)

World in Torment (originally published as The Mutants Rebel (1953))

The Primitive (1977)

The Resurrected Man (1954)

The Sleeping City (1999)

The Space-Born (1956)

The Stellar Legion (1954)

To Dream Again (2011)

Venusian Adventure (1953)

Tide of Death (first published as World at Bay (1954))

E. C. Tubb (writing as Arthur MacLean)

The Possessed (revised version of Touch of Evil (1957))

E. C. Tubb (writing as Brian Shaw)

Argentis (1952)

E. C. Tubb (writing as Carl Maddox)

Menace from the Past (1954)

The Living World (1954)

E. C. Tubb (writing as Charles Grey)

Dynasty of Doom (1953)

The Extra Man (first published as Enterprise 2115 (1954) & then as The Mechanical Monarch (1958))

I Fight for Mars (1953)

Space Hunger (1953)

The Hand of Havoc (1954)

Secret of the Towers (originally published as The Tormented City (1953))

The Wall (1953)

E. C. Tubb (writing as Gill Hunt)

Planetfall (1951)

E. C. Tubb (writing as King Lang)

Saturn Patrol (1951)

E. C. Tubb (writing as Roy Sheldon)

The Metal Eater (1954)

E. C. Tubb (writing as Volsted Gridban)

The Green Helix (originally published as Alien Universe (1952))

Reverse Universe (1952)

Planetoid Disposals Ltd. (1953)

The Freedom Army (originally published as De Bracy’s Drug (1953))

Fugitive of Time (1953)

In the dark a child was crying.

Listening to it, a normal man would have responded to the thin, keening wail, feeling the emptiness, the terror and hopeless
despair, but to Elge it was merely the symptom of a disturbing problem. The thing crying had been old long before he’d been
born, and tears, to it, had been alien for the major part of its life. Yet now it cried as if a child again. Why?


“Catatonia,” said the man at his side. Like Elge he wore the scarlet robe of the Cyclan. His face was gaunt, bone prominent,
his skull devoid of hair; attributes common to all cybers. “The probability is so high as to eliminate doubt. For some reason
the intelligence is trying to find escape in the past.”


Moving back through time into childhood—there to find forgotten terrors. An answer which was almost certainly correct; Icelus
was too skilled to make errors, but one which left the main problem unsolved. Why should the intelligence have needed to escape
at all?


Leaning back in his chair Elge stared thoughtfully at the console before him; the meters, readouts, signal lights, the speakers
from which came the endless sobbing. Crude apparatus compared to what alternatives were available but far safer to use as
two cybers had proved; one now dead from cerebral shock, the other a mindless shell. And yet a probability remained that he
could gain some measure of success.


A touch and a microphone was activated. “Itel,” said Elge. “Itel, can you hear me? Answer if you can. Answer!”


The sobbing continued.

“Itel?” A waste of time and energy; the intelligence had reverted to before the name had been given. A fact Icelus would have
known but he had remained silent, content to watch, to gauge the other’s ability. Elge said, “You have his dossier?”


He waited as it was fed into a machine; a minute chip which held the sum total of a man’s active existence. The details flashed
on the screen were what he’d expected; a child of the slums spotted by a shrewd agent and placed in a Cyclan school for elementary
training. Proving worthy he had become first an acolyte then, later, had won the scarlet robe of a cyber. A man trained and
tested and dedicated to serving the organization; one as efficient as a living machine. Itel had served well in that he had
never failed and had earned his final reward. A reward he had enjoyed for centuries—why should he now be crying?


“As I told you,” said Icelus when Elge asked the question. “Catatonia.”

“The condition but not the cause.”

“True—that is, as yet, unknown.” He added, as Elge remained silent, “All possible causes have been eliminated by a series
of exhaustive tests. The nutrient fluids have been analyzed and found innocuous. No trace of radiation was found in the casing
or attendant structures. No chemical alterations of any kind could be discerned in any part of the essential apparatus. There
is no apparent protoplasmic degeneration.”


“But there is a correlation with previous breakdowns.” Elge studied the addendum on the dossier. “This unit was removed from
its original position and placed in isolation.”


“To minimize the risk of contamination,” explained Icelus. “It was previously in close proximity to a bank of failed units.”

Brains which had taken to uttering nothing but gibberish—the entire unit of which they were a part totally destroyed by orders of the Cyber Prime. A decision which, obviously, had failed to achieve the desired result. Elge listened
again to the thin, frightened wailing of a lost and lonely child. What was it seeking? How did it feel? A brain, taken from
its skull, fitted with life-support apparatus, placed in a vat of nutrient fluids there to rest, alive, awake and aware. Once
it had been a part of Central Intelligence; incorporated in the massed brains which, linked together, formed the tremendous
cybernetic computer able to handle an incredible input of data. Able also to eliminate time and space in direct communication
with cybers scattered throughout the galaxy. The heart of the Cyclan—one now at risk.


Elge recognized the danger as did others. A unit could fail and, if that failure was due to a malfunction of apparatus, it
could be accepted. But if a unit should fail for no apparent reason then to punish the attendants was not enough. The cause
had to be found and eliminated. Had to! The merest acolyte could predict the disaster implicit in the disintegration of the Central Intelligence. At all costs
that disaster must be avoided.


The screen died as Elge touched a control; data vanishing as the chip was automatically expelled. Facts he had assimilated
and could always check if the need arose but which now served no useful purpose. The sound of weeping followed, to be replaced
by a sudden, almost tangible silence. One broken by a rustle as Icelus moved.


“The Council will be expecting your attendance,” he said. “They may wish to hear your conclusions.”

“There is time.” Minutes and to a cyber a minute was not to be wasted, yet what more could he do? Elge rose, conscious of
a sudden chill, wondering at its origin. The body was a machine and not to be cosseted for fear of it becoming less efficient.
Food was fuel and fat excess tissue, hampering, unwanted, yet at times the loss of insulation made itself felt. He must increase
his diet a little, there was an optimum balance to be maintained; in the meantime a walk would restore his efficiency. One
through the caverns of the headquarters of the Cyclan.


An earlier age would have called it a temple; a place built to house a subterranean god, formed, adorned, tended by devoted priests. But no earlier age could have imagined the
vastness of the huge complex which lay in calculated array miles beneath the surface of a scarred and lonely world. Yet the
similarity remained; the mathematical form of the caverns designed for maximum strength held the beauty of functional design,
the cybers were dedicated servants and if a god was something more than a man the Central Intelligence was all of that. And,
like a god, it had its sacrifice.


Alone in his office Master Nequal, Cyber Prime, sat and contemplated the nearing conclusion of his life. It had been a long
one; the stamp of years accentuated the skull-like appearance of his face which formed a waxen ball against the rich scarlet
of his thrown-back cowl. An old face for it takes time to achieve great power and he had started as a starving boy begging
in a gutter, stealing when the opportunity arose, fighting like an animal when, inevitably, he had been caught. Then the school,
the strange men with their strange ways, the lessons instilled by pain, the promises and the proofs, the growing desire to
be as they were; men indifferent to the normal world, protected from it, respected for the attributes they possessed.


The skilled talent he had nurtured and had brought to flower.

One which now had turned against him.

To know. To have the ability as every cyber had to extrapolate from a handful of known facts and to predict the logical sequence
of events. To gauge and evaluate and to reach a conclusion that was so probable as to be almost certain. And he knew his inevitable
fate.


He would die. A death earned because he had failed and even though he was the Cyber Prime still he had to pay the penalty
of failure. To die. To be robbed of his hoped-for reward. Never to rest in blissful freedom of the irritations of the body
and enjoy the pleasure of mental expansion. Of tasting the joy of mental achievement—the only pleasure a cyber could know.


An end he had anticipated all through the long, long years of his dedicated service.

A lamp glowed on the panel before him followed by a voice as he touched a stud. “Master?”

“Yes?”

“The Council is assembling.” Jarvet, his aide, and one who said too little. Yandron would have said more but he was dead now,
long gone to his reward, wondering, perhaps, why his old master was taking so long to join himself and the rest in mental
gestalt. “Master?”


“I heard.”

A pause as if of waiting then the lamp died as Jarvet broke the connection. Had he hoped for more? Unnecessary repetition?
Questions of an empty nature? If so he had been disappointed. If almost a century of life failed to teach a man discretion
then he had better never to have been born.


But the years rode heavily. Nequal straightened, slowly, using the desk to gain support until he was firmly upright. A thing
which would have told against him had any been present to observe and they would have been right to condemn him. A cyber had
to be efficient at all times and the Cyber Prime most of all. Why had he waited so long?


The answer bloomed before him as he activated a familiar control.

It was a masterpiece of electronic ingenuity; tiny motes of light held in a mesh of invisible forces, the entire galactic
lens constrained within three hundred cubic feet of space. With such compression details had to be lost; the billions of individual
worlds, the comets, the asteroidal matter, rogue planets, isolated patches of dust, all swallowed in the glowing depiction
of countless stars. Nequal touched a control and scarlet flecks appeared in scattered profusion, each fleck representing a
cyber. More than there had been when he first became Cyber Prime to rest at the very apex of his world, but not as many as
he would have liked. Still there were large areas devoid of the scarlet flecks, spaces in which they were thinly scattered,
regions and nodes in which the influence of the Cyclan was minor or absent. More evidence of his failure but none other than himself would have considered it as such. It was a personal assessment of how far he had failed to reach
the goal he had set himself when the Council had elevated him to his present position. And yet, even when setting that target,
he had known he would fail.


Ambition, even the emotionless aspirations of a cyber, had to accept the limitations of reality. It took time for a cyber
to gain the trust of a ruler. More to make himself indispensable. Years and even decades before the domination of the Cyclan
could be so firmly established that nothing could shake it. And the galaxy was so vast, the worlds so plentiful, the task
so great that it seemed it would never be accomplished. That sheer size and distance would thwart the Great Plan and frustrate
the ideal which governed his life and the lives of all who wore the scarlet robe. To dominate everyone everywhere. To eliminate
waste. To establish the law of logic and reason wherever mankind could be found.


An aim to which he had dedicated his life.

One shortly to end.

“Master!” Jarvet had arrived in person, now standing within the open door, his eyes like his face as impassive as if carved
from stone. “The Council—”


“Are waiting my presence. I understand.”

“No, master. They are willing to excuse you if that is what you wish.”

A deference to his rank while reinforcing the fact that they were the real strength of the Cyclan. A guard and check against
dangerous excess or reluctant tardiness; watchdogs to keep the Cyber Prime at his best. He could sit and wait and their decision
would be delivered but they, and he, knew what it would be. Or he could attend and face those who chose to accuse him and
defend the actions he had taken. A choice which was really no choice at all.


“I shall not keep them waiting.” The glowing depiction died to form splintered shards of fading luminescence. A brilliance
agains. . .