There was a mutter of agreement, primarily from my faction, and the angry meeting broke up. Nothing had been settled, except the division of the expedition into two camps. We never worked together again in harmony. Since Baiel's group was unarmed, their greatest potential danger seemed to be gone; yet the village tension persisted.
Baiel could no longer use his Hayden to make a spectacular display of the power of the sun god; slowly the old priest began to reassert the cult of brother glacier. It seemed to me that Baiel encouraged the change; certainly he and the old priest became more intimate than before. I wanted to order an end to their close association, but my own faction was against it.
"Baiel's harmless," they told me again and again. "Don't ride him, Captain. Let this thing simmer down and we'll have them all on our side again."
Gradually I realized that the very existence of the Olympus was a constant threat to the precarious stability of our community. There were still countless machines aboard which could be converted into further enervating gifts of the sun god. The Olympus had to be destroyed, and yet I had no means to accomplish it.
Built to withstand the extreme radiations of spatial sunlight unfiltered by any atmosphere, the metal of the hull was immune to the relatively low degree of heat generated by the Hayden. Only the converted energy used to fuel the tubes could be used for emergency welding if repairs had to be made away from our Earth bases. While there was still a residue sealed in the tanks, I knew it was not enough to liquidate even a part of the ship.
The alternative was to move the community to a place where it would be physically impractical to return to the Olympus. To the south the land would be more fertile in any case, the game more plentiful. To migrate had always been one of my goals for the tribe.
But, when I proposed migration, I came face to face with the strongest of their taboos. The volcanic mountains to the south were more terrifying than brother glacier, which moved inexorably closer with the passing years. No argument, no logic, no patient persuasion could weaken the force of the taboo. Even Dayhan, who had learned so much, refused to listen to me. Beyond the fire mountains lay the hunting ground of the dead; it was forever forbidden to the living.
Suddenly, one night, the sky to the south blazed orange-red as the slumbering volcano erupted. The ground trembled and we heard long crevices cracking through the glacial ice; a gray ash settled down from the sky, smearing the snow heaped around our stone huts.
The tribe flocked in terror to the old priest. Brother glacier, he told them, was angry because he had been neglected; brother glacier demanded sacrifices.
Baiel stood on the stone pedestal beside the priest, smirking helplessly. When he caught my eye, he pointed to his sleeve to show me that it was empty. Since I had negativized his Hayden, he could do nothing to prevent the orgy of human slaughter.