Starfarers

by Poul Anderson

  Regor set the boat down on a cliff overlooking the bay he had described. The escarpment ringed a curved beach of enormous length and breadth, its sands strewn with rocks and boulders. Kilometers away, the arc closed in on itself, leaving only a strait passage to the ocean. The bay was placid, clear bluish-green beneath the early sun, but not stagnant. The tides of the one big moon must raise and lower it two or three meters in a day, and a river ran in from the southern highlands. Afar Jong could see how shells littered the sand below high-water mark, proof of abundant life. It seemed bitterly unfair to him that the colonists had had to trade so much beauty for darkness.

  Regor’s lean face turned from one man to the next. “Equipment check,” he said, and went down the list: fulgurator, communication bracelet, energy compass, medikit—“My God,” said Neri, “you’d think we were off on a year’s trek, and separately at that.”

  “We’ll disperse, looking for traces,” Regor said, “and those rocks will often hide us from each other.” He left the rest unspoken: that that which had been the death of the colony might still exist.

  They emerged into cool, flowing air with the salt and iodine and clean decay smell of coasts on every Earthlike world, and made their way down the scarp. “Let’s radiate from this point,” Regor said, “and if nobody has found anything, we’ll meet back here in four hours for lunch.”

  Jong’s path slanted farthest north. He walked briskly at first, enjoying the motion of his muscles, the scrunch of sand and rattle of pebbles beneath his boots, the whistle of the many birds overhead. But presently he must pick his way across drifts of stone and among dark boulders, some as big as houses, which cut him off from the wind and his fellows; and he remembered Sorya’s aloneness.

  Oh no, not that. Haven’t we paid enough? he thought. And, for a moment’s defiance: We didn’t do the thing. We condemned the traitors ourselves, and threw them into space, as soon as we learned. Why should we be punished?

  But the Kith had been too long isolated, themselves against the universe, not to hold that the sin and sorrow of one belonged to all. And Tomakan and his coconspirators had done what they did unselfishly, to save the ship. In those last vicious years of the Star Empire, when Earthmen made the Kithfolk scapegoats for their wretchedness until every crew fled to await better times, the Golden Flyer’s captured people would have died horribly—had Tomakan not bought their freedom by betraying to the persecutors that asteroid where two other Kith vessels lay, readying to leave the Solar System. How could they afterward meet the eyes of their kindred, in the Council that met at Tau Ceti?

  The sentence was just: to go exploring to the fringes of the galactic nucleus. Perhaps they would find the Elder Races that must dwell somewhere; perhaps they could bring back the knowledge and wisdom that could heal man’s inborn lunacies. Well, they hadn’t; but the voyage was something in itself, sufficient to give the Golden Flyer back her honor. No doubt everyone who had sat in Council was now dust. Still, their descendants—

  Jong stopped in midstride. His shout went ringing among the rocks.

  “What is it? Who called? Anything wrong?” The questions flew from his bracelet like anxious bees.

  He stooped over a little heap and touched it with fingers that wouldn’t hold steady. “Worked flints,” he breathed. “Flakes, broken spearheads … shaped wood … something—” He scrabbled in the sand. Sunlight struck off a piece of metal, rudely hammered into a dagger. It had been, it must have been fashioned from some of the ageless alloy in the city—long ago, for the blade was worn so thin that it had snapped across. He crouched over the shards and babbled.

  And shortly Mons’ deep tones cut through: “Here’s another site! An animal skull, could only have been split with a sharp stone, a thong—Wait, wait, I see something carved in this block, maybe a symbol—”

  Then suddenly he roared, and made a queer choked gurgle, and his voice came to an end.

  Jong leaped erect. The communicator jabbered with calls from Neri and Regor. He ignored them. There was no time for dismay. He tuned his energy compass. Each bracelet emitted a characteristic frequency besides its carrier wave, for location purposes, and—The needle swung about. His free hand un-holstered his fulgurator, and he went bounding over the rocks.

  As he broke out onto the open stretch of sand the wind hit him full in the face. Momentarily through its shrillness he heard the horn, louder than before, off beyond the cliffs. A part of him remembered fleetingly how one day on a frontier world he had seen a band of huntsmen gallop in pursuit of a wounded animal that wept as it ran, and how the chief had raised a crooked bugle to his lips and blown just such a call.

  The note died away. Jong’s glance swept the beach. Far down its length he saw several figures emerge from a huddle of boulders. Two of them carried a human shape. He yelled and sprinted to intercept them. The compass dropped from his grasp.

  They saw him and paused. When he neared, Jong made out that the form they bore was Mons Rainart’s. He swung ghastly limp between his carriers. Blood dripped from his back and over his breast.

  Jong’s stare went to the six murderers. They were chillingly manlike, half a meter taller than him, magnificently thewed beneath the naked white skin, but altogether hairless, with long webbed feet and fingers, a high dorsal fin, and smaller fins at heels and elbows and on the domed heads. The features were bony, with great sunken eyes and no external ears. A flap of skin drooped from pinched nose to wide mouth. Two carried flint-tipped wooden spears, two had tridents forged from metal—the tines of one were red and wet—and those who bore the body had knives slung at their waists.

  “Stop!” Jong shrieked. “Let him go!”

  He plowed to a halt not far off, and menaced them with his gun. The biggest uttered a gruff bark and advanced, trident poised. Jong retreated a step. Whatever they had done, he hated to—

  An energy beam winked, followed by its thunderclap. The one who carried Mons’ shoulders crumpled, first at the knees, then down into the sand. The blood from the hole burned through him mingled with the spaceman’s, equally crimson.

  They whirled. Neri Avelair pounded down the beach from the opposite side. His fulgurator spoke again. The shimmering wet sand reflected the blast. It missed, but quartz fused where it struck near the feet of the creatures, and hot droplets spattered them.

  The leader waved his trident and shouted. They lumbered toward the water. The one who had Mons’ ankles did not let go. The body flapped arms and head as it dragged. Neri shot a third time. Jolted by his own speed, he missed anew. Jong’s finger remained frozen on the trigger.

  The five giants entered the bay. Its floor shelved rapidly. In a minute they were able to dive below the surface. Neri reached Jong’s side and fired, bolt after bolt, till a steam cloud rose into the wind. Tears whipped down his cheeks. “Why didn’t you kill them, you bastard?” he screamed. “You could have gunned them down where you were!”

  “I don’t know.” Jong stared at his weapon. It felt oddly heavy.

  “They drowned Mons!”

  “No … he was dead already. I could see. Must have been pierced through the heart. I suppose they ambushed him in those rocks—”

  “M-m-maybe. But his body, God damn you, we could’a saved that at least!” Senselessly, Neri put a blast through the finned corpse.

  “Stop that,” commanded Regor. He threw himself down, gasping for breath. Dimly, Jong noticed gray streaks in the leader’s hair. It seemed a matter of pity and terror that Regor Lannis the unbendable should be whittled away by the years.

  What am I thinking? Mons is killed. Sorya’s brother.

  Neri holstered his fulgurator, covered his face with both hands, and sobbed.

  After a long while Regor shook himself, rose, knelt again to examine the dead swimmer. “So there were natives here,” he muttered. “The colonists must not have known. Or maybe they underestimated what savages could do.”

  His hands ran over the glabrous hide. “Still warm,” he said, almost to h
imself. “Air-breathing; a true mammal, no doubt, though this male lacks vestigial nipples; real nails on the digits, even if they have grown as thick and sharp as claws.” He peeled back the lips and examined the teeth. “Omnivore evolving toward carnivore, I’d guess. The molars are still pretty flat, but the rest are bigger than ours, and rather pointed.” He peered into the dimmed eyes. “Human-type vision, probably less acute. You can’t see so far underwater. We’ll need extensive study to determine the color-sensitivity curve, if any. Not to mention the other adaptations. I daresay they can stay below for many minutes at a stretch. Doubtless not as long as cetaceans, however. They haven’t evolved that far from their land ancestors. You can tell by the fins. Of some use in swimming, but not really an efficient size or shape as yet.”

  “You can speculate about that while Mons is being carried away?” Neri choked.

  Regor got up and tried in a bemused fashion to brush the sand off his clothes. “Oh no,” he said. His face worked, and he blinked several times. “We’ve got to do something about him, of course.” He looked skyward. The air was full of wings, as the sea birds sensed meat and wheeled insolently close. Their piping overrode the wind. “Let’s get back to the boat. We’ll take this carcass along for the scientists.”

  Neri cursed at the delay, but took one end of the object. Jong had the other. The weight felt monstrous, and seemed to grow while they stumbled toward the cliffs. Breath rasped in their throats. Their shirts clung to the sweat on them, which they could smell through every sea odor.

  Jong looked down at the ugly countenance beneath his hands. In spite of everything, in spite of Mons being dead—oh, never to hear his big laugh again, never to move a chessman or hoist a glass or stand on the thrumming decks with him!—he wondered if a female dwelt somewhere out in the ocean who had thought this face was beautiful.

  “We weren’t doing them any harm,” said Neri between wheezes.

  “You can’t … blame a poison snake … or a carnivore … if you come too near,” Jong said.

  “But these aren’t dumb animals! Look at that braincase. At that knife.” Neri needed a little time before he had the lungful to continue his fury: “We’ve dealt with nonhumans often enough. Fought them once in a while. But they had a reason to fight … mistaken or not, they did. I never saw or heard of anyone striking down utter strangers at first sight.”

  “We may not have been strangers,” Regor said.

  “What?” Neri’s head twisted around to stare at the older man.

  Regor shrugged. “A human colony was planted here. The natives seem to have wiped it out. I imagine they had reasons then. And the tradition may have survived.”

  For ten thousand years or more? Jong thought, shocked. What horror did our race visit on theirs, that they haven’t been able to forget in so many millennia?

  He tried to picture what might have happened, but found no reality in it, only a dry and somehow thin logic. Presumably this colony was established by a successor civilization to the Star Empire. Presumably that civilization had crumbled in its tum. The settlers had most likely possessed no spaceships of their own; outpost worlds found it easiest to rely on the Kith for what few trade goods they wanted. Often their libraries did not even include the technical data for building a ship, and they lacked the economic surplus necessary to do that research over again.

  So—the colony was orphaned. Later, if a period of especially virulent anti-Kithism had occurred here, the traders might have stopped coming; might actually have lost any record of this world’s existence. Or the Kith might have become extinct, but that is not a possibility we will admit. The planet was left isolated.

  Without much land surface it couldn’t support a very big population, even if most of the food and industrial resources had been drawn from the sea. However, the people should have been able to maintain a machine culture. No doubt their society would ossify, but static civilizations can last indefinitely.

  Unless they are confronted by vigorous barbarians, organized into million-man hordes under the lash of outrage. … But was that the answer? Given atomic energy, how could a single city be overrun by any number of neolithic hunters?

  Attack from within? A simultaneous revolt of every autochthonous slave? Jong looked back to the dead face. The teeth glinted at him. Maybe I’m softheaded. Maybe these beings simply take a weasel’s pleasure in killing.

  They struggled up the scarp and into the boat. Jong was relieved to get the thing hidden in a cold-storage locker. But then came the moment when they called the Golden Flyer to report.

  “I’ll tell his family,” said Captain Ilmaray, most quietly.

  But I’ll still have to tell Sorya how he looked, Jong thought. The resolution stiffened in him: We’re going to recover the body. Mons is going to have a Kithman’s funeral; hands that loved him will start him on his orbit into the sun.

  He had no reason to voice it, even to himself. The oneness of the Kith reached beyond death. Ilmaray asked only if Regor believed there was a chance.

  “Yes, provided we start soon,” the leader replied. “The bottom slopes quickly here, but gets no deeper than about thirty meters. Then it’s almost flat to some distance beyond the gate, farther than our sonoprobes reached when we flew over. I doubt the swimmers go so fast they can evade us till they reach a depth too great for a nucleoscope to detect Mons’ electronic gear.”

  “Good. Don’t take risks, though.” Grimly: “We’re too short on future heredity as is.” After a pause, Ilmaray added, “I’ll order a boat with a high-powered magnascreen to the stratosphere, to keep your general area under observation. Luck ride with you.”

  “And with every ship of ours,” Regor finished the formula.

  As his fingers moved across the pilot board, raising the vessel, he said over his shoulder, “One of you two get into a spacesuit and be prepared to go down. The other watch the ’scope, and lower him when we find what we’re after.”

  “I’ll go,” said Jong and Neri into each other’s mouths. They exchanged a look. Neri’s glared.

  “Please,” Jong begged. “Maybe I ought to have shot them down, when I saw what they’d done to Mons. I don’t know. But anyhow, I didn’t. So let me bring him back, will you?”

  Neri regarded him for nearly a minute more before he nodded.

  The boat cruised in slow zigzags out across the bay while Jong climbed into his spacesuit. It would serve as well underwater as in the void. He knotted a line about his waist and adjusted the other end to the little winch by the personnel lock. The metallic strand woven into its plastic would conduct phone messages. He draped a sack over one arm for the, well, the search object, and hoped he would not need the slugthrower at his hip.

  “There!”

  Jong jerked at Neri’s shout. Regor brought the craft to hoverhalt, a couple of meters above the surface and three kilometers from shore. “You certain?” he asked.

  “Absolutely. Not moving, either. I suppose they abandoned him so as to make a faster escape when they saw us coming through the air.”

  Jong clamped his helmet shut. External noises ceased. The stillness made him aware of his own breath and pulse and—some inner sound, a stray nerve current or mere imagination—the hunter’s horn, remote and triumphant.

  The lock opened, filling with sky. Jong walked to the rim and was nearly blinded by the sunlight off the wavelets. Radiance ran to the horizon. He eased himself over the lip. The rope payed out and the surface shut above him. He sank.

  A cool green roofed with sunblaze enclosed him. Even through the armor he felt multitudinous vibrations; the sea lived and moved, everywhere around. A pair of fish streaked by, unbelievably graceful. For a heretical instant he wondered if Mons would not rather stay here, lulled to the end of the world.

  Cut that! he told himself, and peered downward. Darkness lurked below. He switched on the powerful flash at his belt.

  Particles in the water scattered the light, so that he fell as if through an illuminated cave. More
fish passed near. Their scales reflected like jewels. He thought he could make out the bottom now, white sand and uplifted ranges of rock on which clustered many-colored coraloids, growing toward the sun. And the swimmer appeared.

  He moved slowly to the fringe of light and poised. In his left hand he bore a trident, perhaps the one which had killed Mons. At first he squinted against the dazzle, then looked steadily at the radiant metal man. As Jong continued to descend he followed, propelling himself with easy gestures of feet and free hand, a motion as lovely as a snake’s.

  Jong gasped and yanked out his slugthrower.

  “What’s the matter?” Neri’s voice rattled in his earplugs.

  He gulped. “Nothing,” he said, without knowing why. “Lower away.”

  The swimmer came a little closer. His muscles were tense, mouth open as if to bite; but the deep-set eyes remained unwavering. Jong returned the gaze. They went down together.

  He’s not afraid of me, Jong thought, or else he’s mastered his fear, though he saw on the beach what we can do.

  Impact jarred through his soles. “I’m here,” he called mechanically. “Give me some slack and—Oh!”

  The blood drained from his head as if an ax had split it. He swayed, supported only by the water. Thunders and winds went through him, and the roar of the horn.

  “Jong!” Neri called, infinitely distant. “Something’s wrong, I know it is, gimme an answer, for the love of Kith!”

  The swimmer touched bottom too. He stood across from what had belonged to Mons Rainart, the trident upright in his hand.

  Jong lifted the gun. “I can fill you with metal,” he heard himself groan. “I can cut you to pieces, the way you—you—”