“I imagine, though,” Flandry prompted, “from time to time when space explorers got together, as it might be in a tavern, you’d swap yarns?”

“Aye, aye. What else? ‘Cept when we was told to keep our hatches dogged about where we’d been. Not easy, foreseer, believe you me ‘tis not, when you could outbrag the crew of ‘em save ‘tis a Naval secret.”

“You must have heard a lot about the Betelgeuse region, regardless.”

Lannawar raised his tankard. Thereby he missed noticing Tachwyr’s frown. But he did break the thread, and the officer caught the raveled end deftly.

“Are you really interested in anecdotes, Ensign? I fear that our good yqan has nothing else to give you.”

“Well, yes, Mei, I am interested in anything about the Betelgeuse sector,” Flandry said. “After all, it borders on our Empire. I’ve already served there, on Starkad, and I daresay I will again. So I’d be grateful for whatever you care to tell me.”

Lannawar came up for air. “If you yourself, Yqan, were never there, perhaps you know someone who was. I ask for no secrets, of course, only stories.”

“Khr-r-r.” Lannawar wiped foam off his chin. “Not many about. Not many what have fared yonderways. They’re either back in space, or they’ve died. Was old Ralgo Tamuar, my barracks friend in training days. He was there aplenty. How he could lie! But he retired to one of the colonies, let me see now, which one?”

“Yqan Belgis.” Tachwyr spoke quietly, with no special inflection, but Lannawar stiffened. “I think best we leave this subject. The Starkadian situation is an unfortunate one. We are trying to be friends with our guest, and I hope we are succeeding, but to dwell on the dispute makes a needless obstacle.” To Flandry, with sardonicism: “I trust the ensign agrees?”

“As you wish,” the Terran mumbled.

Damn, damn, and damn to the power of hell! He’d been on a scent. He could swear he’d been. He felt nauseated with frustration.

Some draughts of ale soothed him. He’d never been idiot enough to imagine himself making any spectacular discoveries or pulling off any dazzling coups on this junket. (Well, certain daydreams, but you couldn’t really count that.) What he had obtained now was—a hint which tended to confirm that the early Merseian expeditions to Starkad had found a big and strange thing. As a result, secrecy had come down like a candlesnuffer. Officers and crews who knew, or might suspect, the truth were snatched from sight. Murdered? No, surely not. The Merseians were not the antlike monsters which Terran propaganda depicted. They’d never have come as far as this, or be as dangerous as they were, had that been the case. To shut a spacefarer’s mouth, you reassigned him or retired him to an exile which might well be comfortable and which he himself might never realize was an exile.

Even for the post of Starkadian commandant, Brechdan had been careful to pick an officer who knew nothing beforehand about his post, and could not since have been told the hidden truth. Why  …  aside from those exploratory personnel who no longer counted, perhaps only half a dozen beings in the universe knew!

Obviously Tachwyr didn’t. He and his fellows had simply been ordered to keep Flandry off certain topics.

The Terran believed they were honest, most of them, in their friendliness toward him and their expressed wish that today’s discord could be resolved. They were good chaps. He felt more akin to them than to many humans.

In spite of which, they served the enemy, the real enemy, Brechdan Ironrede and his Grand Council, who had put something monstrous in motion. Wind and surfbeat sounded all at once like the noise of an oncoming machine.

I haven’t found anything Abrams doesn’t already suspect, Flandry thought. But I have got for him a bit more proof. God! Four days to go before I can get back and give it to him.

His mouth still felt dry. “How about another round?” he said.

“We’re going for a ride,” Abrams said.

“Sir?” Flandry blinked.

“Little pleasure trip. Don’t you think I deserve one too? A run to Gethwyd Forest, say, that’s an unrestricted area.”

Flandry looked past his boss’s burly form, out the window to the compound. A garden robot whickered among the roses, struggling to maintain the microecology they required. A secretary on the diplomatic staff stood outside one of the residence bubbles, flirting boredly with the assistant naval attache’s wife. Beyond them, Ardaig’s modern towers shouldered brutally skyward. The afternoon was hot and quiet.

“Uh  …  sir—“ Flandry hesitated.

“When you ‘sir’ me in private these days, you want something,” Abrams said. “Carry on.”

“Well, uh, could we invite Donna d’Io?” Beneath those crow’s-footed eyes, Flandry felt himself blush. He tried to control it, which made matters worse. “She, uh, must be rather lonesome when his Lordship and aides are out of town.”

Abrams grinned. “What, I’m not decorative enough for you? Sorry. It wouldn’t look right. Let’s go.”

Flandry stared at him. He knew the man by now. At least, he could spot when something unadmitted lurked under the skin. His spine tingled. Having reported on his trip, he’d expected a return to desk work, dullness occasionally relieved after dark. But action must be starting at last. However much he had grumbled, however sarcastic he had waxed about the glamorous life in romantic alien capitals, he wasn’t sure he liked the change.

“Very good, sir,” he said.

They left the office and crossed aboveground to the garages. The Merseian technics reported periodically to inspect the luxury boat lent Abrams, but today a lone human was on duty. Envious, he floated the long blue teardrop out into the sunlight. Abrams and Flandry boarded, sealed the door, and found chairs in the saloon. “Gethwyd Forest, main parking area,” Abrams said. “Five hundred KPH. Any altitude will do.”

The machine communicated with other machines. Clearance was granted and lane assigned. The boat rose noiselessly. On Terra, its path could have been monitored, but the haughty chieftains of Merseia had not allowed that sort of capability to be built in for possible use against them. Traffic control outside of restricted sections was automatic and anonymous. Unless they shadowed a boat, or bugged it somehow, security officers were unable to keep it under surveillance. Abrams had remarked that he liked that, on principle as well as because his own convenience was served.

He groped in his tunic for a cigar. “We could have a drink,” he suggested. “Whisky and water for me.”

Flandry got it, with a stiff cognac for himself. By the time he returned from the bar, they were leveled off at about six kilometers and headed north. They would take a couple of hours, at this ambling pace, to reach the preserve which the Vach Dathyr had opened to the public. Flandry had been there before, on a holiday excursion Oliveira arranged for Hauksberg and company. He remembered great solemn trees, gold-feathered birds, the smell of humus and the wild taste of a spring. Most vividly he remembered sunflecks patterned across Persis’ thin gown. Now he saw the planet’s curve through a broad viewport, the ocean gleaming westward, the megalopolitan maze giving way to fields and isolated castles.

“Sit down,” Abrams said. His hand chopped at a lounger. Smoke hazed him where he sprawled.

Flandry lowered himself. He wet his lips. “You’ve business with me, haven’t you?” he said.

“Right on the first guess! To win your Junior Spy badge and pocket decoder, tell me what an elephant is.”

“Huh, sir?”

“An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications. Or else a mouse is a transistorized elephant.” Abrams didn’t look jovial. He was delaying.

Flandry took a nervous sip. “If it’s confidential,” he asked, “should we be here?”

“Safer than the Embassy. That’s only probably debugged, not certainly, and old-fashioned listening at doors hasn’t ever quite gone out of style.”

“But a Merseian runabout—“

“We’re safe. Take my word.” Abrams glared at the cigar he rolled between his fingers. “Son, I need you for a job of work and I need you bad. Could be dangerous and sure to be nasty. Are you game?”

Flandry’s heart bumped. “I’d better be, hadn’t I?”

Abrams cocked his head at the other. “Not bad repartee for a nineteen-year-old. But do you mean it, down in your bones?”

“Yes, sir.” I think so.

“I believe you. I have to.” Abrams took a drink and a long drag. Abruptly:

“Look here, let’s review the circumstances as she stands. I reckon you have the innate common sense to see what’s written on your eyeballs, that Brechdan hasn’t got the slightest intention of settling the squabble on Starkad. I thought for a while, maybe he figured to offer us peace there in exchange for some other thing he really wants. But if that were the case, he wouldn’t have thrown a triple gee field onto the parley the way he has. He’d have come to the point with the unavoidable minimum of waste motion. Merseians don’t take a human’s glee in forensics. If Brechdan wanted to strike a a bargain, Hauksberg would be home on Terra right now with a preliminary report.

“Instead, Brechdan’s talkboys have stalled, with one quibble and irrelevancy after another. Even Hauksberg’s getting a gutful. Which I think is the reason Brechdan personally invited him and aides to Dhangodhan for a week or two of shootin’ and fishin’. Partly because that makes one more delay by itself; partly to smooth our viscount’s feelings with a ‘gesture of goodwill.’ “ The quotes were virtually audible. “I was invited too, but begged off on grounds of wanting to continue my researches. If he’d thought of it, Brechdan’d likely have broken custom and asked Donna Persis, as an added inducement for staying in the mountains a while. Unless, hm, he’s provided a little variety for his guests. There are humans in Merseian service, you know.”

Flandry nodded. For a second he felt disappointment. Hauksberg’s absence when he returned had seemed to provide a still better opportunity than Hauksberg’s frequent exhaustion in Ardaig. But excitement caught him. Never mind Persis. She was splendid recreation, but that was all.

“I might be tempted to think like his Lordship, Brechdan is fundamentally sincere,” he said. “The average Merseian is, I’m sure.”

“Sure you’re sure. And you’re right. Fat lot of difference that makes.”

“But anyhow, Starkad is too important. Haven’t you told that idi—Lord Hauksberg so?”

“I finally got tired of telling him,” Abrams said. “What have I got to argue from except a prejudice based on experiences he’s never shared?”

“I wonder why Brechdan agreed to receive a delegation in the first place.”

“Oh, easier to accept than refuse, I suppose. Or it might have suited his plans very well. He doesn’t want total war yet. I do believe he originally intended to send us packing in fairly short order. What hints I’ve gathered suggest that another issue has arisen—that he’s planning quite a different move, not really germane to Starkad—and figures to put a better face on it by acting mild toward us. God alone knows how long we’ll be kept here. Could be weeks more.”

Abrams leaned forward. “And meanwhile,” he continued, “anything could happen. I came with some hopes of pulling off a hell of a good stunt just before we left. And it did look hopeful at first, too. Could give us the truth about Starkad. Well, things have dragged on, configurations have changed, my opportunity may vanish. We’ve got to act soon, or our chance of acting at all will be mighty poor.”

This is it, Flandry thought, and a part of him jeered at the banality, while he waited with hardheld breath.

“I don’t want to tell you more than I’ve got to,” Abrams said. “Just this: I’ve learned where Brechdan’s ultrasecret file is. That wasn’t hard; everybody knows about it. But I think I can get an agent in there. The next and worst problem will be to get the information out, and not have the fact we’re doing so be known.

“I dare not wait till we all go home. That gives too much time for too many things to go wrong. Nor can I leave beforehand by myself. I’m too damn conspicuous. It’d look too much as if I’d finished whatever I set out to do. Hauksberg himself might forbid me to go, precisely because he suspected I was going to queer his pea-ea-eace mission. Or else  …  I’d be piloted out of the system by Merseians. Brechdan’s bully boys could arrange an unfortunate accident merely as a precaution. They could even spirit me off to a hypnoprobe room, and what happened to me there wouldn’t matter a hoot-let compared to what’d happen to our forces later. I’m not being melodramatic, son. Those are the unbuttered facts of life.”

Flandry sat still. “You want me to convey the data out, if you get them,” he said.

“Ah, you do know what an elephant is.”

“You must have a pretty efficient pipeline to Merseian HQ.”

“I’ve seen worse,” Abrams said rather smugly.

“Couldn’t have been developed in advance.” Flandry spoke word by word. Realization was freezing him. “Had it been, why should you yourself come here? Must be something you got hold of on Starkad, and hadn’t a chance to instruct anyone about that you trusted and who could be spared.”

“Let’s get down to business,” Abrams said fast.

“No. I want to finish this.”

“You?”

Flandry stared past Abrams like a blind man. “If the contact was that good,” he said, “I think you got a warning about the submarine attack on Ujanka. And you didn’t tell. There was no preparation. Except for a fluke, the city would have been destroyed.” He rose. “I saw Tigeries killed in the streets.”

“Sit down!”

“One mortar planted on a wharf would have gotten that boat.” Flandry started to walk away. His voice lifted. “Males and females and little cubs, blown apart, buried alive under rubble, and you did nothing!”

Abrams surged to his feet and came after him. “Hold on, there,” he barked.

Flandry whirled on him. “Why the obscenity should I?”

Abrams grabbed the boy’s wrists. Flandry tried to break free. Abrams held him where he was. Rage rode across the dark Chaldean face. “You listen to me,” Abrams said. “I did know. I knew the consequences of keeping silent. When you saved that town, I went down on my knees before God. I’d’ve done it before you if you could’ve understood. But suppose I had acted. Runei is no man’s fool. He’d have guessed I had a source, and there was exactly one possibility, and after he looked into that my pipeline would’ve been broken like a dry stick. And I was already developing it as a line into Brechdan’s own files. Into the truth about Starkad. How many lives might that save? Not only human. Tigery, Siravo, hell, Merseian! Use your brains, Dom. You must have a couple of cells clicking together between those ears. Sure, this is a filthy game. But it has one point of practicality which is also a point of honor. You don’t compromise your sources. You don’t!”

Flandry struggled for air. Abrams let him go. Flandry went back to his lounger, collapsed in it, and drank deep. Abrams stood waiting.

Flandry looked up. “I’m sorry, sir,” he got out. “Overwrought, I guess.”

“No excuses needed.” Abrams clapped his shoulder. “You had to learn sometime. Might as well be now. And you know, you give me a tinge of hope. I’d begun to wonder if anybody was left on our side who played the game for anything but its own foul sake. When you get some rank—Well, we’ll see.”

He sat down too. Silence lay between them for a while.

“I’m all right now, sir,” Flandry ventured.

“Good,” Abrams grunted. “You’ll need whatever all rightness you can muster. The best way I can see to get that information out soon involves a pretty dirty trick too. Also a humiliating one. I’d like to think you can hit on a better idea, but I’ve tried and failed.”

Flandry gulped. “What is it?”

Abrams approached the core gingerly. “The problem is this,” he said. “I do believe we can raid that file unbeknownst. Especially now while Brechdan is away, and the three others who I’ve found have access to that certain room. But even so, it’d look too funny if anyone left right after who didn’t have a plausible reason. You can have one.”

Flandry braced himself. “What?”

“Well  …  if Lord Hauksberg caught you in flagrante delicto with his toothsome traveling companion—“

That would have unbraced a far more sophisticated person. Flandry leaped from his seat. “Sir!”

“Down, boy. Don’t tell me the mice haven’t been playing while the cat’s elsewhere. You’ve been so crafty that I don’t think anybody else guesses, even in our gossipy little enclave. Which augurs well for your career in Intelligence. But son, I work close to you. When you report draggle-tailed on mornings after I noticed Lord Hauksberg was dead tired and took a hypnotic; when I can’t sleep and want to get some work done in the middle of the night and you aren’t in your room; when you and she keep swapping glances—Must I spell every word? No matter. I don’t condemn you. If I weren’t an old man with some eccentric ideas about my marriage, I’d be jealous.

“But this does give us our chance. All we need do is keep Persis from knowing when her lord and master is coming back. She don’t mix much with the rest of the compound—can’t say I blame her—and you can provide the distraction to make sure. Then the message sent ahead—which won’t be to her personally anyhow, only to alert the servants in the expectation they’ll tell everyone—I’ll see to it that the word doesn’t reach her. For the rest, let nature take its course.”

“No!” Flandry raged.

“Have no fears for her,” Abrams said. “She may suffer no more than a scolding. Lord Hauksberg is pretty tolerant. Anyway, he ought to be. If she does lose her position  …  our corps has a slush fund. She can be supported in reasonable style on Terra till she hooks someone else. I really don’t have the impression she’d be heartbroken at having to trade Lord Hauksberg in on a newer model.”

“But—“ Confound that blush! Flandry stared at the deck. His fists beat on his knees. “She trusts me. I can’t.”

“I said this was a dirty business. Do you flatter yourself she’s in love with you?”

“Well—uh—“

“You do. I wouldn’t. But supposing she is, a psych treatment for something that simple is cheap, and she’s cool enough to get one. I’ve spent more time worrying about you.”

“What about me?” asked Flandry miserably.

“Lord Hauksberg has to retaliate on you. Whatever his private feelings, he can’t let something like this go by; because the whole compound, hell, eventually all Terra is going to know, if you handle the scene right. He figures on dispatching a courier home a day or two after he gets back from Dhangodhan, with a progress report. You’ll go on the same boat, in disgrace, charged with some crime like disrespect for hereditary authority.

“Somewhere along the line—I’ll have to work out the details as we go—my agent will nobble the information and slip it to me. I’ll pass it to you. Once on Terra, you’ll use a word I’ll give you to get the ear of a certain man. Afterward—son, you’re in. You shouldn’t be fumblydiddling this way. You should be licking my boots for such an opportunity to get noticed by men who count. My boots need polishing.”

Flandry shifted, looked away, out to the clouds which drifted across the green and brown face of Merseia. The motor hum pervaded his skull.

“What about you?” he asked finally. “And the rest?”

“We’ll stay here till the farce is over.”

“But  …  no, wait, sir  …  so many things could go wrong. Deadly wrong.”

“I know. That’s the risk you take.”

“You more.” Flandry swung back to Abrams. “I might get free without a hitch. But if later there’s any suspicion—“

“They won’t bother Persis,” Abrams said. “She’s not worth the trouble. Nor Hauksberg. He’s an accredited diplomat, and arresting him would damn near be an act of war.”

“But you, sir! You may be accredited to him, but—“

“Don’t fret,” Abrams said. “I aim to die of advanced senile decay. If that starts looking unlikely, I’ve got my blaster. I won’t get taken alive and I won’t go out of the cosmos alone. Now: are you game?”

It took Flandry’s entire strength to nod.

12

Two days later, Abrams departed the Embassy again in his boat. Ahead, on the ocean’s rim, smoldered a remnant of sunset. The streets of Ardaig glowed ever more visible as dusk deepened into night. Windows blinked to life, the Admiralty beacon flared like a sudden red sun. Traffic was heavy, and the flier’s robopilot must keep signals constantly flickering between itself, others, and the nearest routing stations. The computers in all stations were still more tightly linked, by a web of data exchange. Its nexus was Central Control, where the total pattern was evaluated and the three-dimensional grid of airlanes adjusted from minute to minute for optimum flow.

Into this endless pulsation, it was easy to inject a suitably heterodyned and scrambled message. None but sender and recipient would know. Nothing less than a major job of stochastic analysis could reveal to an outsider that occasional talk had passed (and even then, would not show what the talk had been about). Neither the boat nor the Terran Embassy possessed the equipment for that.

From the darkness where he lay, Dwyr the Hook willed a message forth. Not sent: willed, as one wills a normal voice to speak; for his nerve endings meshed directly with the circuits of the vessel and he felt the tides in the electronic sea which filled Ardaig like a living creature feeling the tides in its own blood.

“Prime Observer Three to Intelligence Division Thirteen.” A string of code symbols followed. “Prepare to receive report.”

Kilometers away, a Merseian tautened at his desk. He was among the few who knew about Dwyr; they alternated shifts around the clock. Thus far nothing of great interest had been revealed to them. But that was good. It proved the Terran agent, whom they had been warned was dangerous, had accomplished nothing. “Division Thirteen to Prime Three. Dhech on duty. Report.” 120

“Abrams has boarded alone and instructed the ‘pilot to take him to the following location.” Dwyr specified. He identified the place as being in a hill suburb, but no more; Ardaig was not his town.

“Ah, yes,” Dhech nodded. “Fodaich Qwynn’s home. We knew already Abrams was going there tonight.”

“Shall I expect anything to happen?” Dwyr asked.

“No, you’ll be parked for several hours, I’m sure, and return him to the Embassy. He’s been after Qwynn for some time for an invitation, so they could talk privately and at length about certain questions of mutual interest. Today he pressed so hard that Qwynn found it impossible not to invite him for tonight without open discourtesy.”

“Is that significant?”

“Hardly. We judge Abrams makes haste simply because he got word that his chief will return tomorrow with the Hand of the Vach Ynvory, great protector of us all. Thereafter he can expect once more to be enmeshed in diplomatic maneuverings. This may be his last chance to see Qwynn.”

“I could leave the boat and spy upon them,” Dwyr offered.

“No need. Qwynn is discreet, and will make his own report to us. If Abrams hopes to pick up a useful crumb, he will be disappointed. Quite likely, though, his interest is academic. He appears to have abandoned any plans he may have entertained for conducting espionage.”

“He has certainly done nothing suspicious under my surveillance,” Dwyr said, “in a boat designed to make him think it ideal for hatching plots. I will be glad when he leaves. This has been a drab assignment.”

“Honor to you for taking it,” Dhech said. “No one else could have endured so long.” A burst of distortion made him start. “What’s that?”

“Some trouble with the communicator,” said Dwyr, who had willed the malfunction. “It had better be checked soon. I might lose touch with you.”

“We’ll think of some excuse to send a technician over in a day or so. Hunt well.”

“Hunt well.” Dwyr broke the connection.

Through the circuits, which included scanners, he observed both outside and inside the hull. The boat was slanting down toward its destination. Abrams had risen and donned a formal cloak. Dwyr activated a speaker. “I have contacted Division Thirteen,” he said. “They are quite unsuspicious. I planted the idea that my sender may go blank, in case for some reason they try to call me while I am absent.”

“Good lad.” Abrams’ tones were likewise calm, but he took a last nervous pull on his cigar and stubbed it out viciously. “Now remember, I’ll stay put for several hours. Should give you ample time to do your job and slip back into this shell. But if anything goes wrong, I repeat, what matters is the information. Since we can’t arrange a safe drop, and since mine host tonight will have plenty of retainers to arrest me, in emergency you get hold of Ensign Flandry and tell him. You recall he should be in Lord Hauksberg’s suite, or else his own room; and I’ve mapped the Embassy for you. Now also, make damn sure the phone here is hooked to the ‘pilot, so you or he can call this boat to him. I haven’t told him about you, but I have told him to trust absolutely whoever has the key word. You remember?”

“Yes, of course. Meshuggah. What does it mean?”

“Never mind.” Abrams grinned.

“What about rescuing you?”

“Don’t. You’d come to grief for certain. Besides, my personal chances are better if I invoke diplomatic immunity. I hope, though, our stunt will go off without a hitch.” Abrams looked about. “I can’t see you, Dwyr, and I can’t shake your hand, but I’d sure like to. And one day I plan to.” The boat grounded. “Good luck.”

Dwyr’s electronic gaze followed the stocky figure out, down the ramp and across the small parking strip in the garden. A pair of clan members saluted the Terran and followed him toward the mansion. A screen of trees soon hid them. No one else was in view. Shadows lay heavy around the boat.

Let us commence, Dwyr thought. His decision was altogether unperturbed. Once he would have tasted fear, felt his heart thud, clutched to him the beloved images of wife and young and their home upon far Tanis. Courage would have followed, sense of high purpose, joy of proving his maleness by a leap between the horns of death—thus did you know yourself wholly alive! But those things had departed with his body. He could no longer recollect how they felt. The one emotion which never left him, like an unhealing wound, was the wish to know all emotions again.

He had a few. Workmanship gave a cerebral pleasure. Hate and fury could still burn  …  though cold, cold. He wondered if they were not mere habits, engraved in the synapses of his brain.

He stirred in the womblike cubicle where he lay. Circuit by circuit, his living arm disconnected his machine parts from the boat. For a moment he was totally cut off. How many hours till sensory deprivation broke down his sanity? He had been kept supplied with impressions of the world, and asleep he never dreamed. But suppose he stayed where he was, in this lightless, soundless, currentless nothing. When he began to hallucinate, would he imagine himself back on Tanis? Or would Sivilla his wife come to him?

Nonsense. The objective was that he come to her, whole. He opened a panel and glided forth. The systems that kept him functional were mounted in a tiny gravsled. His first task would be to exchange it for a more versatile body.

Emerging, he floated low, keeping to the bushes and shadows. Stars were plainer to see here, away from the city web and the beacon flare which lay at the foot of these hills. He noted the sun of Tanis, where Merseians had made their homes among mountains and forests, where Sivilla lived yet with their children. She thought him dead, but they told him she had not remarried and the children were growing up well.

Was that another lie?

The problem of weaving his way unseen into the city occupied a bare fragment of Dwyr’s attention. His artificial senses were designed for this kind of task, and he had a decade of experience with them. Mostly he was remembering.

“I was reluctant to leave,” he had confessed to Abrams on Starkad. “I was happy. What was the conquest of Janair to me? They spoke of the glory of the race. I saw nothing except that other race, crushed, burned, enslaved as we advanced. I would have fought for my liberty as they did for theirs. Instead, being required to do my military service, I was fighting to rob them of their birthright. Do not misunderstand. I stayed loyal to my Roidhun and my people. It was they who betrayed me.”

“They sure as the seventh hell did,” Abrams said.

That was after the revelation which knocked Dwyr’s universe apart. “What?” Abrams had roared. “You could not be regenerated? Impossible!”

“But radiation damage to the cells—“

“With that kind of radiation damage, you’d’ve been dead. The basic gene pattern governs the organism throughout life. If everything mutated at once, life would have to stop. And the regeneration process uses the chromosomes for a chemical template. No, they saw their chance to make a unique tool out of you, and lied. I suppose they must’ve planted an unconscious mental block too, so you’d never think to study basic biomedicine for yourself, and avoid situations where somebody might tell you. God! I’ve seen some vile tricks in my time, but this one takes the purple shaft, with pineapple clusters.”

“You can heal me?” Dwyr screamed.

“Our chemosurgeons can. But slow down. Let’s think a bit. I could order the job done on you, and would as a matter of ethics. Still, you’d be cut off from your family. What we ought to do is smuggle them out also. We could resettle you on an Imperial planet. And I haven’t the authority to arrange that. Not unless you rate it. Which you could, by serving as a double agent.”

“To you too, then, I am nothing but a tool.”

“Easy. I didn’t say that. I just said that getting back your family won’t come cheap. It’ll involve some risk to the crew who fetch them. You’ve got to earn a claim on us. Willing?”

Oh, very willing!

As he darted between towers, Dwyr was no more conspicuous than a nigh third. He could easily reach the place assigned him, on an upper level of a control station where only computers dwelt, without being noticed. That had been arranged on Brechdan Ironrede’s own command. The secret of Dwyr’s existence was worth taking trouble to preserve. A recognition lock opened for him and he glided into a room crowded with his bodies and attachments. There was nothing else; an amputated personality did not carry around the little treasures of a mortal.

He had already chosen what to take. After detaching from the sled, he hitched himself to the biped body which lay stretched out like a metal corpse. For those moments he was without any senses but sight, hearing, a dim touch and kinesthesia, a jab of pain through what remained of his tissues. He was glad when he had finished making the new connections.

Rising, he lumbered about and gathered what else he would need and fastened it on: special tools and sensors, a gravity impeller, a blaster. How weak and awkward he was. He much preferred being a vehicle or a gun. Metal and plastic did not substitute well for cells, nerves, muscles, the marvelous structure which was bone. But tonight an unspecialized shape was required.

Last came some disguise. He could not pass for Merseian (after what had been done to him) but he could look like a spacesuited human or Iskeled. The latter race had long ago become resigned to the domination of his, and furnished many loyal personnel. No few had been granted Merseian citizenship. It had less significance than the corresponding honor did for Terra, but it carried certain valuable privileges.

Ready. Dwyr left his room and took to the air again, openly this time. Admiralty House grew before him, a gaunt mountain where caves glared and the beacon made a volcano spout. A sound of machines mumbled through the sky he clove. He sensed their radiation as a glow, a tone, a rising wave. Soaring, he approached the forbidden zone and spoke, on a tight beam, those passwords Brechdan had given him. “Absolute security,” he added. “My presence is to be kept secret.”

When he landed on the flange, an officer had joined the sentries. “What is your business on this level?” the Merseian demanded. “Our protector the Hand is not in Ardaig.”

“I know,” Dwyr said. “I am at his direct orders, to conduct some business inside. That is as much as I am allowed to tell you. You and these males will admit me, and let me out in a while, and forget I was ever here. It is not to be mentioned to anyone in any circumstances. The matter is sealed.”

“Under what code?”

“Triple Star.”

The officer saluted. “Pass.”

Dwyr went down the corridor. It echoed a little to his footfalls. When he reached the anteroom, he heard the buzz of work in the offices beyond; but he stood alone at the door of the vault. He had never seen this place. However, the layout was no secret and had been easy to obtain.

The door itself, though—He approached with immense care, every sensor at full amplification. The scanners saw he was not authorized to go by, and might trigger an alarm. No. Nothing. After all, people did use this route on certain errands. He removed the false glove on his robot arm and extended tendrils to the plates.

They reacted. By induction, his artificial neurones felt how signals moved into a comparison unit and were rejected. So now he must feed in pulses which would be interpreted as the right eye and hand patterns. Slowly  …  slowly, micro-metric exactitude, growing into the assembly, feeling with it, calling forth the response he wanted, a seduction which stirred instincts until his machine heart and lungs moved rapidly and he was lost to the exterior world  …  there!

The door opened, ponderous and silent. He trod through. It closed behind him. In a black chamber, he confronted a thing which shone like opal.

Except for possessing a recognition trigger of its own, the molecular file was no different from numerous others he had seen. Still full of oneness with the flow of electrons and inter-meshed fields, still half in a dream, he activated it. The operation code was unknown to him, but he detected that not much information was stored here. Stood to reason, the thought trickled at the back of his awareness. No individual could single-handedly steer an empire. The secrets which Brechdan reserved for himself and his three comrades must be few, however tremendous. He, Dwyr the Hook, need not carry on a lengthy random search before he got the notes on Starkad.

Eidhafor: Report on another Hand who often opposed Brechdan in Council; data which could be used, at need, to break him.

Maxwell Crawford: Ha, the Terran Emperor’s governor of the Arachnean System was in Merseian pay. A sleeper, kept in reserve.

Therayn: So that was what preoccupied Brechdan’s friends. Abrams was evidently right; Hauksberg was being delayed so as to be present, influenceable, when the news broke.

Starkad!

Onto the screen flashed a set of numbers. 0.17847, 3° 14’ 22”.591, 1818 h.3264  …  Dwyr memorized them automatically, while he stood rigid with shock. Something had happened in the file. An impulse had passed. Its transient radiation had given his nerves a split second’s wispy shiver. Might be nothing. But better finish up and get out fast!

The screen blanked. Dwyr’s fingers moved with blurring speed. The numbers returned. Why—they were the whole secret. They were what Starkad was about. And he didn’t know what they meant.

Let Abrams solve this riddle. Dwyr’s task was done. Almost.

He went toward the door. It opened and he stepped into the antechamber. The door behind, to the main offices, was agape. A guard waited, blaster poised. Two more were hurrying toward him. Desk workers scuttled from their path.

“What is the matter?” Dwyr rapped. Because he could not feel terror or dismay, a blue flame of wrath sheeted through him.

Sweat glistened on the guard’s forehead and ran down over the brow ridges. “You were in his secretorium,” he whispered.

So terrible is the magic in those numbers that the machine has had one extra geas laid upon it. When they are brought forth, it calls for help.

“I am authorized,” Dwyr said. “How else do you think I could enter?”

He did not really believe his burglary could long remain unknown. Too many had seen. But he might gain a few hours. His voice belled. “No one is to speak of this to anyone else whatsoever, not even among yourselves. The business is sealed under a code which the officer of the night knows. He can explain its significance to you. Let me pass.”

“No.” The blaster trembled.

“Do you wish to be charged with insubordination?”

“I  …  I must take that risk, foreseer. We all must. You are under arrest until the Hand clears you in person.”

Dwyr’s motors snarled. He drew his own gun as he flung himself aside. Fire and thunder broke free. The Merseian collapsed in a seared heap. But he had shot first. Dwyr’s living arm was blasted off.

He did not go into shock. He was not that alive. Pain flooded him, he staggered for a moment in blindness. Then the homeostats in his prostheses reacted. Chemical stimulation poured from tubes into veins. Electronic impulses at the control of a microcomputer joined the nerve currents, damped out agony, forced the flesh to stop bleeding. Dwyr whirled and ran.

The others came behind him. Guns crashed anew. He staggered from their impact. Looking down, he saw a hole drilled in him from back to breast. The energy beam must have wrecked some part of the mechanism which kept his brain alive. What part, he didn’t know. Not the circulation, for he continued moving. The filtration system, the purifier, the osmotic balancer? He’d find out soon enough. Crash! His left leg went immobile. He fell. The clatter was loud in the corridor. Why hadn’t he remembered his impeller? He willed the negagravity field to go on. Still he lay like a stone. The Merseians pounded near, shouting. He flipped the manual switch and rose.

The door to the flange stood shut. At top speed, he tore the panels asunder. A firebolt from a guard rainbowed off his armor. Out  …  over the verge  …  down toward shadow!

And shadows were closing in on him. His machinery must indeed have been struck in a vital spot. It would be good to die. No, not yet. He must hang on a while longer. Get by secret ways to the Terran Embassy; Abrams was too far, and effectively a prisoner in any event. Get to the Embassy—don’t faint!—find this Flandry—how it roared in his head—summon the airboat—the fact that his identity was unknown to his pursuers until they called Brechdan would help—try for an escape—if you must faint, hide yourself first, and do not die, do not die—perhaps Flandry can save you. If nothing else, you will have revenged yourself a little if you find him. Darkness and great rushing waters  … 

Dwyr the Hook fled alone over the night city.

13

That afternoon, Abrams had entered the office where Flandry was at work. He closed the door and said, “All right, son, you can knock off.”

“Glad to,” Flandry said. Preparing a series of transcribed interviews for the computer was not his idea of sport, especially when the chance of anything worthwhile being buried in them hovered near zero. He shoved the papers across his desk, leaned back, and tensed cramped muscles against each other. “How come?”

“Lord Hauksberg’s valet just called the majordomo here. They’re returning tomorrow morning. Figure to arrive about Period Four, which’d be fourteen or fifteen hundred Thursday, Terran Prime Meridian.”

Flandry sucked in a breath, wheeled his chair about, and stared up at his chief. “Tonight—?”

“Uh-huh,” Abrams nodded. “I won’t be around. For reasons you don’t need to know, except that I want attention focused my way, I’m going to wangle me an invite to a local Pooh-Bah.”

“And a partial alibi, if events go sour.” Flandry spoke with only the top half of his mind engaged. The rest strove to check pulse, lungs, perspiration, tension. It had been one thing to dash impulsively against a Merseian watercraft. It would be quite another to play against incalculable risks, under rules that would change minute by minute, in cold blood, for x many hours.

He glanced at his chrono. Persis was doubtless asleep. Unlike Navy men, who were trained to adapt to nonterrestrial diurnal periods by juggling watches, the Embassy civilians split Merseia’s rotation time into two short, complete “days.” She followed the practice. “I suppose I’m to stand by in reserve,” Flandry said. “Another reason for our separating.”

“Smart boy,” Abrams said. “You deserve a pat and a dog biscuit. I hope your lady fair will provide the same.”

“I still hate to  …  to use her this way.”

“In your position, I’d enjoy every second. Besides, don’t forget your friends on Starkad. They’re being shot at.”

“Y-yes.” Flandry rose. “What about, uh, emergency procedure?”

“Be on tap, either in her place or yours. Our agent will identify himself by a word I’ll think of. He may look funny, but trust him. I can’t give you specific orders. Among other reasons, I don’t like saying even this much here, however unbuggable we’re alleged to be. Do whatever seems best. Don’t act too damned fast. Even if the gaff’s been blown, you might yet manage to ride out the aftermath. But don’t hesitate too long, either. If you must move, then: no heroics, no rescues, no consideration for any living soul. Plain get that information out!”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Sounds more like Tyi-yi, sir!’,” Abrams laughed. He seemed I at ease. “Let’s hope the whole operation proves dull and sordid. Good ones are, you know. Shall we review a few details?”

Later, when twilight stole across the city, Flandry made his way to the principal guest suite. The corridor was deserted. Ideally, Lord Hauksberg should come upon his impudence as a complete surprise. That way, the viscount would be easier to provoke into rage. However, if this didn’t work—if Persis learned he was expected and shooed Flandry out—the scandal must be leaked to the entire compound. He had a scheme for arranging that.

He chimed on the door. After a while, her voice came il drowsy. “Who’s there?” He waved at the scanner. “Oh. What is it, Ensign?”

“May I come in, Donna?”

She stopped to throw on a robe. Her hair was tumbled and she was charmingly flushed. He entered and closed the door. “We needn’t be so careful,” he said. “Nobody watching. My boss is gone for the night and a good part of tomorrow.” He laid hands on her waist. “I couldn’t pass up the chance.”

“Nor I.” She kissed him at great length.

“Why don’t we simply hide in here?” he suggested.

“I’d adore to. But Lord Oliveira—“

“Call the butler. Explain you’re indisposed and want to be alone till tomorrow. Hm?”

“Not very polite. Hell, I’ll do it. We have so little time, darling.”

Flandry stood in back of the vidiphone while she talked. If the butler should mention that Hauksberg was due in, he must commence Plan B. But that didn’t happen, as curt as Persis was. She ordered food and drink ‘chuted here and switched off. He deactivated the instrument. “I don’t want any distractions,” he explained.

“What wonderful ideas you have,” she smiled.

“Right now I have still better ones.”

“Me too.” Persis rejoined him.

 

Her thoughts included refreshments. The Embassy larder was lavishly stocked, and the suite had a small server to prepare meals which she knew well how to program. They began with eggs Benedict, caviar, akvavit, and champagne. Some hours later followed Perigordian duck, with trimmings, and Bordeaux. Flandry’s soul expanded. “My God,” he gusted, “where has this sort of thing been all my life?”

Persis chuckled. “I believe I have launched you on a new career. You have the makings of a gourmet first class.”

“So, two causes why I shall never forget you.”

“Only two?”

“No, I’m being foolish, Aleph-null causes at the minimum. Beauty, brains, charm—Well, why’m I just talking?”

“You have to rest sometime. And I do love to hear you talk.”

“Hm? I’m not much in that line. After the people and places you’ve known—“

“What places?” she said with a quick, astonishing bitterness. “Before this trip, I was never further than Luna. And the people, the articulate, expensive, brittle people, their intrigues and gossip, the shadow shows that are their adventures, the words they live by—words, nothing but words, on and on and on—No, Dominic my dearest, you’ve made me realize what I was missing. You’ve pulled down a wall for me that was shutting off the universe.”

Did I do you any favor? He dared not let conscience stir, he drowned it in the fullness of this moment.

They were lying side by side, savoring an ancient piece of music, when the door recognized Lord Hauksberg and admitted him.

“Persis? I say, where—Great Emperor!”

He stopped cold in the bedroom archway. Persis smothered a scream and snatched for her robe. Flandry jumped to his feet. But it’s still dark! What’s happened?

The blond man looked altogether different in green hunting clothes and belted blaster. Sun and wind had darkened his face. For an instant that visage was fluid with surprise. Then the lines congealed. The eyes flared like blue stars. He clapped hand to weapon butt. “Well, well,” he said.

“Mark—“ Persis reached out.

He ignored her. “So you’re the indisposition she had,” he said to Flandry.

Here we go. Off schedule, but lift gravs anyway. The boy felt blood course thickly, sweat trickle down ribs; worse than fear, he was aware how ludicrous he must look. He achieved a grin. “No, my lord. You are.”

“What d’you mean?”

“You weren’t being man enough.” Flandry’s belly grew stiff, confronting that gun. Strange to hear Mozart lilting on in the background.

The blaster stayed sheathed. Hauksberg moved only to breathe. “How long’s this been between you?”

“It was my fault, Mark,” Persis cried. “All mine.” Tears whipped over her cheeks.

“No, my sweet, I insist,” Flandry said. “My idea entirely. I must say, my lord, you weren’t nice to arrive unannounced. Now what?”

“Now you’re under nobleman’s arrest, you whelp,” Hauksberg said. “Put on some clothes. Go to your quarters and stay there.”

Flandry scrambled to obey. On the surface, everything had gone smoothly, more so than expected. Too much more so. Hauksberg’s tone was not furious; it was almost absent-minded.

Persis groped toward him. “I tell you, Mark, I’m to blame,” she wept. “Let him alone. Do what you want to me, but not him!”

Hauksberg shoved her away. “Stop blubberin’,” he snapped. “D’ you think I care a pip on a ‘scope about your peccadillos, at a time like this?”

“What’s happened?” Flandry asked sharply.

Hauksberg turned and looked at him, up and down, silent for an entire minute. “Wonder if you really don’t know,” he said at the end. “Wonder quite a lot.”

“My lord, I don’t!” Flandry’s mind rocked. Something was wrong.

“When word came to Dhangodhan, natur’lly we flitted straight back,” Hauksberg said. “They’re after Abrams this minute, on my authority. But you—what was your part?”

I’ve got to get out. Abrams’ agent has to be able to reach me. “I don’t know anything, my lord. I’ll report to my room.”

“Stop!”

Persis sat on the bed, face in hands, and sobbed. She wasn’t loud.

“Stay right here,” Hauksberg said. “Not a step, understand?” His gun came free. He edged from the chamber, keeping Flandry in sight, and went to the phone. “Hm. Turned off, eh?” He flipped the switch. “Lord Oliveira.”

Silence lay thick while the phone hunted through its various scanner outlets. The screen flickered, the ambassador looked forth. “Hauksberg! What the devil?”

“Just returned,” said the viscount. “We heard of an attempt to rifle Premier Brechdan’s files. May have been a successful attempt, too; and the agent escaped. The premier accused me of havin’ a finger in it. Obvious thought. Somebody wants to sabotage my mission.”

“I—“ Oliveira collected himself. “Not necessarily. Terra isn’t the only rival Merseia has.”

“So I pointed out. Prepare to do likewise at length when you’re notified officially. But we’ve got to show good faith. I’ve deputed the Merseians to arrest Commander Abrams. He’ll be fetched back here. Place him under guard.”

“Lord Hauksberg! He’s an Imperial officer, and accredited to the diplomatic corps.”

“He’ll be detained by Terrans. By virtue of my commission from his Majesty, I’m assumin’ command. No back talk if you don’t want to be relieved of your position.”

Oliveira whitened but bowed. “Very good, my lord. I must ask for this in properly recorded form.”

“You’ll have it when I get the chance. Next, this young fella Flandry, Abrams’ assistant. Happens I’ve got him on deck. Think I’ll quiz him a while myself. But have a couple of men march him to detention when I give the word. Meanwhile, alert your staff, start preparin’ plans, explanations, and disclaimers, and stand by for a visit from Brechdan’s foreign office.”

Hauksberg cut the circuit. “Enough,” he said. “C’mon out and start talkin’, you.”

Flandry went. Nightmare hammered at him. In the back of his head ran the thought: Abrams was right. You don’t really want drama in these things.

What’ll happen to him?

To me? To Persis? To Terra?

“Sit down.” Hauksberg pointed his gun at a lounger and swung the barrel back at once. With his free hand he pulled a flat case from his tunic pocket. He appeared a little relaxed; had he begun to enjoy the tableau?

Flandry lowered himself. Psychological disadvantage, looking upward. Yes, we underestimated his Lordship badly. Persis stood in the archway, red-eyed, hugging herself and gulping.

Hauksberg flipped open the case—an unruly part of Flandry noticed how the chased silver shone beneath the fluoro-ceiling—and stuck a cheroot between his teeth. “What’s your role in this performance?” he asked.

“Nothing, my lord,” Flandry stammered. “I don’t know—I mean, if—if I were concerned, would I have been here tonight?”

“Might.” Hauksberg returned the case and extracted a lighter. His glance flickered to Persis. “What about you, m’ love?”

“I don’t know anything,” she whispered. “And neither does he. I swear it.”

“Inclined to b’lieve you.” The lighter scritted and flared. “In this case, though, you’ve been rather cynic’lly used.”

“He wouldn’t!”

“Hm.” Hauksberg dropped the lighter on a table and blew smoke from his nostrils. “Could be you both were duped. We’ll find that out when Abrams is probed.”

“You can’t!” Flandry shouted. “He’s an officer!”

“They certainly can on Terra, my boy. I’d order it done this very hour, and risk the repercussions, if we had the equipment. ‘Course, the Merseians do. If necess’ry, I’ll risk a much bigger blowback and turn him over to them. My mission’s too important for legal pettifoggin”. You might save the lot of us a deal of grief by tellin’ all, Ensign. If your testimony goes to prove we Terrans are not involved—d’ you see?”

Give him a story, any story, whatever gets you away. Flandry’s brain was frozen. “How could we have arranged the job?” he fumbled. “You saw what kind of surveillance we’ve been under.”

“Ever hear about agents provocateurs? I never believed Abrams came along for a ride.” Hauksberg switched the phone to Record. “Begin at the beginnin”, continue to the end, and stop. Why’d Abrams co-opt you in the first place?”

“Well, I—that is, he needed an aide.” What actually did happen? Everything was so gradual. Step by step. I never really did decide to go into Intelligence. But somehow, here I am.

Persis squared her shoulders. “Dominic had proven himself on Starkad,” she said wretchedly. “Fighting for the Empire.”

“Fine, sonorous phrase.” Hauksberg tapped the ash from his cheroot. “Are you really infatuated with this lout? No matter. P’rhaps you can see anyhow that I’m workin’ for the Empire myself. Work sounds less romantic than fight, but’s a bit more useful in the long haul, eh? Go on, Flandry. What’d Abrams tell you he meant to accomplish?”

“He  …  he hoped to learn things. He never denied that. But spying, no. He’s not so stupid, my lord.” He’s simply been outwitted. “I ask you, how could he arrange trouble?”

“Leave the questions to me. When’d you first get together with Persis, and why?”

“We—I—“ Seeing the anguish upon her, Flandry knew in full what it meant to make an implement of a sentient being. “My fault. Don’t listen to her. On the way—“

The door opened. There was no more warning than when Hauksberg had entered. But the thing which glided through, surely the lock was not keyed to that!

Persis shrieked. Hauksberg sprang back with an oath. The thing, seared and twisted metal, blood starting afresh from the cauterized fragment of an arm, skin drawn tight and gray across bones in what was left of a face, rattled to the floor.

“Ensign Flandry,” it called. The voice had volume yet, but no control, wavering across the scale and wholly without tone. Light came and went in the scanners which were eyes.

Flandry’s jaws locked. Abrams’ agent? Abrams’ hope, wrecked and dying at his feet?

“Go on,” Hauksberg breathed. The blaster crouched in his fist. “Talk to him.”

Flandry shook his head till the sweat-drenched hair flew.

“Talk, I say,” Hauksberg commanded. “Or I’ll kill you and most surely give Abrams to the Merseians.”

The creature which lay and bled before the now shut main door did not seem to notice. “Ensign Flandry. Which one is you? Hurry. Meshuggah. He told me to say meshuggah.”

Flandry moved without thinking, from his lounger, down on his knees in the blood. “I’m here,” he whispered.

“Listen.” The head rolled, the eyes flickered more and more dimly, a servomotor rattled dry bearings inside the broken shell. “Memorize. In the Starkad file, these numbers.”

As they coughed forth, one after the next in the duodecimals of Eriau, Flandry’s training reacted. He need not understand, and did not; he asked for no repetitions; each phoneme was burned into his brain.

“Is that everything?” he asked with someone else’s throat.

“Aye. The whole.” A hand of metal tendrils groped until he clasped it. “Will you remember my name? I was Dwyr of Tanis, once called the Merry. They made me into this. I was planted in your airboat. Commander Abrams sent me. That is why he left this place, to release me unobserved. But an alarm order was on the Starkad reel. I was ruined in escaping. I would have come sooner to you but I kept fainting. You must phone for the boat and  …  escape, I think. Remember Dwyr.”

“We will always remember.”

“Good. Now let me die. If you open the main plate you can turn oft my heart.” The words wobbled insanely, but they were clear enough. “I cannot hold Sivilla long in my brain. It is poisoned and oxygen starved. The cells are going out, one by one. Turn off my heart.”

Flandry disengaged the tendrils around his hand and reached for the hinged plate. He didn’t see very well, nor could he smell the oil and scorched insulation.

“Hold off,” Hauksberg said. Flandry didn’t hear him. Hauksberg stepped close and kicked him. “Get away from there, I say. We want him alive.”

Flandry lurched erect. “You can’t.”

“Can and will.” Hauksberg’s lips were drawn back, his chest rose and fell, the cheroot had dropped from his mouth into the spreading blood. “Great Emperor! I see the whole thing. Abrams had this double agent. He’d get the information, it’d be passed on to you, and you’d go home in disgrace when I caught you with Persis.” He took a moment to give the girl a look of triumph. “You follow, my dear? You were nothin’ but an object.”

She strained away from them, one hand to her mouth, the other fending off the world.

“Sivilla, Sivilla,” came from the floor. “Oh, hurry!”

Hauksberg backed toward the phone. “We’ll call a medic. I think if we’re fast we can save this chap.”

“But don’t you understand?” Flandry implored. “Those numbers—there is something about Starkad—your mission never had a chance. We’ve got to let our people know!”

“Let me worry ‘bout that,” Hauksberg said. “You face a charge of treason.”

“For trying to bail out the Empire?”

“For tryin’ to sabotage an official delegation. Tryin’ to make your own policy, you and Abrams. Think you’re his Majesty? You’ll learn better.” Flandry took a step forward. The gun jerked. “Stand back! Soon blast you as not, y’ know.” Hauksberg’s free hand reached for the phone.

Flandry stood over Dwyr, in a private Judgment Day.

Persis ran across the floor. “Mark, no!”

“Get away.” Hauksberg held his gun on the boy.

Persis flung her arms around him. Suddenly her hands closed on his right wrist. She threw herself down, dragging the blaster with her. “Nicky!” she screamed.

Flandry sprang. Hauksberg hit Persis with his fist. She took the blow on her skull and hung on. Flandry arrived. Hauksberg struck at him. Flandry batted the hand aside with one arm. His other, stiff-fingered, drove into the solar plexus. Hauksberg doubled. Flandry chopped him behind the ear. He fell in a heap.

Flandry scooped up the blaster and punched the phone controls. “Airboat to Embassy,” he ordered in Eriau.

Turning, he strode back to Dwyr, knelt, and opened the frontal plate. Was this the switch he wanted? He undid its safety lock. “Good-bye, my friend,” he said.

“One moment,” wavered from the machine. “I lost her. So much darkness. Noise  …  Now.”

Flandry pulled the switch. The lights went out in the eyes and Dwyr lay still.

Persis sprawled by Hauksberg, shaken with crying. Flandry returned and raised her. “I’ll have to make a dash,” he said. “Might not finish it. Do you want to come?”

She clung to him. “Yes, yes, yes. They’d have killed you.”

He embraced her one-armed, his other hand holding the blaster on Hauksberg, who stirred and choked. Wonder broke upon him like morning. “Why did you help me?” he asked low.

“I don’t know. Take me away from here!”

“Well  …  you may have done something great for the human race. If that information really is important. It has to be. Go put on a dress and shoes. Comb your hair. Find me a clean pair of pants. These are all bloody. Be quick.” She gripped him tighter and sobbed. He slapped her. “Quick, I said! Or I’ll have to leave you behind.”

She ran. He nudged Hauksberg with his foot. “Up, my lord.”

Hauksberg crawled to a stance. “You’re crazy,” he gasped. “Do you seriously expect to escape?”

“I seriously expect to try. Give me that holster belt.” Flandry clipped it on. “We’ll walk to the boat. If anyone asks, you’re satisfied with my story, I’ve given you news which can’t wait, and we’re off to report in person to the Merseian authorities. At the first sign of trouble, I’ll start shooting my way through, and you’ll get the first bolt. Clear?”

Hauksberg rubbed the bruise behind his ear and glared.

With action upon him, Flandry lost every doubt. Adrenaline sang in his veins. Never had he perceived more sharply—this over-elegant room, the bloodshot eyes in front of him, the lovely sway of Persis re-entering in a fire-red gown, odors of sweat and anger, sigh of a ventilator, heat in his skin, muscle sliding across muscle, the angle of his elbow where he aimed the gun, by eternity, he was alive!

Having changed pants, he said, “Out we go. You first, my lord. Me a pace behind, as fits my rank. Persis next to you. Watch his face, darling. He might try to signal with it. If he blows a distress rocket from his nose, tell me and I’ll kill him.”

Her lips trembled. “No. You can’t do that. Not to Mark.”

“He’d’ve done it to me. We’re committed, and not to any very genteel game. If he behaves himself he’ll live, maybe. March.”

As they left, Flandry saluted that which lay on the floor.

But he did not forget to screen the view of it with his body on his way out to the corridor, until the door shut behind him. Around a corner, they met a couple of young staffmen headed in their direction. “Is everything well, my lord?” one asked. Flandry’s fingers twitched near his sheathed gun. He cleared his throat loudly.

Hauksberg made a nod. “Bound for Afon,” he said. “Immediately. With these people.”

“Confidential material in the suite,” Flandry added. “Don’t go in, and make sure nobody else does.”

He was conscious of their stares, like bullets hitting his back. Could he indeed bluff his way clear? Probably. This was no police or military center, wasn’t geared to violence, only created violence for others to quell. His danger lay beyond the compound. Surely, by now, the place was staked out. Dwyr had wrought a miracle in entering unseen.

They were stopped again in the lobby, and again got past on words. Outside, the garden lay aflash with dew under Lythyr and a sickle Neihevin. The air was cool. It quivered with distant machine sounds. Abrams’ speedster had arrived. O God, I have to leave him behind! It sat on the parking strip, door open. Flandry urged Hauksberg and Persis aboard. He closed the door and waved on the lights. “Sit down at the console,” he ordered his prisoner. “Persis, bring a towel from the head. My lord, we’re about to talk our way through their security cordon. Will they believe we’re harmlessly bound for Dhangodhan?”

Hauksberg’s face contorted. “When Brechdan is here? Don’t be ridiculous. C’mon, end the comedy, surrender and make things easier for yourself.”

“Well, we’ll do it the hard way. When we’re challenged, tell ‘em we’re headed back to your ship to fetch some stuff we need to show Brechdan in connection with this episode.”

“D’ you dream they’ll swallow that?”

“I think they might. Merseians aren’t as rule-bound as Terrans. To them, it’s in character for a boss noble to act on his own, without filing twenty different certificates first. If they don’t believe us, I’ll cut out the safety locks and ram a flier of theirs; so be good.” Persis gave Flandry the towel. “I’m going to tie your hands. Cooperate or I’ll slug you.”

He grew conscious, then, of what power meant, how it worked. You kept the initiative. The other fellow’s instinct was to obey, unless he was trained in self-mastery. But you dared not slack off the pressure for a second. Hauksberg slumped in his seat and gave no trouble.

“You won’t hurt him, Nicky?” Persis begged.

“Not if I can avoid it. Haven’t we troubles enough?” Flandry took the manual-pilot chair. The boat swung aloft.

A buzz came from the console. Flandry closed that circuit. A uniformed Merseian looked from the vidscreen. He could see nothing but their upper bodies. “Halt!” he ordered. “Security.”

Flandry nudged Hauksberg. The viscount said, “Ah  …  we must go to my ship—“ No human would have accepted a tale so lamely delivered. Nor would a Merseian educated in the subtleties of human behavior. But this was merely an officer of planetary police, assigned here because he happened to be on duty at the time of the emergency. Flandry had counted on that.

“I shall check,” said the green visage.

“Don’t you realize?” Hauksberg snapped. “I am a diplomat. Escort us if you like. But you have no right to detain us. Move along, pilot.”

Flandry gunned the gravs. The boat mounted. Ardaig fell away beneath, a glittering web, a spot of light. Tuning in the after viewscreen, Flandry saw two black objects circle about and trail him. They were smaller than this vessel, but they were armed and armored.

“Nice work, there at the end, my lord,” he said.

Hauksberg was rapidly regaining equilibrium. “You’ve done rather well yourself,” he answered. “I begin to see why Abrams thinks you’ve potentialities.”

“Thanks.” Flandry concentrated on gaining speed. The counteracceleration field was not quite in tune; he felt a tug of weight that, uncompensated, would have left him hardly able to breathe.

“But it won’t tick, y’ know,” Hauksberg continued. “Messages are flyin’ back and forth. Our escort’ll get an order to make us turn back.”

“I trust not. If I were them, I’d remember Queen Maggy was declared harmless by her Merseian pilot. I’d alert my forces, but otherwise watch to see what you did. After all, Brechdan must be convinced you’re sincere.”

Ardaig was lost. Mountains gleamed in moonlight, and high plains, and cloud cover blanketing the planet in white. The wail of air grew thin and died. Stars trod forth, wintry clear.

“More I think about it,” Hauksberg said, “more I’d like to have you on the right side. Peace needs able men even worse’n war does.”

“Let’s establish peace first, huh?” Flandry’s fingers rattled computer keys. As a matter of routine, he had memorized the six elements of the spaceship’s orbit around Merseia. Perturbation wouldn’t have made much difference yet.

“That’s what I’m tryin’ for. We can have it, I tell you. You’ve listened to that fanatic Abrams. Give me a turn.”

“Sure.” Flandry spoke with half his attention. “Start by explaining why Brechdan keeps secrets about Starkad.”

“D’ you imagine we’ve no secrets? Brechdan has to defend himself. If we let mutual fear and hate build up, of course we’ll get the big war.”

“If we let Terra be painted into a corner, I agree, my lord, the planet incinerators will fly.”

“Ever look at it from the Merseian viewpoint?”

“I didn’t say it’s wise to leave them with no out but to try and destroy us.” Flandry shrugged. “That’s for the statesmen, though, I’m told. I only work here. Please shut up and let me figure my approach curve.”

Korych flamed over the edge of the world. That sunrise was gold and amethyst, beneath a million stars.

The communicator buzzed anew. “Foreseer,” said the Merseian, “you may board your ship for a limited time provided we accompany you.”

“Regrets,” Hauksberg said. “But quite impossible. I’m after material which is for the eyes of Protector Brechdan alone. You are welcome to board as soon as I have it in this boat, and escort me straight to Castle Afon.”

“I shall convey the foreseer’s word to my superiors and relay their decision.” Blankoff.

“You’re wonderful,” Persis said.

Hauksberg barked a laugh. “Don’t fancy this impetuous young hero of yours includin’ me in his Divine Wind dive.” Seriously: “I s’pose you figure to escape in an auxiliary. Out of the question. Space patrol’ll overhaul you long before you can go hyper.”

“Not if I go hyper right away,” Flandry said.

“But—snakes alive, boy! You know what the concentration of matter is, this near a sun. If a microjump lands you by a pebble, even—“

“Chance we take. Odds favor us, especially if we head out normally to the ecliptic plane.”

“You’ll be in detection range for a light-year. A ship with more legs can run you down. And will.”

“You won’t be there,” Flandry said. “Dog your hatch. I’m busy.”

The minutes passed. He scarcely noticed when the call came, agreeing that Hauksberg’s party might board alone. He did reconstruct the reasoning behind that agreement. Dronning Margrete was unarmed and empty. Two or three men could not start her up in less than hours. Long before then, warcraft would be on hand to blast her. Hauksberg must be honest. Let him have his way and see what he produced.

The great tapered cylinder swam into sight. Flandry contacted the machines within and made rendezvous on instruments and trained senses. A boatlock gaped wide. He slid through. The lock closed, air rushed into the turret, he killed his motor and stood up. “I’ll have to secure you, my lord,” he said. “They’ll find you when they enter.”

Hauksberg regarded him. “You’ll not reconsider?” he asked. “Terra shouldn’t lose one like you.”

“No. Sorry.”

“Warn you, you’ll be outlawed. I don’t aim to sit idle and let you proceed. After what’s happened, the best way I can show my bona fides is to cooperate with the Merseians in headin’ you off.”

Flandry touched his blaster. Hauksberg nodded. “You can delay matters a trifle by killin’ me,” he said.

“Have no fears. Persis, another three or four towels. Lie down on the deck, my lord.”

Hauksberg did as he was told. Looking at the girl, he said: “Don’t involve yourself. Stay with me. I’ll tell ‘em you were a prisoner too. Hate to waste women.”

“They are in short supply hereabouts,” Flandry agreed. “You’d better do it, Persis.”

She stood quiet for a little. “Do you mean you forgive me, Mark?” she asked.

“Well, yes,” Hauksberg said.

She bent and kissed him lightly. “I think I believe you. But no, thanks. I’ve made my choice.”

“After the way your boy friend’s treated you?”

“He had to. I have to believe that.” Persis helped bind Hauksberg fast.

She and Flandry left the boat. The passageways glowed and echoed as they trotted. They hadn’t far to go until they entered another turret. The slim hull of a main auxiliary loomed over them. Flandry knew the model: a lovely thing, tough and versatile, with fuel and supplies for a journey of several hundred parsecs. Swift, too; not that she could outpace a regular warcraft, but a stern chase is a long chase and he had some ideas about what to do if the enemy came near.

He made a quick check of systems. Back in the control room, he found Persis in the copilot’s seat. “Will I bother you?” she asked timidly.

“Contrariwise,” he said. “Keep silent, though, till we’re in hyperdrive.”

“I will,” she promised. “I’m not a complete null, Nicky. You learn how to survive when you’re a low-caste dancer. Different from space, of course. But this is the first time 145

I’ve done anything for anyone but myself. Feels good. Scary, yes, but good.”

He ran a hand across the tangled dark hair, smooth cheek and delicate profile, until his fingers tilted her chin and he bestowed his own kiss on her. “Thanks more’n I can say,” he murmured. “I was doing this mainly on account of Max Abrams. It’d have been cold, riding alone with his ghost. Now I’ve got you to live for.”

He seated himself. At his touch, the engine woke. “Here we go,” he said.

14

Dawn broke over Ardaig, and from the tower on Eidh Hill kettledrums spoke their ancient prayer. Admiralty House cast its shadow across the Oiss, blue upon the mists that still hid early river traffic. Inland the shadow was black, engulfing Castle Afon.

Yet Brechdan Ironrede chose to receive the Terrans there instead of in his new eyrie. He’s shaken, Abrams thought. He’s rallying quick, but he needs the help of his ancestors.

Entering the audience chamber, a human was at first dazed, as if he had walked into a dream. He needed a moment to make sense of what he saw. The proportions of long, flagged floor, high walls, narrow windows arched at both top and bottom, sawtoothed vaulting overhead, were wrong by every Terran canon and nonetheless had a Tightness of their own. The mask helmets on suits of armor grinned like demons. The patterns of faded tapestries and rustling battle banners held no human symbology. For this was Old Wilwidh, before the machine came to impose universal sameness. It was the wellspring of Merseia. You had to see a place like this if you would understand, in your bones, that Merseians would never be kin to you.

I wish my ancestors were around. Approaching the dais beside a silent Hauksberg, his boots resounding hollow, bitter incense in his nostrils, Abrams conjured up Dayan in his head. I too have a place in the cosmos. Let me not forget.

Black-robed beneath a dragon carved in black wood, the Hand of the Vach Ynvory waited. The men bowed to him. He lifted a short spear and crashed it down in salute. Brusquely, he said: “This is an evil thing that has happened.”

“What news, sir?” Hauksberg asked. His eyes were sunken and a tic moved one corner of his mouth.

“At latest report, a destroyer had locked detectors on Flandry’s hyperwake. It can catch him, but time will be required, and meanwhile both craft have gone beyond detection range.”

“The Protector is assured anew of my profoundest regrets. I am preferring charges against this malefactor. Should he be caught alive, he may be treated as a common pirate.”

Yah, Abrams thought. Dragged under a hypnoprobe and wrung dry. Well, he doesn’t have any vital military secrets, and testimony about me can’t get me in any deeper than I am. But please, let him be killed outright.

“My lord,” he said, “to you and the Hand I formally protest. Dominic Flandry holds an Imperial commission. At a minimum the law entitles him to a court-martial. Nor can his diplomatic immunity be removed by fiat.”

“He was not accredited by his Majesty’s government, but myself,” Hauksberg snapped. “The same applies to you, Abrams.”

“Be still,” Brechdan ordered him. Hauksberg gaped unbelieving at the massive green countenance. Brechdan’s look was on Abrams. “Commander,” the Merseian said, “when you were seized last night, you insisted that you had information I must personally hear. Having been told of this, I acceded. Do you wish to talk with me alone?”

Hang on, here we go. I boasted to Dom once, they wouldn’t take me in any condition to blab, and they’d pay for whatever they got. Nu, here I am, whole-skinned and disarmed. If I’m to justify my brag, these poor wits will have to keep me out of the interrogation cell. “I thank the Hand,” Abrams said, “but the matter concerns Lord Hauksberg also.”

“Speak freely. Today is no time for circumlocutions.”

Abrams’ heart thudded but he held his words steady. “Point of law, Hand. By the Covenant of Alfzar, Merseia confirmed her acceptance of the rules of war and diplomacy which evolved on Terra. They evolved, and you took them over, for the excellent reason that they work. Now if you wish to declare us personae non gratae and deport us, his Majesty’s government will have no grounds for complaint. But taking any other action against any one of us, no matter what the source of our accreditation, is grounds for breaking off relations, if not for war.”

“Diplomatic personnel have no right to engage in espionage,” Brechdan said.

“No, Hand. Neither is the government to which they are sent supposed to spy on them. And in fact, Dwyr the Hook was planted on me as a spy. Scarcely a friendly act, Hand, the more so when urgent negotiations are under way. It happened his sympathies were with Terra—“

Brechdan’s smile was bleak. “I do not believe it merely happened, Commander. I have the distinct impression that you maneuvered to get him posted where he would be in contact with you. Compliments on your skill.”

“Hand, his Majesty’s government will deny any such allegation.”

“How dare you speak for the Empire?” Hauksberg exploded.

“How dare you, my lord?” Abrams replied. “I am only offering a prediction. But will the Hand not agree it is probably correct?”

Brechdan rubbed his chin. “Charge and counter-charge, denial and counter-denial  …  yes, no doubt. What do you expect the Empire to maintain?”

“That rests with the Policy Board, Hand, and how it decides will depend on a number of factors, including mood. If Merseia takes a course which looks reasonable in Terran eyes, Terra is apt to respond in kind.”

“I presume a reasonable course for us includes dropping charges against yourself,” Brechdan said dryly.

Abrams lifted his shoulders and spread his palms. “What else? Shall we say that Dwyr and Flandry acted on impulse, without my knowledge? Isn’t it wise to refrain from involving the honor of entire planets?”

“Khraich. Yes. The point is well taken. Though frankly, I am disappointed in you. I would stand by a subordinate.”

“Hand, what happens to him is outside your control or mine. He and his pursuer have gone past communication range. It may sound pompous, but I want to save myself for further service to the Empire.”

“We’ll see about that,” Hauksberg said venomously.

“I told you to be silent,” Brechdan said. “No, Commander, on Merseia your word is not pompous at all.” He inclined his head. “I salute you. Lord Hauksberg will oblige me by considering you innocent.”

“Sir,” the viscount protested, “surely he must be confined to the Embassy grounds for the duration of our stay. What happens to him on his return will lie with his service and his government.”

“I do request the commander to remain within the compound,” Brechdan said. He leaned forward. “Now, delegate, comes your turn. If you are willing to continue present discussions, so are we. But there are certain preconditions. By some accident, Flandry might yet escape, and he does carry military secrets. We must therefore dispatch a fast courier to the nearest Terran regional headquarters, with messages from us both. If Terra disowns him and cooperates with Merseia in his capture or destruction, then Terra has proven her desire for peaceful relations and the Grand Council of His Supremacy will be glad to adjust its policies accordingly. Will you lend your efforts to this end?”

“Of course, sir! Of course!”

“The Terran Empire is far away, though,” Brechdan continued. “I don’t imagine Flandry would make for it. Our patrols will cover the likeliest routes, as insurance. But the nearest human installation is on Starkad, and if somehow he eludes our destroyer, I think it probable he will go either there or to Betelgeuse. The region is vast and little known. Thus our scouts would have a very poor chance of intercepting him—until he is quite near his destination. Hence, if he should escape, I shall wish to guard the approaches. But as my government has no more desire than yours to escalate the conflict, your commandant on Starkad must be told that these units are no menace to him and he need not send for reinforcements. Rather, he must cooperate. Will you prepare such orders for him?”

“At once, sir,” Hauksberg said. Hope was revitalizing him. He paid no attention to Abrams’ stare.

“Belike this will all prove unnecessary,” Brechdan said. “The destroyer estimated she would overtake Flandry in three days. She will need little longer to report back. At such time we can feel easy, and so can his Majesty’s government. But for certainty’s sake, we had best get straight to work. Please accompany me to the adjacent office.” He rose. For a second he locked eyes with Abrams. “Commander,” he said, “your young man makes me proud to be a sentient creature. What might our united races not accomplish? Hunt well.”

Abrams could not speak. His throat was too thick with unshed tears. He bowed and left. At the door, Merseian guards fell in, one on either side of him.

Stars crowded the viewscreens, unmercifully brilliant against infinite night. The spaceboat thrummed with her haste.

Flandry and Persis returned from their labor. She had been giving him tools, meals, anything she could that seemed to fit his request, “Just keep feeding me and fanning me.” In a shapeless coverall, hair caught under a scarf, a smear of grease on her nose, she was somehow more desirable than ever before. Or was that simply because death coursed near?

The Merseian destroyer had called the demand to stop long ago, an age ago, when she pulled within range of a hyper-vibration ‘cast. Flandry refused. “Then prepare your minds for the God,” said her captain, and cut off. Moment by moment, hour by hour, he had crept in on the boat, until instruments shouted his presence.

Persis caught Flandry’s hand. Her own touch was cold. “I don’t understand,” she said in a thin voice. “You told me he can track us by our wake. But space is so big. Why can’t we go sublight and let him hunt for us?”

“He’s too close,” Flandry said. “He was already too close when we first knew he was on our trail. If we cut the secondaries, he’d have a pretty good idea of our location, and need only cast about a small volume of space till he picked up the neutrino emission of our powerplant.”

“Couldn’t we turn that off too?”

“We’d die inside a day. Everything depends on it. Odds-on bet whether we suffocated or froze. If we had suspended-animation equipment—But we don’t. This is no warcraft, not even an exploratory vessel. It’s just the biggest lifeboat-cum-gig Queen Maggy could tote.”

They moved toward the control room. “What’s going to happen?” she asked.

“In theory, you mean?” He was grateful for a chance to talk. The alternative would have been that silence which pressed in on the hull. “Well, look. We travel faster than light by making a great many quantum jumps per second, which don’t cross the intervening space. You might say we’re not in the real universe most of the time, though we are so often that we can’t notice any difference. Our friend has to phase in. That is, he has to adjust his jumps to the same frequency and the same phase angle as ours. This makes each ship a completely solid object to the other, as if they were moving sub-light, under ordinary gravitic drive at a true velocity.”

“But you said something about the field.”

“Oh, that. Well, what makes us quantum-jump is a pulsating force-field generated by the secondary engine. The field encloses us and reaches out through a certain radius. How big a radius, and how much mass it can affect, depends on the generator’s power. A big ship can lay alongside a smaller one and envelop her and literally drag her at a resultant pseudo-speed. Which is how you carry out most capture and boarding operations. But a destroyer isn’t that large in relation to us. She does have to come so close that our fields overlap. Otherwise her beams and artillery can’t touch us.”

“Why don’t we change phase?”

“Standard procedure in an engagement. I’m sure our friends expect us to try it. But one party can change as fast as another, and runs a continuous computation to predict the pattern of the opposition’s maneuvers. Sooner or later, the two will be back in phase long enough for a weapon to hit. We’re not set up to do it nearly as well as he is. No, our solitary chance is the thing we’ve been working on.”

She pressed against him. He felt how she trembled. “Nicky, I’m afraid.”

“Think I’m not?” Both pairs of lips were dry when they touched. “Come on, let’s to our posts. We’ll know in a few minutes. If we go out—Persis, I couldn’t ask for a better traveling companion.” As they sat down, Flandry added, because he dared not stay serious: “Though we wouldn’t be together long. You’re ticketed for heaven, my destination’s doubtless the other way.”

She gripped his hand again. “Mine too. You won’t escape me th-th-that easily.”

Alarms blared. A shadow crossed the stars. It thickened as phasing improved. Now it was a torpedo outline, still transparent; now the gun turrets and missile launchers showed clear; now all but the brightest stars were occulted. Flandry laid an eye to the crosshairs of his improvised fire-control scope. His finger rested on a button. Wires ran aft from it.

The Merseian destroyer became wholly real to him. Starlight glimmered off metal. He knew how thin that metal was. Force screens warded off solid matter, and nothing protected against nuclear energies: nothing but speed to get out of their way, which demanded low mass. Nevertheless he felt as if a dinosaur stalked him.

The destroyer edged nearer, swelling in the screens. She moved leisurely, knowing her prey was weaponless, alert only for evasive tactics. Flandry’s right hand went to the drive controls. So  …  so  …  he was zeroed a trifle forward of the section where he knew her engines must be.

A gauge flickered. Hyperfields were making their first tenuous contact. In a second it would be sufficiently firm for a missile or a firebolt to cross from one hull to another. Persis, reading the board as he had taught her, yelled, “Go!” Flandry snapped on a braking vector. Lacking the instruments and computers of a man-of-war, he had estimated for himself what the thrust should be. He pressed the button.

In the screen, the destroyer shot forward in relation to him. From an open hatch in his boat plunged the auxiliary’s auxiliary, a craft meant for atmosphere but propellable anywhere on gravity beams. Fields joined almost at the instant it transitted them. At high relative velocity, both pseudo and kinetic, it smote.

Flandry did not see what happened. He had shifted phase immediately, and concentrated on getting the hell out of the neighborhood. If everything worked as hoped, his airboat ripped through the Merseian plates, ruinously at kilometers per second. Fragments howled in air, flesh, engine connections. The destroyer was not destroyed. Repair would be possible, after so feeble a blow. But before the ship was operational again, he would be outside detection range. If he zigzagged, he would scarcely be findable.

He hurtled among the stars. A clock counted one minute, two, three, five. He began to stop fighting for breath. Persis gave way to tears. After ten minutes he felt free to run on automatic, lean over and hold her.

“We did it,” he whispered. “Satan in Sirius! One miserable gig took a navy vessel.”

Then he must leap from his seat, caper and crow till the boat rang. “We won! Ta-ran-tu-la! We won! Break out the champagne! This thing must have champagne among the rations! God is too good for anything else!” He hauled Persis up and danced her over the deck. “Come on, you! We won! Swing your lady! I gloat, I gloat, I gloat!”

Eventually he calmed down. By that time Persis had command of herself. She disengaged from him so she could warn: “We’ve a long way to Starkad, darling, and danger at the end of the trip.”

“Ah,” said Ensign Dominic Flandry, “but you forget, this is the beginning of the trip.”

A smile crept over her mouth. “Precisely what do you mean, sir?”

He answered with a leer. “That it is a long way to Starkad.”

15

Saxo glittered white among the myriads. But it was still so far that others outshone it. Brightest stood Betelgeuse. Flandry’s gaze fell on that crimson spark and lingered. He sat at the pilot board, chin in hand, for many minutes; and only the throb of the engine and murmur of the ventilators were heard.

Persis entered the control room. During the passage she had tried to improvise a few glamorous changes of garment from the clothes in stock, but they were too resolutely utilitarian. So mostly, as now, she settled for a pair of shorts, and those mostly for the pockets. Her hair swept loose, dark-bright as space; a lock tickled him when she bent over his shoulder, and he sensed its faint sunny odor, and her own. But this time he made no response.

“Trouble, darling?” she asked.

“ ‘It ain’t the work, it’s them damn decisions,’ “ he quoted absently.

“You mean which way to go?”

“Yes. Here’s where we settle the question. Saxo or Betelgeuse?”

He had threshed the arguments out till she knew them by heart, but he went on anyhow: “Got to be one or the other. We’re not set up to lie doggo on some undiscovered planet. The Empire’s too far; every day of travel piles up chances for a Merseian to spot our wake. They’ll have sent couriers in all directions—every kind of ship that could outrun our skulker’s course—soon’s they learned we escaped. Maybe before, even. Their units must be scouring these parts.

“Saxo’s the closer. Against heading there is the consideration they can keep a pretty sharp watch on it without openly using warcraft in the system. Any big, fast merchantman could gobble us, and the crew come aboard with sidearms. However, if we were in call range, I might raise Terran HQ on Starkad and pass on the information we’re carrying. Then we might hope the Merseians would see no further gain in damaging us. But the whole thing is awful iffy.

“Now Betelgeuse is an unaligned power, and very jealous of her neutrality. Foreign patrols will have to keep their distance, spread so thin we might well slip through. Once on Alfzar, we could report to the Terran ambassador. But the Betelgeuseans won’t let us enter their system secretly. They maintain their own patrols. We’d have to go through traffic procedures, starting beyond orbital radius of the outermost planet. And the Merseians can monitor those com channels. A raider could dash in quick-like and blast us.”

“They wouldn’t dare,” Persis said.

“Sweetheart, they’d dare practically anything, and apologize later. You don’t know what’s at stake.”

She sat down beside him. “Because you won’t tell me.”

“Right.”

He had gnawed his way to the truth. Hour upon hour, as they fled through Merseia’s dominions, he hunched with paper, penstyl, calculator, and toiled. Their flight involved nothing dramatic. It simply meandered through regions where one could assume their enemies rarely came. Why should beings with manlike biological requirements go from a dim red dwarf star to a planetless blue giant to a dying Cepheid variable? Flandry had ample time for his labors.

Persis was complaining about that when the revelation came. “You might talk to me.”

“I do,” he muttered, not lifting his eyes from the desk. “I make love to you as well. Both with pleasure. But not right now, please!”

She flopped into a seat. “Do you recall what we have aboard for entertainment?” she said. “Four animations: a Martian travelogue, a comedian routine, a speech by the Emperor, and a Cynthian opera on the twenty-tone scale. Two novels: Outlaw Blastman and Planet of Sin. I have them memorized. They come back to me in my dreams. Then there’s a flute, which I can’t play, and a set of operation manuals.”

“M-hm.” He tried putting Brechdan’s figures in a different sequence. It had been easy to translate from Merseian to Terran arithmetic. But what the devil did the symbols refer to? Angles, times, several quantities with no dimensions specified  …  rotation? Of what? Not of Brechdan; no such luck.

A nonhuman could have been similarly puzzled by something from Terra, such as a periodic table of isotopes. He wouldn’t have known which properties out of many were listed, nor the standardized order in which quantum numbers were given, nor the fact that logarithms were to the base ten unless e was explicit, nor a lot of other things he’d need to know before he could guess what the table signified.

“You don’t have to solve the problem,” Persis sulked. “You told me yourself, an expert can see the meaning at a glance. You’re just having fun.”

Flandry raised his head, irritated. “Might be hellish important for us to know. Give us some idea what to expect. How in the name of Copros can Starkad matter so much? One lonesome planet!”

And the idea came to him.

He grew so rigid, he stared so wildly out into the universe, that Persis was frightened. “Nicky, what’s wrong?” He didn’t hear. With a convulsive motion, he grabbed a fresh sheet of paper and started scrawling. Finished, he stared at the result. Sweat stood on his brow. He rose, went into the control room, returned with a reel which he threaded into his microreader. Again he wrote, copying off numbers. His fingers danced on the desk computer. Persis held herself moveless.

Until at last he nodded. “That’s it,” he said in a cold small voice. “Has to be.”

“What is?” she could then ask.

He twisted around in his chair. His eyes took a second to focus on her. Something had changed in his face. He was almost a stranger.

“I can’t tell you,” he said.

“Why not?”

“We might get captured alive. They’d probe you and find you knew. If they didn’t murder you out of hand, they’d wipe your brain—which to my taste is worse.”

He took a lighter from his pocket and burned every paper on the desk and swept the ashes into a disposal. Afterward he shook himself, like a dog that has come near drowning, and went to her.

“Sorry,” he smiled. “Kind of a shock for me there. But I’m all right now. And I really will pay attention to you, from here on in.”

She enjoyed the rest of the voyage, even after she had identified the change in him, the thing which had gone and would never quite come back. Youth.

The detector alarm buzzed. Persis drew a gasp and caught Flandry’s arm. He tore her loose, reaching for the main hyper-drive switch.

But he didn’t pull it, returning them to normal state and kinetic velocity. His knuckles stood white on the handle. A pulse fluttered in his throat. “I forgot what I’d already decided,” he said. “We don’t have an especially good detector. If she’s a warship, we were spotted some time ago.”

“But this time she can’t be headed straight at us.” Her tone was fairly level. She had grown somewhat used to being hunted. “We have a big sphere to hide in.”

“Uh-huh. We’ll try that if necessary. But first let’s see which way yonder fellow is bound.” He changed course. Stars wheeled in the viewports, otherwise there was no sensation. “If we can find a track on which the intensity stays constant, we’ll be running parallel to him and he isn’t trying to intercept.” Saxo burned dead ahead. “S’pose he’s going there—“

Minutes crawled. Flandry let himself relax. His coverall was wet. “Whew! What I hoped. Destination, Saxo. And if he’s steered on a more or less direct line, as is probable, then he’s come from the Empire.”

He got busy, calculating, grumbling about rotten civilian instrumentation. “Yes, we can meet him. Let’s go.”

“But he could be Merseian,” Persis objected. “He needn’t have come from a Terran planet.”

“Chance we take. The odds aren’t bad. He’s slower than us, which suggests a merchant vessel.” Flandry set the new path, leaned back and stretched. A grin spread across his features.

“My dilemma’s been solved for me. We’re off to Starkad.”

“Why? How?”

“Didn’t mention it before, for fear of raising false hopes in you. When I’d rather raise something else. But I came here first, instead of directly to Saxo or Betelgeuse, because this is the way Terran ships pass, carrying men and supplies to Starkad and returning home. If we can hitch a ride  …  you see?”

Eagerness blossomed in her and died again. “Why couldn’t we have found one going home?”

“Be glad we found any whatsoever. Besides, this way we deliver our news a lot sooner.” Flandry rechecked his figures. “We’ll be in call range in an hour. If he should prove to be Merseian, chances are we can outspeed and lose him.” He rose. “I decree a good stiff drink.”

Persis held her hands up. They trembled. “We do need something for our nerves,” she agreed, “but there are psycho-chemicals aboard.”

“Whisky’s more fun. Speaking of fun, we have an hour.”

She rumpled his hair. “You’re impossible.”

“No,” he said. “Merely improbable.”

 

The ship was the freighter Rieskessel, registered on Nova Germania but operating out of the Imperial frontier world Irumclaw. She was a huge, potbellied, ungainly and unkempt thing, with a huge, potbellied, ungainly and unkempt captain. He bellowed a not quite sober welcome when Flandry and Persis came aboard.

“Oh, ho, ho, hoi Humans! So soon I did not expect seeing humans. And never this gorgeous.” One hairy hand engulfed Flandry’s, the other chucked Persis under the chin. “Otto Brummelmann is me.”

Flandry looked past the bald, wildly bearded head, down the passageway from the airlock. Corroded metal shuddered to the drone of an ill-tuned engine. A pair of multi-limbed beings with shiny blue integuments stared back from their labor; they were actually swabbing by hand. The lights were reddish orange, the air held a metallic tang and was chilly enough for his breath to smoke. “Are you the only Terran, sir?” he asked.

“Not Terran. Not me. Germanian. But for years now on Irumclaw. My owners want Irumclagian spacehands, they come cheaper. No human language do I hear from end to end of a trip. They can’t pronounce.” Brummelmann kept his little eyes on Persis, who had donned her one gown, and tugged at his own soiled tunic in an effort at getting some wrinkles out. “Lonely, lonely. How nice to find you. First we secure your boat, next we go for drinks in my cabin, right?”

“We’d better have a private talk immediately, sir,” Flandry said. “Our boat—no, let’s wait till we’re alone.”

“You wait. I be alone with the little lady, right? Ho, ho, hoi” Brummelmann swept a paw across her. She shrank back in distaste.

On the way, the captain was stopped by a crew member who had some question. Flandry took the chance to hiss in Persis’ ear: “Don’t offend him. This is fantastic luck.”

“This?” Her nose wrinkled.

“Yes. Think. No matter what happens, none of these xenos’ll give us away. They can’t. All we have to do is stay on the good side of the skipper, and that shouldn’t be hard.”

He had seen pigpens, in historical dramas, better kept up than Brummelmann’s cabin. The Germanian filled three mugs, ignoring coffee stains, with a liquid that sank fangs into stomachs. His got half emptied on the first gulp. “So!” he belched. “We talk. Who sent you to deep space in a gig?”

Persis took the remotest corner. Flandry stayed near Brummelmann, studying him. The man was a failure, a bum, an alcoholic wreck. Doubtless he kept his job because the owners insisted on a human captain and couldn’t get anyone else at the salary they wanted to pay. Didn’t matter greatly, as long as the mate had some competence. For the most part, antiquated though her systems must be, the ship ran herself.

“You are bound for Starkad, aren’t you, sir?” Flandry asked.

“Yes, yes. My company has a Naval contract. Irumclaw is a transshipment point. This trip we carry food and construction equipment. I hope we go on another run soon. Not much pleasure in Highport. But we was to talk about you.”

“I can’t say anything except that I’m on a special mission. It’s vital for me to reach Highport secretly. If Donna d’Io and I can ride down with you, and you haven’t radioed the fact ahead, you’ll have done the Empire a tremendous service.”

“Special mission  …  with a lady?” Brummelmann dug a blackrimmed thumb into Flandry’s ribs. “I can guess what sort of mission. Ho, ho, ho!”

“I rescued her,” Flandry said patiently. “That’s why we were in a boat. A Merseian attack. The war’s sharpening. I have urgent information for Admiral Enriques.”

Brummelmann’s laughter choked off. Behind the matted whiskers, that reached to his navel, he swallowed. “Attack, you said? But no, the Merseians, they have never bothered civilian ships.”

“Nor should they bother this one, Captain. Not if they don’t know I’m aboard.”

Brummelmann wiped his pate. Probably he thought of himself as being in the high, wild tradition of early spacefaring days. But now his daydreams had orbited. “My owners,” he said weakly. “I have obligation to my owners. I am responsible for their ship.”

“Your first duty is to the Empire.” Flandry considered taking over at blaster point. No; not unless he must; too chancy. “And all you need do is approach Starkad in the usual fashion, make your usual landing at Highport, and let us off. The Merseians will never know, I swear.”

“I—but I—“

Flandry snatched an idea from the air. “As for your owners,” he said, “you can do them a good turn as well. Our boat had better be jettisoned out here. The enemy has her description. But if we take careful note of the spot, and leave her power-plant going for neutrino tracing, you can pick her up on your way home and sell her there. She’s worth as much as this entire ship, I’ll bet.” He winked. “Of course, you’ll inform your owners.”

Brummelmann’s eyes gleamed. “Well. So. Of course.” He tossed off the rest of his drink. “By God, yes! Shake!”

He insisted on shaking hands with Persis also. “Ugh,” she said to Flandry when they were alone, in an emptied locker where a mattress had been laid. She had refused the captain’s offer of his quarters. “How long to Starkad?”

“Couple days.” Flandry busied himself checking the spacesuits he had removed from the boat before she was cast adrift.

“I don’t know if I can stand it.”

“Sorry, but we’ve burned our britches. Myself, I stick by my claim that we lucked out.”

“You have the strangest idea of luck,” she sighed. “Oh, well, matters can’t get any worse.”

They could.

Fifteen hours later, Flandry and Persis were in the saloon. Coveralled against the chill but nonetheless shivering, mucous membranes aching from the dryness, they tried to pass time with a game of rummy. They weren’t succeeding very well.

Brummelmann’s voice boomed hoarse from the intercom: “You! Ensign Flandry! To the bridge!”

“Huh?” He sprang up. Persis followed his dash, down halls and through a companionway. Stars glared from the viewports. Because the optical compensator was out of adjustment, they had strange colors and were packed fore and aft, as if the ship moved through another reality.

Brummelmann held a wrench. Beside him, his first mate aimed a laser torch, a crude substitute for a gun but lethal enough at short range. “Hands high!” the captain shrilled.

Flandry’s arms lifted. Sickness caught at his gullet. “What is this?”

“Read.” Brummelmann thrust a printout at him. “You liar, you traitor, thought you could fool me? Look what came.”

It was a standard form, transcribed from a hypercast that must have originated in one of several automatic transmitters around Saxo. Office of Vice Admiral Juan Enriques, commanding Imperial Terrestrial Naval forces in region—Flandry’s glance flew to the text.

General directive issued under martial law: By statement of his Excellency Lord Markus Hauksberg, Viscount of Ny Kalmar on Terra, special Imperial delegate to the Roidhunate of Merseia  …  Ensign Dominic Flandry, an officer of his Majesty’s Navy attached to the delegation  …  mutinied and stole a spaceboat belonging to the realm of Ny Kalmar; description as follows  …  charged with high treason  …  Pursuant to interstellar law and Imperial policy, Ensign Flandry is to be apprehended and returned to his superiors on Merseia  …  All ships, including Terran, will be boarded by Merseian inspectors before proceeding to Starkad  …  Terrans who may apprehend this criminal are to deliver him promptly, in their own persons, to the nearest Merseian authority  …  secrets of state—

Persis closed her eyes and strained fingers together. The blood had left her face.

“Well?” Brummelmann growled. “Well, what have you to say for yourself?”

Flandry leaned against the bulkhead. He didn’t know if his legs would upbear him. “I  …  can say  …  that bastard Brechdan thinks of everything.”

“You expected you could fool me? You thought I would do your traitor’s work? No, no!”

Flandry looked from him, to the mate, to Persis. Weakness vanished in rage. But his brain stayed machine precise. He lowered the hand which held the flimsy. “I’d better tell you the whole truth,” he husked.

“No, I don’t want to hear, I want no secrets.”

Flandry let his knees go. As he fell, he yanked out his blaster. The torch flame boomed blue where he had been. His own snap shot flared off that tool. The mate yowled and dropped the red-hot thing. Flandry regained his feet. “Get rid of your wrench,” he said.

It clattered on the deck. Brummelmann backed off, past his mate who crouched and keened in pain. “You cannot get away,” he croaked. “We are detected by now. Surely we are. You make us turn around, a warship comes after.”

“I know,” Flandry said. His mind leaped as if across ice floes. “Listen. This is a misunderstanding. Lord Hauksberg’s been fooled. I do have information, and it does have to reach Admiral Enriques. I want nothing from you but transportation to Highport. I’ll surrender to the Terrans. Not to the Merseians. The Terrans. What’s wrong with that? They’ll do what the Emperor really wants. If need be, they can turn me over to the enemy. But not before they’ve heard what I have to tell. Are you a man, Captain? Then behave like one!”

“But we will be boarded,” Brummelmann wailed. “You can hide me. A thousand possible places on a ship. If they have no reason to suspect you, the Merseians won’t search everywhere. That could take days. Your crew won’t blab. They’re as alien to the Merseians as they are to us. No common language, gestures, interests, anything. Let the greenskins come aboard. I’ll be down in the cargo or somewhere. You act natural. Doesn’t matter if you show a bit of strain. I’m certain everybody they’ve checked has done so. Pass me on to the Terrans. A year from now you could have a knighthood.”

Brummelmann’s eyes darted back and forth. The breath rasped sour from his mouth.

“The alternative,” Flandry said, “is that I lock you up and assume command.”

“I  …  no—“ Tears started forth, down into the dirty beard. “Please. Too much risk—“ Abruptly, slyly, after a breath: “Why, yes. I will. I can find a good hiding spot for you.”

And tell them when they arrive, Flandry thought. I’ve got the upper hand and it’s worthless. What am I to do?

Persis stirred. She approached Brummelmann and took his hands in hers. “Oh, thank you,” she caroled. “Eh? Ho?” He gawped at her.

“I knew you were a real man. Like the old heroes of the League, come back to life.”

“But you—lady—“

“The message doesn’t include a word about me,” she purred. “I don’t feel like sitting in some dark hole.”

“You  …  you aren’t registered aboard. They will read the list. Won’t they?”

“What if they do? Would I be registered?”

Hope rushed across Flandry. He felt giddy with it. “There are some immediate rewards, you see,” he cackled.

“I—why, I—“ Brummelmann straightened. He caught Persis to him. “So there are. Oh, ho, ho! So there are!”

She threw Flandry a look he wished he could forget.

He crept from the packing case. The hold was gut-black. The helmet light of his spacesuit cast a single beam to guide him. Slowly, awkward in armor, he wormed among crates to the hatch.

The ship was quiet. Nothing spoke but powerplant, throttled low, and ventilators. Shadows bobbed grotesque where his beam cut a path. Orbit around Starkad, awaiting clearance to descend—must be. He had survived. The Merseians had passed within meters of him, he heard them talk and curled finger around trigger; but they had gone again and the Rieskessel resumed acceleration. So Persis had kept Brummelmann under control; he didn’t like to think how.

The obvious course was to carry on as he had outlined, let himself be taken planetside and turn himself in. Thus he would be certain to get his message through, the word which he alone bore. (He had wondered whether to give Persis those numbers, but decided against it. A list for her made another chance of getting caught; and her untrained mind might not retain the figures exactly, even in the subconscious for narcosynthesis to bring forth.) But he didn’t know how Enriques would react. The admiral was no robot; he would pass the information on to Terra, one way or another. But he might yield up Flandry. He would most likely not send an armed scout to check and confirm, without authorization from headquarters. Not in the face of Hauksberg’s message, or the command laid on him that he must take no escalating action save in response to a Merseian initiative.

So at best, the obvious course entailed delay, which the enemy might put to good use. It entailed a high probability of Brechdan Ironrede learning how matters stood. Max Abrams (Are you alive yet, my father?) had said, “What helps the other fellow most is knowing what you know.” And, finally, Dominic Flandry wasn’t about to become a God damned pawn again!

He opened the hatch. The corridor stretched empty. Unhuman music squealed from the forecastle. Captain Brummelmann was in no hurry to make planetfall, and his crew was taking the chance to relax.

Flandry sought the nearest lifeboat. If anyone noticed, well, all right, he’d go to Highport. But otherwise, borrowing a boat would be the smallest crime on his docket. He entered the turret, dogged the inner valve, closed his faceplate, and worked the manual controls. Pumps roared, exhausting air. He climbed into the boat and secured her own airlock. The turret’s outer valve opened automatically.

Space blazed at him. He nudged through on the least possible impetus. Starkad was a huge wheel of darkness, rimmed with red, day blue on one edge. A crescent moon glimmered among the stars. Weightlessness caught Flandry in an endless falling.

It vanished as he turned on interior gravity and applied a thrust vector. He spiraled downward. The planetary map was clear in his recollection. He could reach Ujanka without trouble—Ujanka, the city he had saved.

16

Dragoika flowed to a couch, reclined on one elbow, and gestured at Flandry. “Don’t pace in that caged way, Domma-neek,” she urged. “Take ease by my side. We have scant time alone together, we two friends.”

Behind her throaty voice, up through the window, came the sounds of feet shuffling about, weapons rattling, a surflike growl. Flandry stared out. Shiv Alley was packed with armed Kursovikians. They spilled past sight, among gray walls, steep red roofs, carved beams: on into the Street Where They Fought, a cordon around this house. Spearheads and axes, helmets and byrnies flashed in the harsh light of Saxo; banners snapped to the wind, shields bore monsters and thunderbolts luridly colored. It was no mob. It was the fighting force of Ujanka, summoned by the Sisterhood. Warriors guarded the parapets on Seatraders’ Castle and the ships lay ready in Golden Bay.

Lucifer! Flandry thought, half dismayed. Did I start this?

He looked back at Dragoika. Against the gloom of the chamber, the barbaric relics which crowded it, her ruby eyes and the striped orange-and-white fur seemed to glow, so that the curves of her body grew disturbingly rich. She tossed back her blonde mane, and the half-human face broke into a smile whose warmth was not lessened by the fangs. “We were too busy since you came,” she said. “Now, while we wait, we can talk. Come.”

He crossed the floor, strewn with aromatic leaves in his honor, and took the couch by hers. A small table in the shape of a flower stood between, bearing a ship model and a flagon. Dragoika sipped. “Will you not share my cup, Dom-maneek?”

“Well  …  thanks.” He couldn’t refuse, though Starkadian wine tasted grim on his palate. Besides, he’d better get used to native viands; he might be living off them for a long while. He fitted a tube to his chowlock and sucked up a bit.

It was good to wear a regular sea-level outfit again, air helmet, coverall, boots, after being penned in a spacesuit. The messenger Dragoika sent for him, to the Terran station in the High Housing, had insisted on taking back such a rig.

“How have you been?” Flandry asked lamely.

“As always. We missed you, I and Ferok and your other old comrades. How glad I am the Archer was in port.”

“Lucky for me!”

“No, no, anyone would have helped you. The folk down there, plain sailors, artisans, merchants, ranchers, they are as furious as I am.” Dragoika erected her tendrils. Her tail twitched, the winglike ears spread wide. “That those vaz-gira-dek would dare bite you!”

“Hoy,” Flandry said. “You have the wrong idea. I haven’t disowned Terra. My people are simply the victims of a lie and our task is to set matters right.”

“They outlawed you, did they not?”

“I don’t know what the situation is. I dare not communicate by radio. The vaz-Merseian could overhear. So I had your messenger give our men a note which they were asked to fly to Admiral Enriques. The note begged him to send a trustworthy man here.”

“You told me that already. I told you I would make quite plain to the vaz-Terran, they will not capture my Domma-neek. Not unless they want war.”

“But—“

“They don’t. They need us worse than we need them, the more so when they failed to reach an accord with the vaz-Siravo of the Zletovar.”

“They did?” Flandry’s spirit drooped.

“Yes, as I always said would happen. Oh, there have been no new Merseian submarines. A Terran force blasted the Siravo base, when we vaz-Kursovikian were unable to. The vaz-Merseian fought them in the air. Heaven burned that night. Since then, our ships often meet gunfire from swimmers, but most of them get through. They tell me combat between Terran and Merseian has become frequent—elsewhere in the world, however.”

Another step up the ladder, Flandry thought. More men killed, Tigeries, seajolk. By now, I suppose, daily. And in a doomed cause.

“But you have given me small word about your deeds,” Dragoika continued. “Only that you bear a great secret. What?”

“I’m sorry.” On an impulse, Flandry reached out and stroked her mane. She rubbed her head against his palm. “I may not tell even you.”

She sighed. “As you wish.” She picked up the model galley. Her fingers traced spars and rigging. “Let me fare with you a ways. Tell me of your journey.”

He tried. She struggled for comprehension. “Strange, that yonder,” she said. “The little stars become suns, this world of ours shrunk to a dustmote; the weirdness of other races, the terrible huge machines—“ She clutched the model tight. “I did not know a story could frighten me.”

“You will learn to live with a whole heart in the universe.” You must.

“Speak on, Domma-neek.”

He did, censoring a trifle. Not that Dragoika would mind his having traveled with Persis; but she might think he preferred the woman to her as a friend, and be hurt.

“—trees on Merseia grow taller than here, bearing a different kind of leaf—“

His wristcom buzzed. He stabbed the transmitter button. “Ensign Flandry.” His voice sounded high in his ears. “Standing by.”

“Admiral Enriques,” from the speaker. “I am approaching in a Boudreau X-7 with two men. Where shall I land?”

Enriques in person? My God, have I gotten myself caught in the gears! “A-a-aye, aye, sir.”

“I asked where to set down, Flandry.”

The ensign stammered out directions. A flitter, as his letter had suggested, could settle on thetowerofDragoika ‘s house. “You see, sir, the people here, they’re—well, sort of up in arms. Best avoid possible trouble, sir.”

“Your doing?”

“No, sir. I mean, not really. But, well, you’ll see everyone gathered. In combat order. They don’t want to surrender me to  …  uh  …  to anyone they think is hostile to me. They threaten, uh, attack on our station if—Honest, sir, I haven’t alienated an ally. I can explain.”

“You’d better,” Enriques said. “Very well, you are under arrest but we won’t take you into custody as yet. We’ll be there in about three minutes. Out.”

“What did he say?” Dragoika hissed. Her fur stood on end.

Flandry translated. She glided from her couch and took a sword off the wall. “I’ll call a few warriors to make sure he keeps his promise.”

“He will. I’m certain he will. Uh  …  the sight of his vehicle might cause excitement. Can we tell the city not to start fighting?”

“We can.” Dragoika operated a communicator she had lately acquired and spoke with the Sisterhood centrum across the river. Bells pealed forth, the Song of Truce. An uneasy mutter ran through the Tigeries, but they stayed where they were.

Flandry headed for the door. “I’ll meet them on the tower,” he said.

“You will not,” Dragoika answered. “They are coming to see you by your gracious permission. Lirjoz is there, he’ll escort them down.”

Flandry seated himself, shaking his head in a stunned fashion.

He rocketed up to salute when Enriques entered. The admiral was alone, must have left his men in the flitter. At a signal from Dragoika, Lirjoz returned to watch them. Slowly, she laid her sword on the table.

“At ease,” Enriques clipped. He was gray, bladenosed, scarecrow gaunt. His uniform hung flat as armor. “Kindly present me to my hostess.”

“Uh  …  Dragoika, captain-director of the Janjevar va-Radovik  …  Vice Admiral Juan Enriques of the Imperial Terrestrial Navy.”

The newcomer clicked his heels, but his bow could have been made to the Empress. Dragoika studied him a moment, then touched brow and breasts, the salute of honor.

“I feel more hope,” she said to Flandry.

“Translate,” Enriques ordered. That narrow skull held too much to leave room for many languages.

“She  …  uh  …  likes you, sir,” Flandry said.

Behind the helmet, a smile ghosted at one corner of Enriques’ mouth. “I suspect she is merely prepared to trust me to a clearly defined extent.”

“Won’t the Admiral be seated?”

Enriques glanced at Dragoika. She eased to her couch. He took the other one, sitting straight. Flandry remained on his feet. Sweat prickled him.

“Sir,” he blurted, “please, is Donna d’Io all right?”

“Yes, except for being in a bad nervous state. She landed soon after your message arrived. The Rieskessel’s captain had been making one excuse after another to stay in orbit. When we learned from you that Donna d’Io was aboard, we said we would loft a gig for her. He came down at once. What went on there?”

“Well, sir—I mean, I can’t say. I wasn’t around, sir. She told you about our escape from Merseia?”

“We had a private interview at her request. Her account was sketchy. But it does tend to bear out your claims.”

“Sir, I know what the Merseians are planning, and it’s monstrous. I can prove—“

“You will need considerable proof, Ensign,” Enriques said bleakly. “Lord Hauksberg’s communication laid capital charges against you.”

Flandry felt nervousness slide from him. He doubled his fists and cried, with tears of rage stinging his eyes: “Sir, I’m entitled to a court-martial. By my own people. And you’d have let the Merseians have me!”

The lean visage beneath his hardly stirred. The voice was flat. “Regulations provide that personnel under charges are to be handed over to their assigned superiors if this is demanded. The Empire is too big for any other rule to work. By virtue of being a nobleman, Lord Hauksberg holds a reserve commission, equivalent rank of captain, which was automatically activated when Commander Abrams was posted to him. Until you are detached from your assignment, he is your senior commanding officer. He declared in proper form that state secrets and his mission on behalf of the Imperium have been endangered by you. The Merseians will return you to him for examination. It is true that courts-martial must be held on an Imperial ship or planet, but the time for this may be set by him within a one-year limit.”

“Will be never! Sir, they’ll scrub my brain and kill me!”

“Restrain yourself, Ensign.”

Flandry gulped. Dragoika bared teeth but stayed put. “May I hear the exact charges against me, sir?” Flandry asked.

“High treason,” Enriques told him. “Mutiny. Desertion. Kidnapping. Threat and menace. Assault and battery. Theft. Insubordination. Shall I recite the entire bill? I thought not. You have subsequently added several items. Knowing that you were wanted, you did not surrender yourself. You created dissension between the Empire and an associated country. This, among other things, imperils his Majesty’s forces on Starkad. At the moment, you are resisting arrest. Ensign, you have a great deal to answer for.”

“I’ll answer to you, sir, not to  …  to those damned gatortails. Nor to a Terran who’s so busy toadying to them he doesn’t care what happens to his fellow human beings. My God, sir, you let Merseians search Imperial ships!”

“I had my orders,” Enriques replied.

“But Hauksberg, you rank him!”

“Formally and in certain procedural matters. He holds a direct Imperial mandate, though. It empowers him to negotiate temporary agreements with Merseia, which then become policy determinants.”

Flandry heard the least waver in those tones. He pounced. “You protested your orders, sir. Didn’t you?”

“I sent a report on my opinion to frontier HQ. No reply has yet been received. In any event, there are only six Merseian men-of-war here, none above Planet class, plus some unarmed cargo carriers told off to help them.” Enriques smacked hand on knee. “Why am I arguing with you? At the very least, if you wanted to see me, you could have stayed aboard the Rieskessel.”

“And afterward been given to the Merseians, sir?”

“Perhaps. The possibility should not have influenced you. Remember your oath.”

Flandry made a circle around the room. His hands writhed behind his back. Dragoika laid fingers on sword hilt. “No,” he said to her in Kursovikian. “No matter what happens.”

He spun on his heel and looked straight at Enriques. “Sir, I had another reason. What I brought from Merseia is a list of numbers. You’d undoubtedly have passed them on. But they do need a direct check, to make sure I’m right about what they mean. And if I am right, whoever goes to look may run into a fight. A space battle. Escalation, which you’re forbidden to practice. You couldn’t order such a mission the way things have been set up to bind you. You’d have to ask for the authority. And on what basis? On my say-so, me, a baby ex-cadet, a mutineer, a traitor. You can imagine how they’d buckpass. At best, a favorable decision wouldn’t come for weeks. Months, more likely. Meanwhile the war would drag on. Men would get killed. Men like my buddy, Jan van Zuyl, with his life hardly begun, with forty or fifty years of Imperial service in him.”

Enriques spoke so softly that one heard the wind whittering off the sea, through the ancient streets outside. “Ensign van Zuyl was killed in action four days ago.”

“Oh, no.” Flandry closed his eyes.

“Conflict has gotten to the point where—we and the Merseians respect each other’s base areas, but roving aircraft fight anyplace else they happen to meet.”

“And still you let them search us.” Flandry paused. “I’m sorry, sir. I know you hadn’t any choice. Please let me finish. It’s even possible my information would be discredited, never acted on. Hard to imagine, but  …  well, we have so many bureaucrats, so many people in high places like Lord Hauksberg who insists the enemy doesn’t really mean harm  …  and Brechdan Ironrede, God, but he’s clever  …  I couldn’t risk it. I had to work things so you, sir, would have a free choice.”

“You?” Enriques raised his brows. “Ensign Dominic Flandry, all by himself?”

“Yes, sir. You have discretionary power, don’t you? I mean, when extraordinary situations arise, you can take what measures are indicated, without asking HQ first. Can’t you?”

“Of course. As witness these atmospheric combats.” Enriques leaned forward, forgetting to stay sarcastic.

“Well, sir, this is an extraordinary situation. You’re supposed to stay friends with the Kursovikians. But you can see I’m the Terran they care about. Their minds work that way. They’re barbaric, used to personal leadership; to them, a distant government is no government; they feel a blood obligation to me—that sort of thing. So to preserve the alliance, you must deal with me. I’m a renegade, but you must.”

“And so?”

“So if you don’t dispatch a scout into space, I’ll tell the Sisterhood to dissolve the alliance.”

“What?” Enriques started. Dragoika bristled.

“I’ll sabotage the whole Terran effort,” Flandry said. “Terra has no business on Starkad. We’ve been trapped, conned, blued and tattooed. When you present physical evidence, photographs, measurements, we’ll all go home. Hell, I’ll give you eight to one the Merseians go home as soon as you tell old Runei what you’ve done. Get your courier off first, of course, to make sure he doesn’t use those warships to blast us into silence. But then call him and tell him.”

“There are no Terran space combat units in this system.”

Flandry grinned. The blood was running high in him. “Sir, I don’t believe the Imperium is that stupid. There has to be some provision against the Merseians suddenly marshaling strength. If nothing else, a few warcraft orbiting ‘way outside. We can flit men to them. A roundabout course, so the enemy’ll think it’s only another homebound ship. Right?”

“Well—“ Enriques got up. Dragoika stayed where she was, but closed hand on hilt. “You haven’t yet revealed your vast secret,” the admiral declared.

Flandry recited the figures.

Enriques stood totem-post erect. “Is that everything?”

“Yes, sir. Everything that was needed.”

“How do you interpret it?”

Flandry told him.

Enriques was still for a long moment. The Tigeries growled in Shiv Alley. He turned, went to the window, stared down and then out at the sky.

“Do you believe this?” he asked most quietly.

“Yes, sir,” Flandry said. “I can’t think of anything else that fits, and I had plenty of time to try. I’d bet my life on it.”

Enriques faced him again. “Would you?”

“I’m doing it, sir.”

“Maybe. Suppose I order a reconnaissance. As you say, it’s not unlikely to run into Merseian pickets. Will you come along?”

A roar went through Flandry’s head. “Yes, sir!” he yelled.

“Hm. You trust me that much, eh? And it would be advisable for you to go: a hostage for your claims, with special experience which might prove useful. Although if you didn’t return here, we could look for trouble.”

“You wouldn’t need Kursoviki any longer,” Flandry said. He was beginning to tremble.

“If you are truthful and correct in your assertion.” Enriques was motionless a while more. The silence grew and grew.

All at once the admiral said, “Very good, Ensign Flandry. The charges against you are held in abeyance and you are hereby re-attached temporarily to my command. You will return to Highport with me and await further orders.”

Flandry saluted. Joy sang in him. “Aye, aye, sir!”

Dragoika rose. “What were you saying, Domma-neek?” she asked anxiously.

“Excuse me, sir, I have to tell her.” In Kursovikian: “The misunderstanding has been dissolved, for the time being anyhow. I’m leaving with my skipper.”

“Hr-r-r.” She looked down. “And then what?”

“Well, uh, then we’ll go on a flying ship, to a battle which may end this whole war.”

“You have only his word,” she objected.

“Did you not judge him honorable?”

“Yes. I could be wrong. Surely there are those in the Sisterhood who will suspect a ruse, not to speak of the commons. Blood binds us to you. I think it would look best if I went along. Thus there is a living pledge.”

“But—but—“

“Also,” Dragoika said, “this is our war too. Shall none of us take part?” Her eyes went back to him. “On behalf of the Sisterhood and myself, I claim a right. You shall not leave without me.”

“Problems?” Enriques barked.

Helplessly, Flandry tried to explain.

17

The Imperial squadron deployed and accelerated. It was no big force to cast out in so much blackness. True, at the core was the Sabik, a Star-class, what some called a pocket battleship; but she was old and worn, obsolete in several respects, shunted off to Saxo as the last step before the scrap orbit. No one had really expected her to see action again. Flanking her went the light cruiser Umbriel, equally tired, and the destroyersAntarctica , New Brazil, and Murdoch’s Land. Two scoutships, Encke and Ikeya-Seki, did not count as fighting units; they carried one energy gun apiece, possibly useful against aircraft, and their sole real value lay in speed and maneuverability. Yet theirs was the ultimate mission, the rest merely their helpers. Aboard each of them reposed a document signed by Admiral Enriques.

At first the squadron moved on gravities. It would not continue thus. The distance to be traversed was a few light-days, negligible under hyperdrive, appalling under true velocity. However, a sudden burst of wakes, outbound from a large orbit, would be detected by the Merseians. Their suspicions would be excited. And their strength in the Saxonian System, let alone what else they might have up ahead, was fully comparable to Captain Einarsen’s command. He wanted to enter this water carefully. It was deep.

But when twenty-four hours had passed without incident, he ordered the New Brazil to proceed at superlight toward the destination. At the first sign of an enemy waiting there, she was to come back.

Flandry and Dragoika sat in a wardroom of the Sabik with Lieutenant (j.g.) Sergei Karamzin, who happened to be off watch. He was as frantic to see new faces and hear something new from the universe as everyone else aboard. “Almost a year on station,” he said. “A year out of my life, bang, like that. Only it wasn’t sudden, you understand. Felt more like a decade.”

Flandry’s glance traveled around the cabin. An attempt had been made to brighten it with pictures and home-sewn draperies. The attempt had not been very successful. Today the place had come alive with the thrum of power, low and bone-deep. A clean tang of oil touched air which circulated briskly again. But he hated to think what this environment had felt like after a year of absolutely eventless orbit. Dragoika saw matters otherwise, of course; the ship dazzled, puzzled, frightened, delighted, enthralled her, never had she known such wonder! She poised in her chair with fur standing straight and eyes bouncing around.

“You had your surrogates, didn’t you?” Flandry asked. “Pseudosensory inputs and the rest.”

“Sure,” Karamzin said. “The galley’s good, too. But those things are just medicine, to keep you from spinning off altogether.” His young features hardened. “I hope we meet some opposition. I really do.”

“Myself,” Flandry said, “I’ve met enough opposition to last me for quite a while.”

His lighter kindled a cigaret. He felt odd, back in horizon blue, jetflares on his shoulders and no blaster at his waist: back in a ship, in discipline, in tradition. He wasn’t sure he liked it.

At least his position was refreshingly anomalous. Captain Einarsen had been aghast when Dragoika boarded—an Iron Age xeno on his vessel? But the orders from Enriques were clear. This was a vip who insisted on riding along and could cause trouble if she wasn’t humored. Thus Ensign Flandry was appointed “liaison officer,” the clause being added in private that he’d keep his pet savage out of the way or be busted to midshipman. (Nothing was said on either side about his being technically a prisoner. Einarsen had received the broadcast, but judged it would be dangerous to let his men know that Merseians were stopping Terran craft. And Enriques’ message had clarified his understanding.) At the age of nineteen, how could Flandry resist conveying the impression that the vip really had some grasp of astronautics and must be kept posted on developments? So he was granted communication with the bridge.

Under all cheer and excitement, a knot of tension was in him. He figured that word from the New Brazil would arrive at any minute.

“Your pardon,” Dragoika interrupted. “I must go to the—what you say—the head.” She thought that installation the most amusing thing aboard.

Karamzin watched her leave. Her supple gait was not impeded by the air helmet she required in a Terran atmosphere. The chief problem had been coiling her mane to fit inside. Otherwise her garments consisted of a sword and a knife.

“Way-hay,” Karamzin murmured. “What a shape! How is she?”

“Be so good as not to talk about her like that,” Flandry rapped.

“What? I didn’t mean any harm. She’s only a xeno.”

“She’s my friend. She’s worth a hundred Imperial sheep. And what she’s got to face and survive, the rest of her life—“

Karamzin leaned across the table. “How’s that? What sort of cruise are we on, anyway? Supposed to check on something the gatortails might have out in space; they didn’t tell us more.”

“I can’t, either.”

“I wasn’t ordered to stop thinking. And you know, I think this Starkad affair is a blind. They’ll develop the war here, get our whole attention on this sinkhole, then bang, they’ll hit someplace else.”

Flandry blew a smoke ring. “Maybe.” I wish I could tell you. You have no military right to know, but haven’t you a human right?

“What’s Starkad like, anyway? Our briefing didn’t say much.”

“Well—“ Flandry hunted for words. They were bloodless things at best. You could describe, but you could not make real: dawn white over a running sea, slow heavy winds that roared on wooded mountainsides, an old and proud city, loveliness on a shadowy ocean floor, two brave races, billions of years since first the planet coalesced, the great globe itself  …  He was still trying when Dragoika returned. She sat down quietly and watched him.

“—and, uh, a very interesting paleolithic culture on an island they call Rayadan—“

Alarms hooted.

Karamzin was through the door first. Feet clattered, metal clanged, voices shouted, under the shrill woop-woop-woop that echoed from end to end of the long hull. Dragoika snatched the sword off her shoulder. “What’s happening?” she yelled.

“Battle stations.” Flandry realized he had spoken in Anglic. “An enemy has been  …  sighted.”

“Where is he?”

“Out there. Put away that steel. Strength and courage won’t help you now. Come.” Flandry led her into the corridor.

They wove among men who themselves pelted toward their posts. Near the navigation bridge was a planetary chartroom equipped for full audiovisual intercom. The exec had decided this would serve the vip and her keeper. Two spacesuits hung ready. One was modified for Starkadian use. Dragoika had gotten some drill with it en route to the squadron, but Flandry thought he’d better help her before armoring himself. “Here; this fastens so. Now hold your breath till we change helmets on you  …  Why did you come?”

“I would not let you fare alone on my behalf,” Dragoika said after her faceplate was closed.

Flandry left his own open, but heard her in his radio earplugs. The alarm penetrated them; and, presently, a voice:

“Now hear this. Now hear this. Captain to all officers and men. The New Brazil reports two hyperdrives activated as she approached destination. She is returning to us and the bogies are in pursuit. We shall proceed. Stand by for hyper-drive. Stand by for combat. Glory to the Emperor.”

Flandry worked the com dials. Tuning in on a bridge view-screen, he saw space on his own panel, black and star-strewn. Briefly, as the quantum field built up, the cosmos twisted. Compensators clicked in and the scene grew steady; but now Sabik outran light and kilometers reeled aft more swiftly than imagination could follow. The power throb was a leonine growl through every cell of his body.

“What does this mean?” Dragoika pressed close to him, seeking comfort.

Flandry switched to a view of the operations tank. Seven green dots of varying size moved against a stellar background. “See, those are our ships. The big one, that’s this.” Two red dots appeared. “Those are the enemy, as near as we can tell his positions. Um-m-m, look at their size. That’s because we detect very powerful engines. I’d say one is roughly equal to ours, though probably newer and better armed. The other seems to be a heavy destroyer.”

Her gauntlets clapped together. “But this is like magic!” she cried with glee.

“Not much use, actually, except to give a quick overall picture. What the captain uses is figures and calculations from our machines.”

Dragoika’s enthusiasm died. “Always machines,” she said in a troubled voice. “Glad I am not to live in your world, Dom-maneek.”

You’ll have to, I’m afraid, he thought. For a while, anyway. If we live.

He scanned the communications office. Men sat before banks of meters, as if hypnotized. Occasionally someone touched a control or spoke a few words to his neighbor. Electromagnetic radio was mute beyond the hull. But with hyperdrive going, a slight modulation could be imposed on the wake to carry messages. Sabik could transmit instantaneously, as well as receive.

As Flandry watched, a man stiffened in his seat. His hands shook a little when he ripped off a printout and gave it to his pacing superior. That officer strode to an intercom and called the command bridge. Flandry listened and nodded.

“Tell me,” Dragoika begged. “I feel so alone here.”

“Shhh!”

Announcement: “Now hear this. Now hear this. Captain to all officers and men. It is known that there are six Merseian warships in Saxo orbit. They have gone hyper and are seeking junction with the two bogies in pursuit of New Brazil. We detect scrambled communication between these various units. It is expected they will attack us. First contact is estimated in ten minutes. Stand by to open fire upon command. The composition of the hostiles is—“

Flandry showed Dragoika the tank. Half a dozen sparks drove outward from the luminous globelet which represented her sun. “They are one light cruiser, about like our Umbriel, and five destroyers. Then ahead, remember, we have a battleship and a quite heavy destroyer.”

“Eight against five of us.” Tendrils rose behind the faceplate, fur crackled, the lost child dropped out of her and she said low and resonant: “But we will catch those first two by themselves.”

“Right. I wonder  …  “ Flandry tried a different setting. It should have been blocked off, but someone had forgotten and he looked over Captain Einarsen’s shoulder.

Yes, a Merseian in the outercom screen! And a high-ranking one, too.

“—interdicted region,” he said in thickly accented Anglic. “Turn back at once.”

“His Majesty’s government does not recognize interdictions in unclaimed space,” Einarsen said. “You will interfere with us at your peril.”

“Where are you bound? What is your purpose?”

“That is of no concern to you, Fodaich. My command is bound on its lawful occasions. Do we pass peacefully or must we fight?”

Flandry translated for Dragoika as he listened. The Merseian paused, and she whispered: “He will say we can go on, surely. Thus he can join the others.”

Flandry wiped his brow. The room felt hot, and he stank with perspiration in his suit. “I wish you’d been born in our civilization,” he said. “You have a Navy mind.”

“Pass, then,” the Merseian said slowly. “Under protest, I let you by.”

Flandry leaned forward, gripping a table edge, struggling not to shout what Einarsen must do.

The Terran commander said, “Very good. But in view of the fact that other units are moving to link with yours, I am forced to require guarantees of good faith. You will immediately head due galactic north at full speed, without halt until I return to Saxo.”

“Outrageous! You have no right—“

“I have the right of my responsibility for this squadron. If your government wishes to protest to mine, let it do so. Unless you withdraw as requested, I shall consider your intentions hostile and take appropriate measures. My compliments to you, sir. Good day.” The screen was blanked.

Flandry switched away from Einarsen’s expressionless countenance and stood shaking. There trickled through the turmoil in him, I guess an old-line officer does have as much sense as a fresh-caught ensign.

When he brought Dragoika up to date, she said coolly, “Let us see that tank again.”

The Merseians ahead were not heeding the Terran order. They were, though, sheering off, one in either direction, obviously hoping to delay matters until help arrived. Einarsen didn’t cooperate. Like a wolf brought to bay, New Brazil turned on her lesser pursuer. Murdoch’s Land hurried to her aid. On the other side, Umbriel and Sabik herself accelerated toward the Merseian battlewagon.Antarctica continued as before, convoying the scoutboats.

“Here we go,” Flandry said between clenched jaws. His first space battle, as terrifying, bewildering, and exalting as his first woman. He lusted to be in a gun turret. After dogging his faceplate, he sought an exterior view.

For a minute, nothing was visible but stars. Then the ship boomed and shuddered. She had fired a missile salvo: the monster missiles which nothing smaller than a battleship could carry, which had their own hyperdrives and phase-in computers. He could not see them arrive. The distance was as yet too great. But close at hand, explosions burst in space, one immense fireball after another, swelling, raging, and vanishing. Had the screen carried their real intensity, his eyeballs would have melted. Even through airlessness, he felt the buffet of expanding gases; the deck rocked and the hull belled.

“What was that?” Dragoika cried.

“The enemy shot at us. We managed to intercept and destroy his missiles with smaller ones. Look there.” A lean metal thing prowled across the screen. “It seeks its own target. We have a cloud of them out.”

Again and again energies ran wild. One blast almost knocked Flandry off his feet. His ears buzzed from it. He tuned in on damage control. The strike had been so near that the hull was bashed open. Bulkheads sealed off that section. A gun turret was wrecked, its crew blown to fragments. But another nearby reported itself still functional. Behind heavy material and electromagnetic shielding, its men had not gotten a lethal dose of radiation: not if they received medical help within a day. They stayed at their post.

Flandry checked the tank once more. Faster than either battleship, Umbriel had overhauled her giant foe. When drive fields touched, she went out of phase, just sufficient to be unhittable, not enough that her added mass did not serve as a drag. The Merseian must be trying to get in phase and wipe her out before—No, here Sabik came!

Generators that powerful extended their fields for a long radius. When she first intermeshed, the enemy seemed a toy, lost among so many stars. But she grew in the screen, a shark, a whale, Leviathan in steel, bristling with weapons, livid with lightnings.

The combat was not waged by living creatures. Not really. They did nothing but serve guns, tend machines, and die. When such speeds, masses, intensities met, robots took over. Missile raced at missile; computer matched wits with computer in the weird dance of phasing. Human and Merseian hands did operate blaster cannon, probing, searing, slicing through metal like a knife through flesh. But their chance of doing important harm, in the short time they had, was small.

Fire sheeted across space. Thunder brawled in hulls. Decks twisted, girders buckled, plates melted. An explosion pitched Flandry and Dragoika down. They lay in each other’s arms, bruised, bleeding, deafened, while the storm prevailed.

And passed.

Slowly, incredulously, they climbed to their feet. Shouts from outside told them their eardrums were not ruptured. The door sagged and smoke curled through. Chemical extinguishers rumbled. Someone called for a medic. The voice was raw with pain.

The screen still worked. Flandry glimpsed Umbriel before relative speed made her unseeable. Her bows gaped open, a gun barrel was bent in a quarter circle, plates resembled sea-foam where they had liquefied and congealed. But she ran yet. And so did Sabik.

He looked and listened awhile before he could reconstruct the picture for Dragoika. “We got them. Our two destroyers took care of the enemy’s without suffering much damage. We’re hulled in several places ourselves, three turrets and a missile launcher are knocked out, some lines leading from the main computer bank are cut, we’re using auxiliary generators till the engineers can fix the primary one, and the casualties are pretty bad. We’re operational, though, sort of.”

“What became of the battleship we fought?”

“We sank a warhead in her midriff. One megaton, I believe  …  no, you don’t know about that, do you? She’s dust and gas.”

The squadron reunited and moved onward. Two tiny green flecks in the tank detached themselves and hastened ahead. “See those? Our scoutboats. We have to screen them while they perform their task. This means we have to fight those Merseians from Saxo.”

“Six of them to five of us,” Dragoika counted. “Well, the odds are improving. And then, we have a bigger ship, this one, than remains to them.”

Flandry watched the green lights deploy. The objective was to prevent even one of the red sparks from getting through and attacking the scouts. This invited annihilation in detail, but—Yes, evidently the Merseian commander had told off one of his destroyers to each of Einarsen’s. That left him with his cruiser and two destroyers against Sabik and Umbriel, which would have been fine were the latter pair not half crippled. “I’d call the odds even, myself,” Flandry said. “But that may be good enough. If we stand off the enemy for  …  a couple of hours, I’d guess  …  we’ve done what we were supposed.”

“But what is that, Domma-neek? You spoke only of some menace out here.” Dragoika took him by the shoulders and regarded him levelly. “Can you not tell me?”

He could, without violating any secrecy that mattered any longer. But he didn’t want to. He tried to stall, and hoped the next stage of combat would begin before she realized what he was doing. “Well,” he said, “we have news about, uh, an object. What the scouts must do is go to it, find out what it is like, and plot its path. They’ll do that in an interesting way. They’ll retreat from it, faster than light, so they can take pictures of it not where it is at this moment but where it was at different times in the past. Since they know where to look, their instruments can pinpoint it at more than a light-year. That is, across more than a year of time. On such basis, they can easily calculate how it will move for the next several years to come.”

Again dread stirred behind her eyes. “They can reach over time itself?” she whispered. “To the past and its ghosts? You dare too much, you vaz-Terran. One night the hidden powers will set free their anger on you.”

He bit his lip—and winced, for it was swollen where his face had been thrown against a mouth-control radio switch. “I often wonder if that may not be so, Dragoika. But what can we do? Our course was set for us ages agone, before ever we left our home world, and there is no turning back.”

“Then  …  you fare bravely.” She straightened in her armor. “I may do no less. Tell me what the thing is that you hunt through time.”

“It—“ The ship recoiled. A drumroll ran. “Missiles fired off! We’re engaging!”

Another salvo and another. Einarsen must be shooting off every last hyperdrive weapon in his magazines. If one or two connected, they might decide the outcome. If not, then none of his present foes could reply in kind.

Flandry saw, in the tank, how the Merseian destroyers scattered. They could do little but try to outdodge those killers, or outphase them if field contact was made. As formation broke up, Murdoch’s Land andAntarctica closed in together on a single enemy of their class. That would be a slugfest, minor missiles and energy cannon and artillery, more slow and perhaps more brutal than the nearly abstract encounter between two capital ships, but also somehow more human.

The volleys ended. Dragoika howled. “Look, Domma-neek! A red light went out! There! First blood for us!”

“Yes  …  yes, we did get a destroyer. Whoopee!” The exec announced it on the intercom, and cheers sounded faintly from those who still had their faceplates open. The other missiles must have been avoided or parried, and by now were destroying themselves lest they become threats to navigation. Max Abrams would have called that rule a hopeful sign.

Another Merseian ship sped to assist the one on which the two Terrans were converging, while New Brazil and a third enemy stalked each other. Umbriel limped on an intercept course for the heavy cruiser and her attendant. Those drove straight for Sabik, which lay in wait licking her wounds.

The lights flickered and died. They came back, but feebly. So there was trouble with the spare powerplant, too. And damn, damn, damn, Flandry couldn’t do a thing except watch that tank!

The cruiser’s escort detached herself and ran toward Umbriel to harry and hinder. Flandry clenched his teeth till his jaws ached. “The greenskins can see we have problems here,” he said. “They figure a cruiser can take us. And they may be right.”

Red crept up on green. “Stand by for straight-phase engagement,” said the intercom.

“What did that mean?” Dragoika asked.

“We can’t dodge till a certain machine has been fixed.” It was as near as Flandry could come to saying in Kursovikian that phase change was impossible. “We shall have to sit and shoot.”

Sabik wasn’t quite a wingless duck. She could revert to sub-light, though that was a desperation maneuver. At superlight, the enemy must be in phase with her to inflict damage, and therefore equally vulnerable. But the cruiser did, now, possess an extra capability of eluding her opponent’s fire. Sabik had no shield except her antimissiles. To be sure, she was better supplied with those.

It looked as if a toe-to-toe match was coming.

“Hyperfield contact made,” said the intercom. “All units fire at will.”

Flandry switched to exterior view. The Merseian zigzagged among the stars. Sometimes she vanished, always she reappeared. She was a strictly spacegoing vessel, bulged at the waist like a double-ended pear. Starlight and shadow picked out her armament. Dragoika hissed in a breath. Again fire erupted.

A titan’s fist smote. A noise so enormous that it transcended noise bellowed through the hull. Bulkheads split asunder. The deck crashed against Flandry. He whirled into night.

Moments later he regained consciousness. He was falling, falling forever, and blind  …  no, he thought through the ringing in his head, the lights were out, the gravs were out, he floated free admidst the moan of escaping air. Blood from his nose formed globules which, weightless, threatened to strangle him. He sucked to draw them down his throat. “Dragoika!” he rasped. “Dragoika!”

Her helmet beam sprang forth. She was a shadow behind it, but the voice came clear and taut: “Domma-neek, are you hale? What happened? Here, here is my hand.”

“We took a direct hit.” He shook himself, limb by limb, felt pain boil in his body but marveled that nothing appeared seriously injured. Well, space armor was designed to take shocks. “Nothing in here is working, so I don’t know what the ship’s condition is. Let’s try to find out. Yes, hang onto me. Push against things, not too hard. It’s like swimming. Do you feel sick?”

“No. I feel as in a dream, nothing else.” She got the basic technique of null-gee motion fast.

They entered the corridor. Undiffused, their lamplight made dull puddles amidst a crowding murk. Ribs thrust out past twisted, buckled plates. Half of a spacesuited man drifted in a blood-cloud which Flandry must wipe off his helmet. No radio spoke. The silence was of a tomb.

The nuclear warhead that got through could not have been very large. But where it struck, ruin was total. Elsewhere, though, forcefields, bulkheads, baffles, breakaway lines had given what protection they could. Thus Flandry and Dragoika survived. Did anyone else? He called and called, but got no answer.

A hole filled with stars yawned before him. He told her to stay put and flitted forth on impellers. Saxo, merely the brightest of the diamond points around him, transitted the specter arch of the Milky Way. It cast enough light for him to see. The fragment of ship from which he had emerged spun slowly—luck, that, or Coriolis force would have sickened him and perhaps her. An energy cannon turret looked intact. Further off tumbled larger pieces, ugly against cold serene heaven.

He tried his radio again, now when he was outside screening metal. With her secondary engines gone, the remnants of Sabik had reverted to normal state. “Ensign Flandry from Section Four. Come in, anyone. Come in!”

A voice trickled through. Cosmic interference seethed behind it. “Commander Ranjit Singh in Section Two. I am assuming command unless a superior officer turns out to be alive. Report your condition.”

Flandry did. “Shall we join you, sir?” he finished.

“No. Check that gun. Report whether it’s in working order. If so, man it.”

“But sir, we’re disabled. The cruiser’s gone on to fight elsewhere. Nobody’ll bother with us.”

“That remains to be seen, Ensign. If the battle pattern should release a bogie, he may decide he’ll make sure of us. Go to your gun.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Dead bodies floated in the turret. They were not mutilated; but two or three thousand roentgens must have sleeted through all shielding. Flandry and Dragoika hauled them out and cast them adrift. As they dwindled among the stars, she sang to them the Song of Mourning. I wouldn’t mind such a send-off, he thought.

The gun was useable. Flandry rehearsed Dragoika in emergency manual control. They’d alternate at the hydraulic aiming system and the handwheel which recharged the batteries that drove it. She was as strong as he.

Thereafter they waited. “I never thought to die in a place like this,” she said. “But my end will be in battle, and with the finest of comrades. How we shall yarn, in the Land of Trees Beyond!”

“We might survive yet,” he said. Starlight flashed off the teeth in his bruised and blood-smeared face.

“Don’t fool yourself. Unworthy of you.”

“Unworthy my left one! I plain don’t intend to quit till I’m dead.”

“I see. Maybe that is what has made you vaz-Terran great.”

The Merseian came.

She was a destroyer. Umbriel, locked in combat with the badly hurt enemy cruiser, had inflicted grave harm on her, too. Murdoch’s Land was shattered, Antarctica out of action until repairs could be made, but they had accounted for two of her fellows. New Brazil dueled yet with the third. This fourth one suffered from a damaged hyperdrive alternator. Until her sweating engineers could repair it, which would take an hour or so, her superlight speed was a crawl; any vessel in better shape could wipe her from the universe. Her captain resolved he would go back to where the remnants of Sabik orbited and spend the interim cleaning them out. For the general order was that none but Merseians might enter this region and live.

She flashed into reality. Her missiles were spent, but guns licked with fire-tongues and shells. The main part of the battleship’s dismembered hulk took their impact, glowed, broke, and returned the attack.

“Yow-w-w!” Dragoika’s yell was pure exultation. She spun the handwheel demoniacally fast. Flandry pushed himself into the saddle. His cannon swung about. The bit of hull counter-rotated. He adjusted, got the destroyer’s after section in his cross-hairs, and pulled trigger.

Capacitors discharged. Their energy content was limited; that was why the gun must be laid by hand, to conserve every last erg for revenge. Flame spat across kilometers. Steel sublimed. A wound opened. Air gushed forth, white with condensing water vapor.

The destroyer applied backward thrust. Flandry followed, holding his beam to the same spot, driving inward and inward. From four other pieces of Sabik, death vomited.

“Man,” Flandry chanted, “but you’ve got a Tigery by the tail!”

Remorselessly, spin took him out of sight. He waited, fuming. When he could again aim, the destroyer was further away, and she had turned one battleship section into gas. But the rest fought on. He joined his beam to theirs. She was retreating under gravities. Why didn’t she go hyper and get the hell out of here? Maybe she couldn’t. He himself had been shooting to disable her quantum-field generator. Maybe he’d succeeded.

“Kursoviki!” Dragoika shrieked at the wheel. “Archers all! Janjevar va-Radovik for aye!”

A gun swiveled toward them. He could see it, tiny at its distance, thin and deadly. He shifted aim. His fire melted the muzzle shut.

The destroyer scuttled away. And then, suddenly, there was New Brazil. Flandry darted from his seat, caught Dragoika to him, held her faceplate against his breast and closed his own eyes. When they looked again, the Merseian was white-hot meteorites. They hugged each other in their armor.

Umbriel, Antarctica, and New Brazil: torn, battered, lame, filled with the horribly wounded, haunted by their dead, but victorious, victorious—neared the planet. The scoutships had long since finished their work and departed Empire-ward. Yet Ranjit Singh would give his men a look at the prize they had won.

On the cruiser’s bridge, Flandry and Dragoika stood with him. The planet filled the forward viewscreen. It was hardly larger than Luna. Like Terra’s moon, it was bereft of air, water, life; such had bled away to space over billions of years. Mountains bared fangs at the stars, above ashen plains. Barren, empty, blind as a skull, the rogue rushed on to its destiny.

“One planet,” the acting captain breathed. “One wretched sunless planet.”

“It’s enough, sir,” Flandry said. Exhaustion pulsed through him in huge soft waves. To sleep  …  to sleep, perchance to dream  …  “On a collision course with Saxo. It’ll strike inside of five years. That much mass, simply falling from infinity, carries the energy of three years’ stellar radiation. Which will have to be discharged somehow, in a matter of seconds. And Saxo is an F5, shortlived, due to start expanding in less than a begayear. The instabilities must already be building up. The impact—Saxo will go nova. Explode.”

“And our fleet—“

“Yes, sir. What else? The thing’s wildly improbable. Interstellar distances are so big. But the universe is bigger still. No matter how unlikely, anything which is possible must happen sometime. This is one occasion when it does. Merseian explorers chanced on the datum. Brechdan saw what it meant. He could develop the conflict on Starkad, step by step, guiding it, nursing it, keeping it on schedule  …  till our main strength was marshaled there, just before the blowup came. We wouldn’t be likely to see the invader. It’s coming in ‘way off the ecliptic, and has a very low albedo, and toward the end would be lost in Saxo’s glare and traveling at more than 700 kilometers per second. Nor would we be looking in that direction. Our attention would be all on Brechdan’s forces. They’d be prepared, after the captains opened their sealed orders. They’d know exactly when to dash away on hyperdrive. Ours—well, the initial radiation will move at the speed of light. It would kill the crews before they knew they were dead. An hour or so later, the first wave of gases would vaporize their ships. The Empire would be crippled and the Merseians could move in. That’s why there’s war on Starkad.”

Ranjit Singh tugged his beard. The pain seemed to strengthen him. “Can we do anything? Plant bombs to blow this object apart, maybe?”

“I don’t know, sir. Offhand, I doubt it. Too many fragments would stay on essentially the same path, I believe. Of course, we can evacuate Starkad. There are other planets.”

“Yes. We can do that.”

“Will you tell me now?” Dragoika asked.

Flandry did. He had not known she could weep.

18

Highport lay quiet. Men filled the ugly barracks, drifted along the dusty streets, waited for orders and longed for home. Clamor of construction work, grumble of traffic, whine of aircraft bound to battle, were ended. So likewise, after the first tumultuous celebrations, was most merrymaking. The war’s conclusion had left people too dazed. First, the curt announcement that Admiral Enriques and Fodaich Runei were agreed on a cease-fire while they communicated with their respective governments. Then, day after day of not knowing. Then the arrival of ships; the proclamation that, Starkad being doomed, Empire and Roidhunate joined in hoping for a termination of the interracial conflict; the quick departure of the Merseians, save for a few observers; the imminent departure of most Imperial Navy personnel; the advent of civilian experts to make preliminary studies for a massive Terran project of another sort. And always the rumors, scuttlebutt, so-and-so knew somebody who knew for a fact that—How could you carry on as if this were ordinary? Nothing would ever again be quite ordinary. At night, you saw the stars and shivered.

Dominic Flandry walked in silence. His boots made a soft, rhythmic thud. The air was cool around him. Saxo spilled radiance from an enormous blue sky. The peaks beyond Mount Narpa thrust snowfields toward the ghost of a moon. Never had the planet looked so fair.

The door was ajar to the xenological office. He entered. Desks stood vacant. John Ridenour’s staff was in the field. Their chief stayed behind, replacing sleep with stimulants as he tried to coordinate their efforts around an entire world. He was in conversation with a visitor. Flandry’s heart climbed into his throat. Lord Hauksberg!

Everyone knew Dronning Margrete had arrived yesterday, in order that his Majesty’s delegate might make a final inspection tour. Flandry had planned on keeping far out of sight. He snapped to a salute.

“Well, well.” The viscount did not rise from his chair. Only the blond sharp face turned. The elegantly clad body stayed relaxed, the voice was amused. “What have we here?”

“Ensign Flandry, sir. I—I beg pardon. Didn’t mean to interrupt. I’ll go.”

“No. Sit. Been meanin’ to get hold of you. I do remember your name, strange as that may seem.” Hauksberg nodded at Ridenour. “Go ahead. Just what is this difficulty you mention?”

The xenologist scarcely noticed the newcomer, miserable on a chair. Weariness harshened his tone. “Perhaps I can best illustrate with a typical scene, my lord, taken last week. Here’s the Sisterhood HQ in Ujanka.”

A screen showed a room whose murals related ancient glories. A Terran and several Tigery females in the plumes and striped cloaks of authority sat in front of a vidiphone. Flandry recognized some. He cursed the accident which brought him here at this minute. His farewells in the city had hurt so much.

Ostrova, the mistress, glared at the piscine face projected before her. “Never,” she snapped. “Our rights and needs remain with us. Better death than surrender what our mothers died to gain.”

The view shifted, went underwater, where also a human team observed and recorded. Again Flandry saw the Temple of Sky, from within. Light pervaded the water, turned it into one emerald where the lords of the Seafolk floated free. They had summoned Isinglass and Evenfall for expert knowledge. Those I never did get a chance to say good-bye to, Flandry thought, and now I never will. Through the colonnade he looked down on elfin Shellgleam.

“You would steal everything, then, through the whole cycle, as always you have done,” said he who spoke for them. “It shall not be. We must have those resources, when great toil is coming upon us. Do not forget, we keep our guns.”

The record included the back-and-forth interpretation of Ridenour’s men at either end, so Flandry followed the bitter argument in Kursovikian. Hauksberg could not, and grew restless. After a few minutes, he said, “Most int’restin’, but s’pose you tell me what’s goin’ on.”

“A summary was prepared by our station in the Chain,” Ridenour said. He nicked a switch. In the screen appeared a lagoon where sunlight glittered on wavelets and trees rustled behind a wide white beach: heartbreakingly beautiful. It was seen from the cabin of a waterboat, where a man with dark-rimmed eyes sat. He gave date and topic, and stated:

“Both factions continue to assert exclusive rights to the archipelago fishing grounds. Largely by shading their translations, our teams have managed to prevent irrevocable loss of temper, but no compromise is yet in sight. We shall continue to press for an equitable arrangement. Success is anticipated, though not for a considerable time.”

Ridenour switched off. “You see, my lord?” he said. “We can’t simply load these people aboard spaceships. We have to determine which of several possible planets are most suitable for them; and we have to prepare them, both in organization and education. Under ideal conditions, the psychic and cultural shock will still be terrible. Groundlaying will take years. Meanwhile, both races have to maintain themselves.”

“Squabblin’ over somethin’ that’ll be a whiff of gas in half a decade? Are such idiots worth savin’?”

“They’re not idiots, my lord. But our news, that their world is under a death sentence, has been shattering. Most of them will need a long while to adapt, to heal the wound, before they can think about it rationally. Many never will. And my lord, no matter how logical one believes he is, no matter how sophisticated he claims to be, he stays an animal. His forebrain is nothing but the handmaiden of instinct. Let’s not look down on these Starkadians. If we and the Merseians, we big flashy space-conquering races, had any better sense, there’d be no war between us.”

“There isn’t,” Hauksberg said.

“That remains to be seen, my lord.”

Hauksberg flushed. “Thank you for your show,” he said coldly. “I’ll mention it in my report.”

Ridenour pleaded. “If your Lordship would stress the need for more trained personnel here—You’ve seen a little bit of what needs doing in this little bit of the planet. Ahead of us is the whole sphere, millions of individuals, thousands of societies. Many aren’t even known to us, not so much as names, only blank spots on the map. But those blank spots are filled with living, thinking, feeling beings. We have to reach them, save them. We won’t get them all, we can’t, but each that we do rescue is one more justification for mankind’s existence. Which God knows, my lord, needs every justification it can find.”

“Eloquent,” Hauksberg said. “His Majesty’s government’ll have to decide how big a bureaucratic empire it wants to create for the benefit of some primitives. Out o’ my department.” He got up. Ridenour did too. “Good day.”

“Good day, my lord,” the xenologist said. “Thank you for calling. Oh. Ensign Flandry. What’d you want?”

“I came to say good-bye, sir.” Flandry stood at attention. “My transport leaves in a few hours.”

“Well, good-bye, then. Good luck.” Ridenour went so far as to come shake hands. But even before Hauksberg, with Flandry behind, was out the door, Ridenour was back at his desk.

“Let’s take a stroll beyond town,” Hauksberg said. “Want to stretch my legs. No, beside me. We’ve things to discuss boy.”

“Yes, sir.”

Nothing further was said until they halted in a meadow of long silvery quasigrass. A breeze slid from the glaciers where mountains dreamed. A pair of wings cruised overhead. Were every last sentient Starkadian rescued, Flandry thought, they would be no more than the tiniest fraction of the life which joyed on this world.

Hauksberg’s cloak flapped. He drew it about him. “Well,” he said, looking steadily at the other. “We meet again, eh?”

Flandry made himself give stare for stare. “Yes sir I trust the remainder of my lord’s stay on Merseia was pleasant.”

Hauksberg uttered a laugh. “You are shameless! Will go far indeed, if no one shoots you first. Yes, I may say Councillor Brechdan and I had some rather int’restin’ talks after the word came from here.”

“I  …  I understand you agreed to, uh, say the space battle was only due to both commanders mistaking their orders.”

“Right. Merseia was astonished as us to learn about the rogue after our forces found it by accident.” Hauksberg’s geniality vanished. He seized Flandry’s arm with unexpected force and said sternly: “Any information to the contrary is a secret of state. Revealin’ it to anyone, ever so much as hintin’ at it, will be high treason. Is that clear?”

“Yes, my lord. I’ve been briefed.”

“And’s to your benefit, too,” Hauksberg said in a milder voice. “Keepin’ the secret necessarily involves quashin’ the charges against you. The very fact that they were ever brought, that anything very special happened after we reached Merseia, goes in the ultrasecret file also. You’re safe, my boy.”

Flandry put his hands behind his back, to hide how they doubled into fists. He’d have given ten years, off this end of his life, to smash that smiling face. Instead he must say, “Is my lord so kind as to add his personal pardon?”

“Oh, my, yes!” Hauksberg beamed and clapped his shoulder. “You did absolutely right. For absolutely the wrong reasons, to be sure, but by pure luck you accomplished my purpose for me, peace with Merseia. Why should I carry a grudge?” He winked. “Regardin” a certain lady, nothin’ between friends, eh? Forgotten.”

Flandry could not play along. “But we have no peace!” he exploded.

“Hey? Now, now, realize you’ve been under strain and so forth, but—“

“My lord, they were planning to destroy us. How can we let them go without even a scolding?”

“Ease down. I’m sure they’d no such intention. It was a weapon to use against us if we forced ‘em to. Nothin’ else. If we’d shown a genuine desire to cooperate, they’d’ve warned us in ample time.”

“How can you say that?” Flandry choked. “Haven’t you read any history? Haven’t you listened to Merseian speeches, looked at Merseian books, seen our dead and wounded come back from meeting Merseians in space? They want us out of the universe!”

Hauksberg’s nostrils dilated. “That will do, Ensign. Don’t get above yourself. And spare me the spewed-back propaganda. The full story of this incident is bein’ suppressed precisely because it’d be subject to your kind of misinterpretation and so embarrass future relations between the governments. Brechdan’s already shown his desire for peace, by withdrawin’ his forces in toto from Starkad.”

“Throwing the whole expensive job of rescue onto us. Sure.”

“I told you to control yourself, Ensign. You’re not quite old enough to set Imperial policy.”

Flandry swallowed a foul taste. “Apologies, my lord.”

Hauksberg regarded him for a minute. Abruptly the viscount smiled. “No. Now I was gloatin’. Apologies to you. Really, I’m not a bad sort. And you mean well too. One day you’ll be wiser. Let’s shake on that.”

Flandry saw no choice.

Hauksberg winked again. “B’lieve I’ll continue my stroll alone. If you’d like to say good-bye to Donna d’Io, she’s in the guest suite.”

Flandry departed with long strides.

By the time he had reached HQ and gone through the rigamarole of gaining admittance, fury had faded. In its place lay emptiness. He walked into the living room and stopped. Why go further? Why do anything?

Persis ran to him. She wore a golden gown and diamonds in her hair. “Oh, Nicky, Nicky!” She laid her head on his breast and sobbed.

He consoled her in a mechanical fashion. They hadn’t had many times together since he came back from the rogue. There had been too much work for him, in Ujanka on Ridenour’s behalf. And that had occupied him so greatly that he almost resented the occasions when he must return to Highport. She was brave and intelligent and fun, and twice she had stepped between him and catastrophe, but she did not face the end of her world. Nor was her own world the same as his: could never be.

They sat down on a divan. He had an arm around her waist, a cigaret in his free hand. She looked at the floor. “Will I see you on Terra?” she asked dully.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Not for some time anyway, I’m afraid. My orders have come through officially, I’m posted to the Intelligence academy for training, and Commander Abrams warns me they work the candidates hard.”

“You couldn’t transfer out again? I’m sure I could arrange an assignment—“

“A nice, cushy office job with regular hours? No, thanks, I’m not about to become anyone’s kept man.”

She stiffened as if he had struck her. “I’m sorry,” he floundered. “Didn’t mean that. It’s only, well, here’s a job I am fitted for, that serves a purpose. If I don’t take it, what meaning has life got?”

“I could answer that,” she said low, “but I guess you wouldn’t understand.”

He wondered what the devil to say.

Her lips brushed his cheek. “Go ahead, then,” she said. “Fly.”

“Uh  …  you’re not in trouble, Persis?”

“No, no. Mark’s a most civilized man. We might even stay together a while longer, on Terra. Not that that makes any big difference. No matter how censored, some account of my adventures is bound to circulate. I’ll be quite a novelty, quite in demand. Don’t worry about me. Dancers know how to land on their feet.”

A slight gladness stirred in him, largely because he was relieved of any obligation to fret about her. He kissed her farewell with a good imitation of warmth.

It was so good, in fact, that his loneliness returned redoubled once he was in the street again. He fled to Max Abrams.

The commander was in his office, straightening out details before leaving on the same transport that would bear Flandry home. From Terra, though, he would go on furlough to Dayan. His stocky frame leaned back as Flandry burst through the doorway. “Well, hello, hero,” he said. “What ails you?”

The ensign flung himself into a chair. “Why do we keep trying?” he cried. “What’s the use?”

“Hey-hey. You need a drink.” Abrarns took a bottle from a drawer and poured into two glasses. “Wouldn’t mind one myself. Hardly set foot on Starkad before they tell me I’m shipping out again.” He lifted his tumbler. “Shalom.”

Flandry’s hand shook. He drained his whisky at a gulp. It burned on the way down.

Abrams made a production of lighting a cigar. “All right, son,” he said. “Talk.”

“I’ve seen Hauksberg,” jerked from Flandry.

“Nu? Is he that hideous?”

“He  …  he  …  the bastard gets home free. Not a stain on his bloody damned escutcheon. He’ll probably pull a medal. And still he quacks about peace!”

“Whoa. He’s no villain. He merely suffers from a strong will to believe. Of course, his political career is bound up with the position he’s taken. He can’t afford to admit he was wrong. Not even to himself, I imagine. Wouldn’t be fair to destroy him, supposing we could. Nor expedient. Our side needs him.”

“Sir?”

“Think. Never mind what the public hears. Consider what they’ll hear on the Board. How they’ll regard him. How neatly he can be pressured if he should get a seat on it, which I hope he does. No blackmail, nothing so crude, especially when the truth can’t be told. But an eyebrow lifted at a strategic moment. A recollection, each time he opens his mouth, of what he nearly got us into last time around. Sure, he’ll be popular with the masses. He’ll have influence. So, fine. Better him than somebody else, with the same views, that hasn’t yet bungled. If you had any charity in you, young man—which no one does at your age—you’d feel sorry for Lord Hauksberg.”

“But  …  I  …  well—“

Abrams frowned into a cloud of smoke. “Also,” he said, “in the longer view, we need the pacifists as a counterweight to the armchair missileers. We can’t make peace, but we can’t make real war either. All we can do is hold the line. And man is not an especially patient animal by nature.”

“So the entire thing is for zero?” Flandry nigh screamed. “Only to keep what little we have?”

The grizzled head bent. “If the Lord God grants us that much,” Abrams said, “He is more merciful than He is just.”

“Starkad, though—Death, pain, ruin, and at last, the rotten status quo! What were we doing here?”

Abrams caught Flandry’s gaze and would not let go. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “We had to come. The fact that we did, however futile it looked, however distant and alien and no-business-of-ours these poor people seemed, gives me a little hope for my grandchildren. We were resisting the enemy, refusing to let any aggression whatsoever go unpunished, taking the chance he presented us to wear him down. And we were proving once more to him, to ourselves, to the universe, that we will not give up to him even the least of these. Oh, yes, we belonged here.”

Flandry swallowed and had no words.

“In this particular case,” Abrams went on, “because we came, we can save two whole thinking races and everything they might mean to the future. We’d no way of knowing that beforehand; but there we were when the time arrived. Suppose we hadn’t been? Suppose we’d said it didn’t matter what the enemy did in these marches. Would he have rescued the natives? I doubt it. Not unless there happened to be a political profit in it. He’s that kind of people.”

Abrams puffed harder. “You know,” he said, “ever since Akhnaton ruled inEgypt , probably since before then, a school of thought has held we ought to lay down our weapons and rely on love. That, if love doesn’t work, at least we’ll die guiltless. Usually even its opponents have said this is a noble idea. I say it stinks. I say it’s not just unrealistic, not just infantile, it’s evil. It denies we have any duty to act in this life. Because how can we, if we let go of our capability?

“No, son, we’re mortal—which is to say, we’re ignorant, stupid, and sinful—but those are only handicaps. Our pride is that nevertheless, now and then, we do our best. A few times we succeed. What more dare we ask for?”

Flandry remained silent.

Abrams chuckled and poured two fresh drinks. “End of lecture,” he said. “Let’s examine what’s waiting for you. I wouldn’t ordinarily say this to a fellow at your arrogant age, but since you need cheering up  …  well, I will say, once you hit your stride, Lord help the opposition!”

He talked for an hour longer. And Flandry left the office whistling.

About the Author

About the time Poul Anderson graduated with honors in physics from theUniversityofMinnesota , the writing bug bit hard. Author since then of some twenty science fiction books,Anderson also has to his credit two historical novels, three outright mysteries, and a substantial nonfiction work investigating the likelihood of life existing on other worlds. His other Flandry books, Agent of the Terran Empire and Flandry of Terra, were published by Chilton in 1965.

He is a member of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and The Mystery Writers of America. His other interests include history and politics, travel, outdoorsmanship, and, especially, a daughter named—appropriately enough—Astrid.