Donnan rallied his nerve. “Thanks, my captain,” he said. “But we can’t take that.”
“What?” Hlott dropped a hand to the light axe at his waist. The Dragar leaned forward in their chairs. A hiss of indrawn breath went down their rank.
“We came as free people, freely offering our services,” Donnan said. “We didn’t come to be domesticated. Give us what we need and we’ll fight for you. Otherwise, good-by.”
Hlott gnawed his lip. “You dare—” began a noble. Hlott shushed him and shrugged elaborately.
“Good-by,” he said.
“My captain.” Ger Nenna bowed low. “Unworthy, I pray your indulgence. Grant these folk their wish.”
“Give them warships? Our painfully gathered intelligence of the enemy? These novices that never saw a space battle?” Hlott snorted an obscenity.
“My captain,” said Ger, “these novices, as you call them, were not content to read texts and hear third-hand accounts of the Galaxy. They set out for themselves. They have been to farther and stranger places than any Vorlakka skipper. They are no novices.
“Furthermore, their planet was in constant upheaval for nigh a century. My captain will recall what the Russians told us about guerrilla operations, border clashes, crafty international maneuverings. They understand war, these males who are your guests. They need only a little technical instruction. Thereafter . . . my captains hazard a ship or two. The Earthmen hazard not only their own lives, which of course are nothing, but conceivably the last life of their race. What Vorlakka would dare do likewise, with the spirits of his ancestors watching?”
Taken aback, Hlott said, “Well . . . even so—”
“A slime worm like myself may not remind my captains of their duty,” Ger said. “And yet, does not the honor of a Draga require him to grant each person his own inalienable right? Food and protection to the groundling, justice and leadership to the crew member, respect to the colleague, deference to the Overmaster.
“These folk, who are freeborn, have come to be revenged on Kandemir, which murdered their planet—a murder so enormous that the hardest Draga must stand aghast. Vengeance is a right as well as a duty. Can the Dragar deny these wronged folk their right?”
The fire roared angrily on the hearth.
After a long while, Hlott nodded. “This is so. You shall have your right, Carl Donnan.” With sudden, gusty good humor: “Who knows, you may deal Kandemir a strong blow. Bring him a chair, you scuts! Fill him a goblet. We’ll drink to that!”
SOME time later, not altogether steady on his feet, Donnan left to return to his spaceboat. Ger Nenna accompanied him and Ramri.
The hall’s noise and brightness fell behind them as they walked downhill. The coppery shield of the moon, two degrees wide, was dropping swiftly horizonward, but the island was still flooded by its light, icy, unreal, as if frost lay on the jungle behind and the beach in front, as if the docked submarines and seaplanes floated in a bath of mercury. Surf flamed white on the reef. The ocean churned and glowed beyond. Overhead the sky was strange. Nearly two hundred light-years from Earth, in the direction of Scorpio, the stars drew enigmatic pictures across the dark. Brightest among them, Antares burned blood red.
The wind, wet and pungent in his face, sobered Donnan.
“I didn’t have a chance to thank you before, Ger Nenna,” he said. “Pardon me, but why did you help us? Your own class, the scholars, don’t believe in revenge, do they?”
“No,” said the black-robed one. “But we believe in justice. And . . . I think the Galaxy has need of your race.”
“Thanks,” Donnan mumbled.
He began to understand why the Overmaster’s representatives were respected. Partly, to be sure, they symbolized the golden age, the Eternal Peace which Vorlak remembered so wistfully. But partly, too, they embodied wisdom. And the Dragar were at least wise enough collectively to feel the lack of wisdom in themselves.
“You jumped to conclusions, though,” Donnan said. “I’m not entirely convinced Kandemir is guilty.”
“Why, then, did you come here to fight against them, if I may presume to ask?”
“Well, we need employment. And I don’t have any special compunctions about helping to stop them.”
“You could have found safer employment, however, for your remnants. A factory job, such as was offered you.”
“Yeh. Nice, humble obscurity.” Donnan tamped his pipe, struck a light and fumed into the wind. “I don’t believe we’re the last survivors of our species. If we are, then our getting killed won’t matter anyway; but I refuse to believe we are. I think a few other human ships must be scattered through the Galaxy. If they haven’t yet returned to the Solar System, they should be warned against doing so, or the missiles there may clobber them. If they have already come back, and escaped, as we did, obviously they haven’t gone to some planet in H this cluster. How can we get word I to them?
“I figure one way is to make I such a hooraw that the tale will I go from end to end of the Galaxy. I “There’s some intercluster I travel, after all. Not much, but I some. Doubtless the news that a whole planet has been wiped out I is already circulating. But over so much space and time and ignorance, people’ll soon forget which one, or even where it is.
“What I’d like to do is produce a sensation they won’t forget and won’t garble too much. I don’t know exactly what. Something about a footloose crew of bipeds who got their planet kicked out from under them and are raising the roof about it in this specific cluster. I hope that eventually the other human ships will hear the yarn and understand.”
He laughed, a short metallic bark in the wind and moonlight.
“A war is a good chance to make a splash,” he finished. “And here we’ve got a war ready made!”
VI
Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming.
—Isaiah, xiv, 9
THE hot F6 dwarf that was Kandemir’s sun lay about 175 light-years from Vorlak, northward and clockwise. Although its third planet was somewhat heavier than Earth, the intense irradiation had thinned and dried the atmosphere. Even so, a man who took precautions against ultraviolet could live on Kandemir and eat most of the Kandemirian food.
History there had taken an unusual course. Vast fertile plains fostered the growth of one continent of a nomadic society which conquered the sedentary peoples. This was not like cases on Earth when barbaric wanderers overran a civilization. On Kandemir, the nomads were the higher culture, those who invented animal domestication, writing, super-tribal government and machine technology. The cities became mere appendages, where helots labored at the tasks such as mining which could not move about with the seasons.
When the nomads learned how to cross Kandemir’s small, shallow oceans, their way of life soon dominated the world. Warfare and economic competition between their hordes spurred the advent of an industrial revolution. But gunpowder, steam engines, and mass production shifted the balance. Nomad society could not readily assimilate them; it developed strains. A century ago, Kandemir had become as chaotic as the last years of Earth.
Then explorers from T’sjuda came upon the planet and began to trade.
Numerous Kandemirians went to space as students, workers, and mercenary soldiers—for T’sjuda, like Xo and some other powers, was not above occasional imperialism on backward planets. The Kandemirians returned home with new ideas for revitalizing their old culture. Under Ashchiza the Great, the Erzhuat Horde forced unification on Kandemir and launched a feverish program of modernization: but a modernization adapted to their nomad lives. The cybernetic machine replaced the helot, the spaceship replaced the wagon, the clans became the crews of distinct fleets.
Soon Kandemirian merchants and adventurers swarmed through space. Yet their tradition bound them to the mother world, where they returned for those seasonal rites of kinship that corresponded in them to a religion. Thus the Grand Lord remained able to command their continued allegiance.
AS time pas
sed, their habits (which others interpreted as cruelty, arrogance and greed) brought them ever more often into conflict with primitive races. These were easy prey. But this, increasingly, caused trouble with advanced worlds such as T’sjuda, who had staked out claims of their own. Action and reaction spiraled into open battle on the space frontiers.
Defeated at first, Kandemir resurged so violently that its enemies asked for terms. The peace settlement was harsh. In effect, the one-time teachers of the nomads became their vassals.
The little empire which thus more or less happened in the time of Ashchiza’s son, began to grow more rapidly under his grandson Ferzhakan. Decentralized and flexible, nomadic overlordship was well suited to the needs of interstellar government; the empire worked. For glory, wealth, and protection—most especially to gain the elbow room which Kandemirian civilization required in ever greater quantities, for space traffic as well as for the gigantic planetary estates of its chieftains—the empire must expand. Ferzhakan dreamed of ultimate hegemony over this entire spiral arm.
His policy soon brought an opposing coalition into existence. This was dominated by the Vorlakka Dragar, who also had far-flung interests. The nomad fleet was stopped at the Battle of Gresh. But that fight was a draw. Neither side could make further headway.
The war settled down to years of raids, advances and retreats, flareups and stalemates, throughout the space between the two planets. Well off to one side, Monwaing and her daughters maintained what was officially an armed neutrality, in practice an assistance and encouragement of Vorlak.
The other independent, space-traveling races in the cluster were too weak to make much difference.
The nearest strong Kandemirian base to Vorlak was forty light-years off, at a star the Vorlakkar called Mayast. As his borrowed destroyer slipped from the last interference fringe and accelerated inward on paragrav, Donnan saw it burn blue-white in the forward viewscreen. Like a fire balloon to starboard, the biggest planet of the system glowed among specks that were moons.
Howard, now chief navigator, swung his scopes and poised fingers over the calculator keyboard. “No,” said Ramri, “the declination is eleven point four two degrees—” He broke off. “You are right. I was wrong. Forgive me.”
Even in that moment, Donnan grinned. Despite his wide experience, Ramri could still get number systems confused. It was more than the different planets using different symbols; the mathematics varied intrinsically. The Monwaingi based their arithmetic on six. But this was a Vorlakka ship, whose ten-fingered builders used a decimal system like Earth’s.
Howard ignored the avian, but Olak Faarer, the Draga observer, scowled and recomputed the fix for himself. He made no bones about doubting the competence of the fifty Terrestrials who had taken over the Hrunna. They had demonstrated their skill after a month of lessons, as well as on the days of their voyage hither. But the Vorlakka aristocrat remained scornful of them.
AS far as that goes, Donnan reflected, the rest of the boys, waiting back on the Franklin in orbit around Vorlak, didn’t look any too confident in us. Does seem like a hare-brained stunt at that. One lone destroyer, to punch through these defenses, approach so close to the enemy base that they can’t stop our missile barrage, and then get away unsinged! When the Vorlakkar have been trying for a decade . . .
He looked at Goldspring. “Anything registered yet?” he asked.
Foolish question, he realized at once. He’d be told the moment that haywired instrument over which the physicist was crouched gave a wiggle. But damn it, you could talk as big as you pleased: when you sailed to battle your heart still banged and you wanted a beer in the worst way. Silliness was excusable.
“N-no. I’m not sure. Wait. Wait a minute.”
In one minute, at forty gravities’ acceleration, the Hrunna added better than fourteen miles per second to an already tremendous velocity. Goldspring nodded. “Yes. Two moving sources over in that direction.”
He read of the coordinates. Donnan tapped a few pilot keys, spinning the ship about and applying full thrust orthogonally to her path. After three or four minutes, Goldspring nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “We’re beyond range.”
Howard studied the integrated data on his meters and punched out a new set of vectors on the control board. The ship had never actually departed from her sunward plunge—so high a velocity was not soon killed—but she began a modification of path, correcting for the previous force, so as to rendezvous with Mayast III according to plan.
Olak Faarer glided across the bridge and gazed at the steady oscilloscope trace on Goldspring’s instrument. “What were they, those objects you detected?” he asked. “Ships, unmanned patrol missiles or what?”
“I don’t know,” Goldspring said. “My gizmo isn’t that good . . . yet. I only know they were sources of modulated paragravitic force, at such-and-such a distance, velocity, and acceleration. In other words, they were something running under power.” He added dryly, “We may assume that anything under power in this system is dangerous.”
“So is anything in free fall,” Olak grumbled.
“OH, Lord,” Donnan groaned.
“How often must I tell you—um-m-m—that is, surely my honorable colleague understands that at such speed as we’ve got, nothing which doesn’t have a velocity comparable in both magnitude and direction is likely to be able to do much about us.”
“Yes, yes,” Olak said stiffly. “I have had your device explained to me often enough. A paragrav detector with unprecedented sensitivity. I admit it is a good instrument.”
“Only the first of a long series of instruments,” Goldspring promised. “And weapons. My staff and I have barely begun to explore the possibilities opened by our new theory of space-time-energy relationships. The workers on the Franklin may already have a surprise for us when we get home.”
“Perhaps,” Olak said with impatience. “Nonetheless! I did not say anything hitherto, lest I be thought a coward. But now that we are irrevocably committed, I tell you frankly that this trusting our lives to a single handmade prototype of a single minor invention is utter foolishness.”
Donnan sighed. “I’ve argued this out a thousand times with a hundred Dragar,” he said. “I thought you were listening. Okay, then, I’ll explain again.
“Arn’s gadget there doesn’t merely respond to paragrav waves like the ordinary detector. It generates microwaves of its own, and thus it can use interferometric principles. The result is, it can spot other ships twice as far and three times as accurately as the best conventional instrument.
“Well, if we’re aware of the enemy long before they can detect us, we can take evasive action and stay beyond their own instrumental range. Your previous raids here failed because the system is so thick with patrol ships and orbital missiles. Your squadrons were homed on before they got near the base planet. But by the time we today get so close they can’t help spotting us, we’ll also be traveling too fast to intercept. So will the torps we launch. We’ll zip right through their inner defenses, wipe out their fort, and reach the opposite interference fringe before they’ve had time to sneeze.”
Olak had bristled with increasing indignation as Donnan’s insulting resume of what everyone knew proceeded. The Draga flashed teeth. “I am not a cub, colleague,” he growled. “I have heard this many times before.”
“Then may I beg my honored colleague to act as if he had?” Donnan murmured.
Olak clapped a hand to his sidearm. Donnan locked eyes with him. After a few seconds that quivered, the Draga gave way. He stamped over to the port screen and glared out at the stars.
DONNAN permitted himself a moment of untensing. That had been a near thing. These otter-faced samurai had tempers like mercury fulminate. But he had to get the moral jump on them. Eventually they must become his allies—or the tale of the last Earthmen would not be colorful enough to cross the Galaxy.
And the best means of putting them down, however dangerous, seemed to be to outpride them.
/> “Hold it!” Goldspring rattled off a series of figures. Donnan and Howard modified course again.
“That one’s up ahead, right?” Donnan asked.
“Yes.” Goldspring tugged his beard. “May have been looking for us.”
“I thought I picked up a trace a few minutes ago,” said Wells at the radar. “I didn’t mention it, because it was gone again right away. Could have been an automatic spy station . . . which could have alerted yonder ship.”
Donnan nodded.
Everybody had realized nothing could be done about that. Black-painted, solar-powered, of negligible mass, a detector station in orbit could not be avoided by the Hrunna. Any ship which passed close would be spotted by its instruments and a warning would be beamcast to the nearest patrol unit. Spaceships would then go looking for the stranger. However, Donnan expected to detect those searchers in ample time to elude their own instruments.
Still, he wished a station had not blabbed so early in the game. Perhaps the Kandemirians were even more thorough about their defenses than Vorlakka intelligence had indicated.
He got out his pipe and reached for his pouch. But no. Better not. Almost out of tobacco. Ration yourself, son, till you can locate a substitute somewhere . . . The thought led him to wine grapes, and horses, and Alison, and every beloved thing that would not exist again. He chewed savagely on the cold pipe.
THE destroyer flung herself onward. Men swapped a few words, attempted jokes, shifted at their posts and stared at their weapons. On the gun deck Yule, whom Donnan had pardoned for the murder of Bowman but whom no one quite trusted any longer, huddled against his torpedo tube as if the launching coils were his mother. Up on the bridge, Ramri and the standby navigator played chess. Slowly the blue sun swelled in the screens. Ever more often, the ship moved crabwise to evade being detected.
The Day After Doomsday Page 6