The High Ones and Other Stories

by Poul Anderson

  The pilot used a safe two minutes of low blast to edge up to the asteroid, "I'll go into the airlock and put on my spacesuit," said Lundgard. "Then I'll jump down and you can put the ship in orbit. Don't try anything while I'm changing, because I'll keep this needler handy."

  "It won't work against a spacesuit," said Bo.

  Lundgard laughed. "I know," he said. He kissed his hand to Valeria and backed into the lock chamber. The outer valve dosed behind him.

  "Bo!" Valeria grabbed the pilot by the shoulders, and he looked around into her face. "You can't go out there, I won't let you, I—"

  "If I don't," he said tonelessly, "we'll orbit around here till we starve."

  "But you could be killed!"

  "I hope not. For your sake, mostly, I hope not," he said awkwardly. "But he won't have any more weapon than me, just a monkey wrench." There was a metal tube welded to the leg of each suit for holding tools; wrenches, the most commonly used, were simply left there as a rule. "I'm bigger than he is."

  "But—" She laid her head on his breast and shuddered with crying. He tried to comfort her.

  "All right," he said at last. "All right. Lundgard must be through. I'd better get started."

  "Leave him!" she blazed. "His air won't last many hours. We can wait."

  "And when he sees he's been tricked, you think he won't wreck those links? No. There's no way out."

  It was as if all his life he had walked on a road which had no turnings, which led inevitably to this moment.

  He made some careful calculations from the instrument readings, physical constants of the asteroid, and used another minute's maneuvering to assume orbital velocity. Alarm lights blinked angry eyes at him, the converter was heating up. No more traveling till the links were restored.

  Bo floated from his chair toward the lock. Good-bye, Valeria," he said, feeling the bloodless weakness of words. "I hope it won't be for long."

  She threw her arms about him and kissed him. The taste of tears was still on his lips when he had dogged down his helmet.

  Opening the outer valve he moved forth, magnetic boots clamping to the hull. A gulf of stars yawned around him, a cloudy halo about his head. The stillness was smothering.

  When he was "over" the asteroid he gauged his position with a practiced eye and jumped free. Falling, lie thought mostly of Valeria.

  As he landed he looked around. No sign of Lundgard. The man could be anywhere in these square miles of cosmic wreckage. He spoke tentatively into his radio, in case Lundgard should be within the horizon: "Hello, are you there?"

  "Yes. I'm coming." There was a sharp cruel note of laughter. "Sorry to play this dirty, but there are bigger issues at stake than you or me. I've kept a rifle in my tool-tube all the time … just in case. Good-bye, Bo."

  A slug smashed into the pinnacle behind him. Bo turned and ran.

  VI

  As he rose over the lip of the crater, his head swung, seeking his enemy. There! It was almost a reflex which brought his arm back and sent the wrench hurtling across the few yards between. Before it had struck, Bo's feet lashed against the pit edge, and the kick arced him toward Lundgard.

  Spacemen have to be good at throwing things. The wrench hit the lifted rifle in a soundless shiver of metal, tore it loose from an insecure gauntleted grasp and sent it spinning into shadow. Lundgard yelled, spun on his heel, and dove after it. Then the flying body of Bo Jonsson struck him.

  Even in low-gee, matter has all its inertia. The impact rang and boomed within their armor, they swayed and fell to the ground, locking arms and hammering futilely at helmets. Rolling over, Bo got on top, his hands closed on Lundgard's throat—where the throat should have been, but plastic and alloy held fast; instinct had betrayed him.

  Lundgard snarled, doubled his legs and kicked. Bo was sent staggering back. Lundgard crawled erect and turned to look for the rifle. Bo couldn't-see it either in the near-solid blackness where no light fell, but his wrench lay as a dark gleam. He sprang for that, closed a hand on it, bounced up, and rushed at Lundgard. A swing shocked his own muscles with its force, and Lundgard lurched.

  Bo moved in on him. Lundgard reached into his tool-tube and drew out his own wrench. He circled, his panting hoarse in Bo's earphones.

  "This … is the way … it was supposed to be," said Bo.

  He jumped in, his weapon whirling down to shiver again on the other helmet. Lundgard shook a dazed head and countered. The impact roared and echoed in Bo's helmet, on into his skull. He smashed heavily. Lundgard's lifted wrench parried the blow, it slid off. Like a fencer, Lundgard snaked his shaft in and the reverberations were deafening.

  Bo braced himself and smote with all his power. The hit sang back through iron and alloy, into his own bones. Lundgard staggered a little, hunched himself and struck in return.

  They stood with feet braced apart, trading fury, a metal rain on shivering plastic. The stuff was almost unbreakable, but not quite, not for long when such violence dinned on it. Bo felt a lifting wild glee, something savage he had never known before leaped up in him and he bellowed. He was stronger, he could hit harder. Lundgard's helmet would break first!

  The Humanist retreated, using his wrench like a sword, stopping the force of blows without trying to deal more of his own. His left hand fumbled at his side. Bo hardly noticed. He was pushing in, hewing, hewing. Again the shrunken sun rose, to flash hard light off his club.

  Lundgard grinned, his face barely visible as highlight and shadow behind the plastic. His raised tool turned one hit, it slipped along his arm to rap his flank. Bo twisted his arm around, beat the other wrench aside for a moment, and landed a crack like a thunderbolt.

  Then Lundgard had his drinking hose free, pointing in his left hand. He thumbed down the clamp, exposing water at fifty degrees to naked space.

  It rushed forth, driven by its own vapor pressure, a stream like a lance in the wan sunshine. When it hit Bo's helmet, most of it boiled off … cooling the rest, which froze instantly.

  Blindness clamped down on Bo. He leaped away, cursing, the front of his helmet so frosted he could not see before him. Lundgard bounced around, playing the hose on him. Through the rime-coat, Bo could make out only a grayness.

  He pawed at it, trying to wipe it off, knowing that Lundgard was using this captured minute to look for the rifle. As he got some of the ice loose, he heard a sharp yell of victory—found!

  Turning, he ran again.

  Over that ridge! Down on your belly! A slug pocked the stone above him. Rolling over, he got to his feet and bounded off toward a steep rise, still wiping blindness off his helmet. But he could not wipe the bitter vomit taste of defeat out of his mouth.

  His breathing was a file that raked in his throat. Heart and lungs were ready to tear loose, and there was a cold knot in his guts. Fleeing up the high, ragged slope, he sobbed out his rage at himself and his own stupidity.

  At the top of the hill he threw himself to the ground and looked down again over a low wall of basalt. It was hard to see if anything moved down in that valley of night. Then the sun threw a broken gleam off polished metal, the rifle barrel, and he saw Einar Lundgard walking around, looking for him.

  The voice came dim in his earphones. "Why don't you give up, Bo? I tell you, I don't want to kill you."

  "Yeh." Bo panted wearily. "I'm sure."

  "Well, you can never tell," said Lundgard mildly. "It would be rather a nuisance to have to keep not only the fair Valeria, but you, tied up all the way to base. Still, if you'll surrender by the time I've counted ten—"

  "Look here," said Bo desperately, "I've got half the links. If you don't give up I'll hammer 'em all flat and let you starve."

  "And Valeria?" The voice jeered at him. He knew his secret was read. "I shouldn't have let you bluff me in the first place. It won't happen a second time. All right: one, two, three—"

  Bo could get off this asteroid with no more than the power of his own legs; a few jets from the emergency blow valve at the bottom of an
air tank would correct his flight as needed to bring him back to the Sirius. He wanted to get up there; and inside warm walls, and take Valeria in his hands and never let her go again. He wanted to live.

  "—six, seven, eight—"

  He looked at his gauges. A lot of oxyhelium mixture was gone from the tanks, but they were big and there was still several atmospheres' pressure in each. A couple of hours' life. If he didn't exert himself too much. They screwed directly into valves in the back of his armor, and—

  "—ten. All right, Bo." Lundgard started moving up the slope, light and graceful as a bird. It was wide and open, no place to hide and sneak up behind him.

  * * * *

  Figures reeled through Bo's mind, senselessly. Mass of the asteroid, effective radius, escape velocity only a few feet per second, and he was already on one of the highest points. Brains! he thought with a shattering sorrow. A lot of good mine have done me!

  He prepared to back down the other side of the hill, run as well as he could, as long as he could, until a bullet splashed his blood or suffocation thickened it. But I want to fight! he thought through a gulp of tears. I want to stand up and fight!

  Orbital velocity equals escape velocity divided by the square root of two.

  For a moment he lay there, rigid, and his eyes stared at death walking up the slope but did not see it.

  Then, in a crazy blur of motion, he brought his wrench around, closed it on a nut at one side, and turned.

  The right hand air tank unscrewed easily. He held it in his hands, a three foot cylinder, blind while calculation raced through his head. What would the centrifugal and Coriolis forces be? It was the roughest sort of estimate. He had neither time nor data, but—

  Lundgard was taking it easy, stopping to examine each patch of shadow thrown by some gaunt crag, each meteor scar where a man might hide. It would take him several minutes to reach the hilltop.

  Bo clutched the loosened tank in his arms, throwing one leg around it to make sure, and faced away from Lundgard. He hefted himself, as if his body were a machine he must use. Then, carefully, he jumped off the top of the hill.

  It was birdlike, dreamlike, thus to soar noiseless over iron desolation. The sun fell behind him. A spearhead pinnacle clawed after his feet. The Southern Cross flamed in his eyes.

  Downward—get rid of that downward component of velocity. He twisted the tank, pointing it toward the surface, and cautiously opened the blow valve with his free hand. Only a moment's exhaust, everything gauged by eye. Did he have an orbit now?

  The ground dropped sharply off to infinity, and he saw stars under the keel of the world. He was still going out, away. Maybe he had miscalculated his jump, exceeded escape velocity after all, and was headed for a long cold spin toward Jupiter. It would take all his compressed air to correct such a mistake.

  Sweat prickled in his armpits. He locked his teeth and refused to open the valve again.

  It was like endless falling, but he couldn't yet be sure if the fall was toward the asteroid or the stars. The rock spun past him. Another face came into view. Yes, by all idiot gods, its gravity was pulling him around!

  He skimmed low over the bleakness of it, seeing darkness and starlit death sliding beneath him. Another crag loomed suddenly in his path, and he wondered in a harsh clutch of fear if he was going to crash. Then it ghosted by, a foot from his flying body. He thought he could almost sense the chill of it.

  He was a moon now, a satellite skimming low above the airless surface of his own midget world. The fracture plain where Lundgard had shot at him went by, and he braced himself. Up around the tiny planet, and there was the hill he had left, stark against Sagittarius. He saw Lundgard, standing on its heights and looking the way he had gone. Carefully, he aimed the tank and gave himself another small blast to correct his path. There was no noise to betray him, the asteroid was a grave where all sound was long buried and frozen.

  He flattened, holding his body parallel to the tank in his arms. One hand still gripped the wrench, the other reached to open the blow valve wide.

  The surge almost tore him loose. He had a careening lunatic moment of flight in which the roar of escaping gas boiled through his armor and he clung like a troll to a runaway witch's broom. The sun was blinding on one side of him.

  He struck Lundgard with an impact of velocity and inertia which seat him spinning down the hill. Bo hit the ground, recoiled, and sprang after his enemy. Lundgard was still rolling. As Bo approached, he came to a halt, lifted his rifle dazedly, and had it knocked loose with a single blow of the wrench.

  Lundgard crawled to his feet while Bo picked up the rifle and threw it off the asteroid. "Why did you do that?"

  "I don't know," said Bo. "I should just shoot you down, but I want you to surrender."

  Lundgard drew his wrench. "No," he said.

  "All right," said Bo. "It won't take long."

  * * * *

  When he got up to the Sirius, using a tank Lundgard would never need, Valeria had armed herself with a kitchen knife. "It wouldn't have done much good," he said when he came through the airlock. She fell into his arms, sobbing, and he tried to comfort her. "It's all over. All taken care of. We can go home now."

  He himself was badly in need of consolation. The inquiry on Earth would clear him, of course, but he would always have to live with the memory of a man stretched dead under a wintery sky. He went aft and replaced the links. When he came back, Valeria had recovered herself, but as she watched his methodical preparations and listened to what he had to tell, there was that in her eyes which he hardly dared believe.

  Not him. Not a big dumb slob like him.

  * * * *

  TURNING POINT

  I

  "Please, mister, could I have a cracker for my oontatherium?"

  Not exactly the words you would expect at an instant when history changes course and the universe can never again be what it was. The die is cast; In this sign conquer; It is not fit that you should sit here any longer; We hold these truths to be selfevident; The Italian navigator has landed in the New World; Dear God, the thing works!—no man with any imagination can recall those, or others like them, and not have a coldness run along his spine. But as for what little Mierna first said to us, on that island half a thousand light-years from home …

  The star is catalogued AGC 4256836, a K2 dwarf in Cassiopeia. Our ship was making a standard preliminary survey of that region, and had come upon mystery enough—how easily Earthsiders forget that every planet is a complete world!—but nothing extraordinary in this fantastic cosmos. The Traders had noted places that seemed worth further investigation. So had the Federals. The lists were not quite identical.

  After a year, vessel and men were equally jaded. We needed a set-down, to spend a few weeks refitting and recuperating before the long swing homeward. There is an art to finding such a spot. You visit whatever nearby suns look suitable. If you come on a planet whose gross physical characteristics are terrestroid, you check the biological details—very, very carefully, but since the operation is largely automated it goes pretty fast—and make contact with the autochthones, if any. Primitives are preferred. That's not because of military danger, as some think. The Federals insist that the natives have no objection to strangers camping on their land, while the Traders don't see how anyone, civilized or not, that hasn't discovered atomic energy can be a menace. It's only that primitives are less apt to ask complicated questions and otherwise make a nuisance of themselves. Spacemen rejoice that worlds with machine civilizations are rare.

  Well, Joril looked ideal. The second planet of that sun, with more water than Earth, it offered a mild climate everywhere. The biochemistry was so like our own that we could eat native foods, and there didn't seem to be any germs that UX-2 couldn't handle. Seas, forests, meadows made us feel right at home, yet the countless differences from Earth lent a fairyland glamor. The indigenes were savages. That is, they depended on hunting, fishing and gathering for their whole food supply. So we
assumed there were thousands of little cultures and picked the one that appeared most advanced: not that aerial observation indicated much difference.

  Those people lived in neat, exquisitely decorated villages along the western seaboard of the largest continent, with woods and hill behind them. Contact went smoothly. Our semanticians had a good deal of trouble with the language, but the villagers started picking up English right away. Their hospitality was lavish whenever we called on them, but they stayed out of our camp except for the conducted tours we gave and other such invitations. With one vast, happy sigh, we settled down.

  * * * *

  But from the first there were certain disturbing symptoms. Granted they had human-like

  throats and palates, we hadn't expected the autochthones to speak flawless English within a couple of weeks. Every one of them. Obviously they could have learned still faster if we'd taught them systematically. We followed the usual practice and christened the planet "Joril" after what we thought was the local word for "earth"—and then found that "Joril" meant "earth," capitalized, and the people had an excellent heliocentric astronomy. Though they were too polite to press themselves on us, they weren't merely accepting us as something inexplicable; curiosity was afire in them, and given half a chance they did ask the most complicated questions.

  Once the initial rush of establishing ourselves was over and we had time to think, it became plain that we'd stumbled on something worth much further study. First we needed to check on some other areas and make sure this Dannicar culture wasn't a freak. After all, the neolithic Mayas had been good astronomers; the ferro-agricultural Greeks had developed a high and sophisticated philosophy. Looking over the maps we'd made from orbit, Captain Barlow chose a large island about 700 kilometers due west. A grav-boat was outfitted and five men went aboard.