Those who are not afraid of death, even at their own hands, may get power beyond their real strength. For then their cooperation has to be bargained for.
The partners in Serendipity had not suffered total defeat. They held several counters. For one, there was the apparatus they had built up, the organization, the computers and memory banks. It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to keep them from destroying this before its sale went through, if they chose. And more was involved here than someone’s money. Too many key enterprises were already too dependent on the service; many others were potentially so; though the loss would be primarily economic, it would give a severe shock to the League, the Commonwealth, and allied peoples. In effect, while untold man-years would not be lost as lives, their productivity would be.
Of course, the system contained no information about its ultimate masters. A few deductions might perhaps be made, e.g., by studying the circuits, but these would be tentative and, if correct, not very important. However, perusal of the accumulated data would have some value as an indicator of the minimum amount of knowledge that those masters had about Technic civilization.
Hence the partners could exact a price for sparing their machines. The price included their own free departure, with no one trailing them: a fact they could verify.
Van Rijn, in his turn, could demand some compensation for helping to arrange this departure. He was naturally anxious to learn something, anything concerning the Shenna—as he soon did worm out that they were called in at least one of their languages. He wanted a meeting between their people and his. Before Kim Yoon-Kun, Anastasia Herrera, and Eve Latimer left the Solar System, he got their promise to urge their lords to send a delegation. Where it would be sent they did not specify. Thea Beldaniel, who stayed behind, was to reveal this at the appropriate time if she saw fit.
Another mutual interest lay in preserving discretion. Neither Serendipity nor van Rijn wanted Technic governments directly involved . . . as yet, anyhow. But if either got disgusted with these private chafferings, that party could stop them by making a public statement of the facts. Since van Rijn probably had less to lose from any such outcome, this was a more powerful chess piece in his hand than in Thea’s. Or so he apparently convinced her. She bought his silence initially by helping him get the information from the computers, about Beta Crucis and the rogue, that Falkayn had gotten earlier.
Nevertheless, negotiations between him and her dragged on. This was partly because of the legal formalities involved in the sale of the company, and tussles with news agencies that wanted to know more. Partly, too, it was due to his own stalling. He needed time—Time for Muddlin’ Through to report back. Time to decide what word should be quietly passed to whom, and what should then be done in preparation against an ill-defined danger. Time to begin those preparations, but keep them undercover, yet not too well-hidden . . .
In contrast, Thea’s advantage—or that of her masters—lay in making an early start for the rendezvous. This should not be too soon for the Shenna to have received ample warning from Kim’s party. But neither should it give van Rijn more time to organize his forces than was unavoidable.
She told him that the Shenna had no overwhelming reason to dicker with anybody. Their spy system being wrecked, they might wish to meet with someone well-informed like van Rijn, feel out the changed situation, conceivably work toward an agreement about spheres of influence. But then again, they might not. Powerful as they were, why should they make concessions to inferior races like man? She proposed that the merchant go unaccompanied to the rendezvous, in a spaceship chosen by her, viewports blanked. He refused.
Abruptly she broke off the talks and insisted on leaving in less than a week. Van Rijn howled to no avail. This was the deadline she and her partners had agreed on, when they also set the meeting place they would suggest to their lords. If he did not accept it, he simply would not be guided.
He threatened not to accept. He had other ways to trace down the Shenna, he said. The haggling went back and forth. Thea did have some reason for wanting the expedition to go. She believed it would serve the ends of her masters; at a minimum, it ought to give them an extra option. And, a minor but real enough consideration, it would carry her home, when otherwise she was doomed to suicide or lifelong exile. She gave in on some points.
The agreement reached at last was for her to travel alone, van Rijn with none but Adzel. (He got a partner in exchange for the fact that his absence would, he claimed, badly handicap the League.) They were to leave at the time she specified. However, they would not travel blind. Once they went hyper, she would instruct the robopilot, and he might as well listen to her as she specified the coordinates. The goal wasn’t a Shenn planet anyway.
But she would not risk some booby trap, tracing device, clandestine message ejector, or whatever else he might put into a ship he had readied beforehand. Nor did he care to take corresponding chances. They settled on jointly ordering a new-built vessel from a nonhuman yard—there happened to be one that had just completed her shake-down cruise and was advertising for buyers—with an entire supply stock. They boarded immediately upon Solar System delivery, each having inspected the other’s hand baggage, and started the moment that clearance was granted.
This much Adzel knew. He had not been party to van Rijn’s other activities. It came as no surprise to him that confidential couriers had been dispatched from end to end of the Solar Spice & Liquors trading territory, carrying orders for its most reliable factors, district chiefs, “police” captains, and more obscure employees. But he had not realized the degree to which other merchant princes of the League were alerted. True, they were not told everything. But the reason for that was less to keep secret the existence of the rogue than it was to head off short-sighted avarice and officiousness that must surely hamper a defense effort. The magnates were warned of a powerful, probably hostile civilization beyond the rim of the known. Some of them were told in more detail about the role Serendipity had played. They must gather what force they had.
And this was sufficient to bring in governments! A movement of Polesotechnic fighting units could not escape notice. Inquiries would be rebuffed, more or less politely. But with something clearly in the wind, official military-naval services would be put on the qui vive. The fact that League ships were concentrating near the important planets would cause those charged with defense to apportion their own strength accordingly.
Given out-and-out war, this would not serve. Then merchant lords must work as closely as might be with the lords spiritual and temporal that legal theory—the different, often wildly different legal theories of the various races and cultures—said were set over them in any of the innumerable separate jurisdictions. But in the immediate situation, where virtually everything was unknown—where the very existence of a dangerous enemy remained unproven—such an alliance was impossible. The rivalries involved were too strong. Van Rijn could get more action faster by flimffammery than by any appeal to idealism or common sense.
At that, the action was far too slow. Under perfect conditions, with everyone concerned a militant angel, it would still be too slow. The distances involved were so immense, lines of communication so thin, planets so scattered and diverse. No one had ever tried to rally all of those worlds at once. Not only had it never been necessary, it did not look feasible.
“I done what I could,” van Rijn said, “not even knowing what I should. Maybe in three-four months—or three-four years, I don’t know—the snowball I started rolling will bear fruit. Maybe then everybody is ready to ride out whatever blow will go bang on them. Or maybe not.
“I left what information I didn’t give out in a safe place. It will be publicated after a while if I don’t come back. After that, hoo-hoo, me I can’t forespeak what happens! Many players then come in the game, you see, where now is only a few. It got demonstrated centuries back, in early days of theory, the more players, the less of a stable is the game.
“We go off right now, you and
me, and try what we can do. If we don’t do nothing except crash, well, we begun about as much battering down of hatches as I think could have been. Maybe enough. Maybe not. Vervloekt, how hard I wish that Beldaniel witch did not make us go away so soon like this!”
TO BE CONTINUED
Conclusion. That strategy, wiles, and wily maneuvers
are effective is beyond doubt—but
there are times, on Satan’s World or any other,
that sheer violent force is the necessary tactic. For that,
someone like Adzel came in handy . . .
Illustrated by Kelly Freas
SYNOPSIS
The Polesotechnic League is theoretically just a mutual-benefit organization of interstellar companies. In practice—given the scale of its operation and the spread of laissez-faire economics—it represents a kind of super-feudalism. Its members act like nearly independent barons, dealing with entire governments on the planets, sometimes making or breaking them, dominating even the powerful nations of the Solar Commonwealth. But the League has its own problems and limitations. Space is too huge; there are too many worlds. Several score light-years from Sol begin those regions which are almost entirely unexplored. Closer in, exploration and development are still incomplete. The sheer volume of data makes it impossible to understand the total situation at any given time, or to lay rational plans for the future.
A new enterprise, Serendipity, Inc., offers a partial solution. Its computers, advanced in this respect beyond any other known machines, do more than collect and correlate information. They search their memory banks along association chains beginning with a particular client or problem, somewhat as a living brain does but with vastly greater scope. Thus many a datum, recorded but then forgotten, is found to be useful to someone. Naturally, the highly competitive merchant princes of the League are suspicious at first of an outfit which sets up to buy and sell information. But Serendipity soon proves that it favors no one, keeps the secrets entrusted to it, and renders an invaluable service. Over the years, it grows immensely. This despite the fact that the six founder-partners, though human, are of unknown background and keep strictly to themselves. Technic civilization has a high regard for privacy, and eccentrics are common.
David Falkayn, born on the autonomous colony planet Hermes, takes a vacation in the Solar System. While there, he decides to visit Serendipity’s office in Lunograd on the Moon, and see if it can turn up anything for him. He is a trade pioneer for Nicholas van Rijn’s Solar Spice & Liquors Company. His job is to discover new sources and new markets in space, which can then be quietly exploited before the competition learns about them. But through various exploits, he has become somewhat prominent. A girl who calls herself Veronica has latched onto him. He can tell that she is a commercial spy, out to learn what she can about van Rijn’s operations so that the rivals of the latter can get the jump on him. Such attempts are taken for granted, along with bribery, blackmail, burglary, and much else. Falkayn isn’t worried. Competition is not literally cutthroat; it is regulated by the covenant of the League so as to protect the psychobiological integrity of the individual, hence ruling out procedures like murder, kidnapping, and brainscrub. Enjoying Veronica’s company, Falkayn simply jollies her along, and leaves her behind when he goes to Serendipity, Inc.
There he talks to Thea Beldaniel, one of the owners. She leads him to an isolation room where he consults a computer. The machine associates him with his discovery, some years ago, of planets freakishly captured by a blue giant star. No other case has ever been found. But nonhuman explorers did come upon one analogous oddity. A sunless “rogue” planet is approaching the B-type star Beta Crucis, some two hundred light-years hence. It will pass by in a tight hyperbolic orbit and recede into space. The explorers saw no significance in this cosmic accident, and their report never reached the Solar System until the ceaseless information-gathering activity of SI chanced to net it. Even then, the machine did not “think” of the matter until Falkayn’s presence “reminded” it. Now it suggests that here may be the greatest bonanza in galactic history. Absolute secrecy should be preserved. Falkayn agrees.
Emerging, he finds Thea Beldaniel friendlier than before. She invites him to visit her and her partners in their Lunar Alpine castle, to discuss a mutually profitable idea. Since no one but nonhuman guards and servants has ever been there before, and since the cenobitical owners of SI may change their minds at any moment, Falkayn leaps at the opportunity to learn something more about their by now key operation. He postpones doing anything about the rogue planet and goes straight from Lunograd, stopping only to notify the other members of his trade team.
These are nonhuman themselves’, the small, quick, short-tempered Cynthian xenobiologist Chee Lan, and the gigantic, placid, dragonlike planetologist Adzel from Woden. They fret a little at the delay, but not too much. Veronica frets more, since Falkayn has stood her up; her interest in him has become personal rather than professional.
At the castle, Falkayn meets three other SI stockholders: Kim Yoon-Kun, Anastasia Herrera, and the wife of Hugh Latimer. Latimer himself, and Thea Beldaniel’s sister, are absent “on business.” Though his hosts try to prevent it, he sees the lift-off of an interstellar ship that he is certain contains those two. It becomes plain that he was invited here simply to get him out of the way while something else happens. Thea tries to allay his suspicions with a story about the background of her group—their shipwreck as children, their adoption by kindly nonhumans who want to stay outside of Technic civilization but who did send them back with a grubstake of rare metals and later supplied them with computer parts. This only makes Falkayn warier. When he declares that he will leave, he is taken prisoner.
Chee Lan and Adzel try repeatedly to call him in the following days. At last they are granted an audiovisual contact. Falkayn tells them he is quitting Solar S & L, joining SI, and marrying Thea. His comrades are convinced that he has been made a puppet by brainscrub techniques. Getting no satisfaction from the Lunar police—who much favor well-behaved SI over the rowdy remainder of the League—they appeal to Nicholas van Rijn. He agrees that Falkayn probably is controlled. Formal action will take too long to organize. A rescue mission, therefore, will be extremely illegal. Van Rijn can stall off the authorities for a while. But Chee and Adzel must risk their lives and liberty to get their friend back.
Using their fast, well-armed exploratory ship Muddlin’ Through, they succeed. Adzel breaks in and seizes Falkayn, then Chee pulls both of them out. In the course of the raid, several castle guards are killed. Van Rijn orders Chee to take Falkayn away into space. She can cure him with equipment already loaded aboard, and go investigate whatever it was he learned at SI. Clearly his supposedly private conference with the computer there was spied on, and the facts revealed were so tremendous as to force SI into actions that the League would never tolerate. Doubtless the information brokers have been spies all along for some unidentified but hostile power. Latimer and Thea’s sister are known to have left the Solar System, surely to carry word to their masters. Speed is vital.
Adzel has gathered proof that Falkayn was indeed brainscrubbed. Van Rijn does not show it to the police. Instead, he lets Adzel be arrested. Meanwhile he uses the evidence to bargain with the SI owners still in Lunograd. He forces them to sell their holdings to a trustworthy group—paying him a fat commission—and assist in concocting a story which gets Adzel freed. All but Thea promptly leave. She remains, to help negotiate the sale and later guide van Rijn to a rendezvous. There, on the advice of her associates, her masters may or may not come parley with him. He agrees to preserve secrecy for the time being; he doesn’t trust any government, or the League as a whole, to deal with a situation as dangerous as this, at least not until it has been made less obscure.
Restored, but deeply embittered by his experience, Falkayn arrives with Chee Lan at Beta Crucis. They find the rogue planet. It is approaching periastron. Under the rays of the blue giant, its cryosphere is boiling into gas an
d water. Conditions are so chaotic and hazardous that Falkayn names it Satan; and violence waxes hourly. After gathering and integrating a vast amount of data in orbit, Muddlehead—the ship’s computer “brain”—does manage to land. This will soon be impossible because of storms, and remain that way for years, until the planet has moved far back toward interstellar space.
Nonetheless, Satan is potentially of fabulous worth: as a site for the large-scale industrial synthesis of rare isotopes. Having verified that, Falkayn and Chee are about ready to go home. Then Muddlehead detects a sizable flotilla of spaceships, coming in fast from the unexplored Circinus region.
They must belong to Si’s masters, responding to Latimer’s report. It seems unlikely that Muddlin’ Through can either hide until they leave, or outrun them once she herself is detected. But her hyperdrive “wake” can cover that of a message capsule, sent back toward Sol with an account of what has hitherto been learned. Falkayn and Chee dispatch such a one, and go on out to meet the strangers.
The ships are indeed of a design unknown throughout Technic civilization, incredibly heavily armed, but moving in a formation and at a speed which look reckless. Furthermore, they must have come here straight from base, without sending so much as a scout ahead. What kind of society would make that kind of commitment, sight unseen?
Contact is established with Latimer, who is aboard the flagship. He has not met Falkayn, and the latter uses a false identity. Latimer says his Lord Gahood commands Falkayn to join them for discussions. When Falkayn tries to set conditions, Latimer grows alarmed. He warns that Gahood is easily angered—and, by implication, supremely self-confident and arrogant. Falkayn bluffs about having reinforcements waiting near Satan, but doubts if he is taken seriously. He is sickly aware that he could be captured and brainscrubbed again; death would be better. But then he realizes that, if he carries a primed grenade, he need suffer no worse than death, and might take some enemies with him.
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