The Stars Are Also Fire

by Poul Anderson

  Where his path descended, he used the fixed ladder rather than the conveyor. Anything to help himself stay in trim. The command cabin lay near the center of the spheroidal hull. Its interior displayed ambient space, a representation better than reality. Solar radiance was muted lest it blind. Star images were bright ened to overcome shipboard lighting. Unwinking, they beswarmed the dark, white, amber, coal-red, steel-blue, the galactic belt icy among them. Jupiter glowed like a lamp, the sun was a tiny disc rimmed with fire-tongues. Kenmuir settled at the main control board. “Screen the message,” he ordered.

  His voice sounded too loud in the encompassing silence. For an instant, bitterness woke anew. Command cabin! Control board! He told the ship where and how to go; she did the rest. And hers was a narrowly limited mind. A higher-order sophotect would not have needed anything from him. He knew of no emergency that even this craft couldn’t handle by herself, unless it be something that destroyed her utterly.

  His glance swung over the stars of the southern sky and came to a stop at Alpha Centauri. Longing shook him. Yonder they dwelt, the descendants of those who had followed Anson Guthrie to a new world, and so tremendous a voyage would scarcely be repeated ever again. From here, at least. Maybe their own descendants would find ways to farther suns. They must, if they were to outlive their doomed planet. But that wreck would not come for lifetimes yet, and meanwhile, meanwhile—

  “Pull yourself together, old fool,” Kenmuir muttered. Self-pity was contemptible. He did get to fare through space, and the worlds that swung around Sol should have grandeurs enough for any man. Let him thank Lilisaire for that.

  Wryness bent his lips upward. Gratitude was irrelevant. The Lunarians had their reasons for keeping as much human staff of both races in their space operations as possible. He, Terran, served a genuine purpose, less as a transporteer who could tolerate higher accelerations than they could than as advisor, troubleshooter, partner of the engineers whom he brought to their work. A sophotect with similar capabilities wouldn’t necessarily do better, he told himself fiercely; and if he depended on life-support systems, why, a machine had its requirements too.

  The thoughts had flashed through him in a fraction of a second. The message grabbed his attention. Its few words rammed into him. He sat for a while dumbstruck.

  Lilisaire wanted him back. At once.

  He had expected some communication about the job ahead. To read it in isolation had been an impulse, irrational, a sudden desire to escape for five or ten minutes. Such feelings grew in you on a twenty-four-month tour of duty.

  But Lilisaire wanted him straight back.

  “Easy, lad, easy,” he whispered. Put down love and lust and all other emotions entangled around her. Think. She was not calling him to her for his personal sweet sake. He could guess what the crisis might be, but not what help he might give. The matter must be grave, for her to interrupt this undertaking on which he was embarked. However mercurial some of the Lunarian magnates were, they all took their Venture most seriously. An alliance of entrepreneurs was their solitary last hope of maintaining an active presence in deep space.

  Absently, as a nearly automatic accompaniment to thought, he evoked a scan of his destination. It was now about six million kilometers away. At her present rate of braking, the ship would get there in one more daycycle.

  Magnified and enhanced, the image of the asteroid swam in the viewtank as a rough oblong lump, murky reddish, pocked with craters shadow-limned against harsh sunlight. Compared to the lesser Jovian moons where Valanndray, with Kenmuir’s assistance, had led machines in the labor of development, this was a pygmy.

  However, a robotic prospector had found resources worth extracting, not ices and organics but ferrous and actinide ores. A work gang was waiting for human direction—robots, of course, not sophotects: mindless, unaware, though versatile and adaptable. Skilled vision identified a landing field, a cluster of shelters, glints off polished metal skins.

  Nearby loomed the skeletal form of a shield generator, big enough for its electrodynamic fields to fend particle radiation not merely off a spacecraft, but off an entire mining plant. Nevertheless it was small, when he compared those that had let him visit Ganymede and return alive.

  A visit, and brief. The settlers there were sophotects, for only machines could function in such an environment and only machines that thought, that were aware, could cope with its often terrible surprises. In law the big inner satellites of Jupiter were territory of the World Federation Space Service. In practice they belonged to the cybercosm.

  Kenmuir dismissed the recollection and stood up. His heart thudded. To be with Lilisaire again, soon, soon! Well, if his feelings were like a boy’s, he could keep his words a man’s. He went back to the recreation room.

  Valanndray was still there, toying with orbital mechanics variations. He turned to confront the pilot. His face, fine-boned, ivory-pale, lifted ten centimeters above Kenmuir’s. On this crossing he had laid flamboyancy aside and clothed his litheness in a coverall; but it was of deep-blue perlux, and phosphorescent light-points blinked in the fabric. Recorded snow blew behind him, recorded wind beneath the musical voice: “So, Captain?”

  Kenmuir halted. Tall for an Earthling, he had long ceased letting Lunarian height overawe him. “A surprise. You won’t like it, I’m afraid.” He recited the message. Within him, it sang.

  Valanndray stood motionless. “In truth, a reversal,” he said at length, tonelessly. “What propose you to do?”

  “Set you off with the supplies and equipment, and make for Luna. What else?”

  “Abandonment, then.”

  “No, wait. Naturally, we’ll call in and explain the situation, if they don’t already know at headquarters.”

  The big oblique eyes narrowed. “Nay. The Federals would retrieve it and learn.”

  Irritation stirred. Kenmuir had simply wanted to be tactful. Their months together had given him an impression that his associate was in some ways, down below the haughtiness, quite woundable. Valanndray might have felt hurt that the other man was so ready to leave him behind.

  Just the same, Kenmuir had grown fired of hearing coldly hostile remarks about the World Federation, and this one was ridiculous. Granted, Lunarians had not rejoiced when their world came back under the general government of humankind. Resentment persisted in many, perhaps most, to this day. But—name of reason!—how long before they were born had the change taken place? And their wish for “independence” was flat-out wrong. What nation-states bred while they existed, as surely as contaminated water bred sickness, had been war.

  “The message went in clear because it must, if we were to read it,” Kenmuir said. “We don’t have cryptographic equipment aboard, do we? Very well, it’s in the databases now. Who cares? If somebody does notice it, will he send for the Peace Authority? I hardly think the lady Lilisaire is plotting rebellion.”

  Recognizing his sarcasm, he made haste to adopt mildness: “Yes, we’ll notify the Venture, though I daresay she has already. It ought to dispatch another ship and teammate for you. Within a week or two, I should imagine.”

  He was relieved to see no anger. Instead, Valanndray regarded the spacefarer as if studying a stranger. He saw a man drably clad, lean to the point of gauntness, with big bony hands, narrow face and jutting nose, grizzled sandy hair cut short, lines around the mouth and crow’s-feet at the gray eyes. The look made Kenmuir feel awkward. He was amply decisive when coping with nature, space, machines, but when it came to human affairs he could go abruptly shy.

  “The lords of the Venture will be less than glad,” Valanndray said.

  Kenmuir shaped a smile. “That’s obvious. Upset plans, extra cost.” When everything was marginal to begin with, he thought. The associated companies and colonists didn’t really compete with the Space Service and its sophotects. They couldn’t. What kept them going was, basically, subsidy, from the former aristocratic families and from lesser Lunarians who traded with them out of Lunarian pride. And stil
l their enterprises were dying away, dwindling like the numbers of the Lunarians themselves. …

  He forced matter-of-factness: “But the lady Lilisaire, she’s a power among them, maybe more than you or I know.” His pulse hammered anew.

  Valanndray spread his fingers. A Terran would have shrugged shoulders. “She can prevail over them, yes. Go you shall, Captain.”

  “I, I’m sorry,” Kenmuir said.

  “You are not,” Valanndray retorted. “You could protest this order. But nay, go you will and at higher thrust than a single Earth gravity.”

  Why that grim displeasure? He and Kenmuir had shaken down into an efficient partnership, which included getting along with one another’s peculiarities. A newcomer would need time to adjust. But the Earthman felt something else was underlying.

  Jealousy, that Lilisaire wanted Kenmuir and not him, though Kenmuir was an alien employee and Valanndray kin to her, a member of her phyle? How well the pilot knew that tomcat Lunarian vanity; how well he had learned to steer clear of it.

  Or a different kind of jealousy? Kenmuir pushed the question away. Just once had Valanndray seemed to drop an erotic hint. Kenmuir prompely changed the subject, and it arose no more. Quite possibly he had misunderstood. Who of his species had ever seen the inmost heart of a Lunarian? In any case, they had a quivira to ease them. Kenmuir did not know what pseudo-experiences Valanndray induced for himself in the dream box, nor did the Earthman talk about his own.

  “If you loathe the idea, you can come back with me,” he said. “You’re entitled.” On the Moon, obligations between underlings and overlings had their strength, but it was the strength of a river, form and force incessantly changeable.

  Valanndray shook his head. Long platinum locks fell aside from ears that were not convoluted like Kenmuir’s. “Nay. I have sunken my mind in yonder asteroid for weeks, hypertext, simulations, the whole of available knowledge about it. None can readily replace me. Were I to forsake it, that would leave the Federation so much the richer, so much the more powerful, than my folk.”

  Kenmuir recalled conversations they had had, and dealings he had had with others, on Luna, Mars, the worldlets of the Belt, moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Few they were, those Lunarian spacefarers and colonists, reckoned against Terrankind. Meager their wealth was, reckoned against that which the machines held in the name of Terrankind. But if they leagued in anger and raised all the resources at their beck, it could bring a catastrophe like none that history knew.

  No, hold on. He was being fantastical. Ignore Valanndray’s last words. No revolt was brewing. War was a horror of the far past, like disease. “That’s right loyal of you,” Kenmuir replied.

  “I hold my special vision of the future,” Valanndray told him. “Come the time, I want potency in council. Here I gain a part of it.” The admission was thoroughly Lunarian. “I regret losing your help, in this final phase of our tour; but go, Captain, go.”

  “Uh, whatever the reason the lady’s recalling me, it must be good. For the good of—of Luna—”

  Valanndray laughed. Kenmuir flushed. The good of Luna? Hardly a Lunarian concept. At most, the good of the phyle. Still, that could entail benefit for the entire race.

  “As for me,” Valanndray said, “I will think on this. We can finish our game later. Until evenwatch, Captain.” He laid right palm on left breast, courtesy salute, and strolled out the door.

  Kenmuir stood a while alone. Lilisaire, Lilisaire!

  But why did she want unimportant him at her side?

  Because of the Habitat? Remote and preoccupied as he had been, he had caught only fugitive mentions of that project. It seemed the Federation government was definitely going to go through with it. That would rouse fury on Luna—a feat of engineering that would make mass immigration from Earth possible—but what in the manifold cosmos could he do?

  What should he do? He was no rebel, no ideologue, nothing but a plain and peaceful man who worked in the Venture of Luna because it had some berths for Terrans who would rather be out among the stars than anywhere else.

  Let him shoot a beam to Ceres and ask for an update on Solar System news, with special reference to the Habitat.

  No. A chill traversed him. That call, hard upon what had just passed, might draw notice. Or it might not. But if the cybercosm, ceaselessly scanning its databases in search of significant correlations, turned this one up—

  Then what? He did not, repeat not, intend anything illegal.

  Still, best if he didn’t get that update. Wait till he reached Luna, maybe till he and Lilisaire were secluded.

  Kenmuir realized that he was bound for his stateroom.

  To reach it felt almost like a homecoming. This space was his, was him. Most of his recreations he pursued elsewhere, handball in the gym, figurine sculpture in the workshop, whatever. Here he went to be himself. From the ship’s database he retrieved any books and dramas, music and visual art, that he wished. He thought his thoughts and relived his memories, uninterrupted, unseen if maybe he breathed a name or beat a fist into an open hand. A few flat pictures clung to the bulkheads. They showed the Highland moor of his childhood; the Grand Canyon of the Colorado as photographed by him; his parents, years dead; Dagny Beynac, centuries dead. …

  From a cabinet he took a bottle and poured a short brandy. He wasn’t given to solitary drinking, or indulgence in glee or brainstir or other intoxicants. He severely rationed both his time in the quivira and the adventures he dreamed there. He had learned the hard way that he must. Now, though, he wanted to uncoil.

  He took his chair, leaned back, put feet on desk. The position was more relaxing under full Earth weight. Yes, bound for Luna, he would most certainly go at that acceleration or better. Lilisaire’s words implied he was free to squander the energy. So he wouldn’t need the centrifuge to maintain muscle tone. Of course, he would keep up his martial arts and related exercises. As for the rest of his hours, he could read, play some favorite classic shows, and—and, right now, call up Bach’s Second Brandenburg Concerto. His tastes ran to the antique.

  As the notes marched forth, as the liquor smoldered across tongue and into bloodstream, his eyes sought the portrait of Dagny Beynac and lingered. Always her figure had stood heroic before him. He wasn’t sure why. Oh, he knew what she did, he had read three biographies and found remembrances everywhere on Luna; but others had also been great. Was it her association with Anson Guthrie? Or was it, in part, that she resembled his mother a little?

  For the thousandth time, he considered her. The picture had been taken when she was in early middle age. She stood tall for an Earthborn woman, 180 centimeters, against the background of a conservatory where flowers grew extravagant under Lunar gravity. A sari and shawl clothed a form robust, erect, deepbosomed. He knew from recordings that her gait was free-striding. Her features were a bit too strong for conventional beauty, broad across the high cheekbones, with slightly curved nose, full mouth, and rounded chin. Eyes wide-set and sea-blue looked straight from beneath hair that was thick and red, with overtones of bronze and gold, in bangs across the forehead and waves down to the jawline. After half a lifespan of sun and weather and radiation, her skin remained fair. He had heard her voice. It was low, with a trace of burr—“whisky tenor,” she called it.

  If her spirit, like Guthrie’s, had stayed in the world until this day, what might the two of them not have wrought? But no, she ordered oblivion for herself. And she knew best. Surely, in her wisdom, she did.

  Hard to believe that once she too was young, confused, helpless. Kenmuir found his imagination slipping pastward, as if he could see her then. It was a refuge from the present and the future. In the teeth of all fact and logic, he felt himself headed for worse trouble than anybody awaited.

  2

  The Mother of the Moon

  It was always something of an event, reported in the local news media, when Anson and Juliana Guthrie visited Aberdeen, Washington. Self-made billionaires weren’t an everyday sight, especially in
a small seaport, twice especially after the lumbering that had been the mainstay of adjacent Hoqu am dwindled away. Not that this pair made a production of their status. On the contrary, they took ordinary accommodations and throughout a stay—usually brief, for their business would recall them—they avoided public appearances as much as possible. Dignitaries and celebrities who tried for their company got more or less politely brushed off. Instead, the Guthries were together with the Stambaughs and, later, the Ebbesens. This too caused wonderment. What could they have in common with people who worked hard to earn a humble living?

  “We hit it off, we enjoy each other, that’s all,” Guthrie once told a reporter. “My wife and I aren’t silver-spoon types either, you know. Our backgrounds aren’t so different from these folks’. We’ve known ’em for years now, and old friends are best, like old shoes, eh?” Those friends said much the same to anyone who asked. The community learned to accept the situation. As the political climate changed, envy of them diminished.

  The relationship came to seem truly remarkable when the Guthries bet all they had on the Bowen laser launcher and founded Fireball Enterprises. Their failure would have been almost as spectacular as their success was, if less meaningful. But after seven years their company dominated space activity near Earth and was readying ships to go harvest the wealth of the Solar System. Nevertheless they returned to Aberdeen every once in a while and were guests in the same small houses.

  At last they even invited young Dagny Ebbesen to come along with them up the coast for a little vacation. Centuries later, Ian Kenmuir could conjecture more shrewdly than her neighbors ever did what the real reason was and what actually went on.

  In the beginning the girl drew strength and comfort more from the woman. Toward the end, though, Juliana drew her husband aside and murmured, “She needs to talk privately with you. Take her for a walk. A long one.”