INCONSTANT STAR

BY

POUL ANDERSON
 The Man-Kzin Wars is created by Larry Niven.

 INCONSTANT STAR

 This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this
 book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is
 purely coincidental.

 Copyright C 1991 by Poul Anderson

 The parts of this novel have appeared in The ManKzin Wars and Man-Kzin Wars
 Ill.

 All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions
 thereof in any form.

 A Baen Books Original

 Baen Publishing Enterprises
 260 Fifth Avenue
 New York, N.Y. 10001

 ISBN: 0-671-72031-7

 Cover art by Larry Elmore

 First printing, January 1991

 Distributed by
 SIMON & SCHUSTER
 1230 Avenue of the Americas
 New York, N.Y. 10020

 Printed in the United States of America
 IRON
               1

 The kzin screamed and leaped.
  In any true gravity field, Robert Saxtorph would have been dead half a
  minute later. The body has its wisdom, and his had been schooled through
  hard years. Before he really knew that a thunderbolt was coming at him, he
  had sprung aside--against the asteroid spin. As his weight dropped, he
  thrust a foot once more to drive himself off the deck, strike a wallfront,
  recover control over his mass, and bounce to a crouch.
  The kzin was clearly not trained for such tricks. He had pounced straight
  out of a crosslane, parallel to Tiamat's rotation axis. Coriolis force was
  too slight to matter. But instead of his prey, he hit the opposite side of
  Ranzau Passage. Pastel plastic cracked under the impact; the metal behind
  it boomed. He recovered with the swiftness of his kind, whirled about, and
  snarled.
  For an instant, neither being moved. Ten meters fi,om him, the kzin stood
  knife-sharp in Saxtorph's
                3
 4        Poul Anderson
 awareness. It was as if he could count every redorange hair of the pelt.
 Round yellow eyes glared at him out of the catlike face, above the mouthful
 of fiLngs. Bat-wing ears were folded out of sight into the fur, for combat.
 The naked tail was angled past a columnar thigh, stiffly held. The claws
 were out, jet-black, on all four digits of either hand. Except for a phone
 on his left wrist, the kzin was unclad. That seemed to make even greater his
 250 centimeters of height, his barrel thickness.
  Before and behind the two, Ranzau Passage curved away. Windows in the
  wallfronts were empty, doors closed, signs turned off; workers had gone
  home for the nightwatch. They were always few, anyway. This industrial
  district had been devoted largely to the production of spaceship equipment
  which the hyperdrive was making as obsolete as fission power.
  There was no time to be afraid. "Hey, wait a minute, friend," Saxtorph
  heard himself exclaim automatically, "I never saw you before, never did you
  any harm, didn't even jostle you-"
  Of course that was useless, whether or not the kzin knew English. Saxtorph
  hadn't adopted the stance which indicated peacefulness. It would have put
  him off balance. The kzin bounded at him.
  Saxtorph released the tension in his right knee and swayed aside. Coming
  up,spin, his speed suddenly lessening his weight, the kzin-definitely not
  a veteran of space-went by too fast to change direction at once. As he
  passed, almost brushing the man, the gingery smell of his excitement
  filling the air, Saxtorph thrust fingers at an eye. That was just about the
  only vulnerable point when a human was unarmed. The kzin yowled; echoes
  rang.
  Saxtorph was shouting, too. "Help, murder, help!" Somebody should be in
  earshot of that. The kzin skidded to a halt and whipped about. It would
  have been astounding how quick and agile his bulk was, if
           INCONSTANT STAIR      5

 Saxtorph hadn't seen action on the ground during the war.
  Again saving his breath, the man backed downspin, but slantwise, so that he
  added little to his weight. Charging full-out, the kzin handicapped himself
  much more. The extra drag on his mass meant nothing to his muscles,, but
  confused his reflexes. Dodging about, Saxtorph concentrated first on
  avoiding the sweeps of those claws, second on keeping the velocity parame-
  ters unpredictably variable. From time to time he yelled.
  One slash connected. It ripped his tunic from collar to belt, and the
  undershirt beneath. Blood welled along shallow gashes. As he jumped clear,
  Saxtorph cracked the blade of his hand onto the flat nose before him. It
  did no real harm, but hurt. The kzin's eyes widened. The pupil of the
  undamaged one grew narrower yet. He had seen the scars across his oppo-
  nent's chest. This human had encountered at least one kzin before, face to
  face.
  But Saxtorph was fifteen years younger then, and equipped with a Gurkha
  knife. Now the wind was gusting out of him. His gullet was afire.
  Sluggishness crept into his motions. "Ya-a-ah, police, helpl Ki-yai!"
  A whistle skirled. The kzin halted. He stared past Saxtorph. The man dared
  not turn his head, but he heard cries and footfalls. The kzin turned and
  sped in the opposite direction, upspin. He whirled into the first crosslane
  he came to and disappeared.
  And that wasn't like his breed, either. Saxtorph sagged back against a
  wallfront and sobbed breath into his lungs. Sweat was cold and acrid on
  him. He felt the beginnings of the shakes and started calling calm down on
  himself, as the Zen master who helped train him for war had taught.
  One cop waved off a score or so of people whom the commotion had drawn
  after him and his companion. The other approached Saxtorph. He was stocky,
  clean-shaven, unremarkable except fbr the way he
 6        Poul Anderson

 cocked his ears forward-neither aristocrat nor Belter, just a commoner from
 Wunderland. "Was ist hier los?" he demanded somewhat wildly.
  Saxtorph could have recalled the Danish of his childhood, before the family
  moved to America, and brushed the rust off what German he'd once studied,
  and made a stab at this language. The hell with it. "Y-y-you speak
  English?" he panted.
  "Ja, some," the policeman answered. "Vat is t'is? Don't you know not to
  push a kzin around?"
  "I sure do know, and did nothing of the sort." Steadiness was returning.
  "He bushwhacked me, completely unprovoked. And, yes, this sort of thing
  isn't supposed to happen with kzinti, and I can't make any more sense of it
  than you. Aren't you going to chase him?"
  "He's gone," said the policeman glumly. "He vill be back in Tigertown and
  t'e trail lost before ve can bring a sniffer to follow him. How you going
  tell vun of t'ose Teufeter from anot'er? You come along to t'e station,
  sir. Ve vill give you first aid and take your statement. "
  Saxtorph drew a long breath, grinned lopsidedly, and replied, "Okay. I'll
  want to make a couple of phone calls. My wife, and-it'd be smart to ask
  Commissioner Markham if I can put off my appointment with him."
                2

  Tiamat is much less known outside its system than it deserves to be. Once
  hyperdrive transport has become readily available and cheap, it may well
  be receiving tourists from all of human space: fbr it is a curious
  object, with considerable historical significance as well.
  Circling Alpha Centauri A near the middle of those asteroids called the
  Serpent Swarm, it was originally a chondritic body with a sideritic
  component giving it more structural strength than is usual for that kind.
  A rough cylinder, about 50 kilometers in length and 20 in diameter, it
  rotated on its long axis in a bit over ten hours; and at the epoch when
  humans arrived, that axis happened to be almost normal to the orbital
  plane. Those who settled on Wunderland paid it no attention; they had a
  habitable planet. The Belters who came later, from the asteroids of the
  Solar System, realized what a treasure was theirs. Little work was needed
  to make the cylinder smooth, control precession, and give it a
  centrifugal acceleration of

                7
 8        Poul Anderson

 one g at the circumference. With its axial orientation, the velocity
 changes for spacecraft to dock were minimal, and magnetic anchors easily
 held them fast until they were ready to depart. The excavation of rooms
 and passages in the yielding material went rapidly. Thereafter, spaces
 just under the surface provided Earth-weight for such activities as
 required it, including the bringing of babies to term; farther inward were
 the levels of successively lower weight, where Belters felt comfortable
 and where other undertakings were possible.
  Everywhere around orbited members of the Swarm, their mineral wealth held
  in negligible gravity wells. Tiamat boomed. It became an industrial
  center, devoted especially to the production of things associated with
  spacefaring.
  When the kzinti invaded, they were quick to realize its importance. Their
  introduction of the gravity polarizer changed many of the manufacturing
  programs, but scarcely affected Tiamat itself; one seldom had any reason
  to adjust the field in a given section, since one could have whatever
  weight was desired simply by going to the appropriate level.
  Out of the years that followed have come countless stories of heroism,
  cowardice, resistance, collaboration, sabotage, salvage, ingenuity,
  intrigue, atrocity, mercy. Some are true. Certainly, when the human
  hyperdrive armada entered the Centaurian System, Tiamat might well have
  been destroyed, had not the Belter freedom fighters taken it over from
  within.
  So ended its heroic age. The rest is anticlimax. More and more, new
  technologies and new horizons are making it a relic.
  However, it is still populous and interesting. Not least of its
  attractions, though a mixed blessing, are the kzinti. Of those who stayed
  behind at this sun, or actually sought there, after the war---disgraced
  combatants, individuals who had formed ties too strong to break, Kdaptist
  refugees, eccentrics, and others
           INCONSTANT STAR       9

 less understandable-a goodly proportion have their colony within Tiamat.
 Tigertown is well worth visiting, in a properly briefed tour group with an
 experienced guide.
  Tiamat also contains the headquarters of the Interworld Space Commission,
  which likewise is not as much in the awareness of the general public as it
  ought to be. Now that the hyperdrive has abruptly opened a way to far more
  undertakings than there are ships and personnel to carry out, rivalry for
  those resources often gets bitter. It can become political, planet versus
  planet at a time when faster-than-light travel has made peace between them
  as necessary as peace between nations on Earth had become when humankind
  was starting its outward venture. Until we have created enough capability
  to satisfy everyone, we must allocate. Alpha Centauri-Wunderland, parts of
  the Serpent Swarm-alone among human dwelling places, suffered kzin
  occupation, almost half a century of it. Alpha Centaurian men and women
  endured, or waged guerrilla warfare from remote and desolate bases, until
  the liberation. Who would question their dedication to our species as a
  whole?
  At least, it was an obvious symbolism to make them the host folk of the
  Commission; and Tiamat, not yet into its postwar decline, was a natural
  choice for the seat.
               3

  "Good evening, " replied Dorcas Glengarry Saxtorph. The headwaiter had
  immediately identified her as being from the Solar System and greeted her
  in English. I was to meet Professor Tregennis. The reservation may be in
  the name of Laurinda Brozik." You didn't just walk into the Star Well; it
  was small and expensive.
  Very briefly, his smoothness failed him and he let his gaze linger. Ten
  years after the end of the war, when outworlders had become a substantial
  fraction of the patronage, she was nonetheless a striking sight. A Belter,
  185 centimeters in height, slender to the point of leanness, she was not in
  that respect different from those who had inhabited the Swarm for
  generations. However, you seldom met features so severely classic,
  fair-skinned, with large green eyes under arching brows. The molding of her
  head was emphasized by the Sol-Belter style, scalp depilated except for a
  crest of mahogany hair that in her case swept halfway down her back. A
  shimmery gray gown

               10
           INCONSTANT STAR      11

 folded and refolded itself around carriage and gestures which, even for
 a person of spacer ancestry, were extraordinarily precise.
  The headwaiter regained professionalism. "Ah, yes, of course, madame."
  Dorcas didn't show her forty Earthyears much, but nobody would take her
  for a girl. "This way, please."
  The tables were arranged around a sunken transparency, ten meters across,
  which gave on the surface of Tiamat and thus the sky beyond.
  Nonreflecting, in the dim interior light it seemed indeed a well of night
  which the stars crowded, slowly streaming. The table Dorcas reached was
  on the bottom tier, with a view directly down into infinity. A glowlamp
  on it cast softness over cloth, silver, ceramic, and the two people
  already seated.
  Arthur Tregennis rose, courtly as ever. A Plateaunian of Crew descent,
  the astrophysicist stood as tall as she did and still more slim,
  practically skeletal. He had the flared hook nose and high cheekbones of
  his kindred; the long nail on his left little finger proclaimed him an
  aristocrat of his planet, never subject to manual labor. Dorcas sometimes
  wondered why he kept that affectation, when he admitted to having
  sympathized with the democrats and their revolution, 33 years ago. Habit,
  perhaps. Otherwise he was an unassuming old fellow.
  "Welcome, my lady," he said. His English was rather flat. Since the
  advent of hyperdrive and hyperwave, he'd been to so many scientific
  conferences, or in voice-to-voice contact with colleagues, that native
  accent seemed to have worn off---.except, maybe, when he was with his own
  folk on top of Mount Lookitthat. "Ah, is Robert detained?"
  "I'm afraid so." Dorcas let the waiter seat her. She'd reacquired a
  little sophistication since the war. "He had a nasty encounter, and the
  aftermath is still retro on him. He told me to come alone, give you his
 12       Poul Anderson

 regrets, and bring back whatever word you have for us.
  "Oh, dear, Laurinda Brozik whispered. "He's all right, isn't he?"
  The English of Tregennis' graduate student was harder for Dorcas to follow
  than his. It was from We Made It.
  The young woman was not a typical Crashlander-is there any such thing as a
  typical anything?-but she could not have been mistaken for a person fi-om
  anywhere else. Likewise tall and finely sculptured, she seemed attenuated,
  arachnodactylic, somehow both awkward and eerily graceful, as if about to
  go into a contortion such as her race was capable of. She belonged to the
  large albino minority on the planet, with snowy skin, big red eyes, white
  hair combed straight down to the shoulders. In contrast to Tregennis' quiet
  tunic and trousers, she wore a gown of golden-hued fabric--an expert would
  have identified it as Terrestrial silk-and an arrowhead pendant of topaz;
  but somehow she wore them shyly.
  "Well, he survived, not too upset." Glancing at the waiter, Dorcas ordered
  a dry martini, "-and I mean dry." She turned to the others. "He was on his
  way to talk with Markham," she explained. "Late hour, but the commissioner
  said he was too busy to receive him earlier. In fact, the meeting was to be
  at an auxiliary office. The equipment at the regular place is all tied up
  with-I'm not sure what. Well, Bob was passing through a deserted section
  when a kzin came out of nowhere and attacked him. He kept himself alive,
  without any serious damage, till the noise drew the police. The kzin fled."
  Oh, dearl" Laurinda repeated. She looked appalled.
  Tregennis had a way of attacking problems from unexpected angles. "Why was
  Robert on foot?" he asked.
 "What?" said Dorcas, surprised. She considered.
           INCONSTANT STAR      13

 "The tubeway wasn't convenient for his destination, and it's not much of
 a walk. What of it?"
  "There have been ample incidents, I hear. Kzinti with their hair-trigger
  tempers; and many humans bear an unreasoning hatred of them. I should
  think Robert would take care." Tregennis chuckled. "He's too seasoned a
  warrior to want any trouble."
  "He had no reason to expect any, I tell you." Dorcas curbed her
  irritation. "Never mind. It was doubtless just one of those things. He
  has a ruined tunic and four superficial cuts, but he gave as good as he
  got. The point is, the police are in an uproar. They were nervous enough,
  now they're afraid of more fights. They've kept him at the station, ques-
  tioning him over and over, showing him stereograms of this or that
  kzin-you can imagine. When last he called, he didn't expect to be free
  for another couple of hours, and then, on top of having nearly gotten
  killed, he'll be wrung out. So he told me to meet you on behalf of us
  both."
 "Horrible," Laurinda said. "But at least he is safe."
  "We regret his absence, naturally," Tregennis added, "and twice so when
  we had invited you two to dinner here in celebration of good news."
  Dorcas smiled. "Well, I'll be your courier. What is the message?"
  It is for you to tell, Laurinda," the astrophysicist said gently.
  The girl swallowed, leaned fbrward, and blurted, "This mornwatch I got
  the word I'd hoped for. On the hyperwave. My father, he, he'd been away,
  and afterward I suppose he needed to think about it, because that is a
  lot of money, but-but if necessary, he'll give us a grant. We won't have
  to depend on the Commission. We can take off on our ownl"
 "Wow-oo," Dorcas breathed.
  Though it made no sense, for a tumbling few seconds her mind was on
  Stefan Brozik, whom she had never met. He had been among those on We Made
 14       Poul Anderson

 It quickest to seize the chance when the Outsiders came by with their offer
 to sell the hyperdrive technology. For a while he was an officer in one of
 the fleets that drove the kzin sublight ships back and back into defeat.
 Returning, he made his fortune in the production of hyperdrives for both
 government and private use; and Laurinda was his adored only daughter-
  "It will take a time," came Tregennis' parched voice. "First the draft must
  clear the banks, then we must order what we need and wait for delivery. The
  demand exceeds the supply, after all. However, in due course we will be
  able to go."
  His white head lifted. Dorcas remembered what he had said to Markham, when
  the commissioner declared: "Professor, this star of yours does appear to be
  an interesting object. I do not doubt an expedition to it would have
  scientific value. But space is full of urgent work to do, human work to do.
  Your project can wait another ten or fifteen years."
 Iron had been in Tregennis' answer: "I cannot."
  "Wonderful!" exclaimed Dorcas. Her jubilation was moderate merely because
  she had expected this outcome. The only question had been how long it would
  take. Stefan Brozik wouldn't likely deny his little girl a chance to go
  visit the foreign sun which she, peering from orbit around Plateau, had
  discovered, and which could make her reputation in her chosen field.
  Nonetheless, Dorcas' gaze left the table and went off down the well of
  stars. Alpha Centauri B, dazzling bright, had drifted from it. She had a
  clear view toward the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. in yonder direction lay Beta
  Hydri, and around it swung Silvereyes, the most remote colony that
  humankind had yet planted. Beyond Silvereyes-But glory filled vision.
  Laurinda's sun was a dim red dwarf, invisible to her. Strange thought, that
  such a thing might be a key to mysteries.
 Anger awoke. "Maybe we won't need your father's
           INCONSTANT STAR      15

 money," Dorcas said. "Maybe the prospect will make that slime-bugger see
 reason."
 I beg your pardon?" asked Tregennis, shocked.
  "Markham." Dorcas grinned. "Sorry. You haven't been toe-to-toe with him,
  over and over, the way Bob and I have. Never mind. Don't let him or a
  quantum-headed kzin spoil our evening. Let's enjoy. We're going!"
                4

  The office of Ulf Reichstein Markham was as austere as the man himself.
  Apart from a couple of chairs, a reference shelf, and a desk with little
  upon it except the usual electronics, its largeness held mostly empty
  space. Personal items amounted to a pair of framed documents and a pair of
  pictures. On the left hung his certificate of appointment to the Interworld
  Space Commission and a photograph of his wife with their eight-year-old
  son. On the right were his citation for extraordinary heroism during the
  war and a portrait painting of his mother. Both women showed the pure
  bloodlines of Wunderland aristocracy, the older one also in her expression;
  the younger looked subdued.
  Markham strove to maintain the same physical appearance. His father had
  been a Belter of means, whom his mother married after the family got in
  trouble with the kzinti during the occupation and fled to the Swarm. At age
  50 he stood a slender, swordblade-straight 195 centimeters. Stiff
  gray-blond

               16
           INCONSTANT STAR      17

 hair grew over a narrow skull, above pale eyes, long nose, outthrust chin
 that sported the asymmetric beard, a point on the right side. Gray and
 closefitting, his garb suggested a military uniform.
  I trust you have recovered from your experience, Captain Saxtorph," he said
  in his clipped manner.
  "Yah, I'm okay, aside from puzzlement." The spaceman settled back in his
  chair, crossed shank over thigh. "Mind if I smoke?" He didn't wait for an
  answer before reaching after pipe and tobacco pouch.
  Markham's lips twitched the least bit in disdain of the uncouthness, but he
  replied merely, "We will doubtless never know what caused the incident. You
  should not allow it to prey on your mind. The resident kzinti are under
  enormous psychological stress, still more so than humans would be in
  comparable circumstances. Besides uprootedness and culture shock, they must
  daily live with the fact of defeat. Acceptance runs counter to an instinct
  as powerful in them as sexuality is in humans. This individual, whoever he
  is, must have lashed out blindly. Let us hope he doesn't repeat. Perhaps
  his friends can prevail on him. "
  Saxtorph scowled. I thought that way, too, at first. Afterward I got to
  wondering. I hadn't been near any kzinti my whole time here, this trip.
  They don't mingle with humans unless business requires, and then they
  handle it by phone if at all possible. This fellow was way off the
  reservation. He lurked till I arrived, in that empty place. He was wearing
  a phone. Somebody else, shadowing me, could have called to tell him I was
  coming and the coast was clear. "
  "Frankly, you are being paranoid. Why in creation should he, or anyone,
  wish you harm? You specifically, I mean. Furthermore, conspiracy like that
  is not kzin behavior. It would violate the sense of honor that the meanest
  among them cherishes. No, this poor creature went wandering about, trying
  to walk
 18       Poul Anderson

 off his anger and despair. When you chanced by, like a game animal on the
 ancestral planet passing a hunter's blind, it triggered a reflex that he
 lost control of."
  "How can you be sure? How much do we really know about that breed?"
 I know more than most humans."
 "Yah," drawled Saxtorph, "I reckon you do."
  Markham stffened. His glance across the desk was like a levelled gun. For
  a moment there was silence.
  Saxtorph got his pipe lit, blew a cloud Of smoke, and through it peered
  back in more relaxed wise. He could affbrd to; somatic presence does make
  a difference. Barely shorter than the Wunderlander, he was hugely broader
  of shoulders and thicker of chest. His face was wide, craggy-nosed,
  shaggy-browed, with downward-slanted blue eyes and reddish hair that, at
  age 45, was getting thin. Whatever clothes he put on, they soon looked
  rumpled, but this gave the impression less of carelessness than of
  activity.
  "What are you implying, Captain?" Markham asked low.
  Saxtorph shrugged. "Nothing in particular, Commissioner. It's common
  knowledge that you have quite a lot to do with 'em."
  "Yes. Certain among the rabble have called me 'kzin-lover.' I did not
  believe you shared their sewer mentality. "
  " Whoa, there." Saxtorph lifted a palm. "Easy, please. Of course you'd
  take a special interest. After all, the kzin empire, if that's what we
  should call it, it's still out yonder, and we still know precious little
  about it. Besides handling matters related to kzin comings and goings,
  you have to think about the future in space. Getting a better handle on
  their psychology is a real service."
  Markham eased a bit. "Learning some compassion does no harm either," he
  said unexpectedly.
           INCONSTANT STAR      19

  "Hm? Pardon me, but I should think that'd be extra hard for you."
  Markham's history flitted through Saxtorph's mind. His mother had
  apparently married his commoner father out of necessity. Her husband died
  early, and she raised their son in the strictest aristocratic and martial
  tradition possible. By age 18 Markham was in the resistance forces. As
  captain of a commando ship, he led any number of raids and gained a
  reputation for kzin-like ruthlessness. He was 30 when the hyperdrive armada
  from Sol liberated Alpha Centauri. Thereafter he was active in restoring
  order and building up a Wunderland navy. Finally leaving the service, he
  settled on the planet, on a restored Reichstein estate granted him, and
  attempted a political career; but he lacked the needful affability and
  willingness to compromise. It was rumored that his appointment to the Space
  Commission had been a way of buying him off-be had been an often annoying
  gadfly~but he was in fact well qualified and worked conscientiously.
  The trouble was, he had his own views on policy. With his prestige and
  connections, he had managed in case after case to win agreement fi-om a
  voting majority of his colleagues.
  Saxtorph smiled and added, "Well, Christian charity is all the more
  valuable for being so rare."
  Markham pricked up his ears. The pale countenance flushed. "Christianl" he
  snapped. "A religion for slaves. No, I learned to respect the kzinti while
  I fought them. They were valiant, loyal, disciplinedand in spite of the
  propaganda and horror stories, their rule was by no means the worst thing
  that ever happened to Wunderland.-
  He calmed, even returned the smile. "But we have drifted rather far off
  course, haven't we? I invited you here for still another talk about your
  plans. Have I no hope of persuading you the mission is wasteful folly?"
 20       Poul Anderson

  "You've said the same about damn near every proposal to do any real
  exploring," Saxtorph growled.
  "You exaggerate, Captain. Must we go over the old, trampled ground again?
  I am simply a realist. Ships, equipment, trained crews are in the shortest
  supply. We need them closer to home, to build up interstellar commerce and
  industry. Once we have that base, that productivity, yes, then of course we
  go forward. But we will go cautiously, if I have anything to say about it.
  Was not the kzin invasion a deadly enough surprise? Who knows what dangers,
  mortal dangers, a reckless would-be galaxytrotter may stir up?"
  Saxtorph sighed. "You're right, this has gotten to be boringly familiar
  territory. I'll spare you my argument about how dangerous ignorance can be.
  The point is, I never put in for anything much. For a voyage as long as we
  intend, we need adequate supplies, and our insurance carrier insists we
  carry double spares of vital gear. The money Professor Tregennis wangled
  out of his university fbr the charter won't stretch to it. So we all
  rendezvoused here to apply for a government donation of stuff sitting in
  the warehouses.
 "It just might buy you a scientific revolution."
  He had rehashed this with malice, to repay Markham for the latter's own
  repetition. It failed to get the man's goat. Instead, the answer was,
  mildly, "I saw it as my duty to persuade the Commission to deny your
  request. Please believe there was no personal motive. I wish you well."
  Saxtorph grinned, blew a smoke ring, and said, "Thanks. Want to come wave
  goodbye? Because we are going."
  Markham took him off guard with a nod. "I know. Stefan Brozik has offered
  you a grant."
  "Huh?" Saxtorph grabbed his pipe just before it landed in his lap. He
  recovered his wits. "Did you have the hyperwave monitored for messages to
  mem-
             INCONSTANT STAR      21

 bers of our party?" His voice roughened. "Sir, I resent that."
  "It was not illegal. I was ... more concerned than you think." Markham
  leaned forward. "Listen. A man does not necessarily like doing what duty
  commands. Did you imagine I don't regret choking off great adventures, that
  I do not myself long fbr the age of discovery that must come? In my heart
  I feel a certain gratitude toward Brozik. He has released me.
  "Now, since you are inevitably going, it would be pointless to continue
  refusing you what you want. That can only delay, not stop you. Better to
  cooperate, win back your goodwill, and in return have some influence on
  your actions. I will contact my colleagues. There should be no difficulty
  in getting a reversal of our decision."
  Saxtorph sagged back in his chair. "Judas ... priest. "
  "There are conditions," Markham told him. "If you are to be spared a long
  time idle here, prudent men must be spared nightmares about what grief you
  might bring on us all by some blunder. Excuse my blunt language. You are
  amateurs."
 "Every explorer is an amateur. By definition."
 "You are undermanned."
  I wouldn't say so. Captain; computerman; two pilots, who're also
  experienced rockjacks and planetsiders; quartermaster. Everybody competent
  in a slew of other specialties. And, this trip, two scientists, the prof
  and his student. What would anybody else do?"
  "For one thing," Markham said crisply, "he would counsel proper caution and
  point out where this was not being exercised. He would keep official policy
  in your minds. The condition of your obtaining what you need immediately is
  this. You shall take along a man who will have officer status-"
  "Hey, wait a minute. I'm the skipper, my wife's the mate as well as the
  computerman, and the rest
 22       Poul Anderson

 have shaken down into a damn good team. I don't aim to shake it back up
 again."
  "You needn't," Markham assured him. "This man will be basically an observer
  and advisor. He should prove useful in several additional capacities. In
  the event of ... disaster to the regular officers, he can take command,
  bring the.ship back, and be an impartial witness at the inquwy. ,
  "M-m-m. " Saxtorph fi-owned, rubbed his chin, pondered. "Maybe. It'll be a
  long voyage, you know, about ninety days cooped up together, with God knows
  what at the end. Not that we expect anything more than interesting
  astronomical objects. Still, you're right, it is unpredictable. We're a
  close-knit crew, and the scientists seem to fit in well, but what about
  this stranger?"
  I refer you to my record," Markham replied. When Saxtorph drew a sharp
  breath, the Wunderlander added, "Yes, I am doubtless being selfish.
  However, my abilities in space are proven, and-in spite of everything, I
  share the dream."
               5

  In her youth, before she became a tramp, Rover was a naval transport, UNS
  Ghost Dance. She took men and mat6riel from their sources to bases around
  the Solar System, and brought some back for furlough or repair. A few
  times she went into combat mode. They were only a few. The kzinti hurled
  a sublight fleet out of Alpha Centauri at variable intervals, but years
  apart, since one way or another they always lost heavily in the
  sanguinary campaigns that followed. Ghost Dance would release her twin
  fighters to escort her on her rounds. Once they came under attack, and
  were the survivors.
  Rover might now be less respectable, maybe even a bit shabby, but was by
  no means a slattern. The Saxtorphs had obtained her in a postwar sale of
  surplus and outfitted her as well as their finances permitted. On the
  outside she remained a hundred-meter spheroid, its smoothness broken by
  airlocks, hatches, boat bays, instrument housings, communications boom,
  grapples, and micrometeoroid pocks that had

               23
 24       Poul Anderson

 given the metal a matte finish. Inboard, much more had changed. Automated as
 she was, she never needed more than a handfid to man her; on a routine
 interplanetary flight she was quite capable of being her own crew. Most
 personnel space had therefore been converted for cargo stowage. Those people
 who did travel in her had more room and comfort than formerly. Instead of
 warcraft she carried two Prospector class boats, primarily meant for
 asteroids and the like but well able to maneuver in atmosphere and set down
 on a fair-sized planet. Other machinery was equally for peaceful, if
 occasionally rough use.
  "But how did the Saxtorphs ever acquire a hyperdrive?" asked Laurinda
  Brozik. "I thought licensing was strict in the Solar System, too, and they
  don't seem to be terribly influential."
  "They didn't tell you?" replied Kamehameha Ryan. "Bob loves to guffaw over
  that caper."
  Her lashes fluttered downward. A tinge of pink crossed the alabaster sidn.
  1, 1 don't like to ... pry-.ask personal questions."
  He patted her hand. "You're too sweet and considerate, Laurinda. Uh, okay
  to call you that? We are in for a long haul. I'm Kam."
  The quartermaster was showing her around while Rover moved up the Alpha
  Centaurian gravity well until it would be safe to slip free of Einsteinian
  space. Her holds being vacant, the acceleration was several g, but the
  interior polarizer maintained weight at the half Earth normal to which
  healthy humans from every world can soon adapt. "You want the grand tour,
  not a hasty look-around like you got before, and who'd be a better guide
  than me?" Ryan had said. "I'm the guy who takes care of inboard operations,
  everything from dusting and polishing, through mass trim and equipment
  service, on to cooking, which is the real art." He was a stocky man of
  medium height, starting to go plump, round-faced, dark-complexioned, his
  blue-black hair streaked with
           INCONSTANT STAR      25

 the earliest frost. A gaudy sleeveless shirt bulged above canary-yellow
 slacks and thong sandals.
  "Well, I-well, thank you, Kam," Laurinda whispered.
  "Thank you, my dear. Now this door I'd better not open for you. Behind it
  we keep chemical explosives for mining-type jobs. But you were asking about
  our hyperdrive, weren't you?
  "Well, after the war Bob and Dorcas-they met and got married during it,
  when he was in the navy and she was helping beef up the defenses at Ixa,
  with a sideline in translation-they worked for Solar Minerals, scouting the
  asteroids, and did well enough, commissions and bonuses and such, that at
  last they could make the down payment on this ship. She was going pretty
  cheap because nobody else wanted her. Who'd be so crazy as to compete with
  the big Belter companies? But you see, meanwhile they'd found the real
  treasure, a derelict hyperdrive craft. She wasn't UN property or anything,
  she was an experimental job a manufacturer had been testing. Unmanned; a
  monopole meteoroid passed close by and fouled up the electronics; she
  looped off on an eccentric orbit and was lost; the company went out of
  business. She'd become a legend of sorts, every search had failed, on which
  basis Dorcas figured out where she most likely was, and she and Bob went
  looking on their own time. As soon as they were ready they announced their
  discovery, claimed salvage rights, and installed the drive in this hull.
  Nobody had foreseen anything like that, and besides, they'd hired a smart
  lawyer. The rules have since been changed, Of course, but we come under a
  grandfather clause. So here we've got the only completely independent
  starship in known space."
 "It is very venturesome of YOU."
  "Yeah, things often get precarious. Interstellar commerce hasn't yet
  developed regular trade routes, except what govibrnment-owned lines
  monopolize.
 26       Poul Anderson
 We have to take what we can get, and not all of it has been simple hauling
 of stuff fi-om here to there. The last job turned out to be a lemon, and
 frankly, this charter is a godsend. Uh, don't quote me. I talk too much.
 Bob bears with me, but a tongue-lashing from Dorcas can take the skin off
 your soul."
 "You and he are old fiiends, aren't you?"
  "Since our teens. He came knocking his way around Earth to Hawaii, proved
  to be a good guy for a haole, I sort of introduced him to people and
  things, we had some grand times. Then he enlisted, had a real yeager of
  a war career, but you must know something about that. He looked me up
  afterward, when he and Dorcas were taking a second honeymoon, and later
  they offered me this berth."
 "You had experienceF,
  "Yes, I'd gone spaceward, too. Civilian. Interesting work, great pay,
  gkimor to draw the girls, because not many flatlanders wanted to leave
  Earth when the next kzin attack might happen anytime."
  "It seems so romantic," IAurinda murmured. "Superficially, at least, and
  to me."
  "What do you mean, please?' Ryan asked, in the interest of drawing her
  out. Human females like men who will listen to them.
  "Oh, that is-What have I done except study? And, well, research. I was
  born the year the Outsiders arrived at We Made It, but of course they
  were gone again long before I could meet them. In fact, I never saw a
  nonhuman in the flesh till I came to Centauri and visited Tigertown. You
  and your friends have been out, active, in the universe."
  I don't want to sound self-pitying," Ryan said, unable to quite avoid
  sounding smug, "but it's been mostly sitting inboard, then working our
  fingers off, fi-antic scrambles, shortages of everything, and moments of
  stark terror. A wise man once called adventure 'somebody else having a
  hell of a tough time ten light-years away.' "
           INCONSTANT STAR      27

  She looked at him from her slightly greater elevation and touched his arm.
  "Lonely, too. You must miss your family."
  "I'm a bachelor type," Ryan answered, forbearing to mention the ex-wives.
  "Not that I don't appreciate you ladies, understand-"
  At that instant, luck brought them upon Carita Fenger. She emerged from a
  cold locker with a hundred-liter keg of beer, intended for the saloon, on
  her back, held by a strap that her left hand gripped. High-tech tasks were
  apportioned 'among all five of Rover's people, housekeeping chores among
  the three crewmen. This boat pilot was a jinxian. Her width came close to
  matching her short height, with limbs in proportion and bosom more so.
  Ancestry under Sirius had made her skin almost ebony, though the bobbed
  hair was no longer sun-bleached white but straw color. Broad nose,
  close-set brown eyes, big mouth somehow added up to an attractive face,
  perhaps because it generally looked cheerful. "Well, hi," she hailed.
  "What's going on here?"
  Ryan and Laurinda halted. I am showing our passenger around the ship," he
  said stiffly.
  Carita cocked her head. "Are you, now? That isn't all you'd like to show
  her, I can see. Better get back to the galley, lad. You did promise us a
  first-meal feast." To the Crashlander: "He's a master chef when he puts his
  mind to it. Good in bed, too."
  Laurinda dropped her gaze and colored. Ryan flushed likewise. "I'm sorry,"
  he gobbled. "Pilot Fenger's okay, but she does sometimes forget her
  manners.
  Carita's laugh rang. "I've not forgotten this nightwatch is your turn, Kam.
  I'll be waiting. Or shall I seduce Commissioner Markham---or Professor Tre-
  gennis?" To Laurinda: "Sorry, dear, I shouldn't have said that. Being
  coarse goes with the kind of life I've led. I'll try to do better. Don't be
  afraid of Kam. He's harmless as long as you don't encourage him."
 28       Poul Anderson

  She trudged off with her burden. To somebody born to jinx gravity, the
  weight was trifling. Ryan struggled to find words. All at once Laurinda
  trilled laughter of her own, then said fast, I apologize. Your
  arrangements are your own business. Shall we continue for as long as you
  can spare the time?"
                6

  The database in Rover contained books as well as musical and video
  performances. Both the Saxtorphs spent a considerable amount of their
  leisure reading, she more than he. Their tastes differed enough that they
  had separate terminals in their cabin. He wanted his literature, like his
  food, plain and hearty; Dorcas ranged wider. Ever since hyperwave made
  transmission easy, she had been putting hundreds of writings by
  extrasolar dwellers into the discs, with the quixotic idea of eventually
  getting to know most of them.
  The ship was a few days into hyperspace when she entered the saloon and
  found Tregennis. A couple of hours' workout in the gym, fbllowed by a
  shower and change of coverall, left her aglow. The Plateaunian sat
  talking with Markham. That was unusual; the commissioner had kept rather
  to himself.
  "Indeed the spectroscope, interferometer, the entire panoply of
  instruments reveals much," Tregennis was saying. "How else did Miss
  Brozik discover her star and learn of its uniqueness? But there is no
               29
 30       Poul Anderson

 substitute for a close look, and who would put a hyperdrive in an unmanned
 probe?"
  "I know," Markham replied. "I was simply inquiring what data you already
  possess. That was never made clear to me. For example, does the star have
  planets?"
  "It's too small and faint for us to establish that, at the distance from
  which we observed. Ah, I am surprised, sir. Were you so little interested
  that you didn't ask questions?"
  'Why should he, when he was vetoing our mission?" Dorcas interjected. It
  brought her to their notice. Tregennis started to rise. "No, please stay
  seated." He looked so fragile. "No offense intended, Landholder Markham.
  I'm afraid I expressed myself tactlessly, but it seemed obvious. After all,
  you wereare a busy man with countless claims on your attention. "
  I understand, Mme. Saxtorph," the Wunderlander said stiffly. "You are
  correct. Feeling as I did, I took care to suppress my curiosity."
  Tregennis shook his head in a bemused fashion. He doubtless wasn't very
  familiar with the twists and turns the human mind can take. Dorcas recalled
  that he had never been married, except to his sciencethough he did seem to
  regard Laurinda as a surrogate daughter.
  The computerman sat down. "In fact," she said conciliatingly, I still
  wonder why you felt you could be spared from your post for as long as we
  may be gone. You could have sent somebody else."
  "Trustworthy persons are hard to find," Markham stated, "especially in the
  younger generation."
  ..I've gathered you don't approve of postwar developments on your planet."
  Dorcas glanced at Tregennis. "That's apropos the reason I hoped you would
  be here, Professor. I'm reading The House on Crowsnest-"
           INCONSTANT STAR      31

  "What do you mean?" Markham interrupted. "Crowsnest is an area on top of
  Mount Lookitthat."
  Dorcas curbed exasperation. Maybe he couldn't help being arrogant. "I
  understand it's considered the greatest novel ever written on Plateau," she
  said.
  Tregennis nodded. "Many think so. I confess the language in it gets too
  strong for my taste."
  "Well, the author is a Colonist, telling how things were before and during
  the revolution," Dorcas said in Markham's direction. "Oppression does not
  make people nice. The wonder is that Crew rule was overthrown almost
  bloodlessly."
  "If you please," Tregennis responded, "we of the Crew families were not
  monsters. Many of us realized reform was overdue and worked for it. I
  sympathized myself, you know, although I did not take an active role. I do
  believe Nairn exaggerates the degree and extent of brutality under the old
  order. "
  "That's one thing I wanted to ask you about. His book's fall of people,
  places, events, practices that must be familiar to you but that nobody on
  any other planet ever heard of. Laurinda herself couldn't tell me what some
  passages refer to."
  Tregennis smiled. "She has only been on Plateau as a student, and was born
  into a democracy. Why should she concern herself about old, unhappy, faroff
  things? Not that she is narrow, she comes from a cultured home, but she is
  young and has a whole universe opening before her."
 Dorcas nodded. "A lucky generation, hers."
  "Yes, indeed. Landholder Markham, I must disagree with views you have
  expressed. Taken as a whole, on every world the young are rising marvel-
  ously well to their opportunities-better, I fear, than their elders would
  have done."
  "It makes a huge difference, being free," Dorcas said.
 Markham sat bolt upright. "Free to do what?" he
 32       Poul Anderson

 snapped. "To be vulgar, slovenly, ignorant, selfcentered, materialistic,
 comnwn? I have seen the degradation go on, year by year. You have stayed
 safe in your ivory tower, Professsor. You, Mme. Saxtorph, operate in
 situations where a measure of discipline, sometimes old-fashioned
 self-sacrifice, is a condition of survival. But I have gotten out into the
 muck and tried to stem the tide of it."
  "I heard you'd run for your new parliament, and I know you don't care for
  the popular modern styles," Dorcas answered dryly. She shrugged. I often
  don't myself. But why should people not have what they want, if they can
  come by it honestly? Nobody forces you to join them. It seems you'd force
  them to do what pleases you. Well, that might not be what pleases me!"
  Markham swallowed. His ears lay back. "I suspect our likes are not
  extremely dissimilar. You are a person of quality, a natural leader."
  Abruptly his voice quivered. He must be waging battle to keep his
  feelings under control. "In a healthy society, the superior person is
  recognized for what he or she is, and lesser ones are happy to be guided,
  because they realize that not only they but generations to come will
  benefit. The leader is not interested in power or glory for their own
  sake. At most, they are means to an end, the end to which he gives his
  life, the organic evolution of the society toward its destiny, the full
  flowering of its soul. But we are replacing living Genwinschaft with
  mechanical Gesellschaft. The cyborg civilization! It goes as crazy as a
  cyborg individual. The leading classes also lose their sense of
  responsibility. Those members who do not become openly corrupt turn into
  reckless megalomaniacs."
  Dorcas paled, which was her body's way of showing anger. "I've seen that
  kind of thinking described in history books," she said. "I thought better
  of you, sir. For your information, my grandfather was a cyborg after an
  accident. Betters always believed it was
           INCONSTANT STAR      33

 as criminal to send convicts into the organ banks as any crime of theirs
 could be. He was the sanest man I've known. Nor have I noticed leaders of
 free Uk doing much that is. half as stupid or evil as what the master
 classes used to order. I'll make my own mistakes, thank you."
  "You certainly will. You already have. I must speak plainly. Your
  husband's insistence on this expedition, against every dictate of sound
  judgment, merely because it suits him to go, is a perfect example of a
  leader who has ceased to be a shepherd. Or perhaps you yourself are,
  since you have aided and abetted him. You could have remembered how ftill
  of terrible unknowns space is. Belters are born to that understanding.
  He is a flatlander."
  Dorcas whitened entirely. Her crest bristled. She stood up, fists on
  hips, to loom over Markham and say word by word: "That will do. We have
  endured your presence, that you pushed on us, in hopes you would prove
  to be housebroken. We have now listened to your ridiculous rantings
  because we believe in free speech where you do not, and in hopes you
  would soon finish. Instead, you have delivered an intolerable racist
  insult. You will go to your cabin and remain there for twenty-four hours.
  Bread and water will be brought to you."
 Markham gaped. "What? Are you mad?"
  1. Furious, yes. As for sanity, I refi-ain from expressing an opinion
  about who may lack it." Dorcas consulted her watch. "You can walk to your
  cabin in about five minutes. Therefore, do not be seen outside it, except
  for visits to the head, until 1737 hours tomorrow. Go. "
  He half rose himself, sank back down, and exclaimed, "This is impossiblel
  Professor Tregennis, I call you to witness."
  "Yes," Dorcas said. "Please witness that he has received a direct order
  from me, who am second in command of the ship. Shall we call Captain
  Saxtorph
 34       Poul Anderson

 to confirm it? You can be led off in irons, Markham. Better you obey. Go."
  The commissioner clambered to his feet. He breathed hard. The others could
  smell his sweat. "Very well," he said tonelessly. "Of course I will file a
  complaint when we return. Meanwhile we shall minimize further conversation.
  Good day. " He jerked a bow and marched off.
  After a time in which only the multitudinous low murmurings of the vessel
  had utterance, Tregennis breathed, "Dear me. Was that not a slightly
  excessive reaction?"
  Dorcas sat down again. Her iciness was dissolving in calm. "Maybe. Bob
  would think so, though naturally he'd have backed me up. He's more good-
  natured than I am. I do not tolerate such language about him. This hasn't
  been the only incident."
  "There is a certain prejudice against the Earthborn among the space-born.
  I understand it is quite widespread."
  "It is, and it's not altogether without foundation-in a number of cases."
  Dorcas laughed. I shared it, at the time Bob and I met. It caused some
  monumental quarrels the first couple of years, years when we could already
  have been married. I finally got rid of it and took to judging individuals
  on their merits."
  "Forgive me, but are you not a little intolerant of those who have not had
  your enlightening experience?"
  "Doubtless. However, between you and me, I welcomed the chance to show
  Markham who's boss here. I worried that if we have an emergency he could
  get insubordinate. That would be an invitation to disaster."
  "He is a strange man," Tregennis mused. "His behavior, his talk, his past
  career, everything seems such a welter of contradictions. Or am I being
  naive?"
  "Not really, unless I am, too. Oh, people aren't self-consistent like the
  laws of mechanics-even quan-
             INCONSTANT STAR      35

 tum mechanics. But I do think we lack some key fact about Landholder
 Markham, and will never understand him till we have it." Dorcas made a
 gesture of dismissal. "Enough. Now may I do what I originally intended and
 quiz you about Plateau?"
               7

  While Rover was in hyperspace, all five of her gang stood mass detector
  watch, six hours a day for four days, fifth day off. It was unpopular
  duty, but they would have enjoyed still less letting the ship fly blind,
  risking an entry into a gravity well deep enough to throw her to whatever
  fate awaited vessels which did not steer clear. The daydream was becoming
  commonplace among their kind, that someday somebody would gain sufficient
  understanding of the psionics involved that the whole operation could be
  automated.
  It wasn't torture, of course, once you had schooled yourself never to
  look into the Less Than Void which filled the single port necessarily
  left unshuttered. You learned how to keep an eye on the indicator globe
  while you exercised, read, watched a show, practiced a handicraft. On the
  infrequent occasions when it registered something, matters did get inter-
  esting.
 "And I've decided I don't mind it in the least,"

               36
           INCONSTANT STAR      37

 said Juan Yoshii after Kamehameha Ryan had relieved him.
  Really?" asked Laurinda Brozik. She had met him below the flight deck by
  agreement.
  He offered her his arm, a studied, awkward gesture not used in his native
  society. She smiled and took it. He was a young Sol-Belter. Unlike Dorcas
  Saxtorph, or most folk of his nation, he eschewed spectacular garb.
  Small, slim, with olive-skinned, almost girlish features, he did wear his
  hair in the crest, but it was cut short.
  "I have just heard complaints about the monotony, Laurinda said.
  "Monotony, or peacefulness?" he countered in his diffident fitshion. I
  chafed, too. Then gradually I realized what an opportunity this is to be
  alone and think. Or compose."
  "You don't sound like a rockjack , she said need lessly. It was what had
  originally attracted her to him.
  He chuckled. "How are roclqacks supposed to sound? We have the rough,
  tough image, yes. Pilot the boat, find the ore, wrench it out, bring it
  home, and damn the meteoroids. Or the sun-flare or the fusion generator
  failure or anything else. But we are simply persons making a living.
  Quite a few of us look forward to a day when we can use different
  talents. "
 "What else would you like to do?"
  His smile was stiff He stared before him. "Prepare yourself to laugh."
  "Oh, no." Her tone made naught of the eight centimeters by which she
  topped him, "How could I laugh at a man who handles the forces that I
  only measure?"
  He flushed and had no answer. They walked on. The ship hummed around
  them. Bulkheads were brightly painted, pictures were hung on them and
  often . changed, here and there were pots whose flow-
   38       Poul Anderson

 ers Carita Fenger maintained, but nonetheless this was a barren environment.
 The two had a date in his cabin, where he would provide tea while they
 screened d'Auvergne's Fifth Chromophony. An appreciation of her work was one
 thing among others that they discovered they had in common.
 "What is your hope?' Laurinda asked at last, low.
 He gulped. "To be a poet."
 "Why, bow ... bow remarkable."
  "Not that there's a living in it," he said hastily. "III need a groundside
  position. But I will anyway when I get too old for this berth-and am still
  fairly young by most standards." He drew breath. "In the centuries of
  spaceflight, how much true poetry has been written? Plenty of verse, but
  how much that makes your hair rise and you think yes, this is the real
  truth? It's as if we've been too busy to find the words for what we've been
  busy with. I want to try. I am trying, but know quite well I won't have a
  chance of succeeding with a single line till I've worked at it for another
  ten years or more."
  "You're too modest, Juan. Genius flowers early oftener than not. I would
  like to see what you have done."
  "No, 1, 1 don't think it's that good. Maybe my efforts never will be. Not
  even equal to-well, actually minor stuff, but it does have the spirit-"
 "Such as what?"
 "Oh, ancient pieces, mostly, pre-space.
 "'To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
  "Beyond the utmost bound of human thought."' Yoshi! cackled a laugh. "I'm
  really getting bookish, am I not? An easy trap to fall into. Spacemen have
  a lot of free time in between crises."
  "You've put yours to good use," she said earnestly. "Is that poem you
  quoted fi-om in the ship's database? I'd like to read it."
 "I don't know, but I can recite it verbatim."
           INCONSTANT STAR      39

  "That would be much better. Romantic--" Uurinda broke off. She turned her
  glance away.
  He sensed her confusion and blurted in his own, "Please don't
  misunderstand me. I know-your customs, your mores-I mean to respect them.
  Completely. "
  She achieved a smile, though she could not yet look back his way. "Why,
  I'm not afraid of you. " Unspoken: You're not unbearably frustrated. It's
  obvious that Carita is your mistress as well as Kam's. "You are a
  gentleman." And what we have coming to life between us is still small and
  frail, but already very sweet.
  Rover re-entered normal space ten astronomical units fi-om. the
  destination star. That was unnecessarfly distant for a mass less than a
  fourth of Sol's, but the Saxtorphs were more cautious than Markham
  admitted. Besides, the scientists wanted to begin with a long sweep as
  baseline for their preliminary observations, and it was their party now.
  As soon as precise velocity figures were available, Dorcas computed the
  vectors. The star was hurtling at well over a thousand kilometers per
  second with respect to galactic center. That meant the ship needed
  considerable delta v to get down to interplanetary speeds and into the
  equatorial plane where any attendant bodies were likeliest to be. That
  boost phase must also serve those initial requirements of the
  astronomers. Course and thrust could be adjusted as data came in and
  plans for the future were developed.
  The star's motion meant, too, that it was escaping the galaxy, bound for
  the gulfs beyond. Presumably an encounter with one or more larger bodies
  had cast
               40
           INCONSTANT STAR      41

 it from the region where it formed. A question the expedition hoped to get
 answered, however incompletely, was where that might have happened-and
 when.
  Except for Dorcas, who worked with Tregennis to process the data that
  Laurinda mostly gathered, the crew had little to do but housekeeping.
  Occasionally someone was asked to lend a hand with some task of the
  research.
  Going off watch, Carita Fenger stopped by the saloon. A large viewscreen
  there kept the image of the sun at the cross-haired center. Else nobody
  could have identified it. It was waxing as the ship drove inward but thus
  far remained a dim dull-red point, outshone by stars light-years away.
  The undertone of power through the ship was like a whisper of that which
  surged within, around, among them, nuclear fires, rage of radiation,
  millennial turmoil of matter, births and funeral pyres and ashes and
  rebirths, the universe forever in travail. Like most spacefarers, Carita
  could lose herself, hour upon hour, in the contemplation of it.
  She halted. Markham sat alone, looking. His face was haggard.
 "Well, hi," she said tentatively.
  Markham gave her a glance. "How do you do, Pilot Fenger." The words came
  flat.
  She plumped herself down in the chair beside him. "Quite a sight, eh?"
 He nodded, his gaze back on the screen.
  "A trite thing to say," she persisted. "But I suspect Juan's wrong. He
  hopes to find words grand enough. I suspect it can't be done."
  "I was not aware Pilot Yoshii had such interests," said Markham without
  unbending.
  "Nah, you wouldn't be. You've been about as outgoing as a black hole.
  What's between you and Dorcas? You seem to be off speaking terms with
  her."
 42       Pout Anderson

  "If you please, I am not in the mood fbr gossip." Markham started to rise,
  to leave.
  Carita took hold of his arm. It was a gentle grip but he could easier have
  broken fi-ee of a salvage grapple. "Wait a minute," she said. "I've been
  halfway on the alert for a chance to talk with you. Who does any more,
  except 'Pass the salt' at mess, that sort of thing? How lonesome you must
  be."
  He refrained from ineffectual resistance, continued to stare before him,
  and clipped, 'Thank you for your concern, but I manage. Kindly let go."
  Look," she said, "we're supposed to be shipmates. It's a hell of an
  exciting adventure--Christ, we're the first, the very first, in all this
  weird wonderbut it's cold out, too, and doesn't care an atom's worth about
  human beings. I keep thinking how awful it must be, cut off from any
  fiiendship the way you are. Not that you've exactly encouraged us, but we
  could try harder."
  Now he did regard her. "Are you inviting me to your bed?" he asked in the
  same tone as before.
  Slightly taken aback, she recovered, smiled, and replied, "No, I wasn't,
  but if it'll make you feel better we can have a go at it."
  "Or make you feel better? I am not too isolated to have noticed that lately
  Pilot Yoshii has ceased visiting your cabin. Is Quartermaster Ryan
  insufficient?"
  Carita's face went sulfur black. She dragged her fingers from him. "My
  mistake," she said. "The rest were right about you. Okay, you can take
  off."
 "With pleasure." He stalked out.
  She mumbled an oath, drew forth a cigar, lit and blew fumes that ran the
  ventilators and air renewers up to capacity. Calm returned after a while.
  She laughed rueffilly. Ryan had told her more than once that she was too
  soft-hearted; and he was a man prone to fits of improvident generosity.
 She was about to go when Saxtorph's voice boomed
           INCONSTANT STAR      43

 fi-om the intercom: "Attention, please. Got an announcement here that I'm
 sure will interest everybody.
  "We'll hold a conference in a few days, when more information is in. Then
  you can ask whatever questions you want. Meanwhile, I repeat my order, do
  not pester the science team. They're working around the clock and don't
  need distractions.
  "However, Arthur Tregennis has given me a quick rundown on what's been
  learned so far, to pass on to you. Here it is, in my layman's language.
  Don't blame him for any garbling.
  "They have a full analysis of the sun's composition, along with other
  characteristics. That wasn't too easy. For one thing, it's so cool that its
  peak emission frequency is in the radio band. Because the absorption and
  re-emission of the interstellar medium in between isn't properly known, we
  had to come here to get decent readings.
  "They bear out what the prof and Laurinda thought. This sun isn't just
  metal-poor, it's metal-impoverished. No trace of any element heavier than
  iron, and little of that. Yes, you've all heard as how it must be very old,
  and has only stayed on the main sequence this long because it's such a
  feeble dwarf. But now they have a better idea of just how long 'this' has
  been.
  "Estimated age, fifteen billion years. Our star is damn near as old as the
  universe.
  "It probably got slung out of its parent galaxy early on. In that many
  years you can cover a lot of Wometers. We're lucky that we meaning the
  human species-are alive while it's in our neighborhood.
  "And ... in the teeth of expectations, it's got planets. Already the
  instruments are finding signs of oddities in them, no two alike, nothing we
  could have foreseen. Well, we'll be taking a close look. Stand by. Over."
 Carita sprang to her feet and cheered.
                9

  Once when they were young bucks, chance-met, beachcombing together in the
  Islands, Kam Ryan and Bob Saxtorph acquired a beat-up rowboat, catrigged
  it after a fashion, stowed some food and plenty of beer aboard, and set
  fbrth on a shakedown cruise across Kaulakahi Channel. Short runs off
  Waimea had gone reasonably well, but they wanted to be sure of the
  seaworthiness before making it a lure for girls. They figured they could
  reach Niihau in 12 or 15 hours, land if possible, rest up in any case,
  and come back. They didn't have the price of an outboard, but in a pinch
  they could row.
  To avoid coping with well-intentioned busybodies, they started after
  dark. By that time sufficient beer had gone down that they forgot about
  tuning in a weather report before leaving their tent-at the verge of kona
  season.
  It was a beautiful night, half a moon aloft and so many stars they could
  imagine they were in space. Wind lulled, seas whooshed, rigging creaked,
  the

               44
           INCONSTANT STAR      45

 boat rocked forward and presently a couple of dolphins appeared, playing
 alongside for hours, a marvel that made even Kam sit silent in wonder.
 Then toward dawn, the goal a vague darkness ahead, clouds boiled out of
 the west, wind sharpened and shrilled, suddenly rain slanted like a ffight
 of spears and through murk the mariners heard waves rumble against rocks.
  It wasn't much of a storm, really, but ample to deal with Wahine. Seams
  opened, letting in water to join that which dashed over the gunwales.
  Sail first reefed, soon struck, stays nonetheless gave way and the mast
  went. It would have capsized the hull had Bob not managed to heave it
  free. Thereafter he had the oars, keeping bow on to the waves, while Kam
  bailed. A couple of years older, and no weakling, the Hawaiian couldn't
  have rowed that long at a stretch. Eventually he did his share and a bit
  at the rudder, when somehow he worked the craft through a gap between two
  reefs which roared murder at them. They hit coral a while later, but
  close enough to shore that they could swim, never sure who saved the life
  of who in the surf. Collapsing behind a bush, they slept the weather out.
  Afterward they limped off till they found a road and hitched a ride.
  They'd been blown back to Kauai. Side by side, they stood on the carpet
  before a Coast Guard officer and endured what they must.
  Next day in their tent, Kam said, unwontedly solemn-the vast solemnity
  of youffi--!'Bob, listen. You've been my hoa since we met, you became my
  hoaloha, but what we've been through, what you did, makes you a hoapili."
  "Aw, wasn't more'n I had to, and you did just as much," mumbled the
  other, embarrassed. "If you mean what I suppose you do, okay, I'll call
  you kammerat, and let's get on with whatever we're going to do."
  "How about this? I've got folks on the Big Island. A tiny little
  settlement tucked away where nobody
 46       Poul Anderson

 ever comes. Beautiful country, mountains and woods. People still live in the
 old kanaka style. How'd you like that?"
 "Um-m, how old a style?"
  Kam was relieved at being enabled to laugh. "You won't eat long pig!
  Everybody knows English, though they use Hawaiian for choice, and never
  fear, you can watch the Chimp Show. But it's a great, relaxed, cheerful
  life-you've got to experience the girls to believe the families don't talk
  about it much when they go outside, or invite haolena in, because tourists
  would ruin it-but you'll be welcome, I guarantee you. How about it?"
  The month that followed lived up to his promises, and then some.
  Recollections of it flew unbidden across the years as Ryan worked in the
  galley. Everybody else was in the gym, where chairs and projection
  equipment had been brought, for the briefing the astronomers would give.
  Rover boosted on automatic; her instruments showed nothing ahead that she
  couldn't handle by herself for the next million kilometers. The quarter-
  master could have joined the group, but he wanted to make a victory feast
  ready. Before long, they'd be too busy to appreciate his art.
  He did have a screen above the counter, monitoring the assembly.
  Tregennis and Laurinda stood facing their audience. The Plateaunian said,
  with joy alive beneath the dry words:
  "It is a matter of semantics whether we call this a first- or a
  second-generation system. Hydrogen and helium are overwhelmingly abundant,
  in proportions consistent with condensation shortly after the Big
  Bang-about which, not so incidentally, we may learn something more than
  hitherto. However, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, silicon, and neon are present
  in significant quantities; magnesium and iron are not insignificant; other
  elements early in the periodic
           INCONSTANT STAR      47

 table are detectable. There has naturally been a concentration of heavier
 atoms in the planets, especially the inner ones, as gases selectively
 escaped. They are not mere balls of water ice.
  "It seems clear, therefore, that this system formed out of a cloud which
  had been enriched by mass loss from older stars in their red giant phase.
  A few supernovae may have contributed, too, but any elements heavier than
  iron which they may have supplied are so scant that we will only find
  them by mass spectrography of samples fi-om the solid bodies. They may
  well be nonexistent. Those older stars must have come into being as soon
  after the Beginning as was physically possible, in a proto-galaxy not too
  far then from the matter which was to become ours, but now surely quite
  distant from us."
  "As we dared hope," said the Crashlander. Tears glimmered in her eyes
  like dew on rose petals.
 "Oh, good for youl" called Yoshii.
  "A relic--hell, finding God's fingerprints," Carita said, and clapped a
  hand to her mouth. Ryan grinned. Nobody else noticed.
 "How many planets?" asked Saxtorph.
 "Five," Tregennis replied.
  "Hm. Isn't that kind of few, even for a dwarf? Are you sure?"
  "Yes. We would have found anything of a size much less than what you
  would call a planet's."
  "Especially since the Bode function is small, as you'd expect," Dorcas
  added. Having worked with the astronomers, she scarcely needed this
  session. "The planets huddle close in. We haven't found an Oort cloud
  either. No comets at all, we think."
  "Outer bodies may well have been lost in the collision that sent this
  star into exile," Laurinda said. "And in fifteen billion years, any
  comets that were left got ... used up."
  "There probably was a sixth planet until some unknown date in the past,"
  Tregennis stated. "We
 48       Poul Anderson

 have indications of asteroids extremely close to the sun. Gravitational
 radiation-no, it must chiefly have been friction with the interstellar
 medium that caused a parent body to spiral in until it passed the Roche
 limit and was disrupted."
  "Hey, wait," Saxtorph said. "Dorcas talks of a Bode function. That implies
  the surviving planets are about where theory says they ought to be. How'd
  they avoid orbital decay?"
 Tregennis smiled. "That's a good question."
  Saxtorph laughed. "Shucks, you sound like I was back in the Academy."
  "Well, at this stage any answers are hypothetical, but consider. In the
  course of its long journey, quite probably through more galaxies than ours,
  the system must sometimes have crossed nebular regions where matter was
  comparatively dense. Gravitation would draw the gas and dust in, make it
  thickest close to the sun, until the sun swallowed it altogether. As a
  matter of fact, the planetary orbits have very small
  eccentricities-friction has a circularizing effectand their distances from
  the primary conform only roughly to the theoretical distribution."
  Tregennis paused. "A ftirther anomaly we cannot explain, though it may be
  related. We have found-marginally; we think we have found-molecules of
  water and OH radicals among the asteroids, almost like a ring around the
  sun." He spread his hands. "Well, I won't live to see every riddle we may
  come upon solved."
 He had fought to get here, Ryan remembered.
  "Let's hear about those planets," Carita said impatiently. Her job would
  include any landings. "Uh, have you got names for them? One, Two, Three
  might cause mixups when we're in a hurry."
  "I've suggested using Latin ordinals," Laurinda answered. She sounded
  almost apologetic.
  "Prima, Secunda, Tertia, Quarta, Quinta," Dorcas supplied. "Top-flight
  idea. I hope it becomes the standard for explorers." Laurinda flushed.
           INCONSTANT STAR      49

  "I have agreed," Tregennis said. "Me philologists can bestow official
  names later, or whoever is to be in charge of such things. Let us give
  you a pr6cis of what we have learned to date."
  He consulted a notator in his hand. "Prima," he recited. "Mean orbital
  radius, approximately 0.4 A. U. Diameter, approximately 16,000
  kilometers. Since it has no satellite, the mass is still uncertain, but
  irradiation is such that it cannot be i . We presume the material is
  largely silicate, w ichallowing for self-compression--Vves a mass on the
  order of Earth's. No signs of air.
  "Secunda, orbiting at 0.7 A.U., resembles Prima, but is slightly larger
  and does have a thin atmosphere, comparable to Mars'. It has a moon as
  well. Remarkably, the moon has a higher albedo than expected, a yellowish
  hue. The period tells us the mass, Of course, which reinforces our guess
  about Prima.
  "rertia is almost exactly one A. U. out. It is a superterrestrial, mass
  of five Earths, as confirmed by four moons, also yellowish. A somewhat
  denser atmosphere than Secundds; we have confirmed the presence of
  nitrogen and trams of oxygen."
  "What?" broke from Saxtorph. "You mean it might have fife?"
  lAurinda shivered a bit. "rhe water is forever &ozen , she told him.
  "Carbon dioxide must often fi,eeze. We don't know how there can be any
  measurable amount of free oxygen. But there is."
  Tregennis cleared his throat. "Quarta," he said. "A gas giant at 1.5
  A.U., mass 230 Earths, as estabfis6d by ten moons detected thus far.
  Surprisingly, no rings. Hydrogen and helium, presumably surrounding a
  vast ice shell which covers a silicate core with some iron. It seems to
  radiate weakly in the radio frequencies, indicating a magnetic field,
  though the radio background of the sun is such that at this distance we
  can't be sure. We plan a flyby on our
 50       Poul Anderson

 way in. Quarta will be basic to understanding the dynamics of the system. It
 is its equivalent of Jupiter. "
  "Otherwise we have only detected radio from Secunda," Laurinda related,
  "but it is unmistakable, cannot be of stellar origin. It is really curious-
  intermittent, seemingly modulated, unless that is an artifact of our skimpy
  data." She smiled. "How lovely if intelligent beings are transmitting."
  Markham stirred. He had put his chair behind the row of the rest. "Are you
  serious?" he nearly shouted.
  Surprised looks went his way. "Oh, no," Laurinda said. "Just a daydream.
  We'll find out what is actually causing it when we get there."
  "Well, Quinta remains," Tregennis continued, "in several respects, the most
  amazing object of all. Mass 103 Earths-seven moons found-at 2.8 A. U. It
  does have a well-developed ring system. Hydrogen-helium atmosphere, but
  with clear spectra of methane, ammonia, and ... water vapor. Water in huge
  quantities. Turbulence, and a measured temperature far above expectations.
  Something peculiar has happened.
  "Are there any immediate questions? If not, Laurinda and Dorcas have
  prepared graphics---charts, diagrams, tables, pictures-which we would like
  to show. Please feel free to inquire, or to propose ideas. Don't be
  bashful. You are all intelligent people with a good understanding of basic
  science. Any of you may get an insight which we specialists have missed."
 Markham rose. "Excuse me," he said.
  "Huh?" asked Saxtorph, amiably enough. "You want to go now when this is
  really getting interesting?"
  "I do not expect I can make a contribution." Markham hesitated. "I am a
  little indisposed. Best I lie down for a while. Do not worry. I will soon
  be well. Carry on." He sketched a bow and departed.
 "What do you know, he is human," Carita said.
  "We ought to be kinder to him than we have been, poor man," Laurinda
  murmured.
           INCONSTANT STAR      51

  "He hasn't given us much of a chance, has he?" replied Yoshii.
 "Stow that," Saxtorph ordered. "No backbiting."
  "Yes," added Dorcas, "let's proceed with the libretto. "
 Eagerness made Tregennis tremble as he obliged.
  In his galley, Ryan fivwned. Something didn't feel quite right. While he
  followed the session he continued slicing the mahimahi he had brought
  frozen fi-om Earth, but his mind was no longer entirely on either.
  Time passed. It became clear that the Quarta approach was going to be an
  intellectual orgy, the more so because Quinta happened to be near inferior
  conjunction and thus a lot of information about that planet would be
  arriving, too. Ryan wiped hands on apron, left his preparations, and
  stumped up toward the ffight deck.
  He met Markham coming back. They halted and regarded each other. The
  companionway thrummed around them. "Hello, there," the quartermaster said
  slowly. "I thought you were in your cabin."
  Markham stiffened. "I am on my way, if it is any of your business."
 "Long way 'round."
  "It ... occurred to me to check certain stations. This is an old ship,
  refitted. Frankly, Captain Saxtorph relies too much on his machinery."
 "What sort of thing did you want to check on?"
  "Who are you to ask?" Markham flung. "You are the quartermaster."
  "And you are the passenger." Ryan's bulk blocked the stairs. "I wouldn't be
  in this crew if I didn't have a pretty fair idea of how all the equipment
  works. I'm responsible for maintaining a lot of it."
 I have commanded spacecraft."
  'Then you know each system keeps its own record." Ryan's smile approximated
  a leer, or a snarl. "Save the skipper a bunch of data retrievals. Where
  were you and what were you doing?'
 52       Pout Anderson

  Markham stood silent while the ship drove onward. At length: "I should, I
  shall report directly to the captain. But to avoid rumors, I tell you
  first. Listen well and do not distort what I say if you are able not to. I
  beamed a radio signal on a standard band at Secunda. It is against the
  possibility-the very remote possibility, Mlle. Brozik assured usthat
  sentient beings are present. Natives, Outsiders, who knows? in the interest
  of peaceful contact, we must provide evidence that we did not try to sneak
  in on them. Not that it is likely they exist, but-this is the sort of
  contigency I am here for. Saxtorph and I can dispute it later if he wishes.
  I have presented him with afait accompli. Now let me by."
  Ryan stood aside. Markham passed downward. Ryan stared after him till he
  was gone from sight, then went back to his galley.
 I-W

               10

  Quarta fell astern as Rover moved on sunward. In the boat called Fido,
  Juan Yoshii swung around the giant planet and accelerated to overtake his
  ship. Vectors programmed, he could relax, look out the ports, seek to
  sort the jumbled marvels in his mind. Most had gone directly from
  instruments to the astronomers; he was carrying back certain observations
  taken farside. A couple of times there had been opportunity for Laurinda,
  Brozik to tell him briefly about the latest interpretation, but he had
  been too busy on his flit to think much beyond the piloting.
  Stars thronged, the Milky Way torrented, a sky little different from the
  skies he remembered. Less than 30 light-years' travelm-a mite's leap in
  the galaxy. Clearly alien was the sun ahead. Tiny but perceptible, its
  ember of a disc was slow to dazzle his eyes, yet already cast sufficient
  light for him to see things by.
  An outer moon drifted across vision. This was his last close passage, and
  instruments worked greedily.

               53
 54       Poul Anderson

 Clicks and whirrs awoke beneath the susurrus of air through the hull.
 Yoshii pointed his personal camera; photography was an enthusiasm of his.
 The globe glimmered wan red under its sun. It was mainly ice, and smooth;
 any cracks and craters had slumped in the course of gigayears. The surface
 was lighter than it might have been and mottled with yellow spots. Ore
 deposits? The same material that tinted most airless bodies here?
 Tregennis was puzzled. You got dark spots in Solar-type systems. They were
 due to photolysis of frozen methane. Of course, this sun was so feeble....
  It nonetheless illuminated the planet aft. Quarta's hue was pale rose,
  overlaid with silvery streaks that were ice clouds: crystals of carbon
  dioxide, ammonia, in the upper levels methane. No twists, no vortices,
  no sign of any jovian storminess marred the serenity. Though the disc was
  visibly flattened, it rotated slowly, taking more than 40 hours. Tidal
  forces through eons had worn down even the spin of this huge mass. They
  had likewise dispersed whatever rings it once had, and surely drawn away
  moons. The core possessed a magnetic field, slight, noticeable only be-
  cause it extended so far into space that it snatched radio waves out of
  inconung cosmic radiation-~emanent magnetism, locked into iron as that
  core froze. For gravitational energy release had long since reached its
  end point; and long, long before then, K-40 and whatever other few
  radionuclei were once on hand had guttered away beyond measurement. The
  ice sheath went upward in tranquil allotropic, layers to a virtually
  featureless surface and an enormous, quietly circulating atmosphere of
  starlike composition. Quarta had reached Nirvana.
  It fell ever farther behind. Fido closed in on Rover. The ship swelled
  until she might have been a planet herself Instructions swept back and
  forth, electronic, occasionally verbal. A boat bay opened its canopy.
  Yoshii maneuvered through and docked. The canopy
           INCONSTANT STAR      55

 closed, shutting off heaven. Air hissed back in from the recovery tanks.
 A bulb flashed green. Yoshii unharnessed, operated the lock, crawled
 forth, and walked under the steady weight granted him by the ship's
 polarizer, into her starboard reception room.
 Laurinda waited.
  Yoshii stopped. She was alone. White hair tumbled past delicate features
  to brush the dress, new to him, that hugged her slenderness. She reached
  out. Her eyes glowed. "W-welcome back, Juan," she whispered.
  'Why, uh, thanks, thank you. You're the ... committee?"
  She smiled, dropped her glance, became briefly the color of the world he
  had rounded. "Kam met Carita. As for you, Dorcas-Mate Saxtorph sug-
  gested-"
  He took her hands. They felt reed-thin and silksoft. "How nice of her.
  And the rest. I've data discs for you."
  "They'll keep. We have more work than we can handle. Observations of
  Quinta were, have been incredibly fruitful." Ardor pulsed in her voice.
  The outermost planet was a safe subject. "We think we can guess its
  nature, but of course there's no end of details we don't understand, and
  we could be entirely wrong-"
  "Good for you," he said, delighted by her delight. I missed out on that,
  of course." Transmissions to him, including hers, had dealt with the
  Quartan system exclusively; any bit of information about it might perhaps
  save his life. "Tell me."
  "Oh, it's violent, multi-colored, with spots like Jupiter's---one bigger
  than the Red-and-the surface is liquid water. It's Arctic-like; we
  imagine continent-sized ice floes clashing together."
 "But warmer than Quartal Why?"
  "We suppose a large satellite crashed, a fraction of a million years ago.
  Debris formed the rings. The
 56       Pout Anderson

 main mass released enough heat to melt the upper part of the planetary
 shell, and, and we'll need years, science will, to learn what else has
 happened."
  He stood for an instant in awe, less of the event than of the time-scale.
  That moon must have been close to start with, but still it had taken the
  casual orbital erosion of ... almost a universe's lifespan so fitr-how many
  passages through nebulae, galaxies, the near-ultimate vacuum of
  intergalactic space?-to bring it down. What is man, that thou art mindful
  of him-?
  What is man, that he should waste the little span which is his?
 "That's wonderful," he said, "but-we-"
  Impulsively, he embraced her. Astoundingly, she responded.
  Between laughter and tears she said in his ear, "Come, let's go, Kam's
  spread a feast for the two of us in my cabin."
 Set beside that, the cosmos was trivial.
  Saxtorph's voice crackled fi-om the intercom: "Now hear this. Now hear
  this. We've just received a message from what claims to be a kzin warship.
  They're demanding we make rendezvous with them. Keep calm but think hard.
  We'll meet in the gym in an hour, 1530, and consider this together."
               11

  Standing with back to bulkhead, the captain let silence stretch, beneath
  the pulsebeat and whispers of the ship, while he scanned the faces of
  those seated before him. Dorcas, her Athene countenance frozen into
  expressionlessness; Kam Ryan's full lips quirked a bit upward, defiantly
  cheerful; Carita Fenger a-scowl; Juan Yoshii and Laurinda Brozik unable
  to keep from glancing at each other, hand gripping hand; Arthur
  Tregennis, who seemed almost as concerned about the girl; Ulf Markham,
  well apart from the rest, masked in haughtiness-Ulf Reichstein Markham,
  if you please.... The air renewal cycle was at its daily point of ozone
  injection. That tang smelled like fear.
  Which must not be let out of its cage. Saxtorph cleared his throat.
  "Okay, let's get straight to business," he said. "You must've noticed a
  quiver in the interior g-field and change in engine sound. You're right,
  we altered acceleration. Rover will meet the foreign vessel, with

               57
 58       Poul Anderson

 velocities matched, in about 35 hours. it could be sooner, but Dorcas told
 them we weren't sure our hull could take that much stress. What we wanted,
 naturally, was as much time beforehand as possible."
 "Why don't we cut and run?" Carita asked.
  Saxtorph shrugged. "Whether or not we can outrun them, we for sure can't
  escape the stuff they can throw, now that they've locked onto us. If they
  really are kzinti navy, they'll never let us get out where we can go
  hyperspatial. They may be lying, but Dorcas and I don't propose to take the
  chance."
  I presume evasion tactics are unfeasible," said Tregennis in his most
  academic voice.
  "Correct. We could stop the engine, switch off the generator, and orbit
  free, with batteries supplying the life support systems, but they'd have no
  trouble computing our path. As soon as they came halfway close, they'd
  catch us with a radar sweep.
  "From what data we have on them, I believe they were searching for some
  time before they acquired us, probably with amplified optics. That's
  assuming they were in orbit around Secunda when they first learned of our
  arrival. The assumption is consistent with what would be a reasonable
  search curve for them and with the fact that there are modulated radio
  bursts out of that planet-transmissions to and from their base."
  Nobody before had seen Yoshii snarl. "And how did they learn about us?" he
  demanded.
  Looks went to Markham. He gave them back. "Yes, undoubtedly through me," he
  said. Strength rang in the words. "You all know I took it upon myself to
  beam a signal at Secunda-in my capacity as this expedition's officer of the
  government. The result has surprised me, too, but I acknowledge no need to
  apologize. If we, approaching a kzin base unbeknownst, had suddenly become
  manifest to their detectors, they would most likely have blown us out of
  existence."
           INCONSTANT STAR      59

  Ryan nodded. "Without stopping to ask questions," he supplied. "Yeah,
  that'd be kzin style. If they are. How're you so sure?"
  I think we can take it for granted," Dorcas said. "Who else would have
  reason to call themselves kzinti?"
 "Who else would want to?" Carita growled.
  "Save the cuss words for later," Saxtorph counselled. "We're in too much of
  a pickle for luxuries. I might add that although the vocal transmission was
  through a translator, the phrasing, the responses to us, everything was
  pure kzin. They are here---on the far side of human space from their own.
  You realize what this means, don't you, folks? The kzinti have gotten the
  hyperdrive."
  That conclusion had indeed become clear to everyone, but Laurinda asked,
  "How could they?" as if in pain.
  Yoshii grimaced. "Once you know something can be done, you're halfway to
  doing it yourself," he told her.
  "I know," she answered. "But I had the, the impression they aren't quite as
  clever at engineering as humans, even if they did invent the gravity polar-
  izer. And, and wouldn't we have known?"
  "Collecting intelligence in kzin space isn't exactly easy," Saxtorph
  explained. "Anyhow, they may have done the R and D on some planet we aren't
  aware of. I'll grant you, I'm surprised myself that they've been this
  quick. Well, they were." His grin was lopsided. "Once I heard about an
  epitaph on an old New England tombstone. 'I expected this, but not so soon.
  "Why have they established themselves here?" Tregennis wondered. "As you
  observed, it is a long journey for them, especially if they went around
  human space in order to avoid any chance that their possession of the
  hyperdrive would be discovered. True, this system is uniquely interesting,
  but I didn't
 60       Poul Anderson

 think kzin civilization gave scientific research as high a value as ours
 does."
 "That's a good question," Saxtorph said.
  His gallows humor drew a chuckle from none but Ryan. Dorcas uttered the
  thought in every mind: "They won't let us go home to tell about them if
  they can help it."
  "Which is why we are being nice and meeting them as they request," Saxtorph
  added. "It gives them an alternative to putting a nuke on our track."
  Markham folded his arms and stated, "I hope you people have the wit to be
  glad, at last, that I came along. They will understand that I am authorized
  to negotiate with them. They will likewise understand that my disappearance
  would in due course cause a second expedition to come, with armed escort,
  as the loss of an entirely private group might not."
  "could be," Saxtorph said. "However, I can think of several ways to fake a
  natural disaster for us."
 "Such as?"
  "Well, for instance, giving us a lethal dose of radiation, then sending the
  corpses back with the ship gimmicked to seem this was an accident. The kzin
  pilot could return on an accompanying vessel after ours left hyperspace."
 "What would the log show?"
 "What the 'last survivor' was tortured into entering."
  "Nonsense. You have been watching too many spy dramas. "
  "I disagree. Besides, that was just one of the notions that occurred to
  Dorcas and me. The kzinti might be more inventive yet."
  "We have decided not to rely exclusively on their sweet nature," the mate
  declared. "Listen carefully.
  "We can launch the boats without them detecting it, if we act soon. They'll
  float free while Rover proceeds to rendezvous. When she's a suitable dis-
  tance off, nobody looking for any action in this volume of space, they'll
  scramble."
           INCONSTANT STAR      61

  Carita smacked fist in palm. "Hey, terrifiel" she cried.
  Markham sounded appalled: "Have you gone crazy? How will you survive, let
  alone return, in two little interplanetary flitters?"
  "They're more than that," Saxtorph reminded. "They're rugged and
  maneuverable and full to the scuppers with delta v. In either of 'em I'd
  undertake to outrace or dodge a tracking missile, and make it tough or
  impossible to hold a laser beam on her long enough to do much damage. Air
  and water recycler are in full working order and rations for one man-year
  are stowed aboard."
  1, 1 ate some," Yoshii stammered. "Carita must have, too."
 "I've already replaced it," Ryan informed them.
  "Good thinkingl" Saxtorph exclaimed. "Did you expect this tactic?"
  "Oh, general principles. Take care of your belly and your belly will take
  care of you."
  "Stop that schoolboy chatter," Markham snapped. "What in the cosmos can you
  hope to do but antagonize the kzinti?"
  "How do you tell an antagonized kzin from an unantagonized one?" Saxtorph
  retorted. "I am dead serious. Nobody has to follow me who doesn't want to.
  11

  I certainly do not. Someone has to stay and try to repair the harm your
  lunacy will have done.
  "I figured you would. But I supposed you, of all people, would have a
  better hold on kzin psychology than you're showing. You ought to know they
  don't resent an opponent giving them a proper fight. Fighting's their
  nature. Whoever surrenders becomes no more than a captured animal in their
  eyes. Dorcas and I aim to put some high cards in your hand before you sit
  down at their poker table. A spacecraft on the loose is a weapon. The
  drive, or the sheer kinetic energy, can wreck things quite as thoroughly as
  the
 62       Poul Anderson

 average nuke. Come worst to worst, we might smash a boat into their base
 at several thousand k.p.h. The other boat might take out their ship and
 leave them stranded; I've a hunch they've kept just a single hyperdrive
 vessel, as scarce as those must still be among them. Yah, going out like
 that would be a sight better than going into the stewpot. Kzinti like long
 pig."
  Yoshii brightened. He and Laurinda exchanged a wonder-smitten look.
  Carita whooped. Tregennis smiled faintly. Ryan went oddly, abruptly
  thoughtful.
  Markham gnawed his lip a moment, then straightened in his chair and
  rapped, "Very well. I do not approve, and I ask the crew to refrain from
  this foolishness Of yours, but I cannot stop you. Therefore I must factor
  your action into my calculations. What terms shall I try to get for us?"
  "Freedom to leave, of course," Dorcas responded. "Let Rover retreat to
  hyperspacing distance and wait, while the kzinti withdraw too far to
  intercept our boats. We can verify that on instruments before we come
  near. We'll convey any message they want, or even a delegate."
  "There could be a delegation on board, waiting," Ryan warned.
 Tregennis stirred. "I will remain behind," he said.
  Tears sprang into Laurinda's eyes. "Oh, nol" she pleaded.
  He smiled again, at her. "I am too old to go blatting around space like
  that. I would merely be a burden, and quite likely die on your hands. Not
  only will I be more comfortable here, I will be an extra witness to the
  bona fides of the kzinti. Landholder Markham alone could not keep track
  of everything they might stealthily do."
  "It will show them there are two reasonable human beings in this outfit,"
  the Wunderlander said. "That might be marginally helpful to me. Anyone
  else?"
           INCONSTANT STAR      63

 "Speaking," Ryan answered.
  "Huh?" broke from Saxtorph. "Hey, Kam, no. Whatever for?"
  "For this," the quartermaster said calmly. "Haven't you thought of it
  yourself? The boats will be on the move, or holed up someplace unknown
  to the kzinti. They can only be reached by broadcast. Planar broadcast,
  maybe, but still the signal's bound to be down in the milliwatts or
  microwatts when it reaches your receivers--with the sun's radio
  background to buck. Nothing but voice transmission will carry worth
  diddly. Given a little time to record how the humans talk who were left
  behind, the kzinti can wTite a computer program to fake it. 'Sure, come
  on back, fellows, all is forgiven and they've left a case of champagne
  for us to celebrate with.' How're you going to know that's for real?"
  Dorcas frowned. "We did consider it," she told him. "We'll use a secret
  password."
  "Which a telepath of theirs can fish right out of a human skull, maybe
  given a spot of torture to unsettle the brain first. Nope, I know a trick
  worth two of that. How well do you remember your Hawaiian, Bob? You
  picked up a fair amount while we were in the village." Ryan laughed.
  "That worked on the girls like butter on a toboggan slope."
  Saxtorph was a long while silent before he answered: I think, if I
  practiced for a few days, I think ... enough of it ... would come back
  to me - "
  Ryan nodded. "The kzinti have programs for the important human languages
  in their translators, but I doubt Hawaiian is included. Or Danish."
  Yoshii swallowed. "You'd certify everything is kosher?" he mumbled. "But
  what if-well-"
  "if the kzinti aren't stupid, they won't try threatening or torturing me
  into feeding you a lie," Ryan responded. "How'd they savvy what I was
  saying? I assure you, it wouldn't be complimentary to them."
 "A telepath would know."
 64       Foul Anderson

  Ryan shrugged. "He'd know I was not going to be their Judas goat, no
  matter what they did. Therefore they won't do it."
  Saxtorph's right hand half reached out. "Kam, old son-" he croaked. The
  hand dropped.
  Dorcas rose and confronted the rest, side by side with her husband. "I'm
  sorry, but time is rationed for us and you must decide at once, " she
  said. "If you think you'd better stay, then do. We won't consider you a
  coward or anything. You may be right. We can't be sure at this stage. All
  we are certain of is that we don't have time for debate. Who's going?"
  Hands went up, Carita~s, Yoshii's, and after an instant Laurinda's.
  "Okay," Dorcas continued. "Now we're not about to put our bets on a
  single number. The boats will go separate ways. Which ways, we'll decide
  by tight beam once we're alone in space. You understand, Kam, Arthur,
  Landholder Markham. What you don't know, a telepath or a torturer can't
  get out of you. Bob and I have already considered the distribution.
  Carita and Juan will take Fido. We thought Kam would ride with them, but
  evidently not. Laurinda, you'll be with Bob and me in Shep,"
  "Wait a minutel" Yoshii protested. The girl brought fingertips to open
  mouth.
  " Sorry, my dears," Dorcas said. "It's a matter of practicality, as
  nearly as we could estimate on short notice. Not that we imagine you two
  would play Romeo and Juliet to the neglect of your duties. However, Juan
  and Carita are our professional pilots, roclqacks, planetside
  prospectors. Together they make our strongest possible team. They can
  pull stunts Bob and I never could. We need that potential, don't we? Bob
  and I are no slouches, but we do our best work in tandem. To supply some
  of what we lack as compared to Juan and Carita, Laurinda has knowledge,
  including knowledge of how to use instruments we plan to pack along.
  Don't forget, more is
           INCONSTAW STAR       65

 involved than us. The whole human race needs to know what the kzinti are
 up to. We must maximize our chances of getting the news home. Agreed?"
  Yoshii clenched his free hand into a fist, stared at it, raised his head,
  and answered, "Aye. And you can take better care of her."
  The Crashlander flushed. "I'm no piece of porcelainl" immediately
  contrite, she stroked the Belter's cheek while she asked unevenly, "How
  soon do we leave?"
  Dorcas smiled and made a gesture of blessing. "Let's say an hour. We'll
  need that much to stow gear. You two can have most of it to yourselves."
               12

  The kzin warship was comparatively small, Prowling Hunter class, but not
  the less terrifying a sight. Weapon pods, boat bays, sensor booms, control
  domes studded a spheroid whose red hue, in the light of this sun, became
  like that of clotted blood. Out of it and across the kilometers between
  darted small fierce gleams that swelled into space-combat armor enclosing
  creatures larger than men. They numbered a dozen, and each bore at least
  two firearms.
  Obedient to orders, Ryan operated the main personnel airlock and cycled
  four of them through. The first grabbed him and slammed him against the
  bulkhead so hard that it rang. Stunned, he would have slumped to the deck
  were it not for the bruising grip on his shoulders. The next two crouched
  with weapons ready. The last one took over the controls and admitted the
  remaining eight.
  At once, ten went off in pairs to ransack the ship. It was incredible how
  fitst they carried the mass of

               66
           INCONSTANT STAR      67

 metal upon them. Their footfalls cast booming echoes down the passageways.
  Markham and Tregermis, waiting in the saloon, were frisked and put under
  guard. Presently Ryan was brought to them. "My maiden aunt has better
  manners than they do," he muttered, and lurched toward the bar. The kzin
  used his rifle butt to push him into a chair and gestured for silence.
  Time passed.
  Within an hour, which felt longer to the humans, the boarding party was
  satisfied that there were no traps. Somebody radioed a report from the
  airlock; the rest shed their armor and stood at ease outside the saloon.
  Its air grew full of their wild odor.
  A new huge and ruddy-gold form entered. The guard saluted, sweeping claws
  before his face. Markham jumped up. "For God's sake, stand," he whis-
  pered. "That's the captain."
  Tregennis and, painfully, Ryan rose. The kzin's gaze flickered over them
  and came back to dwell on Markham, recognizing leadership. The
  Wunderlander opened his mouth. Noises as of a tiger fight poured forth.
  Did the captain register surprise that a man knew his language? He heard
  it out and spat a reply. Markham tried to continue. The captain
  interrupted, and Markham went mute. The captain told him something.
  Markham turned to his companions. "He forbids me to mangle the Hero's
  Tongue any more," he related wryly. "He grants my request for a private
  talk-in the communications shack, where our translator is, since I
  explained that we do have one and it includes the right program.
  Meanwhile you may talk with each other and move freely about this cabin.
  If you must reliev yourselves, you may use the sink behind the bar. F
 "How gracious of him," Ryan snorted.
  Markham raised brows. "Consider yourselves fortunate. He is being
  indulgent. Don't risk provoking
 68       Poul Anderson

 him. High-ranking kzinti are even more sensitive about their honor than
 the average, and he has earned a partial name, Hraou-Captain.'
  "We will be careful," Tregennis promised. I am sure you will do your best
  for us."
  The commander went majestically out. Markham trailed. Ryan gusted a sigh,
  sought the bar, tapped a liter Of beer, and drained it in a few gulps.
  The guard watched enviously but then also left. Discipline had prevented
  him fiom shoving the human aside and helping himself. He and a couple of
  his fellows remained in the passage. They conversed a bit, rumbling and
  hissing.
  "We'll be here a while," Ryan sighed. "Care for a round of gin?"
  "It would be unwise of us to drink," Tregennis cautioned. "Best you be
  content with that mugful you had."
 "I mean gin rummy."
 "What is that, if not a, ah, cocktail?"
  "A card game. They don't play it on Plateau? I can teach you."
  "No, thank you. Perhaps I am too narrow in my interests, but cards bore
  me." Tregennis brightened. "However, do you play chess?"
  Ryan threw up his hands. "You expect me to concentrate on woodpushing
  now? Hell, let's screen a show. Something light and trashy, with plenty
  of girls in it. Or would you rather seize the chance to at last read War
  and Peace?"
  Tregennis smiled. "Believe it or not, Kamehameha, I have my memories. By
  all means, girls."
  The comedy was not quite finished when a kzin appeared and jerked an
  unmistakable gesture. The men followed him. He didn't bother with a
  companion or with ever glancing rearward. At the flight deck he proceeded
  to Saxtorph's operations cabin, waved them through, and closed the door
  on them.
 Markham sat behind the desk. He was very pale
           INCONSTANT STAR      69

 and reeked of the sweat that stained his tunic, but his visage was set in
 hard lines. Hraou-Captain loomed beside him, too big to use a human's chair,
 doubtless tired of being cramped in the comshack and maybe choosing to
 increase his dominance by sheer height. Another kzin squatted in a far
 corner of the room, a wretched-looking specimen, fur dull and unkempt,
 shoulders slumped, eyes turned downward.
  "Attention," rasped markham. I wish I did not have to tell you this-I hoped
  to avoid it-but the commander says I must. He ... feels deception is
  pointless and ... besmirches his honor. His superior on Secunda agrees; we
  have been in radio contact. "
 The newcomers braced themselves.
  Nonetheless it was staggering to hear: "For the past five years I have been
  an agent of the kzinti. Later I will justify myself to you, if your minds
  are not totally closed. It is not hatred for my species that drove me to
  this, but love and concern for it, hatred fbr the decadence that is
  destroying us. Later, I say. We dare not waste Hraou-Captain's time with
  arguments. "
  Regarding the faces before him, Markham made his tone dry. "The kzinti
  never trusted me with specific information, but after I began sending them
  information about hyperdrive technology, they gave me a general directive.
  I was to use my position as commissioner to fbrestall, whenever possible,
  any exploration beyond the space containing the humanoccupied worlds. That
  naturally gave me an inkling of the reason-to prevent disclosure of their
  activitiesand it became clear to me that some of the most important must be
  in regions distant from kzin space. When hope was lost of keeping you from
  this expedition, I decided my duty was to join it and stand by in case of
  need. Not that I anticipated the need, understand. The star looked so
  useless. But when you did get those radio indications, I knew better than
  you
 70       Poul Anderson

 what they could mean, and was glad I had provided against the contingency,
 and beamed a notice of our arrival. "
 "Your parents were brothers," Ryan said.
  Markham laid back his ears. "Spare the abuse. Remember, by forewarning the
  kzinti I saved your lives. If you had simply blundered into detector
  range--:'
  "They may be impulsive," Tregennis said, "but they are not idiotic. I do
  not accept your assertion that they would reflexively have annihilated us."
  Markham trembled. "Silence. Bear in mind that I am all that stands between
  you and-It has been a long time since the kzinti in this project tasted
  fresh meat."
 "What are they doing?" Ryan asked.
  "Constructing a naval base. They chose the system precisely because it
  seemed insignificant-the dimmest star in the whole region, devoid of heavy
  elements and impoverished in the light-though it does happen to have a
  ready source of iron and certain other crucial materials, together with a
  strategic location. They never expected humans to seek it out. They
  underestimated the curiosity of our species. They are ... cats, not
  monkeys."
  "Uh-huh. Not noisy, sloppy, free-swinging monkeys like you despise. Kzinti
  respect rank. Once they've overrun us, they'll put the niggers back in
  their proper place. From here they can grab off Beta Hydri, drive a salient
  way into our space-How many more prongs will there be to the attack? When
  is the next war scheduled for?"
  "Silencel" Markham shouted. "Hold your mouthl One word from me, and-"
  "And what? You need us, Art and me, you need us, else we wouldn't be having
  this interview. Kill us, and your boss just gets a few meals."
  "Killing can be in due course. I imagine he would enjoy your testicles for
  tomorrow~s breakfast."
           INCONSTAW STAR       71

  Ryan rocked on his feet. Tregennis' lips squeezed together till they were
  white.
  Markham's voice softened. "I am warning, not threatening," he said in a
  rush. "I'll save you if I can, unharmed, but if you don't help me I can
  promise nothing. "
  He leaned forward. "Listen, will you? Obviously you can't be released to
  spread the news-not yetbut some years of detention are better than death.
  " He could not quite hold back the sneer. "In your minds, I suppose. You're
  lucky, lucky that I was aboard. Once my status has been verified, the high
  commandant can let me bring home a convincing tale of disaster. Else he
  would probably have had to kill us and make our bodies stage props, as
  Saxtorph suggested. I think he will spare you if I ask; it will cost him
  little, and kzinti reward faithful service. They also keep their promises.
  But you must earn your lives."
 "The boats," Tregennis whispered.
  Ryan nodded. "You've got a telepath on hand, I see," he said flat-voiced.
  "He could make sure that my call in Hawaiian tells how everything is hearts
  and flowers. Except if he reads my mind, he'll see that I ain't gonna do
  it, no matter what. Or, okay, maybe they can break me, but Bob will hear
  that in his old pal's voice."
  "I've explained this to Hraou-Captain," Markham said, cooler now. "It is
  necessary to neutralize those boats, but they don't pose any urgent threat,
  so we will start with methods less time-consuming than ... interrogation
  and persuasion. Later, though, when we are on Secunda-that's where we are
  going-later your cooperation in working up a plausible disaster for me to
  return with, that is what will buy you your lives. If you refuse, you'll
  die for nothing, because we can always devise some deception which will
  keep humans away from here. You'll die fbr nothing."
 72       Poul Anderson

  "What the hell can we do about the boats? We don't know where they've
  gone."
  Markham's manner became entirely impersonal. I have explained this to
  Hraou-Captain. I went on to explain that their actions will not be
  random. What Captain Saxtorph decides-has decided to do is a
  multi-variable function of the logic of the situation and of his
  personality. You and he are good friends, Ryan. You can make shrewd
  guesses as to his behavior. They won't be certain, of course, but they
  will eliminate some possibilities and assign rough probabilities to
  others. Your input may have some value, too, Professor. And even mine-in
  the course of establishing that I have been telling the truth.
  "Sit down on the deck. This will not be pleasant, you know."
  Hraou-Captain, who had stood like a pillar, turned his enormous body and
  growled a command. The telepath raised his head. Eyes glazed by the drug
  that called forth his total abilities came to a focus.
  In their different ways, the three humans readied for what was about to
  happen. They'd have sundering headaches for hours afterward, too.
               13

  Small though it was, at its distance from Prima the sun showed more than
  half again the disc which Sol presents to Earth. Blotches of darkness
  pocked its sullen red. Corona shimmered around the limb, not quite
  drowned out of naked-eye vision.
  Yoshii ignored it. His attention was on the planet which Fido circled in
  high orbit. Radar, spectroscope, optical amplifier, and a compact array
  of other instruments fed data to a computer which spun forth
  interpretations on screen and printout. Click and whirr passed low
  through the rustling ventilation, the sometimes uneven human breath
  within the control cabin. Body warmth and a hint of sweat tinged the air.
  Yoshii's gaze kept drifting from the equipment, out a port of the globe
  itself. "Unbelievable," he murmured.
  Airless, it stood sharp-edged athwart the stars, but the illuminated side
  was nearly a blank, even at first and last quarter when shadows were
  long. Then a

               73
 74       Poul Anderson

 few traces of hill and dale might appear, like timeworn Chinese brush
 strokes. Otherwise there was yellowish-white smoothness, with ill-defined
 areas of faint gray, brown, or blue. The whole world could almost have
 been a latex ball, crudely made for a child of the giants.
  "What now?" Carita asked. She floated, harnessed in her seat, her back
  to him. They bad turned off the gravity polarizer and were weightless,
  to eliminate that source of detectability. Her attention was clamped to
  the long-range radar with which she swept the sky, to and fro as the boat
  swung around.
  Oh, everything," said the Belter.
  "Any ideas? You've had more chance to think, these past hours, than I
  have."
  "Well, a few things look obvious, but I wouldn't make book on their being
  what they seem."
  "Why don't you give me a rundown?" proposed the Jinxian. "Never mind if
  you repeat what I've already heard. We should try putting things in
  context."
  Yoshii plunged into talk. It was an escape of sorts from their troubles,
  from not knowing what the fate of Shep and those aboard her might be.
  "The planet's about the mass of Earth but only about half as dense. Must
  be largely silicate, some aluminum, not enough iron to form a core.
  Whatever atmosphere and hydrosphere it once outgassed, it lost-weak
  gravity, and temperatures around 400 K at the hottest part of the day.
  That day equals 131 of Earth's; two-thirds rotational lock, like Mercury.
  No more gas comes out, because vulcanism, tectonics, all geology ended
  long ago. Unless you want to count meteoroid erosion wearing down the
  surface; and I'd guess hardly any objects are left that might fall on
  these planets.
  "Then what is that stuff mantling the surface? The computer can't figure
  it out. Shadows of what relief there is indicate it's thin, a few
  centimeters deep,
           INCONSTANT STAR      75

 with local variations. Reflection spectra suggest carbon compounds but
 that's not certain. It just hes there, you see, doesn't do anything. Try
 analyzing a lump of some solid plastic across a distance. Is that what we
 have here, a natural polymer? I wish I knew more organic chemistry."
  "can't help you, Juan," Carita said. "All I remember from my class in it,
  aside from the stinks in the lab, is that the human sex hormones are much
  the same, except that the female is ketonic and the male is alcoholic."
  "We'll have time to look and think further, Of course." Yoshii sighed.
  "Time and time and time. I never stopped to imagine how what fugitives
  mostly do is sit. Hiding, huddling, while--2' He broke off and struggled
  for self-command.
  "And we don't dare let down our guard long enough to take a little
  recreation," Carita grumbled.
 Yoshii reddened. "Uh, if we could, 1-well~"
  She chuckled and said ruefully, "I know. The fair Laurinda. Don't worry,
  your virtue will be safe with me till you realize it can't make any
  possible diffHoldl" she roared.
 He tensed where he floated. "What?"
 "Quiet. No, secure things and get harnessed."
  For humming minutes she studied the screen and meters before her. Yoshii
  readied himself. Seated at her side he could see the grimness grow. Pale
  hair waved around sable skin when at last she nodded. "Yes," she said,
  "somebody's bound this way. From the direction of the sun. About ten
  million klicks off. He barely registered at first, but it's getting
  stronger by the minute. He's boosting fast. We'd tear our hull apart if
  we tried to match him, supposing we had that kind of power. Definitely
  making for Prima."
 "What ... is it?"
  "What but a kzin ship with a monster engine? I'm afraid they've caught
  on to our strategy." Carita's
 76       Poul Anderson

 tone grew wintry. "I'd rather not hear just how they did. "
 "G-guesswork?" Yoshii faltered.
  "Maybe. I don't know kzin psych. How close to us can they make themselves
  think?" She turned her head to clamp her vision on him. "Well, maybe the
  skippees plan failed and ifs actually drawn the bandits to us. Or maybe
  it's the one thing that can save

  (Saxtorph's words drawled through memory: "We don't know how much search
  capability the kzin have, but a naval vessel means auxiliaries, plus
  whatever civilian craft they can press into service. A boat out in the
  middle of the far yonder, drifting free, would be near-as-damn impossible
  to find. But as soon as she accelerates back toward where her crew might
  do something real, she screams the announcement to any alert, properly
  organized watchers-optical track, neutrino emission, the whole works till
  she's in effective radar range. After that she's sold to the licorice
  man, as they say in Denmark. On the other hand, if she can get down onto
  a planetary surfitce, she can probably make herself almost as invisible
  as out in the deep. A worldful of topography, which the kzinti cannot
  have had time or personnel to map in anything but the sketchiest way. So
  how about one of ours goes to Prima, the other to Tertia, and hes low in
  orbit? Immediately when we get wind Of trouble, we drop down into the
  best hidey-hole the planet has got, and wait things out."
  (It had been the most reasonable idea that was broached.)
  "You've been doing our latest studies," Carita went on. "Found any
  prospective burrows? The kzinti may or may not have acquired us by now.
  Maybe not. That vessel may not be as well equipped to scan as this
  prospector, and she's probably a good deal bigger. But they're closing
  in fast, I tell you."
 Yoshii made a shushing gesture, swiveled his seat,
           INCONSTANT STAR      77

 and evoked pictures, profiles, data tabulations. Shortly he nodded. "I think
 we have a pretty respectable chance." Pointing: "See here. Prima isn't all
 an unbroken plain. This range, it's small valleys-and on the night side,
 too."
 Carita whistled. "Hey, boy, we live right!"
  "I'll set up for a detailed scan and drop into low orbit to make it. We
  should find some cleft we can back straight down into. The kzinti would
  have to arc immediately above and be on the lookout for that exact spot to
  see us." Yoshii said nothing about what a feat of piloting he had in mind.
  He was a Belter. She had almost comparable experience, together with
  jinxian reflexes.
               14

  "Yah, I do think our best bet is to land and snuggle in." Saxtorph's look
  ranged through the port and across the planet, following an onward sweep of
  daylight as Shep orbited around to the side of the sun.
  That disc was less than half the size of Sol's at Earth, its coal-glow
  light little more than one onehundredth. Nevertheless Tertia shone so
  brightly as to dazzle surrounding stars out of sight. Edges softened by
  atmosphere, it was bestrewn with glaciers, long streaks and broad plains
  and frozen seas bluishly aglimmer from pole to pole. Bared rock reached
  darkling on mountainsides or reared in tablelands. Five Terrestrial masses
  had been convulsed enough as they settled toward equilibrium that the last
  of the heights they thrust upward had not worn away entirely during the
  post-tectonic eons.
  The glaciers were water, with some frozen carbon dioxide overlying them in
  the antarctic zone where winter now reigned. The air, about twice as dense
  as Earth's, was almost entirely nitrogen, the oxygen in

               78
           INCONSTANT STAIR     79

 it insufficient to sustain fire or life. It was utterly clear save where
 slow winds raised swirls of glitter, dust storms whose dust was fine ice.
  A small moon, inmost of four, hove in view. it sheened reddish-yellow,
  like amber. The largest, Luna-size, was visible, too, patched with the
  same hue, ashen where highlands were uncovered. It had no craters;
  spalling and cosmic sand had long since done away with them.
  "But, but on the surface we'll see only half the sky at best," Laurinda
  ventured. "And atmospherics will ... hinder the seeing."
  Saxtorph nodded. "True. Ordinarily I'd opt for staying in space in hopes
  of early warning. That does have its own drawbacks, though. A kzin search
  vessel could likelier than not detect us the moment we commenced boost.
  Since we might not be able to skedaddle flat-out from them, we'd probably
  drop planetside. That's the whole idea of being where we are, remember?
  If we did it right, the ratcats wouldn't know where we'd squatted, but
  they'd know we were someplace yonder for sure, and that would be a bigger
  help to them than they deserve."
 "Treacherous terrain for landing," Dorcas warned.
  Saxtorph nodded again. "Indeed. Which means we'll be smart to take our
  time while we've still got it, come down cautiously and settle in
  thoroughly. As for knowing when a spacecraft is in the neighborhood, at
  a minimum there's our neutrino detector. It's not what you'd call
  precise, but it will pick up an operating fusion generator within a
  couple million klicks, clear through the body of the planet."
  He paused before adding, "I realize this isn't quite what we intended
  when we said goodbye. But we didn't know what Tertia is like. Doctrine
  exists to be modified as circumstances dictate. I'd guess the sensible
  thing for Juan and Carita to do is quite different. "
  Laurinda's fingers twisted together. She turned her face from the other
  two.
 80       Poul Anderson

  I vote with you," Dorcas declared. They had been considering tactics for
  hours, while they gained knowledge of the world they had reached. "What
  are the specs of a landing site? Safe ground; concealment from anything
  except an unlikely observation from directly overhead, unless we can
  avoid that, too; but we don't want to be in a radio shadow, because we
  hope for-we expect-a broadcast message in the fairly near future."
 "Don't forget defensibility," Saxtorph reminded.
  "What?" asked Laurinda, startled. "How can we possibly-"
  The man grinned. "I didn't tell you, honey, because it's not a thing to
  blab about, but Dorcas and I always travel with a few weapons. I took
  them along packed among my personal effects. Managed to slip Carita a
  rifle and some ammo when nobody else was looking. That leaves us with
  another rifle, a Pournelle rapid-fire automatic, choice of solid or
  explosive shells; a .38-caliber machine pistol with detachable stock, and
  a 9-mm. mulekiller."
  "Plus a certain amount of blasting sticks," Dorcas informed him.
  Saxtorph goggled. "Huh?" He guffawed. "rhat's my nice little wifey. The
  standard mining equipment aboard includes knives, geologists' hammers,
  crowbars, and such, useful for mayhem." He sobered. "Not that we want a
  fight. God, nol But if we're able to give a good account of ourselves-it
  might make a difference. "
  "A single small warhead will make a much bigger difference, unless we
  have dispersal and concealment capability, " Dorcas observed. "All right,
  let's take a close look at what topographical data we've collected. "
  The choice was wide, but decision was quick. Shep dropped out of orbit
  and made for a point about 30 degrees north latitude. It was at
  midafternoon, which was a fitctor. Lengthening shadows would bring out
           INCONSTANT STAR      81

 details, while daylight would remain-in a rotation period of 40 hours,
 37-plus minutes--for preliminary exploration of the vicinity.
  A mesa loomed stark, thinly powdered with ice crystals, above a glacier
  that had flowed under its own weight, down from the heights, until a
  jumble of hills beneath had brought it to a halt. As it descended, the
  gJacier had gouged a deep, almost sheerwalled coulee through slopes and
  steeps. The bottom was talus, under a dusting of sand, but solid; with
  gravity a third higher than on Earth, and epochs of time, shards and
  particles had settled into gridlock.
  Or so the humans reasoned. The last few minutes of maneuver were very
  intent, very quiet except for an occasional low word of business,
  Saxtorph, manning the console, was prepared to cram on emergency boost
  at the first quiver of awryness. But Dorcas talked him down and Shep
  grounded firmly. For a while, nobody spoke or moved. Then husband and
  wife unharnessed and kissed. After a moment, Laurinda made it a threeway
  embrace.
  Saxtorph peered out. The canyon walls laid gloom over stone. "You ladies
  unlimber this and stow that while I go take a gander," he said. "Yes,
  dear, I won't be gone long and I will be careful."
  His added weight dragged at him, but not too badly. It wasn't more than
  physiology could take, even a Belter's or a Crashlander's, and
  distributed over the whole body. The women would get used to it, sort of,
  and in fact it ought to be valuable, continuous exercise in the cramped
  quarters of the boat. The spacesuit did feel pretty heavy.
  He cycled through and stood for a few minutes learning to see the
  landscape. Every cue was alien, subtly or utterly, light, shadow, shapes.
  The cobbles underfoot were smooth as those on a beach. They and the
  rubble along the sides and the cliffs above were tawny-gray, sparked with
  bits of what might be mica but was likelier something strange--diamond
 82       Poul Anderson

 dust? Several crags survived, eroded to laciness. The lower end of the
 gorge, not far off, was blocked by a wall of glacier. Above reached purple
 sky. An icedevil whirled on the heights. Wind whittered.
  Saxtorph decided his party had better plant an antenna and relay
  inconspicuously up there. Any messages ought to be on a number of
  simultaneous bands, at least one of which could blanket a Tertian
  hemisphere, but the signal would be tenuous and these depths might screen
  it out altogether. He walked carefully from the arrowhead of the boat to
  the righthand side and started downslope, looking for safe routes to the
  top. Lateral ravines appeared to offer them.
 Abruptly he halted. What the flapping hellfire?
  He stooped and stared. Could it be ? No, some freak of nature. He wasn't
  qualified to identify a fossil.
  He went on. By the time he had tentatively found the path he wanted, he was
  so near the glacier that he continued. It lifted high, not grimy like its
  counterparts on terrestroid planets but clear, polished glassy-smooth, a
  cold and mysterious blue. Whatever mineral grains once lay on it had sunken
  to the bottom, and-
 And-
  Saxtorph stood moveless. The time was long before he breathed, "Oh. My.
  God."
  From within the ice, the top half of a skull stared at him. It could only
  be that, unhuman though it was. And other bones were scattered behind, and
  shaped stones, and pieces of what was most surely earthenware-
  Chill possessed him from within. How old were those remnants?
  Big Tertia must in its youth have had a still denser atmosphere than now,
  greenhouse effect, heat from a contracting interior, and ... those
  molecules that are the kernel from which life grows, perhaps evolved
           INCONSTANT STAR      83

 not here but in interstellar space, organics which the wan sun did not
 destroy as they drifted inward. . . . Life arose. It liberated oxygen. It
 gave birth to beings that made tools and dreams. But meanwhile the planetary
 core congealed and chilled, the oceans began to freeze, plants died, nothing
 replaced the oxygen that surface rocks bound fast.... Without copper, tin,
 gold, iron, any metal they could know for what it was, the dwellers had
 never gone beyond their late stone age, never had a chance to develop the
 science that might have saved them or at least have let them understand what
 was happening....
  Saxtorph shuddered. He turned and hastened back to the boat.
               15

  Unsure what kind of surface awaited them, Carita and Yoshii descended on
  the polarizer and made a feather-soft landing. They were poised to spring
  instantly back upward. All they felt was a slight resilience, more on
  their instruments than in their bones. It damped out and Fido rested
  quiet.
 '. Elastic?" Yoshii wondered. "Or viscous, or what?"
  "Never mind, we'll investigate later, right now we're down safe," Carita
  replied. She wiped her brow. "Hoo, but I need a stiff drink and a hot
  showerl"
 Yoshii leered at her. "In the opposite order, please.
 She cuffed him lightly. The horseplay turned into mutual unharnessing and
 a hug.
  "Hey-y," she purred, "you really do want to celebrate, don't you? Later,
  we'll share that shower."
  His arms dropped. She released him in her turn and he made a stumbling
  backward step. 1, I'm sorry, I didn't intend-Well, we should take a good
  look outside, shouldn't we?"
 The Jinxian was briefly silent before she smiled

               84
           INCONSTANT STAR      85

 wryly and shrugged. "Okay. I'll forgive you this time if you'll fix
 dinner. Your yakitori tacos are always consoling. You're right, anyway."
  They turned off the fluoros and peered fbrth. As their eyes adapted, they
  saw well enough through airlessness, by the thronging stars and the cold
  rush of the Milky Way. Bowl-shaped, the dell in which they were parked
  curved some 50 meters wide to heights twice as fitr above the bottom.
  Fido sat close to one side; direct sunlight would only touch her for a
  small part of the day, weeks hence. Every edge and lump was rounded off
  by the covering of the planet. In this illumination it appeared pale
  gray.
 "What is the stuff?" Carita muttered.
  "I've hit on an idea," Yoshii said. I do not warrant that it is right.
  It may not even make sense."
  Her teeth flashed white in the darkness. "The universe is not under
  obligation to make sense. S A your piece. " She switched cabin
  illumination !rack on. Radiance made the ports blank.
  I think it must be organic-carbon-based," Yoshii said. "It doesn't
  remotely match any mineral I've ever seen or heard of or imagined,
  whereas it does resemble any number of plastics."
  "Hm, yeah, I had the same thought, but discarded it. Where would the
  chemistry come from? Life can't have started in the short time Prima hung
  onto its atmosphere, can it? Whatever carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen
  are left must be locked up in solidstate materials. At most we might find
  hydrates or something."
 "This could have come from space."
  "What?" She pped at him. "If that's a joke, it's too deep for me.'
  "There is matter in space, in the nebulae and even in the emptiest
  stretches between. It includes organic compounds, some of them fairly
  complex."
 "Not quite concentrated enough for soup."
 "Sure, the densest nebula is still a pretty hard
 86       Poul Anderson

 vacuum by Terrestrial standards. However, this system has had time to pass
 through many. Between them, too-yes, between galaxies-gravity has found
 atoms and molecules to draw in. During any single year, hardly a measurable
 amount. But it's been fifteen billion years, Carita."
  "Um'h," she uttered, almost as if punched in the stomach.
  "The sun doesn't give off any ultraviolet to speak of," Yoshii pursued.
  "Its wind is puny. Carbon-based molecules land intact. The sun does
  maintain a daytime temperature at which they can react with each other. I
  daresay cosmic radiation energizes the chemistry, too. Fine grains of sand
  and dust--crumbled off rocks, together with meteoroid powder--provide col-
  loidal surfaces where the stuff can cluster till there's a fiLirly high
  concentration and complicated exchanges become possible. Unsaturated bonds
  grab the free atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, anything included in the
  downdrift except noble gases, and incorporate them. Maybe, here and there,
  some such growing patch 'learns' how to take stuff from surface rocks. It's
  a slow, slow process--or set of processes-but it's had time. Eventually
  atches meet as they expand. What happens then Sepends on just what their
  compositions happen to be. I'd expect some weird interactions while they
  join. Those could be going on yet. That would explain why we saw
  differently colored areas. But it's only the terminal reactions."
  Yoshii's words had come faster and faster. He was developing his idea as he
  described it. Excitement turned into awe and he whispered, "A polymer. A
  single multiplex molecule, the size of this planet."
  Carita was mute for a whole minute before she murmured, "Whew! But why
  isn't the same stuff on every airless body? ... No, wait. Stupid of me to
  ask. This is the only one where conditions have been right. "
 Yoshii nodded. I suspect that what yellows the
           INCONSTANT STAR      87

 rest is a carbon compound, too, but something formed in space. You get
 some fairly complicated ones there, you know. If that particular one can't
 react with the organics I was talking about-too cold-then they are a minor
 part of the downdrift compared to it. We haven't noticed the same thing
 in other planetary systems because they are all too young, and maybe
 because none of them have made repeated passages through nebulae."
  "You missed your calling," Carita said tenderly. "Should've been a
  scientist. Is it too late? We can go out, take samples, put 'em through
  our analyzers. When we get home, you can write a paper that'll have
  scholarships piled around you up to your bellybutton. Though I hope
  you'll keep on with the poetry. I like what you-"
  A quiver went through the boat. "What the Finagle!" she exclaimed.
 "A quake?" Yoshii asked.
  "The profs told us these planets are as far beyond quakes as a mummy is
  beyond hopscotch," Carita snapped.
  Another tremor made slight noises throughout the hull. Yoshii reached for
  the searchlight switch. Carita caught his arm. "Hold that," she said.
  "The kzinti-No, unless they beef up that already wild boost they are
  under, they won't arrive for a couple more hours.
 Nevertheless he refrained.
  The pair studied their instrument panel. "We've been tilted a bit,"
  Yoshii pointed out. "Should we reset the landing jacks?"
  "Let's wait and see," Carita said. "I'd guess the rock beneath has
  settled under our weight, or one layer has slid over another, or
  something like that. If it's reached a new equilibrium, we don't want to
  upset it by shifting mass around. No sense in moving yet, when we can't
  tell what the ground is like anywhere else."
 88       Poul Anderson

  "Right. I'm afraid, though, we can't relax as we had hoped."
  "How much relaxing could we do anyway, with kzinti sniffing after us?"
  "And Laurinda-" Yoshii whispered. Harshly: "Do you want to take the
  controls, stand by to jump out Of here, in case? I'll snug things down and,
  yes, throw a meal together."
  Lightfoot under the low gravity, he descended aft to the engine
  compartment. Delicate work needed doing. The idling fusion generator must
  be shut down entirely, lest its neutrino smoke betray the boat-not that the
  kzinti could home in on it, but they would know with certainty the humans
  were on Prima, and in which quadrant. Batteries, isotopic and crystalline
  as well as chemical, held energy for weeks of life support and ordinary
  operations. Yet it had to be possible to restart the generator instantly,
  full power within a second, should there be a sudden need to scramble. That
  meant disconnecting the safety interlocks. Yoshii fetched tools and got
  busy. The task was demanding, but not too much for his spirit to wing
  elsewhere in space, elsewhen in time-the Belt, Plateau, We Made It, Rovers
  folk on triumphal progress after their return....
  Carita's voice came over the intercom. "Tbis is dull duty. I think I will
  turn on the searchlight while it's still safe to do so. Might get a clue to
  what caused those jolts. "
  "Good idea, " he agreed absent-mindedly, and continued his task.
  The metal around him throbbed. Small objects rattled on the deck.
  Juan!" Carita shouted. "rhe, the material-it's rippling, crawling-" The
  hull rocked. "I'm getting us out of here!"
  ,'Yes, do," he called back, and grabbed for the nearest handhold.
 Within its radiation shield, the generator hummed.
           INCONSTANT STAR      89

 Needles sprang across dials, displays onto screens. Yoshii felt the upward
 thrust of the deck against his feet. It was slight. Carita was a careful
 pilot, applying barely sufficient boost to rise off the ground before she
 committed to a leap.
  The boat screamed. Things tilted. Yoshii clung. Loose things hailed
  around him. A couple of them drew blood. The boat canted over, toppled,
  struck lengthwise, tolled so that he was half deafened
  Stillness crashed down, except for a shrill whistle that he knew too
  well. Air was escaping from one or more rents nearby. He hauled himself
  erect and out of his daze. The emergency valve had already shut, sealing
  off this section. He had to get through the lock built into it before the
  pressure differential made operation fatally slow.
  Somehow he passed forth, and on along the companionway that was now a
  corridor, toward the control cabin. Lights were still shining,
  ventilators still whirring, and few articles lay strewn around. This was
  a good, sturdy craft, kept shipshape. How had she failed?
  Carita met him in the entrance. "Hey, you sure got battered, didn't you?
  I was secured. Here, let me help you. " She practically carried him to
  his chair, which she had adjusted for the new orientation. Meanwhile she
  talked on: "The trouble's with the landing gear, I think. Is that damn
  stuff a glue? No, how could it be? Take over. I'm going to suit up and
  go out for a look."
  "Don't," he protested. "You might get stuck there, too. "
  "I'll be careful. Keep watch. If I don't make it back-" She stooped,
  brushed lips across his, and hurried aft.
  His ears rang and pained him, his head ached, he was becoming conscious
  of bruises, but his eyes worked. The searchlight made clear the motion
  in the mantle. It was slight in amplitude, as thin as the
 90       Poul Anderson

 layer was, and slow, but intricate, like wave patterns spreading from
 countless centers to form an everchanging moir6. Those nodes were darker
 than the ripple-shadows and seemed to pass the darknesses on from one to
 the next, so that a shifting stipple went outward from the boat, across
 the dell floor and, as he watched, up the side. The hull rocked a little,
 off and on, in irregular wise.
  "Do you read me?" he heard after a while. "I'm in the Number Two lock,
  outer valve open, looking over the lip."
  I read you," he answered unevenly. At least the radio system remained
  intact. "What do you see?"
  "The same turbulence in the ... stuff. Nothing clear aft, where the main
  damage is. The searchbeam doesn't diffuse, and-I'm off to inspect."
  "Better not. If you lost your footing and fell down into-:'
  She barked scorn. "If you think I could, then I'm for sure the right
  person for this job." He clenched his fists but must needs admit that
  induction boots gave plenty of grip on the metal for a rockjack-a
  rockidl, she often called herself. "I'm crawling out. ... Standing....
  On my way." The hull pitched. "Heyl That damn near threw me." Starkly:
  I think Fido just settled more at the after end."
 "But into what?" he cried. "Solid rock?"
  "No, I guess not. I do know what we are deep down into.... Okay,
  proceeding. Landing gear in sight now, spraddled against the sky. It's
  dark, I can't see much except stars. Let me unlimber my flashlight....
  A-a-ah!" she nearly screamed.
  He half rose in his seat. "What happened? Carita, dear, are you there?"
  "Yes. A nasty shock, that sight. Listen, the Number Three leg is off the
  ground. The bottom end sticks up-ragged, holes in it-like a badly
  corroded thing that got so weak it tore apart when it came
           INCONSTANT STAR      91

 under stress. . . . But, Juan, this is melded steel and titanium alloy.
 What could've eaten it?"
  "We can guess," Yoshfi said between his teeth. "Come back."
  "No, I need to see the rest. Don't worry, I'll creep down the curve like
  a cat burglar.... I'm at the socket of Number Two. I'm shining my light
  along it. Yes. Nothing left of the foot. Seems to be sort of-absorbed
  into the ground. Number One-more yet is missing, and, yes, that's the
  unit which pulled partly loose from its mounting and made the hole in the
  engine compartment. I can see the skin ripped and buckled-"
  The boat swayed. Her nose twisted about and lifted a few degrees as her
  tail sank. Groans went through the hull.
  "I'm okay, mate. Well anchored. But holy Finaglel The stuff is going wild
  underneath. Has it come to a boil?"
  Yoshii could not see that where he was, but he did spy the quickening and
  thickening of the wave fronts farther off. Understanding blasted him.
  "Douse your flash!" he yelled. "Get back insidel" He grabbed for the
  searchlight switch as for the throat of a foeman.
 "Hey, what is this?" Carita called.
  "Douse your flash, I said. Can't you see, bright light is what causes the
  trouble? Find your way by the stars." He clutched his shoulders and
  shivered in the dark. The boat shivered with him, diminuendo.
 I read you," Carita said faintly.
  Yoshii darkened the cabin as well. "Let's meet in my stateroom," he
  proposed. The sarcastically named cubbyhole did not give on the outside.
  He groped till he found it. When again he dared grant himself vision, he
  bent above the locker where a bottle was, shook his head, straightened,
  and stood looking at a photograph of Laurinda on the bulkhead.
 Carita entered. Her coverall was wet and pungent,
 92       Poul Anderson

 Sweat glistened on the dark face. "Haven't you poured me a drink?" she asked
 hoarsely.
 "I decided that would be unwise."
  "Maybe for you, sonny boy. Not for me." The jinxian helped herself, tossed
  off two mouthfuls, and sighed. That's better. Thank you very much."
  Yoshii gestured at his bunk. It was roughly horizontal, that being how the
  polarizer field was ordinarily set in flight. They sat down on it, side by
  side. Her bravado dwindled. "So you know what's happened to us?" she
  murmured.
  "I have a guess," Yoshii replied with care. "It depends on my idea of the
  supermolecule being correct."
 'Say on."
  "Well, you see, it grew. Or rather, I think, different ones grew till they
  met and linked up. There must have been all possible combinations, permuta-
  tions of radicals and bases and--every kind of chemical unit. Cosmic
  radiation drives that kind of change. So does quantum mechanics, random
  effects; that was probably dominant in intergalactic space. So the
  chemistry ... mutated. Whatever structure was better at assimilating fresh
  material would be favored. It would grow at the expense of the rest."
  Carita whistled. "Natural selection, evolution? You mean the stuffs alive?"
  "No, not like you and me or bacteria or even viruses. But it would- develop
  components which could grab onto new atoms, and other components that are
  catalytic, and--and I think ways of passing an atom on from ring to ring
  until it's gone as far as there are receptors for it. That would leave room
  for taking up more at the near end. Because I think finally the molecule
  evolved beyond the point of depending on whatever fell its way from the
  skies. I think it began extracting matter from the planet, whenever it
  spread to where there was a suitable substance. Breaking down carbonates
  and silicates
           INCONSTANT STAR      93

 and-and incorporating metallic atoms, too. Clathrate formation would
 promote growth, as well as chemical combination. But of course metal is
 ultra-scarce here, so the molecule became highly efficient at stealing it.
 11
  "At eating things." Carita stared before her. "That's close enough to
  life for me."
  "The normal environment is low-energy, Yoshii said. "Things must go
  faster during the day. Not that there is much action then, either;
  nothing much to act on, any more. But we set down on our metal landing
  gear, and pumped out light-frequency quanta.
 "And it ... woke."
  Yoshii grimaced but stayed clear of semantic argu-~ ment. "It must be
  strongly bound to the underlying rock. It was quick to knit the feet of
  our landing jacks into that structure. "
 "And gnaw its way upward, till I-" -
  He caught her hand. "You couldn't have known. I didn't. "
  The deck swayed underfoot. The liquor sloshed in Carita's glass. "But
  we're blacked out now," she protested, as if to the devourer,
  "We're radiating infrared," Yoshii answered. "The boat's warmer on the
  outside than her surroundings. Energy supply. The chemistry goes on,
  though slower. We can't stop it, not unless we want to freeze to death.
  "
 "How long have we got?" she whispered.
  He bit his lip. "I don't know. If we last till sunrise we'll dissolve
  entirely soon after, like spooks in an ancient folk tale."
 "That's more than a month away."
  "I'd estimate that well before then, the hull will be eaten open. No more
  air."
  "Our suits recycle. We can jury-rig other things to keep us alive."
  "But the hull will weaken and collapse. Do you want to be tossed down
  into ... that?" Yoshii sat
 94       Poul Anderson

 straight. Resolution stiffened his tone. "I'm afraid we have no choice
 except to throw ourselves on the mercy of the kzinti. They must have
 arrived."
  Carita ripped forth a string of oaths and obscenities, knocked back her
  drink, and rose. "Shep is still on the loose," she said.
  Yoshii winced. "Man the control cabin. I'm going to suit up and get back
  into the engine compartment.
 "What for?"
  "Isn't it obvious? The energy boxes are stored there. "
  "Oh. Yes. You're thinking we'll have to take orbit under our own power and
  let the kzinti pick us up? I'm not keen on that."
  "Nor I. But I don't imagine they'll be keen on landing here."
  He rejoined her an hour later. By starlight she saw how he trembled. "I was
  too late," dragged fi-om him. "Maybe if I hadn't had to operate the airlock
  hydraulics manually-What I found was a seething mass of--of-The entire
  locker where the boxes were is gone."
  "That fast?" she wondered, stunned, though they had been in communication
  until he passed through into the after section. And then, slowly: "Well,
  the capacitors in those boxes are-were fully charged. Energy concentrated
  like the stuff s never known before. Too bad so much didn't poison it.
  Instead, it got a kick in the chemistry making it able to eat everything in
  three gulps. We're lucky the life-support batteries weren't there, too."
  "Let's hope the kzinti want us enough to come down for us."
  Shielding a flashlight with a clipboard, they actinted the radio,
  standard-band broadcast. Yoshii spoke.
 SOS. SOS. Two humans aboard a boat, marooned," he said dully. "We are
 sinking into a-solvent-the macromolecule-You doubtless know about it. Rescue
 requested.
           INCONSTANT STAR      95

  "We can't lift by ourselves. The drive units in our spacesuits have only
  partial charge, insufficient to reach orbital speed in this field. We
  can't recharge. That equipment is gone. So are all the reserve energy
  boxes. We can flit a goodly distance around the planet or rise to a
  goodly height, but we can't escape.
  "Please take us off. Please inform. We will keep our receiver open on
  this band, and continue transmission so you can locate us."
  Having recorded his words, he set them to repeat directly on the carrier
  wave and leaned back. "Not the most eloquent speech ever made, he
  admitted. "But they won't care."
  She took his hand. Heaven stood gleamful above them. Time passed.
  Occasionally the vessel moved a bit.
  A spaceship flew low, from horizon to horizon. They had only the barest
  glimpse. Perhaps cameras took note of theirs.
 Carita choked. "Alien."
 "Kzin," Yoshii said. "Got to be."
 "But I never heard of anything like
 "Nor 1. What did you see?"
  "Big. Sphere with fins or flanges or-.vhatever they are-all around.
  Mirror-bright. Doesn't look like she's intended for planetfall."
  Yoshii nodded. "Me, too. I wanted to make sure of my impression, as fast
  as she went by. just the same, I think we have a while to wait. " He
  stood up. "Suppose I go fix us some sandwiches and also bring that
  bottle. We may as well take it easy. We've played our hand out."
  "But won't they-oh, yes, I see. That's no patrol craft. She was called
  off her regular service to come check Prima, We being found, she'll call
  Secunda for further orders, and relay our message to a translator there.
  "
  "About a five-minute transmission lag either way, at the present
  positions. A longer chain-of-command
 96       Poul Anderson

 lag, I'll bet. Leave the intercom on for me, please, but just for the sake
 of my curiosity. You can talk to them as well as I can."
 "There isn't a lot to say," Carita agreed.
  Yoshii was in the galley when he heard the computer-generated voice:
  "Werlith-Commandant addressing you directly. Identify yourselves."
  "Carita Fenger, Juan Yoshii, of the ship Rover, stuck on Prima--on Planet
  One. Your crew has seen us. I suppose they realize our plight. We're being
 * * * swallowed. Please take us off. If your vessel here can't do it, please
 dispatch one that can. Over."
 Silence hummed and rustled. Yoshii kept busy.
  He was returning when the voice struck again: "We lost two boats with a
  total of eight heroes aboard before we established the nature of the peril.
  I will not waste time explaining it to you. Most certainly I will not
  hazard another craft and more fives. On the basis of observations made by
  the crew of Sun Defier, if you keep energy output minimal you have approxi-
  mately five hundred hours left to spend as you see fit. "
 A click signalled the cutoff.
  Werlith-Commandant had been quite kindly by his lights, Yoshii
  acknowledged.
  He entered the control cabin. "I'm sorry, Carita," he said.
  She rose and went to meet him. Starlight guided her through shadows and
  glinted off her hair and a few tears. "I'm sorry, too, Juan," she gulped.
  "Now let's both of us stop apologizing. The thing has happened, that's all.
  Look, we can try a broadcast that maybe they'll pick up in Shep, so they'll
  know. They won't dare reply, I suppose, but it's nice to think they might
  know. First let's eat, though, and have a couple of drinks, and talk, and,
  and go to bed. The same bed."
  He lowered his tray to the chart shelf. "I'm exhausted," he mumbled.
           INCONSTANT STAR      97

  She threw her arms around him and drew his head down to her opulent bosom.
  "So'm I, chum. And if you want to spend the rest of what time we've got
  being faithful, okay. But let's stay together. It's cold out there. Even in
  a narrow bunk, let's be together while we can."
               16

  The sun in the screen showed about half the Soldisc at Earth. Its light
  equaled more than 10,000 fun Lunas, red rather than off-white but still
  ample to make Secunda shine. The planetary crescent was mostly
  yellowish-brown, little softened by a tenuous atmosphere of methane with
  traces of carbon dioxide and ammonia. A polar cap brightened its wintered
  northern hemisphere, a shrunken one the southern. The latter was all
  water ice, the former enlarged by carbon dioxide and ammonia that had
  frozen out. These two gases did it everywhere at night, most times,
  evaporating again by day in summer and the tropics, so that sunrises and
  sunsets were apt to be violent. Along the terminator glittered a storm
  of fine silicate dust mingled with ice crystals.
  The surfiLce bore scant relief, but the slow rotation, 57 hours, was
  bringing into view a gigantic crater and a number of lesser neighbors.
  Probably a moon had crashed within the past billion years; the scars
  remained, though any orbiting fragments had

               98
           INCONSTANT STAR      99

 dissipated. A sister moon survived, three-fourths Lunar diameter, dark
 yellowishlike so many bodies in this system.
  Thus did Tregennis interpret what he and Ryan saw as they sat in RovWs
  saloon watching the approach. Data taken from afar, befbre the capture,
  helped him fill in details. Talking about them was an anodyne for both
  men.
  Markham entered. Silence rushed through like a wind.
 "I have an announcement," he said after a moment.
 Neither prisoner stirred.
  "We are debarking in half an hour," he went on. I have arranged for your
  clothing and hygienic equipment to be brought along. Including your
  medication, Professor. "
 "Thank you," Tregennis said flatly.
  "Why shouldn't he?" Ryan sneered. "Keep the animals alive till the master
  race can think of a need for them. I wonder if he'll share in the feast."
  Markham's stiffness became rigidity. "Have a care," he warned. "I have
  been very patient with you." During the 50-odd hours of 3-g
  flight--during which Hraou-Captain allowed the polarizer to lighten
  weight-he had received no word from either, nor eye contact. To be sure,
  he had been cultivating the acquaintance of such kzinti among the prize
  crew as deigned to talk with him. "Don't provoke me."
  "All right," Ryan answered. Unable to resist: "Not but what I couldn't
  put up with a lot of provocation myself, if I were getting paid what they
  must be paying you.
  Markham's cheekbones reddened. "For your information, I have never had
  one mark of recompense, nor ever been promised any. Not one."
  Tregennis regarded him in mild amazement. "Then why have you turned
  traitor?" he asked.
  I have not. On the contrary-" Markham stood for several seconds before
  he plunged. "See here, if
 100      Poul Anderson

 you will listen, if you will treat me like a human being, you can learn
 some things you will be well advised to know."
  Ryan scowled at his beer glass, shrugged, nodded, and grumbled, "Might
  as well."
 "Can you talk freely?" Tregennis inquired.
  Markham sat down. "I have not been forbidden to. Of course, what I have
  been told so fitr is quite limited. However, certain kzinti, including
  HraouCaptain, have been reasonably forthcoming. They have been bored by
  their uneventful duty, are intrigued by me, and see no immediate threat
  to security. "
 "I can understand that," said Tregennis dryly.
  Markham leaned forward. His assurance had shrunk enough to notice. He
  tugged his half-beard. His tone became earnest:
  "Remember, for a dozen Earth-years I fought the kzinti. I was raised to
  it. They had driven my mother into exile. The motto of the House of
  Reichstein was 'Ehre-' well, in English, 'Honor Through Service.' She
  changed it to 'No Surrender.' Most people had long since given up, you
  know. They accepted the kzin order of things. Many had been born into it,
  or had only dim childhood memories of anything before. Revolt would have
  brought massacre. Aristocrats who stayed on Wunderland-the majority-saw
  no alternative to cooperating with the occupation forces, at least to the
  extent of preserving order among humans and keeping industries in
  operation. They were apt to look on us who fought as dangerous
  extremists. It was a seductive belief. As the years wore on, with no end
  in sight, more and more members of the resistance despaired. Through the
  aristocrats at home they negotiated terms permitting them to come back
  and pick up the pieces of their lives. My mother was among those who had
  the greatness of spirit to refuse the temptation. 'No Surrender.' "
 Ryan still glowered, but Tregennis said with a