The High Ones and Other Stories

by Poul Anderson

  A dark laughter was in his radio earphones. "Take it easy, Bo. I'll be there in a minute."

  He backed away, his heart a sudden thunder, looking for a place to hide. Down! Get down and don't stand where he can see you! He crouched as much as the armor would allow and broke into a bounding run.

  A slug spat broken stone near his feet. The powdery dust hung for minutes before settling. Breath rattled in his throat. He saw the lip of a meteoric crater and dove.

  Crouching there, he heard Lundgard's voice again: "You're somewhere near. Why not come out and finish it now?"

  The radio was non-directional, so he snapped back: "A gun against a monkey wrench?"

  Lundgard's coolness broke a little; there was almost a puzzled note: "I hate to do this. Why can't you be reasonable? I don't want to kill you."

  "The trouble," said Bo harshly, "is that I want to kill you."

  "Behold the man of the New Enlightenment!" Bo could imagine Lundgard's grin. It would be tight, and there would be sweat on the lean face, but the amusement was genuine. "Didn't you believe sweet reasonableness could solve everything? This is only the beginning, Bo, just a small preliminary hint that the age of reason is dying. I've already converted you to my way of thinking, by the very fact you're fighting me. Why not admit it?"

  Bo shook his head—futile gesture, looked in darkness where he lay. There was a frosty blaze of stars when he looked up.

  It was more than himself and Johnny Malone, more even than the principle of the thing and the catastrophe to all men which Lundgard's victory meant. There was something deep and primitive which would not let him surrender, even in the teeth of annihilation. Valeria's image swayed before him.

  Lundgard was moving around, peering over the shadowy tumble of blackened rock in search of any trace. There was a magnetic rifle in his hands. Bo strained his helmet to the crater floor, trying to hear ground vibrations, but there was nothing. He didn't know where Lundgard was, only that he was very near.

  Blindly, he bunched his legs and sprang out of the pit.

  * * * *

  They found the asteroid where Valeria had left her recording instruments. It was a tiny drifting fragment of a world which had never been born, turning endlessly between the constellations; the Sirius moored fast with grapples, and Valeria donned a spacesuit and went out to get her apparatus. Lundgard accompanied her. As there was only work for two, Bo stayed behind.

  He slumped for a while in the pilot chair, letting his mind pace through a circle of futility. Valeria, Valeria, Valeria—O strong and fair and never to be forgotten, would he ever see her again after they made Luna?

  This won't do, he told himself dully. I should at least keep busy. Thank God for work.

  He wasn't much of a thinker, he knew that, but he had cleverness in his hands. It was satisfying to watch a machine come right under his tools. Working, he could see the falseness of Lundgard's philosophy. The man could quote history all he wanted; weave a glittering circle of logic around Bo's awkward brain, but it didn't change facts. Maybe this century was headed for trouble; maybe psychotechnic government was only another human self-limitation and should be changed for something else; nevertheless, the truth remained that most men were workers who wished no more than peace in which to create as best they could. All the high ideals in the universe weren't worth breaking the Union for and smashing the work of human hands in a single burst of annihilating flame.

  I can feel it, down inside me. But why can't I say it?

  He got up and went over to the baggage rack, remembering that Lundgard had dozens of book-reels along and that reading would help him not to think about what he could never have.

  On a planet Bo would not have dreamed of helping himself without asking first. But custom is different in space, where there is no privacy and men must be a unit if they are to survive. He was faintly surprised to see that Lundgard's personal suitcase was locked; but it would be hours, probably, before the owner got back: dismantling a recorder setup took time. A long time, in which to talk and laugh with Valeria. In the chill spatial radiance, her hair would be like frosty fire.

  Casually, Bo stooped across to Lundgard's sack-hammock and took his key ring off the hook. He opened the suitcase and lifted out some of the reels in search of a promising title.

  Underneath them were neatly folded clothes, Fireball uniforms and fancy dress pajamas. A tartan edge stuck out from below, and Bo lifted a coat to see what clan that was. Probably a souvenir of Lundgard's Venusian stay—

  Next to the kilt was a box which he recognized. L-masks came in such boxes.

  How the idea came to him, he did not know. He stood there for minutes, looking at the box without seeing it. The ship was very quiet around him. He had a sudden feeling that the walls were closing in.

  When he opened the box, his hands shook, and there was sweat trickling along his ribs.

  The mask was of the latest type, meant to fit over the head, snug around the cheeks and mouth and jaws. It was like a second skin, reflecting expression, not to be told from a real face. Bo saw the craggy nose and the shock of dark hair, limp now, but—

  Suddenly he was back on Achilles, with riot roaring around him and Johnny Malone's body in his arms.

  No wonder they never found that Venusian. There never was any.

  Bo felt a dim shock when he looked at the chronometer. Only five minutes had gone by while he stood there. Only five minutes to turn the cosmos inside out.

  Very slowly and carefully he repacked the suitcase and put it in the rack and sat down to think.

  What to do?

  Accuse Lundgard to his face—no, the man undoubtedly carried that needler. And there was Valeria to think of. A ricocheting dart, a scratch on her, no! It took Bo a long time to decide; his brain seemed viscous. When he looked out of a port to the indifferent stars, he shuddered.

  * * * *

  They came back, shedding their spacesuits in the airlock; frost whitened the armor as moisture condensed on chilled surfaces. The metal seemed to breathe cold. Valeria went efficiently to work, stowing the boxed instruments as carefully as if they were her children. There was a laughter on her lips which turned Bo's heart around inside him.

  Lundgard leaned over the tiny desk where he sat. "What y' doing?" he asked.

  "Recalculating our orbit to Luna," said Bo. "I want to go slow for a few million miles before going up to hyperbolic speed."

  Why? It'll add days to the trip, and the fuel—"

  "I … I'm afraid we might barge into Swarm 770. It's supposed to be near here now and, uh, the positions of those things are never known for sure … perturbations … " Bo's mouth felt dry.

  "You've got a megamile of safety margin or your orbit would never have been approved," argued Lundgard.

  "Hell damn it, I'm the captain!" yelled Bo.

  "All right, all right … take it easy, skipper." Lundgard shot a humorous glance at Valeria. "I certainly don't mind a few extra days in … the present company."

  She smiled at him. Bo felt ill.

  His excuse was thin; if Lundgard thought to check the ephemeris, it would fall to ruin. But he couldn't tell the real reason.

  An iron-drive ship does not need to drift along the economical Hohmann "A" orbit of the big freighters; it can build up such furious speed that the sun will swing it along a hyperbola rather than an ellipse, and can still brake that speed near its destination. But the critical stage of acceleration has to be just right, or there will not be enough fuel to stop completely; the ship will be pulled into a cometary orbit and run helpless, the crew probably starving before a rescue vessel can locate them. Bo dared not risk the trouble exploding at full drive; he would drift along, capture and bind Lundgard at the first chance, and then head for Earth. He could handle the Sirius alone even if it was illegal; he could not handle her if he had to fight simultaneously.

  His knuckles were white on the controls as he loosed the grapples and nudged away from the asteroid with a whisper of power. A
fter a few minutes of low acceleration, he cut the rockets, checked position and velocity, and nodded. "On orbit," he said mechanically. "It's your turn to cook, Ei … Einar."

  Lundgard swooped easily through the air into the cubbyhole which served for a galley. Cooking in free fall is an art which not all spacemen master, but he could—his meals were even good. Bo felt a helpless kind of rage at his own clumsy efforts.

  He crouched in midair, dark of mind, a leg hooked around a stanchion to keep from drifting.

  When someone touched him, his heart jumped and he whirled around.

  "What's the matter, Bo?" asked Valeria. "You look like doomsday."

  "I … I … " He gulped noisily and twisted his mouth into a smile. "Just feeling a little off."

  "It's more than that, I think." Her eyes were grave. "You've seemed so unhappy the whole trip. Is there anything I can do to help?"

  "Thanks … Dr. McKittrick … but—"

  "Don't be so formal," she said, almost wistfully. "I don't bite. Too many men think I do. Can't we be friends?"

  "With a thick-headed clinker like me?" His whisper was raw.

  "Don't be silly. It takes brains to be a spaceman. I like a man who knows when to be quiet." She lowered her eyes, the lashes were long and sooty black. "There's something solid about you, something so few people seem to have these days. I wish you wouldn't go feeling so inferior."

  At any other time it would have been a sunburst in him. Now he thought of death, and mumbled something and looked away. A hurt expression crossed her face. "I won't bother you," she said gently, and moved off.

  The thing was to fall on Lundgard while he slept—

  The radar alarm buzzed during a dinner in which Lundgard's flow of talk had battered vainly against silence and finally given up. Bo vaulted over to the control panel and checked. No red light glowed, and the autopilot wasn't whipping them out of danger, so they weren't on a collision course. But the object was getting close. Bo calculated it was an asteroid on an orbit almost parallel to their own, relative speed only a few feet per second; it would come within ten miles or so. In the magnifying periscope, it showed as a jagged dark cube, turning around itself and flashing hard glints of sunlight off mica beds—perhaps six miles square, all crags and cracks and fracture faces, heatless and lifeless and kindless.

  V

  Lundgard yawned elaborately after dinner. "Excuse," he said. "Unless somebody's for chess?" His hopeful glance met the grimness of Bo and the odd sadness of Valeria, and he shrugged. "All right, then. Pleasant dreams."

  After ten minutes—now!

  Bo uncoiled himself. "Valeria," he whispered, as if the name were holy.

  "Yes?" She arched her brows expectantly.

  "I can't stop to explain now. I've got to do something dangerous. Get back aft of the gyro housing."

  "What?"

  "Get back!" Command blazed frantically in him. "And stay there, whatever happens."

  Something like fear flickered in her eyes. It was a very long way to human help. Then she nodded, puzzled but with an obedience which held gallantry, and slipped out of sight behind the steel pillar.

  Bo launched himself across the room in a single null-gee bound. One hand ripped aside Lundgard's curtain, the other got him by the throat.

  "What the hell—"

  Lundgard exploded into life. His fist crashed against Bo's cheek. Bo held on with one hand and slugged with the other. Knuckles bounced on rubbery muscle. Lundgard's arm snaked for the tunic stretched on his bunk wall; his body came lithely out of the sack. Bo snatched for that wrist. Lundgard's free hand came around, edged out to slam him in the larynx.

  Pain ripped through Bo. He let go and sailed across the room. Lundgard was pulling out his needler.

  Bo hit the opposite wall and rebounded—not for the armed man, but for the control panel. Lundgard spat a dart at him. It burst on the viewport over his shoulder, and Bo caught the acrid whiff of poison. Then the converter was roaring to life and whining gyros spun the ship around.

  Lundgard was hurled across the room. He collected himself, catlike, grabbed a stanchion, and raised the gun again. "I've got the drop," he said. "Get away from there or you're a dead man."

  It was as if someone else had seized Bo's body. Decision was like lightning through him. He had tried to capture Lundgard, and failed, and venom crouched at his back. But the ship was pointed for the asteroid now, where it hung gloomily a dozen miles off, and the rockets were ready to spew.

  "If you shoot me," said Bo, "I'll live just long enough to pour on the juice. We'll hit that rock and scatter from hell to breakfast."

  Valeria emerged. Lundgard swung the needler to cover her. "Stay where you are!" he rapped.

  "What's happening?" she said fearfully.

  "I don't know," said Lundgard. "Bo's gone crazy—attacked me—"

  Wrath boiled black in the pilot. He snarled, "You killed my partner. You must'a been fixing to kill us too."

  "What do you mean?" whispered Valeria.

  "How should I know?" said Lundgard. "He's jumped his orbit, that's all. Look, Bo, be reasonable. Get away from that panel—"

  "Look in his suitcase, Valeria." Bo forced the words out of a tautened throat. "A Venusian shot my partner. You'll find his face and his clothes in Lundgard's things. I'd know that face in the middle of the sun."

  She hung for a long while, not moving. Bo couldn't see her. His eyes were nailed to the asteroid, keeping the ship's nose pointed at it.

  "Is that true, Einar?" she asked finally.

  "No," he said. "Of course not. I do have Venusian clothes and a mask, but—"

  "Then why are you keeping me covered too?"

  Lundgard didn't answer at once. The only noise was the murmur of machinery and the dense breathing of three pairs of lungs. Then his laugh jarred forth.

  "All right," he said. "I hadn't meant it to come yet, or to come this way, but all right."

  "Why did you kill Johnny?" Tears stung Bo's eyes. "He never hurt you."

  "It was necessary." Lundgard's mouth twitched. "But you see, we knew you were going to Achilles to pick up Valeria and her data. We needed to get a man aboard your ship, to take over when her orbit brought her close to our asteroid base. You've forced my hand—I wasn't going to capture you for days yet. I sabotaged the Drake's fuel tanks to get myself stranded there, and shot your friend to get his berth. I'm sorry."

  "Why?" Horror rode Valeria's voice.

  "I'm a Humanist. I've never made a secret of that. What our secret is, is that some of us aren't content just to talk revolution. We want to give this rotten, over-mechanized society the shove that will bring on its end. We've built up a small force, not much as yet, not enough to accomplish anything lasting. But if we had a solar power beam it would make a big difference. It could be adapted to direct military uses, as well as supplying energy to our machines. A lens effect, a concentration of solar radiation strong enough to burn. Well, it seems worth trying."

  "And what do you intend for us?"

  "You'll have to be kept prisoners for a while, of course," said Lundgard. "It won't be onerous. We aren't beasts."

  "No," said Bo. "Just murderers."

  "Save the dramatics," snapped Lundgard. "I have the gun. Get away from those controls."

  Bo shook his head. There was a wild hammering in his breast, but his voice surprised him with steadiness: "No. I've got the upper hand. I can kill you if you move. Yell if he tries anything, Valeria."

  Lundgard's eyes challenged her. "Do you want to die?" he asked.

  Her head lifted. "No," she said, "but I'm not afraid to. Go ahead if you must, Bo. It's all right."

  * * * *

  Bo felt cold. He knew he wouldn't. He was bluffing. In the final showdown he could not crash her. He had seen too many withered space drained mummies in his time. But maybe Lundgard didn't realize that.

  "Give up," he said. "You can't gain a damn thing. I'm not going to see a billion people burned alive just to save our nec
ks. Make a bargain for your life."

  "No," said Lundgard with a curious gentleness. "I have my own brand of honor. I'm not going to surrender to you. You can't sit there forever."

  Impasse. The ship floated through eternal silence while they waited.

  "All right," said Bo. "I'll fight you for the power beam."

  How's that?"

  "I can throw this ship into orbit around the asteroid. We can go down there and settle the thing between us. The winner can jump up here again with the help of a jet of tanked air. The lump hasn't got much gravity."

  Lundgard hesitated. "And how do I know you'll keep your end of the bargain?" he asked. "You could let me go through the airlock, then close it and blast off."

  Bo had had some such thought, but he might have known it wouldn't work. "What do you suggest?" he countered, never taking his eyes off the planetoid. "Remember, I don't trust you either."

  Lundgard laughed suddenly, a hard yelping bark. "I know! Valeria, go aft and remove all the control-rod links and spares. Bring them back here. I'll go out first, taking half of them with me, and Bo can follow with the other half. He'll have to."

  "I—no! I won't," she whispered. "I can't let you—"

  "Go ahead and do it," said Bo. He felt a sudden vast weariness. It's the only way we can break this deadlock."

  She wept as she went toward the engine room.

  Lundgard's thought was good. Without linked control-rods, the converter couldn't operate five minutes, it would flare up and melt itself and kill everyone aboard in a flood of radiation. Whoever won the duel could quickly re-install the necessary parts.

  There was a waiting silence. At last Lundgard said, almost abstractedly: "Holmgang. Do you know what that means, Bo?"

  "No."

  "You ought to. It was a custom of our ancestors back in the early Middle Ages—the Viking time. Two men would go off to a little island, a holm, to settle their differences; one would come back. I never thought it could happen out here." He chuckled bleakly. "Valkyries in spacesuits?"

  The girl came back with the links tied in two bundles. Lundgard counted them and nodded. "All right." He seemed strangely calm, an easy assurance lay over him like armor. Bo's fear was cold in his belly, and Valeria wept still with a helpless horror.