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                             THE VIOLATORS

                            By EANDO BINDER

             _Some wonderful odds and ends of Mother Earth
            had escaped the fiery incinerator of Time. And
            the most significant of all--metallic, angular
              and ancient--Lem Starglitter Blake carried
              proudly in his dirty old prospector's bag._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                       Planet Stories Fall 1954.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


He was excited, the little man with the big find.

He drove his battered old space tub down at the world which lay frozen
over and lifeless since long ago. But not completely abandoned. Far
from it.

He joined the long line of ships making the pilgrimage to the ancient,
original home of the human race. Below lay a transparent dome, the
largest Z-model of 100,000 capacity, into whose ample entry locks the
ships filed down, one by one. Some had to circle, waiting their turn.
He licked his lips impatiently. At times he grinned and savored the
delay, in view of what lay ahead.

At last he chugged in and parked his grimy little tub beside shiny
yachts and towering spaceliners and spacebuses. The canned air of the
dome was fresh to his lungs, compared to the reek of his cabin. He dug
a tip out of his frayed jeans for the parking attendant, not quite
daring to snub him. He winced at the sneer over the small coin.

But no more sneers like that, soon. And plenty more money, with what he
had in his bag. He smiled and mumbled as he walked away, swinging the
leather bag at his side, bulging with something angular.

He filed his way among others toward the turnstiles leading to the main
exhibit area. Tourists, vacationers, families with kids, school groups,
newsmen, galactic trotters, earnest scholars. You could find all types
here, from every walk of life and from any distant planet, drawn like
a magnet to this "must" for all travelers. It was _the_ sight to see
around the Milky Way.

Certainly nothing could beat its appeal as the birthplace of mankind.
Nothing, that is, except the gay and fabulous Carnival of Castor,
whose attendance record could never be topped.

He tried to rush through the turnstile but was halted by the green-clad
guard.

"I'm in a hurry, mister," he mumbled in his wispy voice, from an
oxygen-burned throat. He began opening his bag. "Look what I found--"

The guard heard not a word. "We keep a register of all visitors to
Mother Earth. Name? Home World? Occupation?"

It was odd how even the guard's routine voice lowered a tone on the
words "Mother Earth."

"Lem Starglitter Blake," said the little old man in unkempt jeans and
patched boots.

The guard's lip twitched slightly. Lem Blake wished he had left out the
middle name. Why had parents of that generation taken to such frothy
names? Red-faced, Blake went on with a rush. "Born on Antares IV.
Prospector for ore strikes. But listen, I made the biggest strike of
all. Not ore but--"

"Next," said the guard.

Lem Blake swallowed the rest and moved on. People wouldn't treat him
that way later, he consoled himself in secret gloating, clutching his
bag. He could take it for a short time more without bitterness.

Another guard eyed the bag sternly. "I must warn you, sir, there is no
souvenir hunting allowed here. Understand, sir?"

"I'm not going to take anything," Blake tried to protest. "I'm bringing
something--"

"Your bag will be emptied and examined when you leave," dismissed the
guard.

They were all so big and important in their flashy uniforms. But just
wait, thought Blake, just wait. We'll see who's big and important
later.

But Blake could see why they were so cautious. All around, enclosed in
the giant plastic bubble, were the hoary ruins of a city, moldered to
fragility. If the hordes of visitors were allowed to snatch souvenirs,
the place would be picked clean as a bone.

ANCIENT NEW YORK, said a sign, MAIN CITY OF HOME EARTH IN PRE-SPACE
DAYS.

People stared in the proper awe due such time-honored relics of antique
glory. It was from this terribly old civilization that the race of
starmen had sprung, inheriting the galaxy. Various individual exhibits
among the ruins were labeled--a broken wheel, a shred of tapestry under
glass, a coil of wire, pottery, bits of jewelry, a bleached human
skull. Odds and ends that had escaped the incinerator of time. There
wasn't much left after 140 rock-wearing centuries.

Priceless, those few dozens of relics. Lem Blake grew excited again at
what lay in his bag. It would command a price, maybe enough to stake
him to years of good food, new clothes, his tub overhauled, leisure and
fun. Maybe more, much more. It all depended.

Blake knew all the busy guards would ignore him. He must reach higher
authority. He hurried to the central auditorium where the staff
lecturer spoke sonorously to the hushed crowd packed shoulder to elbow.
Blake took a long breath at the outer fringes and began squeezing his
way closer to the rostrum. It was slow work in the human jam. He heard
the speech as he struggled on.

"--though today we are born and live and die on many worlds, my fellow
humans, we all come from the original stock of this particular planet.
It was from this small and quite backward 20th century world that
mankind leaped to the stars."

Lem Blake suddenly choked on a chuckling thought in the dead quiet
of the listening throng. A circle of eyes transfixed him at the
unspeakable crime. Mumbling apologies, Blake pressed on.

Professor John Nova McKay went on with the stock lecture. How many
times had it been repeated now, some 80,000? He himself had delivered
it over a thousand times. It was hard to keep the monotony out of his
tones.

"Ships roared into space at the end of the 20th century. First, to
explore and pioneer on nearby worlds of the same sun. By the 25th
century, they had the Hyper Drive, permitting speeds greater than
light. Then began the second phase of building a galactic commonwealth.
Those were days of glory."

The speaker tried to lift his voice on those words but it fell flat
in his own ears. But the audience hung on it, caught in the dramatic
thought that their own feet stood where all that had started.

"This is all ancient space history going back 14,000 years, and many of
its details and records are lost. But we know that by the 30th century
we humans ranged all through the Milky Way, settling, colonizing,
setting up trade with native races. Worlds existed in vast numbers,
many habitable."

Blake stopped muttering apologies as he elbowed his way inch by inch.
The apologies drew frosty frowns, and were the last thing they wanted.
They wanted silence. Only Blake's bag insisted on clanking now and
then. He kept on doggedly.

Professor McKay's voice rolled over the rapt faces. "Today, there are
over a million commonwealth planets, about half under native rule,
friendly to us. On the other half no native intelligence survived, and
they thus became our own home planets. Earthmen came to dominate the
galaxy but only in the sense that they were the single largest and most
prolific race."

McKay's dry voice quickened now, as the most unique part of the stock
historical story came at last. "But strangely, during that era of
galactic expansion, Earth itself gradually faded out of the picture.
More and more people left, seeking better homes, richer opportunities,
more desirable locations and neighborhoods in the galaxy. Population
fell on Earth.

"This was all hastened and brought to a focus when the sun of Earth
suddenly began dimming in the 49th century. An old star, that sun
died. In a short time, by the cosmic clock, another ice age fell on
Earth--the final one. The oceans froze solid and all land areas turned
to bleak wasteland."

There was a suitable pause at this point for the audience to weigh
that calamitous event. People stood hushed, half in ancient sorrow.

Blake stopped, hardly daring to breathe. One clank now and he might be
thrown out.

"Of course, long before the final death of the planet, the last
Earthmen had left for other waiting homes. There was no swift storylike
doom. No panic or hardship or loss of life. And then, perhaps
inevitably but still queerly, Earth receded in all human memory and was
forgotten."

The speaker paused again. It always came on cue here, a gasp from the
audience, as certainly as the "ahs" and "ohs" of a fireworks display.
The bald statement always had its shock effect on any audience, and
here on hallowed Earth itself.

Lem Starglitter Blake resumed his slow progress toward the rostrum,
glad for the noise.

       *       *       *       *       *

Professor McKay braced himself, winced, and went on. Who had written
the original purple prose for the lecture? Yet it could not be changed
now. Not without an act of the Galactic Congress.

"Yes, Mother Earth was forgotten and abandoned as it floated frozen and
lifeless about its dying primary. Forlorn, deserted. Nobody came to
visit Earth any more, for any reason. Nor any of its sister planets, as
they too were sheathed in ice. Earth became a ghost world.

"And as centuries marched on, with humanity busy on many thriving
worlds, all records were lost as to where Earth might be. Earth fell
into the category of a vague legend, known only to be a frozen globe
circling a sun once typed G-O. But there were a hundred such. Which one
was Earth's sun? Nobody knew any more."

Blake stepped on somebody's toes and was roundly cursed. But he kept
on, clutching his bag. They'd be sorry. All this would change when he
showed what he had.

"Imagine it, friends. By the 100th century, even the name 'Earth' had
faded from collective memory. Most humans living and dying on the
worlds of Arcturus, Vega, Pollux or any others didn't even know that
the race had come from Earth originally. They almost thought themselves
native life. We no longer called ourselves Earthmen by then. That term
fell into discard too. We were Starmen. And so, for an age, lonely
Earth was lost in space, unsung, unknown, unhallowed."

McKay went on by rote, thinking of dinner.

"It was not till the 130th century that the Galactic Historical Society
decided to make a shrine of Mother Earth, original home of the Starmen,
as turned up in a musty record. But where _was_ Earth? Vague records
helped nothing. Picture how aghast they were. Finally, they had to
organize a galactic hunt for Earth that took a century."

Lem Blake sweated as he forged on through the packed crowd. If only his
bag didn't bump against shins producing two noises, one metallic, the
other human and angry. But later, when they heard, they wouldn't mind.
Blake grinned. Maybe they'd tell of it proudly.

"The ships searched everywhere for unmarked Earth, known only to be a
frozen world of a dead sun. It was not even known how many planets had
circled Earth's sun. Some thought three, others nine, again thirteen.
Nobody could submit proof one way or another, so it became a blind
search in a cosmic haystack. A star search.

"The only real clue was that it must be in the vicinity of Sirius,
since it was known that such star systems as Centauri, Barnard and
Epsilon Eridani held the earliest colonies of Starmen. Earth had to be
somewhere among this general group, since the Starmen expanded outward
slowly, jumping from near stars to far stars.

"All frozen worlds among that narrowed-down group were visited, for any
tell-tale signs as to which would be Earth itself. They often had to
burn down with atomic torches through glacial ice to examine ancient
ruins."

Blake glared back at an indignant glare. He grew bolder as his goal
neared. Not far now, another hundred feet.

"Ultimately, the most likely evidence pointed to one certain planet:
the one we stand on today. Under the ice and hoar frost was found this
ancient city whose ruins now surround you. A few scraps of chiseled
wording on cornerstones matched the earliest writings of Earth we know
of, at least prior to the 30th century. And so, we had found the
forgotten world, Mother Earth."

McKay remembered to make his voice ring just in time.

"The GHS then enthusiastically gave Earth its deserved and honored
niche in galactic history. A dome, many times replaced and enlarged,
was set up around the city ruins. Precious ruins, for they proved the
only ones found on Earth. All else had vanished to dust. Visitors were
welcomed. Earth became a shrine. In the past nine centuries, no less
than twelve billions of our scattered people, from all corners of the
galaxy, have made the pilgrimage here to home Earth."

Blake was close now, panting, not caring how he swung the bag. McKay
was close now, too, to the end of his lecture.

"Think once, my galactic fellowmen. This we believe was New York, main
metropolis of ancient Earth. The then-existing oceans are gone, the
continents utterly changed and jumbled, and the day is far longer than
at that time. Everything of that long past era is obliterated in dusty
time, except these few ruins.

"But this is Earth. Our home planet. Our Mother World. In reverent
honor to our vanished ancestors of this alpha world, we ask that you
bow your heads in silent tribute for a moment."

       *       *       *       *       *

Blake had just reached the rostrum and was yelling, "Hey, Mr. Speaker.
I'm Lem Blake and I got something to show you--"

Blake froze in horror even as his weak voice rang out like a gong in
the pin-drop silence that had just fallen. But what did it matter now?
He leaped on the rostrum before the startled lecturer.

"Listen," said Blake hurriedly. "Listen what I found--"

"Shut up," hissed McKay, snapping off the sound system. "Nothing like
this happened in 900 years, a lecture interrupted. You fool. Don't ruin
it all for them. See me later."

McKay tried to shove Blake bodily off the platform. But Blake twisted
free. If he did not go through with it now, guards would come and
hustle him out of the dome.

"Look, here in my bag," he begged. "An old-time relic, one I stumbled
on looking for paydirt under deep ice. I knew it was a real old timer
when I saw it. Maybe it's the biggest strike I ever made."

McKay took his hand away from Blake's collar. "Another relic of Earth,
you mean? They're so scarce ... let me see it. Hurry, man."

At last Blake fumbled it out of his bag and held it up.

Two cross-pieces of rusted metal, welded at right angles to a common
bar, freakishly preserved by some oily patina, and with lettering still
legible in white. From under glacial ice, it must be old as old.

FIFTH AVENUE read one cross-piece, to Professor McKay's trained eye.
The other, 42nd STREET.

He stared.

Blake grinned suddenly. "And you know where I found it? Not here on
Procyon V but over on Sol III. You know, about eleven light-years
galactic east."

Blake grinned more, shrewdly measuring what he saw in McKay's face, and
let go his bombshell, whose fuse had been burning uncertainly inside
him all this time. "So this was the wrong Earth all the time, eh? Guess
that really rocks you. It'll rock the galaxy too. I'll be famous--"

"Don't be a fool," hissed the professor, signalling guards. "You're
mistaken ... that is--but I'll explain later."

As the guards dragged Blake off, McKay said, "Take him to my office.
See that he keeps his mouth shut till I get there."

In a moment, the reconnected sound system blared out to the puzzled
audience--"Please pardon the rude interruption. And in conclusion, as
we stand reverently on Mother Earth--"

_My gawd! Did he think he was the first one? And did he think we'd
change now after nine hundred years?_