The Fleet of Stars

by Poul Anderson

  Best to veer off from that. It wasn't what Fenn had traveled here to talk about. "Do you know what those data mean?'' he probed. Lunarians who had figured it out already might well keep it to themselves.

  Elverir tensed. "Nay."

  "Let me tell you."

  Elverir made no reply. Silence brooded under the stone and the sun.

  Fenn drew breath. He should first explain his own situation, to make the rest of his words believable. "Yes, Kinna and I got in and released the file. On the way back to our flyer, we were set on by those Inrai, unprovoked, and she was shot dead." He hastened on. "The constables arrived and took charge. I was pretty well beaten down by then." He must force the admission. "I agreed to cooperate—quizzing under drugs—nothing seemed to matter very much anymore—"

  Elverir got up, retracting the seat legs, not to be loomed over as he said, “A Lunarian would have died first."

  Anger erupted. "So you tell yourself. Get rid of the romance, will you? How do you suppose the constables learned what they know about the Inrai, where to be finding them, if it weren't for prisoners? Your outfit is done for, and deserves to be. Admit it!"

  Again Elverir was mute, impassive. Shadows were lapping higher than before.

  "It may well be," he said at last, softly.

  Fenn's wrath gave way to sudden respect. To accept reality like this took manhood. And... she had found Elverir worthy of her friendship.

  The green eyes sought the blue. "But you are no longer helpless," Elverir said.

  "I haven't been for some while," Fenn revealed. "Oh, true, without my diergetic and euthymic pills, I'd fall down in a heap." As he must eventually, the sooner the wiser. His debt to nature was accumulating compound interest. But he wouldn't pay it yet. There was too flaming much to do. "I'm not, uh, emotionally stunned any more, though. I've got a purpose back." A driving, rising fury. "I let on to be still curled up inside myself, three-quarters robot." The reviving shrewdness had taken control over the rekindling rage. Maybe he was finally growing up. "It's evidently worked. They let me flit here unescorted. First, when nobody was looking, I slipped into their storeroom and borrowed a detector. No spybugs in my clothes or on my person. The police will be glad to see the last of me, but meanwhile they don't take me seriously."

  "Hai, good," Elverir said low.

  "Never mind the details of what happened on the mountain. For now, anyway." They would only wound, when time was short and work was at hand. "Let me tell you about the data we got. Everybody 'will soon know, but I need your help today."

  Elverir poised. If not yet amicable, he had shed hostility, and in an instant; but then, he was young, Kinna's age.

  Fenn gave him what Chuan had given.

  Elverir kept breaking in with questions, protests, and wild exclamations in his own tongue. Toward the end he grew still and stood breathing hard. Afterward he stared for minutes across the abyss.

  It's really hit him, Fenn thought. Even more than I expected. Will the knowing be worse for Lunarians than for Terrans? And what about the Keiki? Yes, what about them?

  Elverir's head swung back toward him. The face was mostly frozen, but a tic jerked at the left corner of the mouth. "It will be long yet before they yonder find us," Elverir whispered. "Nay?... But the cybercosm amidst us, it will go forward at once, triumphant."

  Things won't be that simple, Fenn thought. They never are in human affairs. However—The same rebellion, which in him had had time to harden, spoke: "Listen. This is why I've come to you. I don't want to be just the messenger back to my people. Slag and slaughter, no! If I can do anything else, anything at all, I'll try."

  A desperate eagerness cried, "Hai-ach, what?"

  "You Inrai have been in touch with the Proserpinans. Are vou still? At least a little, now and then?"

  The boy went wary. "Maychance."

  Fenn gathered his strength. Too many memories clung to what he was about to say. But he must.

  "Here's what I have in mind. We've all heard about a ship that's come to Proserpina from Alpha Centauri. We took for granted they were Centaurians aboard, Lunarians like you. But why would they be? What could they do in Proserpina that they couldn't do faster and easier over the laser beams? And that long a voyage, cold sleep or no—If they ever came back home, everybody they knew would be aged or dead. They'd be strangers, without seigneurs or followers, powerless. Would you do it, you, a Lunarian?

  "But the Terrans at three other stars, they'll want to know what things are like here at Sol, after the hiatus in communication. They could send downloads in a c-ship, first to Centauri, which they'd always have been in touch with. There they'd get another ship, bigger, slower, but better outfitted. That way they could arrive here prepared to do whatever they'd have to, fight if need be—and it wouldn't take them the centuries that a direct crossing from home in that kind of craft would. But it stands to reason, doesn't it, that they won't stay just at Proserpina. They'll want to look around for themselves."

  Kinna, this was your idea, that night in Xanadu Gardens, when we discovered amazed that we were both in love. Kinna, you live in this, if in nothing else.

  "I have a ship too, not like theirs but she'll get me into space. I'm hoping I can find out, for all of us, what they know about this out at the stars, what they think, what they can do. Could your gang somehow make contact for me?"

  Tears on brown skin shattered sunlight. "Eyach," Elverir stammered, "it, it may be. It may be." He cast his arms around Fenn, altogether unlike a Lunarian, youthfully impulsive like Kinna.

  After dark, following hours during which Fenn mostly waited in a room behind a locked door, Elverir returned and led him out to a flitter. Its canopy was blanked. The flight zigzagged, and neither said much. Eventually they set down. It was somewhere in the wilderness, doubtless north of Valles Marineris. Fenn didn't attempt to locate it any closer. Dust thickened the night, but as he walked he glimpsed boulders, minor craters, wasteland; and the terrain was hilly. Beneath an overhanging bluff lay a cave, similar to the one he could never forget but larger. Inside were a sealtent and other equipment. Some of that was communications gear, which could be deployed in the open. Armed men in skinsuits stood watch. Elverir spoke with them in Lunarian.

  Shortly Fenn found himself seated under the sky, among the rocks. He saw the transceiver brought forth, used, and taken back into concealment. Yes, he thought, pieces of the Inrai organization survived for a while yet. He could imagine several different ways in which messages could travel undetected, as well as other precautions. Doomed, of course, but momentarily valuable to him.

  Time went past. He pictured the stars wheeling overhead, above the dust-veil. Kinna had dreamed of years to come when Mars would again be alive, waters sheen by day and stars shining clear by night, around the moon that life had made huge and brilliant. He would gladly have abided on the planet and worked for that tomorrow, with her. Now just the stars remained.

  He must not let go; he must not mourn. The drugs in him helped stave it off. Until he was free, he dared only be angry. But while he waited, he could remember. Couldn't he? He'd been doing so already on this expedition, and had kept the memories from taking him over completely, how she walked, how she laughed, the gray eyes and tangled curls and the lips beneath his, her earnestness and her little jokes, a bit of verse she'd made for him. Her ashes ought not to blow about forever across dead deserts. It was right that someday their atoms again form living flesh and beat in living blood. Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.

  Fenn didn't recall where in his random reading he had seen that line. It didn't matter.

  He hadn't anticipated that the outlaws here would be talkative, and they weren't. Stubborn holdouts, they would never feel reconciled, though probably in the end they would swallow defeat and go back to a hateful everyday. Also Elverir kept aside. Did he understand that Fenn had no wish for company? Quite likely. Kinna had found him worthy of her friendship.

  Y
es, he—oh, all Lunarians—rated a share in whatever future the human genus had.

  Toward morning, Scorian arrived.

  He and Fenn sat alone in the sealtent. It was surroundings nearly as barren as outside, but they had some food and a samovar of tea.

  The outlaw lord had received the word about the Star Net discoveries with wintry self-command. Fenn wondered how deeply it touched him. Scorian would not surrender when at last they cornered him, to be taken off and tamed. He would court the death-shot, or he would open his helmet to Mars.

  The bald head lifted from its concentration of listening; the yellow eyes probed. "And what would you of us?" he asked. "The scattered, hunted scourings of us."

  Fenn had no pity for him. Pity was something you felt for your inferiors. "You've still got a communications system. Does it still reach into space?"

  "Proserpina orbits light-days hence. And what can they do any longer for us? The Inrai are destroyed." You were an agent in that, Scorian did not add, although his hand strayed over the shorts word at his black-clad waist, as if a temptation flickered.

  Rage leaped. "What loss are they? Your dogs destroyed—Never mind."

  Both sat quiet, curbing themselves. The air cycler hummed. The air was warm and stenchful, too often re-breathed. It took abundant life around you to renew things properly.

  "I have heard somewhat from Proserpina," Scorian murmured. "Say on."

  "Bueno, here's what I'm thinking of." At greater length, interrupted by knowledgeable questions, Fenn repeated Kinna's ideas and his own.

  Scorian was again silent for a spell.

  "We could—" he said finally. "The ship from the stars is indeed aprowl through the inner System. This much we heard from Proserpina, warning us, before our disaster. I have no recent news, but surely the ship has not contacted the Synesis, or the world would know somewhat about that. And I doubt she has yet set course anew for Proserpina."

  It flamed in Fenn. "Can you put me in touch?"

  The gaunt, scarred face stiffened. "Why? If we can."

  "I told you, didn't I? To talk with the crew. To find out what they know. The more I think about the story I have from Chuan, the less true it rings to me. Maybe that's pure wishfulness. He seems to believe it, and he's got access to more brainpower than either of us. But are we going to do nothing? Here's a chance."

  "laurai—'"

  Was that which stirred in Scorian mere joy of demolition, as in Rinndalir of old, or was it something else? And Rinndalir had come to share a vision with Anson Guthrie....

  "We cannot simply call to and fro," he said. His voice became more vigorous, more decisive, as he went on. "We know not where the ship is. Nor would the crew likely risk betraying themselves by a beamcast lasting any length of time—if they even desire to speak with us few. But we can broadcast on the band we have used with the Proserpinans, with the same encryption as before. Only for a minute or two, lest the enemy notice it and zero in; but we can compress the data. And we can hope the crew keeps a recording receiver tuned, and will hear, and will heed."

  "Yes. You don't need to tell them more than that I'll be in space, bound for Earth, a couple of days from now. If they're interested, their detectors will pick me up, and a ship like theirs can easily close with mine. And after that—and after that—"

  "We shall see. We shall try. Naught is left us to lose. What harm?"

  Kinna's words.

  28

  'ATAFA THRUMMED AND shivered, faintly, at the very threshold of human senses, accelerating outward. After all this time, full Earth weight lay on Fenn like iron, and in him, in bones and muscles and the coursing of his blood. It should not. He was born to it. He had lost no strength while he was away. If anything, he ought to be sturdier than before, in body and spirit both. But weariness such as he had never known was iTpon him; he seemed to ache in every cell; now and then black rags blew across his vision or an echo of voices rang through his skull.

  He was off, homebound, aboard a ship that steered herself according to a flight plan properly computed and registered, and that would look after his needs. For this while, events were out of his hands. Could he not let go, yield to the exhaustion, float down its dark stream till it carried him over the edge of whatever pit it fell into?

  No, he thought. He might not get back out. He didn't care much about that at the moment, either way, but he remembered sluggishly how some or other opportunity might exist for something or other different. If it did, he ought to be ready for it. Let him see if he couldn't make the drugs in him stoke his vitality for a little longer.

  He stared out the viewscreen. Mars hung against space, nearly full, enormous as yet, red, mottled, scarred. His unaided eyes picked out the larger craters, ranges, a dust storm yellow-gray under the northern polar cap, Valles Marineris, the giant volcanoes of Tharsis, yes, there was Pavonis Mons. "Aloha, Kinna, ipo, milimili," he mumbled.

  But that was not her language. "Good-bye, sweetheart . .. beloved." The Anglo came awkwardly. He had never been in the habit of endearments.

  Weight dragged his head downward. He was boosting considerably more than necessary before he went on trajectory. He wanted to be well distant from the planet, beyond routine TrafCon surveillance, as soon as possible. It was rather extravagant of fuel, but 'Atafa would reach Earth nonetheless. If need be, a tanker thereabouts could rendezvous and resupply her for terminal maneuvers. He had more important concerns. Maybe.

  But no danger in sleep. On the contrary, provided it did not sweep away the sentinel inside him. His eyelids fell. He told the sentinel to stand firm and force him awake if anything happened. Darkness overflowed.

  He surfaced briefly, snatching for breath. He had fallen off a cliff. No, boost had ended. He hung weightless in his harness. Mars had dwindled. He spiraled back into sleep.

  Kinna was calling him. He heard her joy, she laughed aloud as she cried his name, but he didn't know where she was; he was lost and couldn't find her.

  A roar hauled him up. "Ship ahoy!"

  He blinked, shook his head, fumbled through confusion. "Huh? What the—" Mars was further shrunken, farther gone from him. "Oh. Yah."

  "Do you copy?" sounded the rough male voice. Audio, no video transmission. Looking out, aside from Mars and the sun, Fenn's light-dazzled eyes found unrelieved black.

  He shivered. "Yes. Who are you?"

  "Let's start with who you are, okay?"

  The language was not easy to follow, Anglo, but with a foreign accent and outcrops of foreign words. Or, wait, he'd heard some of them in historical shows, seen them in historical reading. Archaic. What might well survive among colonists of the stars.

  Abruptly Fenn was altogether awake. The control console lay before him as icily clear to see as the chills along his spine and the shuddering in his veins were to feel. Only at the rim of consciousness did he mark how emptied out he was underneath. "Fenn," he croaked. "Are you—the crew from outside?"

  "Pipe down," said the voice. "I'm using a tight laser beam, but you're broadcasting."

  Well, I've no notion of where you are, Fenn thought. No noticeable time lag, so you must be fairly close, but that could mean thousands of klicks. You've fingered me, though.

  "Somebody might overhear," the voice went on. "Probably not, but why take chances we don't have to? Hold on a bit, and we'll talk. Ending transmission."

  They're being careful, tumbled through Fenn. Have the Proserpinans made them suspicious? That's not a Proserpinan who spoke. Wait. Wait. They're coming.

  The stranger ship shone like a new star, swelled to a moon, was there. She matched velocities in a single incredible swoop and ran parallel to 'Atafa, half a kilometer off, sunward under the same parameters.

  You couldn't do that with jets. Not that neatly, given anything that size. Field drive—The ship was a rounded cone, about a hundred meters long and forty wide at the base, a smoothness broken by a few low, streamlined turrets and the outlines of hatches, valves, and other portals. What seas had that ma
tte-gray hull plowed, at what speeds, how, why, to come here at last and meet him?

  The voice returned. "Listen. Don't answer right away. Let me explain first. Yes, I am from beyond—out of Amaterasu, to be exact, Beta Hydri Four, via Alpha Centauri and Proserpina." It overwhelmed. Fenn heard the rest through thunders: "I logged a call from Mars about you. I'm on the loose. If you'd like to join me, I'll be glad to talk. Answer yes or no."

  "Flaming yes!" Fenn bawled.

  "Our airlocks don't look compatible. Can you cross over? If you can, we'll skite elsewhere. A detector might happen to register two vessels laid alongside, and make people wonder. I'll bring you back to yours when we're done. Is that agreeable?"

  "Yes, it—Yes. As fast as I can."

  "Muy bien." The other gave directions. In spite of timbre and vocabulary, they were comprehensible. He had definitely done his share of spacefaring, though it be around alien suns.

  Fenn unharnessed, free-flew aft to the starboard lock, donned EVA gear, cycled out, and kicked himself from the hull. A sight taken, a computation run, a jet fired, all nearly as quick and automatic as breathing, and he was asoar across the sky.

  For a second it was like flying near the Habitat, boyhood and his father, young manhood and He'o ... but no, he went alone, between two ships, the same stars around but the sun dwarfed and Mars a small, rusty crescent, and he did not know if he had a mission or what it might be.

  An entrance received him. Beyond was a chamber where a resilient surface brought him gently to rest. The opening closed. He heard air gushing in. "Make ready," sounded in his earplugs. "We're about to shove off."

  The boost was low, a tenth g or thereabouts, but it stabilized things and was comforting, like a friendly hand laid on his shoulder. The lock filled, the inner valve retracted, and Fenn stepped through.