A SUN INVISIBLE

The invaders had posted their fleet in standard patrol orbits. Otherwise they did nothing to camouflage themselves. It bespoke a confidence that chilled David Falkayn.

As his speedster neared Vanessa, he picked up ship after ship on his instruments. One passed so close that his viewscreens needed little magnification to show details. She was a giant, of Nova class, with only subtle outward indications that the hands which built her were not human. Her guns thrust across blackness and crowding constellations; sunlight blazed off her flanks; she was beautiful, arrogant, and terrifying.

Falkayn told himself he was not duly terrified. Himself wondered how big a liar he was.

His receiver buzzed, a call on the universal band. He flipped to Accept. The dial on the Doppler compensator indicated that the battleship was rapidly matching vectors with him. The image which looked out of the screen was—no, scarcely that of a Vanessan, but a member of the same species. It gabbled.

"Sorry, no spikka da—" Falkayn braked. Conquerors were apt to be touchy, and yonder chap sat aboard a vessel which could eat a continent with nuclear weapons and use his boat afterward for a toothpick. "I regret my ignorance of your various languages."

The Kraok honked. Evidently he, she, or yx did not know Anglic. Well, the interspeech of the Polesotechnic League . . . "Loquerisne Latine?"

The being reached for a vocalizer. Without such help, humans and Kraoka garbled each other's sounds rather badly. Adjusting it, the officer asked, "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"

"Huh?" Falkayn's jaw hit his Adam's apple.

"Ich haben die deutsche Sprache ein wenig gelehrt," said the Kraok with more pride than grammar, "bei der grosse Kapitan."

Falkayn gripped tight to his pilot seat, and his sanity, and gaped.

Aside from being hostile, the creature was not an unpleasing sight. About two meters tall, the body resembled that of a slim tyrannosaur, if one can imagine tyrannosaurs with brown fur. From the back sprang a great, ribbed dorsal fin, partly folded but still shimmering iridescent. The arms were quite anthropoid, except for four-fingered hands where each digit had an extra joint. The head was round, with tufted ears, blunt muzzle, eyes smaller than a man's.

Clothing amounted to a brassard of authority, a pouch belt, and a sidearm. Falkayn could therefore search his memory and discover which of the three Kraokan sexes the officer belonged to: the so-called transmitter, which was fertilized by the male and in turn impregnated the female. I should've guessed, he thought, even if the library on Garstang's didn't have much information on them. The males are short and meek and raise the young. The females are the most creative and make most of the decisions. The transmitters are the most belligerent.

And right now are tracking me with guns. He felt altogether isolated. The throb and murmur of the boat, the odors of recycled air and his own sweat, his weight under the interior gee-field, were like an eggshell of life sensation around him. Outside lay starkness. The power of the League was distant by multiple parsecs, and these strangers had declared themselves its enemies.

"Antworten Sie!" demanded the Kraok.

Falkayn groped with half-forgotten bits of Yiddish that he had sometimes heard from Martin Schuster, during his apprenticeship. "Ikh . . . veyss . . . nit keyn . . . Deitch," he said, as slowly and clearly as possible. "Get me . . . ah mentsch . . . uh, zeit azay git." The other sat motionless. "Damn it, you've got humans with you," Falkayn said. "I know the name of one. Utah Horn. Understand? Utah Horn."

The Kraok switched him over to another, who squatted against a background of electronic apparatus. Unhuman tones whistled from an intercom. The new one turned to Falkavn.

"I know some Latin," yx said. In spite of a vocalizer, the accent was thick enough to spread on pumpernickel. "You identify."

Falkayn wet his lips. "I am the Polesotechnic League's factor on Garstang's," he said. "A messenger capsule brought me word about your, uh, advent. It said I had permission to come here."

"So." More whistles. "Indeed. One boat, unarmed, we allow to make landing at Elan-Trrl. You make trouble, we kill."

"Of course I won't," Falkayn promised, unless I get a chance. "I will proceed directly. Do you want my route plan?"

Yx did. The boat's pilot computer sent numbers to the battleship's. The track was approved. Maser beams flashed through space, alerting other vessels to keep an eye on the speedster. "You go," said the Kraok.

"But this Utah Horn-"

"Commander Horn see you when want to. Go." The screen blanked and Falkayn went. The acceleration strained his internal field compensators.

He gusted air from his lungs and stared outward. Hitherto, as he sped toward Thurman's Star, the view had been dominated by Beta Centauri, unwinking, almost intolerably brilliant across two-score light-years. But now the sun of Vanessa showed a visible disc. It wasn't that kind of type B supergiant: but nevertheless impressive, a white F7, seething with prominences, shimmering with corona. If his shield screens should fail, its radiation would strike through the hull and destroy him.

Well, he gulped, I wanted to be a dashing adventurer. So here I am, and mostly I want to dash.

He stretched, opposed muscles to each other, worked out some of his tension. Then he felt hungry and went aft to build a sandwich; and when he had eaten and lit his pipe, a certain ebullience returned. For he was a bare twenty years old.

When he got his journeyman's papers, he was one of the youngest humans ever to do so. In large part, that was thanks to his role in the trouble on Ivanhoe. To set a similar record for a Master Merchant's certificate, he needed another exploit or two. Beljagor's message had made him whoop for glee.

Now it turned out that he was up against something more formidable than he had imagined. But he remained a scion of a baronial house in the Grand Duchy of Hermes. Mustn't let the side down, eh, what?

At a minimum, if he did nothing but convey word to Sector HQ about what had happened, that would bring him to the notice of the higher-ups. Maybe old Nick van Rijn himself would hear about this David Falkayn, who was so obviously being wasted in that dismal little outpost on Garstang's.

He practiced a reckless grin. It looked better than last year. While his face remained incurably snub-nosed, it had lost the chubbiness that used to distress him. And he was large and blond and rangy, he told himself, and had excellent taste in clothes and wine. Also women, he added, becoming more smug by the minute. If only he weren't the sole human on his assigned planet—! Well, perhaps this mysterious Horn person had brought along some spare females. . . .

Vanessa grew in the vision ports, a reddish globe mottled with green and blue, sparked with reflections off the small seas. Falkayn wondered what the inhabitants called it. Being colonists themselves, whose civilization had not fallen apart during the long hiatus in Kraokan space travel as had happened on other settlements, they doubtless had a single language. Why hadn't Thurman done the usual thing in such cases, and put the native name of his discovery into the catalogues?

Quite probably because men couldn't wrap their larynxes around it. Or maybe he just felt like dubbing the planet "Vanessa." Judas, what a radium-plated opportunity an explorer had! What girl could possibly resist an offer to name a whole world for her?

Another warship in sentry orbit became discernible. Falkayn stopped dreaming.

II

In the lost great days of their expansion, the Kraoka had never founded a city. The concept of so small a unit having an identity of its own—and composed of still lesser individual subunits, each with its separateness—was too alien to them. However, they did give names to the interconnected warrens they built at various sites. Falkayn's bible (Terrestrial Pilot's Guide to the Beta Centauri Region) informed him that Elan-Trrl, in any of several possible spellings, could be found in the middle northern latitudes, and was marked by a League radio beacon.

So crowded a microreel could say little about the planet. The only important hazards mentioned were ozone and ultraviolet. He got into a hooded coverall and donned a filter mask with goggles. The tiny spaceport swooped up at him. He landed and debarked.

For a moment he stood orienting himself, getting accustomed to strangeness. The sky overhead was cloudless, very pale blue, the sun too dazzling for him to look near. Colors seemed washed out in that cruel illumination. Beyond the port, hills rolled down to a lake from which irrigation canals seamed a landscape densely cultivated in bluish-green shrubs. Gnarled, feathery-leaved trees grew along the canal banks and high-prowed motorboats glided on the water. The agricultural machines in the fields, and the occasional gravity craft that flitted overhead, must have been imported by League traders. On the horizon there bulked a dry brown mountain range.

Falkayn felt heavy, under the pull of one-point-two gees. A wind boomed around him, casting billows of heat. But in this parched air he wasn't grossly uncomfortable.

On the other side of the port, Elan-Trrl lifted bulbous towers. Their gray stone was blurred in outline, from millennia of weathering. He didn't see much traffic; mainly underground, he believed. His eyes went gratefully to the homelike steel-and-vitryl facades of the League compound at the edge of the space field. They wavered in the heat shimmers.

Two vessels rested near his. One was a stubby Holbert, evidently Beljagor's; the second, lean and armed, modeled after a Terrestrial chaser, must belong to the invaders. Several Kraoka stood guard in her shade. They must have been told to expect Falkayn, for they made no move toward him. Nor did they speak. As he walked to the compound, he felt their eyes bore at his back. His boots made a loud, lonely noise beneath the wind.

The door of the factor's quarters opened for him. The air in the lobby was no less hot and sere than outside, the light scarcely less harsh. But naturally the League would put someone from an F-type star here. Falkayn began to think more kindly about cool green Garstang's. And why hadn't this Beljagor unko come out to meet him?

An intercom said, "Down the hall to your right," in Latin and a gravelly bass.

Falkayn proceeded to the main office. Beljagor sat behind his desk, puffing a cigar. Above him hung the emblem of the Polesotechnic League, an early Caravel spaceship on a sunburst and the motto All the Traffic Will Bear. Computers, vocascribes, and other equipment were familiar, too. The boss was not. Falkayn had never met anyone from Jaleel before.

"So there you are," Beljagor said. "Took you long enough."

Falkayn stopped and looked at him. The factor was somewhat anthropoid. That is, his stocky form sported two legs, two arms, one head, and no tail. But he was little over a meter tall; his feet each -had three thick toes, his hands three mutually opposed fingers; the kilt which was his solitary garment revealed gray scales and yellow abdomen. His nose could best be likened to a tapir's snout, his ears to a sort of bat wings. A bunch of carroty cilia sprouted from the top of his pate, a pair of fleshy chemosensor tendrils from above his eyes. Those eyes were as small as a Kraok's; animals which see a ways into the ultraviolet and don't use the red end of man's spectrum have no need for large orbs.

As if for comparison, a Vanessan squatted on yxs—no, her this time—tail before the desk. Beljagor gestured with his cigar. "This here is Quillipup, my chief liaison officer. And you are . . . what is your silly name, now?"

"David Falkayn!" The newcomer could do nothing but snap a bit, when he was a mere journeyman face to face with a Master.

"Well, sit. Have a beer? You Earthtypes dehydrate easy."

Falkayn decided Beljagor wasn't such a bad fellow after all. "Thank you, sir." He folded his lean frame into a lounger.

The Jaleelan ordered through his intercom. "Have any trouble on your way?" he asked.

"No."

"I didn't expect you would. You're not worth bothering with. Also, Horn wanted you to come, and he seems to rank high in their fleet." Beljagor shrugged. "Can't say I wanted you myself. An unlicked cub! If there'd been an experienced man anywhere nearby, we might have gotten something done."

Falkayn swallowed another chunk of pride. "Regrets, sir. But when the League has only been operating hereabouts for a few decades—I'm not sure what you have in mind. Your message just said the Thurmanian System had been invaded by a force of Kraoka who're ordering the League out of the whole Beta Centauri region."

"Well, somebody has to go warn HQ," Beljagor grunted, "and I won't myself. That is, I figure to stay here and stall, maybe even argue them into changing their minds. Your own post won't miss you." He fumed in silence for a while. "First, though, before you leave, I want you to try and make a few elementary observations. That's why I sent to Garstang's for help, instead of Roxlatl. Snarfen is probably ten times as able as you—he being a Master—but you are a human and there are humans in high positions among the Antoranites. Like Horn, who said he'd want to interview you, after I mentioned your origin. So maybe you can get a line on what's going on. Takes one member of your ridiculous race to understand another, I always say."

Falkayn stuck grimly to the point. "The Antoranites . . . sir?"

"The invaders call their base Antoran. They won't describe it beyond the name."

Falkayn glanced at Quillipup. "Don't you have some idea where they come from?" he asked.

"No," said the Kraok into her vocalizer. "It can be no world that the Race was known to have settled. But records are incomplete."

"I don't understand how—"

"I shall explain. Ages before your species or Master Beljagor's were aught but savages, our great ancestors on Kraokanan—"

"Yes, I know about them."

"Don't interrupt your superiors, cub," Beljagor growled. "Besides, I'm not sure you do know the history. And won't hurt you to hear it again, whether or not you've waded through a book or two." His nose twitched in disdain. "You're with Solar Spice & Liquors, right? They don't deal here. Nothing for them. As far as interstellar trade goes, Vanessa doesn't produce anything but drugs and fluorescents that aren't useful to your type of fife. Me, I'm not only here as agent for General Motors of Jaleel, I often represent other companies from similar planets. So I have to know the situation inside out. Go on, Quillipup."

"Now you are interrupting," sulked the Vanessan.

"When I speak, it's not an interruption, it's an enlightenment. Go on, I said. But make it short. None of your damned singing chronicles, you hear?"

"The majesty of the Race cannot well be conveyed without the Triumph Ballads."

"Stuff the majesty of the Race! Carry on."

"Oh, well, he probably could not appreciate the splendor anyway."

Falkayn gritted his teeth. Where the hell was that promised beer?

"Thousands upon thousands of years ago, then," Quillipup began, "the Race mastered space flight and set forth to colonize among the stars. Long and mighty was that striving, and the tales of the hero-crews echo down the ages. As for example, Ungn—"

"Vector back," ordered Beljagor, for Quillipup seemed about to burst into song.

Falkayn wondered if her bragging was due to an inferiority complex. The fact of the matter was that the Kraoka never had learned how to build a hyperdrive engine. Everything must be done at sub-light speeds: decades or centuries, from star to star. And then only the bright F-types, which are comparatively rare, were reasonable goals. Smaller suns, like Sol, were too cool and dim, too poor in the ultraviolet radiation on which a high-energy biochemistry depended. Bigger ones like Beta Centauri—indeed, any above F5 in the main sequence—lacked planets. The Kraoka were lucky to have found fourteen new systems they could use.

"Try to imagine the ancestral achievement," Quillipup urged. "Not merely did they cross the unthinkable interstellar abysses, they often transformed the atmosphere and ecology of entire worlds, to make them habitable. Never another species has gained the skill in that art which they possessed."

Well, naturally not, Falkayn thought. Modern spacefarers had no reason to be planetary engineers. If they didn't like a globe, they flitted off to look for another. Sublight travelers could not be so choosy.

He must admit that the Kraokan past had a certain grandeur. Men would hardly have mounted so vast a project for so long; they had more individual but less racial pride.

"When the Dark Ages descended," Quillipup said, "we remembered. Whatever else slipped from our grasp, we were yet able to look into the night sky and know what stars shone upon our kindred."

According to what Falkayn had read, the collapse had been gradual but inevitable. The sphere of operations simply became too big for expeditions so slow; it grew too costly, in time and labor and resources, to attain the next white sun. Thus exploration ended.

And likewise did trade between the colonies. It couldn't be made to pay. The Polesotechnic League exists merely because—given hyperdrive and gravity control—interstellar freight costs less for numberless planetary products than manufacture at home would

cost. Though the ancient Kraoka had lacked a profit motive, they were not exempt from the laws of economics.

So they built no more star ships. In time, most of the colonies even quit interplanetary travel. Several fell into chaos and ultimate barbarism. Vanessa was luckier: civilization persisted, ossified and changeless but on a fairly high technological level, for some three hundred centuries. Then Thurman came. And now the Kraoka again had news from their lost brothers and dreamed of reunifying the Race.

Which required money. A spaceship is not exactly cheap, and the League is no charitable organization. Let the Vanessans accumulate sufficient credit, and shipyards elsewhere in the galaxy would be glad to take their orders. But not before.

Falkayn grew aware that Quillipup was droning on about more immediately significant business.

"—neither chronicle nor tradition identifies a world that might be Antoran. Phonetic analysis of clandestinely recorded speech, and certain details.of custom that have been observed, suggest that the planet was settled from Dzua. But Dzua was one of the first worlds on which civilization disintegrated, and no record remains of enterprises which might once have begun there. Antoran must, accordingly, be a fifteenth colony, forgotten at home and never mentioned to the rest of us."

"Are you sure?" Falkayn ventured. "I mean, could one of the known Kraokan planets not have—"

"Certainly not," Beljagor said. "I've been on all of them and I know their capabilities. A fleet like this one—and I was taken into space, shown how big a fleet it is and what it can do—it can't be built without more industry than anybody could hide."

"The invaders . . . what have they said?"

"Not a clue-giving word, I told you. They don't belong to your blabbermouth species. Kraoka have too much tribal-identity instinct to break security."

"They must at least have explained their reasons."

"Oh, that. Yes. They're hell-bent to reestablish the old society, as an empire this time. And they want the League out of the entire region because they say we're a bunch of dominators, exploiters, corrupters of the pure tradition, and I don't know what stinking else."

Falkayn stole a look at Quillipup. He couldn't read expressions on

her face, but the dorsal fin—a body-cooling surface—was erecting itself and the tail switched. Vanessa had offered no resistance to the take-over. Quite probably Quillipup would not be a bit sorry if her present employers got booted out.

The human said carefully, "Well, sir, in a way they're justified, aren't they? This is their home, not ours. We've done nothing for the Kraoka that we didn't make a fat profit on. And if they want to deal with us, they have to change a high, ancient culture—"

"Your idealism pierces me to the core; I won't say in what part of my anatomy," Beljagor sneered. "What matters is tiiat the League stands to lose a megawhopping amount of money. All our facilities in the region are to be confiscated, you hear? So they'll get our trade with the cooler stars, too. And I don't think they'll stop there, either. Those humans who're with them, what do they want?"

"Well . . . yes," Falkayn conceded. There was no denying that his own species was among the most predatory in the universe. "Your message mentioned somebody called Utah Horn. That does sound pretty, uh, Wild West and banditlike."

"I'll notify him you're here," Beljagor said. "He wants to talk with a League official of his own race. Well, he'll have to settle for you. I wish I could hope you'll manage to worm something out of him." A servor floated in with bottles. "Here's the beer," Beljagor announced. The machine opened two, Quillipup curtly declining a third. Her sinews were taut and her tail lashed the clawed feet. "Ad fortunam tuam," Beljagor said with no great sincerity, and tossed off half a liter.

Falkayn opened his mask at the mouth and did the same. Then he spouted the liquid back, choked, coughed, and fought not to

vomit.

"Huh?" Beljagor stared. "What in the nine pustulant hells—? Oh. I see. I forgot your breed can't stand Jaleelan proteins." He slapped his thigh with a pistol noise. "Haw, haw, haw!"

III

Humans being as ubiquitous as they are, nearly every League outpost on a nonterrestroid planet includes a suite conditioned and stocked for such visitors. Falkayn had been afraid that those Antoranite officers who were of his lineage would have taken the

quarters over, leaving him to twiddle his thumbs in the cramped speedster. But they preferred their spaceships, he learned. Perhaps they were wary of booby traps. He was free to twiddle his thumbs in a series of rooms.

His phone chimed as Vanessa's nineteen-hour day was drawing to a close. A man in a form-fitting green uniform looked out of the screen. His features were hard, moustached, and so deeply tanned that at first Falkayn took him for an African. "You are the one from the other Polesotechnic station?" he asked. He spoke coldly, with a guttural accent.

"Yes. David Falkayn. And you're Commander Horn?"

"No. Captain Blanck, in charge of security. Since Commander Horn is to have a conference with you, I am making safe arrangements."

"I'm not quite sure what we are to confer about."

Blanck cracked a smile. It seemed to hurt his face. "Nothing very definite, Freeman Falkayn. We wish certain messages conveyed by you to the League. Otherwise, shall we say that it is mutually advantageous to get some personal impressions of each other, uncomplicated by inherent differences between species. Antoran will fight if need be, but would rather not. Commander Horn wishes to persuade you that we are no monsters, nor engaged in an unreasonable cause. It is hoped that you in turn can convince your superiors."

"Um-m-m . . . okay. Where and when?"

"I think best in your billet. We assume you are not so stupid as to attempt any breach of truce."

"With a war fleet sitting right over my head? Don't worry!" Falkayn considered. "How about dinner here? I've checked the supplies, and they're better than anything a spaceship is likely to have."

Blanck agreed, set the time for an hour hence, and switched off. Falkayn got the kitchen servors busy. The fact that he was to dine with an enemy did not mean he couldn't dine well. Of course, a space cowboy like Utah Horn wouldn't know caviar from buckshot; but Falkayn was prepared to savor for two.

While he dressed, in a formal gold outfit, he fined up his thoughts. There didn't seem to be many humans with the invaders, but they all seemed to be key personnel. No doubt they were the ones who had originally shown the Antoranites how to build warcraft and were the experienced strategists and tacticians of the whole shebang. Horn was willing to come here because a fellow human taken aboard a ship might observe too much, critical little details which would have escaped Beljagor. But Falkayn could try to pump him. ...

A tender landed from the orbiting flotilla. Dusk had fallen, and Falkayn could barely see that a single human walked toward his lodgings, accompanied by four Kraokan guards. Those took stations at the entrance.

A minute passed while his guest waited in the air lock for ozone to be converted; then Falkayn activated the inner door. The An-toranite had just hung up a filter mask. Falkayn lurched.

"What?" he yelled.

She couldn't be many years older than himself. The uniform was snug around a figure which would have stunned .him even if he had not been celibate for months. Blue-black hair fell softly to her shoulders past enormous hazel eyes, tip-tilted nose, the most delightful mouth he had ever—

"But, but, but," he said.

She turned Blanck's accent to music. "Freeman Falkayn? I am Commander Horn."

"Utah Horn?"

"Yes, that is correct, Jutta Horn of Neuheim. You are surprised?"

Falkayn nodded in a blackjacked fashion.

"You see, Neuheim's population being small, any who happen to have some ability must help. Besides, my father was the man who discovered the lost planet and began this whole crusade. The Kra-oka, with their feeling for ancestry, revere me on that account; and moreover, they are used to thinking of females as leaders. So I am doubly useful: any orders transmitted by me are sure to be obeyed to the letter. You must have met women spacers before now."

"Uh, it's only that, uh—" J get it. When he dictated his letter to me, Beljagor was using a "'scribe adjusted for Anglic spelling. Quite understandable, when so few people speak German anymore. He did use the masculine pronoun for her. But either he didn't happen to meet her personally, or he's too contemptuous of humans to bother noticing their sex.

The loss is entirely his.

Falkayn collected himself, smiled his largest smile and bowed his most sweeping bow. "I wish I could be so pleasantly surprised every time," he purred. "Welcome, Commander. Do sit down. What would you like to drink?"

She looked doubtful. "I am not sure if I ought."

"Come, come. A dinner without an aperitif is like a—ahem!— a day without sunshine." He had almost said, "A bed without a girl," but that might be rushing matters.

"Ach, I am not familiar with these things."

"High time you became so, then." Falkayn told the nearest servor to bring old-fashioneds. He preferred a martini himself, by several light-years, but if her palate was uneducated she'd drink more of something sweet.

She settled primly on a chair. He saw that her wrist communicator was energized, doubtless transmitting to the guards outside. If they heard anything suspicious, they would break in. Still, they wouldn't catch the nuances of what Falkayn was feverishly planning.

He sat down, too. She refused a cigarette. 'You must not have had a chance to*be corrupted by civilization," he laughed.

"No," she agreed, deadpan. "I was born and raised on Neuheim. My sole visits beyond the system, until now, were to unexplored stars in the course of training cruises."

"What is this Neuheim?"

"Our planet. A part of the Antoranite System."

"Eh? You mean Antoran is a star?"

Jutta Horn bit her lip. "I did not know you had the opposite impression."

In spite of her nearness, or maybe because of being stimulated thereby, Falkayn's mind leaped. "Ah-hal" he grinned. "This tells me something. We took for granted that the Antoranites were from a single planet and their human allies simply adventurers. Earthmen don't call themselves Solarians. But Earthmen and Martians do collectively. Ergo, there's more than one inhabited planet going around Antoran. Your Neuheim; and how many Kraokan worlds?'

"No matter!" she clipped.

He waved his hand. "I'm sorry if I've disturbed you. Here are our cocktails. Let's drink to a better understanding between us."

She sipped, hesitantly at first, then with frank enjoyment. "You are more friendly than I had expected," she said.

"How could I be otherwise toward you, my lady?" She blushed and fluttered her lashes, yet obviously she was not playing coquette. He eased off; never embarrass your target. "We're discussing our differences like two civilized people, trying to reach a compromise. Aren't we?"

"What authority have you to sign treaties?" She might never have been in civilization, but she had been taught how it worked.

"None," Falkayn said. "As the man on the spot, though, I can make recommendations that will have considerable weight."

"You look so young to be so important," she murmured.

"Oh, well," said Falkayn modestly, "I've knocked around a bit? you know. Had the chance to do this and that. Let's talk about you."

She took his pronoun for plural and started off on what must be a prepared lecture.

Antoran did indeed have planets which the Kraoka of Dzua had once colonized. Though the settlers perforce gave up star travel, they had maintained interplanetary commerce down the millennia, keeping more technology than Vanessa did.

Forty-odd years ago, Robert Horn of Nova Germania was being chased by a League cruiser. He laid a course to throw the pursuer off his trail—the old star-dodge maneuver—and thus passed so near Antoran that he detected radio emissions. Later he slipped back to investigate and discovered the planets.

"Yes, he was an outlaw," his daughter said defiantly. "He was a leader in the Landholders' Revolt ... so good, so effective, that afterward they dared not give him amnesty."

Falkayn had heard vaguely about the matter. Something to do with a conspiracy among Nova Germania's first families, descendants of the original pioneers, to get back the power that a new constitution had taken away from them. And, yes, the League was involved; the republican government offered better trading concessions than the Landholders had granted in their day. No wonder that this girl was busily doing the League all the dirt she could.

He smiled and refilled her glass. "I can sympathize," he said. "Being from Hermes, you see. Aristocracy's far and away my favorite system."

Her eyes widened. "You are adel—nobly born?"

"Younger son," Falkayn said, modest again. He did not add that he'd been shipped to Earth for his education because he kept kicking over the traces which an aristocrat was expected to carry. "Do go on. You fascinate me."

"The Antoranite System includes one planet which the Kraoka had modified for habitability, but which was too far out, too cold and dark, to be really worth their while. For humans it is better. That is my world, Neuheim."

Hm, Falkayn thought. This implied at least one planet further inward which did provide a good Kraokan environment. Very possibly more than one; a war fleet as big as Beljagor claimed he had seen can't be built in a hurry without a lot of population and resources. But this in turn implied a large sun with a wide biothermal zone. Which didn't make sense! Every F-type star in this region had been visited by League surveyors; likewise the G-types; and there definitely was no such system as—

"My father returned in secret to Nova Germania," Jutta Horn said. "He got recruits there and elsewhere. The whole world of Neuheim was given them in exchange for their help."

I feel pretty sure they planted the idea of conquest in the first place, Falkayn reflected. Yeh, 1 can guess how Kraoka might fall for the concept of a reunified Vaterland. And given enough anti-League propaganda, they might well come to believe that the only way to get unification is to expel us first.

"So Germanian engineers showed the Antoranites how to make hyperdrive ships," he said; "and Germanian officers trained the crews; and Germanian secret agents kept track of events outsystem —my, you've been busy."

She nodded. Two drinks blurred her tone a little. "That is true. Everything comes second to the crusade. Afterward we can relax. How I look forward!"

"Why not start right away?" Falkayn asked. "Why fight the League? We've no objection to the Kraoka building a star marine at their own expense, nor to any social arrangements you've made on Neuheim."

"After the way the League meddled in the past?" she challenged.

"Yes, granted, we do, now and then, when our interests are threatened. But still, Jutta"—there, he'd established a first-name relationship—"the Polesotechnic League is not a state, not even a government. It's nothing but a mutual-benefit association of interstellar merchants, who're probably more wolfish toward each other than toward anybody outside."

"Power is the one basis of negotiation," she said, turning Clausewitzian. "When we and our allies have secured this region, then

perhaps we will allow you to operate here again . . . under our rules. Otherwise you could too easily impose your will on us, if we did not happen to desire the same things as you."

"The League isn't going to take this lying down," he warned.

"I think the League had better do so," she retorted. "We are here, in the region, with interior lines of communication. We can strike from space, anywhere. A League war fleet must come across many parsecs. It will find its bases demolished. And it will not know where our home planets are!"

Falkayn backed off in haste. He didn't want her in that mood. "You certainly have a tremendous advantage," he said. "The League can muster forces greater by orders of magnitude-surely you realize that—but the League may well decide that the cost of defeating you would be greater than any possible gain in doing so."

"Thus my father calculated before he died. Merchants, who lust for nothing but money, can be cowed. Adelsvolk are different. They live for an ideal, not for economics."

I wish to hell you'd had a chance to stick that pretty nose out of your smug, ingrown little kingdom and see what working aristocrats are like, Falkayn thought. Aloud: "Well, now, Jutta, I can't quite agree. Remember, I'm both a merchant and a nobleman's son. The psychologies aren't so unlike. A peer has to be a politician, with everything that that entails, or he's no good. And a merchant has to be an idealist."

"What?" She blinked in startlement. "How?"

"Why, you don't think we work for money alone, do you? If that were the object, we'd stay safe and snug at home. No, it's adventure, new horizons, life's conquest of inanimate nature—the universe itself, the grandest enemy of all." '

She frowned, but she was softened. "I do not understand, quite."

"Suppose I give you a few examples—"

IV

Dinner was served in the roof turret, which had a view like being outdoors. By night Vanessa took on beauty. Both moons were aloft, small and swift, turning the land to a fantasy of dim silver and moving shadows. The lake gleamed, the native towers looked like giant blossoms. Overhead the sky was splendid with stars, Beta

Centauri the king jewel, its blue radiance matching the moons'.

And glowpanels caressed Jutta's sun-browned cheeks with their own light; and Beethoven's Seventh lilted softly from a speaker; and bubbles danced in the champagne glasses. Dinner had made its stately progression from hors d'oeuvres and consomme through fish, roast, and salad, to petits fours and now cheeses. Falkayn had kept the magnum flask busy. Not that either party was drunk— Jutta, alas, had so far kept her wits patriotically about her—but they both felt more than cheerful.

"Tell me other things," she urged. "You have had such a wonderful existence, David. Like the hero of an ancient saga—but this is now, which makes it twice as good."

"Let me think," he said, giving her a refill. "Maybe the time I cracked up on a rogue planet?"

"A what?"

"Free planet, sunless. More of them floating around in space than there are stars. The smaller the body, you see, the likelier it was to form when the galaxy coalesced. Normally you find them in groups ... to be honest, you don't normally find them, because space is big and they are little and dark. But by sheer chance, on the way from Tau Ceti to 70 Ophiuchi, I—"

The adventure had, in fact, happened to somebody else. So had most of the stories Falkayn had been relating. But he saw no reason to spoil a good yarn with pedantry.

Besides, she continued to sip, in an absentminded and unsuspecting way, while he talked.

"—and finally I replenished my air by boiling and processing frozen gases. And was I glad to leave!"

"I should think so." She shivered. "Space is bleak. Lovely but bleak. I like planets better." She gazed outward. "The night here is different from home. I don't know which I like best, Neuheim or Vanessa. After dark, I mean," she added, with a slightly wobbling laugh. "None of the Kraokan worlds are pleasant by day."

"None whatsoever? You must have seen quite a variety, with three of them for neighbors."

"Five," she corrected. Her hand went to her mouth. "Lieber Gott! I didn't mean to tell."

He chuckled, though inwardly he thrummed with a new excitement. Judas! Five planets-six, counting Neuheim-in the thermal zone where water was liquid . . . around one star! "It doesn't make any practical difference," he said, "when you've evidently found some way to make your whole system invisible. I'd like to know more about you, that's all, and I can't unless you tell me something about your home." He reached across the table and patted her hand. "That's what gave you your dreams, your hopes—your charm, if I may say so. Neuheim must be a paradise."

"No, it is a hard world for humans," she answered earnestly. "In my own lifetime, we have had to move entire villages toward the poles as the planet swung closer to the sun. Even the Kraoka have their troubles for similar reasons." She pulled free of his touch. "But I am talking of what I shouldn't."

"Very well, let's keep to harmless things," he said. "You mentioned that the nights were different at home. In what way?"

"Oh . . . different constellations, of course. Not greatly, but enough to notice. And then, because of the auroras, we never see the stars so clearly as here, from any location. I must not say more. You are far too observing, Davy. Tell me, instead, about your Hermes." She smiled irresistibly. "I would like to know where your own dreams come from."

Nothing loth, Falkayn spoke of mountains, virgin wilderness, plains darkened by horned herds, surf-bathing at Thunderstrands— "What does that mean, Davy?"

"Why, bathing in the surf. You know, the waves caused by tidal action." He decided to disarm her suspicions with a joke. "Now, my poor innocent, you've given yourself away again. You imply Neuheim doesn't have tides."

"No harm in that," she said. "True, we have not any moon. The oceans are like huge, still lakes."

"Doesn't the sun—" He checked himself.

"Not so far away as it is, a tiny point of fire, I can't get used to the disc here." Abruptly Jutta set down her glass. "Listen," she said, "you are either very young and sweet or you are clever as Satan."

"Why not both?"

"I cannot take the chance." She rose. "Best I leave now. I made a mistake to come."

"What?" He scrambled to his own feet. "But the evening's hardly begun. I thought we'd go back to the living room and relax with some more music." The Liebestod, for instance.

"No." Distress and determination chased each other across her face. "I enjoy myself too much. I forget to guard my tongue. Take to the League this word from us. Before they can marshal against us, we will have the Kraokan stars, and more. But if the League will be reasonable, jo, perhaps we can discuss trade treaties." Her eyes dropped. She flushed. "I would like if you could return."

God damn all politics! Falkayn groaned. He got nowhere trying to change her mind, and must finally see her to the door. There he kissed her hand . . . and before he could build on that beginning, she had whispered good night, and was outside.

He poured himself a stiff whisky, lit his pipe, and flung himself into a lounger. None were an adequate substitute.

Rats! he brooded. Giant mutant rats! She'll have me hustled off the planet right away, tomorrow dawn, before I can use any information I might have gathered.

Well, at least there'll be girls at Sector HQ. And maybe, eventually, I'll find myself back here.

As a journeyman assistant; and Jutta will be at the social apex of an interstellar empire. She wouldn't snub me on that account, but what chance would we ever have to get together?

He puffed hard and scowled at a repro of a Hokusai portrait, an old man, which hung opposite him. The old man smiled back till Falkayn wanted to punch him in the nose.

The long-range significance of the Neuheimer scheme was far nastier than several begacredits' loss to the merchant princes, Falkayn saw. Suppose it did succeed. Suppose the mighty Polesotechnic League was defied and defeated, and the Kraokan Empire was established. Well, the Kraoka by themselves might or might not be content to stop at that point and settle down to peaceful relationships with everybody else. In any event, they were no direct threat to the human race; they didn't want the same kind of real estate.

But the Neuheimer humans— Already they spoke of themselves as crusaders. Consider the past history of Homo self-styled Sapiens and imagine what so spectacular a success would do to a bunch of ideologically motivated militarists! Oh, the process would be slow; they'd have to increase their numbers, and enlarge their industrial base, and get control of every man-useful planet in this neighborhood. But eventually, for power, and glory, and upset of the hated merchants, and advancement of a Way of Life—war.

The time to squelch them was now. A good healthy licking would discredit the Landholders; peace, mercantilism, and cooperation with others (or, at least, simple cutthroat economic competition) would become fashionable on Neuheim; and, incidentally, a journeyman who played a significant part in that outcome could expect early certification as a Master Merchant.

Whereas a mere bearer of bad tidings—

"All right," Falkayn muttered. "Step One in the squelching process: Find their damned planetary system!"

They couldn't hope to keep its location secret forever. Just long enough to secure a grip on this region; and given the destructive power of a space fleet, that needn't be very long. While it remained hidden, though, the source of their strength was quite efficiently protected. Hence their entire effort could go into purely offensive operations, which gave them a military capability far out of proportion to their actual force.

Nonetheless, if the League should decide to fight, the League would win. No question about that. In the course of the war, the secret was bound to be discovered, one way or another. And then —nuclear bombardment from space— No!

The Landholders were gambling that the League, rather than start an expensive battle for a prize that would certainly be ruined in the course of the fighting, would vote to cut its losses and come to terms. Antoran being hidden, the bet looked fairly good. But no matter how favorable the odds, only fanatics played with entire living worlds for stakes. Poor Jutta! What foul company she was mixed up in. How he'd like to introduce her to some decent people.

Okay, then, where was the silly star?

Someplace not far off. Jutta had betrayed nothing by admitting that the constellations at home were almost like the constellations here. The ancient Kraoka could not have traveled any enormous ways, as interstellar distances go. Also, the home base must be in this territory so that its fleet could exploit the advantage of interior communications.

And Antoran must be large and bright, no later in the main sequence than, say, G0. Yet . . . every possible sun was already eliminated by information the League had long possessed.

Unless—wait a minute—could it be hidden by a thick nebulosity?

No. There'd still be radio indications. And Jutta had spoken of seeing stars from her home.

Aurora. Hm. She'd mentioned the necessity for certain villagers to migrate toward the poles, as her planet got too near its primary.

Which meant their original settlements were a good bit further toward the equator. Even so, auroras had been conspicuous: everywhere you went, she'd said. This, again, suggested a highly energetic sun.

Funny, about the eccentric orbit. More than one planet in the system, too, with the same problem. Unheard of. You'd almost think that-

Falkayn sat bolt upright. His pipe dropped from his jaws to his lap. "Holy . . . hyper . . . Judas," he gasped.

Thereafter he thought most furiously. He did not come back to himself until the coals from his pipe set fire to his trousers.

V

The door to Beljagor's place, offices-cum-residence, barely had time to get out of Falkayn's way. But as he entered the lobby, he skidded to a stop. In a small room opening on this, two Kraoka were talking. One was armed and brassarded, an invader. The other was Quillipup. They froze.

"Greetings," said the liaison agent after a pause. "What brings you here?"

"I want to see your boss," Falkayn answered.

"I believe he is asleep," Quillipup said.

"Too bad." Falkayn started down the hall. .

"Stop!" Quillipup bounded after him. "I told you he is asleep."

"And I told you it's a pity he has to be wakened," Falkayn rapped.

Quillipup regarded him. Her dorsal fin rose. The Antoranite glided close behind, hand not far from blaster.

"What have you to say which is so urgent?" Quillipup asked slowly.

Falkayn gave her eyeball for eyeball and responded, "What's so urgent for you, that it can't wait till Beljagor has risen?"

Silence, under the icy white light. Falkayn grew aware of blood pounding in his ears. His skin prickled. That energy gun looked too businesslike for his taste. But Quillipup turned on her heel, without a word, and led her companion back to the office. Falkayn let out a hard-held breath and continued on his way.

He hadn't been told where in the building the factor lived, but the layout of places like this was pretty standardized. The suite door was locked. He buzzed. Nothing happened. He buzzed again.

The scanner must have a screen in the bedroom, because the voice from the annunciator rasped, "You! Do you suppose I'd get up for a pestilential human?"

"Yes," Falkayn said. "Urgent."

"Urgent that you jump off the nearest cliff, right. And a bad night to you." The speaker clicked off.

That adjective "urgent" was being overworked, Falkayn decided. He leaned on the buzzer.

"Stop your infernal racket!" howled Beljagor.

"Sure, when you let me in," Falkayn said.

Click.

Falkayn whistled "The Blue Danube" to pass the time while he leaned on the buzzer.

The door flew open. Beljagor bounced forth. Falkayn was interested to note that the Jaleelan slept in pajamas, bright purple ones. "You insolent whelp!" the factor bawled. "Get out of here!"

"Yes, sir," Falkayn said. "You come, too."

"What?"

"I have to show you something in my space boat."

Beljagor's eyes turned red. His tendrils stood erect. He drank air until his small round form seemed ready to explode.

"Please, sir," Falkayn begged. "You've got to. It's terribly important."

Beljagor cursed and swung a fist.

Falkayn sidestepped the blow, picked up the Master Merchant by collar and trousers, and bore him kicking and yelling down the hall. "I told you you had to come," the journeyman said patiently.

The two Kraoka in the lobby had left, and those on sentry-go at the warship made no move to interfere. Maybe, behind furry poker faces, they enjoyed the sight. Falkayn had left the gangway ramp extruded from his speedster but had put a recognition lock on the entrance. It opened for him. He carried Beljagor inside, set him down, and waited for the storm to break.

The Jaleelan spoke no word, only looked at him. His snout quivered a little.

"Okay," Falkayn sighed. "You don't accept my apologies. You'll have my certificate revoked. You'll strangle me with my own guts. Anything else?"

"I suppose you have an explanation," Beljagor said like fingernails going quite slowly over a blackboard.

"Yes, sir. The business won't wait. And I didn't dare speak anyplace but here. Your Quillipup is acting far too friendly with the self-appointed liberators. Be no trick for her to bug your quarters."

What ozone had come in with them—less than by day—must have been processed into oxygen by now. Falkayn slipped off his filter mask. Beljagor mumbled something about Earth-type atmosphere being good for naught except breaking wind. Otherwise, though, the factor had cooled off astonishingly fast. "Talk, cub," he ordered.

"You see," Falkayn said, "I know where Antoran is."

"Heh?" Beljagor jumped several centimeters in the pilot chair he occupied.

"They'd never let me go if they found out I know," Falkayn continued. He leaned back against a bulkhead. His gaze drifted beyond the viewports. Both moons had set, and Beta Centauri ruled heaven. "As is, you'll have to come, too."

"What? Impossible! If you think I'll abandon the property of General Motors to a gang of pirates—"

"They'll doubtless send you packing before long in any event," Falkayn said. "Admit that. You just hate to surrender. But we've got to take the bull by the tail and look the situation squarely in the face."

"What do you mean, you know where Antoran is?" Beljagor spluttered. "Did you swallow something the Horn creature told you for a joke?"

"No, sir, she didn't intend to give me any information. Only, well, she was raised in an isolated, dedicated, Spartan society. She wasn't equipped to handle me." Falkayn grinned. "Figuratively, I mean, not literally. Her fellows didn't allow for the effects of alcohol and smooth talk. Not used to such things themselves, I imagine. Could be they also counted on my being so overbowled by her looks that I'd merely gawk and listen to her. They seem to be a very romantic bunch. Dangerous as hell, but romantic."

"Well? Well? What did Horn say?"

"Little items. They gave the show away, though. Like, Antoran isn't a planet but a star. And just one star hereabouts can possibly fit the data." Falkayn let Beljagor rumble for a moment before he pointed skyward and said, "Beta Centauri."

The factor did explode. He hopped around the cabin, flapping his arms and raving. Falkayn filed the choicer epithets in his memory for later use.

At last Beljagor was sufficiently calm to stand in one spot, raise a finger, and say, "You unutterable imbecile, for your information, Beta is a type B blue giant. People knew before space flight began, giant suns don't have planets. Angular momentum per unit mass proved as much. After the hyperdrive came along, direct expeditions to any number of them clinched the matter. Even supposing, somehow, one did acquire satellites, those satellites never would get habitable. Giant stars burn hydrogen so fast their existence is measured in millions of years. Millions, you hear, not billions. Beta Centauri can hardly be ten million years old. More than half its stable lifetime is past. It'll go supernova and become a white dwarf. Life'd have no chance to evolve before the planets were destroyed. Not that there are any, I repeat. The reason for only the smaller suns having planets is understood. A big protostar, condensing from the interstellar medium, develops too intense a gravitational field for the secondary condensation process to take place outside it.

"I thought even humans learned so much elementary astrophysics in the first grade of school. I was wrong. Now you know."

His voice rose to a scream. "And for this you got me out of bed!"

Falkayn moved to block the cabin exit. "But I do know," he said. "Everybody does. The Antoranites have based their whole strategy on our preconception. They figure by the time we discover Beta Centauri is a freak case, they'll control the whole region."

Beljagor hurled himself back into the pilot chair, folded his arms, and grated, "Well, get the farce over with, since you must."

"Here are the facts," Falkayn said. He ticked them off. "One, the Antoranite System was colonized by Kraoka, who couldn't and didn't settle on planets with suns as cool as Sol. Two, Antoran has six planets in the liquid-water zone. No matter how you arrange their orbits, that zone has to be mighty broad—which indicates a correspondingly luminous star. Three, the outermost of those six planets is too cold and weakly irradiated for Kraokan comfort, but suits humans fairly well. Yet it has brilliant auroras even in the temperate zones. For that, you need a sun which shoots out some terrifically energetic particles: again, a giant.

"Four, this human planet, Neuheim, is far out. The proof lies in three separate facts, (a) From Neuheim, the sun doesn't have a naked-eye disc, (b) There are no solar tides worth mentioning, (c) The year is long, I figure something like two Earth centuries. I know the year is long, because Jutta let slip that her people had to shift some towns poleward a while back. Orbital eccentricity was making the lower latitudes too hot, maybe also too much UV was penetrating the ozone layer in those parts and making poisonous concentrations of ozone at the surface, like here. Nevertheless, the original human settlement was forty years ago. In other words, Neuheim's radius vector changes at so leisurely a rate that it was worth sitting down in areas which the colonists knew would have to be abandoned later. I suppose they wanted to exploit local minerals.

"Okay. In spite of its enormous distance from the primary, Neuheim is habitable, if you don't mind getting a deep suntan. What kind of star can buck the inverse-square law on so grand a scale? What but a blue giant! And Beta Centauri is the only blue giant close by."

He stopped, hoarse and in need of beer. Beljagor sat like a graven image, assuming that anybody would want to grave such an image, while the minutes stretched. A space boat whined overhead, an enemy craft on an unknown errand.

Finally, tonelessly, Beljagor asked, "How could there be planets?"

"I've worked that out," Falkayn replied. "A freak, as I remarked before, perhaps the only case in the universe, but still possible. The star captured a mess of rogue planets."

"Nonsense. Single bodies can't make captures." But Beljagor didn't yell his objection.

"Granted. Here's what must have happened. Beta was condensing, with a massive nucleus already but maybe half its mass still spread over God knows how many astronomical units, as a nebular cloud. A cluster of rogue planets passed through. Beta's gravity field swung them around. But because of friction with the nebula, they didn't recede into space again. Energy loss, you see, converting hyperbolic orbits into elliptical ones. Could be that there was also a secondary center of stellar condensation, which later spiraled into the main mass. Two bodies can certainly make captures. But I think friction alone would serve.

"The elliptical orbits were almighty eccentric, of course. Friction smoothed them out some. But Jutta admitted that to this day the planets have paths eccentric enough to cause weather trouble. Which is not the normal case either, you recall. Makes another clue for us,"

"Hm-m-m." Beljagor tugged his nose and pondered.

"The planets would've exuded gases and water vapor in the early stages of their existence, through vulcanism, like any other substellar globes," Falkayn plowed on. "The stuff froze in space. But Beta unfroze it.

"I don't know how the Kraoka of Dzua learned what the situation was. Maybe they simply didn't know that blue giants don't have planets. Or maybe they sent a telemetric probe for astrophysical research, and it informed them. Anyhow, they discovered Beta had five potentially good worlds plus one that was marginal for them. So they colonized. Sure, the planets were sterile, with poisonous atmospheres. But the ancient Kraoka were whizzes at environmental engineering. You can sketch for yourself what they did: seeded the air with photosynthetic spores to convert it, released other forms of life to consume the primeval organic matter and form the basis of an ecology, et cetera. Under those conditions, microbes would multiply exponentially, and it'd take no more than a few centuries for a world to become habitable."

Falkayn shrugged. "Beta will blow up and destroy their work in five or ten million years," he finished. "But that's ample time for anyone, hey?"

"Yes," Beljagor said low.

He raised his head, looked directly at the man, and said, "If this be true, we've got to tell the League. A war fleet that went straight to Beta should catch the enemy by complete surprise. Once the home planets were hostage to us, obviously there'd be no fighting."

"Uh-huh." Falkayn suppressed a yawn. Weariness was beginning to overtake him. ;

"But this is only a hypothesis," Beljagor said. "Your evidence is all hearsay. Horn could've been putting you on. The League can't base a whole operation on an idea which may turn out wrong. That'd be ruinous. We need positive proof."

"Right," Falkayn nodded. "So we'll both go, in our separate boats. You can easily make some excuse for having changed your mind about staying here. They won't suspect a thing if you throw a temper tantrum and storm off into space."

Beljagor grew rigid. "What are you saying? I'm the most patient, long-suffering entity in this cosmos."

"Huh?"

"When I think of what I have to put up with, impertinence like

yours, stupidity, greed, thievishness, lack of appreciation—" Beljagor's tone mounted to a dull roar. Falkayn smothered a second yawn.

"Well, such is my life," said the factor as a coda. "I'll think of something. What do you propose after we take off?"

"We'll start ostensibly for HQ," Falkayn said. "Once we're out of detector range, we'll head toward Beta. We'll stop at a safe distance. You wait. I'll run in close to the star and make observations. Then I'll come back to you and we really will skite for friendlier country."

"Why the separate excursion?"

"I might get caught. In that case—if I haven't rejoined you by the agreed time—you can tell the League what we do know and suggest they investigate Beta themselves."

"Hm. Ha. Correct. But why do you volunteer for the dangerous part? I doubt that you're competent."

"Sir," Falkayn said tiredly, "I may be young, but I can handle instruments. This speedster is built for humans—you couldn't operate her efficiently—and she's better adapted to a quick job of spying than your craft. So I'm elected. Besides," he added, "if I get clobbered, I'm a mere journeyman, a human at that. You're a Master Merchant from Jaleel."

His sarcasm went to waste. Beljagor sprang erect with tears starting from his porcine eyes. "Right!" he cried, choked by emotion. "How noble of you to admit it!" He wrung Falkayn's hand. "Please don't think badly of me. I may be loud now and then—I may talk rough when my patience wears thin—but believe me, I've got no prejudice against your race. Humans have fine qualities. Why, some of my best friends are human!"

VI

Danger began about one light-year from goal: the distance within which the instantaneous space-time pulses emitted by a vessel in hyperdrive are detectable. Beljagor's boat lay outside that radius, her own detectors wide open. Not that there was any measurable chance of a speck like her being found by accident. Falkayn would have trouble enough making rendezvous, knowing her location. But if Beljagor observed the "wake" of another ship, he would be careful not to start his own secondary engines until the stranger was safely remote again.

Falkayn had no like choice. At full quasi-speed, he drove straight for Beta Centauri.

The sun grew and grew before him. Under magnification, he could see the disc, seething with nuclear storms, raging with billion-kilometer prominences, hell-blue and terrible. Eleven times the mass of Sol; fourteen hundred times the luminosity; across a full hundred and ninety light-years, one of the brightest stars in Earth's sky. He tried to whistle a tune, but the sound was too small and scared.

Inward. Inward. Now he could start the cameras. Photographing the viewscreens, which compensated for aberration and Doppler effect, they pictured a stable background of constellations. Planets, though, registered as meteorite streaks—yes, here! Falkayn changed course and repeated his observations. Before long he had the triangulation data to feed his computer.

He'd only spotted a few of the captured worlds, not all of them possible habitations. What he had was sufficient, however, especially when one turned out to be approximately thirty-seven astronomical units from the sun, the right distance and the right diameter for Neuheim. And, uh-huh, his detectors showed hypervibrations crisscrossing local space, comings and goings among the stars.

One indication was too damn near for his liking, and getting nearer. A patrol craft must have sniffed his trail and be on her way to investigate. Well, she'd have to be fiendish fast to catch this little beauty of his!

She was.

As he fled spaceward, Falkayn watched the intensity readings creep higher. He scowled, puffed his pipe, and figured. He could rendezvous with Beljagor before he was overhauled, but then the Antoranite would be within a light-year of them, and get a fix on both.

Well, they could separate. . . .

A second needle flickered on the detector panel. Falkayn said bad words. Another ship was closing in. Extrapolating directions and rates of amplitude increase, he found that Number Two couldn't run him down—but could snag Beljagor's ambling Holbert.

So. The thing to do was switch off the secondaries and lie doggo, hidden by the sheer vastness of space. . . . Uh-uh. If those fellows knew their business, they'd identify the point where he stopped—at this range—within several million kilometers. They'd also go sub-light, and home on the neutrino emission of his power plant. Or simply finger him with a radar sweep.

"Brother," Falkayn told himself, "you've had it, with pineapples."

He looked into the glory which was space, sun after sun until suns grew so thick that they melted into the great argent flood of the Milky Way. He remembered how light is trapped in the leaves of a wind-tossed tree; and how good the beer had tasted in a funny little Swiss tavern; and how often he had laughed among friends; and how a woman felt; and he sensed an utter lack of ambition to be a hero.

Don't irritate them. Surrender. Otherwise they'll phase in to your hyperjump frequency and put a warhead between your ears.

Beljagor could still report to the League, after the enemy had returned home. Of course, then he'd have no confirmation of Beta Centauri's nature. Falkayn's not showing up was inadequate proof, when he could have come to grief in any number of ways. So the League must send spies of its own, who would also be detected. Using ultrafast ships, they'd get away, but the enemy would be alerted and would mount strong guard on his home country. If war then came, it would be more savage than one dared think about, whole planets might be incinerated, Jutta be blown to incandescent gas, Falkayn himself—Judas!

Why wasn't there faster-than-light radio, so he could beam a message to the factor before he must stop? Damn the laws of physics!

The boat hummed and quivered with driving energies. Falkayn was maddeningly aware of thirst, an itch between his shoulder blades, a need for a haircut. This was no time to be human. Think, blast you.

He couldn't. He prowled the cabin, smoked his tongue leathery, forced down a plateful of rations, and came back to gloom at the detectors. Until finally he said, "To hell with this," killed his last bottle of Scotch and went to sleep.

He awoke some hours later, and there was his solution. For a while he lay staring at the overhead, awed by his genius. But according to computation, he'd soon reach Beljagor. Which meant he was in detection range right now, and the Jaleelan was certainly cursing a Beta-colored streak as he watched his own instruments. He'd not be asleep under these circumstances—not him.

"No time like the present," Falkayn said, thus proving his originality had limits. He sprang from his bunk and started scribbling notes.

"Okay, chum." He settled into the pilot chair.

Switch off the secondaries and go sublight. One minute later, switch them back on. Thirty seconds later, off again. One minute later, on again.

Polesotechnic pulse code. The needles of whichever detectors were tuned on him must be jumping back and forth, dash-dot-dash-dash-dot. HYPOTHESIS CONFIRMED. F. Repeat the cycle, to be sure Beljagor noticed. And again. Let him wonder if the F was anything but an initial. He'd get the rest of the idea, which was all that mattered. God willing, the Antoranites would not; this particular code was kept secret.

The engines began objecting to abuse. Falkayn whiffed scorched insulation and heard an ominous whine in the power hum. He switched vectors, taking off at a sharp angle to his former path, and drove steadily.

Arithmetic showed that when Enemy Number One pulled alongside him, they'd be well over a light-year from Beljagor. So would Enemy Number Two, who was obligingly coming about also. Falkayn left the board on automatic, showered, dressed in his fanciest clothes, and fixed a leisurely breakfast.

Next he destroyed his photographs, registry, route papers, and certain parts of his log, and did an artistic job of forging substitutes. League vessels are equipped for a variety of emergencies.

The Antoranite hove close, a Comet class with wicked-looking guns. Her probe light flashed the command to halt. Falkayn obeyed. The other went sublight likewise, matched kinetic velocities, and lay at a cautious distance. The radio buzzed. Falkayn accepted.

A long-jawed human officer type with a chestful of ribbons glared from the screen. "Hello," Falkayn said. "Do you speak Anglic or Latin?"

"Ja," said the man. He picked the former. "Yourself identify."

"PL speedster Greased Lightning out of Tricorn for Hopewell, journeyman Sebastian Tombs aboard solo. And who might you be?"

"Neuheim warship Graf Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke, Landholder Otto von Lichtenberg commanding, Oberleutnant Walter Schmitt speaking."

"Neuheim? Where the devil is Neuheim? Never heard of it."

"Vot iss your purpose? Vy haff you tried to escape?"

"My purpose," Falkayn said, "is a trip from my post on Tricorn to ask for some emergency supplies from the Polesotechnic station on Hopewell. We had a flood and it rather messed us up. As for why I ran from you, good Lord, when strangers start chasing a fellow, what do you expect him to do?"

"You assumed ve vas unfriendly," Schmitt said, more in anger than in sorrow. "Maybe you iss unfriendly to us, ha?"

"No, ha. If you consult your navigation tables, you'll find Beta Centauri is almost directly between Tricorn and Hopewell. And I was bound for Hopewell, instead of some closer post, because Hopewell is the nearest planet where I can be sure of getting the stuff we need. Zipping past Beta, I noticed a roughness in the engines." It was there yet, thanks to his using them for a radio. "To check the vector control, I changed course a few times, as you probably noticed. Then all at once, whoosh, here I detected a ship headed for me where no ship ought to be. Perhaps you were a harmless scientific expedition, anxious for a gabfest. But I wasn't about to chance it. Pirates do exist, you know. I skedaddled. My engines began spontaneously popping in and out of secondary. I got the Lauritzens fixed and tried a change of course, hoping you'd understand I didn't want company and leave me alone. No luck. So here we are."

Falkayn donned an indignant look and pounded the pilot board. "Seems like you're the one who has explaining to do," he barked. "What is this Neuheim comedy? Why are warships hanging around a blue giant? What's the idea, taking off after a harmless passerby? The Polesotechnic League is going to hear about thisl"

"Perhaps," said Schmitt. "Shtand by to be boarded."

"Damnation, you have no right—"

"Ve haff several nuclear cannon zeroed on you. Giffs t'at a right?"

"It does," Falkayn sighed.

He cooperated in linking air locks by a gangtube. Schmitt entered with a squad, who pointed their rifles at him, and demanded to see his papers.

Presently: "Fery veil, Herr Tombs. Might be you are honest. I do not know. Ve haff our orders. It vill be necessary to intern you on Neuheim."

"What?" Falkayn bellowed. He held his breath till he turned scarlet and his eyes popped. "Do you realize who I am? I'm a certified member of the Polesotechnic League!"

"Too bad for you," Schmitt said. "Come along." He grabbed Falkayn's wrist.

Falkayn yanked it back, drew himself straight, and blessed his father for teaching him the proper mannerisms. "Sir," he said, and liquid helium dripped from every word, "if I am to be a prisoner, I protest the illegality but I must yield. Nevertheless, there is such a thing as the laws of war. Furthermore, I am heir apparent to the Barony of Dragonshaw, United Kingdom of New Asia and Radagach. You will treat me with the respect according to my station!"

Schmitt paled. He clicked his heels, bowed, and 'followed with a salute. "Jawohl, mein Hen" he gasped. "I beg for your most gracious pardon. If you had seen fit to tell me more earlier—Landholder von Lichtenberg vill be reqvesting t'e honor uff your pressence at tea."

VII

Schloss Graustein was not the worst place in the cosmos to be a prisoner. Though gaunt and drafty on its high ridge, it was surrounded by forests where the hunting was excellent. The food was heavy but edible, and the local beer superb. Landholder Graustein did his best to make the distinguished, if compulsory, guest feel at home. During long conversations and occasional guided tours of the planet, Falkayn spotted interesting commercial opportunities, once the region had been pacified.

Unless— He didn't want to contemplate the alternative. And after some weeks, time began to hang as leaden as the knackwurst.

Thus Falkayn was quite happy when a servant knocked at the door of his suite and announced a visitor. But then she stepped through. He had never thought she would be an unwelcome sight.

"Jutta," he whispered.

She closed the door behind her and regarded him for a still moment. Dark wood and granite panels framed her where she stood vivid under the fluorolight. She was in mufti, and if he had thought her beautiful when uniformed, he must now multiply by an astronomical factor.

"So it is indeed you," she said.

"P-p-please sit down," he managed.

She remained standing. Her features were stony, her voice flat. "Those idiots took for granted you were what you claimed, a merchant who simply chanced to pass by and saw too much. They never interrogated you in depth, never notified the fleet command. I only

heard of you yesterday, in conversation with Landholder von Lichtenberg, after I came home on leave. The description—" Words trailed off.

Falkayn rallied his courage. "A stratagem of war, my dear," he said gently. "Not a war that my side began, either."

"What have you done?"

He told his pulse to decelerate, took out his pipe, and made a production of loading and kindling it. "You can squirt me full of babble juice, so I might as well Tell All," he smiled. "I guessed the truth and went for a look to make certain."

"That funny little being who left about the same time as you did ... he knew?"

Falkayn nodded. "He's reported to HQ long ago. If the League is half as realistic as I think, a battle fleet you can't hope to resist is on its way right now."

She clenched one hand over another. Tears stood in her eyes. "What follows?"

"They should head straight here. I expect them any day. You've nothing in the Beta System except a few patrollers; the rest of your navy is spread over a dozen stars, right? The League doesn't want to bombard planets, but in this case—" She uttered anguish. He went quickly to her, took both those hands, and said, "No, no. Realpolitik, remember? The object of war is not to destroy the enemy but to impose your will on him. Why should we kill people that we might sell things to? We'll simply take the Beta System prisoner and then bargain about its release.

"I don't make policy, but I can predict what'll happen. The League will demand you disband your armed forces, down to a normal defense level. And, naturally, we'll want to keep our trade concessions. But that's all. Now that some Kraoka have starships, they can go ahead and unify, as long as they do it peacefully. We'd hoped to sell them a cargo and passenger fleet, at a huge markup, but that hope isn't worth fighting for—you do have bargaining power yourselves, in your own capabilities for making trouble, you know. Neuheim can keep any social order it wants. Why not? If you try to maintain this wretched autarchy, you'll be depriving yourselves of so much that inside of ten years your people will throw out the Landholders and yell for us."

He chucked her under the chin. "I understand," he said. "It's tough when a dream dies. But why should you, your whole life, carry your father's grudges?"

She surrendered to tears. He consoled her, and a private hope began to grow in him.

Not that he was in the market for a wife. Judas! At his age? However—

Afterward they found themselves on the balcony. Night had fallen, the auroral night where vast banners shook red and green across the sky, dimming the stars, and the mountain swooped down to a forest which breathed strange sweet odors back upward. Wineglasses were in their hands, and she stood close to him.

"You can report who I am," he said, "and cause me to have an unpleasant time, maybe even be shot." Pale in the shuddering light, her face lost its look of happiness and he heard the breath suck between her teeth. "Your duty, according to the articles of war," he continued. "And it won't make one bit of difference, it'll be too late —except that the League protects its own and will take a stiff price for me."

"What choice have I?" she pleaded.

He flashed a well-rehearsed grin. "Why, to keep your lovely mouth shut, tell everybody you were mistaken and Sebastian Tombs has nothing to do with that Falkayn character. When peace comes— well, you're quite influential on this planet. You could do a lot to help your people adjust."

"And become merchants?" she said, in a dying flare of scorn.

"I remarked once," he said, "that we aren't really so ignoble. We're after a profit, yes. But even a knight must eat, and our bread doesn't come from slaves or serfs or anyone who had to be killed. Look beyond those lights. They're fine, sure, but how about the stars on the other side?"

She caught his arm. He murmured, as best he could in Latin, "Thy merchants chase the morning down the sea . . ." and when she turned questioning to him he added, low in the dusk,

"Their topmasts gilt by sunset, though their sails be whipped to

rags, Who raced the wind around the world go reeling home again, With ivory, apes, and peacocks loaded, memories and brags, To sell for this high profit: knowing fully they are Men!"

"Oh-h-h," he heard.

And to think he'd resented his schoolmasters, when he was a kid on Hermes, making him read Flecker and Sanders in the original.

"I will not tell anyone," she said.

And: "May I stay here for a while?"

Falkayn was downright regretful a week later, when the League fleet arrived to rescue him.

PLUS ÇA CHANGE, PLUS C'EST LA MÊME CHOSE

Did I ever meet Noah Arkwright? Did I ever meet Noah Arkwright? Just pull up a chair and tune up an ear. No, better not that chair. We keep it in case the Gratch should pay us a call. Glowberry wood, the tree concentrates uranium salts, so less'n you're wearing lead diapers . . .

Sure, we'd heard of that skyhoot Noah Arkwright wanted to do. Space pilots flit the jaw, even this far out the spokes. We wanted no more'snatch at his notion than any other men whose brains weren't precessing. Figured the Yonder could wait another couple hundred years; got more terry incog already than we can eat, hey? But when he bunged down his canster here, he never jingled a word about it. He had a business proposition to make, he said, and would those of us who had a dinar or two to orbit be interested?

Sounded right sane, he did: though with that voice I compute he could've gotten jewelry prices for what he'd call dioxide of eka-carbon. See you, nigh any planet small enough for a man to dig on has got to have its Victory Heads—Golcondas, Mesabis, Rands, if you want to go back to Old Earth—anyhow, its really rich mineral deposits. The snub always was, a planet's one gorgo of a big place. Even with sonics and spectros, you'll sniff around a new one till entropy overhauls you before you have a white dwarf chance of making the real find. But he said he had a new hypewangle that'd spot from satellite altitude. He needed capital to proceed, and they were too stuffnoggin on Earth to close him a circuit, so why not us?

Oh, we didn't arc over. Not that we saw anything kinked in his not telling us how the dreelsprail worked; out here, secrets are property. But we made him demonstrate, over on Despair. Next planet spaceward, hardly visited at all before, being as useless a little glob as ever was spunged off God's thumbnail. Dis if his meters didn't swing a cory over what developed into the biggest rhenium strike since Ignatz.

Well, you know how it is with minerals. The rich deposits have an edge over extraction methods, like from sea water, but not so much of an edge that you can count your profits from one in exponentials. Still, if we had a way to find any number of 'em, quick and cheap, in nearby systems— We stood in line to capitalize his company.. And me, I was so tough and smart I rammed my way to the head of the linel

I do think, though, his way of talking did it. He could pull Jupiter from Sol with, oh, just one of his rambles through xenology or analytics or Shakespeare or history or hypertheory or anything. Happen I've still got a tape, like I notice you making now. You cogno yours stays private, for your personal journal, right? I wouldn't admit the truth about this to another human. Not to anybeing, if I wasn't an angstrom drunk. But listen, here's Noah Arkwright.

"—isn't merely that society in the large goes through its repetitions. In fact, I rather doubt the cliche that we are living in some kind of neo-Elizabethan age. There are certain analogies, no more. Now a life has cycles. Within a given context, the kinds of event that can happen to you are of a finite number. The permutations change, the elements remain the same.

"Consider today's most romantic figure, the merchant adventurer. Everyone, especially himself, thinks he leads a gorgeously variegated existence. And yet, how different can one episode be from the next? He deals with a curious planetary environment, natives whose inwardness he must try to understand, crafty rivals, women tempting or belligerent, a few classes of dangers, the eternal problem of making his enterprise pay off—what more, ever? What I would like to do is less spectacular on the surface. But it would mean a breaking of the circle: an altogether new order of experience. Were you not so obsessed with your vision of yourself as a bold pioneer, you would see what I mean."

Yah. Now I do.

We didn't see we'd been blued till Ave put the articles of partnership through a sematic computer. He must have used symbolic logic

to write them, under all the rainbow language. The one isolated fusing thing he was legally committed to do was conduct explorations on our behalf. He could go anywhere, do anything, for any reason he liked. So of course he used our money to outfit his damned expedition! He'd found that rhenium beforehand. He didn't want to wait five years for the returns to quantum in; might not've been enough anyway. So he dozzled up that potburning machine of his and— On Earth they call that swindle the Gypsy Blessing.

Oh, in time we got some sort of profit out of Despair, though not half what we should've dragged on so big an investment. And he tried to repay us in selfcharge if not in cash. But—the output of the whole works is—here I am, with a whole star cluster named after me, and there's not a fellow human being in die universe that I can tell why!

—Recorded in the diary of Urwain

the Wide-Faring