Poul Anderson's Planet Stories

by Poul Anderson

  Nothing happened. The vessel kept on going.

  "Hey!" the man wailed. "Who"! . . . Urushkidan, what's wrong? I can't stop accelerating!"

  "Of course not," the Martian told him. "You must apply an exact counterfunction. Use te omega-wabe generator."

  "Omega wave? What the hell is that?"

  "Why, I told you—"

  "You did not."

  Ray and Urushkidan stared at each other. "It seems," the Martian said at length, "tat tere has been a certain failure of communication between us."

  Weightlessness complicated everything. By the time that a braking system had been improvised, nobody knew where the boat had gotten to.

  This was after a rather grim week. The travelers floated in the cabin and stared out at skies which, no matter how splendid, seemed totally foreign. Silence pressed inward with a might that would have been more impressive were it not contending against odors of old cooking and unwashed bodies.

  "The trouble is my fault," Dyann said contritely. "If I had brought Ormun, she vould have looked after us."

  "Let's hope she takes care of the Solar System," Ray said. "The Jovians aren't fools. When we left Ganymede, jetless, it must've been obvious we'd built the drive. They'll want to take action before we can give it to Earth."

  "First," Urushkidan pointed out, "we habe to find Eart."

  "It should be possible," Ray said. His tone lacked conviction. "We can't have gone completely out of our general part of the galaxy. Could those foggy patches yonder be the Magellanic Clouds? If they are, and if we can relate several bright stars to them—Rigel, for instance—We should be able to estimate roughly where we've come to."

  "Bery well," Urushkidan replied, "which is Rigel?"

  Ray held his peace.

  "Maybe ve can find somevun who knows," Dyann suggested.

  Ray imagined landing on a planet and asking a three-headed citizen, "Pardon me, could you tell me the way to Sol?" Whereupon the alien would answer, "Sorry, I'm a stranger here myself."

  Never being intended for proper space trips, the boat carried no navigational or astronomical tables. Since she had passed close to Neptune, or whatever globe that was, she had presumably been more or less in the ecliptic plane. Therefore some of the zodiacal constellations, those from which she had moved away, ought to be recognizable, though doubtless distorted. Ordinarily an untrained eye might have been unable to identify any pattern, so numerous are the stars visible in space. However, after a week without cleaning, the ports here were greasy and grimy enough to dim the light as much as Earth's atmosphere does.

  Nevertheless Ray was baffled. "If I'd been a Boy Scout," he lamented, "I might know the skies. As is, all I can pick out are Orion and the Big Dipper, and I've no idea how they lie with respect to the zodiac or anything else." He gave Urushkidan an accusing glance. "You're the great astrophysicist. Can't you tell one star from another?"

  "Certainly not," replied the Martian. "No astrophysicist eber looks at te stars if he can help it."

  "Oh, you vant to find the con—con—star-pictures?" Dyann asked.

  "Yes, we have to," Ray explained. "Familiar ones that we can steer by. You're quite a girl in your way, honey, but I do wish you were more of an intellectual."

  "Vy, of course I know the heavens," she assured him. "How vould I ever find my vay around, huntin or raidin, othervise? And they are not very different in the Solar System. I learned your pictures for fun, vile I vas on Earth." She floated around the chamber from port to port, peering and muttering. "Haa-ai, yes, yonder are Kunatha the Qveen and Skalk the Consort . . . not much chanyed except—" she chuckled coarsely— "it is even more clear to see here than at home that they are begettin the Heir. You Earthlins take a section right out of the middle betveen those two and make a figure you call . . . m-m-m . . . ah, yes, Virgo."

  "And you can tell us how the rest are arranged, and steer us till they have the right configurations?" Ray exclaimed. "Dyann, I love you!"

  "Then let's get home fast," she beamed. "I vant to be on a planet." During the outward flight she had been discomfited at discovering the erotic importance of gravity.

  "Control your optimism, Tallantyre," Urushkidan said dourly. "Trying to nabigate by eyeball alone, wit only a barbarian's information to go on, we may perhaps find te general galactic region we want, but tereafter we could cast about at random until our food is gone and we starbe to deat."

  "Oh, I know the constellations close," Dyann said, "and I know how to take stellar measurements. It vill not be hard to make a few simple instruments, like for measurin angles accurately, that I can use."

  "You?" the Martian screeched. "How in Nebukadashtabu can you have learned such tings?"

  "Every noble in Kathantuma does, for to practice the—vat do you call it?—astroloyee. It is needful for plannin battles and ven to sow grain and marriage dates and everythin."

  "Do you mean to say you are an . . . an ... an astrologer?"

  "Of course. I thought you vere too, but it seems you Solarians are more backvard than I supposed. Vould you like me to cast your horoscope?"

  "Well," said Ray helplessly, "I guess it's up to you to pilot us back, Dyann."

  "Sure," she laughed. "Anchors aveigh!"

  Urushkidan retched. "Brought home by an astrologer. Te ignominy of it all."

  Somehow Ray got his shipmates herded into seats, the vessel aimed according to Dyann's instructions, and the drive started. Given the modifications they had made, they could accelerate the whole distance and then stop almost instantly. The passage should not be long.

  Except, of course, for the time-consuming nuisance of frequent halts en route to take navigational sights. Ray pondered this in the next couple of days, while he constructed the instruments Dyann required. That task was comparatively simple, demanding precise workmanship but no original thought to speak of. His engineering talent had free play; if nothing else, the problem took his attention from the zero-gee pigpen into which he was crammed.

  Starlight was still around. It was merely Dopplered out of visible wavelengths and aberrated out of its proper direction. Both these effects were functions of the boat's speed—if "speed" was a permissible word in this case, which Urushkidan would noisily deny—and that in turn depended in a mathematically simple fashion on drive-pulse frequency and time. The main computer aboard, which controlled most systems, could easily add to its chores a program for reversing optical changes. There were several television pickups and receivers in the hold; normally, explorers on a Jovian moon would use them to observe a locale from a distance, bnt they could be adapted. . . .

  After a pair of days more, Ray had installed in the forward cabin a gadget as uncouth to behold as the star drive itself, but which showed, on a large screen, ambient space undistorted. It was adjustable for any direction. Playing with it, Dyann found a group of stars which made her smile. "See," she said, "now Avalla is takin shape. That is the Victorious Warrior Returnin Vith Captive Man Slung Across Her Saddlebow."

  "No," said Ray, "that's Ursa Major. You Kathantumans have a wild imagination."

  Seated in the pilot's chair—for she had soon mastered the controls of the star drive, as crude as they were—Dyann continued swinging the scanner around the heavens. Abruptly the screen blazed. Had radiance not been stopped down, the watchers might have been blinded. As was, they saw a vast, incandescent globe from which flames seethed millions of kilometers—"A blue giant sun," Urushkidan whispered. For once he was awed.

  Dyann's eyes sparkled. "Let's play tag vith it," she said, and applied a sidewise vector. "Yippee!"

  "Hey!" the Earthling yelped. "Stop!"

  They whizzed among the flames, dodging, while Dyann roared out a battle chant. Urushkidan huddled in his chair, squinched his eyes shut, and muttered, "I am being serene. I am being serene." Ray tried to recollect his childhood prayers.

  The star fell behind. "Okay, ve continue," Dyann said. "Vasn't that fun? Ray, darlin, after this trouble is over, ve vill take a cruise
through the galaxy, yust the two of us."

  Time passed. The heavens majestically altered their aspect. The conquerors of the light-years floated about, gazed forth at magnificence, and ate cold beans.

  "Ve are in the yeneral sector ve seek," Dyann said. "I have been thinkin. First ve go to Varann."

  "Your native planet?" asked Urushkidan. "Ridiculous! We are returning directly to Uttu."

  "Ve may need help in the Solar System," she argued. "Ve have been gone for two or three veeks. Much can have happened, most of it not good."

  "But . . . but what help do you expect to get from a bunch of . . . Centaurians?" Ray spluttered. "It isn't practical."

  Dyann grinned. "How vill you stop me, sveetheart?"

  He considered the muscles which stirred beneath her tawny skin. "Oh, well," he said, "I always wanted to see Varann anyway."

  For a few hours the amazon kept busy with instruments and pilot board. Then, astoundingly to Ray, she found her goal. Waxing in the screen were two yellowish suns very much like Sol. Out of the stellar background, a telescope identified a dim red dwarf at a greater distance. Nowhere else in this part of space did such a trio exist.

  "Home, oh, home," Dyann murmured almost tearfully.

  "Not quite," Ray reminded her with a certain slight malice. "How are you going to find your planet?"

  "Vell . . . vell, uh—" She scratched her ruddy head.

  He took pity and thought aloud for her benefit. "Planets are in the plane of the two main stars. They'd have to be. If we put ourselves in that plane, at a point where Varann's sun, Alpha A, appears to be the right size, and swing in a circle of that radius, we should come pretty close. It has a good-sized moon, doesn't it, and its color is greenish-blue? Yes, we ought not to have trouble."

  "You are so clever," Dyann sighed. "It is sexy. Yust you vait till ve have landed."

  At a modest fraction of the speed of light, a mere few thousand kilometers per second, the boat paced out her path. Before long, Dyann was jubilating, "There ve are! Look ahead! Home! After all these years, home!"

  "I would still like to know what we are supposed to do when we get tere," Urushkidan snorted.

  "I told Ray vat," Dyann retorted. "You suit yourself."

  The man said nothing, being preoccupied. Terminal maneuvers were necessarily his responsibility. They took his entire flying skill and then some. He could use the cosmic drive to shed a velocity which would else have caused his craft to explode on striking atmosphere. However, he could not thereafter use the conventional jets; they were never meant for thick air or strong gravity. Thus he must also come down on the new system, which was incredibly precarious when he didn't have a universeful of room for error around him. He must make a descent which was largely aerodynamic, in a boat hijacked from a moon where aerodynamics was a farce. Probably he would never have succeeded, were it not for experience he'd gained when he spent part of his legacy on rakish sports flyers.

  Wind boomed outside. The sky turned from black and starry to blue and cloud-wreathed. Weight dragged at bodies. The hull bucked and shuddered. Far below, landscape emerged. Ray had directed his approach by what he and Dyann remembered of maps—

  "Kathantuma!" she shouted. "My own, my native land! See, I know her, yonder mountain, old Hastan herself. Yes, and that town, Mayta. Ve're here!"

  VI

  When Ray had thumped the boat down onto the ground and his teeth had stopped rattling, he admitted to himself that this was pretty country. Around him waved rows of white-tasseled grain, wildflowers strewn among them in small brave splashes of color. Beyond the field he glimpsed a thatch-roofed rustic cottage and outbuildings, surrounded by trees whose foliage shone green-gold. In the opposite direction gleamed a river, crossed by a stone bridge which led to Mayta. The town seemed an overgrown village, timber houses snuggled about the granite walls of a castle whose turrets bore lacy spires from which banners flew. Elsewhere thereabouts, the land was devoted to pasture and woodlots, whose verdancy turned blue with distance till it faded into the snow-crowned heights which guarded this valley.

  "Home," Dyann exulted. She unharnessed, rose, and stretched sinew by sinew, like a great cat. "And yust feel, darlin, ve got a decent up and down again."

  "Uh—yeah." Ray had less pleasure. Fifty percent more pull than on Earth. . . . Urushkidan groaned and collapsed over his own seat like so much molasses.

  "Come on out for some fresh air," Dyann said, "and ve vill find us a nice soft patch of turf."

  She started to operate the airlock. He prevented her barely in time, and opened the valves the merest crack. Atmospheric pressure outside was considerably in excess of that within. No sense in getting a sinus headache; let the buildup be gradual. "Keep chewing and swallowing," he advised as the inward draught began to shrill.

  "Vat? Vell; if you say so." Dyann reached for a hunk of cheese.

  When at length they could go forth, it was into a freshness of cool breezes and the manifold scents of growing things, into trillings and chirpings from winged creatures that darted beneath sun-brilliant clouds, into air whose richness made every lungful heady as wine, so that aches and exhaustion vanished. "A-a-ah," Ray breathed. "You were right to make us stop here, sweetheart. What we need most after what we've been through is unspoiled nature, peace and quiet and—"

  An arrow hummed past his ear and rang like a gong off the boat.

  "Yowp!" Ray dived into the grain. Another arrow zipped where he had been. Dyann stood fast. After a moment, he ventured to raise himself, behind her back, and see what was happening.

  From the rustic cottage, half a dozen women ran: a squat and scarred older one, and five tall and youthful who must be her daughters. They hadn't stopped to armor themselves with more than helmets and shields, but they did brandish swords and axes. The archer among them slung bow on shoulder as her companions closed in, and drew a dirk. Several man watched nervously from the farmyard.

  "Ho-hai, saa, saa!" whooped Dyann. She herself was in full battle gear, that being the only clothing she had brought along. Her blade hissed free of its sheath. The matriarch charged. Dyann's blow was stopped by her shield, and her ax clanged grazingly off the newcomer's helmet. Dyann staggered. Her weapon fell from her grasp. The rest came to ring her in.

  Dyann recovered. A karate-like kick to the elbow disarmed Mother. At once Dyann seized her by the waist, raised her on high, and threw her. Two of the girls went down beneath that mass. While they were trying to disentangle themselves, Dyann got under the guard of the next nearest and grappled.

  Centaurian hospitality! flashed through Ray's mind.

  A backhanded blow sent him over. Dazed, he looked up to see a daughter looming above. She smacked her lips, picked him up, and laid him across her shoulder. A sister tugged at him—by the hair—and said something which might have meant, "Now don't be greedy, dear; we go shares, remember?" They didn't seem worried about the rest, who were busy with Dyann and would obviously soon overcome her.

  A trumpet blare and a thunder of hoofs interrupted. From the castle had come galloping a squad of armored ladies. Their mounts were the size and general shape of Percheron horses, though horned, hairless, and green. They halted at the fight and started to wield clubbed lances with fine impartiality. Combat broke up in a sullen fashion. From his upside-down position, Ray saw that none of the gashed and bruised femininity had suffered grave wounds. Yet that didn't seem to have been for lack of trying.

  The guttural, barking language of Kathantuma resounded around. A rider, perhaps the chief, pointed a mailed hand at Ray's captor and snapped an order. The girl protested, was overruled, and tossed him pettishly to the ground.

  When he recovered full awareness, his head was on Dyann's knees and she was stroking him. "Poor little man," she murmured. "Ve play too rough for you, ha?"

  "What. . . was that... all about?"

  "Oh, this family say they vas mad because ve landed in their grainfield. That's a lie. They could have demanded compensation. I'm sure they
really hoped to seize our boat and claim it as plunder. Luckily, the royal cavalry got here in time to stop them. Since ve are still alive, ve can file charges of assault if ve choose, because this is not a legal duellin ground. I think I vill, to teach a lesson. There must be law and order, you know."

  "Yes," whispered Ray, "I know."

  Two days later—Varannian days, a bit shorter than Terrestrial—Dyann gave a speech. She and her traveling companions were on a platform by the main gate of the castle, at the edge of the market square. She stood; they sat in leather chairs, along with Queen Hiltagar, the Mistress of Arms, the Keeper of the Stables, and similar dignitaries. Pikes of troopers and lances of mounted ladies hedged the muddy plaza, to maintain a degree of decorum among the two or three hundred who filled it. These were the free yeowomen of the surrounding district, whose approval of any important action was necessary because they would constitute the backbone of the army. In coarse, colorful tunics; body paint; and massive jewelry, they kept flourishing their weapons and beating their shields. To judge by Dyann's gratified expression, that counted as applause. Here and there circulated public entertainers, scantily-clad men with flowers twined into their hair and beards, who strummed harps, sang softly, and watched the proceedings out of liquid, timid eyes.

  Ray wasn't sure what went on, nor did he care very much. A combination of heavy weight, heavier meals, reaction to the rigors of his journey, and Dyann's demands kep him chronically sleepy. This evening, a lot of the potent local wine had been added. He could barely focus on the crowd. Beside him, Urushkidan snored, Martian style, which sounds like firecrackers in an echo chamber.

  Dyann ended her harangue at last. Both cheers and jeers lifted deafeningly. Long-winded arguments followed, which tended to degenerate into fist fights, until Ray himself dozed off.

  He was shaken awake when sunset turned heaven sulfurous above the roofs, and gaped blearily around. The assembly was dispersing, most people headed for the taverns which comprised a large part of Mayta. Stiff and sore, he lurched to his feet. Dyann was more fresh and rosy than he felt he should be asked to tolerate.