‘Right. We’ll probably need a small course correction or two, but otherwise I expect three holidays for us. Except for deciding what we’ll do when we arrive, where we’ll go.’
‘Have you had any further thoughts on that?’
‘I’m afraid not. A place which won’t treat us as criminals, and won’t confiscate this vessel. Meyco? Okkaido?’
‘Too vulnerable to Maurai pressure, as I told you before. How about my suggestion of a backward region, well inland?’
‘I considered that,’ Iern said reluctantly, ‘but the more I come to know these controls, the more certain I am we can’t land without adequate ground facilities. A full crew might conceivably set down on an Asian steppe or an African savannah, though I wouldn’t care to risk it and I’m a moderately reckless sort. We can’t by any manner of means. A single pilot won’t have sufficient data input, nor could I by myself direct you, fast and accurately enough, how to operate the engines – which are badly undermanned too. When we hit atmosphere, I’ll mainly have to make snap guesses about most of the parameters, including the most important ones; and as an aircraft, rather than a spacecraft, this thing is a pretty good brick. We’ll be doing well – better than well – to make a safe landing on the best, and best-monitored, airfield in the world.’
Ronica sighed. ‘Uh-huh. Say, don’t look so down in the mouth, or I’ll spin myself around and make you seem like smiling. At worst, we turn ourselves in to the Maurai. They should treat us fine, seeing what we’ve done for them, and from what I’ve heard, Oceania is not a bad place to live. Maybe eventually we can talk them into reconstructing Orion for themselves. Or – who knows? – maybe when we reach Earth, establish proper radio contact, and get some news, we’ll learn of a country that’ll welcome us on our terms.’
‘Maybe. More likely, bioscience will have developed a giant moth that can fly between planets.’ Iern jerked. His fingernails whitened on the seatback to which he held himself moored.
Ronica reached for him. ‘Hey, sweetheart! Trouble?’
He wrenched the words out, while he stared before him and did not really see Earth. ‘Yes. Earlier I was too exhausted, or else too busy, or else too caught up in this experience … for the fact to sink in … that we can very easily crash, or burn on our way down … and you be killed.’
‘Aw-w.’ She rumpled his hair. ‘Come off that Francey chivalry, will you? I knew what I was doing, and never for a wingbeat wanted anything else. No, of course I’m not anxious for us to die, not before we’re too old and decrepit to screw, but this way, if it happens, we’ll go out fast – crack! – and together. And we’ve had better lives by several light-years, both of us, than most of the human race ever imagined. Don’t you dare feel sorry for me.’
‘Well –’ He kissed her. They lost their holds and drifted off, embraced. ‘You’re the greatest wonder the universe has, Ronica, you.’
By Earthlight, as it flooded the darkened cabin, he saw her eyelids droop, nostrils flare, lips grow fuller. ‘In that case,’ she proposed from down in her throat, ‘let’s go to the cargo section, where there’s more room. I’ve figured a way round the problems in making love in free fall.’
2
For eight hundred years, Skyholm had simply maintained station against stratospheric winds, save for the briefest of test cruises after a major engine replacement; and none of those had occurred in living memory. Its voyage across the ice-crown of the planet became an epic of daring, ingenuity, and will.
Jovain encountered little of that himself, except as tales told him by men who trembled and whose words dragged in weariness. He knew that inexperienced Aimay Roverto Awilar had lost footing in an unexpected gust, while on a team changing a blown-out skin panel, and gotten his parachute lines fatally ensnarled; that inexperienced Katarina Papetoai, returning from a reconnaissance, had missed her landing on the flange, been caught in turbulence, and blasted into unconsciousness and a lethal tailspin when her small jetplane passed under the hot-air vent; that others had promptly volunteered; that engineers, electronicians, work gangs frantically made repairs on systems stressed beyond design limits, as pilots contended with forces that were huge upon a thing of this size, navigators peered and hunched over inadequate charts and muttered profanely to themselves, preachers preached but a few determinedly lighthearted amateur entertainers did more to keep morale high – He heard of these things, and for his part issued commendations and honors, but nothing was entirely real; he was lost in the passage itself.
The continent, the Channel, Angleylann amazingly verdant, Scotalann still bleak, a sea wild and murky when it was not wild and green, rocks heaving gray-blue around fjords and then the inland glacier that seemed to have no end until storms drowned the sight, unseasonable stars and shuddery auroras after dark, and always, always, the purpose before him, the thing he must do: while Skyholm lumbered on toward his destiny.
The time came at last when it halted.
‘General checkout,’ he ordered. ‘Combat teams to their stations, three-watch schedule.’ He felt no exultation. He was inexorable but tired, and Laska had cloaked itself against him. Nothing but clouds showed beneath Skyholm, from rim to rim of the world. The navigators could tell him no more than that he was approximately above his goal, plus or minus fifty kilometers. The sun stood wan in blue-black heaven.
No importance. The roiling whiteness below must break for a spell and he could get a fix on the target area. Meanwhile, always, he poised invulnerable and omnipotent. The subarctic day at this time of year was equal to any on the planet, and it would lengthen beyond aught the Domain summer knew, until he had power to maintain bombardment almost the whole twenty-four hours. He did not expect he need be here nearly that long. Well before solstice, he could have laid the region waste in the course of a methodical raking that must eventually find and annihilate all of Orion. The enemy ought to surrender much sooner than that.
He sought the central control compartment. Mattas accompanied him. Rewi Seraio was already present, to represent his government, on whose side Skyholm had gone to war. The three of them stood at the center of a circular chamber ringed in by instrumented panels where technicians sat alert. Screens presented images of the world, downward, sideward, spaceward. A hum and a faint ozone smell pervaded the atmosphere. The deck vibrated very slightly underfoot.
‘You may proceed when ready.’ Jovain’s words felt enormous in his skull.
Bolts flared, more lurid than lightning, as the outraged air rushed back and discharged.
A boss technician removed his earphones and swiveled his chair around. ‘Operation satisfactory, sir,’ he reported, ‘and radar ionoscopy shows adequate power delivered to the ground.’
‘Good,’ said Jovain. ‘Stand by.’ He departed from the uncanny squiggles on the oscilloscope screen, to the familiarity of his office, and wished Mattas and Rewi did not follow him. Why did they come to that room? Curiosity? A need somehow to participate? An exorcism of fear? Why did I?
Arrived, he ordered a radio call to ground and an intercom patch-in for himself when the Orion chief was on the line. Thereafter he stared across his desk, the desk from High Midi, at the others. ‘Well,’ he said. His skin prickled and felt cold. He noticed wet patches under the sleeves of his uniform. Faylis, he thought, but she was infinitely remote.
The resolve abided that had launched him on this enterprise. It’s for her, mankind, Gaea, my fame (no, I’m not supposed to think about that), sanity, righteousness. In this terrible hour, we must ourselves be terrible. ‘Well,’ he repeated.
‘Would you like me to deliver the ultimatum?’ Rewi offered.
‘No,’Jovain said. ‘Thank you, but – no, I am the Captain. Of course, if you should want to add something –’
‘I told you earlier, sir, that could give a false impression of indecisiveness and prolong matters,’ the Maurai answered imperturbably. ‘I trust you’ll not falter.’
‘It won’t be easy,’ Mattas said. His beard waggled as h
e talked. A scrap of bacon was caught in the grizzled shag. ‘You may have to conduct massive destruction. Remember always, it’s surgery. Gaea will heal.’
And we’ll go back to our customary lives? Jovain thought. No, Gaea never raises the dead. She brings forth new lives. How sinister did the mammals seem to the dinosaurs?
The intercom buzzed. He stabbed its accept button. A woman’s voice spoke accented Angley: ‘Your Dignity, please hear Eygar Dreng, director of Orion for the Wolf Lodge of the Northwest Union. Dr. Dreng, you address the Captain of Skyholm, Talence Jovain Aurillac.’
Mattas and Rewi showed the same tenseness that Jovain felt in his belly. His chest muscles hurt. Not Gaean, not Gaean. Relax, like a tiger.
A hoarse masculine tone: ‘Hello, Skyholm, hello.’
‘Greeting, sir,’ Jovain said, and waited for the interpreter.
‘This is Dreng,’ he heard in Angley about as good as the underling’s. ‘Proceed, if you please.’
Jovain recovered from his surprise. After all, the master of Orion could not be an ignoramus. A substantial literature on aerodynamics and related sciences existed in the Domain, and since the Enric Restoration, copies had gone abroad. Dreng had doubtless wanted to read the originals; if he had an ear for languages, he could have acquired a conversational knowledge with slight extra effort, for Angley and Unglish were close kin; maybe he had kept in practice by periodic talks with that woman, secretary or research librarian or whatever she was – Jovain snapped off his speculation. His business was too deadly serious.
‘I am the Captain,’ he said. ‘Do you, eh, do you understand what the situation is? We were broadcasting announcements of our intentions, appeals to your reason, on every usual band while we approached. But we got no answer.’
‘You did not rate an answer, as long as we could hope your balloon would puncture and go down in the drink.’
Anger flared cleansing through Jovain. ‘Well, it did not!’
‘So?’
Jovain wrestled for self-possession. ‘Hear this. The aerostat is positioned above you. Its accumulators are fully charged and indefinitely rechargeable. Any aircraft or missiles you may send against us – not that I believe you have any with the capability – will be blasted out of existence. Our lasers will ruin your project, your entire goal in this senseless war. I beg you, surrender before it is too late. Your own government has disowned you. I have a representative of the Maurai at my elbow, ready to help negotiate reasonable terms.’
‘Sure,’ Eygar Dreng said contemptuously. ‘The trouble is, your idea of “reasonable” and ours have nothing to do with each other. Look, we here have considered this, the bunch of us, since your first message came in. We’re agreed, we’ll take our chances. We’ll keep the same channel open for communication, and you might do well not to sizzle our transmitter out. Don’t you realize you’re laying your entire civilization on the line?’
Mattas pulled his hips from his chair arms as he rose. The seat clattered to the deck behind him. ‘How much harm will you make us wreak on Gaea?’ he bawled.
‘Fuck you,’ Eygar Dreng said. Click. The intercom went dead.
‘Punish them,’ Mattas said thick-tongued, while his fists punched about, ‘punish them, punish them.’
3
An unseen sun loosed wrath upon the land.
Clouds and rain could not stop such bolts. They seared their way through; water turned to live steam, so that vapor trailed after every flash; thunder banged; electric sparks and streamers rushed eerie blue; the wind was troubled in its course, it eddied about and whined.
Where a beam smote, trees exploded and their fragments burst aflame. Herbage vanished at the center, became charred in broad rings about such a patch of baked earth. Rocks glowed red. The beasts and men that took direct hits were lucky, for they perished too fast to know it. Those on the fringes were cooked alive, or took a superheated breath and felt their lungs shrivel. At larger distances, any that chanced to be looking in the direction of a ray were blinded – and the rays went everywhere.
Some were winks, that did their havoc and then, recreated, struck nearby. Some lasted for a minute or more. They did not hold steady, for there was no sense in drilling at a target the gunners could not see. Instead, they walked around on the mountains, down into the valleys, up across snows that gave way in avalanches. As the hours passed, square kilometers of wilderness turned into blackened, smoking, steaming, flood-riven desolation, save in random spots where things that had been animals might still writhe and scream.
Toward evening the rain ended and the sky began to open. Men who had been elsewhere, who had glimpsed the fury from behind shielding ranges, and by cowering had saved their sight, now saw a foreign moon above them in dusky heaven. So huge was it that it seemed to be falling down upon them, and that was when many lost their last wits, cast their weapons away, and ran haphazardly, howling. Its sunset-ruddy light made the stormclouds around it glow, as if with inner fires that would soon break forth.
Pickets on the heights, who had taken shelter during the onslaught, used the luminance to observe that which had been done. They put portable transceivers to their lips, and radio waves swept to and fro through a dusk grown hideously quiet. The men huddled into their parkas against deepening cold. The invader moon faded as the sun dropped farther below the horizon, but they saw how the circle of it blotted out stars, and knew they would see it again, coldly ashine, ready to kill the rest of them.
Eygar Dreng sat in his office, as alone as ever a man could be. It was a homely, cluttered room, mostly full of overloaded bookshelves and file cabinets, communications and computer equipment, a few such souvenirs as a kayak paddle from the racing championship he had held in his youth. Upon his battered old desk were two pictures, one of his family, one out of ancient archives, a Voyager view of Saturn. The ventilators whispered.
He held a radiophone to his ear. Colonel Rogg’s voice, relayed from the field, sounded faint and thin, as if a ghost spoke: ‘No, sir, we have no hope whatsoever. I thought we might, but the enemy has demonstrated his capabilities – and he was, in effect, shooting blind. Tomorrow looks like clearing weather. A technology like his must include optics that can pick out individuals on the ground. Sir, I am responsible for my men. Today I’ve seen too many of them – well, we’ve a hospital tent here at base, you know, and the rescue and medic teams have been absolutely heroic, but – No, sir, tomorrow we withdraw.’
‘You realize that leaves Orion open to ground attack, as soon as the Maurai can muster more troops,’ Eygar said. His own voice dragged, as did every muscle and bone in his body. ‘No replacements for you, when the aerostat interdicts every approach.’
‘They wouldn’t come anyway, would they, to certain death – and for what? Sir, we’re licked. Our duty is to salvage what we can.’
‘You suppose the Yurrupans will let you evacuate.’
‘That’s for you to arrange, sir. You have a line to them, don’t you? I… I assume they wouldn’t hunt us just for fun. Whatever happens, we’re leaving. Surely you’ll help save lives.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the colonel said. ‘Myself, I’d be glad to die leading a charge against them. But they’re up in the sky.’
‘I understand,’ Eygar told him gently. ‘Commence what preparations you’re able. I’ll be in touch again before … before sunrise.’
After a few technical details, he set the phone down and punched his intercom. ‘Get me Skyholm, Nona,’ he instructed dully.
The answer sounded appalled: ‘Not to surrender? Already?’
‘No, not yet, I guess. But I do have to parley.’ Eygar sat back and waited. Once he smiled at the image of his wife, children, son-in-law, grandchild; once he touched the Saturn picture.
The phone rang. He fitted himself to it. Preliminaries babbled. Then:
‘Captain Jovain speaking. Dr. Dreng? I trust you want to talk reason. Believe me, we have not enjoyed doing what you f
orced us to do.’
‘I wonder – No, pardon me. This has been a shock.’
An oddly sympathetic tone: ‘I know. Please say what you wish.’
‘I suppose you learned, from your Maurai allies, approximately where our militiamen are, and selected an occupied area for a demonstration, as closely as you were able given the weather.’
‘Yes, we did. I warn you, my meteorologists tell me that tomorrow it will clear.’
‘Uh-huh. Okay, Captain, the militia have had enough. If you permit, they’ll leave in the morning.’
‘Splendid! I am happy. Naturally, in common humanity, we will permit. But let me give you another warning. We will monitor, and consider any evidence of bad faith to be an intolerable provocation.’
‘Oh, sure, sure.’ Discussion turned to routes and schedules. The Norrmen would meet at Tyonek, and Maurai ships would be on hand to transport them away, probably to Seattle. The march and embarkation would take several days.
‘Meanwhile –’ Joy beiled through Jovain’s words. ‘About your installation. I suggest you bring your personnel to the same pickup point, for the same conveyance home. The Maurai will require guides and the like, of course, on their way to the site.’
Eygar grinned lopsidedly. ‘Oh, no, Captain,’ he said. ‘That was not on the agenda. We stay.’
‘What?’Jovain yelped. He recovered equilibrium. ‘Your position is hopeless. I repeat, Skyholm will fight until you surrender or are destroyed. You are already outlaws, yes, in the proclamation of your own government. Do the decent thing, give up, spare lives, and amnesty should be possible for most of your group.’
‘“Outlaw” bears a rather special meaning in this country,’ Eygar said. In the recital of a tradition there was strength. ‘We don’t hold with locking human beings in cages or turning them over to professional killers. An outlaw is a person who’s forfeited his right to redress for anything anyone may do to him. It’s about as effective a deterrent to crime as I know of, and less expensive than the rest. But declaring a man outlaw is the gravest business we can undertake, a lengthy process with every safeguard our forefathers could devise, much too important to trust to a government. Besides, at present the Northwest Union has no government. We don’t count those miserable puppets of the Maurai.’
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