Poul Anderson's Planet Stories

by Poul Anderson

  Repatriated slaves had told him of the Earthlings' power. Their roaring machines filled the silence of their own deserts, gouged the quiet face of their own moon, shook the planets with a senseless fury of meaningless energy. They were the conquerors, and it never occurred to them that an ancient peace and stillness could be worth preserving.

  Well—he fitted an arrow to the string and crouched in the silent, flimmering sunlight, waiting.

  The hound came first, yelping and howling. Kreega drew the bow as far as he could. But the human had to come near first—

  There he came, running and bounding over the rocks, rifle in hand and restless eyes shining with taut green light, closing in for the death. Kreega swung softly around. The beast was beyond the rock now, the Earthman almost below it.

  The bow twanged. With a savage thrill, Kreega saw the arrow go through the hound, saw the creature leap in the air and then roll over and over, howling and biting at the thing in its breast.

  Like a gray thunderbolt, the Martian launched himself off the rock, down at the human. If his axe could shatter that helmet—

  He struck the man and they went down together. Wildly, the Martian hewed. The axe glanced off the plastic—he hadn't had room for a swing. Riordan roared and lashed out with a fist. Retching, Kreega rolled backward.

  Riordan snapped a shot at him. Kreega turned and fled. The man got to one knee, sighting carefully on the gray form that streaked up the nearest slope.

  A little sandsnake darted up the man's leg and wrapped about his wrist. Its small strength was just enough to pull the gun aside. The bullet screamed past Kreega's ear as he vanished into a cleft.

  He felt the thin death-agony of the snake as the man pulled it loose and crushed it underfoot. Somewhat later, he heard a dull boom echoing between the hills. The man had gotten explosives from his boat and blown up the tower.

  He had lost axe and bow. Now he was utterly weaponless, without even a place to retire for a last stand. And the hunter would not give up. Even without his animals, he would follow, more slowly but as relentlessly as before.

  Kreega collapsed on a shelf of rock. Dry sobbing racked his thin body, and the sunset wind cried with him.

  Presently he looked up, across a red and yellow immensity to the low sun. Long shadows were creeping over the land, peace and stillness for a brief moment before the iron cold of night closed down. Somewhere the soft trill of a sandrunner echoed between low wind-worn cliffs, and the brush began to speak, whispering back and forth in its ancient wordless tongue.

  The desert, the planet and its wind and sand under the high cold stars, the clean open land of silence and loneliness and a destiny which was not man's, spoke to him. The enormous oneness of life on Mars, drawn together against the cruel environment, stirred in his blood. As the sun went down and the stars blossomed forth in awesome frosty glory, Kreega began to think again.

  He did not hate his persecutor, but the grimness of Mars was in him. He fought the war of all which was old and primitive and lost in its own dreams against the alien and the desecrator. It was as ancient and pitiless as life, that war, and each battle won or lost meant something even if no one ever heard of it.

  You do not fight alone, whispered the desert. You fight for all Mars, and we are with you.

  Something moved in the darkness, a tiny warm form running across his hand, a little feathered mouse-like thing that burrowed under the sand and lived its small fugitive life and was glad in its own way of living. But it was a part of a world, and Mars has no pity in its voice.

  Still, a tenderness was within Kreega's heart, and he whispered gently in the language that was not a language, You will do this for us? You will do it, little brother?

  Riordan was too tired to sleep well. He had lain awake for a long time, thinking, and that is not good for a man alone in the Martian hills.

  So now the rockhound was dead too. It didn't matter, the owlie wouldn't escape. But somehow the incident brought home to him the immensity and the age and the loneliness of the desert.

  It whispered to him. The brush rustled and something wailed in darkness and the wind blew with a wild mournful sound over faintly starlit cliffs, and it was as if they all somehow had voice, as if the whole world muttered and threatened him in the night. Dimly, he wondered if man would ever subdue Mars, if the human race had not finally run across something bigger than itself.

  But that was nonsense. Mars was old and worn-out and barren, dreaming itself into slow death. The tramp of human feet, shouts of men and roar of sky-storming rockets, were waking it, but to a new destiny, to man's. When Ares lifted its hard spires above the hills of Syrtis, where then were the ancient gods of Mars?

  It was cold, and the cold deepened as the night wore on. The stars were fire and ice, glittering diamonds in the deep crystal dark. Now and then he could hear a faint snapping borne through the earth as rock or tree split open. The wind laid itself to rest, sound froze to death, there was only the hard clear starlight falling through space to shatter on the ground.

  Once something stirred. He woke from a restless sleep and saw a small thing skittering toward him. He groped for the rifle beside his sleeping bag, then laughed harshly. It was only a sandmouse. But it proved that the Martian had no chance of sneaking up on him while he rested.

  He didn't laugh again. The sound had echoed too hollowly in his helmet.

  With the clear bitter dawn he was up. He wanted to get the hunt over with. He was dirty and unshaven inside the unit, sick of iron rations pushed through the airlock, stiff and sore with exertion. Lacking the hound, which he'd had to shoot, tracking would be slow, but he didn't want to go back to Port Armstrong for another. No, hell take that Martian, he'd have the devil's skin soon!

  Breakfast and a little moving made him feel better. He looked with a practiced eye for the Martian's trail. There was sand and brush over everything, even the rocks had a thin coating of their own erosion. The owlie couldn't cover his tracks perfectly—if he tried, it would slow him too much. Riordan fell into a steady jog.

  Noon found him on higher ground, rough hills with gaunt needles of rock reaching yards into the sky. He kept going, confident of his own ability to wear down the quarry. He'd run deer to earth back home, day after day until the animal's heart broke and it waited quivering for him to come.

  The trail looked clear and fresh now. He tensed with the knowledge that the Martian couldn't be far away.

  Too clear! Could this be bait for another trap? He hefted the rifle and proceeded more warily. But no, there wouldn't have been time—

  He mounted a high ridge and looked over the grim, fantastic landscape. Near the horizon he saw a blackened strip, the border of his radioactive barrier. The Martian couldn't go further, and if he doubled back Riordan would have an excellent chance of spotting him.

  He tuned up his speaker and let his voice roar into the stillness: "Come out, owlie! I'm going to get you, you might as well come out now and be done with it!"

  The echoes took it up, flying back and forth between the naked crags, trembling and shivering under the brassy arch of sky. Come out, come out, come out—

  The Martian seemed to appear from thin air, a gray ghost rising out of the jumbled stones and standing poised not twenty feet away. For an instant, the shock of it was too much; Riordan gaped in disbelief. Kreega waited, quivering ever so faintly as if he were a mirage.

  Then the man shouted and lifted his rifle. Still the Martian stood there as if carved in gray stone, and with a shock of disappointment Riordan thought that he had, after all, decided to give himself to an inevitable death.

  Well, it had been a good hunt. "So long," whispered Riordan, and squeezed the trigger.

  Since the sandmouse had crawled into the barrel, the gun exploded.

  Riordan heard the roar and saw the barrel peel open like a rotten banana. He wasn't hurt, but as he staggered back from the shock Kreega lunged at him.

  The Martian was four feet tall, and skinny and weap
onless, but he hit the Earthling like a small tornado. His legs wrapped around the man's waist and his hands got to work on the airhose.

  Riordan went down under the impact. He snarled, tigerishly, and fastened his hands on the Martian's narrow throat. Kreega snapped futilely at him with his beak. They rolled over in a cloud of dust. The brush began to chatter excitedly.

  Riordan tried to break Kreega's neck—the Martian twisted away, bored in again.

  With a shock of horror, the man heard the hiss of escaping air as Kreega's beak and fingers finally worried the airhose loose. An automatic valve clamped shut, but there was no connection with the pump now—

  Riordan cursed, and got his hands about the Martian's throat again. Then he simply lay there, squeezing, and not all Kreega's writhing and twistings could break that grip.

  Riordan smiled sleepily and held his hands in place. After five minutes or so Kreega was still. Riordan kept right on throttling him for another five minutes, just to make sure. Then he let go and fumbled at his back, trying to reach the pump.

  The air in his suit was hot and foul. He couldn't quite reach around to connect the hose to the pump—

  Poor design, he thought vaguely. But then, these airsuits weren't meant for battle armor.

  He looked at the slight, silent form of the Martian. A faint breeze ruffled the gray feathers. What a fighter the little guy had been! He'd be the pride of the trophy room, back on Earth.

  Let's see now—He unrolled his sleeping bag and spread it carefully out. He'd never make it to the rocket with what air he had, so it was necessary to let the suspensine into his suit. But he'd have to get inside the bag, lest the nights freeze his blood solid.

  He crawled in, fastening the flaps carefully, and opened the valve on the suspensine tank. Lucky he had it—but then, a good hunter thinks of everything. He'd get awfully bored, lying here till Wisby caught the signal in ten days or so and came to find him, but he'd last. It would be an experience to remember. In this dry air, the Martian's skin would keep perfectly well.

  He felt the paralysis creep up on him, the waning of heartbeat and lung action. His senses and mind were still alive, and he grew aware that complete relaxation has its unpleasant aspects. Oh, well—he'd won. He'd killed the wiliest game with his own hands.

  Presently Kreega sat up. He felt himself gingerly. There seemed to be a rib broken—well, that could be fixed. He was still alive. He'd been choked for a good ten minutes, but a Martian can last fifteen without air.

  He opened the sleeping bag and got Riordan's keys. Then he limped slowly back to the rocket. A day or two of experimentation taught him how to fly it. He'd go to his kinsmen near Syrtis. Now that they had an Earthly machine, and Earthly weapons to copy—

  But there was other business first. He didn't hate Riordan, but Mars is a hard world. He went back and dragged the Earthling into a cave and hid him beyond all possibility of human search parties finding him.

  For a while he looked into the man's eyes. Horror stared dumbly back at him. He spoke slowly, in halting English: "For those you killed, and for being a stranger on a world that does not want you, and against the day when Mars is free, I leave you."

  Before departing, he got several oxygen tanks from the boat and hooked them into the man's air supply. That was quite a bit of air for one in suspended animation. Enough to keep him alive for a thousand years.

  WAR-MAID OF MARS

  The man came into the laboratory and shut the door behind him against a blast of wind. He was a stranger, and he had a gun in one hand.

  "Who the hell are you?" demanded Fredison.

  "Call me Jones," said the man. The smile was thin and unpleasant on his frost-whitened cheeks. "And don't move, please. There's no one else for a thousand miles of Antarctic and I wouldn't hesitate to kill you."

  Fredison stood rigid. For an instant only the muted howl of wind was heard in the room. It was a long room, brightly lit, cluttered with apparatus. Fredison stood behind a table bearing a wall of equipment, with a good five yards of open floor beyond it to the stranger.

  "There must be some mistake," he said thickly, and the sudden wild throb of blood in his ears told him he was a liar. "I never saw you in my life. This is the Raihala Energy Lab. You've got no business with me."

  "But I do, Dr. Fredison." Jones spoke tonelessly, with a shiver of iron in his voice. "I'm here to get you and that energy globe, but the globe is more important and if you make trouble I'll shoot you and find it for myself. I'm a pretty fair lab technician, among other things."

  "Who sent you?" whispered Fredison. The wind mumbled under his words.

  "Where is the globe? Quickly, now! You can't buck the forces you're up against."

  The man's eyes drifted along the room, back to Fredison's table, and caught the reflected shimmer of light from the thing that lay before him. "That's it, right there, that must be it. All right, pick it up in both hands. Come over to me slowly."

  "You can't do this and get away with it." Useless, melodramatic gibberish, with death looking hollowly out of an unwavering muzzle. "The law . . ."

  "We are the law," said Jones contemptuously. "At least, we will be very soon, and we remember our enemies. I'd advise cooperation."

  The slow realization came. "You're from the Unionists," breathed Fredison. "You must be."

  "All right, get moving." Jones jerked a thumb at him.

  Fredison picked up the globe. It was small, some three inches in diameter, but it was cold and heavy in his hands. The reflection of the laboratory wavered in distortion over its surface. He came around from behind the table. "You don't know what you're doing," he said frantically. "You don't realize what a power you're tampering with."

  "On the contrary," answered Jones evenly, "we're the only ones on Earth who do know what we're about."

  Fredison shook his head, wonderingly. It had, perhaps, been a mistake to come here alone—but who could have known it, who could have looked for it? He had never imagined that the Unionist bosses had the faintest idea of Raihala's tremendous achievement. When the robowatcher signaled an approaching rocketplane he had merely assumed it to be a flyer off course in the Antarctic blizzard. Glad of a little company in the night and loneliness, he had left the door unlocked and then gone back to his studies.

  Unionists—O Lord, the Unionists, the party of hate and death and nescience. The Unionists had him now.

  "What are you going to do?" he asked. He couldn't keep the fright out of his voice.

  "I am going to put you and this globe safely in my plane," said Jones, "and then I am going to wait here, maybe look over this interesting setup, until the others come. After that, I suppose, you'll be taken to headquarters. But don't be afraid, Dr. Fredison, if you aren't stubborn you won't be hurt. There'll even be some fine rewards for you."

  Fredison nodded. "I see." He halted, a couple of yards from the other men, and the sudden decision was like a calming hand. Death—well, he was no braver than anyone else, but death was not the worst thing in the universe.

  "No," he said.

  "Any heroics will only result in your own unnecessary killing," said Jones. There was a vicious bite in the words.

  Fredison shook his head, smiling. "You don't understand," he said gently. "Before you came I activated the globe. It's in a state of unstable equilibrium now. If it suffers any shock—well, there are five kilos of pure energy that will be released. A big hole in the ground. A hell of a big hole."

  "You're lying!" It was a sudden screech from a distorted mouth. The man started forward, knuckles whitening on his pistol grip, and Fredison raised the globe over his head.

  "Try it and see," he invited. "Shoot me and watch the sphere drop."

  Jones stood unmoving, trembling beneath his heavy clothes, There was a fine mist of sweat on his gaunt face. "I don't believe it," he muttered. "You're not a fanatic. You wouldn't dare."

  "No, I'm not a crusader of any kind, Jones, but I vote the Liberal ticket. I don't like Unionists. If
the lab goes up, with all Raihala's equipment and notes, it may take a hundred years to duplicate his work. By that time the Unionists and their kind may be extinct."

  "I'm not afraid to die either," said Jones.

  "No, but you are afraid to lose the globe, aren't you? This is the biggest chance your party has had since the Hemispheric Wars, isn't it? You don't want to miss a chance to take over the whole Solar System. You'd rather bargain with me than take a chance on calling what may be my bluff." Fredison's voice came with a vast and unnatural steadiness, some hidden source of strength he had never known was in him kept his tones level and faintly amused. "You see, I don't mind suggesting that it may be a bluff because I happen to know that it isn't. So it doesn't really matter what you do."

  The wind hooted around the building. The walls shivered ever so slightly with its violence.

  "Look," said Jones, 'let's be reasonable. Let's talk it over."

  "Sure. If you put that gun down."

  The Unionist stooped and laid it on the floor. "You see," he said as he bent, "I'm not such a wild-eyed fanatic as you think. I'm quite willing to talk."

  Now—now!

  Jones straightened up, driving forward in a football motion. Fredison had expected him to try something of the sort—a quick grab, seizure of the globe before it could hit the floor. He dodged aside, let the the shoulder graze his belly. The sphere fell from his hands and bounced from Jones' clutch, thudding to the boards.

  Fredison kicked at the stooping man's jaw. It was a savage, heavy-shoed kick that connected with a crunch of bone. The Unionist screamed. Fredison kicked him again and he lay still.

  Shaking, suddenly uncontrollable in his trembling, Fredison sank to the floor beside him. Gods, gods, gods, it had worked. His bluff had worked!

  If it hadn't, O almighty powers of space, if it hadn't worked, if Jones had won...

  Gasping, Fredison dragged himself erect and stumbled over to a drawer and took out a bottle of whiskey. The stuff splashed as he brought it to his lips. It was raw in his throat and he choked and sputtered and took another drag.