The Day After Doomsday

by Poul Anderson

  Until:

  “That vessel registering now is running very nearly parallel to us, at about the same speed and acceleration,” Goldspring computed. “We’ll enter the effective range of his instruments before long.”

  “Can’t avoid him, eh?” Donnan said.

  “No. The enemy craft have gotten too thick. See, if we dodge this way we’ll run smack into this cluster of boats—” Goldspring pointed to a chart he was maintaining—“and if we deviate very far in the other direction, we’ll be spied by that large craft yonder. And he could loose quite a barrage, I’m sure. We’ll do best to hold our present vector and take our chances with the ship I just mentioned.”

  “Hm, I dunno. If his own vectors are so similar to ours—”

  “Not similar enough. He’d have to accelerate at thirty gees to get really near us. And he’s a cruiser, at least, judging from the power of his emission. A cruiser can’t do thirty.”

  “A cruiser’s torpedoes can do a hundred!”

  “I know. He probably will fire at us. But according to my data, with our improved detection capability, we’ll have sighting information at least ten seconds in advance of his. So our broadside will intercept his completely—nothing will get through—at a distance of half a kilomile.”

  “Well,” Donnan sighed, “I’ll take your word for it. This was bound to happen sooner or later.”

  Olak’s eyes filmed and his nostrils flared. “I had begun to fear we would see no combat on this mission,” he said.

  “That would’a suited me fine,” Donnan answered. “Space war’s too hard on my nerves. A bareknuckle brawl is kinda fun, but this sitting and watching while a bunch of robots do your fighting for you, feels too damned helpless . . . Steady as she goes, then.”

  They weren’t very far from the planet, he told himself. In another hour they could discharge their missiles. But that hour might get a bit rough.

  Gunnery was out of his department. His officers’ orders barked in his awareness, but he paid little attention. Hands loose on the pilot board, he thought mostly about Earth. There had been a girl once, not Alison, though Alison’s lips had also been sweet . . . Sparks flared and died among the stars.

  “One, two, three, four,” Goldspring counted. “Five, six!”

  “No more?” Ramri asked from the chessboard.

  “No. Nothing more registers. We intercepted his whole barrage. And we’ve three torps left over that are still moving. They just might zero in on that fellow.”

  “Excellent,” said Ramri. He tapped the sweating man who sat across the board from him. “Your move, Lieutenant . . . Lieutenant! Do you feel all right?”

  Wells yelled. Donnan didn’t stop to look. He crammed on a full sideways vector. Engines roared. Too late! For a bare instant, the sternward screen showed him the heavy, clumsy object that darted from low larboard.

  Then the deck rolled beneath him. He saw it split open. A broken girder drove upward and sheared the head off Ramri’s chess partner.

  Blood geysered. The crash of explosion struck like a fist in the skull. Donnan was hurled against his safety web. Olak Faarer, who had not been seated, cartwheeled past him, smashed into the panel and bounced back, grotesquely flopping. Paragrav was gone; weightlessness became an endless tumble, through smoke and screams, thunderous echoes, the hiss of escaping atmosphere. Blood drops danced in the air, impossibly red.

  The screens went blank. The lights went out. Too weak to be felt as such, the pseudogravity of the ship’s lunatic spin sent wreckage crawling within the smashed hull.

  End over end, the ruin whirled on a hyperbolic orbit toward the blue sun.

  VII

  Then endure for a while, and live for a happier day.

  —Virgil

  PRISONER!

  He had been one twice before, on a vag rap in some Arkansas tank town and then, years afterward, when a bunch of Chinese “volunteers” overran the Burmese valley where he was building a dam. But Donnan didn’t care to think about either occasion now. At their worst, those jails had stood on a green and peopled Earth.

  The sky overhead was like incandescent brass. He couldn’t look near the sun. Squinting against its lightning-colored glare, he saw the horizon waver with mirage. A furnace wind sucked moisture from skin and nose; he heard its monotonous roar as

  background to the crunch of boot-soles on gravel.

  And yet this was not a desert. Clusters of serpentine branches with leathery brown fringes rose thickly on every side, tossing and snapping in the blast. Overhead glided a kite-shaped animal whose skin glittered as if strewn with mica. The same glint was on the scales of the natives, who otherwise looked more like giant four-legged spiders with quadruple eyes and tentacular arms than anything else. No doubt they found this environment pleasant, as did the Kandemirian platoon to whom they kowtowed.

  Donnan had rarely felt so alone.

  Failure, the death of ten men who trusted him and the captivity of forty others, had been horrible in him since the moment the enemy frigate laid alongside and the boarding party entered. There wasn’t much the humans could have done except surrender, of course. Their ship was a hulk; only spacesuits kept them alive, few even had a sidearm. They shambled to the other craft and waited apathetically in irons while they were ferried to Mayast 11.

  And now some big cheese wants to interrogate me himself, Donnan thought dully. How can I breathe the same air as Earth’s murderers?

  THE beehive native huts which straggled around the fortifications were left behind as the platoon passed a steel gate and entered a mountainous concrete dome. The warren inside was unimportant, Donnan knew, frosting on the cake. The real base was buried deep in the planet’s crust. Even so, his barrage could have wrecked it; if—

  Activity hummed around him, tall Kandemirian forms striding with tools and weapons and papers down rubbery-floored corridors, offices where they squatted before legless desks under the arching leaves of uzhurun plants. They did not speak unnecessarily. The stillness was uncanny after the booming wind outside. Their odor overwhelmed him, acrid and animal.

  He must concede they were handsome. A seven-foot humanoid with exaggerated breadth of shoulders and slenderness of waist looked idealized rather than grotesque. So did the nearly perfect ovoid of the head, its curve hardly broken by wide greenish-blue eyes with slit pupils, tiny nose, the peculiarly human and sensitive lips. Behind the large, pointed ears, a great ruff of hair framed the face. Otherwise the skin was glabrous, silken smooth; the mobile twin tendrils on the upper lip were scent organs. The hands were also humanoid, in spite of having six fingers and jet-black nails. The dignified appearance was enhanced by austere form-fitting clothes in subdued colors. Against this, the blazons of rank and birth stood startlingly forth.

  Donnan felt dumpy in their presence. He straightened his shoulders. So what, by God!

  A door, above which was painted a giant eye, flew open. The guard platoon halted, not stiffly and with clattering heels as Earth’s soldiers had been wont, but gliding to a partial crouch. Each touched to his head the stubby barrel of his cyclic rifle. Someone whistled within. The leader nudged Donnan forward. The door closed behind him.

  One guard stood in a corner, watchful. Otherwise the room’s only occupant was a middle-aged officer whose clan badge carried the pentacle of supreme nobility. He belonged to that Kandemirian race whose skin was pale gold and whose ruff was red. A scar seamed one cheek.

  Still squatting, he smiled up at Donnan. “Greeting, shipmaster,” he said in fluent Uru. “I bid you welcome.” He arched naked brows with a most human sardonicism. “If you choose to accept my sentiments.”

  DONNAN nodded curtly and lowered himself tailor fashion to the floor. The Kandemirian touched a button on his desk. “You see Tarkamat of Askunzhol, who speaks for the Baikush Clan and for the field command of the Grand Fleet,” he said without pretentiousness.

  Almost, Donnan himself whistled. The high admiral in person, director of combat operations alo
ng the whole Vorlakka front! “I had no idea . . . we’d be of this much interest,” he managed to say. “Uh—”

  A silver plate in the desktop slid back and a tray emerged with two cups of some hot liquid. “What records about your species I could find in the files of this base,” Tarkamat said, “mention that indak will not hurt you. In fact, many of you find—found the beverage pleasant.”

  Automatically, Donnan reached for a cup. No! He yanked his hand back as if scalded.

  Tarkamat made a purring noise that might correspond to laughter. “Believe me, if I wished you drugged, I would order that done. What I offer you with the indak is the status of . . . no, not quite a guest, but more than a captive. Drink.”

  Donnan began to shake. He fought back tears, but needed a while before he could stammer, “I, I, I’ll be damned if I’ll . . . take anything . . . from you! From any murdering sneak of a Kandemir-

  The soldier tilted his rifle and growled. Tarkamat hushed him with a soft trill. For a moment the admiral studied his prisoner, scarred, alien countenance enigmatic.

  Then, very quietly, he said: “Do you believe my folk annihilated yours? But you are wrong. We had no part in that deed.”

  “Who did then?” Donnan shouted. He started to rise, fists knotted, but sank down again and struggled for breath.

  The red-ruffed head wove back and forth. “I do not know, shipmaster. Our intelligence service has made some effort to learn who is responsible, but thus far has failed. Vorlak seems the likeliest possibility.”

  “No.” Donnan gulped toward a degree of self-possession. “I was there. They showed me proof they were innocent.”

  “What proof?”

  “A treaty—” Donnan stopped. “Ah, so. Between themselves and some Terrestrial nation? Yes, we knew about that, from various sources.” Tarkamat made a negligent gesture. “We feel quite sure that none of the minor independent powers, such as Xo, struck at Earth. They lack both resources and motive.”

  “WHO’S left but Kandemir, then?” Donnan’s voice was jagged and strange in his own ears. “Earth—one nation of Earth, at least—was helping your enemies; that’s motive. And the Solar System is patrolled by your robot missiles. I took photographs.”

  “So did we,” Tarkamat answered imperturbably. “We sent an expedition there to look about when we heard the news. It was also attacked. But the Mark IV Quester is, frankly, not the best weapon of its type. Hundreds have been captured by foreign powers, enemy and neutral, through being disabled or having their computers jammed or simply because their warheads were duds. Someone who wished to blacken our name—and has, in fact, succeeded, because few people believe our denials—such a party could have accumulated those missiles for the purpose. Please note, too, that the Mark IV is not ordinarily as slow and awkward as those encountered in the Solar System. Does that not suggest they were deliberately throttled down, to make sure that there would be escapees to carry the tale?”

  “Or to give your propaganda exactly the argument you’ve just given me,” Donnan growled. “You can’t sweep under the rug that the treaty between Russia and Vorlak gave you reason to destroy Earth.”

  “Then why have we not made a similar attempt on Monwaing?” Tarkamat countered. “They, in their alleged neutrality, have been more useful to the Vorlakka cause for a much longer time than one country on Earth supplying a few shiploads of small arms.”

  He lifted his head superciliously. “We have refrained, not from squeamishness, but because the effort would be out of proportion to the result. Especially since a living planet is far more valuable to us in the long run. We could not colonize a Monwaingi world without sterilizing it first; but despite the cooler sun, we could have planted ourselves firmly on Earth . . . if we chose . . . when we got around to it. The biochemistries are enough alike.”

  HIS tone hardened: “Do not imagine your world, or any country on it, amounted to anything militarily. Had that one nation, that Ro-si-ya or whatever it was called, had it proven a serious annoyance, do you know what we would have done? If simple threats would not make them desist, we would have used the tried and true process which has gained Kandemir easy dominion over five other backward planets. We would have sent a mission to the Terrestrial rivals of Ro-si-ya, pointed out how strong she was becoming in relation to them, and made them our own cat’s paws. Why expend good Kandemirian lives to conquer Earth when the Earthlings themselves would have done half the work for us?”

  Donnan bit his lip. He hated to admit how the argument struck home. What he remembered of human history told him how often a foreign invader had entered as the ally of one local faction. Romans in Greece, Saxons in Britain, English in Ireland and India, Spaniards in Mexico—If I forget thee, O Jerusalem!

  “Very clever,” he said. “Have you any actual proof?”

  Tarkamat smiled. “Who is interrogating whom, shipmaster? Accept my word or not, as you choose. Frankly, the clans care little what others think of them. However,” he added more seriously, “we are not fiends. Look about you with unprejudiced eyes. Our overlordship may seem harsh at times. And it is in fact, when our interests so require. But our proconsuls are not meddlesome. They respect ancient usage. The subject peoples gain protection and share in the prosperity of an ever-widening free trade sphere. We do not drain their wealth. If anything, they live better than the average Kandemirian.”

  Harking back over what he had learned, Donnan must needs nod. The Spartan virtues of the nomads did include governmental honesty.

  “You forget one thing,” he said. “They aren’t free any longer.”

  “So your culture would claim,” Tarkamat replied with sudden brutality. “But your culture is dead. What use can sentimentalism be to you? Make the best of your situation.”

  “I’m sentimental enough not to collaborate with whoever killed my people,” Donnan snapped.

  “I told you Kandemir did not. Your opinion is of insufficient importance to me for me to belabor that subject further. A handful of rootless mercenaries like yourselves hardly seem worth keeping prisoner, even. Except . . . for the astonishingly deep penetration you made of our defenses. I want to know how that was done.”

  “Luck. You got us in the end, after all.”

  “By using a new device we had been reserving for the next major battle.”

  “I CAN guess what that was,” Donnan said, hoping to postpone the real unpleasantness. (Why? he wondered. What did it matter? What did anything matter? ) “Missiles, like ships, operate on paragrav these days, to get the range and acceleration that it offers. So countermissiles are equipped with paragrav detectors.

  They home on the engines of a target object. Only if the engine is switched off do they use radar, infrared and other shorter-range equipment. Well, you used a big paragrav job to match vectors with our ship. We spotted it easily. But it didn’t try to zero on us. It ran parallel instead, and released a flight—not of regular torps, but of rockets. We weren’t on the lookout for anything so outmoded. Over that short distance, an atomic-powered ion drive could rendezvous with us. We didn’t know it was there till too late to dodge.”

  “Actually, you were hit by only one rocket out of several,” Tarkamat confessed. “But one suffices. You would have been blown to gas, had our anxiety to know your secret not made us preset the warheads for minimal blast.”

  “There is no secret.” Donnan felt sweat gather in his armpits and trickle down his ribs. Before him wavered the image of Goldspring, half stunned, bleeding in the face, elbowing aside the wreckage and the dead that bobbed around him, by flashbeam light ripping and hammering his detector into shapelessness while the enemy frigate closed in.

  “There most certainly is,” Tarkamat stated flatly. “Statistical analysis of what course data we have for you strongly suggests you were able to detect us at unprecedented distances. Our own best paragrav instruments are crowding the theoretical limit of sensitivity. Therefore you employed some new principle. This in turn may conceivably lead to entire new
classes of weapons. I do not intend to play games, shipmaster. I presume you have no great emotional attachment to Vorlak, but some to your crew. One crewman per day will be executed before your eyes until you agree to collaborate. The method of execution I have in mind takes several hours.”

  I expected something like this, Donnan thought. Coldness and grayness drowned his spirit. As if from immensely far away, he heard Tarkamat continue:

  “If you cooperate, you can expect good treatment. You will be settled on a congenial planet. Any other humans who may be found can join you there. An able species like yours can surely fit itself into the framework set by the imperium. But I warn you against treachery. You will be allowed to build and demonstrate your devices, but under the close supervision of our own physicists, to whom the principles involved must be explained beforehand. Since I presume you left people behind at Vorlak, who will also be working along these lines, delays shall not be tolerated. Very well, shipmaster, give me your answer.”

  Why keep on? the mind sighed in Donnan. Why not surrender? Maybe they really did not bomb Earth. Maybe the best thing is to become their serfs. Oh, Jesus, but I’m tired.

  I was tired in that Burma prison camp too, he thought drearily. I didn’t believe we’d ever get sprung, me and the others. Barbed wire, jungle, sloppy-looking guards with almighty quick guns, miserable villagers who didn’t dare help us—

  But that was on Earth. There was still a future then. We could plan on . . . on sunrise, and moon-rise, and rain and wind and light; on the game continuing after we ourselves stopped playing. So, we didn’t stop.

  That’s why I’ve gone so gutless, he thought. Now there’s nothing in space or time except my own piddling self.

  The hell there isn’t!

  The knowledge burst within him. He sat straight with an oath.

  Tarkamat regarded him over a steaming cup. “Well, shipmaster?” he murmured.

  “We’ll do what you want,” Donnan said. “Of course.”