THE MIND READER WHO HATED EARTH
All's fair in love and war — and with the
galaxy split in conflict between two implacable confederations, anything ought
to go. Still, how do you plan the ambush and capture of a tremendously capable
telepath?
The intended victim, the weird genius from an
uncharted world and the right arm of the enemy's general staff, not only knew
everything thought nearby, he could read minds at a distance. So the problem posed
to Dominic Flandry, Captain of Terran Intelligence, was a real killer.
To make matters worse, the telepath in
question was equally interested in putting Flandry out of commission. For the
fate of many planets might depend on which of the two triumphed.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
SIR DOMINIC FLANDRY He'd risk death rather than lose the luxuries
he loved.
AYCHARAYCH
He held the knowledge of all men in his mind, and the fate of the galaxy in his hands.
CATHERINE KITTREDGE Just a good little girl from a doomed planet.
SVANTOZIK
He was a well-trained hunter; the mind was
both his weapon and his target.
JUDITH HURST
She was a rebel with a cause — a liberal mind
in a free body.
CHIVES
The perfect gentleman's gentleman, even his
long green tail was discreet.
WE CLAIM THESE STARS!
by
Poul Anderson
ACE
BOOKS, INC. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
we claim these stars!
Copyright ©, 1959, by Ace
Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
CHAPTER I
It
pleased Ruethen
of the Long Hand to give a feast and ball at the Crystal Moon for his enemies.
He knew they must come. Pride of race had slipped from Terra, while the need to
appear well-bred and sophisticated had waxed correspondingly. The fact that
spaceships prowled and fought, fifty light-years beyond Antares, made it all
the more impossible a gaucherie to refuse an invitation from the Merseian
representative. Besides, one could feel delightfully wicked and ever so
delicately in danger.
Captain
Sir Dominic Flandry, Imperial Naval Intelligence Corps, allowed himself a small
complaint, "It's not that I refuse any being's liquor," he said,
"and Ruethen has a chef for his human-type meals who'd be worth a war to
get. But I thought I was on furlough,"
"So
you are," said Diana Vinogradoff, Right Noble Lady Guardian of the Mare
Crisium. "Only I saw you first."
Flandry
grinned and slid an arm about her shoulders. He felt pretty sure he was going
to win his bet with Ivar del Bruno. They relaxed in
the lounger and he switched off the lights.
This borrowed yacht was ridiculously frail
and ornate; but a saloon which was one bubble of clear plastic, ah! Now in the
sudden darkness, space leaped forth, crystal black and a wintry blaze of stars.
The banded shield of Jupiter swelled even as they watched, spilling soft amber
radiance into the ship. Lady Diana became a figure out of myth, altogether
beautiful;
her jewels glittered like raindrops on her long gown and heaped tresses.
Flandry stroked his neat mustache. I don't suppose I look too hideous myself, he thought smugly, and advanced to the
attack.
"No
. . . please . . . not now." Lady Diana fended him off, but in a promising
way. Flandry reclined again. No hurry. The banquet and dance would take hours.
Afterward, when the yacht made its leisured way home toward Terra,
and champagne bubbles danced in both their heads. . . . "Why did you say
that about being on furlough?" she asked, smoothing her coiffure with slim
fingers. Her luminous nail polish danced about in the twilight like flying
candle flames.
Flandry
got a cigarette from his own shimmerite jacket and inhaled it to life. The glow
picked out his face, narrow, with high cheek bones and gray eyes, seal-brown
hair and straight nose. He sometimes thought his last biosculp had made it too
handsome, and he ought to change it again. But what the devil, he wasn't on
Terra often enough for the girls to get bored with his looks. Besides, his
wardrobe, which he did take pains to keep fashionable, was expensive enough to
rule out many other vanities.
"The
Nyanza business was a trifle wearing, y'know," he said, to remind her of
yet another exploit of his on yet another exotic planet. "I came Home for
a rest. And the Merseians are such damnably strenuous creatures. It makes me
tired just to look at one, let alone spar with him."
"You
don't have to, tonight, Sir Dominic," she smiled. "Can't you lay all this feuding aside, just for a little while, and be
friends with them? I mean, we're all beings, in spite of these silly
rivalries."
"I'd
love to relax with them, my lady. But you see, they never do."
"Oh, come now! I've
talked to them, often, and—"
"They can radiate all
the virile charm they need," said
Flandry.
For an instant his light tone was edged with acid.
"But destroying the Terrestrial Empire
is a full-time job." Then, quickly, he remembered what he was about, and
picked up
his usual line of banter. He wasn't required to be an Intelligence agent all
the time, was he? When a thousand-credit bet with his friend was involved? Ivar
del Bruno had insisted that Lady Diana Vinogradoff
would never bestow her favors on anyone under the rank of earl. The challenge
was hard to refuse, when the target was so intrinsically tempting, and when
Flandry had good reason to be complacent about his own abilities. It had been a
hard campaign, though, and yielding to her whim to attend the Merseian party
was only a small fraction of the lengths to which he had gone.
But
now, Flandry decided, if he played his cards right for
a few hours more, the end would be achieved. And afterward, a thousand credits
would buy a really good orgy for two at the Everest House.
Chives,
valet cum pilot cum private gunman, slipped the yacht smoothly into berth at
the Crystal Moon. There was no flutter of weight change, though deceleration
had been swift and the internal force-field hard put to compensate. Flandry
stood up, cocked his beret at a carefully rakish angle, swirled his scarlet
cloak, and offered an arm to Lady Diana. They stepped through the airlock and
along a transparent tube to the palace.
The
woman caught a delighted gasp. "I've never seen it so close up," she
whispered. "Who ever made it?"
The
artificial satellite had Jupiter for background, and the Milky Way and the
huge, cold constellations. Glass-clear walls faced infinity, curving and
tumbling like water. Planar gravity fields held faceted, synthetic jewels;
ruby, emerald, diamond, topaz, massing several tons each, in orbit around the
central minaret. One outward thrust of bubble was left at zero gee, a
conservatory where mutant ferns and orchids rippled on rhythmic breezes.
"I
understand it was built for Lord Tsung-Tse about a century back," said
Flandry. "His son sold it for gambling debts, and the then Merseian
ambassador acquired it and had it put in orbit around Jupiter. Symbolic, eh?"
She
arched questioning brows, but he thought better of explaining. His own mind ran
on, Eh, for sure. 1 suppose it's inevitable and so forth. Terra has been
too rich for too long; we've grown old and content, no more high hazards for
us. Whereas the Merseian Empire is fresh, vigorous, disciplined, dedicated, et tedious cetera. Personally, I enjoy decadence; but
somebody has to hold off the Long Night for my own lifetime, and it looks as if I'm elected.
Then
they neared the portal, where a silver spider-web gate stood open. Ruethen
himself greeted them at the head of an iridescent slideramp. Such was Merseian
custom. But he bowed in Terran style and touched horny lips to Lady Diana's
hand. "A rare pleasure, I am certain." The bass voice gave to fluent
Anglic an indescribable nonhuman accent.
She
considered him. The Merseian was a true mammal, but with more traces of reptile
ancestry than humankind: pale green skin, hairless and finely scaled; a low
spiny ridge from the head down along the backbone to the end of a long thick
tail. He was broader than a man, and would have stood a sheer two meters did he
not walk with a forward-stooping gait. Except for its baldness and lack of
external ears, the face was quite humanoid, even good-looking in a heavy rough
way. But the eyes beneath the overhanging brow ridges were two small pits of
jet. Ruethen wore the austere uniform of his class, form-fitting black with
silver trim. A blaster was belted at his hip.
Lady
Diana's perfectly sculped mouth curved in a smile. "Do you actually know
me, my lord?" she murmured.
"Frankly, no." A barbaric bluntness. Any noble of Terra would
have been agile to disguise his ignorance. "But while this log does burn
upon the altar stone, peace-holy be it among us. As my tribe
would say in the Cold Valleys."
"Of
course you are an old friend of my escort," she teased.
Ruethen
cocked an eye at Flandry. And suddenly the man sensed tautness in that massive
frame. Just for a moment, Ruethen's whole body became a mask. "We have met
now and then," said the Merseian dryly. "Welcome, Sir Dominic. The
cloakroom slave will furnish you with a mind-screen."
"What?" Despite
himself, Flandry started.
"If you want one." Ruethen bared powerful teeth at Lady Diana.
"Will my unknown friend grant me a dance later?"
She lost her own coolness for a second, then nodded graciously. "That would be a . . . unique
experience, my lord," she said.
It
would, at that. Flandry led her on into the ballroom. His mind worried
Ruethen's curious offer, like a dog with a bone. Why?
He saw the gaunt black shape among the
rainbow Terrans, and he knew. It went cold along his spine.
CHAPTER II
He
wasted no time on excuses,
but almost ran to the cloakroom. His feet whispered along the crystalline
floor, where Orion glittered hundreds of light-years beneath.
"Mind-screen," he snapped.
The
slave was a pretty girl. Merseians took pleasure in buying humans for menial
jobs. "I've only a few, sir," she said. "His lordship told me to
keep them for—"
"Me!"
Flandry snatched the cap of wires, transistors, and power
cells from her hesitant fingers. Only when it was on his head did he
relax. Then he took out a fresh cigarette and steered through lilting music
toward the bar. He needed a drink, badly.
Aycharaych of Chereion stood beneath high
glass pillars. No one spoke to him. Most of the humans were dancing, while
nonhumans of various races listened to the music. A performer from Lulluan
spread heaven-blue feathers on a small stage, but few watched that rare sight.
Flandry elbowed past a Merseian, who had just drained a two-liter tankard.
"Scotch," he said. "Straight, tall, and
quick."
Lady
Diana approached. She seemed uncertain whether to be indignant or intrigued.
"Now I know what they mean by cavalier treatment." She pointed
upward. "What is that thing?"
Flandry
tossed off his drink. The whiskey smoked down his throat, and he felt his
nerves ease. "I'm told it's my face," he said.
"No,
on!
Stop foolingl I mean that horrible wire thing."
"Mind-screen." He held out his glass for a refill. "It heterodynes the energy
radiation of the cerebral cortex in a random
pattern. Makes it impossible to read what I'm thinking."
"But
I thought that was impossible anyway," she said, bewildered. "I mean,
unless you belong to a naturally telepathic species."
"Which
man isn't," he agreed, "except for rare cases.
The non-telepath develops his own private 'language,' which is gibberish to
anyone who hasn't studied him for a long time as a single individual. Ergo,
telepathy was never considered a particular threat in my line of work, and
you've probably never heard of the mind-screen. It was developed just a few
years ago. And the reason for its development is standing over there."
She
followed his eyes. "Who? That
tall being in the black mantle?"
"The same. I had a brush with him, and discovered to
my—er—discomfiture, shall we say?—that he has a unique gift. Whether or not all his race does, I couldn't tell you. But within a range
of a few hundred meters, Aycharaych of Chereion can read the mind of any
individual of any species, whether he's ever met his victim before or
not."
"But—why,
then—!"
"Exactly. He's persona non grata throughout our territory, of course, to be shot on sight. But as you
know, my lady," said Flandry in a bleak tone, "we are not now in the
Terrestrial Empire. Jupiter belongs to the Dispersal of Ymir."
"Oh," said Lady
Diana. She colored. "A telepath!"
Flandry
gave her a lopsided grin. "Aycharaych is the equivalent of a
gentleman," he said. "He wouldn't tell on you. But I'd better go talk
to him now." He bowed. "You are certain not to lack company. I see a
dozen men converging here already."
"So
there are." She smiled. "But I think Aycharaych—how do you pronounce it, that guttural oh baffles
me—I think he'll be much more intriguing." She took his arm.
Flandry
disengaged her. She resisted. He closed a hand on her wrist and shoved it down
with no effort. Maybe his visage was a fake, he told himself once in a while,
but at least his body was his own, and the dreary hours of calisthenics had
some reward. "I'm sorry, my lady," he said, "but I am about to
talk shop, and you're not initiated in the second oldest profession. Have
fun."
Her
eyes flared offended vanity. She whirled about and welcomed the Duke of Mars
with far more enthusiasm than that foolish young man warranted. Flandry sighed.
I suppose I owe you a
thousand credits, Ivar. He
cocked his cigarette at a defiant angle, and strolled across the ballroom.
Aycharaych
smiled. His face was also humanoid, but in a bony, sword-nosed fashion; the
angles of mouth and jaw were exaggerated into Vs. It might almost have been the
face of some Byzantine saint. But the skin was a pure golden hue, the brows
were arches of fine blue feathers, the bald skull carried a feather crest and
pointed ears. Broad chest, wasp waist, long skinny legs were hidden by the
cloak. The feet, with four clawed toes and spurs on the ankles, showed bare.
Flandry
felt pretty sure that intelligent life on Chereion had evolved from birds, and
that the planet must be dry, with a thin cold atmosphere. He had hints that its
native civilization was incredibly old, and reason to believe it was not a mere
subject of Merseia. But beyond that, his knowledge emptied into darkness. He
didn't even know where in the
Merseian sphere the sun of Chereion lay.
Aycharaych
extended a six-fingered hand. Flandry shook it. The digits were delicate within his own. For a brutal moment he thought of squeezing
hard, crushing the fine bones. Aycharaych stood a bit taller than he, but
Flandry was a rather big human, much broader and more solid.
"A
pleasure to meet you again, Sir Dominic," said Aycharaych. His voice was
low, sheer beauty to hear. Flandry looked at rust-red eyes, with a warm
metallic luster, and released the hand.
"Hardly unexpected," he said.
"For you, that is." "You travel about so much," Aycharaych
said. \"I. was sure a few men of your corps would be here tonight, but I could
not be certain of your own whereabouts." "I wish I ever was of
yours," said Flandry ruefully. "Congratulations upon your handling of
I'affaire Nyanza. We are going to miss
A'u on our side. He had a certain watery brilliance."
Flandry
prevented himself from showing surprise. "I thought that aspect of the
business had been hushed up," he said. "But little pitchers seem to
have big ears. How long have you been in the Solar System?"
"A
few weeks," said Aycharaych. "Chiefly a pleasure
trip." He cocked his head. "Ah, the orchestra has begun a
Strauss waltz. Very good. Though of
course Johann is not to be compared to Richard, who will always be the Strauss."
"Oh?"
Flandry's interest in ancient music was only slightly greater than his interest
in committing suicide. "I wouldn't know."
"You
should, my friend. Not even excepting Xingu, Strauss is the most misunderstood
composer of known galactic history. Were I to be imprisoned for life with only
one tape, I wouid choose his Death and Transfiguration and be satisfied."
"I'll arrange
it," offered Flandry at once.
Archaraych
chuckled and took the man's arm. "Come, let us
find a more peaceful spot. But I pray you, do not
waste so amusing an occasion on me. I own to visiting Terra clandestinely, but
that part of it was entirely for the easement of my personal curiosity. I had
no intention of burgling the Imperial offices—"
"Which are equipped
with Aycharaych alarms anyway."
"Telepathizing detectors? Yes, so I
would assume. 1 am a little too old and stiff, and your gravity a little too
overpowering, to indulge in my own thefts. Nor have I the type of dashing good
looks needed, I am told by all the teleplays, for cloak and dagger work. No, I
merely wished to see the planet which bred such a race as yours. I walked in a
few forests, inspected certain paintings, visited some chosen graves, and
returned here. Whence I am about to depart, by the way.
You need not get your Imperium to put pressure on the Ymirites to expel me; my
courier ship leaves in twenty hours."
"For where?"
asked Flandry.
"Hither and yon,"
said Aycharaych lightly.
Flandry
felt his stomach muscles grow hard. "Syrax?" he got out.
They
paused at the entrance to the null-gee conservatory. A single great sphere of
water balanced like silver at its very heart with fern jungle and a thousand
purple-scarlet blooms forming a cavern around it, the stars and mighty Jupiter
beyond. Later, no doubt, the younger and drunker humans would be peeling off
their clothes and going for a free-fall swim in that serene globe. But now only
the music dwelt here. Aycharaych kicked himself over the threshold. His cloak
flowed like black wings as he arrowed across the bubble-dome. Flandry came
after, in clothes that were fire and trumpeting. He needed a moment before he
adjusted to weightlessness. Aycharaych, whose ancestors once whistled in
Chereion's sky, appeared to have no such trouble.
The
nonhuman stopped his flight by seizing a bracken frond. He looked at a violet
burst of orchids and his long hawk-head inclined. "Black against the
quicksilver water globe," he mused, "the universe black and cold
beyond both. A beautiful arrangement, and with that touch of
horror necessary to the highest art."
"Black?" Flandry glanced startled at the violet flowers. Then he clamped his
lips.
But Aycharaych had already grasped the man's
idea. He smiled. "Touché. I should not have let slip that I am colorblind in the blue wave
lengths."
"But
you see further into the red than I do," predicted Flandry.
"Yes.
I admit, since you would infer so anyhow, my native sun is cooler and redder
than yours. If you think that will help you identify it, among all the millions
of stars in the Merseian sphere, accept the information with my compliments."
"The
Syrax Cluster is middle Population One," said Flandry. "Not too
suitable for your eyes."
Aycharaych
stared at the water. Tropical fish were visible within its globe, like tiny
many-colored rockets. "It does not follow I am going to Syrax," he
said tonelessly. "I certainly have no personal wish to do so. Too many warcraft, too many professional officers. I do not
like their mentality." He made a free-fall bow. "Your own excepted, of course."
"Of
course," said Flandry. "Still, if you could do something to break the
deadlock out there, in Merseia's favor—"
"You
flatter me," said Aycharaych. "But I fear you have not yet outgrown
the romantic view of military politics. The fact is that neither side wants to
make a total effort to control the Syrax stars. Merseia could use them as a
valuable base, outflanking Antares and thus a spearhead poised at that entire
sector of your empire. Terra wants control simply to deny us the cluster. Since
neither government wishes, at present, to break the nominal state of peace,
they maneuver about out there, mass naval strength, spy and snipe and hold
running battles . . . but the game of all-out seizure is not worth the candle
of all-out war."
"But
if you could tip the scales, personally, so our boys lost out at Syrax,"
said Flandry, "we wouldn't counter attack your
imperial sphere. You know that. It'd invite counter-counterattack on us.
Heavens, Terra itself might be bombed! We're much too comfortable to risk such
an outcome." He pulled himself up short. Why expose his
own bitterness, and perhaps be arrested on Terra for sedition?
"If we possessed Syrax," said
Aycharaych, "it would, with 71 percent probability, hasten the collapse of
the Terran hegemony by a hundred years, plus or minus ten. That is the verdict
of our military computers—though I myself feel the faith our High Command has
in them is naive and rather touching. However, the predicted date of Terra's
fall would still lie 150 years hence. So I wonder why your government
cares."
Flandry
shrugged. "A few of us are a bit sentimental about our planet," he
answered sadly. "And then, of course, we ourselves aren't out there being
shot at."
"That
is the human mentality again," said Aycharaych. "Your instincts are
such that you never accept dying. You, personally, underneath everything, do
you not feel death is just a little bit vulgar, not quite a gentleman?"
"Maybe. What would you call it?"
"A
completion."
Their
talk drifted to impersonalities. Flandry had never found anyone else whom he
could so converse with. Aycharaych could be wise and learned and infinitely
kind when he chose; or flick a whetted wit across the pompous face of empire.
To speak with him, touching now and then on the immortal questions,
was almost like a confessional; for he was not human and did not judge human
deeds, yet he seemed to understand the wishes at their root.
At last Flandry made a reluctant excuse to
get away. Nu,
he told himself, business is business. Since Lady Diana was studiously ignoring him,
he enticed a red-haired bit of fluff into an offside room, told her he would be
back in ten minutes, and slipped through a rear corridor. Perhaps any Merseian
who saw him thus disappear wouldn't expect him to return for an hour or two;
might not recognize the girl when she got bored waiting and found her own way
to the ballroom again. One human looked much like another to the untrained
nonhuman eye, and there were at least a thousand guests by now.
It
was a flimsy camouflage for his exit, but the best he could think of.
Flandry re-entered the yacht and roused
Chives. "Home," he said. "Full acceleration.
Or secondary drive, if you think you can handle it within the System in this
clumsy gold-plated hulk."
"Yes,
sir. I
can."
At
faster-than-light, he'd be at Terra in minutes, rather than hours. Excellent!
It might actually be possible to arrange for Aycharaych's completion.
More than half of Flandry hoped the attempt
would fail.
CHAPTER III
It
happened to
be day over North America, where Vice Admiral Fenross had his offices. Not that
that mattered; they were like as not to work around the clock in Intelligence,
or else Flandry could have gotten his superior out of bed. He would, in fact,
have preferred to do so.
As
matters worked out, however, he-created a satisfactory commotion. He saved an
hour by having Chives dive the yacht illegally through all traffic lanes above
Admiralty Center. With a coverall over his party clothes, he dove from the
airlock and rode a grav repulser down to the 40th flange of the Intelligence tower.
While the yacht was being stopped by a sky monitor, Flandry was arguing with a
marine on guard duty. He looked down the muzzle of a blaster and said,
"You know me, sergeant. Let me by. Urgent."
"I
guess I do know your face, sir," the marine answered. "But faces can
be changed and nobody gets by me without a pass. Just stand there while I buzzes a patrol."
Flandry considered making a jump for it. But
the Imperial Marines were on to every trick of judo he knew. Hell
take it, an hour wasted on identification! Wait. Memory clicked into
place. "You're Mohandas Parkinson," said Flandry. "You have four
darling children, your wife is unreasonably monogamous, and you were playing Go
at Madam Cepheid's last month."
Sergeant
Parkinson's gun wavered. "Huh?" he said, Then, loudly, "I don'
know whatcher talking about!"
"Madame
Cepheid's Go board is twenty meters square," said Flandry, "and the
pieces are live girls. In the course of a game— Does
that ring a bell, sergeant? I was there too, watching, and I'm sure your wife
would be delighted to hear you are still capable of such truly epic—"
"Get on your way, you . . .
blackmailer!" choked Parkinson. He gulped and added, "Sir."
Captain Flandry grinned, patted him on his
helmet, hol-stered his weapon for him, and went quickly inside.
Unlike
most, Fenross had no beautiful receptionist in his outer office. A robovoice
asked the newcomer's business. "Hero," he said blandly. The robot
said Admiral Fenross was occupied with a most disturbing new development.
Flandry said he was also, and got admission.
Hollow-cheeked
and shaky, Fenross looked across his desk. His eyes were not too bloodshot to
show a flick of hatred. "Oh," he said. "You.
Well, Captain, what interrupts your little tete-a-tete with your Merseian friends?"
Flandry
sat down and took out a cigarette. He was not surprised that Fenross had set
spies on him, but the fact was irritating nonetheless. How the devil did this feud ever get started? he
wondered. Is it only that I took that girl . . . what was her name anyway? Marjorie? Margaret? . . . was it only that I once took her from him when we were cadets together? Why, I did it for a joke. She wasn't very good-looking, in spite of everything biosculp could do.
"I've news too hot for any com
circuit," he said. "I just now—"
"You're on furlough," snapped
Fenross. "You've got no business here."
"What?
Look, it was Aycharaychl Himself! At the Crystal Moon!"
A
muscle twitched in Fenross' cheek. "I can't hear an unofficial report,''
he said. "All ruin is exploding beyond Aldebaran.
If you think you've done something brilliant, file an account in the regular
channels."
"But—for
God's sake!" Flandry sprang to his feet "Admiral Fenross, sir,
whatever the hell you want me to call you, he's leaving the Solar System in a
matter of hours. Courier boat. We can't touch him in
Ymirite space, but if we waylaid him on his way out. He'll be tricky, the
ambush might not work, but name of a little green pig, if we can get Aycharaych
it'll be better than destroying a Merseian fleet!"
Fenross
reached out a hand which trembled ever so faindy, took
a small pillbox and shook a tablet loose. "Haven't slept in forty
hours," he muttered. "And you off on that yacht. . . . I can't take
cognizance, Captain. Not under the circumstances." He glanced up again.
Slyness glistened in his eyes. "Of course," he said, "if you
want to cancel your own leave—"
Flandry stood a moment,
rigid, staring at the desk-bound man who hated him.
Memory trickled back: After
I broke off with her, yes, the girl did go a bit wild. She was killed in an
accident on Venus, wasn't she . . . drunken party flying over the Saw . . .
yes, I seem to've heard about. it. And Fenross has
never even looked at another woman.
He
sighed. "Sir, I am reporting myself back on active duty."
Fenross nodded. "File that with the
robot as you leave. Now I've got work for you." "But
Aycharaych—"
"We'll
handle him. I've got a more suitable assignment in mind." Fenross grinned,
tossed down his pill and followed it with a cup of water from the desk
fountain. "After all, a dashing field agent ought to dash, don't you
think?"
Could it be just the fact that he's gotten more rank but
I've
had more fun! wondered
Flandry. Who
knows! Does he himself! He sat down again, refusing to show
expression.
Fenross
drummed the desk top and stared at a blank wall. His uniform was as severe as
regulations permitted—Flandry's went in the opposite direction—but it still
formed an unnecessarily gorgeous base for his tortured red head. "This is
under the strictest secrecy," he began in a rapid, toneless voice. "I
have no idea how long we can suppress the news, though. One of our colonies is
under siege. Deep within the Imperial sphere."
Flandry was forced to
whistle. "Where? Who?"
"Ever
heard of Vixen? Well, I never had, either, before this. It's a human-settled
planet of an F6 star about a hundred light-years from Sol, somewhat north and
clockwise of Aldebaran. Odd ball world, but moderately
successful as colonies go. You know that region is poor in systems of
interest to humans, and very little explored. In effect, Vixen sits in the
middle of a desert. Or does it? You'll wonder when I tell you that a space
fleet appeared several weeks ago and demanded that it yield to occupation. The
ships were of exotic type, and the race crewing them can't be identified. But
some, at least, spoke pretty good Anglic."
Flandry
sat dead still. His mind threw up facts, so familiar as to be ridiculous, and
yet they must now be considered again. The thing which had happened was without
precedent.
An
interstellar domain can have no definite borders; stars are scattered too
thinly, their types too intermingled. And there are too many of them. In very
crude approximation, the Terrestrial Empire was a sphere of some 400
light-years diameter, centered on Sol, and contained an estimated four million
stars. But of these less than half had ever been visited. A bare 100,000 we're
directly concerned with the Imperium, a few multiples of that number might have
some shadowy contact and owe a theoretical allegiance. Consider a single
planet; realize that it is a world, as
big and varied and strange as this Terra ever was, with as many conflicting
elements of race and language and culture among its natives; estimate how much
government even one planet requires, and see how quickly a reign over many
beopmes impossibly huge. Then consider, too, how small a percentage of stars
are of any use to a given species (too hot, too cold, too turbulent, too many
companions) and, of those, how few will have even one planet where that species
is reasonably safe. The Empire becomes tenuous indeed. And its inconceivable
extent is still the merest speck in one outlying part of one spiral arm of one
galaxy; among a hundred billion or more great suns, those known to any single
world are the barest, tiniest handful.
However—attack
that far within the sphere? No! Individual ships could sneak between the stars
easily enough. But a war fleet could never come a hundred light-years inward from
the farthest Imperial bases. The instantaneous "wake" of disturbed
space time, surging from so many vessels, would be certain of detection
somewhere along the line. Therefore—
"Those
ships were built within pur sphere," said Flandry slowly. "And not too many parsecs from Vixen."
Fenross
sneered. "Your genius dazzles me. As a matter of fact, though, they might
have come further than usual, undetected, because so much of the Navy is out at
Syrax now. Our interior posts are stripped, some completely deserted. I'll
agree tfie enemy must base within several parsecs of Vixen. But that doesn't
mean they live there. Their base might be a space station, a rogue planet, or
something else we'll never find; they could have sent their fleet to it a ship
at a time, over a period of months."
Flandry
shook his head. "Supply lines. Having occupied Vixen, they'll need to
maintain their garrison till it's self-sufficient. No, they have a home
somewhere in the Imperial sphere, surely in the same quadrant. Which includes only about a million stars! Say, roughly,
100,000 possibilities, some never even catalogued. How many years would it take
how many ships to check out 100,000 systems?"
"Yeh. And what would be happening meanwhile?"
"What has?"
"The Vixenites put up a fight. There's a
small naval base on their planet, unmanned at present, but enough of the civilian population knew how to make use of
its arsenal. They got couriers away, of course, and Aldebaran Station sent what
little help it could. When last heard from, Vixen was under seige. We're
dispatching a task force, but it'll take time to get there. That wretched Syrax
business ties our hands. Reports indicate the aliens haven't overwhelming
strength; we could send enough ships to make mesons of them. But if we withdrew
that many from Syrax, they'd come back to find Merseia entrenched in the
Cluster." "Tie-in?" wondered Flandry.
"Who
knows? I've got an idea, though, and your assignment will be to investigate
it." Fenross leaned over the desk. His sunken eyes probed at Flandry's.
"We're all too ready to think of Merseia when anything goes wrong,"
he said bleakly. "But after all, they live a long ways off. There's
another alien power right next door . . . and as closely interwoven with
Merseia as it is with us."
"You
mean Ymir?" Flandry snorted. "Come now, dear chief, you're letting
your xenophobia run away with you."
"Consider,"
said Fenross. "Somebody, or something, helped those aliens at Vixen build
a modern war fleet. They couldn't have done it alone; we'd have known it if
they'd begun exploring stellar space, and knowledge
has to precede conquest. Somebody, very familiar with our situation, has
briefed the aliens on our language, weapons, territorial layout—the works.
Somebody, I'm sure, told them when to attack; right now, when nearly our whole
strength is at Syrax. Who?
There's one item. The
aliens use a helium-pressure power system like the Ymirites. That's
unmistakable on the detectors. Helium-pressure is all right, but it's not as
convenient as the hydrogen-heavy atom cycle; not if you live under terrestroid
conditions, and the aliens very definitely do. The ships, their shape I mean,
also have a subtly Ymirite touch. I'll show you pictures that have arrived with
the reports. Those ships look as if they'd been designed by some engineer more
used to working with hydrolithium than steel.."
"You mean the Ymirites
are behind the aliens? But—"
"But
nothing.
There's an Ymirite planet in the Vixen system too. Who knows how many stars those crawlers have colonized . .
. stars we never even heard about? Who knows how many client races they might
lord it over? And they travel blithely back and fourth, across our sphere and
Merseia's and—Suppose they are secredy in cahoots with
Merseia. What better way to smuggle Merseian agents into our systems? We don't
stop Ymirite ships. We aren't able to! But any of them could carry a
force-bubble with terrestroid conditions inside. . . . I've felt for years
we've been too childishly trustful of Ymir. It's past time we investigated them
in detail. It may already be too late!"
Flandry
stubbed out his cigarette. "But what interest have they got in all
this?" he asked mildly. "What could any oxygen-breathing race have
that they'd covet—or bribe them with?"
"That
I don't know," said Fenross. "I could be dead wrong. But I want it
looked into. You're going back to Jupiter, Captain. At
once."
"What?"
"We're chronically undermanned in this
miserable stepchild of the service," said Fenross. "Now,
worse than ever. You'll have to go alone. Snoop around as much as you
can. Take all the time you need. But don't come back without a report that'll
give some indication—one way or another!"
Or
come back dead, thought
Flandry^ He looked into the twitching face across the desk and knew that was
what Fenross wanted.
CHAPTER IV
He
got Chives out of arrest and debated with himself
whether to" sneak back to Ruethen's party. It was still going on. But no. Aycharaych would never have mentioned his own
departure without assuming Flandry would notify headquarters. It might be his
idea of a joke—it might be a straightforward challenge, for Aycharaych was just
the sort who'd enjoy seeing if he could elude an ambush—-most likely, the whole
thing was deliberate, for some darkling purpose. In any event, a junior
Intelligence officer or two could better keep tabs on the Chereionite than the
too well-known Flandry. Having made arrangements for that the man took Chives
to his private flitter.
Though
voluptuous enough inside, the Hooligan was
a combat boat, with guns and speed. Even on primary, sub-light drive, it could
reach Jupiter in so few hours, that Flandry would have little enough time to
think what he would do. He set the autopilot and bade Chives bring a drink.
"A stiff one," he added.
"Yes, sir. Do you wish your whites laid out, or do you
prefer a working suit?"
Flandry
considered his rumpled elegance and sighed. Chives had spent an hour dressing
him—for nothing. "Plain gray zipsuit," he said. "Also
sackcloth and ashes."
"Very good, sir." The valet poured whiskey over ice. He was from Shalmu, quite humanoid
except for bald emerald skin, prehensile tail, one-point-four meter height, and
details
of
ear, hand, and foot. Flandry had bought him some years back, named him Chives,
and taught him any number of useful arts. Lately, the being had politely
refused freedom. ("If I may make so bold as to say it, sir, I am afraid my
tribal customs would now have a lack of interest for me matched only by their
deplorable lack of propriety.")
Flandry
brooded over his drink a while. "What do you know about Ymir?" he
asked.
"Ymir is the arbitrary human name, sir, for the chief planet of a
realm—if I may use that word advisedly— coterminous with the Terrestrial
Empire, the Merseian, and doubtless a considerable part of the galaxy
beyond."
"Don't
be so bloody literal-minded," said Flandry. "Especially
when I'm being rhetorical. I mean, what do you know about their ways of
living, thinking, believing, hoping? What do they find
beautiful and what is too horrible to tolerate? Good galloping gods, what do
they even use for a government? They call themselves the Dispersal when they
talk Anglic; but is that a translation or a mere tag? How can we tell? What do
you and I have in common with a being that lives at a hundred below zero,
breathing hydrogen at a pressure which makes our ocean beds look like vacuum,
drinking liquid methane and using allotropic ice to make his tools?
"We were ready enough to cede Jupiter to
them; Jupiter-type planets throughout our realm. They had terrestroid planets
to offer in exchange. Why, that swap doubled the volume of our sphere. And we
traded a certain amount of scientific information with them, high-pressure
physics for low-pressure, oxygen metabolisms versus hydrogen . . . but
disappointingly little, when you get down to it. They'd been in interstellar
space longer than we had. (And how did they learn atomics under Ymirite air
pressure? We don't ask it!) They'd already observed our kind of life throughout
. . . how much of the galaxy? We couldn't offer them a thing of importance,
except the right to colonize some more planets in peace. They've never shown as
much interest in our wars— the wars of the oxygen breathers on the pygmy
planets—as you and I would have in a fight between two ant armies. Why should
they care? You could drop Terra or Merseia into Jupiter and it'd hardly make a
decent splash. For a hundred years, now, the Ymirites have scarcely said a word
to us. Or to Merseia, from all indications. Till now.
"And
yet I glanced at the pictures taken out near Vixen, just before we left. And
Fenross, may he fry, is right. Those blunt ships were
made on a planet similar to Terra, but they have Ymirite lines . . . the way
the first Terran automobiles had the motor in front, because that was where the
horse used to be. . . . It could be coincidence, I suppose. Or
a red herring. Or—I don't know. How am I supposed to find out, one man
on a planet with ten times the radius of Terra? Judas!"
He drained his glass and held it out again.
Chives
refilled, then went back to the clothes locker. "A white scarf or a
blue?" he mused. "Hm, yes, I do believe the white, sir."
The
flitter plunged onward. Flandry needed a sober jolt by the time he had landed
on Ganymede.
There
was an established procedure for such a visit. It hadn't been used for decades,
Flandry had had to look it up, but the robot station still waited patiently
between rough mountains. He presented his credentials,
radio contact was made with the primary planet, unknown messages traveled over
its surface. A reply was quick: yes, Captain, the governor can receive you. A
spaceship is on its way, and will be at your disposal.
Flandry
looked out at the stony desolation of Ganymede. It was not long before a squat,
shimmering shape had made grav-beam descent. A tube wormed from its lock to the
flitter's. Flandry sighed. "Let's go," he
said, and strolled across. Chives trotted after with a burden of weapons,
tools, and instruments—none of which were likely to be much use. There was a
queasy moment under Ganymede's natural gravity, then
they had entered the Terra-conditioned bubble.
It
looked like any third-class passenger cabin, except for the outmoded
furnishings and a bank of large viewscreens. Hard to believe that this was only
the material inner lining of a binding-force field; that that same energy,
cousin to that which held the atomic nucleus together, was all which kept this
room from being crushed beneath intolerable pressure. Or, at
the moment, kept the rest of the spaceship from exploding outward. The
bulk of the vessel was an alloy of water, lithium, and metallic hydrogen,
stable only under Jovian surface conditions.
Flandry
let Chives close the air lock while he turned on the screens. They gave him a
full outside view. One remained blank, a communicator, the other showed the
pilot's cabin.
An artificial voice, ludicrously sweet in the style of a century ago,
said, "Greeting, Terran. My name, as nearly as it may be rendered in sonic equivalents, is Horx.
I am your guide and interpreter while you remain on Jupiter."
Flandry
looked into the screen. The Ymirite didn't quite register on his mind. His eyes
weren't trained to those shapes and proportions, seen by that weirdly shifting
red-bluc-brassy light. (Which wasn't the real thing, even,
but an electronic translation. A human looking straight into the thick
Jovian air would only see darkness.) "Hello, Horx," he said to the
great black multi-legged shape with the peculiarly tendrilled heads. He wet his
lips, which seemed a bit dry. "I, er, expect you haven't had such an assignment
before in your life."
"I
did several times, a hundred or so Terra-years ago," said Horx casually.
He didn't seem to move, to touch any controls, but Ganymede receded in the
viewscreens and raw space blazed forth. "Since then I have been doing
other work." Hesitation. Or was it? At last,
"Recently, though, 1 have conducted several
missions to our surface."
"What?" choked Flandry.
"Merseian,"
said Horx. "You may inquire of the governor if you wish." He said
nothing else the whole trip.
Jupiter,
already big in the scene, became half of heaven. Flandry saw blots march across its glowing many-colored face, darknesses which
were storms that could have swallowed all Terra. Then the sight was lost, he
was dropping through the atmosphere. Still the step-up screens tried loyally to
show him something; he saw clouds of ammonia crystals, a thousand kilometers
long, streaked with strange blues and greens that were free radicals; he saw
lightning leap across a purple sky, and the distant yellow flare of sodium explosions.
As he descended, he could even feel, very dimly, the quiver of the ship under
enormous winds, and hear the muffled shriek and thunder of the air.
They
circled the night side, still descending, and Flandry saw a methane ocean,
beating waves flattened by pressure and gravity against a cliff of black
allotropic ice, which crumbled and was lifted again even as he watched. He saw
an endless plain where things half trees and half animals— except that they
were neither, in any Terrestrial sense— lashed snaky fronds after ribbon-shaped
flyers a hundred meters in length. He saw bubbles stream past on a red wind,
and they were lovely in their myriad colors and they sang in thin crystal
voices which somehow penetrated the ship. But they couldn't be- true bubbles at
this pressure. Could they?
A
city came into view, just beyond the dawn line. If it was a
city. It was, at least, a unified structure of immense extent, intricate
with grottos and arabesques, built low throughout, but somehow graceful and
gracious. On Flandry's screen its color was polished blue. Here and there
sparks and threads of white energy would briefly flash. They hurt his eyes.
There were many Ymirites about, flying on their own wings or riding in
shell-shaped power gliders. You wouldn't think of Jupiter as a planet where
anything could fly, until you remembered the air density; then you realized it
was more a case of swimming.
The spaceship came to a halt, hovering on its
repulsor field. Horx said, "Governor Thua."
Another
Ymirite squatted suddenly in the outside communication screen. He held
something which smoked and flickered from shape to shape. The impersonally
melodious robot voice said for him, under the eternal snarling of a wind which
would have blown down any city men could build, "Welcome. What is your
desire?"
The
old records had told Flandry to expect brusqueness. It was not discourtesy;
what could a human and an Ymirite make small talk about? The man puffed a
cigarette to nervous life and said, "I am here on an investigative mission
for my government." Either these beings were or were not already aware of
the Vixen situation; if not, then they weren't allies of Merseia and would
presumably not tell. Or if they did, what the devil difference? Flandry
explained.
Thua
said at once, "You seem to have very small grounds for suspecting, us. A
mere similarity of appearances and nuclear technology is logically
insufficient."
"I know," said
Flandry. "It could be a fake."
"It could even be that one or a few
Ymirite individuals have offered advice to the entities which instigated this
attack," said Thua. You couldn't judge from the pseudo-voice, but he
seemed neither offended nor sympathetic; just monumentally
uninterested. "The Dispersal has been nonstimulate as regards
individuals for many cycles. However, I cannot imagine what motive an Ymirite
would have for exerting himself on behalf of oxygen breathers. There is no
insight to be gained from such acts, and certainly no material profit."
"An
aberrated individual?" suggested Flandry with little hope. "Like a
man poking an anthill—an abode of lesser animals—merely to pass the time?"
"Ymirites
do not aberrate in such fashion," said Thua stiffly.
"I understand there've been recent
Merseian visits here."
"I
was about to mention that. I am doing all I can to assure both empires of
Ymir's strict neutrality. It would be a nuisance if either attacked us and
forced us to exterminate their species."
Which is the biggest brag since that fisherman who caught the equator, thought Flandry, or else is sober truth. He said aloud, choosing his words one by one, "What, then, were the
Merseians doing here?"
"They
wished to make some scientific observations of the Jovian surface," said
Thua. "Horx guided them, like you. Let him describe their
activities."
The pilot stirred in his chamber, spreading
black wings. "We simply cruised about a few times. They had optical
instruments, and took various spectroscopic readings. They said it was for
research in solid-state physics."
"Curiouser
and curioUser," said Flandry. He stroked his mustache.
"They have as many Jovoid planets in their sphere as we do. The detailed
report on Jovian conditions, which the first Ymirite settlers made to Terra,
under the treaty, has never been secret. No, I just don't believe that research
yarn."
"It
did seem dubious," agreed Thua, "but I do not pretend to understand
every vagary of the alien mind. It was easier to oblige them than argue about
it."
Chives
cleared his throat and said unexpectedly, "If I may take the liberty of a
question, sir, were all these recent visitors of the Merseian species?"
Thua's
disgust could hardly be mistaken, "Do you expect me to register
insignificant differences between one such race and another?"
Flandry sighed. "It
looks like deadlock, doesn't it?" he said.
"I
can think of no way to give you positive assurance that Ymir is not concerned,
except my word," said Thua. "However, if you wish, you may cruise
about this planet at random and see if you observe anything out of the
ordinary." His screen went blank.
"Big
fat chance!" muttered Flandry. "Give me a drink, Chives."
"Will you follow the
governor's proposal?" asked Horx.
"Reckon
so." Flandry flopped into a chair. "Give us the standard guided tour.
I've never been on Jupiter, and might as well have something to show for my
time."
The
city fell behind, astonishingly fast. Flandry sipped the whiskey Chives had
gotten from the supplies they had along, and watched the awesome landscape with
half an eye. Too bad he was feeling so sour; this really was an experience such
as is granted few men. But he had wasted hours on a mission which any
second-year cadet could have handled . . . while guns were gathered at Syrax
and Vixen stood alone against all hell ...
or even while Lady Diana danced with other men and Ivar del Bruno waited grinning to collect
his bet. Flandry said an improper word. "What a nice subtle bed of coals for Fenross to rake me over," he added. "The man has a
genius for it." He gulped his drink and called for another.
"We're rising,
sir," said Chives much later.
Flandry
saw mountains which trembled and droned, blue mists that whirled about their
metallic peaks, and then the Jovian ground was lost in
darkness. The sky began to turn blood color. "What are we heading for
now?" he asked. He checked a map. "Oh, yes, I see."
"I
venture to suggest to the pilot, sir, that our speed may be a trifle
excessive," said Chives.
Flandry
heard the wind outside rise to a scream, with subsonic undertones that shivered
in his marrow. Red fog flew roiled and tattered past his eyes. Beyond, he saw
crimson clouds the height of a Terrestrial sierra, with lightning leaping in
their bellies. The light from the screens washed like a dull fire into the
cabin.
"Yes,"
he muttered. "Slow down, Horx. There'll be
another one along in a minute, as the story has it—"
And
then he saw the pilot rise up in his chamber, fling open a door, and depart. An
instant afterward Flandry saw Horx beat wings against the spaceship's furious
slipstream; then the Ymirite was whirled from view. And then Chives saw the
thing which hung in the sky before them, and yelled. He threw his tail around
Flandry's waist while he clung with hands and legs to a bunk stanchion.
And then the world exploded into thunder and
night.
CHAPTER V
Flandry
awoke. He spent centuries
wishing he hadn't. A blurred green shape said: "You aneurine,
sir."
"Go 'way,"
mumbled Flandry. "What was I drinking?"
"Pardon
my taking the liberty, sir," said Chives. He pinned the man's wrists down
with his tail, held Flandry's nose with one hand and poured the drug down his
mouth with the other. "There, now, we are feeling much better, aren't
we?"
"Remind
me to shoot you, slowly." Flandry gagged for a while. The medicine took
hold and he sat up. His brain cleared and he looked at the screen bank.
Only
one of the viewers still functioned. It showed thick, drifting redness, shot
through with blues and blacks. A steady rough growling, like the breakup of a
polar ice pack, blasted its way through the ultimate rigidity of the force
bubble. God, what must the noise be like outside? The cabin was tilted. Slumped
in its lower corner, Flandry began to glide across the floor again; the ship
was still being rolled about. The internal gravity field had saved their lives
by cushioning the worst shock, but then it had gone dead. He felt the natural
pull of Jupiter upon him, and every cell was weary from its own weight.
He
focused on a twisted bunkframe. "Did I do that with my own little head?"
"We
struck with great force, sir," Chives told him. "I permitted myself
to bandage your scalp. However, a shot of growth hormone will heal the cuts in
a few hours, sir, if we escape the present dilemma."
Flandry lurched to his feet. His bones seemed
to be dragging him back downward. He felt the cabin walls tremble and beard
them groan. The force bubble had held, which meant that its generator and the
main power plant had survived the crash. Not unexpectedly; a ship like this was
built on the "fail safe" principle. But there was no access
whatsoever from this cabin to the pilot room— unless you were an Ymirite. It
made no difference whether the ship was still flyable or not. Human and
Shalmuan were stuck here till they starved. Or, more likely, till the
atomic-power plant quit working, under the buffets this ship was receiving.
Well,
when the force-field collapsed and Jovian air pressure flattened the cabin, it
would be a merciful death.
"The
hell with that noise," said Flandry. "I don't want to die so fast I
can't feel it. I want to see death coming, and make the stupid thing fight for
every centimeter of me."
"Chives
gazed into the sinister crimson which filled the last electronic window. His
slight frame stooped, shaking in the knees; he was even less adapted to Jovian
weight than Flandry. "Where are we, sir?" he husked. "I was
thinking primarily about what to make for lunch, just before the collision,
and—"
"The Red Spot area," said Flandry. "Or, rather, the fringe of it. We must be on an
outlying berg, or whatever the deuce they're called."
"Our guide appears to
have abandoned us, sir."
"Hell,
he got us into this mess. On purpose! I now know for a fact there's, at least
one Ymirite working for the enemy—whoever the enemy is. But the information
won't be much use if we become a pair of grease spots."
The
ship shuddered and canted. Flandry grabbed a stanchion for support, eased
himself down on the bunk, and said, very quickly, for destruction roared around
him, "You've seen the Red Spot from space, Chives. It's been known for a
long time, even before space travel, that it's a ... a mass of aerial pack ice. Lord, what a fantastic place to
die! What happens is that at a certain height in the Jovian atmosphere, the
pressure allows a red crystalline form on ice—not the white stuff we splash
whiskey onto, or the black allotrope down at the
surface, or the super-dense variety in the mantle around the Jovian core. Here
the pressure is right for red ice, and the air density is identical, so it
floats. An initial formation created favorable conditions for the formation of
more ... so it accumulated in this
one region, much as polar caps build up on cozier type planets. Some years a
lot of it melts away—changes phase—the Red Spot looks paler from outside. Other
years you get a heavy pile-up, and Jupiter seems to have a moving wound. But
always, Chives, the Red Spot is a pack of flying glaciers, stretching broader
than all Terra. And we've been crashed on one of them!"
"Then
our present situation can scarcely be accidental, sir," nodded Chives
imperturbably. "I daresay, with all the safety precautions built into this
ship, Horx thought this would be the only way to destroy us without leaving
evidence. He can claim a stray berg was tossed in our path, or some such
tale." Chives sniffed. "Not sportsmanlike at all, sir. Just what one would expect of a ...
a native."
The
cabin yawed. Flandry caught himself before he fell out of the bunk. At this
gravity, to stumble across the room would be to break a leg. Thunders rolled.
White vapors hissed up against crimson in the surviving screen.
"I'm
not on to these scientific esotérica," said
Flandry. His chest pumped, struggling to supply oxygeh for muscles toiling
under nearly three times their normal' weight. Each rib felt
as if cast in lead. "But I'd guess what is happening is this. We
maintain a temperature in here which for Jupiter is crazily high. So we're
radiating heat, which makes the ice go soft and—we're slowly sinking into the
berg." He shrugged and got out a cigarette.
"Is that wise,
sir?" asked Chives.
"The
oxygen recyclers are still working," said Flandry. "It's not at all stuffy
in here. Air is the least of our worries." His coolness cracked over, he
smote a fist on the wall and said between his teeth, "It's this being
helpless! We can't go out of the cabin, we can't do a
thing but sit here and take it!"
"I wonder, sir." Slowly, his thin
face sagging with gravity,
Chives
pulled himself to the pack of equipment. He pawed
through it. "No, sir. I regret to say I took no
radio. It seemed we could communicate through the pilot." He paused.
"Even if we did find a way to signal, I daresay any Ymirite who received
our call would merely interpret it as random static."
Flandry
stood up, somehow. "What do we have?" A tiny excitement shivered
along his nerves. Outside, Jupiter boomed at him.
"Various detectors, sir, to check for
installations. A pair of spacesuits. Sidearms.
Your burglar kit, though I confess uncertainty what value it would have here. A microrecorder. A—"
"Wait
a minutel"
Flandry
sprang toward his valet. The floor rocked beneath him. He staggered toward the
far wall. Chives shot out his tail and helped brake the man. Shaking, Flandry
eased himself down and went on all fours to the corner where the Shalmuan
squatted.
He didn't even stop to gibe at his own
absent-mindedness. His heart thuttered. "Wait a
minute, Chives," he said. "We've got an airlock over there. Since the
force-bubble necessarily reinforces its structure, it must still be intact; and
its machinery can open the valves even against this outside pressure. Of
course, we can't go through ourselves. ,Our space
armor would be squashed flat. But we can get at the mechanism of the lock. It
also, by logical necessity, has to be part of the Terra-conditioned system. We
can use the tools we have here to make a simple automatic cycle. First the
outer valve opens. Then it shuts, the Jovian air is exhausted from the chamber
and Terrestrial air replaces same. Then the valve opens again . . . and so on.
Do you see?"
"No,
sir," said Chives. A deadly physical exhaustion filmed his yellow eyes.
"My brain feels so thick ... I
regret—"
"A
signal!" yelled Flandry. "We flush oxygen out into a
hydrogencum-methane atmosphere. We supply an electric spark in the lock chamber
to ignite the mixture. Whoosh! A flare! Feeble and blue
enough—but not by Jovian standards. Any Ymirite anywhere within tens of
kilometers is bound to see it as brilliant as we see a magnesium torch. And
it'll repeat. A steady cycle, every four or five minutes.
If the Ymirites aren't made of concrete, they'll be curious enough to
investigate . . . and when they find the wreck op this berg, they'll guess our
need and—"
His
voice trailed off. Chives said dully, "Can we spare the oxygen, sir?"
"We'll
have to," said Flandry. "We'll sacrifice as much as we can stand, and
then halt the cycle. If nothing has happened after several hours, we'll expend
half of what's left in one last fire works." He took an ultimate pull on
his cigarette, ground it out with great care, and fought back to his feet.
"Come on, let's get going. What have' we to lose?"
The
floor shook. It banged and crashed outside. A fog of free radicals drifted
green past the window, and the red iceberg spun in Jupiter's endless gale.
Flandry
glanced at Chives. "You have one fault, laddy," he said, forcing a
smile to his lips. "You aren't a beautiful woman." And then, after a
moment, sighing, "However, it's just as well. Under the
circumstances."
CHAPTER VI
And
in that well-worn nick of time, which goes to prove that the gods,
understandably, love me, help arrived. An Ymirite party spotted our flare.
Having poked around, they went off, bringing back another force-bubble ship to
which we transferred our nearly suffocated carcasses. No, Junior,
I don't know what the Ymirites were doing in the Red Spot area. It must be a dank cold place for them, too.
But I had guessed they would be sure to maintain some kind of monitors, scientific stations, or what
have you around there, just as we monitor the weather-breeding regions of Terra.
Governor Thua didn't bother to apologize. He didn't even notice my
valet's indignant demand that the miscreant Horx be forthwith administered a
red-ice shaft, except to say that future visitors would be given a different
guide {how can they tell?) and that this business was none of his doing and he wouldn't waste any
Ymirite's time with investigations or punishments or any further action at all.
He pointed out the treaty provision, that he wasn't bound to admit us, and that
any visits would always be at the visitor's own risk.
The fact that some Ymirites did rescue us
proves that the conspiracy, if any,
does not involve their whole race. But how highly placed the hostile
individuals are in their government (if
they have anything corresponding to government as we know it) I haven't the groggiest.
Above summary for
convenience only.
Transcript of all conversation, which
was taped as per ungentlemanly orders, attached.
Yes, Junior, you may leave the room.
Flandry
switched off the recorder. He could trust the confidential secretary, who would
make a formal report out of his dictation, to clean it up. Though he wished she
wouldn't.
He
leaned back, cocked feet on desk, trickled smoke through his nostrils, and
looked out the clear wall of his office. Admiralty Center gleamed, slim faerie
spires in soft colors, reaching for the bright springtime sky of Terra. You
couldn't mount guard across 400 light-years without millions of ships; and that
meant millions of policy makers, scientists, strategists, tacticians,
co-ordinators, clerks . . . and they had families, which needed food, clothing,
houses, schools, amusements ... so
the heart of the Imperial Navy became a city in its own right. Damn company town, thought Flandry. And yet, when the bombs
finally roared out of space, when the barbarians howled among smashed buildings
and the smoke of burning books hid dead men in tattered bright uniforms— when
the Long Night came, as it would a century or a millennium hence, what difference?—something
of beauty and gallantry would have departed the universe.
To hell with it. Let civilization hang together long enough for Dominic Flandry to taste
a few more vintages, ride a few more horses, kiss a lot more girls and sing
another ballad or two. That would suffice. At least, it was all he dared hope
for.
The
intercom chimed. "Admiral Fenross wants to see you immediately, sir."
"Now he tells me," grunted Flandry.
"I wanted to see him yesterday, when I got back."
"He
was busy then, sir," said the robot, as glibly as if it had a conscious
mind. "His lordship the Earl of Sidrath is visiting Terra, and wished to
be conducted through the operations center."
Flandry
rose, adjusted his peacock-blue tunic, admired the crease of his gold-frogged
white trousers, and covered his sleek hair with a jewel-banded officer's cap.
"Of course," he said, "Admiral Fenross couldn't possibly
delegate the tour to an aide."
"The
Earl of Sidrath is related to Grand Admiral the Duke of Asia," the robot
reminded him.
Flandry
sang beneath his breath, "Brown is the color of my
true love's nose," and
went out the door. After a series of slideways and gravshafts, he reached
Fenross' office.
The
admiral nodded his close-cropped head beyond the desk. "There you
are." His tone implied Flandry had stopped for a beer on the way.
"Sit down. Your preliminary verbal report on the Jovian mission has been
communicated to me. Is that really all you could find out?"
Flandry
smiled. "You told me to get an indication, one way or another, of the
Ymirite attitude, sir," he purred. "That's what I got; an indication,
one way or another."
Fenross
gnawed his lip. "All right, all right. I should
have known, I guess. Your forte never was working with an organization, and
we're going to need a special project, a very large project, to learn the truth
about Ymir."
Flandry sat up straight.
"Don't," he said sharply.
"What7"
"Don't waste men that way. Sheer
arithmetic will defeat them. Jupiter alone has the area of a hundred Terras.
The population must be more or less proportional. How are our men going to
percolate around, confined to the two or three spaceships that Thua has
available for them? Assuming Thua doesn't simply refuse to admit any further
oxygen-breathing nuisances. How are they going to question, bribe, eavesdrop, get any single piece of information? It's a truism that the
typical Intelligence job consists of gathering a million unimportant little
facts and fitting them together into one big fact. We've few enough agents as
is, spread ghastly thin. Don't tie them up in an impossible job. Let them keep
working on Merseia, where they've a chance of accomplishing something!"
"And if Ymir suddenly
turns on us?" snapped Fenross.
"Then
we roll with the punch. Or we die." Flandry shrugged and winced; his
muscles were still sore from the pounding they had taken. "But haven't you
thought, sir, this whole business may well be a Merseian stunt—to divert our
attention from them, right at this crisis? It's exactly the sort of bear trap
Aycharaych loves to set."
"That
may be," admitted Fenross. "But Merseia lies' beyond Syrax; Jupiter
is next door. I've been given to understand that His Imperial Majesty is
alarmed enough to desire—" He shrugged too, making it the immemorial gesture
of a baffled underling.
"Who
dropped that hint?" drawled Flandry. "Surely not
the Earl of Sidrath, whom you were showing the sights yesterday while the news
came in that Vixen had fallen?"
"Shut
up!" Almost, it was a scream. A jag of pain went over Fenross' hollowed
countenance. He reached for a pill. "If I didn't oblige the peerage,"
he said thickly, "I'd be begging my bread in Underground and someone would
be in this office who'd never tell them no."
Flandry
paused. He started a fresh cigarette with unnecessary concentration. I suppose I am being unjust to him, he thought. Poor devil. It
can't be much fun being Fenross.
Still,
he reflected, Aycharaych had left the Solar System so smoothly that the space
ambush had never even detected his boat. Twenty-odd hours ago, a battered
scoutship had limped in to tell the Imperium that Vixen had perforce
surrendered to its nameless besiegers, who had landed en masse after reducing
the defenses. The last dispatch from Syrax described clashes which had cost the
Terrans more ships than the Merseians. Jupiter blazed a mystery in the evening
sky. Rumor said that after his human guests had left, Ruethen and his staff had
rolled out huge barrels of bitter ale and caroused like trolls for many hours;
they must have known some reason to be merry.
You
couldn't blame Fenross much. But would the whole long climb of man, from jungle
to stars, fall back in destruction—and no single person even deserve to have
his knuckles rapped for it?
"What
about the reinforcements that were being sent to Vixen?" asked Flandry.
"They're
still on their way." Fenross gulped his pill and relaxed a trifle.
"What information we have, about enemy strength and so on, suggests that
another standoff will develop. The aliens won't be strong enough to kick our
force out of the system—"
"Not
with Tom Walton in command. I hear he is." A very
small warmth trickled into Flandry's soul.
"Yes.
At the same time, now the enemy is established on Vixen, there's no obvious way
to get them off without total blasting—which would sterilize the planet. Of
course, Walton can try to cut their supply lines and starve them out; but once
they get their occupation organized, Vixen itself will supply them. Or he can
try to find out where they come from, and counter-attack their home. Or perhaps
he can negotiate something. I don't know. The Emperor himself gave Admiral
Walton what amouts to carte
blanche."
It must have been one of His Majesty's off
days, decided Flandry. Actually doing the sensible
thing.
"Our
great handicap is that our opponents know all about us and we know almost
nothing about them," went on
Fenross.
"I'm afraid the primary effort of our Intelligence must be diverted toward
Jupiter for the time being. But someone has to gather information at Vixen too,
about the aliens." His voice jerked to a halt.
Flandry
filled his lungs with smoke, held it a moment, and let it out in a slow flood.
"Eek," he said tonelessly.
"Yes. That's your next
assignment."
"But. . . me, alone, to Vixen? Surely Walton's force carries
a bunch of our people."
"Of course. They'll do what they can. But parallel operations are standard espionage
procedure, as even you must know. Furthermore, the Vixenites made the dramatic
rather than the logical gesture. After their planet had capitulated, they got
one boat out, with one person aboard. The boat didn't try to reach any
Terrestrial ship within the system. That was wise, because the tiny force
Aldebaran had sent was already broken in battle and reduced to sneak raids. But
neither did the Vixenite boat go to Aldebaran itself. No, it came straight
here, and the pilot expected a personal audience with the Emperor."
"And
didn't get it," foretold Flandry. "His Majesty is much too busy
gardening to waste time on a mere commoner representing a mere planet. "
"Gardening?" Fenross blinked.
"I'm
told His Majesty cultivates beautiful pansies," murmured Flandry.
Fenross
gulped and said in great haste, "Well, no, of course not. I mean, I myself
interviewed the pilot, and read the report carried along. Not too much
information, though helpful. However, while Walton has a few Vixenite refugees
along as guides and advisors, this pilot is the only one who's seen the aliens
close up, on the ground, digging in and trading rifle shots with humans; has
experienced several days of occupation before getting away. Copies of the
report can be sent after Walton. But that firsthand knowledge of enemy
behavior, regulations, all the little unpredictable details .-.
. that may also prove essential."
"Yes," said Flandry. "If a spy is to be smuggled back into Vixen's surface. Namely me."
Fenross allowed himself a prim little smile.
"That's what I had in mind."
Flandry
nodded, unsurprised. Fenross would never give up trying to get him killed.
Though in all truth, Dominic Flandry doubtless had more chance of pulling such
a stunt and getting back unpunctured than anyone else.
He
said idly, "The decision to head straight for Sol wasn't illogical. If the
pilot had gone to Aldebaran, then Aldebaran would have sent us a courier
reporting the matter and asking for orders. A roundabout
route. This way, we got the news days quicker. No, that Vixenite has a
level head on his shoulders."
"Hers," corrected
Fenross.
"Huh?" Flandry
sat bolt upright.
"She'll
explain any details," said Fenross. "I'll arrange an open requisition
for you; draw what equipment you think you'll need. And if you survive, remember,
I'll want every millo's worth accounted for. Now get out and get busy! I've got
work to do."
CHAPTER VII
The Hooligan snaked out of Terran sky, ran for a time on
primary drive at an acceleration which it strained the internal grav-field to
compensate for, and, having reached a safe distance from Sol, sprang over into
secondary. Briefly the viewscreens went wild with Doppler effect
and aberration. Then their circuits adapted to the rate at which the vessel
pulsed in and out of normal space-time-energy levels; they annulled the optics
of pseudo-speed, and Flandry looked again upon cold many-starred night as if he
were at rest.
He
left Chives in the turret to make final course adjustments, and strolled down
to the saloon. "All clear," he smiled. "Estimated
time to Vixen, thirteen standard days."
"What?"
The girl, Catherine Kittredge, half rose from the luxuriously cushioned bench.
"But it took me a month the other way, an' I had the fastest racer on pur planet."
"I've
tinkered with this one," said Flandry. "Or, rather, found experts to
do so." He sat down near her, crossing long legs and leaning an elbow on
the mahogany table which the bench half-circled. "Give me a screwdriver
and I'll make any firearm in the cosmos sit up and speak. But space drives have
an anatomy I can only call whimsical."
He
was trying to put her at ease. Poor kid, she had seen her home assailed,
halfway in from the Imperial marches that were supposed to bear all the wars;
she had seen friends and kinfolk slain in battle with unhuman unknowns, and
heard the boots of an occupying enemy racket in once-familiar streets; she had
fled to Terra like a child to its mother, and been coldly interviewed in an
office and straightway bundled onto a spaceship, with one tailed alien and one
suave stranger. Doubtless an official had told her she was a brave little girl
and now it was her duty to return as a spy and quite likely be killed. And
meanwhile rhododendrons bloomed like cool fire in Terra's parks, and the
laughing youth of Terra's aristocracy flew past on their way to some newly
opened pleasure house.
No
wonder Catherine Kittredge's eyes were wide and bewildered.
They
were her best feature, Flandry decided; large, set far apart, a gold-flecked
hazel under long lashes and thick dark brows. Her hair would have been nice
too, a blonde helmet, if she had not cut it off just below the ears. Otherwise
she was nothing much to look at—a broad, snub-nosed, faintly freckled
countenance, generous mouth and good chin. As nearly as one could tell through
a shapeless gray coverall, she was of medium height and on the stocky side. She
spoke
Anglic
with a soft regional accent that sounded good in her low voice; but all her
mannerisms were provincial, fifty years out of date. Flandry wondered a little
desperately what they could talk about.
Well, there was business enough. He flicked
buttons for autoservice. "What are you drinking?" he asked.
"We've anything within reason, and a few things out of reason, on
board."
She blushed. "Nothin',
thank you," she mumbled.
"Nothing at all? Come, now.T)aiquiri? Wine?
Beer? Buttermilk, for heaven's
sake?"
"Hm?" She raised a fleeting glance. He discovered
Vixen had no dairy industry, cattle couldn't survive
there, and dialed ice cream for her. He himself slugged down
a large gin-and-bitters. He was going to need alcohol—two weeks alone in
space with Little Miss Orphan!
She
was pleased enough by discovering ice cream to relax a trifle. Flandry offered
a cigarette, was refused, and started one for himself.
"You'll have plenty of time to brief me en route," he said, "so
don't feel obliged to answer questions now, if it distresses you."
Catherine
Kittredge looked beyond him, out the viewscreen and into the frosty sprawl of
Andromeda. Her lips twitched downward ever so faintly. But she replied with a
steadiness he liked, "Why not? 'Twon't bother me
more'n sittin' an' broodin'."
"Good
girl. Tell me, how did you happen to carry the message?"
"My
brother was our official courier. You know how 'tis on planets like ours,
without much population or money; whoever's got the best spaceship gets a
subsidy an' carries any special dispatches. I helped him. We used to go off
jauntin' for days at a time, an'—No," she broke off. Her fists closed.
"I won't bawl. The aliens forced a landin'. Hank went off with our groun' forces.
He didn't come back. Sev'ral days after the surrender, when
things began to settle down a little, I got the news he'd been killed in
action. A few of us decided the Imperium had better be given what
information we could supply. Since I knew Hank's ship best, they tol' me to
go."
"I
see." Flandry determined to keep this as dry as possible, for her sake.
"I've a copy of the report your people made up, of course, but you had all
the way to Sol to study it, so you must know more about it than anyone else off
Vixen. Just to give me a rough preliminary idea, I understand some of the
invaders knew Anglic and there was a certain amount of long-range parleying.
What did they call themselves?"
"Does that
matter?" she asked listlessly.
"Not
in the faintest, at the present stage of things, except that it's such a weary cliché to speak of Planet X."
She
smiled, a tiny bit. "They called themselves the Ardazirho, an' we gathered
the ho was a collective endin'. So we figure their planet is named Ardazir. Though I can't come near pronouncin' it right."
Flandry
took a stereopic from the pocket of his iridescent shirt. It had been snapped
from hiding, during the ground battle. Against a background of ruined human
homes crouched a single enemy soldier. Warrior? Acolyte? Unit? Armed, at least, and a killer of men.
Preconceptions
always got in the way. Flandry's first startled thought had been Wolf] Now he realized that of course the Ardazirho was not lupine, didn't even
look notably wolfish. Yet the impression lingered. He was not surprised when
Catherine Kittredge said the aliens had gone howling into battle.
The were
described as man-size bipeds, but digitigrade, which gave their feet almost the
appearance of a dog's walking on its hind legs. The shoulders and arms were
very humanoid, except that the thumbs were on the opposite side of the hands
from mankind's. The head, arrogantly held on a
powerful neck, was long and narrow for an intelligent animal, with a low
forehead, most of the brain space behind the pointed ears. A black-nosed
muzzle, not as sharp as a wolf's and yet somehow like it, jutted out of the face.
Its lips were pulled back in a snarl, showing bluntly pointed fangs which
suggested a flesh-eater turned omnivore. The eyes were oval, close set, and
gray as sleet. Short thick fur covered the entire body, turning to a ruff at
the throat; it was rusty red.
"Is this a
uniform?" asked Flandry.
The
girl leaned close to see. The pictured Ardazirho wore a sort of kilt, in
checkerboard squares of various hues. Flandry winced at some of the
combinations: rose next to scarlet, a glaring crimson offensively between two
delicate yellows. "Barbarians indeed," he muttered. "I hope
Chives can stand the shock." Otherwise the being was dressed in boots of
flexible leather and a harness from which hung various pouches and equipment.
He was armed with what was obviously a magnetronic rifle, and had a
wicked-looking knife at his belt.
"I'm
not sure," said the girl. "Either they don't use uniforms at all, or
they have such a variety that we've not made any sense of it. Some might be
dressed more or less like him, others in a kind o' tunic an' burnoose, others
in breastplates an' fancy plumed helmets."
"Him," pounced Flandry. "They're all male, then?"
"Yes,
sir, seems that way. The groun' fightin' lasted long
enough for our biologists to dissect an' analyze a few o' their dead. Accordin'
to the report, they're placental mammals. It's clear they're from a more or
less terrestroid planet, probably with a somewhat stronger gravity. The eye
structure suggests their sun is bright, type A5 or thereabouts. That means they
should feel pretty much at home in our badlands." Catherine Kittredge
shrugged sadly. "Figure that's why they picked us to start on."
"They
might have been conquering for some time," said Flandry. "A hot star
like an A5 is no use to humans; and I imagine the F-type like yours is about as
cool as they care for. They may well have built up a little coterminous
kingdom, a number of B, A, and F suns out in your quadrant, where we don't even
have a complete astronomical mapping—let alone having explored much. . . . Hm. Didn't you get a chance to interrogate any live
prisoners?"
"Yes. 'Twasn't much
use. Durin' the fightin', one of our regiments did encircle a unit o'
theirs an' knock it out with stun beams. When two o' them woke up an' saw they
were captured, they died."
"Preconditioning,"
nodded Flandry. "Go on."
"The
rest didn't speak any Anglic, 'cept one who'd picked up a little -bit. They
questioned him." The girl winced. "I don't figure 'twas very nice.
The report says toward the end his heart kept stoppin' an' they'd revive it,
but at last he died for good. . . . Anyway, it seems a fair bet he was tellin'
the truth. An' he didn't know where his home star was. He could understan' our
co-ordinate system, an' translate it into the one they used. But that was
zeroed arbitrarily on S Doradus, an' he didn't have any idea about the
co-ordinates of Ardazir."
"Memory blank." Flandry scowled. "Probably
given to all the enlisted ranks. Such officers as must retain
information are conditioned to die on capture. What a merry monarch they've
got." He twisted his mustache between nervous fingers. "You know,
though, this suggests their home is vulnerable. Maybe we should concentrate on
discovering where it is."
The
girl dropped her eyes. She lost a little color. "Do you think we can, my
lord?" she whispered. "Or are we just goin' to die, too?"
"If the mission involves procedures
illegal or immoral, I should have no trouble." Flandry grinned at her.
"You can do whatever honorable work is necessary. Between
us, why, God help Ardazir. Incidentally, I don't rate a title."
"But they called you
Sir Dominic."
"A knighthood is not a patent of
nobility. I'm afraid my relationship to the peerage involves a bar sinister.
You see, one day my father wandered into this sinister bar, and—" Flandry
rambled on, skirting the risque, until he heard her laugh. Then he laughed back
and said, "Good girl! What do they call you at home? Kit, I'll swear. Very
well, we're off to the wars, you the Kit and I the caboodle. Now let's scream
for Chives to lay out caviar and cheeses. Afterward I'll show you.to your
stateroom." Her face turned hot, and he added, "Its door locks on the
inside."
"Thank you," she said, so low he
could scarcely hear it. Smoky lashes fluttered on her cheeks. "When I was
told to come—with you—I mean, I didn't know—"
"My
dear girl," said Flandry, "credit me with enough experience to
identify a holstered needle gun among more attractive curves beneath that
coverall."
CHAPTER VIII
There
was always1
something unreal about a long trip through space. Here, for a time, you were
alone in the universe. No radio could outpace you and be received, even if
unimaginable distance would not soon have drowned it in silence. No other
signal existed, except another spaceship, and how would it find you unless your
feeble drive-pulsations were by the merest chance detected? A whole fleet might
travel many parsecs before some naval base sensed its wake with instruments;
your one mote of a craft could hurtle to the ends of creation and never be
heard. There was nothing to be seen, no landscape, no weather, simply the
enormous endless pageantry of changing constellations, now and then a cold
nebular gleam between flashing suns, the curdled silver of the Milky Way and the
clotted stars near Sagittarius. Yet you in your shell were warm, dry, breathing
sweet recycled air; on a luxury vessel like the Hooligan, you might listen to recorded Lysarcian bells,
sip Namorian maoth and taste Terran grapes.
Flandry worked himself even less mercifully
than he did Chives and Kit. It was the hard, dull grind which must underlie all
their hopes; study, rehearsal, analysis of data, planning and discarding and
planning again, until brains could do no more and thinking creaked to a halt. But
then recreation became pure necessity—and they were two humans with one
unobtrusive servant, cruising among the stars.
Flandry
discovered that Kit could give him a workout, when they played handball down in
the hold. And her stubborn chess game defeated his swashbuckling tactics most
of the time. She had a puckish humor when she wasn't remembering her planet.
Flandry would not soon forget her thumbnail impression of Vice Admiral Fenross,
"A mind like a mousetrap, only he ought to let
some o' those poor littie mice go." She could play the lorr, her fingers
dancing over its twelve primary strings with that touch which brings out the
full ringing resonance of the secondaries; she seemed to know all the ballads
from the old brave days when men were first hewing their homes out of Vixen's
wilderness, and they were good to hear.
Flandry
grew slowly aware that she was not at all bad looking. She just hadn't been
sculped into the monotonously aristocratic appearance of Terra's high-born
ladies. The face, half boyish, was her own, the body
full and supple where it counted. He swore dismally to himself and went on a
more rigorous calisthenic program.
Slowly
the stars formed new patterns. There came a time when Aldebaran stood like red
flame, the brightest object in all heaven. And then the needle-point of Vixen's
sun, the star named Cerulia, glistened keen and blue ahead. And Flandry turned
from the viewscreen and said quietly, 'Two more days to go. I think we'll have
captain's dinner tonight."
"Very
good, sir," said Chives. "I took it upon myself to bring along some
live Maine lobster. And I trust the Lieb-fraumilch '51 will be
satisfactory?"
"That's the advantage of having a
Shalmuan for your batman," remarked Flandry to Kit. "Their race has
more sensitive palates than ours. They can't go wrong on vintages."
She smiled, but her eyes
were troubled.
Flandry
retired to his own cabin and an argument. He wanted to wear a peach-colored
tunic with his white slacks;
Chives
insisted that the dark blue, with a gold sash, was more suitable. Chives won,
naturally. The man wandered into the saloon, which was already laid out for a
feast, and poured himself an aperitif. Music sighed from the recorder, and it
was sweet to hear.
A
footfall came lightly behind him. He turned and nearly dropped his glass. Kit
was entering in a sheer black dinner gown; one veil the color of fire flickered
from her waistline. A filigree tiara crowned shining hair, and a bracelet of
Old Martian silver coiled massive on her wrist.
"Great
hopping electrons," gasped Flandry. "Don't do such things without warning! Where did the paintbrush come from to lay
on the glamor that thick?"
Kit
chuckled and pirouetted. "Chives," she said. "Who
else? He's a darlin'. He brought the jew'lry along, an' he's been makin'
the dress at odd moments this whole trip."
Flandry
shook his head and clicked his tongue. "If Chives would accept
manumission, he could set himself up in business, equipping lady spies to
seduce poor officers like me. He'd own the galaxy in ten years."
Kit
blushed and said hastily, "Did he select the tape too? I always have loved
Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto."
"Oh,
is that what it is? Nice music for a sentimental occasion, anyway. My
department is more the administration of drinks. I prescribe this before
dinner: Ansan aurea. Essentially, it's a light dry
vermouth, but for once a non-Terran soil has improved the flavor of a Terran plant."
She hesitated. "I
don't—I never—"
"Well,
high time you began." He did not glance at the viewscreen, where Cerulia
shone like steel, but they both knew there might not be many hours left for
them to savor existence. She took the glass, sipped, and sighed.
"Thank you, Dominic.
I've been missin' out on such a lot."
They
seated themselves. "We'll have to make that up, after this affair is
over," said Flandry. A darkening
passed through him, just long enough to make him add, "However, I suspect
that on the whole you've done better in life than I."
"What do you mean?" Her eyes, above
the glass, reflected the wine's hue and became almost golden.
"Oh . . . hard to say." His mouth twisted ruefully upward.
"I've no romantic illusions about the frontier. I've seen too much of it.
I'd a good deal rather loll in bed sipping my morning chocolate than bounce
into the fields before dawn to cultivate the grotch or scag the thimbs or
whatever dreary technicalities it is that pioneers undergo. And yet, well, I've
no illusions about my own class either, or my own way of life. You frontier
people are the healthy ones. You'll be around—most of you—long after the Empire
is a fireside legend. I envy you that."
He
broke off. "Pardon me. I'm afraid spiritual jaundice is an occupational
disease in my job."
"Which
I'm still not sure what is—Oh, dear." Kit
chuckled. "Does alcohol act that fast? But
really, Dominic, I wish you'd talk a little about your work. All you've said is, you're in Naval Intelligence. I'd like to know what you
do."
"Why?" he asked.
She flushed and blurted,
"To know you better."
Flandry
saw her confusion and moved to hide it from them both, "There's not a lot
to tell. I'm a field agent, which means I go out and peek through windows
instead of sitting in an office reading the reports of window peekers. Thanks
to the circumstance that my immediate superior doesn't like me, I spend most of
my working time away from Terra, on what amounts to a roving commission. Good
old Fenross. If he was ever replaced by some kindly father-type who dealt
justly with all subordinates, I'd dry up and blow away."
"I think that's revoltin'."
Anger flashed in her voice.
"What?
The discrimination? But my dear lass, what is any
civilization but an elaborate structure of special privileges? I've learned to
make my way around among them. Good frogs, d'you think I want a nice secure desk job with a guaranteed pension?"
"But
still, Dominic—a man like you, riskin' his life again an' again, sent almost
alone against all Ardazir . . . because someone doesn't like you!" Her
face still burned, and there was a glimmer of tears in the hazel eyes.
"Hard to imagine how that could
be," said Flandry with calculated smugness. He added, lightly and almost
automatically, "But after all, think what an outrageous special privilege
your personal heredity represents, so much beauty, charm, and intelligence lavished
on one litde girl."
She
grew mute, but faintly she trembled. With a convulsive gesture, she tossed off
her glass.
Easy,
boy, thought Flandry. A
not unpleasurable alertness came to life. Emotional scenes are the last thing we want
out here. "Which
brings up the general topic of you," he said in his chattiest tone.
"A subject well worth discussing over the egg flower soup which I see
Chives bringing in ... or any other
course, for that matter. Let's see, you were a weather engineer's assistant for
a living, isn't that right? Sounds like fun, in an earnest high-booted
way." And
might prove useful, added
that part of him which never took a vacation.
She
nodded, as anxious as he to escape what they had skirted. They took pleasure in
the meal, and talked of many things. Flandry confirmed his impression that Kit
was not an unsophisticated peasant. She didn't know the latest delicious gossip
about you-know-who and that actor. But she had measured the season of her
strange violent planet; she could assemble a machine so men could trust their
lives to it; she had hunted and sported, seen birth and death; the intrigues of
her small city were as subtle as any around the Imperial throne. Withal, she
had the innocence of most frontier folk— or call it
optimism, or honor, or courage—at any rate, she had not begun to despair of the
human race.
But
because he found himself in good company, and this was a special occasion, he
kept both their glasses filled. After a while he lost track of how many times
he had poured.
When
Chives cleared the table and set out coffee and liqueur, Kit reached eagerly
for her cup. "I need this," she said, not quite clearly. " 'Fraid I had too much to drink."
"That
was the general idea," said Flandry. He accepted a cigar from Chives. The
Shalmuan went noiselessly out. Flandry looked across the table. Kit sat with
her back to the broad viewscreen, so that the stars were like jewels clustered
around her tiara.
"I don't believe
it," she said after a moment.
"You're probably right," said
Flandry. "What don't you believe?"
"What you were
sayin'... 'bout the Empire bein' doomed."
"It's better not to
believe that," he said gently.
"Not
because o' Terra," she said. She leaned forward. The light was soft on her
bare young shoulders. "The little bit I saw there was a hard blow. But
Dominic, as long's the Empire has men like, like you—we'll take on the whole
universe an' win."
"Blessings," said
Flandry in haste.
"No." Her eyes were the least bit
hazed, but they locked steadily with his. She smiled, more in tenderness than
mirth. "You won't wriggle off the hook with a joke this time, Dominic. You
gave me too much to drink, you see, an'—I mean it. A planet with you on its
side has still got hope enough."
Flandry
sipped his liqueur. Suddenly the alcohol touched his own
brain with its pale fires, and he thought, Why not be honest with her? She can take it.
Maybe she even deserves it.
"No,
Kit," he said. "I know my class from the inside out, because it is my
class and I probably wouldn't choose another even if some miracle made me able
to. But we're hollow, and corrupt, and death has marked us for
its own. Ultimately, though we disguise it, however strenuous and
hazardous and even lofty our amusements are, the only reason we can find for
living is to have fun. And I'm afraid that isn't reason enough."
"But it is!" she
cried.
"You
think so," he said, "because you're lucky enough to belong to a society
which still has important jobs uncompleted. But we aristocrats of Terra, we
enjoy life instead of enjoying what we're doing . . . and there's a cosmos of
difference.
"The
measure of our damnation is that every one of us with an intelligence—and there
are some—every one sees the Long Night coming. We've grown too wise; we've
studied a little psychodynamics, or perhaps only read a lot of history, and we
can see that Manuel's Empire was not a glorious resurgence. It was the Indian
summer of Terran civilization. (But you've never seen Indian summer, I suppose.
A pity; no planet has anything more beautiful and full of old magics.) Now even
that short season is past. Autumn is far along; the nights are cold and the
leaves are fallen and the last escaping birds call through a sky which has lost
all color. And yet, we who see winter coming can also see it won't be here till
after our lifetimes ... so we shiver
a bit, and swear a bit, and go back to playing with a few bright dead
leaves."
He
stopped. Silence grew around them. And then, from the intercom, music began
again, a low orchestral piece which spoke to deep places of their awareness.
"Excuse
me," said Flandry. "I really shouldn't have wished my sour pessimism
on you."
Her
smile this time held a ghost of pity. "An' o' course 'twouldn't be debonair to show your real feelin's, or try to find words
for them."
"ToucheV
He cocked his head. "Think we could dance to that?"
'The music? Hardly. The Liebestod is background for somethin' else. I wonder if
Chives knew." "Hm?" Flandry looked
surprised at the girl. "I don't mind at all," she whispered.
"Chives is a darlin'." Suddenly he understood.
But
the stars were chill behind her. Flandry thought of guns and dark fortresses
waiting for them both. He thought of knighdy honor, which would not take
advantage of the helplessness which is youth—and then, with a little sadness,
he decided that practical considerations were what really turned the balance
for him.
He
raised the cigar to his mouth and said softly, "Better drink your coffee
before it gets cold, lass."
With
that, the moment was safely over. He thought he saw disappointed gratitude in
Kit's hurried glance, but wasn't sure. She turned around, gazing at the stars
merely to avoid facing him for the next few seconds.
Her breath sighed outward. She sat looking at
Cerulia for a whole minute. Then she stared down at her hand and said
tonelessly, "Figure you're right 'bout the Empire. But then what's to
become o' Vixen?"
"We'll
liberate it, and squeeze a fat indemnity out of Ardazir," said Flandry as
if there were no doubt.
"Uh-uh."
She shook her head. Bitterness began to edge her voice. "Not
if 'tisn't convenient. Your Navy might decide to fight the war out where
'tis. An' then my whole planet, my people, the little girl next door an' her
kitten, trees an' flowers an' birds, why, 'twill just be radioactive ash
blowin' over dead gary hills. Or maybe the Imperium will decide to compromise,
an' let Ardazir keep Vixen. Why not? What's one planet to the Empire? A swap
might, as you say, buy them peace in their own lifetimes. A few million human
bein's, that's nothin', write them off in red ink." She shook her head
again in a dazed way. "Why are we goin' there, you an' I?
What are we workin' for? Whatever we do can come to nothin',
from one stroke of a pen in some bored bureaucrat's hand. Can't
it?"
"Yes," said
Flandry.
CHAPTER IX
Cerulia, being a main-sequence star, did not need
vastly more mass than Sol to shine more fiercely. Vixen, the fourth planet out,
circled its primary in one and a half standard years, along such an orbit that
it received, on the average, about as much radiation as Terra.
"The catch lies in that word 'average,'
" murmured Flandry.
He
floated in the turret with Chives, hands on the control panel and body
weightless in a cocoon of pilot harness. To port, the viewscreens were dimmed,
lest the harsh blue sun burn out his eyes. Elsewhere, distorted constellations
sprawled stark against night. Flandry picked out the Jupiter-type planet called
Ogre by the humans of Vixen: a bright yellow glow, its larger moons visible
like sparks. And what were its Ymirite colonists thinking?
"Ogre's
made enough trouble for Vixen all by itself," complained Flandry.
"Its settlers ought to be content with that, and not go plotting with
Ardazir. If they are, I mean." He turned to Chives. "How's Kit taking
this free-fall plunge?"
"I regret to say Miss Kittredge did not
look very comfortable, sir," answered the Shahnuan. "But she said she
was."
Flandry
clicked his tongue. Since the advent of gravity control, there had been little
need for civilians ever to undergo weightlessness; hence Kit, susceptible to it
didn't have the training that would have helped. Well, she'd be a lot sicker if
an Ardazirho missile homed on the Hooligan. Nobody
ever died of space nausea: no such luckl
Ardazir
would undoubtedly have mounted tight guard over conquered Vixen. Flandry's
detectors were confirming this. The space around the planet quivered with
primary-drive vibrations, patrolling warcraft, and there must be a network of
orbital robot monitors to boot. A standard approach was certain to be spotted.
There was another way to land, though, if you were enough of a pilot and had
enough luck. Flandry had decided to go ahead with it, rather than contact
Walton's task force. He couldn't do much there except report himself in . . . and
then proceed to Vixen anyway, with still more likelihood of detection and
destruction.
Engines cold, the Hooligan plunged at top meteoric velocity straight
toward her goal. Any automaton was sure to register her as a siderite, and
ignore her. Only visual observation would strip that disguise off; and space is
so vast that even with the closest blockade, there was hardly a chance of
passing that close to an unwarned enemy. Escape from the surface would be
harder, but this present stunt was foolproof. Until you hit atmosphere I
Flandry watched Vixen swelling in the forward
viewscreens. To one side Cerulia burned, ominously big. The planet's northern
day-side was like a slice of incandescence; polarizing telescopes showed bare
mountains, stony deserts, rivers gone wild with melted snows. In the southern
hemisphere, the continents were still green and brown, the oceans deeply blue,
like polished cobalt. But cloud banded that half of the world, storms marched
roaring over hundreds of kilometers, lightning flared through rain. The equator
was hidden under a nearly solid belt of cloud and gale. The northern aurora was
cold flame; the south pole, less brilliant, still
shook great banners of light into heaven. A single small moon, 100,000
kilometers from the surface, looked pale against that luminance.
The spaceship seemed tomb silent when Flandry
switched his attention back to it. He said, just to make a noise, "And
this passes for a terrestroid, humanly habitable planet. What real estate
agents they must have had in the pioneer days!"
"I understand that southern Cerulia IV
is not unsalubrious most of the year, sir," said Chives. "It is only
now, in fact, that the northern part becomes lethal."
Flandry
nodded. Vixen was the goat of circumstance; huge Ogre had exactly four times
the period, and thus over millions of years resonance had multiplied
perturbation and brought the eccentricity of Vixen's orbit close to one-half.
The planet's axial inclination was 24°, and northern midsummer fell nearly at
periastron. Thus, every eighteen months, Cerulia scorched that hemisphere with
fourfold the radiation Terra got from Sol. This section of the orbit was
hastily completed, and most of Vixen's year was spent in cooler regions.
"But I dare say the Ardazirho timed their invasion for right now,"
said Flandry. "If they're from an A-type star, the northern weather
shouldn't be too hard on them."
He
put out his final cigarette. The planet filled the bow screen. Robot mechanisms
could do a lot, but now there must also be live piloting ... or a streak in Vixen's sky and a crater
blasted from its rock.
At the Hooligan's speed,
she crossed the tenuous upper air layers and hit stratosphere in a matter of
seconds. It was like a giant's fist. Flandry's harness groaned as his body
hurtled forward. There was no outside noise, yet, but the flitter herself
shrieked in metallic pain. The screens became one lurid fire, air heated to
incandescence.
Flandry's
arm trembled with weight. He slammed it down on the drive switches. Chives'
slight form could not stir under these pressures, but the green tail darted,
button to dial to vernier. Engines bellowed as they fought to shed velocity.
The vessel glowed red; but her metal was crystallized to endure more than
furnace heat. Thunder banged around her, within her. Flandry felt his ribs
shoved toward his lungs, as direction shifted. Still he could see only flame
outside. But his blurring eyes read instruments. He knew the vessel had leveled
off, struck denser atmosphere, skipped like a stone, and was now rounding the
planet in monstrous shuddering bounces.
Only
then did he have time to reactivate the internal compensators. A steady one gee
poured its benediction through him. He drew unsteady breath into an aching
chest. "For this we get paid?" he
mumbled.
While
Chives took over, and the thermostat brought the turret near an endurable
temperature, Flandry unbuckled and went below to. Kit's
stateroom. She lay unstirring in harness, a trickle of blood from the
snub nose. He injected her with stimulol. Her eyes fluttered open. She looked
so young and helpless that he had to glance away. "Sorry to jolt you back
to consciousness in this fashion," he said. "It's bad practice. But
right now, we need a guide."
"O' course." She preceded him to the turret. He sat down and she leaned over his
shoulder, frowning at the viewscreens. The Hooligan burrowed into atmosphere on a steep downward
slant. The roar of cloven air boomed through the hull. Mountains rose jagged on
a night horizon. "That's the Ridge," said Kit. "Head yonder,
over Moonstone Pass." On the other side, a shadowed valley gleamed with
rivers, under stars and a trace of aurora. "There's the Shaw, an' the
King's Way cuttin' through. Land anywhere near, 'tisn't likely the boat will be
found."
The Shaw belied its name; it was a virgin
forest, 40,000 square kilometers of tall trees. Flandry set his craft down so
gently that not a twig was broken, cut the engines and leaned back. "Thus
far," he breathed gustily, "we is did it, chillun!"
"Sir,"
said Chives, "may I once again take the liberty of suggesting
that if you and the young lady go off alone, without me, you need a
psychiatrist."
"And
may I once again tell you where to stick your head," answered Flandry.
"I'll have trouble enough passing myself off as a Vixenite, without you
along. You stay with the boat and keep ready to fight Or,
more probably, to scramble out of here like an egg."
He
stood up. "We'd better start now, Kit," he added. "That drug
won't hold you up for very many hours."
Both
humans were already dressed in the soft green coveralls Chives had made
according to Kit's description of professional hunters. That would also explain
Flandry's little radio transceiver, knife and rifle; his accent might pass for
that of a man lately moved here from the Avian Islands. It was a thin enough
disguise . . . but the Ardazirho wouldn't have an eye for fine details.~The main thing was to reach Kit's home city, Garth,
undetected. Once based there, Flandry could assess the situation and start
making trouble.
Chives
wrung his hands, but bowed his master obediendy out the airlock. It was
midwinter, but also periastron; only long nights and frequent rains marked the
season in this hemisphere. The forest floor was thick and soft underfoot. Scant
light came through the leaves, but here and there on the high trunks glowed
yellow phosphorescent fungi, enough to see by. The air was warm, full of strange
green scents. Out in the darkness there went soft whistlings, callings,
croakings, patterings, once a scream which cut off in
a gurgle, the sounds of a foreign wilderness.
It
was two hours' hike to the King's Way. Flandry and Kit fell into the rhythm of
it and spoke litde. But when they finally came out on the broad starlit ribbon
of road, her hand stole jnto his. "Shall we walk on?" She asked.
"Not if Garth is fifty kilometers to
go," said Flandry. He sat down by the road's edge. She lowered herself into
the curve of his arm.
"Are you cold?"
he asked, feeling her shiver.
"
'Fraid,"
she admitted.
His
lips brushed hers. She responded shyly, unpracticed. It beat hiking. Or did it?
1 never liked hors d'oeuvres alone for a meal, thought Flandry, and drew her close.
Light
gleamed far down the highway. A faint growl waxed. Kit disengaged herself. "Saved by the bell," murmured Flandry,
"but don't stop to wonder which of us was." She laughed,
a small and trembling sound beneath unearthly constellations.
Flandry
got up and extended his arm. The vehicle ground to a halt and the driver of the
ten-cartnjck leaned out. "Boun' for Garth?" he called.
"That's
right." Flandry helped Kit into the cab and followed. The truck started
again, its train rumbling for 200 meters behind.
"Goin'
to turn in your gun, are you?" asked the driver. He was a burly
bitter-faced man. One arm carried the traces of a recent blaster wound.
"Figure
so," Kit replied. "My husban' an' I been trekkin' in the Ridge this last
three months. We heard 'bout the invasion an' started back, but floods held us
up—rains, you know— an' our radio's given some trouble too. So we aren't sure
o' what's been happenin'."
"Enough."
The driver spat out the window. He glanced sharply at them. "But what the
gamma would anybody be doin' in the mountains this time o' year?"
Kit
began to stammer. Flandry said smoothly, "Keep it confidential, please,
but this is when the cone-tailed radcat comes off the harl. It's dangerous,
yes, but we've filled six caches of grummage."
"Hm . . . uh . . . yeh. Sure. Well, when you reach Garth, better not
carry your gun yourself to the wolf headquarters.
They'll
most likely shoot you first an' ask your intentions later. Lay it down
somewhere an' go ask one o' them would he please be so kind as to come take it
away from you."
"I hate to^give up
this rifle," said Flandry.
The
driver shrugged. "Keep it, then, if you want to take the risk. But not aroun' me. I fought at Burnt Hill, an' played dead
all night while those howlin' devils hunted the remnants of our troop. Then I
got home somehow, an' that's enough. I got a wife an' children to keep."
He jerked his thumb backward. "Load o' rare earth ore this trip. The
wolves'll take it, an' Hobden's mill will turn it into fire-control
elements for 'em, an' they'll shoot some more at the Empire's ships. Sure, call
me a quislin'—an' then wait till you've seen your friends run screamin' down
your street with a pack o' batsnakes flappin' an' snappin' at them an' the
wolves boundin' behind laughin'. Ask yourself if you want to go through that,
for an Empire that's given us up already."
"Has it?" asked Flandry. "I
understood from one 'cast that there were reinforcements coming."
"Sure.
They're here. One o' my chums has a pretty good radio, an' sort o' followed the
space battle when Walton's force arrived, by receivin' stray messages. It petered
out pretty quick, though. What can Walton do, unless he attacks this planet,
where the wolves are now based, where they're already makin' their own supplies
an' munitions? An' if he does that—" The headlight reflections shimmered
off sweat on the man's face. "No more Vixen. Just a
cinder. You pray God, chum, that the Terrans
don't try to blast Ardazir off Vixen."
"What's happening,
then, in space?" asked Flandry.
He
didn't expect a coherent reply. To the civilian, as to the average fighter, war
is one huge murky chaos. It was a pure gift when the driver said, "My chum
caught radio 'casts beamed at us from the Terran fleet. The wolves tried to jam
it, o' course, but I heard an' figure 'tis mostly truth. Because 'tis bad
enough 1 There was a lot o' guff about keepin' up our
courage, an' sabotagin' the enemy, an'—" The driver rasped an obscenity.
"Sorry, ma'm. But wait till you see what 'tis
really like arou' Garth an' you'll know how I feel about that idea. Admiral Walton says his fleet's seized some asteroid bases an'
theirs isn't tryin' to get him off 'em. Stalemate, you see, till the wolves
have built up enough strength. Which they're doin', fast. The reason the
admiral can't throw everything he's got against them in space is that he has to
watch Ogre too. Seems there's reason to suspect Ymir might be in cahoots with
Ardazir. The Ymirites aren't sayin'. You know what they're like."
Flandry nodded. "Yes.
'If you will not accept our word that we are neutral, there is no
obvious way to let you convince yourselves, since the whole Terran Empire could
not investigate a fraction of Dispersal territory. Accordingly, we shall not
waste our time discussing the question.'"
"That's
it, chum. You've got the very tone. They might be honest, sure. Or they might
be waitin' for the minute Walton eases up his watch on 'em, to jump him."
Flandry
glanced out. The stars flashed impersonally, not caring that a few motes of
flesh named them provinces for a few centuries. He saw that part of this
planet's sky which had no stars, a hole into forever. Kit had told him it was
called the Hatch. But that was only a nearby dark nebula, not even a big one.
The clear white spark of Rigel was more sinister, blazing from the heart of
Merseia's realm. And what of Ogre, tawny above the trees?
"What
do you think will happen?" Kit's voice could scarcely be heard through the
engine grumble.
"I,don't even dare guess," said the driver. "Maybe
Walton'U negotiate something—might leave us here, to
become wolf-catde, or might arrange to evacuate us an' we can become beggars on
Terra. Or he might fight in space . . . but even if he doesn't attack their
forts here on Vixen, we'll all be hostages to Ardazir, won't we? Or the
Ymirites might attack. . . . No, ma'm, I'm just drivin' my truck an' drawin' my
pay an' feedin' my family. Shorter rations every week, it seems. Figure there's
nothin' else any one person can do. Is there?"
Kit began to cry, a soft hopeless sobbing on
Flandry's shoulder. He laid an arm around her and they sat thus all the way to
Garth.
CHAPTER X
Night again, after a short hot winter day full of
thunderstorms.
Flandry and Emil Bryce stood in the pit blackness of an alley, watching a
nearly invisible street. Rain sluiced over their cloaks. A fold in Flandry's
hood was letting trickle in, his tunic was soaked, but he dared not move. At
any moment now, the Ardazirho would come by.
The
rain roared slow and heavy, down over the high-peaked roofs of Garth, through
blacked-out streets and gurgling into the storm drains. All wind had stopped,
but now and then lightning glared. There was a brief white view of pavement
that shimmered wet, half-timbered houses with blind shutters crowded side by
side, a skeletal transmitter tower for one of the robotic weather-monitor
stations strewn over the planet. Then night clamped back down, and thunder went
banging through enormous hollow spaces.
Emil
Bryce had not moved for half an hour. But he really was a hunter by trade,
thought Flandry. The Terran felt an unreasonable resentment of Bryce's guild.
Damn them, it wasn't fair, in that trade they stood waiting for prey since they
were boys—and he had to start cold. No, hot.
It steamed beneath his rain cape.
Feet resounded on the walk. They did not have
a human rhythm. And they did not smack the ground first With
a boot heel, but clicked metal-shod toes along the pavement.
A
flashbeam bobbed, slashing darkness with a light too blue and sharp for human
comfort. Watery reflections touched Bryce's broad red face. His mouth alone
moved, and Flandry could read fear upon it. Wolvesl
But
Bryce's dart gun slithered from under his cloak. Flandry eased steel knucks
onto one hand. With the other, he gestured Bryce back. He, Flandry, must go first, pick out the precise enemy he wanted—in darkness, in
rain, and all their faces nonhuman. Nor would uniforms help; the Ardazirho bore
such a wild variety of dress.
But
. . . Flandry was trained. It had been worth a rifle, to have an excuse for
entering local invader headquarters. Their garrison in Garth was not large: a
few hundred, for a city of a quarter million. But modern heavy weapons
redressed that, robotanks, repeating cannon, the flat announcement that any
town where a human uprising actually succeeded would be missiled. (The glassy
crater which had been Marsburg proved it.) The Garth garrison was there chiefly
to man observation posts and anti-spacecraft defenses in the vicinity; but they
also collected firearms, directed factories to produce for their army, prowled
in search of any citizens with spirit left to fight. Therefore, Flandry told
himself, their chief officer must have a fair amount of knowledge—and the chief
officer spoke Anglic, and Flandry had gotten a good look at him while
surrendering the rifle, and Flandry was trained to tell faces apart, even
nonhuman faces—
And
now Clanmaster Temulak, as he had called himself, was going off duty, from
headquarters to barracks. Bryce and others had been watching the Ardazirho for
weeks. They had told Flandry that the invaders went on foot, in small armed
parties, whenever practicable. Nobody knew quite why. Maybe they preferred the
intimacy with odors and sounds which a vehicle denied; it was known they had
better noses than man. Or perhaps they relished the challenge; more than once,
humans had attacked such a group, been beaten off and hunted down and torn to
pieces. Civilians had no chance against body armor, blast-weapons, and reflexes
trained for combat
But I'm not a civilian, Flandry told himself, and Bryce has some rather special skills.
The
quarry passed by. Scattered flashbeam light etched the ruffed, muzzled heads
against flowing dimness. There were five. Flandry identified Temulak, helmeted
and cor-seleted, near the middle. He glided out of the alley, behind them.
The Ardazirho whipped about. How keen were
their ears? Flandry kept going. One red-furred alien hand dropped toward a
holstered blaster. Flandry smashed his steel-knuckled fist at Temulak's face.
The enemy bobbed his head, the knucks clanged off the helmet. And light metal
sheathed his belly, no blow would have effect there.
The blaster came out. Flandry chopped down his left palm, edge on, with savage
precision. He thought he felt wristbones crack beneath it. Temulak's gun
clattered to the pavement. The Ardazirho threw back his head and howled,
ululating noise hurled into the rain. And Headquarters only half a kilometer
away, barracks no further in the opposite direction—
Flandry
threw a karate kick to the jaw. The officer staggered back. But he was quick,
twisting about to seize the man's ankle before it withdrew. They went down
together. Temulak's right hand still hung useless, but his left snatched for
Flandry's throat. The Terran glimpsed fingernails reinforced with sharp steel
plectra. He threw up an arm to keep his larynx from being torn out. Temulak
howled again. Flandry chopped at the hairy neck. The Ardazirho ducked and sank
teeth into Flandry's wrist. Anguish went like flame along the nerves. But now
Temulak was crouched before him. Flandry slammed down a rabbit punch. Temulak
slumped. Flandry got on his back and throttled him.
Looking up, gasping, the man saw shadows leap
and yell in the glow of the dropped flashlight. There had been no way simply to
needle Temulak. He was wanted alive, and Flandry didn't know what anesthetics
might be fatal to an Ardazirho. But Bryce had only to kill the guards, as
noiselessly as possible. His airgun spat cyanide darts, quick death for any
oxygen breather. And his skilled aim sent those darts into exposed flesh, not
uselessly breaking on armor. Two shapes sprawled in the street. Another had
somehow jumped for Bryce's throat. The hunter brought up one boot. It clanged
on a breastplate, but sheer force sent the alien lurching backward. Bryce shot
him. By then the last one had freed his blaster. It crashed and blazed through
rain. Bryce had already dropped. The ion bolt sizzled where he had been. Bryce,
fired, missed, rolled away from another blast, fired again and missed. Now
howling could be heard down the street, as a pack of invaders rallied to come
and help.
Flandry
reached across Temulak's gaunt body, picked up the Clanmaster's gun, and
waited. He was nearly blind in this night. The other Ardazirho's blaster flamed
once more. Flandry fired where it showed. The alien screamed, once, and thudded
to the street. Scorched hair and meat smoked sickly in the wet air.
"Out
o' here!" gasped Bryce. He sprang erect. 'They're comin'I An' they'll track us by scent—"
"I
came prepared for that,"
said Flandry. A brief hard
grin peeled his teeth. He let Bryce pick up Temulak while he got a flat
plastibottle from his tunic. He turned a pressure nozzle and sprayed a liter of
gasoline around the area. "If their noses are any good for several minutes
after this, I give up. Let's go."
Bryce led the way, through the alley to the next street, down a block of
horribly open paving, then hand-over-hand across a garden wall. No private human vehicles could move after
dark without being shot at from the air, but it wasn't far to the underground
hideout. In fact, too close, thought Flandry. But then, who on Vixen had any
experience with such operations? Kit had looked up those friends in Garth who
smuggled her out, and they had led Flandry straight to
their bitter little organization. It expedited matters this time, yes, but suppose the Ardazirho had supplied a ringer? Or . . . it was
only a matter of time before they started questioning humans in detail, under
drugs and duress. Then you needed cells, changing passwords, widely scattered
boltholes, or your underground was done for.
Flandry
stumbled through drenched flower beds. He helped Bryce carry Temulak down into
the hurricane cellar; standard for every house in Garth. A tunnel had been dug
from this one; its door, at least, was well concealed. Flandry and Bryce groped
for several hundred meters to the other end. They emerged beneath a house whose
address they should not have been permitted to know.
Judith
Hurst turned about with a small shriek when the cellar door opened.
Then dim light picked out Bryce's heavy form, and Temulak still limp in the
hunter's arms. Flandry came behind, shedding his cape with a relieved whistie. "Oh," gasped Judith. "You got
him!"
Bryce's
eyes went around the circle of them. A dozen men stood with taut brown faces in
the light of a single small fluoro. Their shadows fell monstrous in the corners
and across the window shutters. Knives and forbidden guns gleamed at their
belts. Kit was the only person seated, still slumped in the dull sadness of
stimulol reaction.
"Damn
near didn't," grunted Bryce. "Couldn't have,
without the captain here. Sir Dominic, I apologize for some things I'd
been thinkin' lately 'bout Terra."
"An' I." Judith Hurst trod forward, taking both the Navy man's hands. She was
among the few women in the underground, and Flandry thought it a crime to risk such looks being shot up. She was tall, with long auburn
hair and skin like cream; her eyes were sleepy brown in a full, pouting face;
her figure strained at shorts and bolero. "I never thought I'd see you
again," she said. "But you've come back with the first real success
this war's had for us."
"Two
swallows do not make a drinking bout," warned Flandry. He gave
her his courtliest bow. "Speaking of which, I could use something liquid,
and cannot imagine a more ornamental cupbearer. But first, let's deal with
friend Temulak. This way, isn't it?"
As
he passed Kit, her exhausted eyes turned up to him. Slow tears coursed down her
face. "Oh, Dominic, you're alive," she whispered. "That makes
everything else seem like nothin'." She rose to wobbly legs. He threw her
a preoccupied smile and continued on past, his brain choked with
technicalities.
Given
a proper biopsych lab, he could have learned how to get truth out of Temulak
with drugs and electronics. But now he just didn't have data on the species. He
would have to fall back on certain widely applicable, if not universal, rules
of psychology.
At his orders, an offside room in the cellar
had been provided with, a comfortable bed. He stripped Temulak and tied him
down, firmly, but using soft bonds which wouldn't chafe. The prisoner began to
stir. By this time Flandry was through and Temulak immobile, the gray alien
eyes were open and the muzzle wrinkled back over white teeth. A growl rumbled
in Temulak's throat.
"Feeling better?" asked the man
unctuously.
"Not
as well as I shall when we pull you down in the street." The Anglic was
thickly accented, but fluent, and it bore a haughtiness
like steel.
"I
shudder." Flandry kindled a cigarette. "Well, comrade, if you want to
answer some questions now, it will save trouble all around. I presume, since
you're alive, you've been blanked of your home sun's co-ordinates. But you
retain clues." He blew a thoughtful smoke ring. "And, to be sure,
there are the things you obviously do know, since your rank requires it. Oh, all sorts of things, dear heart, which my side is just dying to
find out." He chuckled. "I don't mean that literally. Any dying
will be done by you."
Temulak
stiffened. "If you think I would remain alive, at the price of betraying
the orbekh—"
"Nothing so clear-cut." The red fur
bristled, but Temulak snarled: "Nor will pain "in any degree compel
me. And I do not believe you understand the phychophysiology of my race well
enough to undertake total reconditioning."
"No,"
admitted Flandry, "not yet. However, I haven't time for reconditioning in
any event, and torture is so strenuous . . . besides offering no guarantee that
when you talk, you won't fib. No, no, my friend, you'll want to spill to me
pretty soon. Whenever you've had enough, just call and I'll come hear you
out."
He
nodded to Dr. Reineke. The physician wheeled forth the equipment he had
abstracted from Garth General Hospital at Flandry's request. A blindfolding
hood went over Temulak's eyes, sound-deadening wax filled his ears and plugged
his nose, a machine supplied him with intravenous nourishment and another
removed body wastes. They left him immobile and, except for the soft constant
pressure of bonds and bed, sealed into a darkness like
death. No sense impressions could reach him from outside. It was painless, it
did no permanent harm, but the mind is not intended for such isolation. When
there is nothing by which it may orient itself, it rapidly loses all knowledge
of time; an hour seems like a day, and later like a week or a year. Space and
material reality vanish. Hallucinations come, and the will begins to crumble.
Most particularly is this true when the victim is -among enemies, tensed to
feel the whip or knife which his own ferocious culture would surely use.
Flandry
closed the door. "Keep a guard," he said. "When he begins to
holler, let me know." He peeled off his tunic. "From whom can I beg
something dry to wear?"
Judith
gave his torso a long look. "I thought all Terrans Were flabby, Sir Dominic," she purred. "I was wrong about that,
too."
His
eyes raked her. "And you, my dear, make it abundantly plain that Vixenites
are anything but," he leered.
She took his arm. "What do you plan to
do next?"
"Scratch
around. Observe. Whip this maquisard outfit into
something efficient. There are so many stunts to teach you. To name just one,
any time you've no other amusement, you can halt work at a war factory for half
a day with an anonymous telecall warning that a time bomb's been planted and
the staff had better get out. Then there's all the rest of your planet to
organize. I don't know how many days I'll have, but there's enough work to fill
a year of 'em." Flandry stretched luxuriously. "Right now, though, I
want that drink I spoke of."
"Here you are,
sir." Bryce held out a flask.
Judith
flicked a scowl at him. "Is that white mule all you can offer the
captain?" she cried. Her hair glowed along her back as she turned to smile
again at Flandry. "I know you'll think I'm terribly forward, but I have
two bottles o' real Bourgogne at my house. 'Tis only a
few blocks from here, an' I know a safe way to go."
Oh-hol Flandry licked his mental chops.
"Delighted," he said.
"I'd
invite the rest o' you," said Judith sweetly, "but 'tisn't enough to
go aroun', an' Sir Dominic deserves it the most. Nothin's too good for him,
that's what I think. Just nothin' at all."
"Agreed,"
said Flandry. He bowed goodnight and went out with her.
Kit
stared after them a moment. As he closed the door, he heard her burst into
weeping.
CHAPTER XI
Three of Vixen's 22-hour rotation periods went by, and part of a fourth, before the message
came that Temulak had broken. Flandry whistled. "It's about time! If
they're all as tough as that—"
Judith
clung to him. "Do you have to go right now, darlin'?" she murmured.
"You've been away so much . . . out prowlin', spyin', an' the streets
still full o' packs huntin' for whoever attacked that squad—I'm terrified for
you."
He look was more inviting than anxious.
Flandry kissed her absent-mindedly. "We're patriots and all that sort of
rot," he said. "I could not love you so much, dear, et cetera. Now do
let go." He was out the door before she could speak further.
The
way between her house and the underground's went mostly from garden to garden,
but there was a stretch of public thoroughfare. Flandry put hands in pockets
and sauntered along under rustling feather palms as if he had neither cares nor
haste. The other humans about, afoot or in groundcars, were subdued, the pinch
of hunger and shabbiness already upon them. Once a party of Ardazirho whirred
past on motor unicycles; their sharp red muzzles clove the air like prows, and
they left a wake of frightened silence behind them. The winter sun burned low
to northwest, big and dazzling white in a-pale sky, among hurried stormclouds.
When
Flandry let himself into the cellar, only Emil Bryce and Kit Kittredge were
there. The\ hunter lounged on guard. From the closed door behind him came
howling and sobbing. "He babbled he'd talk," said Bryce. "But
can you trust what he says?"
"Interrogation is a science too,"
answered Flandry. "If Temulak is enough like a human to break under
isolation, he won't be able to invent consistent lies fast enough when I start
throwing questions at him. Did you get that recorder I wanted?"
"Here." Kit picked it up. She
looked very small and alone in all the shadows. Sleeplessness had reddened her
eyes. She brought the machine to Flandry, who met her several meters from
Bryce. She leaned toward him on tiptoe and whispered shakily, "What will
you do now?"
Flandry
studied her. He had gotten to know her well on the journey here, he thought.
But that was under just one set of conditions—and how well does one human ever
know another, in spite of all pretentious psychology? Since capturing the
Adarzirho, he had only seen her on a single brief visit to this cellar. They
had had a few moments alone, but nothing very personal was said. There had been
no time for it. He saw how she trembled.
"I'm going to quiz brother
Temulak," he told her. "And afterward i cuiud use some dinner and a stiff drink."
"Wuh
Judith Hurst?" It startled him, how ferociously she spat it out.
"Depends," he
said in a careful tone.
"Dominic—"
She hugged herself, forlornly, to stop shivering. Her gaze blurred, seeking
his. "Don't. Please don't make me do . . . what I don't want—"
"We'll
see." He started toward the door. Kit began to cry, hopelessly this time.
Bryce got up. "Why, what all's the
matter?" he asked.
"She's
overtired." Flandry opened the door.
"Worse'n
that." The hunter looked from him to the girl and back again. Resentment
smoldered in his growl: "Maybe it's none o' my business—"
"It
isn't." Flandry stepped through, closing the door behind him.
Temulak
lay shuddering and gasping. Flandry set up the recorder and unplugged the
Ardazirho's ears. "Did you want to speak to me?" he asked mildly.
"Let
me go!" shrieked Temulak. "Let me go, I say! Zamara shammish ni ulan\" He opened his mouth and howled. It was so
much like a beast that a crawling went along Flandry's spine.
"We'll see, after
you've co-operated." The man sat down.
"I
never thought . . . you gray people . . . gray hearts—" Temulak whimpered.
He dribbled between his fangs.
"Goodnight,
then," said Flandry. "Sweet dreams."
"No!
No, let me see! Let me smell! I will . . . zamara, zamara—"
Flandry began to
interrogate.
It
took time. The basic principle was to keep hitting, snap out a question, yank
forth the answer, toss the next question, pounce on the smallest discrepancies,
always strike and strike and strike with never a second's pause for the victim
to think. Without a partner, Flandry was soon tired. He kept going, on
cigarettes and nerves; after the first hour, he lost count of time.
In
the end, with a full tape, he relaxed a moment. The air was nearly solid with
smoke. Sweat felt sticky under his clothes. He puffed yet another cigarette and
noticed impersonally the shakiness of his hand. But Temulak whined and
twitched, beaten close to mindlessness by sheer psychic exhaustion.
The picture so far was only a bare oudine,
thought Flandry in adull far-off way. How much could be told in one night of an
entire world, its greatness and rich variety, its many peoples and all their
histories? How much, to this day, do we really know about Terra? But the tape
held information worth entire ships.
Somewhere
there was a sun, brighter even than Cerulia, and a planet called Ardazir by its
principal nation. ("Nation" was the Anglic word; Flandry had an
impression that "clan alliance" or "pack aggregate" might
more, closely translate orbekh.)
Interplanetary travel had
been independendy achieved by that country. Then, some fifteen standard years
ago, gravities, super-light pseudo-speeds, the whole apparatus of the modern
galaxy, had burst upon Ardazir. The war lords (chiefs, speakers, pack leaders?)
of Urdahu, the dominant orbekh,
had promptly used these to
complete the subjugation of their own world. Then they turned outward. Their
hunters ravened into a dozen backward systems, looting and enslaving; engineers
followed, organizing the conquered planets for further war.
And
now the attack on the human empire had begun. The lords of Urdahu assured their
followers that Ardazir had allies, mighty denizens of worlds so alien that
there could never be any fear of attack . . . though these aliens had long been
annoyed by humankind, and found in Ardazir an instrument to destroy and replace
the Terran Empire. . . . Temulak had not inquired more deeply,
had not thought much about it at all. The Ardazirho seemed, by nature, somewhat
more reckless and fatalistic than men, and somewhat less curious. If
circumstances had provided a chance for adventure, glory, and wealth, that was
enough. Precaution could be left in care of the orbekh's wise old females.
Flandry
smoked in a thick silence. If Ymir were, indeed, behind Ardazir—it would be
natural for Ymir to co-operate temporarily with Merseia, whipsawing Terra
between the Syrax and Vixen crises. Maybe Merseia was next on Ymir's list.
Thereafter Ardazir would hardly prove troublesome to wreck.
But
what grudge could Ymir have against oxygen breathers,
or even against Terra alone? There had been some small friction, yes,
inevitably—but nothing serious, surely the monsters rubbed each other more raw than—And yet Horx did his level best to kill me. Why? What could he have been
hired with? What material thing from a terrestroid planet would not collapse in
his hands on Jupiter? What reason would he have, except orders from his own
governor, who was carrying out a policy hatched on Ymir itself—?
Flandry
clenched a fist. There was an answer to that question but not one he dared rely
on without further proof. He bent his mind back toward practicalities. Mostly
the tape held such details: the number of Ardazirho ships and troops in this
system, recognition signals, military dispositions across Vixen, the layout of
forts and especially of the great headquarters den; the total population of
Ardazir, resources, industry, army and navy—Temulak was not in on many state
secrets, but he had enough indications to give Flandry gooseflesh. Two million
or so warriors occupied Vixen; a hundred' million were still at home or on the
already conquered planets, where war material was being rapidly stockpiled;
officers had all been informed that there were plenty of other vulnerable
Imperial outposts, human colonies or the home worlds of Terran-allied species.
. . . Yes, Ardazir was surely planning to strike elsewhere within the Empire,
and soon. Another one or two such blows, and the Imperial Navy must surrender Syrax to Merseia, turn inward and defend the mother planet. At
which point—
Not
true that an army marches on its stomach, thought Flandry. It needs information even more than food. Marches on its head. Which, no doubt, is
why the Imperial High Command has so many flat-heads.
He
chuckled. Bad as it was, the joke strengthened him. And he was going to need
strength.
"Will
you let me see?" asked Temulak in a small, broken voice.
"I
will deprive you no longer of my beauty," said Flandry. He unhooded the
rufous head and drew his wax plugs from the nose. Temulak blinked dazedly into
smoke and one dull light. Flandry uncoupled the machines which had kept him
alive. "You'll remain our guest, of course," he said. "If it
turns out you prevaricated, back you go in the dark closet."
Temulak brisded. His teeth snapped together, missing the man's arm by a centimeter.
"Naughty!"
Flandry stepped back. "For that, you can stay tied up a while."
Temulak
snarled from the cot, "You gray-skinned hairless worm, if you think your valkuza's tricks will save you from the Black People—I myself will rip out your
gullet and strangle you with your own bowels!"
"And
foreclose my
mortgage," said Flandry. He went out, closing the door behind him.
Bryce and Kit started. They had fallen asleep
in their chairs. The hunter rubbed his eyes. "God o' the galaxy, you been
at it a long time!" he exclaimed.
"Here."
Flandry tossed him the tape spool. "This has to reach Admiral Walton's
fleet. It's necessary, if not quite sufficient, for your liberation. Can
do?"
"The enemy would pick up radio,"
said Bryce doubtfully. "We still got a few spaceships hid, but Kit's was
the fastest. An' since then, too, the wolf space guard's been tightened till it
creaks."
Flandry
sighed. "I was afraid of that." He scribbled on a sheet of paper.
"Here's a rough map to show you where my personal flitter is. D'you know this tune?" He whistled. "No? That proves
you've a clean mind. Well, learn it." He rehearsed the Vixenite till he was
satisfied. "Good. Approach the flitter whistling that, and Chives won't
shoot~you without investigation. Give him this note. .It says for him to take
the. tape to Walton. If anything can run that blockade
without collecting a missile, it's Chives in the Hooligan."
Kit
suppressed a gasp. "But then you, Dominic— no escape—"
Flandry
shrugged. "I'm much too tired to care about aught except a nice soft
bed."
Bryce,
sticking the spool under his tunic, grinned, "Whose?" Kit stood as if
struck.
Flandry nodded slightly at her. "That's
the way of it." He glanced at his chrono. "Close to
local midnight. Shove off, Bryce, lad. But stop by and tell Dr. Reineke
to shift his apparatus and the prisoner elsewhere. It's always best to keep
moving around, when you're being searched for. And nobody, except the pill
peddler and whoever helps him, is to know where they stash Temulak next. All clear?"
"Dominic—"
Kit closed her fists till the knuckles stood white. She stared down'at the floor, he could only see her short bright hair.
He
said gently, "I have to sleep or collapse, lass. I'll meet you at noon by
the Rocket Fountain. I think we've a few
private things to discuss."
She turned and fled
upstairs.
Flandry
departed too. The night sky was aflicker with aurora; he thought he could hear
its ionic hiss in the city's blacked-out silence. Once he scrambled to a roof
top and waited for an Ardazirho patrol to go by. Wan blue light glimmered off
their metal and their teeth.
Judith made him welcome.
"I've been so worried, darlin'—"
He
considered her a while. Weariness dragged at him. But she had put out a late
supper, with wine and a cold game bird, as she knew he liked it; and her hair
glowed red by candlelight. Sleep be damned, Flandry
decided. He might be permanently asleep tomorrow.
He
did nap for a few morning hours, and went out before noon. Explorers' Plaza had
been a gay scene once, where folk sat leisurely in the surrounding gardens,
sipping coffee and listening to harp trees in the wind and watching life stream
past. Now it was empty. The metal fountain itself, in the form of an ancient
space rocket, still jetted manycolored heatless fires from its tail; but they
seemed pale under the gloomy winter sky.
Flandry
took out a cigarette, sat down on the fountain rim and
waited. A few preliminary raindrops kissed his half lifted face.
A
military truck careened out of a deserted street and ground to a halt. Three
Ardazirho leaped from the cab. Kit was with them. She pointed at Flandry.
Lightning blinked immediately overhead, and sudden thunder swamped her words.
But the tone was vindictive.
"Halt,
human!"
It
must have been the only Anglic phrase any of the three
invaders knew. They bayed it again and yet again as
Flandry sprang to the plaza. He ducked and began to run, zigzagging.
No
shots were fired. An Ardazirho yelped glee and opened the truck body. Wings
snapped leathery. Flandry threw a glance behind. A score of meter-long snake
bodies were streaming upward from the truck. They saw him, whistled and
stooped.
Flandry
ran. His heart began to pump, the wildness of irrational uncontrollable terror.
The batsnakes reached him. He heard teeth click together behind his nape. A
lean body coiled on his right arm. He jerked the limb up, frantic. Wings
resisted him. Fangs needled into his flesh. The rest of the pack whirled and
dove and whipped him with their tails.
He
started to run again. The three Ardazirho followed, long bounds which took them
over the ground faster than a man could speed. They howled, and there was laughter
in their howling. The street was empty, resounding under boots. Shuttered
windows looked down without seeing. Doors were closed and locked.
Flandry
stopped. He spun around. His right arm was still cumbered. The left dove
beneath his tunic. His needier came out. He aimed at the nearest of the
laughing ruddy devils. A batsnake threw itself on his gun hand. It bit with
trained precision, into the fingers. Flandry let the weapon fall. He snatched
after the snake—to wring just one of their damned necks—!
It writhed free. Its reptile-like jaws
grinned at him. Then the Ardazirho closed in.
CHAPTER XII
Most
of the year, Vixen's
northern half was simply desert, swamp, or prairie, where a quick vegetative
life sprang up and animals that had been estivating crept from their burrows.
The arctic even knew snow, when winter-long night had fallen. But in summer the
snows melted to wild rivers, the rivers overflowed and became lakes, the lakes
baked dry. Storms raged about the equator and into the southern hemisphere, as
water precipitated again in cooler parts. Except for small seas dreary amidst
salt flats, the north blistered arid. Fires broke loose,
the pampas became barren again in a few red days. Under such erosive
conditions, this land had no mountains. Most of it was plain, where dust and
ash scoured on a furnace wind. In some places rose gnarled ranges, lifeless
hills, twisted crags, arroyos carved by flash flood into huge earth scars.
The
Ardazirho had established their headquarters in such a region, a little below
the arctic circle. Thousands of lethal kilometers made
it safe from human ground attack; the broken country was camouflage and
protection from spaceships. Not that they tried to conceal their fortress
absolutely. That would have been impossible. But it burrowed deep into the
range and offered few specific targets.
Here
and there Flandry saw a warship sitting insolently in the open, a missile
emplacement, a detector station, a lookout tower black and lean against the
blinding sky. Outer walls twisted through gullies and over naked ridges;
Ardazirho sentries paced them, untroubled by dry cruel heat, blue-white
hell-glare, pouring ultraviolet radiation. But mostly, the fortress went inside
the hills, long vaulted tunnels where boots clashed and voices echoed from room
to den-like room. Construction had followed standard dig-in methods: prodigal
use of atomic energy to fuse the living rock into desired patterns, then swift
robotic installation of the necessary mechanisms. But the layout was rougher,
more tortuous, less private, than man or Merseian would have liked. The
ancestral Ardazirho had laired in caves and hunted in packs.
Flandry
was hustled into a small room equipped as a laboratory. A pair of warriors
clamped him in place. A grizzled technician began to prepare instruments.
Often,
in the next day or two, Flandry screamed. He couldn't help it. Electronic
learning should not go that fast. But finally, sick and shaking, he could growl
the Urdahu language. Indeed, he thought, the Ardazirho had been thoroughly
briefed. They understood the human nervous system so well that they could stamp
a new linguistic pattern on it in mere hours, and not drive the owner insane.
Not quite.
Flandry
was led down endless booming halls. Their brilliant bluish fluorescence hurt
his eyes, forcing him to squint. Even so, he watched what passed. It might be a
truck load of ammunition, driven at crazy speed by a warrior who yelped curses
at foot traffic. Or it might be a roomful of naked red-furred shapes; sprawled
in snarling, quarrelsome fellowship; gambling with tetrahedral dice for stakes
up to a year's slavery; watching a wrestling match which employed teeth and
nails; testing nerve by standing up in turn against a wall while the rest threw
axes. Or it might be a sort of chapel, where a single scarred fighter wallowed
in pungent leaves before a great burning wheel. Or it might be a mess hall and
a troop lying on fur rugs, bolting raw meat and howling in chorus with one who
danced on a monstrous drumhead.
The man came at last to an office. This was
also an artificial cave, thick straw on the floor, gloom in the corners, a thin stream of water running down a groove in one wall. A
big Ardazirho lay prone on a hairy dais, lifted on both elbows to a slanting
desktop. He wore only a skirt of leather strips, a crooked knife and a very
modern blaster. But the telescreen and intercom before him were also new, and
Flandry's guards touched their black noses in his presence.
"Go,"
he said in the Urdahu. "Wait outside." The guards obeyed. He nodded
at Flandry. "Be seated, if you wish."
The
human lowered himself. He was still weak from what he had undergone, filthy,
ill-fed, and ragged. Automatically he smoothed back his hair, and thanked human
laziness, for its invention of long-lasting antibeard enzyme. He needed such
morale factors.
His aching muscles grew
tight. Things were in motion again.
"I
am Svantozik of the Janneer Ya," said the rough
voice. "I am told that you are Captain Dominic Flandry of Terran Naval
Intelligence. You may consider my status approximately the same."
"As one colleague to another,"
husked Flandry, "will you give me a drink?"
"By
all means."
Svantozik gestured to the artesian stream.
Flandry
threw him a reproachful look, but needed other things too badly to elaborate.
"It would be a kindly deed, and one meriting my gratitude, if you provided
me at once with dark lenses and cigarettes." The last word was perforce
Anglic. He managed a grin. "Later I will tell you what further courtesies
ought to be customary."
Svantozik
barked laughter. "I expected your eyes would suffer," he said.
"Here." He reached in the desk and tossed over a pair of green
polarite goggles, doubtless taken off a Vixenite casualty. Flandry put them on
and whistled relief. "Tobacco is forbidden," added Svantozik.
"Only a species with half-dead scent organs could endure it."
"Oh,
well. There was no harm in asking." Flandry hugged his knees and leaned
back against the cave wall.
"None. Now, I wish to congratulate you on your daring exploits."
Svantozik's smile looked alarming enough, but it seemed friendly. "We
searched for your vessel, but it must have escaped the planet."
"Thanks,"
said Flandry, quite sincerely. "I was afraid you would have gotten there
in time to blast it." He cocked his head. "In return ... see here, my friend (literally:
croucher-in-my-blind). When dealing with my species, it is usually better to
discourage them. You should have claimed you had caught my boat before it could
escape, manufacturing false evidence if necessary to convince me. That would
make me much more liable to yield my will to yours."
"Oh,
indeed?" Svantozik pricked up his ears. "Now among the Black People,
the effect would be just opposite. Good news tends to relax us, make us
grateful and amenable to its bearer. Bad tidings raise the quotient of
defiance."
"Well, of course it is not that
simple," said Flandry. "In breaking down the resistance of a man, the
commonest technique is to chivvy him for a protracted time, and then halt the Drocess, speak kindly to him—preferably, get someone
else to do that."
"Ah."
Svantozik drooped lids over his cold eyes. "Are you not being unwise in
telling me this—if it is true?"
"It
is textbook truth," said Flandry, "as I am sure whatever race has
instructed you in the facts about Terra's Empire will confirm. I am revealing
no secret. But as you must be aware, textbooks have little value in practical
matters. There is always the subtiety of the individual, which eludes anything
except direct intuition based on wide, intimate experience. And you, being
nonhuman, cannot ever have such an experience of men."
"True."
The long head nodded. "In fact, I remember now reading somewhat of the
human trait you mention . . . but there was so much else to learn, prior to the
Great Hunt we are now on, that it had slipped my memory. So you tantalize me
with a fact I could use— if I were on your side!" A sudden deep chuckle
cracked in the ruffed throat. "I like you, Captain, the Sky Cave eat me if
I do not."
Flandry
smiled back. "We could have fun. But what are your intentions toward me
now?"
"To learn what I can. For
example, whether or not you were concerned in the murder of four warriors in
Garth and the abduction of a fifth, not long ago. The informant who led
us to you has used hysterics—real or simulated—to escape detailed questioning
so far. Since the captured Ardazirho was a Clanmaster, and therefore possessed
of valuable information, I suspect you had a hand in this."
"I swear upon the
Golden Ass of Apuleius I did not."
"What is that?"
"One of our most
revered books."
" 'The Powers only hunt at night,' " quoted
Svantozik. "In other words, oaths are cheap. I personally do not wish to
hurt you unduly, being skeptical of the value of torture anyhow. And I know
that officers like you are immunized to the so-called truth sera. Therefore,
reconditioning would be necessary; a long, tedious process, the answers stale
when finally you wanted to give them, and you of
little further value to us or yourself." He shrugged. "But I am going
back to Ardazir before long, to report and await reassignment. I know who will
succeed me here; an officer quite anxious to practice some of the techniques
which we have been told are effective on Terrans. I recommend you co-operate
with me, instead."
This must be one of their crack field operatives, thought Flandry, growing cold. He did the basic Intelligence work on Vixen.
Now, with Vixen in hand, he'll be sent to do the same job when the next Terran
planet is attacked. Which will be soon!
Flandry
slumped. "Very well," he said in a dull tone. "I captured
Temulak."
"Ha!"
Svantozik crouched all-fours on the dais. The fur stood up along his spine, the
iron-colored eyes burned. "Where is he now?"
"I
do not know. As a precaution, I had him moved elsewhere, and did not inquire
the place."
"Wise." Svantozik relaxed. "What did you get from him?" "Nothing. He did not crack."
Svantozik stared at Flandry. "I doubt
that," he said. "Not that I scorn Temulak—a brave one—but you are an
extraordinary specimen of a civilization older and more learned than mine. It
would be strange if you had not—"
Flandry
sat up straight. His laughter barked harsh. "Extraordinary?" he cried
bitterly. "I suppose so . . . the way I allowed myself to be caught like a
cubl"
" 'No
ground is free of possible pits,'" murmured Svanto-zik. He brooded a
while. Presendy, "Why did the female betray you? She went to our
headquarters, declared you were a Terran agent, and led our warriors to your
meeting place. What had she to gain?"
"I
don't know," groaned Flandry. "What difference does it make? She is
wholly yours now, you know. The very fact she aided you once gives you the
power to make her do it again—lest you denounce her to her own people."
Svantozik nodded, grinning. "What do her original motives matter?"
The man sagged back and picked at the straw.
"I
am interested," said Svantozik. "Perhaps the same process may work
again, on other humans." ^
"No."
Flandry shook his head in a stunned way. "This was personal. I suppose she
thought I had betrayed her first— Why am I telling you
this?"
"I have been informed that you Terrans
often have strong feelings about individuals of the opposite sex," said
Svantozik. "I was told it will occasionally drive you to desperate,
meaningless acts."
Flandry
passed a tired hand across his brow. "Forget it," he mumbled.
"Just be kind to her. You can do that much, can you not?"
"As a matter of fact—" Svantozik
broke off. He sat for a moment, staring at emptiness.
"Great unborn planetsl" he whispered. "What?" Flandry
didn't look up.
"No
matter," said Svantozik hastily. "Ah, am I right in assuming there
was a reciprocal affection on your part?"
"It
is no concern of yours!" Flandry sat up and shouted it. "I will hear
no more! Say what else you will, but keep your filthy snout out of my own
life!"
"So," breathed Svantozik.
"Yes-s-s-s. . . . Well, then, let us discuss other things."
He
hammered at Flandry a while, not with quite the ruthlessness the human had
shown Temulak. Indeed, he revealed a kind of chivajry; there was respect,
fellow feeling, even an acrid liking in him for this man whose soul he hunted.
Once or twice Flandry managed to divert the conversation—they spoke briefly of
alcoholic drinks and riding animals; they traded some improper jokes, similar
in both cultures.
Nevertheless, Svantozik
hunted. It was a rough few hours.
At
last Flandry was taken away. He was too worn to notice very much, but the route
did seem devious. He was finally pushed into a room, not unlike Svantozik's
office, save that it had human-type furniture and illumination. The door
clashed behind him.
Kit stood waiting.
CHAPTER XIII
For a moment he thought she would scream. Then, very
quickly, her eyes closed. She opened them again. They remained closed. She
opened them again. They remained dry, as if all her tears had been spent. She
took a step toward him. "Oh, God, Kit," he croaked.
Her
arms closed about his neck. He held her to him. His own gaze flickered around
the room, until it found a small human-made box with a few controls which he
recognized. He nodded to himself, ever so faintly, and drew an uneven breath.
But he was still uncertain.
''Dominic, darlin'—"
Kit's mouth sought his.
He
stumbled to the bunk, sat down and covered his face. "Don't he whispered. "I can't take-much more."
The
girl sat down beside him. She laid her head on his shoulder. He felt how she
trembled. But the words came in glorious anticlimax, "That debuggin' unit
is perfectly good, Dominic."
He
wanted to lean back and shout with sudden uproarious mirth. He wanted to kick
his heels and thumb his nose and turn handsprings across the cell. But he held
himself in, letting only a rip of laughter come from lips which he hid against
her cheek.
He
had more than half expected Svantozik to provide a bug-scrambler. Only with the
sure knowledge that any listening devices were being negated by electronic and
soundwave interference, would even a cadet of Intelligence relax and speak
freely. He suspected, though, that a hidden lens was conveying a silent image.
They could talk, but both of them must continue to pantomine.
"How's it been,
Kit?" he asked. "Rough?"
She nodded, not play-acting
her misery at all. "But I haven't had to give any names," she gulped. "Not yet."
"Let's hope you
don't," said Flandry.
He had told her Jn the hurricane cellar—how many centuries
ago?— "This is picayune stuff. I'm not doing what
any competent undercover agent couldn't; what a score of Walton's men will be trying as soon as they can be smuggled
here. I've something crazier in mind. Quite likely it'll kill us, but then
again it might, strike a blow worth whole fleets. Are you game, kid? It means the risk of death, or torture, or lifelong slavery on a foreign planet.
What you'll find worst, though, is the risk of
having to sell out your own comrades, name them to the enemy, so he will keep confidence
in you. Are you brave enough to sacrifice twenty lives for a world? I believe
you are—but it's as cruel a thing as I could ask of any living creature."
"They
brought me straight here," said Kit, holding him. "I don't think they
know quite what to make o' me. A few minutes ago, one o' them came hotfootin'
here with the scrambler an' orders for me to treat you—" a slow flush went
over her face—"kindly. To get information from you, if I could, by any
means that seemed usable."
Flandry
waved a fist in melodramatic despair, while out of a contorted face his tone
came levelly, "I expected something like this. I led Svantozik, the local
snooper-in-chief, to think that gentle treatment from one of my own species,
after a hard grilling from him, might break me down. Especially
if you were the one in question. Svantozik isn't stupid at all, but he's
dealing with an alien race, us, whose psychology he knows mainly from sketchy
secondhand accounts. I've an advantage; the Ardazirho are new to me, but I've
spent a lifetime dealing with all shapes and sizes of other species. Already I
see what the Ardazirho have in common with several peoples whom I hornswoggled
in the past."
The
girl bit her lip to hold it steady. She looked around the stone-walled room,
and he knew she thought of kilometers of tunnel, ramparts and guns, wolfish
hunters, and the desert beyond where men could not live. Her words fell thin
and frightened, "What are we goin' to do now, Dominic? You never told me
what you planned."
"Because
I didn't know," he replied. "Once here, I'd have to play by ear.
Fortunately,, my confidence in my own ability to land
on my feet approaches pure conceit, or would if I had any faults. We're not
doing badly, Kit. I've learned their principal language, and you've been
smuggled into their ranks."
'They don't trust me
yet."
"No.
I didn't expect they would—very much. . . . But let's carry on our visual
performance. I wouldn't flipflop over to the enemy side just because you're
here, Kit; but I am badly shaken, I lose discretion and ordinary carefulness.
Svantozik will accept that."
He
gathered her back to him. She responded hungrily. He felt so much of himself return to his abused being, that his brain began to
spark, throwing up schemes and inspecting them, discarding them and generating
new ones, like a pyrotechnic display, like merry hell.
He
said at last, while she quivered on his lap, "I think I have a notion.
We'll have to play things as they lie, and pre-arrange a few signals, but
here's what we'll try for." He felt her stiffen in his embrace. "Why,
what's the matter?"
She
asked, low and bitter: "Were you thinkin' o' your work all the time—just
now?"
"Not
that alone." He permitted himself the briefest grin. "Or, rather, I
enjoyed my work immensely."
"But still—Oh, never mind. Go on." She slumped.
Flandry
scowled. But he dared not stop for side issues. He said, "Tell Svantozik,
or whoever deals with you, that you played remorseful in my presence, but
actually you hate my inwards and my outwards too, because—uh—"
"Judith!" she
snarled.
He
had the grace to blush. "I suppose that's as plausible a reason as any, at
least in Ardazirho eyes."
"Or
human. If
you knew how close I was to— No. Go on."
"Well,
tell the enemy that you told me you'd betrayed me in a fit of pique, and now
you regretted it. And I, being wildly in love with you—which again is highly
believable—" She gave his predictable gallantry no response whatsoever.
"I told you there was a possible escape for you. I said this: The
Ardazirho are under the impression that Ymir is behind them. Actually, Ymir
leans toward Terra, since we are more peace-minded and therefore less
troublesome. The Ymirites are willing to help us in small ways; we keep this
fact secret because now and then it saves us in emergencies. If I could only
set a spaceship's signal to a certain recognition pattern, you could try to
steal that ship. The Ardazirho would assume you headed for Walton's fleet, and line out after you in that direction. So you
could give them the slip, reach Ogre, transmit the signal pattern, and request
transportation to safety in a force-bubble ship."
Her
eyes stretched wide with terror. "But if Svantozik hears that—an' 'tisn't
true—"
"He won't know it's
false till he's tried, will he?" answered
Flandry cheerfully. "If I lied, it isn't your fault. In fact, since you hastened to
tattle, even about what looked like an escape for you, it'll convince him
you're a firm collaborationist."
"But—no, Dominic. 'Tis
... I don't dare—" "Don't
hand me that, Kit. You're one girl in ten to the tenth, and there's nothing you
won't dare." Then she began to sob.
After
she had gone, Flandry spent a much less happy time waiting. He could still only
guess how his enemy would react; an experienced human would probably not be
deceived, and Svantozik's ignorance of human psychology might not be as deep as
hoped. Flandry swore and tried to rest. The weariness of the past days was gray
upon him.
When
his cell door opened, he sprang up with a jerkiness that told him how thin his
nerves were worn.
Svantozik
stood there, four guards poised behind. The Ardazirho officer flashed teeth in
a grin. "Good hunting, Captain," he greeted. "Is your den
comfortable?"
"It
will do," said Flandry, "until I can get one provided with a box of
cigars, a bottle of whiskey, and a female."
"The
female, at least, I tried to furnish," riposted Svantozik.
Flandry
added in his suavest tone, "Oh, yes, I should also like a rug of Ardazirho
skin."
One
of the guards snarled. Svantozik chuckled. "I too have a favor to ask,
Captain," he said. "My brothers in the engineering division are
interested in modifying a few spaceships to make them more readily usable by
humans. You understand how such differences as the location of the thumb, or
that lumbar conformation which makes it more comfortable for us to lie prone on
the elbows than sit, have influenced the design of our control panels. A man
would have trouble steering an Ardazirho craft. Yet necessarily, in the course
of time, if the Great Hunt succeeds and we acquire human subjects—we will find
occasion for some of them to pilot some of our vehicles. The Kittredge female,
for example, could profitably have a ship of her own, since we anticipate
usefulness in her as a go-between among us and the human colonists here. If you
would help her—simply in checking over one of our craft, and drawing up
suggestions—"
Flandry
grew rigid. "Why should I help you at all?" he said through clenched
jaws.
Svantozik
shrugged. "It is very minor assistance. We could do it ourselves, But it may pass the time for you." Wickedly, "I am
not at all sure that good treatment, rather than abuse, may not be the way to
break down a man. Also, Captain, if you must have a rationalization, think;
here is a chance to examine one of our vessels close up. If later, somehow, you
escape, your own service would be interested in what you saw."
Flandry stood a moment, altogether quiet.
Thought lanced through him: Kit told. Svantozik naturally prefers me not to know what she did tell.
So he makes up this story—offers me what he hopes I'll think is a God-sent
opportunity to arrange for Kit's escape—
He
said aloud, urbanely, "You are most kind, my friend of-Janneer. But Miss
Kittredge and I could not feel at ease with ugly guards like yours drooling
over our shoulders."
He
got growls from two warriors that time. Svantozik hushed them. "That is
easily arranged," he said. "The guards can stay out of the control
turret."
"Excellent. Then, if
you have some human-made tools—"
They
went down hollow corridors, past emplacements where artillery slept like nested
dinosaurs, across the furious artic day, and so to a spaceship near the
outworks. Through goggles, the man studied her fiercely gleaming shape. About equivalent to a Terran Comet class. Fast, lightly
armed, a normal complement of fifteen or so, but one could handle her if need
be.
The naked hills beyond wavered in heat. When he had stepped through the airlock, he
felt dizzy from that brief exposure.
Svantozik
stopped at the turret companionway. "Proceed," he invited cordially.
"My warriors will wait here until you wish to return—at which time you and
the female will come dine with me and I shall provide Terran delicacies."
Mirth crossed his eyes. "Of course, the engines have been temporarily
disconnected."
"Of course,"
bowed Flandry.
Kit
met him as he shut the turret door. Her fingers closed cold on his arm.
"Now what'll we do?" she gasped.
"Easy, lass." He disengaged her. "I don't see a bug scrambler here." Remember, Svantozik thinks I think you are
still loyal to me. Play it, Kit, don't forget, or we're both donel "There are four surly-looking guards
slouched below," he said. "I don't imagine Svantozik will waste his
own valuable time in their company. A direct bug to the office of someone who
knows Anglic is more efficient. Consider me making gestures at you, O great
unseen audience. But is anyone else aboard, d'you know?"
"N-no—" Her eyes asked him, through
fear, Have you forgotten?
Are you alerting them to your plan?
Flandry
wandered past the navigation table to the main radio transceiver. "I don't
want to risk someone getting officious," he murmured. "You see, I'd
first like a peek at their communication system. It's the easiest thing to
modify, if any alterations are needed. And it could look bad, unseen audience,
if we were surprised at what is really a harmless inspection." I trust, he thought with a devil's inward laughter, that they don't know I know they know I'm actually
supposed to install a password circuit for Kit.
It
was the sort of web he loved. But he remembered, as a cold tautening, that a
bullet was still the ultimate simplicity which clove all webs.
He
took the cover off and began probing. He could not simply have given Kit the
frequencies and wave shapes in a recognition signal, because Ardazirho
equipment would not be built just like Terran, hor calibrated in metric units.
He must examine an actual set, dismantle parts, test them with oscilloscope and
static meters—and, surreptitiously, modify it so that the required pattern
would be emitted when a single hidden circuit was closed.
She watched him, as she should if she
expected him, to believe this was her means of escape. And doubtless the
Ardazirho spy watched too, over a bugscreen. When Handry's job was done, it
would be Svantozik who took this snip to Ogre, generated the signal, and saw
what happened.
Because
the question of whose side the Ymirite Dispersal truly was on, overrode
everything else. If Flandry had spoken truth to Kit, the lords of Urdahu must
be told without an instant's pause.
The
man proceeded, making up a pattern as if Ymir really did favor Terra. Half an
hour later he reseated the unit. Then he spent another hour ostentatiously
strolling around the turret examining all controls.
"Well," he said
at last, "we might as well go home, Kit."
He
saw the color leave her face. She knew what that sentence meant. But she
nodded. "Let's," she whispered.
Flandry
bowed her through the door. As she came down the companionway, the guards at
its base got up. Their weapons aimed past her, covering Flandry, who strolled
with a tigerish leisure.
Kit
pushed through the line of guards. Flandry, still on the companionway, snatched
at his pocket. The four guns leaped to focus on him. He laughed and raised
empty hands. "I only wanted to scratch an itch," he called.
Kit
slipped a knife from the harness of one guard and stabbed him in the ribs.
Flandry
dove into the air. A bolt crashed past him, scorching his tunic. He struck the
deck with flexed knees and bounced. Kit had already snatched the rifle from the
yelling warrior she had wounded. It thundered in her hand, point-blank. Another
Ardazirho dropped. Flandry knocked aside the gun of a third. The fourth enemy
had whipped around toward Kit. His back was to Flandry. The man raised the
blade of his hand and brought it down again, chop to the skull-base. He heard neckbones
splinter. The third guard sprang back, seeking room to shoot. Kit blasted him
open. The first one, stabbed, on his knees, reached for a dropped rifle.
Flandry kicked him in the larynx.
"Starboard
lifeboat!" he rasped.
He
clattered back into the turret. If the Ardazirho watcher had left the bugscreen
by now, he had a few minutes' grace. Otherwise, a nuclear shell would probably
write his private doomsday. He snatched up the navigator's manual and sprang
out again.
Kit was already in the lifeboat. Its small
engine purred, warming up. Flandry plunged through the lock,
dogged it behind him. "I'll fly," he panted. "I'm more used to
non-Terran panels. You see *if you can find some bailing-out equipment. We'll
need it."
Where
the devil was the release switch? The bugwatcher had evidently quit in time,
but any moment now he would start to wonder why Flandry and Party weren't yet
out of the spaceship—
There!
He slapped down a lever. A hull panel opened. Harsh sunlight poured through the
boat's viewscreen. Flandry glanced over its controls. Basically like those he
had just studied. He touched the Escape button.
The engine yelled. The boat sprang from its mother ship, into the sky.
Flandry
aimed southward. He saw the fortress whirl dizzily away, fall below the horizon.
And still no pursuit, not even a homing missile. They must be too dumfounded.
It wouldn't last, of course. . . . He threw back his head and howled out all
his bottled-up laughter,
great gusts of it to fill
the cabin and echo over the scream of split atmosphere.
"What
are ,you doin'?" Kit's voice came faint and
frantic. "We can't escape this way. Head spaceward
before they overhaul us!"
Flandry
wiped his eyes. "Excuse me," he said. "I was laughing while I
could." Soberly, "With the blockade, and a slow vessel never designed
for human steering, we'd not climb 10,000 kilometers before they nailed us.
What we're going to do is bail out and let the boat continue on automatic. With
luck, they'll pursue it so far before catching up that they'll have no prayer
of backtracking us. With still more luck, they'll blow the boat up and assume
we were destroyed too."
"Bail out?" Kit looked down at a
land of stones andblowing ash. The sky above was like molten steel. "Into
that?" she whispered.
"If
they do realize we jumped," said Flandry, "I trust they'll figure we
perished in the desert. A natural conclusion, I'm sure, since our legs aren't
so articulated that we can wear Ardazirho spacesuits." He grew grimmer
than she had known him before. "I've had to improvise all along the way.
Quite probably I've made mistakes, Kit, which will cost us a painful death. But
if so, I'm hoping we won't die for naught."
CHAPTER XIV
Even riding a grav repulsor down, Flandry felt how the
air smote him with heat. When he struck the ground and rolled over, it burned
his skin.
He
climbed up, already ill. Through his goggles, he saw Kit rise. Dust veiled her,
blown on a furnace wind. The desert reached in withered soil and bony crags for
a few kilometers beyond her, then the heat-haze swallowed vision. The northern
horizon seemed incandescent, impossible to look at.
Thunder
banged in the wake of the abandoned lifeboat. Flandry stumbled toward the girl.
She leaned on him. "I'm sorry," she said. "I think I twisted an
ankle."
"And scorched it, too,
I see. Come on lass, not far now."
They
groped over tumbled gray boulders. The weather monitor tower rippled before
their eyes, like a skeleton seen through water. The wind blasted and whined.
Flandry felt his skin prickle with ultraviolet and bake dry as he walked. The
heat began to penetrate his boot soles.
They were almost at the station when a
whistle cut through the air. Flandry lifted aching eyes. Four torpedo shapes
went overhead, slashing from horizon to horizon in seconds. The
Ardazirho, in pursuit of an empty lifeboat. If they had seen the humans
below?— No. They were gone. Flandry tried to grin, but
it split his lips too hurtfully.
The station's equipment huddled in a concrete
shack beneath the radio transmitter tower. The shade, when they had staggered
through the door, was like all hopes of heaven. Flandry uncorked a water botde.
That was all he had dared take, out of the spaceboat supplies; alien food was
liable to have incompatible proteins. His throat was too much like a mummy's to
talk, but he offered Kit the flask and she gulped thirstily. When he had also
swigged, he felt a littie better.
"Get
to work, wench," he' said. "Isn't it lucky you're in Vixen's weather
engineering department, so you knew where to find a station and what to do when
we got there?"
"Go
on," she tried to laugh. It was a rattling in her mouth. "You built
your idea arou' the fact. Let's see, now, they keep tools in a locker at every
unit—" She stopped. The shadow in this hut was so deep, against the fury
seen through one litde window, that she was almost invisible to him. "I
can tinker with the sender, easily enough," she said. Slow terror rose in
her voice. "Sure, I can make it 'cast your message, 'stead 6' telemeterin'
weather data. But ... I just now get
to thinkin' . . . s'pose an Ardazirho reads it? Or s'pose nobody does? I don't
know if my service is even bein' manned now. We could wait here, an' wait,
an'—"
"Easy."
Flandry came behind her, laid his hands on her shoulders and squeezed.
"Anything's possible. But I think the chances favor us. The Ardazirho can
hardly spare personnel for something so routine and, to them, unimportant, as
weather adjustment. At the same time, the human engineers are very probably
still on the job. Humanity always continues as much in the old patterns as
possible, people report to their usual work, hell may open but the city will
keep every lawn mowed. . . . Our real gamble is that whoever spots our call
will have the brains, and the courage and loyalty, to act on it."
She
leaned against him a moment. "An' d'you think there's a way for us to be
gotten out o' here, under the enemy's nose?"
An
obscure pain twinged in his soul. "I know it's unfair, Kit," he said.
"I myself am a hardened sinner and this is my job and so on, but it isn't
right to hazard all the fun and love and accomplishment waiting for you. It
must be done, though. My biggest hope was always to steal a navigation manual.
Don't you understand, it will tell us where Ardazir lies!"
"I
know." Her sigh was a small sound almost lost in the boom of dry hot wind
beyond the door. "We'd better start work."
While
she opened the transmitter and cut out the meter circuits, Flandry recorded a
message, a simple plea to contact Emil Bryce and arrange the rescue from
Station 938 of two humans with vital material for Admiral Walton. How that was
to be done, he had no clear idea himself. A Vixenite aircraft would have little
chance of getting this far north undetected and undestrbyed. A radio
message—no, too easily intercepted, unless you had very special apparatus— a
courier to the fleet—and if that was lost, another and another—
When she had finished, Kit reached for the
second water bottle. "Better not," said Flandry. "We've a long
wait." "I'm dehydrated," she husked.
"Me too. But we've no salt; heat stroke is a real threat. Drinking as little as
possible will stretch our survival time. Why the devil aren't these places air
conditioned and stocked with rations?"
"No
need for it. They just get routine inspection ...
at midwinter in these parts." Kit sat down on the one little bench.
Flandry joined her. She leaned into the curve of his arm. A savage gust
trembled in the hut walls, the window was briefly
blackened with flying grit.
"Is
Ardazir like this?" she wondered. "Then 'tis a real
hell for those devils to come from."
"Oh, no,"
answered Flandry. "Temulak said their planet has a sane orbit. Doubtless
it's warmer than Terra, on the average, but we could stand the temperature in
most of its climatic zones, I'm sure. A hot star, emitting strongly in the UV,
would split water molecules and kick the free hydrogen into space before it
could recombine. The ozone layer would give some protection to the hydrosphere,
but not quite enough. So Ardazir must be a good deal drier than Terra, with
seas rather than oceans. At the same time, judging from the muscular strength
of the nadves, as well as the fact they don't mind Vixen's air pressure,
Ardazir must be somewhat bigger. Surface gravity of
one-point-five, maybe. That would retain an atmosphere similar to ours,
in spite of the sun."
He
paused. Then, "They aren't fiends, Kit. They're fighters and hunters.
Possibly they've a little less built-in kindliness than our species. But I'm
not even sure about that. We were a rambunctious lot, too, a few centuries ago.
We may well be again, when the Long Night has come and it's root, hog, or die.
As a matter of fact, the Ardazirho aren't even one people. They're a whole
planetful of races and cultures. The Urdahu conquered the rest only a few years
ago. That's why you see all those different clothes on them—concession to
parochialism, like an ancient Highland regiment. And I'll give odds that in
spite of all their successes, the Urdahu are not too well liked at home. Theirs
is a very new empire, imposed by overwhelming force; it could be split again,
if we used the right tools. I feel almost sorry for them, Kit. They're the
dupes of someone else—and Lord, what a someone that
is! What a genius!"
He
stopped, because the relentless waterless heat had shriveled his gullet. The
girl said, low and bitter, "Go on. Sympathize with Ardazir an' admire the
artistry o' this X who's behind it all. You're a professional, too. But my kind
o' people has to do the dyin'."
"I'm sorry." He
ruffled her hair.
"You
still haven't tol' me whether you think we'll be rescued alive."
"I
don't know." He tensed himself until he could add, "I doubt it. I
expect it'll take days, and we can only hold out for hours. But if the ship
comes—no, damn it, when
the ship comes!—that pilot
book will be here."
"Thanks
for bein' honest, Dominic," she said. "Thanks for everything."
He kissed her, with enormous gentleness.
After that they waited.
The
sun sank. A short night fell. It brought little relief, the wind still
scourging, the northern sky still aflame. Kit tossed
in a feverish daze beside Flandry. He himself could no longer think very
clearly. He had hazy recollections of another white night in high-latitude
summer—but that had been on Terra, on a cool upland meadow of Norway, and there
had been another blonde girl beside him—her lips were like roses. . . .
This
whistling down the sky, earth-shaking thump of a recklessly fast landing, feet
that hurried over blistering rock and hands that hammered on the door, scarcely
reached through the charred darkness of Flandry's mind. But when the door
crashed open and the wind blasted in, he swam up through waves of pain. And the
thin face of Chives waited to meet him.
"Here, sir. Sit up. If I may take the liberty—"
"You green bastard," croaked Flandry out of nightmare, "I
ordered you to—"
"Yes, sir. I delivered your tape. But after that, it seemed advisable to slip back
and stay in touch with Mr. Bryce. Easy there, sir, if you
please. We can run the blockade with little trouble. Really, sir, did
you think natives
could, bar your own
personal spacecraft? I shall prepare medication for the young lady, and tea is
waiting in your stateroom."
CHAPTER XV
Fleet
Admiral Sir Thomas Walton
was a big man, with gray hair and bleak faded eyes. He seldom wore any of his
decorations, and visited Terra only on business. No sculp, but genes and war
and unshed tears, when he watched his men die and then watched the Imperium
dribble away what they had gained, had carved his face. Kit thought him the
handsomest man she had ever met. But in her presence, his tongue locked with
the shyness of an old bachelor. He called her Miss Kittredge, assigned her a
private cabin in his flagship, and found excuses to avoid the officers' mess where
she ate.
She
was given no work, save keeping out of the way. Lonely young lieutenants buzzed
about her, doing their best to charm and amuse. But Flandry was seldom aboard
the dreadnaught.
The
fleet orbited in darkness, among keen sardonic stars. Little could actively be
done. Ogre must be watched, where the giant planet crouched an enigma. The
Ardazirho force did not seek battle, but stayed close to Vixen where ground
support was available and where captured robofactories daily swelled its
strength. Now and then the Terrans made forays. But Walton hung back from a
decisive test. He could still win—if he
used his whole strength and if Ogre stayed neutral. But Vixen, the prize, would
be a tomb.
Restless and unhappy,
Walton's men muttered in their ships.
After
three weeks, Captain Flandry was summoned to the admiral. He whistled relief.
"Our scout must have reported back," he said to his assistant.
"Now maybe they'll take me off this damned garbage detail."
The
trouble was, he alone had been able to speak Urdahu.
There were a few hundred Ardazirho prisoners, taken off disabled craft by
boarding parties. But the officers had destroyed all navigational clues and
died, with the ghastly gallantry of preconditioning. None of the enlisted
survivors knew Anglic, or co-operated with the Terran linguists. Flandry had
passed on his command of their prime tongue, electronically; but not wishing
to risk his sanity again, he had done it at the standard easy pace. The rest of
each day had been spent interrogating—a certain percentage of prisoners were
vulnerable to it in their own language. Now, two other humans possessed
Urdahu; enough of a seedbed. But until the first spies sent to Ardazir itself
got back, Flandry had been left on the grilling job. Sensible, but exhausting
and deadly dull.
He
hopped eagerly into a grav scooter and rode from the Intelligence ship to the
dreadnaught. It was Nova class; its hull curved over him, monstrous as a
mountain, guns raking the Milky Way. Otherwise he saw only stars, the distant
sun Cerulia, the black nebula. Hard
to believe that hundreds of ships, with the unchained atom in their magazines,
prowled for a million kilometers around.
He
entered the Nr. 7 lock and strode quickly toward the flag
office. A scarlet cloak billowed behind him; his tunic was peacock blue, his
trousers like snow, tucked into half-boots of authentic Cordovan leather. The
angle of his cap was an outrage to all official dignity. He felt like a boy
released from school.
"Dominicl"
Flandry stopped.
"Kit!" he whooped.
She
ran down the corridor to meet him, a small lonely figure in brief Terran dress.
Her hair was still a gold helmet, but he noted she was thinner. He put hands on
her shoulders and held her at arm's length. "The better to see you
with," he laughed. And then, soberly, "Tough?"
"Lonesome,"
she said. "Empty. Nothin' to do but worry."
She pulled away from him. "No, darn it, I hate people who feel sorry for
themselves. I'm all right, Dominic." She looked down at the deck and
knuckled one eye.
"Come on!" he
said.
"Hm? Dominic, where are you goin'? I can't—I
mean—"
Flandry
slapped her in the most suitable place and hustled her along the hall.
"You're going to sit in on this! It'll give you something to hope for. March!"
The
guard outside Walton's door was shocked. "Sir, my orders were to admit
only you."
"One side, junior." Flandry picked up the marine by the gun belt
and set him down a meter away. "The young lady is my portable expert on
hypersquidgeronics. Also, she's pretty." He closed the door in the man's
face.
Admiral
Walton started behind his desk. "What's this, Captain?"
"I thought she could pour beer for
us," burbled Flandry.
"I don't—" began
Kit helplessly. "I didn't mean to—"
"Sit
down." Flandry pushed her into a corner chair. "After all, sir, we
might need first-hand information about Vixen." His eyes clashed with
Walton's. "I think she's earned a ringside seat," he added.
The
admiral sat unmoving a moment. Then his mouth crinkled. "You're
incorrigible," he said. "And spare me that stock answer, 'No, I'm
Flandry.' Very well, Miss Kittredge. You understand
this is under top security. Captain Flandry, you know Commander Sugimoto."
Flandry
shook hands with the other Terran, who had been in charge of the first sneak
expedition to Ardazir. They sat down. Flandry started a cigarette. "D'you find the place all right?" he asked.
"No
trouble," said Sugimoto. "Once you'd given me the correlation between
their astronomical tables and ours, and explained the number system, it was
elementary. Their star's not-in our own catalogues, because it's on the other
side of that dark nebula and there's never been any exploration that way. So
you've saved us maybe a year of search. Incidentally, when the war's over the
scientists will be interested in the nebula. Seen from the other side, it's
faintly luminous; a proto-sun. No one ever suspected that Population One got that young
right in Sol's own galactic neighborhood! Must be a freak,
though."
Flandry stiffened.
"What's the matter?" snapped Walton.
"Nothing, sir. Or maybe something. I don't know. Go on,
Commander."
"No
need to repeat in detail," said Walton. "You'll see the full report.
Your overall picture of Ardazirho conditions, gained from your interrogations,
is accurate. The sun is an A4 dwarf—actually
no more than a dozen parsecs from here. The planet is terrestroid, biggish,
rather dry, quite mountainous, three satellites. From all indications—you know
the techniques, sneak
landings, long-range' telescopic spying, hidden cameras, random
samples—the'Urdahu hegemony is recent and none too stable."
"One
of our xenologists spotted what he swore was a typical rebellion," said
Sugimoto. "To me, his films are merely a lot of red hairy creatures in one
kind of clothes, firing with gunpowder weapons at a modem-looking fortress
where they wear different clothes. The sound track won't mean a thing till your
boys translate for us. But the xenologist says there are enough other signs to
prove it's the uprising of a backward tribe against more civilized
conquerors."
"A
chance, then, to play them off against each other," nodded Flandry.
"Of course, before we can hope to do that, Intelligence must first gather
a lot more information. Advertisement."
"Have
you anything to add, Captain?" asked Walton. "Anything you learned
since your last progress report?"
"No,
sir," said Flandry. "It all hangs together pretty well. Except, naturally, the main question. The Urdahu couldn't
have invented all the modern paraphernalia that gave them control of Ardazir.
Not that fast. They were still in the early nuclear age, two decades ago.
Somebody supplied them, taught them, and sent them out a-conquering. Who?"
"Ymir,"
said Walton flatly. "Our problem is, are the
Ymirites working independently, or as allies of Merseia?"
"Or at all?"
murmured Flandry.
"Hell
and thunder! The Ardazirho ships and heavy equipment have Ymirite lines. The
governor of Ogre ties up half our strength simply by refusing to speak. A
Jovian colonist tried to murder you when you were on an official mission,
didn't he?"
"Thes
ships could be made that way on purpose, to mislead us," said Flandry.
"You know the Ymirites are not a courteous race; even if they were, what
difference would it make, since we can't investigate them in detail? As for my
little brush with Horx—"
He
stopped. "Commander," he said slowly, "I've learned there are
Jovoid planets in the system of Ardazir. Is any of
them colonized?"
"Not as far as I could tell," said
Sugimoto. "Of course, with that hot sun ...
I mean, we wouldn't colonize Ardazir, so Ymir—"
"The sun doesn't make a lot of
difference when atmosphere gets that thick," said Flandry. "My own guiding led me to believe there are no Ymirite
colonies anywhere in the region overrun by Ardazir. Don't you think, if they
had interests there at all, they'd live there?"
"Not
necessarily." Walton's fist struck the desk. "Everything's 'not
necessarily,'" he growled, like a baited lion. "We're fighting in a
fog. If we made an all-out attack anywhere, we'd expose ourselves to possible
Ymirite action. This fleet is stronger than the Ardazirho force around
Vixen—but weaker than the entire fleet of the whole Ardazirho realm— yet if we
pulled in reinforcements from Syrax, Merseia would gobble up the Cluster! But
we can't hang around here forever, either, waiting for somebody's next
move!"
He
stared at his big knobbly hands. "We'll send more spies to- Ardazir,"
he rumbled. "Of course some'll get caught, and then Ardazir will know we
know, and they'll really exert themselves against us. . . . By God, maybe the
one thing to do is smash them here at Vixen, immediately, and then go straight
to Ardazir and hope enough of our ships survive long enough to sterilize the
whole hell-planet!"
Kit leaped to her feet.
"No!" she screamed.
Flandry
forced her down again. Walton looked at her with eyes full of anguish.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled. "I know it would be the end of Vixen. I
don't want to be a butcher at Ardazir either , . . all their little cubs, who never heard about war— But what
can I do?"
"Wait," said
Flandry. "I have a hunch."
Silence
fell, layer by layer, until the cabin grew thick with it. Finally Walton asked,
most softly, "What is it, Captain?"
Flandry
stared past them all. "Maybe nothing," he said. "Maybe
much. An expression some of the Ardazirho use: the Sky Cave. It's some
kind of black hole. Certain of their religions make it the entrance to hell.
Could it be—I remember my friend Svantozik too. I surprised him, and he let
out an oath which was not stock. Great unborn planets. Svantozik ranks high. He knows more than any other Ardazirho we've met.
It's little enough to go on, but . . . can you spare me a flotilla,
Admiral?"
"Probably
not," said Walton. "And it couldn't sneak off. One ship at a time,
yes, we can get that out secredy. But several— The
enemy would detect their wake, notice which way they were headed, and wonder.
Or wouldn't that matter in this case?"
"I'm
afraid it would." Flandry paused. "Well, sir, can you lend me a few
men? I'|l take my own flitter. If I'm not back soon, do whatever seems
best."
He
didn't want to go. It seemed all too likely that the myth was right and the Sky
Cave led to hell. But Walton sat watching him, Walton who was one of the last
brave and wholly honorable men in all Terra's Empire. And Kit watched him, too.
CHAPTER XVI
He
would have departed at
once, but a stroke of luck— about time, he
thought ungratefully—made him decide to wait another couple of days. He
spent them on the Hooligan,
not telling Kit he was
still with the fleet If she knew he had leisure, he
would never catch up on some badly needed sleep.
The
fact was that the Ardazirho remained unaware that any human knew their
language, except a few prisoners and the late Dominic Flandry. So they were
sending all messages in clear. By now Walton had agents on Vixen, working with
the underground, equipped to communicate undetected with his fleet. Enemy
transmissions were being monitored with growing thoroughness. Flandry
remembered that Svantozik had been about to leave, and requested a special
lookout for any information on this subject. A scanner was adjusted to spot
that name on a recording tape. It did so; the contents of the tape were
immediately relayed into space; and Flandry listened with sharp interest to
a~~playback.
It
was a normal enough order, relating to certain preparations. Mind-hunter
Svantozik of the Janneer Ya was departing for home as
per command. He would not risk being spotted and traced back to Ardazir by some
Terran, so would employ only a small ultra-fast flitter. (Flandry admired his
nerve. Most humans would have taken at least.a Meteor class boat.) The hour and
date of his departure were given, in Urdahu terms.
"Rally 'round," said Flandry. The Hooligan glided into action.
He
did not come near Vixen. That was the risky business of the liaison craft. He
could predict the exact manner of Svantozik's take-off; there was only one
logical way. The flitter would be in the middle of the squadron, which would
roar spaceward on a foray. At the right time, Svantozik would give his own
littie boat a powerful jolt of primary drive; then, orbiting with cold engines
away from the others, let distance accumulate. When he felt sure no Terran had
spied him, he would go cautiously on gravs until well clear—then switch over
into secondary and exceed the velocity of light. So small a
craft, so far away from Walton's bases, would not be detected, especially with
enemy attention diverted by the raiding squadron.
Unless,
to be sure, the enemy had planted himself out in that region, with
foreknowledge of Svantozik's goal and sensitive pulse-detectors running wide
open.
When
the alarm buzzed and the needles began to waver, Flandry allowed himself a
yell. "That's our boy!" His finger stabbed a button. The Hooligan went into secondary with a wail of abused
converters. When the viewscreens had steadied, Cerulia was visibly dimming to
stern. Ahead, oudined in diamond constellations, the nebula roiled ragged
black. Flandry stared at his instruments. "He's not as big as we
are," he said, "but traveling like goosed
lightning. Think we can overhaul short of Ardazir?"
"Yes,
sir," said Chives. "In this immediate volume of space, which is
dustier than average, and at these pseudo-speeds, friction becomes significant.
We are more aerodynamic than he. I estimate twenty hours. Now, if I may be
excused, I shall prepare supper."
"Uh-uh," said Flandry emphatically.
"Even if he isn't aware of us yet, he may try evasive tactics on general
principles. An autopilot has a randomizing predictor for such cases, but no
poetry."
"Sir?" Chives raised the eyebrows he didn't have.
"No
feel . . . intuition . . . whatever you want to call it. Svantozik is an artist
of Intelligence. He may also be an artist at the pilot panel. So are you,
little chum. You and I will stand watch and watch here. I've assigned a hairy
great CPO to cook."
"Sirl" bleated
Chives.
Flandry
winced. "I know. Navy cuisine. The sacrifices we
unsung heroes make for Terra's cause—1"
He
wandered aft to get acquainted with his crew. Walton had
personally chosen a dozen for this mission: eight humans; a Scothanian, nearly
human-looking but for the horns in his yellow hair; a pair of big four-armed
gray-furred shaggy-muzzled Gorzuni; a purple-and-blue giant from Donarr,
vaguely like a gorilla torso centauroid on a rhinoceros body. All had
Terran citizenship, all were career personnel, all had
fought with every weapon from ax to operations analyzer. They were as good a
crew as could be found anywhere in the known galaxy. And far down underneath,
it saddened Flandry that not one of the humans, except himself, came from
Terra.
The
hours passed. He ate, napped, stood piloting tricks.
Eventually he was close upon the Ardazirho boat, and ordered combat armor all
around. He himself went into the turret with Chives.
His
quarry was a squat, ugly shape, dark against the distant star-clouds. The
viewscreen showed a slim blast cannon and a torpedo launcher heavier than most
boats that size would carry. The missiles it sent had power enough to penetrate
the Hooligan's potential screens, make contact, and vaporize
the target in a single nuclear burst.
Flandry
touched a firing stud. A tracer shell flashed out, drawing a line of fire
through Svantozik's boat. Or, rather, through the space where
shell and boat coexisted with differing frequencies. The conventional
signal to halt was not obeyed.
"Close in," said
Flandry. "Can you phase us?"
"Yes, sir." Chives danced lean triple-jointed fingers over the board. The Hooligan plunged like a stooping osprey. She
interpenetrated the enemy craft, so that Flandry looked for a moment straight
through its turret. He recognized Svantozik at the controls, in person, and
laughed his delight. The Ardazirho slammed on pseudo-deceleration. A less
skillful pilot would have shot past him and been a million kilometers away
before realizing what had happened. Flandry and Chives, acting as one, matched
the maneuver. For a few minutes they followed every twist and dodge. Then,
grimly, Svantozik continued in a straight line. The Hooligan edged sideways until she steered a parallel
course, twenty meters off.
Chives
started the phase adjuster. There was an instant's sickness while the secondary
drive skipped through a thousand separate frequency patterns. Then its
in-an-out-of-space-time matched the enemy's. A mass detector informed the
robot, within microseconds, and the adjuster stopped. A tractor beam clamped
fast to the other hull's sudden solidity. Svantozik tried a different phasing,
but the Hooligan
equaled him without
skipping a beat.
"Shall we lay
alongside, sir?" asked Chives.
"Better
not," said Flandry. "They might choose to blow themselves up, and us with them. Boarding tube."
It
coiled from the combat airlock to the other" hull, fastened leech-like
with magnetronic suckers, and clung. The Ardazirho energy cannon could not be
brought to bear at this angle. A missile flashed from their launcher. It was
disintegrated by a blast from the Hooligan's gun.
The Donar-rian, vast in his armor, guided a "worm" through the
boarding tube to the opposite hull. The machine's energy snout began to gnaw
through metal.
Flandry
sensed, rather than saw, the faint ripple which marked a changeover into
primary drive. He slammed down his own switch. Both craft reverted
simultaneously to intrinsic sub-light velocity. The difference of fifty
kilometers per second nearly ripped them across. But the tractor beam held, and
so did the compensator fields. They tumbled onward, side by side.
"He's hooked!"
shouted Flandry.
Still
the prey might try a stunt. He must remain with Chives, parrying everything,
while his crew had the pleasure of boarding. Flandry's muscles ached with the
wish for personal combat. Over the intercom now, radio voices snapped:
"The worm's pierced through, sir. Our party entering the breach. Four hostiles in battle
armor opposing with mobile weapons—"
Hell
broke loose. Energy beams flamed against indurated steel. Explosive bullets
burst, sent men staggering, went in screaming fragments through bulkheads. The
Terran crew plowed unmercifully into the barrage, before it could break down
their armor. They closed hand to hand with the Ardazirho. It was not too uneven
a match in numbers; six to four, for half Flandry's crew must man guns against
possible missiles. The Ardazirho were physically a bit stronger than humans.
That counted little, when fists beat on plate. But the huge Gorzuni, the
barbarically shrill Scothanian with his wrecking bar of collapsed alloy, the
Donarrian happily ramping and roaring and dealing buffets which stunned through
all insulation—they ended the fight. The enemy navigator, preconditioned, died.
The rest were extracted from their armor and tossed in the Hooligan's hold.
Flandry
had not been sure Svantozik, too, was not channeled so capture would be
lethal. But he had doubted it. The Urdahu were unlikely to be that prodigal of
their very best officers, who if taken prisoner might still be exchanged or
contrive to escape. Probably Svantozik had simply been given a bloc against
remembering his home sun's co-ordinates, when a pilot book wasn't open before
his face.
The
Terran sighed. "Clear the saloon, Chives," he said wearily.
"Have Svantozik brought to me, post a guard outside, and bring us some
refreshments." As he passed one of the boarding gang, the man threw him a
grin and an exuberant salute. "Damn heroes," he muttered.
He felt a little happier when Svantozik entered. The
Ardazirho walked proudly, red head erect, kilt somehow
made neat again. But there was an inward chill in the wolf
eyes. When he saw who sat at the table, he grew rigid. The
fur stood up over his whole lean body and a growl trembled
in his throat. i
"Just
me," said the human. "Not back from the Sky Cave, either, Flop down." He waved at the bench opposite his own
chair.
Slowly,
muscle by muscle, Svantozik lowered himself. He said at last, "A proverb
goes: 'The hornbuck may run swifter than you think.' I touch the nose to you,
Captain Flandry."
"I'm
pleased to see my men didn't hurt you. They had particular orders to get you
alive. That was the whole idea."
"Did
I do you so much harm in the Den?" asked Svantozik bitterly.
"On the contrary. You were a more considerate host than I would have been. Maybe I can
repay that." Flandry took out a cigarette. "Forgive me. I have turned
the ventilation up. But my brain runs on nicotine."
"I
suppose—" Svantozik's gaze went to the viewscreen and galactic night—
"you know which of those stars is ours."
"Yes."
"It
will be defended to the last ship. It will take more strength than you can
spare from your borders to break us."
"So
you are aware of the Syrax situation." Flandry trickled smoke through his
nose. "Tell me, is my impression correct that you
rank high in Ardazir's space service and in the Urdahu orbekh itself?"
"Higher in the former than the
latter," said Svantozik dully. "The Packmasters and the old females
will listen to me, but I have no authority with them."
"Still—Look out there again. To the Sky Cave.
What do you see?"
They
had come so far now that they glimpsed the thinner part of the nebula, which
the interior luminosity could penetrate, from the side. The black cumulus shape
towered ominously among the constellations; a dim red glow along one edge
touched masses and filaments, as if a dying fire smoldered in some grotto full
of spiderwebs. Not many degrees away from it, Ardazir's sun flashed sword blue.
"The
Sky Cave itself, of course," said Svantozik wonder-ingly. "The Great Dark. The Gate of the Dead, as those who believe
in religion call it. . . ." His tone, meant to be sardonic, wavered."
"No
light, then? It is black to you?" Flandry nodded slowly. "I expected
that. Your race is red-blind. You see further into the violet than I do; but in
your eyes, I am gray and you yourself are black. Those atrociously combined red
squares in your kilt all look equally dark to you."
The Urdahu word he used for "red" actually designated the
yellow-orange band; but Svantozik understood.
"Our
astronomers have long known there is invisible radiation from the Sky Cave,
radio and shorter wave lengths," he said. "What of it?"
"Only
this," said Flandry, "that you are getting your orders from that
nebula."
.. Svantozik did not move a muscle. But Flandry saw how the fur bristled
again, involuntarily, and the ears lay fiat.
The
man rolled his cigarette between his fingers, staring at it. "You think
the Dispersal of Ymir lies behind your own sudden expansion," he said.
"They supposedly provided you with weapons, robot machinery, knowledge, whatever you needed, and launched you on your
career of conquest. Their aim was to rid the galaxy of Terra's Empire, making
you dominant instead among the oxygen breathers. You were given to understand
that humans and Ymirites simply did not get along. The technical experts on
Ardazir itself, who helped you get started, were they
Ymirite?"
"A
few," said Svantozik. "Chiefly, of course, they were oxygen
breathers. That was far more convenient."
"You thought those were mere Ymirite
clients, did you not?" pursued Flandry. "Think, though. How do you
know any Ymirites actually were on Ardazir? They would have to stay inside a
force-bubble ship all the time. Was anything inside
that ship, ever, except a remote-control panel? With maybe a
dummy Ymirite? It would not be hard to fool you that way. There is
nothing mysterious about vessels of that type, they are not hard to build, it
is only that races like ours normally have no use for such elaborate additional
apparatus—negagrav fields offer as much protection against material particles,
and nothing protects against a nuclear shell which has made contact.
"Or,
even if a few Ymirites did visit Ardazir . . . how do you know they were in
charge? How can you be sure that their oxygen-breathing 'vassals' were not the
real masters?"
Svantozik
laid back his lip and rasped through fangs, "You flop bravely in the net,
Captain. But a mere hypothesis—"
"Of
course I am hypothesizing." Flandry stubbed out his cigarette. His eyes
clashed so hard with Svantozik's, flint gray striking steel gray, that it was
as if sparks flew. "You have a scientific culture, so you know the simpler
hypothesis is to be preferred. Well, I can explain the facts much more simply
than by some cumbersome business of Ymir deciding to meddle in the affairs of
dwarf planets useless to itself. Because Ymir and Terra have
never had any serious trouble. We have, no
interest in each other! They know no terrestroid race could ever become a
serious menace to them. They can hardly detect a difference between Terran and
Merseian, either in outward appearance or in mentality. Why
should they care who wins?"
"I
do not try to imagine why," said Svantozik stubbornly. "My brain is
not based on ammonium compounds. The fact is, however—"
"That a few individual Ymirites, here
and there, have performed hostile acts," said Flandry. "I was the
butt of one myself. Since it is not obvious why they would, except as agents of
their government, we have assumed that that was the reason. Yet all the time
another motive was staring us in the face. I knew it. It is the sort of thing I
have caused myself, in this dirty profession of ours, time and again. I have
simply lacked proof. I hope to get that proof soon.
"When you cannot bribe
an individual—blackmail him!"
Svantozik
jerked. He raised himself from elbows to hands, his nostrils quivered, and he
said roughly: "How? Can you learn any sordid secrets in the private life
of a hydrogen breather? I shall not believe you even know what that race would
consider a crime."
"I
do not," said Flandry. "Nor does it matter. There is one being who
could find out. He can read any mind at close range, without preliminary study,
whether the subject is naturally telepathic or not. I think he must be
sensitive to some underlying basic life energy our science does not yet
suspect. We invented a mind-screen on Terra, purely for his benefit. He was in
the Solar System, on both Terra and Jupiter, for weeks. He could have probed
the inmost thoughts of the Ymirite guide. If Horx himself was not vulnerable,
someone close to Horx may have been. Aycharaych, the telepath, is an oxygen
breather. It gives me the cold shudders to imagine what it must feel like,
receiving Ymirite thoughts in a protoplasmic brain. But he did it. How many
other places has he been, for how many years? How strong a grip does he have on
the masters of Urdahu?"
Svantozik
lay wholly still. The stars flamed at his back, in all their icy millions.
"I
say," finished Flandry, "that your people have been mere tools of
Merseia. This was engineered over a fifteen-year period. Or
even longer, perhaps. I do not know how old Aycharaych is. You were
unleashed against Terra at a precisely chosen moment—when you confronted us
with the choice of losing the vital Syrax Cluster or being robbed and ruined in
our own sphere. You, personally, as a sensible hunter, would co-operate with
Ymir, which you understood would never directly threaten Ardazir, and which
would presumably remain allied with your people after the war, thus protecting
you forever. But dare you co-operate with Merseia? It must be plain to you that
the Merseians are as much your rivals as Terra could ever be. Once Terra is
broken, Merseia will make short work of your jerry-built empire. I say to you,
Svantozik, that you have been the dupe of your overlords, and that they have
been the helpless, traitorous tools of Aycharaych. I think they steal off into
space to get their orders from a Merseian gang—which, I think, I shall go and
hunt!"
CHAPTER XVII
As the
two flitters approached
the nebula, Flandry heard the imprisoned Aidazirho howl. Even Svantozik, who
had been before and claimed hard agnosticism, raised his ruff and licked dry
lips. To red-blind eyes, it must indeed be horrible, watching that enormous
darkness grow until it had gulped all the stars and only instruments revealed
anything of the absolute night outside. And ancient myths will not die; within
every Urdahu subconscious, this was still the Gate of the Dead. Surely, that
was one reason the Merseians had chosen it for the lair from which they
controlled the destiny of Ardazir. Demoralizing awe would make the Packmasters
still more their abject puppets.
And
then, on a practical level, those who were summoned —to report progress and
receive their next instructions— were blind. What they did not see, they could
not let slip, to someone who might start wondering about discrepancies.
Flandry
himself saw sinister grandeur; great banks and clouds of blackness, looming in
utter silence on every side of him, gulfs and canyons and steeps, picked out by
the central red glow. He knew, objectively, that the nebula was near-vacuum
even in its densest portions; only size and distance created that picture of
caverns beyond caverns. But his eyes told him that he sailed into Shadow Land,
under walls and roofs huger than planetary systems, and his own tininess shook
him.
The
haze thickened as the boats plunged inward. So too did the light, until at last
Flandry stared into the clotted face of the infra-sun. It was a broad blurred disc, deep crimson, streaked with spots and bands of
sable, hazing at the edges into impossibly delicate coronal arabesques. Here,
in the heart of the nebula, dust and gas were condensing,
a new star was taking shape.
As
yet it shone simply by gravitational energy, heating as it contracted. Most of
its titanic mass was still ghostly tenuous. But already its core density must
be approaching quantum collapse, a central
temperature of megadegrees. In a short time (a few million years more, when man
was bones and not even the wind remembered him) atomic fires would kindle and a
new radiance light this sky.
Svantozik
looked at the instruments of his own flitter. "We orient ourselves by
these three cosmic radio sources," he said pointing. His voice fell flat
in a stretched quietness. "When we are near the . . . headquarters ... we emit our call signal and a regular
ground-control beam brings us in."
"Good."
Flandry met the alien eyes, half frightened and half wrathful, with a steady compassionate look. "You know what you must do when you have
landed."
"Yes."
The lean grim head lifted. "I shall not betray anyone again. You have my
oath, Captain. I would not have broken troth with the Packmasters either, save
that I think you are right and they have sold Urdahu."
Flandry
nodded and clapped the Ardazirho's shoulder. It trembled faintly beneath his
hand. He felt Svantozik was sincere; though he left two armed humans aboard the
prize, just to make certain the sincerity was permanent. Of course, Svantozik
might sacrifice his own life to bay a warning, or he might have lied about
there being only one installation in the whole nebula, but you had to take some
risks.
Flandry crossed back to his own vessel. The
boarding
tube was retracted. The two boats ran parallel
for a time.
Great unborn planets. It
had been a slim clue, and Flandry would not have been surprised had it proved a
false lead. But ... it has been know
for many centuries that when a rotating mass has condensed sufficientiy,
planets will begin to take shape around it.
By
the, dull radiance of the swollen sun, Flandry saw his goal. It was, as yet,
little more than a dusty, gassy belt of stones, strung out along an eccentric
orbit in knots of local concentration, like beads. Gradually, the' forces of
gravitation, magnetism, and spin were bringing it together; ice and primeval
hydrocarbons, condensed in the bitter cold on solid particles, made them unite
on colliding, rather than shatter or bounce. Very little of the embryo world
was visible; only the largest nucleus, a rough asteroidal mass, dark, scarred,
streaked here and there by ice, crazily spinning; the firefly dance of lesser
meteors, from mountains to dust motes, which slowly rained upon it.
Flandry
placed himself in the turret by Chives. "As near as I can tell," he
said, "this is going to be a terrestroid planet."
"Shall
we leave a note for its future inhabitants, sir?" asked the Shalmuan,
dead-pan.
Flandry's
bark of laughter came from sheer tension. He added slowly, "It does make
you wonder, though, what might have happened before Terra was born—"
Chives
held up a .hand. The red light pouring in turned his green skin a hideous
color. "I think that is the Merseian beam, sir."
Flandry glanced at the
instruments. "Check. Let's scoot."
He
didn't want the enemy radar to show two craft. He let Svantozik's dwindle from
sight while he sent the Hooligan
leaping around the cluster.
"We'd better come in about ten kilometers from the base, to be safely
below their horizon," he said. "Do you have them located,
Chives?"
"I
think so, sir. The irregularity of the central asteroid confuses
identification, but—Let me read the course, sir, while you bring us in."
Flandry took the controls. This would come as
close to seat-of-the-pants piloting as was ever possible in space. Instruments
and robots, faster and more precise than live flesh could ever hope to be,
would still do most of the work; but in an unknown, shifting region like this,
there must also be a brain, continuously making the basic decisions. Shall we evade this rock swarm at the price of running that ice cloud?
He
activated the negagrav screens and swooped straight for his target. No local
object would have enough speed to overcome that potential and strike the hull.
But sheer impact on the yielding force field could knock a small vessel galley
west, dangerously straining its metal.
Against looming nebular curtains, Flandry saw
two pitted meteors come at him. They rolled and tumbled, like iron dice. He
threw in a double vector, killing some forward velocity while he applied a
"downward" acceleration. The Hooligan slid
past. A jagged, turning cone, five kilometers long, lay ahead. Flandry whipped
within meters of its surface. Something went by, so quickly his eyes
registered nothing but an enigmatic "fire-streak. Something else struck
amidships. The impact rattled his teeth together. A brief storm of frozen
gases, a comet, painted the viewscreens with a red-tinged blizzard.
Then
the main asteroid swelled before him. Chives called out figures. The Hooligan slipped over the whirling rough surface.
"Here!" cried Chives. Flandry slammed to a halt. "Sir,"
added the Shalmuan. Flandry eased down with great care. Silence fell. Blackness
lowered beyond the hull. They had landed.
"Stand
by," said Flandry. Chives' green face grew mutinous. "That's an
order," he added, knowing how he hurt the other being, but without choice
in the matter. "We may possibly need a fast getaway. Or
a fast pursuit. Or, if everything goes wrong, someone to report back to
Walton."
"Yes, sir." Chives could scarcely be heard. Flandry left him bowed over the control
panel.
His
crew, minus the two humans with Svantozik, were
already in combat armor. A nuclear howitzer was mounted on the Donarrian's
centauroid back, a man astride to fire it.
The
pieces of a rocket launcher slanted across the two Gorzuni's double shoulders.
The Scothanian cried a war chant and swung his pet wrecking bar so the air
whistled. The remaining five men formed a squad in one quick metallic clash.
Flandry put on his own suit
and led the way out.
He
stood in starless night. Only the wan glow from detector dials, and the puddle
of light thrown in vacuum by a fiashbeam, showed him that his eyes still saw.
But as they adjusted, he could make out the very dimmest of cloudy red above
him, and blood-drop sparks where satellite meteors caught sunlight. The gravity
underfoot was so low that even in armor he was near weighdessness. Yet his
inertia was the same. It felt like walking beneath some infinite ocean.
He
checked the portable neutrino tracer. In this roil of nebular matter, all
instruments were troubled; the dust spoke in every spectrum, a million-year
birth cry. But there was clearly a small nuclear-energy plant ahead. And that
could only belong to one place.
"Join
hands," said Flandry. "We don't want to wander from each other. Radio silence, of course. Let's go."
They
bounded over the invisible surface. It was irregular, often made slick by
frozen gas. Once there was a shudder in the ground, and a roar traveling
through their boot soles. Some giant boulder had crashed.
Then
the sun rose, vast and vague on the topplingly near horizon, and poured ember
light across ice and iron. It climbed with visible speed. Flandry's gang
released hands and fell into approach tactics; dodging from pit to crag,
waiting, watching, making another long flat leap. In
their black armor, they were merely a set of moving shadows among many.
The
Merseian dome came into view. It was a blue hemisphere, purple in this light,
nestled into a broad shallow crater. On the heights around there squatted
negafield generators, to maintain a veil of force against the stony rain. 4t
had been briefly turned off to permit Svantozik's landing; the squat black
flitter sat under a scarp, two kilometers from the dome. A small fast
warcraft—pure Merseian, the final proof —berthed next to the shelter, for the
use of the twenty or so beings whom it would accommodate. The ship's bow gun
was aimed at the Ardazirho boat. Routine precaution, and there were no other
defenses. What had the Merseians to fear?
Flandry
crouched on the rim and tuned his radio. Svanto-zik's beam dispersed enough for
him to listen to the conversation: "—no, my lords, this visit is on my own
initiative. I encountered a situation on Vixen so urgent that I felt it should
be made known to you at once, rather than delaying to stop at Ardazir—"
Just gabble, bluffing into blindness, to gain time for Flandry's attack.
The
man checked his crew. One by one, they made the swab-O-sign. He led them
forward. The force field did not touch ground; they slithered beneath it, down
the crater wall, and wormed toward the dome. The rough, shadow-blotted rock
gave ample cover.
Flandry's
plan was simple. He would sneak up close to the place and put a low-powered
shell through. Air would gush out, the Merseians would die, and he could
investigate their papers at leisure. With an outnumbered band, and so much
urgency, he could not afford to be chivalrous.
"—thus
you see, my lords, it appeared to me the Ter-rans—"
"All hands to space armorl We are being attacked?'
The
shout ripped at Flandry's earphones. It had been in the Merseian Prime
language, but not a Merseian voice. Somehow, incredibly, his approach had been
detected.
"The Ardazirho is on their side\ Destroy
himV
Flandry
hit the ground. An instant later, it rocked. Through all the armor, he felt a
sickening belly blow. It seemed as if he saw the brief thermonuclear blaze
through closed lids and a sheltering arm.
Without
air for concussion, the shot only wiped out Svantozik's boat. Volatilized iron
whirled up, condensed, and sleeted down again. The asteroid shuddered to
quiescence, Flandry leaped up. There was a strange dry weeping in his throat.
He knew, with a small guiltiness, that he mourned more for Svantozik of the
Janneer Ya than he did for the two humans who had
died.
"—attacking party is
about sixteen degrees north of the sunrise
point, 300 meters from the dome—"
The gun turret of the
Merseian warship swiveled about.
The* Donarrian was already a-gallop. The
armored man on his back clung tight, readying his weapon. As the enemy gun
found its aim, the nuclear howitzer spoke.
That
was a lesser blast. But the sun was drowned in its noiseless blue-white
hell-dazzle. Half the spaceship went up in a fiery cloud, a ball which changed
from white to violet to rosy red, swelled away and was lost in the nebular sky.
The stern tottered, a shaken stump down which molten steel crawled. Then,
slowly, it fell. It struck the crater floor and rolled earthquaking to the
cliffs, where it vibrated and was still.
Flandry
opened his eyes again to cold wan light. "Get at them!" he bawled.
The
Donarrian loped back. The Gorzuni were crouched, their rocket launcher
assembled in seconds, its chemical missile aimed at the dome.
"Shoot!" cried Flandry. It echoed in his helmet. The cosmic radio
noise buzzed and mumbled beneath his command.
Flame
and smoke exploded at the point of impact. A hole gaped in the dome, and air
rushed out. Its moisture froze; a thin fog overlay the crater. Then it began to
settle, but with slowness in this gravitational field, so that mists whirled
around Flandry's crew as they plunged to battie.
The
Merseians came swarming forth. There were almost a score, Flandry saw, who had
had time to throw on armor after being warned. They crouched big and black in
metal, articulated tail-plates lashing their boots with rage. Behind faceless
helmets, the heavy mouths might have been drawn into snarls. Their hoarse calls
boomed over the man's earphones.
He
raced forward. The blast from their sidearms sheeted over him. He felt heat
glow through insulation, his nerves shrank from it. Then he was past the
concerted barrage.
A
dinosaurian shape met him. The Merseian held a blaster, focused to needle beam.
Its flame gnawed at Flandry's cuirass. The man's own energy gun spat—straight
at the other weapon. The Merseian roared and tried to shelter his gun with an
armored hand. Flandry held his beam steady. The battle gauntlet began to glow.
The Merseian dropped his blaster with a shriek of anguish. He made a
low-gravity leap toward his opponent, whipped around, and slapped with his
tail.
The
blow smashed at Flandry. He went tumbling across the ground, fetched against
the dome with a force that stunned him, and sagged there. The Merseian closed
in. His mighty hands snatched after the Terran's weapon. Flandry made a judo
break, yanking his wrist out between the Merseian's fingers and thumb. He kept
his gun arm in motion, till he poked the barrel into the enemy's eye slit. He
pulled trigger. The Merseian staggered back. Flandry followed, close in,
evading all frantic attempts to break free of him. A second, two seconds,
three, four, then his beam had pierced the thick superglass. The Merseian fell,
gruesomely slow.
Flandry's
breath was harsh in his throat. He glared through the drifting red streamers of
fog, seeking to understand what went on. His men were outnumbered still, but
that was being whittled down. The Donarrian hurled Merseians to earth, tossed
them against rocks, kicked and stamped with enough force to kill them through
their armor by sheer concussion. The Gorzuni stood side by side, a blaster
aflame in each of their hands; no metal could long withstand that concentration
of fire. The Scothanian bounced, inhumanly swift, his wrecking bar leaping in
and out like a battle ax—strike, pry, hammer at
vulnerable joints and connections, till something gave way and air bled out.
And the humans were live machines bleakly wielding blaster and slug gun,
throwing grenades and knocking Merseian weapons aside with karate blows. Two of
them were down, dead; one slumped against the dome, and Flandry heard his pain
over the radio. But there were more enemy casualties strewn over the crater.
The Terrans were winning. In spite of all,
they were winning. But—
Flandry's eyes swept the scene. Someone,
somehow, had suddenly realized that a band of skilled space fighters was stealing
under excellent cover toward the dome. There was no way Flandry knew Of to be certain of that, without instruments he had not seen planted
around. Except—
Yes.
He saw the tall gaunt figure mounting a cliff. Briefly it was etched against
the bloody sun, then it slipped from view.
Aycharaych had been here after all.
No men could be spared from combat, even if
they could break away. Flandry bounded off himself.
He
topped the ringwall in three leaps. A black jumble of rocks fell away before
him. He could not see any flitting shape, but in this weird shadowy land eyes
were almost useless at a distance. He knew, though, which way Aycharaych was
headed. There was only one escape from the nebula now, and the Chereionite had
gotten what information he required from human minds.
Flandry
began to travel. Leap—not high, or you will take forever to come down again—
long, low bounds, with the dark metallic world streaming away beneath you and
the fire-coal sun slipping toward night again; silence, death, and aloneness.
If you die here, your body will be crushed beneath falling continents,
your atoms will be locked for eternity in the core of a planet.
A
ray flared against his helmet. He dropped to the ground, before he had even
thought He lay in a small crater, blanketed with shadow, and stared into the
featureless black wall of a giant meteor facing away from the sun. Somewhere on
its slope—
Aycharaych's
Anglic words came gende, "You can move faster than I. You could reach your
vessel before me and warn your subordinate I can only get in by a ruse, of
course. He will hear me speak on the radio in a disguised voice of things known
only to him and yourself, and will not see me until I have been admitted. And
that will be too late for him. But first I must complete your life, Captain
Flandry."
The
man crouched deeper into murk. He felt the near-absolute cold of the rock creep
through armor and touch his skin. "You've tried often enough before,"
he said.
Aycharaych's
chuckle was purest music. "Yes. I really thought I had said farewell to
you, that night at the Crystal Moon. It seemed probable you would be sent to
Jupiter—I have studied Admiral Fenross with care—and Horx had been instructed
to kill the next Terran agent. My appearance at the feast was largely
sentimental. You have been an ornament of my reality, and I could not deny
myself a final conversation."
"My
friend," grated Flandry, "you're about as sentimental as a block of solid
helium. You wanted us to know about your presence. You foresaw it would alarm
us enough to focus our attention on Syrax, where you hinted you would go
next—what part of our attention that superb red-herring operation had not
fastened on Ymir. You had our Intelligence men swarming around Jupiter and out
in the Cluster, going frantic in search of your handiwork, leaving you free to
manipulate Ardazir."
"My
egotism will miss you," said Aycharaych coolly. "You alone, in this
degraded age, can fully appreciate my efforts, or censure them intelligendy
when I fail. This time, the unanticipated thing was that you would survive on
Jupiter. Your subsequent assignment to Vixen has, naturally, proven catastrophic
for us. I hope now to remedy that disaster, but—" The philosopher awoke.
Flandry could all but see Aycharaych's ruddy eyes filmed over with a vision of
some infinitude humans had never grasped. "It is not certain. The totality
of existence will always elude us; and in that mystery lies
the very meaning. How I pity immortal God!"
Flandry jumped out of the crater.
Aycharaych's
weapon spat. Flame splashed off the man's armor. Reflex—a mistake, for now
Flandry knew ..where Aycharaych was. The Chereionite
could not get away— comforting to realize, than an enemy who saw twenty years
ahead, and had controlled whole races like a hidden fate, could also make
mistakes.
Flandry
sprang up onto the meteor. He crashed against Aycharaych.
The blaster fired point-blank. Flandry's hand
chopped down. Aycharaych's wrist did not snap across, the armor protected it.
But the gun went spinning down into darkness. Flandry snatched for his own
weapon. Aycharaych read the intention and closed in,
wrestling. They staggered about on the meteor in each other's arms. The
sinking sun poured its baleful light across them and Aycharaych could see
better by it than Flandry. In minutes, when night fell, the man would be
altogether blind and the Chereionite could take victory.
Aycharaych
thrust a leg behind the man's and pushed. Flandry toppled. His' opponent
retreated. But Flandry fell slowly enough that he managed to seize the other's
waist. They rolled down the slope together. Aycharaych's breath whistled in the
radio, a hawk sound. Even in the clumsy spacesuit,vhe
seemed like water, nearly impossible to keep a grip on.
They
struck bottom. Flandry got his legs around the Chereionite's. He wriggled
himself onto the back and groped after flailing limbs. A forearm around the
alien helmet— he couldn't strangle, but he could immobilize and—His hands-clamped
on a wrist. He jerked hard.
A trill went through his
radio. The struggle ceased. He lay atop his prisoner, gasping for air. The sun
sank, and blackness closed about them.
"I
fear you broke my elbow joint there," said Aycharaych. "I must
concede."
"I'm
sorry," said Flandry, and he was nothing but honest. "I didn't mean
to."
"In
the end," sighed Aycharaych, and Flandry had never heard so deep a
soul-weariness, "I am beaten not by a superior brain or a higher justice,
but by the brute fact that you are from a larger planet than I and thus have
stronger muscles. It will not be easy to fit this into a harmonious
reality."
Flandry unholstered his blaster and began to
weld their sleeves together. Broken arm or not, he was taking no chances. Bad
enough to have that great watching mind next to his for the time needed to
reach the flitter.
Aycharaych's
tone grew light again, almost amused, "I would like to refresh myself with
your pleasure. So, since you will read the fact anyway in our papers, I shall
tell you now that the overlords of Urdahu will arrive here for conference in
five Terran days."
Flandry
grew rigid. Glory blazed within him. A single shell burst, and Ardazir was
headless I
Gradually
the stiffness and the splendor departed. He finished securing his captive. They
helped each other up. "Come along," said the human. "I've work
to do."
CHAPTER XVUI
Cerulia
did not lie anywhere near
the route between Syrax and Sol. But Flandry went home that way. He didn't
quite know why. Certainly it was not with any large willingness.
He
landed at Vixen's main spaceport. "I imagine I'll be back in a few hours,
Chives," he said. "Keep the pizza
flying." He went lithely down the gangway, passed quarantine in a whirl of
gold and scarlet, and caught an airtaxi to Garth.
The town lay peaceful in its midsummer. Now,
at apastron, with Vixen's atmosphere to filter its radiation, the sun might
almost have been Sol; smaller, brighter, but gentle in a blue sky where tall
white clouds walked. Fields reached green to the Shaw; a river gleamed; the
snowpeaks of the Ridge hovered dreamlike at world's edge.
Flandry
looked up the address he wanted in a public telebooth. He didn't call ahead,
but walked through bustling streets to the little house. Its peaked roof was
gold above vine-covered walls.
Kit
met him at the door. She stood unmoving a long time. Finally she breathed,
"I'd begun to fear you were dead."
"Came close, a time or
two," said Flandry, awkwardly.
She
took his arm. Her hand shook. "No," she said, "y-y-you can't be
killed. You're too much alive. Oh, come in, darlin'!" She closed the door
behind him.
He
followed her to the living room and sat down. Sunlight streamed past roses in a
trellis window, casting blue shadows over the warm small neatness of
furnishings. The girl moved about, dialing the public pneumo for drinks,
chattering with frantic gaiety. His eyes found it pleasant to follow her.
"You
could have written," she said, smiling too much to show it wasn't a
reproach. "When the Ardazirho pulled out o' Vixen, we went back to normal
fast. The mailtubes were operatin' again in a few hours."
"I was busy," he
said.
"An'
you're through now?" She gave him a whiskey and sat down opposite him,
resting her own glass on a bare
sunbrowned knee.
"I
suppose so." Flandry took out a cigarette. "Until
the next trouble comes."
"I
don't really understan' what happened," she said. "
'Tis all been one big confusion."
"Such
developments usually are," he said, glad of a chance to speak
impersonally. "Since the Imperium played down all danger in the public
mind, it could hardly announce a glorious victory in full detail. But things
were simple enough. Once we'd clobbered the Ardazirho chiefs at the nebula,
everything fell apart for their planet. The Vixen force withdrew to help defend
the mother world, because revolt was breaking out all over their little empire.
Walton followed. He didn't seek a decisive battle, his fleet being less than
the total of theirs, but he held them at bay while our psychological warfare
teams took Ardazir apart. Another reason for avoiding open combat as much as
possible was that we wanted that excellent navy of theirs. When they
reconstituted themselves as a loose
federation of coequal orbekhs,
clans, tribes, and what
have you, they were ready enough to accept Terran supremacy— the Pax would
protect them against each other!"
"As easy as
that." A
scowl passed beneath Kit's fair hair.
"After
all they did to us, they haven't paid a millo. Not that
reparations would bring back our dead, but should they go scot
free?"
"Oh,
they ransomed themselves, all right." Flandry's tone grew somber. He
looked through a shielding haze of smoke at roses which nodded in a mild summer wind. "They paid ten times over for all they did at
Vixen; in blood and steel and agony, fighting as bravely as any people I've
ever seen for a cause that was not theirs. We spent them like
wastrels. Not one Ardazirho ship in a dozen came home. And yet the poor proud
devils think it was a victory!"
"What? You mean—"
"Yes.
We joined their navy to ours at Syrax. They were the spearhead of the
offensive. It fell within the rules of the game, you see. Technically, Terra
hadn't launched an all-out attack on the Merseian bases. Ardazir, a confederacy
subordinate to us, had done so! But our fleet came right behind. The Merseians
backed up. They negotiated. Syrax is ours, now." Flandry shrugged.
"Merseia can afford it. Terra won't use the Cluster as an invasion base.
It'll only be a bastion. We aren't brave enough to do the sensible thing; we'll
keep the peace, and to hell with our grandchildren." He smoked in short
ferocious drags. "Prisoner exchange was a condition. All prisoners, and the Merseians meant all. In plain language, if they couldn't have Aycharaych back, they wouldn't
withdraw. They got him."
She looked a wide-eyed
question.
"Never
mind," said Flandry scornfully. "That's a mere detail. I don't
suppose my work went quite for nothing. I helped end the Ardazir war and the
Syrax deadlock. I personally, all by myself, furnished Aycharaych as a bargaining
counter. I shouldn't demand more, should I?" He dropped his face into one
hand. "Oh, God, Kit, how tired I am!"
She
rose, went over to sit on the arm of his chair, and laid a hand upon his head. "Can you stay here an' rest?" she asked
softly.
He looked up. A bare instant he paused,
uncertain himself. The rue twisted his lips upward. "Sorry. I only stopped
in to say good by."
"What?" she whispered, as if he had
stabbed her. "But, Dominic—"
He
shook his head. "No," he cut her off. "It won't do, lass.
Anything less than everything would be too unfair to you. And I'm just not the
forever-and-ever sort. That's the way of it."
He
tossed off his drink and stood up. He would go now, even sooner than he had
planned, cursing himself that he had been so heedless
of them both as to return here. He tilted up her chin and smiled down into the
hazel eyes. "What you've done, Kit," he said, "your children and their children will be proud to remember.
But mostly ... we had fun, didn't
we?"
His
lips brushed hers and tasted tears. He went out the door and walked down the
street again, never looking back.
A
vague, mocking part of him remembered that he had not yet settled his bet with
Ivar del Bruno. And why should he? When he reached
Terra, he would have another try. It would be something to do.
THE END