Flandry's Legacy: The Technic Civilization Saga

by Poul Anderson

  The crew of Makt didn’t offer to help him. Irrational in his hurt, he didn’t ask them. Jaccavrie could carry on any essential communication with their captain and navigator. He toiled until he dropped, woke, fueled his body, and went back to work. Between stars, he made detailed analyses of his samples. That was tricky enough to keep his mind off Graydal. Minerals like these could have formed nowhere but in this witchy realm.

  Finally the ships took orbit around a planet that had atmosphere. “Do you indeed wish to make entry there?” the computer asked. “I would not recommend it.”

  “You never recommend anything I want to do,” Laure grunted. “I know air adds an extra factor to reckon with. But I want to get some idea of element distribution at the surface of objects like that.” He rubbed bloodshot eyes. “It’ll be the last. Then we go home.”

  “As you wish.” Did the artificial voice actually sigh? “But after this long time in space, you’ll have to batten things down for an aerodynamic landing.”

  “No, I won’t. I’m taking the sled as usual. You’ll stay put.”

  “You are being reckless. This isn’t an airless globe where I can orbit right above the mountaintops and see everything that might happen to you. Why, if I haven’t misgauged, the ionosphere is so charged that the sled radio can’t reach me.”

  “Nothing’s likely to go wrong,” Laure said. “But should it, you can’t be spared. The Kirkasanters need you to conduct them safely out.”

  “I—”

  “You heard your orders.” Laure proceeded to discuss certain basic precautions. Not that he felt they were necessary. His objective looked peaceful—dry, sterile, a stone spinning around a star.

  Nevertheless, when he departed the main hatch and gunned his gravity sled to kill velocity, the view caught at his breath.

  Around him reached the shining fog. Stars and stars were caught in it, illuminating caverns and tendrils, aureoled with many-colored fluorescences. Even as he looked, one such point, steely blue, multiplied its brilliance until the intensity hurt his eyes. Another nova. Every stage of stellar evolution was so richly represented that it was as if time itself had been compressed—cosmos, what an astrophysical laboratory!

  (For unmanned instruments, as a general rule. Human flesh couldn’t stand many months in a stretch of the cosmic radiation that sleeted through these spaces, the synchrotron and betatron and Cerenkov quanta that boiled from particles hurled in the gas across the intertwining magnetism of atoms and suns. Laure kept glancing at the cumulative exposure meter on his left wrist.)

  The solar disk was large and lurid orange. Despite thermostating in the sled, Laure felt its heat strike at him through the bubble and his own armor. A stepdown viewer revealed immense prominences licking flame-tongues across the sky, and a heartstoppingly beautiful corona. A Type K shouldn’t be that spectacular, but there were no normal stars in sight—not with this element distribution and infall.

  Once the planet he was approaching had been farther out. But friction with the nebula, over gigayears, was causing it to spiral inward. Surface temperature wasn’t yet excessive, about 50° C., because the atmosphere was thin, mainly noble gases. The entire world hadn’t sufficient water to fill a decent lake. It rolled before him as a gloom little relieved by the reddish blots of gigantic dust storms. Refracted light made its air a fiery ring.

  His sled struck that atmosphere, and for a while he was busy amidst thunder and shudder, helping the autopilot bring the small craft down. In the end, he hovered above a jumbled plain. Mountains bulked bare on the near horizon. The rock was black and brown and darkly gleaming. The sun stood high in a deep purple heaven. He checked with an induction probe, confirmed that the ground was solid—in fact, incredibly hard—and landed.

  When he stepped out, weight caught at him. The planet had less diameter than the least of those on which men live, but was so dense that gravity stood at 1.22 standard G. An unexpectedly strong wind shoved at him. Though thin, the air was moving fast. He heard it wail through his helmet. From afar came a rumble, and a quiver entered his boots and bones. Landslide? Earthquake? Unseen volcano? He didn’t know what was or was not possible here. Nor, he suspected, did the most expert planetologist. Worlds like this had not hitherto been trodden.

  Radiation from the ground was higher than he liked. Better do his job quickly. He lugged forth apparatus. A power drill for samples—he set it up and let it work while he assembled a pyroanalyzer and fed it a rock picked off the chaotic terrain. Crumbled between alloy jaws, flash heated to vapor, the mineral gave up its fundamental composition to the optical and mass spectrographs. Laure studied the printout and nodded in satisfaction. The presence of atmosphere hadn’t changed matters. This place was loaded with heavy metals and radioactives. He’d need a picture of molecular and crystalline structures before being certain that they were as easily extractable as he’d found them to be on the other planets; but he had no reason to doubt it.

  Well, he thought, aware of hunger and aching feet, let’s relax awhile in the cab, catch a meal and a nap, then go check a few other spots, just to make sure they’re equally promising; and then—

  The sky exploded.

  He was on his belly, faceplate buried in arms against the flash, before his conscious mind knew what had happened. Rangers learn about nuclear weapons. When, after a minute, no shock wave had hit him, no sound other than a rising wind, he dared sit up and look.

  The sky had turned white. The sun was no longer like an orange lantern but molten brass. He couldn’t squint anywhere near it. Radiance crowded upon him, heat mounted even as he climbed erect. Nova, he thought in his rocking reality, and caught Graydal to him for the moment he was to become a wisp of gas.

  But he remained alive, alone, on a plain that now shimmered with light and mirage. The wind screamed louder still. He felt how it pushed him, and how the mass of the planet pulled, and how his mouth was dry and his muscles tautened for a leap. The brilliance pained his eyes, but was not unendurable behind a self-adapting faceplate and did not seem to be growing greater. The infrared brought forth sweat on his skin, but he was not being baked.

  Steadiness came. Something almighty strange was happening. It hadn’t killed him yet, though. As a check, with no hope of making contact, he tuned his radio. Static brawled in his earplugs.

  His heart thudded. He couldn’t tell whether he was afraid or exhilarated. He was, after all, quite a young man. But the coolness of his training came upon him. He didn’t stop feeling. Wildness churned beneath self-control. But he did methodically begin to collect his equipment, and to reason while he acted.

  Not a nova burst. Main sequence stars don’t go nova. They don’t vary in seconds, either . . . but then, every star around here is abnormal. Perhaps, if I’d checked the spectrum of this one, I’d have seen indications that it was about to move into another phase of a jagged output cycle. Or perhaps I wouldn’t have known what the indications meant. Who’s studied astrophysics in circumstances like these?

  What had occurred might be akin to the Wolf-Rayet phenomenon, he thought. The stars around him did not evolve along ordinary lines. They had strange compositions to start with. And then matter kept falling into them, changing that composition, increasing their masses. That must produce instability. Each spectrum he had taken in this heart of the cluster showed enormous turbulence in the surface layers. So did the spots, flares, prominences, coronas he had seen. Well, the turbulence evidently went deeper than the photospheres. Actual stellar cores and their nuclear furnaces might be affected. Probably every local sun was a violent variable.

  Even in the less dense regions, stars must have peculiar careers. The sun of Kirkasant had apparently been stable for five thousand years—or several million, more likely, since the planet had well-developed native life. But who could swear it would stay thus? Destruction! The place had to be found, had to, so that the people could be evacuated if need arose. You can’t let little children fry—

  Laure checked his rad
iation meter. The needle climbed ominously fast up the dial. Yonder sun was spitting X rays, in appreciable quantity, and the planet had no ozone layer to block them. He’d be dead if he didn’t get to shelter—for choice, his ship and her force-screens—before the ions arrived. Despite its density, the globe had no magnetic field to speak of, either, to ward them off. Probably the core was made of stuff like osmium and uranium. Such a weird blend might well be solid rather than molten. I don’t know about that. I do know I’d better get my tail out of here.

  The wind yelled. It began driving ferrous dust against him, borne from somewhere else. He saw the particles scud in darkling whirls and heard them click on his helmet. Doggedly, he finished loading his gear. When at last he entered the sled cab and shut the air lock, his vehicle was trembling under the blast and the sun was reddened and dimmed by haze.

  He started the motor and lifted. No sense in resisting the wind. He was quite happy to be blown toward the night side. Meanwhile he’d gain altitude, then get above the storm, collect orbital velocity and—

  He never knew what happened. The sled was supposedly able to ride out more vicious blows than any this world could produce. But who could foretell what this world was capable of? The atmosphere, being thin, developed high velocities. Perhaps the sudden increased irradiation had triggered paroxysm in a cyclone cell. Perhaps the dust, which was conductive, transferred energy into such a vortex at a greater rate than one might believe. Laure wasn’t concerned about meteorological theory.

  He was concerned with staying alive, when an instant blindness clamped down upon him with a shriek that nigh tore the top off his skull, and he was whirled like a leaf and cast against a mountainside.

  The event was too fast for awareness, for anything but reaction. His autopilot and he must somehow have got some control. The crash ruined the sled, ripped open its belly, scattered its cargo, but did not crumple the cab section. Shock harness kept the man from serious injury. He was momentarily unconscious, but came back with no worse than an aching body and blood in his mouth.

  Wind hooted. Dust went hissing and scouring. The sun was a dim red disk, though from time to time a beam of pure fire struck through the storm and blazed off metallic cliffsides.

  Laure fumbled with his harness and stumbled out. Half seen, the slope on which he stood caught at his feet with cragginess. He had to take cover. The beta particles would arrive at any moment, the protons, within hours, and they bore his death.

  He was dismayed to learn the stowed equipment was gone. He dared not search for it. Instead, he made his clumsy way into the murk.

  He found no cave—not in this waterless land—but by peering and calculating (odd how calm you can grow when your life depends on your brain) he discovered in what direction his chances were best, and was rewarded. A one-time landslide had piled great slabs of rock on each other. Among them was a passage into which he could crawl.

  Then nothing to do but lie in that narrow space and wait.

  Light seeped around a bend, with the noise of the storm. He could judge thereby how matters went outside. Periodically he crept to the entrance of his dolmen and monitored the radiation level. Before long it had reached such a count that—space armor, expert therapy, and all—an hour’s exposure would kill him.

  He must wait.

  Jaccavrie knew the approximate area where he intended to set down. She’d come looking as soon as possible. Flitting low, using her detectors, she’d find the wrecked sled. More than that she could not do unaided. But he could emerge and call her. Whether or not they actually saw each other in this mountainscape, he could emit a radio signal for her to home on. She’d hover, snatch him with a forcebeam, and reel him in.

  But . . . this depended on calm weather. Jaccavrie could overmaster any wind. But the dust would blind both her and him. And deafen and mute them; it was conductive, radio could not get through. Laure proved that to his own satisfaction by experimenting with the mini-radar built into his armor.

  So everything seemed to depend on which came first, the end of the gale or the end of Laure’s powerpack. His air renewer drew on it. About thirty hours’ worth of charge remained before he choked on his own breath. If only he’d been able to grab a spare accumulator or two, or better still, a hand-cranked recharger! They might have rolled no more than ten meters off. But he had decided not to search the area. And by now, he couldn’t go back. Not through the radiation.

  He sighed, drank a bit from his water nipple, ate a bit through his chow lock, wished for a glass of beer and a comfortable bed, and went to sleep.

  When he awoke, the wind had dropped from a full to a half gale; but the dust drift was so heavy as to conceal the glorious starfog night that had fallen. It screened off some of the radiation, too, though not enough to do him any good. He puzzled over why the body of the planet wasn’t helping more. Finally he decided that ions, hitting the upper air along the terminator, produced secondaries and cascades which descended everywhere.

  The day-side bombardment must really have got fierce!

  Twenty hours left. He opened the life-support box he had taken off his shoulder rack, pulled out the sanitary unit, and attached it. Men don’t die romantically, like characters on a stage. Their bodies are too stubborn.

  So are their minds. He should have been putting his thoughts in order, but he kept being disturbed by recollections of his parents, of Graydal, of a funny little tavern he’d once visited, of a gaucherie he’d rather forget, of some money owing to him, of Graydal—He ate again, and drowsed again, and the wind filled the air outside with dust, and time closed in like a hand.

  Ten hours left. No more?

  Five. Already?

  What a stupid way to end. Fear fluttered at the edge of his perception. He beat it. The wind yammered. How long can a dust storm continue, anyhow? Where’d it come from? Daylight again, outside his refuge, colored like blood and brass. The charged particles and X rays were so thick that some diffused in to him. He shifted cramped muscles, and drank the stench of his unwashed skin, and regretted everything he had wanted and failed to do.

  A shadow cast on the cornering rock. A rustle and slither conducted to his ears. A form, bulky and awkward as his own, crawling around the tunnel bend. Numb, shattered, he switched on his radio. The air was fairly clear in here and he heard her voice through the static: “. . . you are, you are alive! Oh, Valfar’s Wings upbear us, you live!”

  He held her while she sobbed, and he wept, too. “You shouldn’t have,” he stammered. “I never meant for you to risk yourself—”

  “We dared not wait,” she said when they were calmer. “We saw, from space, that the storm was enormous. It would go on in this area for days. And we didn’t know how long you had to live. We only knew you were in trouble, or you’d have been back with us. We came down. I almost had to fight my father, but I won and came. The hazard wasn’t so great for me. Really, no, believe me. She protected me till we found your sled. Then I did have to go out afoot with a metal detector to find you. Because you were obviously sheltered somewhere, and so you could only be detected at closer range than she can come. But the danger wasn’t that great, Daven. I can stand much more radiation than you. I’m still well inside my tolerance, won’t even need any drugs. Now I’ll shoot off this flare, and she’ll see, and come so close that we can make a dash—You are all right, aren’t you? You swear it?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said slowly. “I’m fine. Better off than ever in my life.” Absurdly, he had to have the answer, however footling all questions were against the fact that she had come after him and was here and they were both alive. “We? Who’s your companion?”

  She laughed and clinked her faceplate against his. “Jaccavrie, of course. Who else? You didn’t think your womenfolk were about to leave you alone, did you?”

  The ships began their trek homeward. They moved without haste. Best to be cautious until they had emerged from the nebula, seen where they were, and aimed themselves at the Dragon’s Head.

/>   “My people and I are pleased at your safety,” said Demring’s image in the outercom screen. He spoke under the obligation to be courteous, and could not refrain from adding: “We also approve your decision not to investigate that planet further.”

  “For the first, thanks,” Laure answered. “As for the second—” He shrugged. “No real need. I was curious about the effects of an atmosphere, but my computer has just run off a probability analysis of the data I already have, which proves that no more are necessary for my purposes.”

  “May one inquire what your purposes are?”

  “I’d like to discuss that first with your navigator. In private.”

  The green gaze studied Laure before Demring said, unsmiling: “You have the right of command. And by our customs, she having been instrumental in saving your life, a special relationship exists. But again I counsel forethought.”

  Laure paid no attention to that last sentence. His pulse was beating too gladly. He switched off as soon as possible and ordered the best dinner his ship could provide.

  “Are you certain you want to make your announcement through her?” the voice asked him. “And to her in this manner?”

  “I am. I think I’ve earned the pleasure. Now I’m off to make myself presentable for the occasion. Carry on.” Laure went whistling down the corridor.

  But when Graydal boarded, he took both her hands and they looked long in silence at each other. She had strewn jewels in her tresses, turning them to a starred midnight. Her clothes were civilian, a deep blue that offset coppery skin, amber eyes, and suppleness. And did he catch the least woodsy fragrance of perfume?

  “Welcome,” was all he could say at last.