Star Bridge by James Gunn

almost over.
    He had thought of that dark room on Quarnon Four as the beginning and the killing as the end, but the bullet that had shortened Kohlnar’s life by only a few days had been an end only for the General Manager. Horn hadn’t thought beyond it to the inevitable consequence—his own death. He wondered now if the dark room had been the real beginning. He knew that it hadn’t.
    All the little things that go to make up a life had shaped him for the decision that had started him on a three-hundred-light-year journey toward death. The Cluster had given him birth and molded him.
    In the Cluster, individualism was sacred. There was too much to do to waste time on laws; they were obeyed or ignored as it suited the individual. Life was struggle; a man got out of it as much as he could take on his own. The frontiers were everywhere.
    Horn had learned self-sufficiency early. The first Quarnon War had orphaned him; the casual government had ignored him. He bore no malice for either. That was life; the sooner a man learned it, the better off he was.
    Everything he had ever had, Horn had struggled for. He grew strong and quick to learn. He became skillful in getting what he wanted and confident that he could get anything he wanted badly enough.
    All causes were alike, good and bad. A man got what he could out of them. The only person a man must answer to is himself.
    Above all, a man must not care. To care is to yield one’s armor against the world; to care is to hand the world the power to hurt. Let the universe go its way; Horn went his and took, with his strength, what he wanted from the universe.
    Horn looked up between the leaves at the stars. He had thought that people were like stars, separated by dark walls. But he saw them now connected by a network of nerves, bridged by sensitive filaments. No one exists in himself. No action is isolated. The black ships that had swooped down on the Cluster many years before had helped fire the shot that had entered Kohlnar’s chest.
    Is it like this everywhere? Horn wondered.
    He rolled over and got back to his knees and crawled forward again. Perhaps he did not live just for himself. He hadn’t been killed with his parents, and now a man was dead. If he lived now, would it have its effect somewhere else?
    Something brushed against his face, something dangling and furry. He reached out. It was a rabbit, still warm, hanging in the noose of one of his snares.
    Horn took a deep breath. It was a good omen. A rabbit died, and its death would give him strength. Perhaps that strength would give him life again.
    Horn remembered what he had decided back on the chessboard desert. A hiding place. The only place he could hide. As he took the rabbit down and began to skin it, the plan unfolded in his mind.

 
    THE HISTORY
    Cultures aren’t creatures.…
    And yet they are much alike. A creature is a collection of cooperating cells; a culture is a collection of cooperating individuals. Like cells, the individuals specialize in their functions; they divide labor and sometimes inherit these divisions; they propagate themselves. Sometimes they grow wildly and, unless controlled, threaten the whole organism.
    Like a creature, Eron needed blood, nerves, and food. Eron itself was the heart, the brain, and the stomach.
    One thick, golden cylinder drove out from Eron into the greatest engine of all, into the flaming, yellow heart of giant Canopus. It was the master Tube. It was power. Power sustained the deadly walls of the other Tubes, and the walls transmitted it to power centers at each Terminal. Power. The blood of empire.
    The Tubes were nerves. Along its walls raced variations—messages—bridging light years in hours.
    And through the Tubes, just as swiftly, sped the giant ships: freighters, cruisers, liners. The cradles inched them into the locks; massive doors closed behind; air was sucked out. Doors parted in front of them, and they fell, fell into