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 one adapted to nomadism. 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 allegiance.
As time passed, 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 rallied 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 unsigned! 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 off 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 II 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 résumé of what everyone knew proceeded. The Dragar 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 se
conds 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 way. 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, 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.
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 our 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 or more."
"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 bare-knuckle 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 bootsoles 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 II.
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 pla
nts. 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.
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