The Human Exodus

Another place, another time. A world called Earth, in its early 25th century, is moving toward a totalitarian, computer-controlled society. An underground has been resisting this. Among its leaders are computer hacker Dale Hender; dashing and adventurous Paxton Solo; and his lover, the serious, tough-minded Antonia Corelli, pilot of the spaceship Oort Raider.

Dale uncovers plans by the computers that control this society to begin force-feeding drugs to the humans to reduce their passions. Not only that, but the computers will soon start taking away individuals' names and issuing them serial numbers. Indeed, Dale has cracked the computer bank containing the number assignments: his is to be the first of the THX series, THX 0001.

Dale has traced his own genealogy through computer records, going back five hundred years. He knows all about his ancestor Curtis Henderson, for instance [Henderson being the form of the family name before the practice of using non-patronymic naming was introduced in the 21st century]. But the new random serial-number system will destroy the ability to trace family ties, and take away much of their identity.

The underground is powerless to defeat the controlling computers, and so they plan to escape Earth aboard the Oort Raider. Earth doesn't yet have interstellar flight, but the Oort Raider is a giant ship, over ten kilometers long. Although huge, it is capable of landing on Earth - indeed, that's the whole point of its existence. Its four vast storage tanks are used to capture cometary nuclei from the Oort cloud at the outskirts of the solar system. These are then hauled back to Earth, where they are used for their water and other raw materials.

The underground is making secret modifications to one of the Oort Raider's four storage tanks to turn it into a habitat capable of taking five thousand humans on a multi-generation mission to Alpha Centauri, where the latest space telescope pictures have identified an Earth-size planet in an orbit they hope is appropriate to support life. There, they plan to create a new, free society - if, that is, they can escape from Earth.

Plans are proceeding smoothly for the launch of the modified Oort Raider, but the controlling computers are becoming suspicious. The launch schedule has to be moved up. Five thousand members of the underground cram into the rude quarters that have been assembled in one of the giant comet-nucleus storage tanks. But the computers have discovered the escape plan, and a fierce laser battle ensues in the docking facility between members of the underground and police robots. It looks like the underground members will be captured, but some of them sacrifice themselves so that the rest can escape - and the giant Oort Raider rises up into the sky.

The Oort Raider is diving well below the ecliptic in its journey out of the solar system, but robot mining ships from the asteroid belt, loyal to Earth's controlling computers, try to intercept it. There's a fierce space battle, in which the robot ships use mass drivers to hurtle asteroidal rock at the Oort Raider. The Oort Raider carries dozens of small auxiliary ships, and these leave the mothership and engage the robot miners in battle. Thanks to them, and to Antonia's skill in piloting the mothership, the humans narrowly escape with only minor damage and casualties.

The Oort Raider enters the Oort cloud, and tracks down three large comet nuclei. These are maneuvered into the three currently empty storage tanks. Comets are essentially dirty snowballs, consisting mostly of water polluted by carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen - they will provide all the water, the food-synthesis raw materials, and the reaction mass for the ship's fusion motors for the long journey to Alpha Centauri. True freedom is still years away, at the end of a long, arduous journey - but the men and women of the Oort Raider can already begin to taste it.

The Oort Raider leaves Earth's solar system, the first manned ship to do so. There's a shipboard celebration - they're farther out than any ship has ever gone before, and going fast enough that they can't possibly be caught.

Everyone is settling in for the long voyage to freedom, when an alarm sounds from the forward sensor array. Something is pulling the ship off course. Antonia and her crew struggle to control the ship, but nothing they try helps. Ahead, a cosmic whirlpool has appeared - all sorts of interstellar debris, falling into an object that might be a black hole. It looks like the ship and its valiant crew are doomed.

The Oort Raider falls into the whirlpool. The giant ship goes on a wild roller-coaster ride as it becomes clear that they've encountered not a black hole but rather an interstellar wormhole - a passageway between distant points in space. The ship sustains heavily casualties and damage during the passage, but then emerges out into what seems to be normal space. Normal, but not familiar - the sky is densely packed with blue and white stars, meaning they're likely inside a galaxy, rather than a globular cluster, but dominating the view is another nearby spiral galaxy. The conclusion is inescapable - they are no longer in the Milky Way. Nor are they in its near vicinity: the visible spiral galaxy matches the arm pattern of neither Andromeda nor the Milky Way.

Antonia orders a computerized search for radio signals. But almost at once Dale Hender reports a startling result. His radio equipment is designed, of course, to ignore the 21-centimeter wavelength, where the three-degree-Kelvin cosmic microwave background radiation is found. (The cosmic background radiation is the heat left over from the original Big Bang explosion. It has cooled over time to just three degrees above absolute zero.) But, as Dale explains to Antonia, the three-degree band is clear; instead, there's uniform background noise at seven degrees. There's only one possible explanation: they've been displaced not only in space, but in time, as well: the universe is billions of years younger, and so the microwave residue of the Big Bang explosion hasn't cooled as much. Antonia makes the announcement to the crew: it is now a long time ago, and they are in a galaxy far, far away.

The Oort Raider was badly damaged coming through the wormhole. Repairs are made, and the crew begins arguing about whether they should risk heading back through the wormhole again.

On the one hand, they'd never intended to return to the oppressive Earth anyway, but on the other, they at least had suspected a habitable planet awaited them around Alpha Centauri. They may find nothing here at all.

Antonia decides that they will attempt another passage through the wormhole, and orders all the auxiliary ships, which have been out exploring, to return to the mothership. But suddenly the whirlpool begins to fragment.

It is, apparently, a transient phenomenon. They can race toward it, and probably make it through before it collapses completely, but one of the auxiliary ships, the Century Eagle, piloted by Paxton Solo, has been exploring far from the Oort Raider. Antonia has to choose: either make a mad dash for the wormhole, possibly just barely squeaking through, or waiting for the return of the Century Eagle.

Paxton urges her to go, to save everyone, but at the last second, Antonia aborts the maneuver, unable to strand her lover alone in a strange galaxy. The wormhole collapses. They are now here for good.

Several small auxiliary craft are sent out to do parallax studies, to try to identify nearby stars. It turns out there is a yellow dwarf G-class star less than half a light-year away. The wormhole may have turned out to be a blessing in disguise: their journey to a new world may have now been cut considerably in length. (Indeed, the astrophysicists among the crew suggest that wormholes can only appear between points deep in a gravity well - in other words, it's not coincidence that they came out close to a star; they had to - just as the wormhole that had temporarily appeared on the outskirts of Sol system had had to appear at such a location.) The ship starts in toward the yellow star. Anticipation is high - but it quickly turns to concern when radio signals are detected. Someone - or something - is already there.

The Oort Raider is rapidly approaching the alien star system - and it soon becomes apparent that the radio signals aren't coming from any of the system's planets, but rather from a fleet of spaceships approaching the system from the other side. There is one planet in the star system's habitation zone - close enough that it will have a surface temperature above the freezing point of water, but not so close as to be too hot for life. In the ship's telescopes, it's seen to have a very high albedo - meaning it likely has clouds and oceans. But there's no artificial radio noise at all coming from it. The crew realizes that they and whoever is approaching from the other side may have stumbled on the planet at the same time. The humans, of course, are willing to share - there are only five thousand people aboard the Oort Raider, after all. But what will the intentions of the approaching aliens be?

The Oort Raider reaches the new world first. It's everything the humans could have hoped for: a land-water world, with an atmosphere they can breathe, covered with vegetation, many types of animal life, but no indigenous intelligent life. Indeed, it seems a tropical paradise, a second Eden - absolutely beautiful and unspoiled.

There's no way the Oort Raider could make another interstellar journey, and the humans want very much to stay here. Antonia lands the giant ship on the planet.

But three other large ships arrive, landing in a small valley a few kilometers from where the Oort Raider has put down. A land speeder brings a crew from the alien ships to meet the humans, providing their first contact with other intelligent beings. The reader recognizes the aliens as Rodians - and they are carrying what appear to be formidable sidearms.

With them is one member of another race, a thin biped with a huge cranium, large, black, lidless eyes, and folds of skin covering the lower part of the face - a Bith. It becomes clear that the large-headed creature is a linguist.

It has a phenomenal vocal range, an apparently perfect memory, and a vast intelligence. In short order, it learns English from Antonia, Dale, Paxton, and the others, simply by having them point at objects and say their names, or perform actions and say the verb associated with those actions.

The Bith tells the humans that his personal name is Laximas. Everything is going fine - first contact seems peaceful enough, and, although the humans can't talk directly to the Rodians, at least the Bith interpreter seems quite friendly, although the Rodians do seem to treat the Bith rather callously.

To the humans' amazement, Laximas explains that the Rodian ships had been traveling in hyperspace - a technology far beyond what the humans have - when they detected the presence of the transient wormhole. Such wormholes can wreak havoc on hyperspace travel, and so they'd dropped down into normal space. Apparently, they are carrying some sort of valuable cargo, and wanted to take no chances with it. Once in normal space, they'd detected the Oort Raider by its fusion exhaust, and had decided to have a look at it.

Antonia is pleased by their good fortune at meeting friends so soon, but Paxton and Dale are suspicious. Something about the Rodians' behavior is very ominous ...

After nightfall, Paxton and Dale make their way under cover of darkness to the Rodian landing site - and are shocked by what they see. One of the landers has its cargo bay open, and inside are hundreds of Biths, crammed into filthy living conditions. The Rodians are slavers, and their "valuable cargo" is a load of Biths. As the two humans watch, one of the Biths tries to escape, and a Rodian gives chase. The Bith is no match for the Rodian's tracking skill, and although Paxton tries to create a diversion without giving his presence away, the Rodian hunts down and kills the Bith.

Paxton and Dale return to the clearing. The other Biths are being forced into arduous physical tasks, and the ones that fail are being shot. Paxton spots Laximas, the translator, amongst a group waiting to be tested. He makes his way through the dense foliage until he is close to Laximas. He manages get his attention, although Laximas seems quite myopic, unable to make him out until he is very close; he later explains that Biths have microscopic vision, but this skill is at the cost of not being able to see distant objects clearly.

The Bith speaks to Paxton in low tones: the Rodians intend to take the humans as slaves - there's a high-price market for exotic slaves. They've got a load of 15,000 Biths in captivity, but are going to weed it down by a third, to make room for taking the 5,000 human captives - the Rodians figure an exotic human slave might fetch a price ten times what a common Bith gets.

Paxton tries to create a diversion to help Laximas escape with them. In so doing, he opens one of the other Rodian cargo holds - and is shocked to find a giant, two-headed dragonlike creature within. It is also part of the Rodian cargo, a rare monster collected from very distant lands to be sold to the highest bidder.

Paxton, Dale, and Laximas escape into the forest.

While heading back toward the Oort Raider, Paxton, Dale, and Laximas are attacked by the escaped two-headed dragon. Paxton is almost killed, but knowing he has to get back to warn the others gives him the strength to defeat the beast ...

Paxton, Dale, and the Bith translator Laximas quickly brief Antonia Corelli and the rest of the humans. They've got only a few options, the best of which seems to be to try to strand or kill the Rodians, free the Biths, and escape with them in the Rodians' fleet of faster-than-light craft. But they only have a matter of hours to prepare. The Rodians are heavily armed and technologically superior. Still, Dale estimates there are only a few hundred of them, and if the tide could be turned, and the Biths would join the fight, they might easily be defeated by the combined total of almost 20,000 humans and Biths.

Although the human technology is inferior to that of the Rodians, the Oort Raider has one thing the Rodians do not: three giant cargo holds containing the nuclei of captured comets. When out in space, the nuclei had been frozen solid - giant, dirty snowballs. But since landing the ship on this temperate world, the nuclei have melted, filling the holds with cubic kilometers full of dirty water, and that gives the Bith named Laximas an idea ...

The Oort Raider does a low-level flight over the low small valley in which the three Rodian ships have landed, and it opens its massive cargo holds, dumping the cometary meltwater into the valley, flooding it. Laximas had revealed that Clak'dor VII, the Bith homeworld, has many oceans, but Rodia is a jungle world where rain evaporates as soon as it hits the ground, meaning there are no open bodies of water. So, Biths are accomplished swimmers, but Rodians are unable to swim at all. The slavers are drowned in the cubic kilometers of cometary water, while the thousands of Biths swim to the surface, then to shore, and freedom.

But one Rodian gets away - he uses his blaster to kill a half-dozen Biths, then lashes their bodies together, forming an escape raft. Antonia chases after him, but he manages to send a radio signal before he is captured ...

With its initial fuel supplies gone and its cometary tanks empty, the Oort Raider can't take off again until the tanks are refilled with water from this beautiful world's oceans. Work begins on that. But now that the transient wormhole is gone, starships can exit hyperdrive directly inside this star system, and suddenly a giant warship appears orbiting above the planet. A shuttle comes down from it, disgorging large green piglike aliens with upturned tusks. The Bith translator recognizes them at once - Gamorreans, sometime enemies of the Rodians, but currently their trading allies. This time, hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, all the humans and the Biths are taken prisoner.

In short order, more Rodian ships arrive. An argument ensues amongst the Gamorreans and the Rodians. The former claim half the slaves as fee for rescuing the lost cargo. The Rodians offer a bulk payment of just 500 Biths and 100 of the exotic new humans as payment. It looks as though in-fighting between the two slaver races may escalate enough that the humans and Biths might be able to escape ...

The Gamorreans and the Rodians come to an agreement on dividing up the slaves. The Rodians can keep three-quarters of all the Biths, but the Gamorreans get the remaining quarter, plus half the humans. The humans are divided into two groups - with Paxton Solo being put in one, and Antonia Corelli into another. They plead, through Laximas, that they are mated, and shouldn't be separated, but the Gamorrean slavemaster laughs - slaves don't get to choose their own mates. Get used to it, says the Gamorrean: for humans, freedom is a thing of the past.

Isolated from the second group of humans, Antonia and those with her organize a daring plan to try to seize the Gamorrean shuttle. They undertake it, but it looks like all is lost - until Paxton and some of the humans from the other group appear. They'd come up independently with a similar plan to seize the shuttle. They make it aboard, along with some of the Biths, including Laximas, who knows how to fly the ship. They take off - but the Gamorreans radio after them that they will kill the remaining humans and Biths unless they return. Antonia figures they are bluffing - why kill thousands of valuable slaves to regain only a few hundred?

But the Gamorreans and Rodians do start executing the slaves, a hundred at a time. Laximas admits that it's him they are after: having been used in many negotiations, he knows valuable secrets, including a plot by the Rodians to betray the Gamorreans at an upcoming trading session. The Rodian slavers will indeed kill all the others just to get Laximas back. Antonia returns the ship to the ground and surrenders. The Rodian leader is about to execute Laximas so that he can never be a threat again, but Paxton and Antonia intervene - and Antonia takes a blaster shot intended for the Bith. She lays dying in Paxton's arms. He promises her that she'll always be remembered.

While the slaver ships are being readied for launch, Dale and Paxton bury Antonia - the one human who will remain behind on the beautiful planet.

The slaves are rounded up and apportioned again between the Gamorreans and the Rodians. They are ready for departure; all that remains is for the Bith translator to be executed. But suddenly another starship arrives in orbit around the planet. This one is of an unknown design, but is clearly superior to both the Rodian and Gamorrean forces. Laximas is left alive, in case his translation services are needed. A crew shuttles down from this new ship. The creatures aboard are giant insectoids - this is the first contact with the Varlians.

Laximas establishes that the Varlians, too, had detected the transient wormhole by its hyperspace signature, and had come from their very distant home sector to investigate. By the time they got here, the wormhole was gone, but their scanners showed life on this planet, which the Varlians now summarily claim for the Varlian Empire. They announce that Varlians will now be moving into this part of the galaxy, taking it over.

The Gamorreans and the Rodians, realizing that they are no match for the superior Varlian technology, make a shrewd decision. They give all 20,000 Bith and human slaves to the Varlians, as an act of tribute, and ally themselves with the insectoids, promising to help them subjugate all other races in this sector. Thus the deadly pattern of Varlian overlords, aided by Gamorrean and Rodian henchmen, is established - a pattern that continues to plague the galaxy to this day.

The human and Bith slaves are all en route to Forhilnor, a harsh, giant planet where the Varlians intend to imprison the civilian populations of all the worlds they conquer. As Paxton Solo and Dale Hender look back on the green-blue paradise of a world they are leaving behind, they agree that it should be named Corellia, in honor of their dead Captain, Antonia Corelli. They vow that one day they will return, and make that lush world their peaceful home.