Agent of the Terran Empire

by Poul Anderson

  “Sir?” Chives raised the eyebrows he didn’t have.

  “No feel … intuition … whatever you want to call it. Svantozik is an artist of Intelligence. He may also be an artist at the pilot panel. So are you, little chum. You and I will stand watch and watch here. I’ve assigned a hairy great CPO to cook.”

  “Sir!” bleated Chives.

  Flandry winced. “I know. Navy cuisine. The sacrifices we unsung heroes make for Terra’s cause—!”

  He wandered aft to get acquainted with his crew. Walton had personally chosen a dozen for this mission: eight humans; a Scothanian, nearly human-looking but for the horns in his yellow hair; a pair of big four-armed gray-furred shaggy-muzzled Gorzuni; a purple-and-blue giant from Donarr, vaguely like a gorilla torso centauroid on a rhinoceros body. All had Terran citizenship, all were career personnel, all had fought with every weapon from ax to operations analyzer. They were as good a crew as could be found anywhere in the known galaxy. And far down underneath, it saddened Flandry that not one of the humans, except himself, came from Terra.

  The hours passed. He ate, napped, stood piloting tricks. Eventually he was close upon the Ardazirho boat, and ordered combat armor all around. He himself went into the turret with Chives.

  His quarry was a squat, ugly shape, dark against the distant star-clouds. The viewscreen showed a slim blast cannon and a torpedo launcher heavier than most boats that size would carry. The missiles it sent must have power enough to penetrate the Hooligan’s potential screens, make contact, and vaporize the target in a single nuclear burst.

  Flandry touched a firing stud. A tracer shell flashed out, drawing a line of fire through Svantozik’s boat. Or, rather, through the space where shell and boat coexisted with differing frequencies. The conventional signal to halt, was not obeyed.

  “Close in,” said Flandry. “Can you phase us?”

  “Yes, sir.” Chives danced lean triple-jointed fingers over the board. The Hooligan plunged like a stooping osprey. She interpenetrated the enemy craft, so that Flandry looked for a moment straight through its turret. He recognized Svantozik at the controls, in person, and laughed his delight. The Ardazirho slammed on pseudo-deceleration. A less skillful pilot would have shot past him and been a million kilometers away before realizing what had happened. Flandry and Chives, acting as one, matched the maneuver. For a few minutes they followed every twist and dodge. Then, grimly, Svantozik continued in a straight line. The Hooligan edged sideways until she steered a parallel course, twenty meters off.

  Chives started the phase adjuster. There was an instant’s sickness while the secondary drive skipped through a thousand separate frequency patterns. Then its in-and-out-of-space-time matched the enemy’s. A mass detector informed the robot, within microseconds, and the adjuster stopped. A tractor beam clamped fast to the other hull’s sudden solidity. Svantozik tried a different phasing, but the Hooligan equaled him without skipping a beat.

  “Shall we lay alongside, sir?” asked Chives.

  “Better not,” said Flandry. “They might choose to blow themselves up, and us with them. Boarding tube.”

  It coiled from the combat airlock to the other hull, fastened leech-like with magnetronic suckers, and clung. The Ardazirho energy cannon could not be brought to bear at this angle. A missile flashed from their launcher. It was disintegrated by a blast from the Hooligan’s gun. The Donarrian, vast in his armor, guided a “worm” through the boarding tube to the opposite hull. The machine’s energy snout began to gnaw through metal.

  Flandry sensed, rather than saw, the faint ripple which marked a changeover into primary drive. He slammed down his own switch. Both craft reverted simultaneously to intrinsic sub-light velocity. The difference of fifty kilometers per second nearly ripped them across. But the tractor beam held, and so did the compensator fields. They tumbled onward, side by side.

  “He’s hooked!” shouted Flandry.

  Still the prey might try a stunt. He must remain with Chives, parrying everything, while his crew had the pleasure of boarding. Flandry’s muscles ached with the wish for personal combat. Over the intercom now, radio voices snapped: “The worm’s pierced through, sir. Our party entering the breach. Four hostiles in battle armor opposing with mobile weapons—”

  Hell broke loose. Energy beams flamed against indurated steel. Explosive bullets burst, sent men staggering, went in screaming fragments through bulkheads. The Terran crew plowed unmercifully into the barrage, before it could break down their armor. They closed hand to hand with the Ardazirho. It was not too uneven a match in numbers: six to four, for half Flandry’s crew must man guns against possible missiles. The Ardazirho were physically a bit stronger than humans. That counted little, when fists beat on plate. But the huge Gorzuni, the barbarically shrill Scothanian with his wrecking bar of collapsed alloy, the Donarrian happily ramping and roaring and dealing buffets which stunned through all insulation — they ended the fight. The enemy navigator, preconditioned, died. The rest were extracted from their armor and tossed in the Hooligan’s hold.

  Flandry had not been sure Svantozik too was not channeled so capture would be lethal. But he had doubted it. The Urdahu were unlikely to be that prodigal of their very best officers, who if taken prisoner might still be exchanged or contrive to escape. Probably Svantozik had simply been given a bloc against remembering his home sun’s coordinates, when a pilot book wasn’t open before his face.

  The Terran sighed. “Clear the saloon, Chives,” he said wearily. “Have Svantozik brought to me, post a guard outside, and bring us some refreshments.” As he passed one of the boarding gang, the man threw him a grin and an exuberant salute. “Damn heroes,” he muttered.

  He felt a little happier when Svantozik entered. The Ardazirho walked proudly, red head erect, kilt somehow made neat again. But there was an inward chill in the wolf eyes. When he saw who sat at the table, he grew rigid. The fur stood up over his whole lean body and a growl trembled in his throat.

  “Just me,” said the human. “Not back from the Sky Cave , either. Flop down.” He waved at the bench opposite his own chair.

  Slowly, muscle by muscle, Svantozik lowered himself. He said at last, “A proverb goes: ‘The hornbuck may run swifter than you think.’ I touch the nose to you, Captain Flandry.”

  “I’m pleased to see my men didn’t hurt you. They had particular orders to get you alive. That was the whole idea.”

  “Did I do you so much harm in the Den?” asked Svantozik bitterly.

  “On the contrary. You were a more considerate host than I would have been. Maybe I can repay that.” Flandry took out a cigaret. “Forgive me. I have turned the ventilation up. But my brain runs on nicotine.”

  “I suppose—” Svantozik’s gaze went to the viewscreen and galactic night, “you know which of those stars is ours.”

  “Yes.”

  “It will be defended to the last ship. It will take more strength than you can spare from your borders to break us.”

  “So you are aware of the Syrax situation.” Flandry trickled smoke through his nose. “Tell me, is my impression correct that you rank high in Ardazir’s space service and in the Urdahu orbekh itself?”

  “Higher in the former than the latter,” said Svantozik dully. “The Packmasters and the old females will listen to me, but I have no authority with them.”

  “Still — look out there again. To the Sky Cave . What do you see?”

  They had come so far now that they glimpsed the thinner part of the nebula, which the interior luminosity could penetrate, from the side. The black cumulus shape towered ominously among the constellations; a dim red glow along one edge touched masses and filaments, as if a dying fire smoldered in some grotto full of spiderwebs. Not many degrees away from it, Ardazir’s sun flashed sword blue.

  “The Sky Cave itself, of course,” said Svantozik wonderingly. “The Great Dark. The Gate of the Dead, as those who believe in religion call it …
” His tone, meant to be sardonic, wavered.

  “No light, then? It is black to you?” Flandry nodded slowly. “I expected that. Your race is red-blind. You see further into the violet than I do: but in your eyes, I am gray and you yourself are black. Those atrociously combined red squares in your kilt all look equally dark to you.” The Urdahu word he used for “red” actually designated the yellow-orange band; but Svantozik understood.

  “Our astronomers have long known there is invisible radiation from the Sky Cave , radio and shorter wavelengths,” he said. “What of it?”

  “Only this,” said Flandry. “that you are getting your orders from that nebula.”

  Svantozik did not move a muscle. But Flandry saw how the fur bristled again, involuntarily, and the ears lay flat.

  The man rolled his cigaret between his fingers, staring at it. “You think the Dispersal of Ymir lies behind your own sudden expansion,” he said. “They supposedly provided you with weapons, robot machinery, knowledge, whatever you needed, and launched you on your career of conquest. Their aim was to rid the galaxy of Terra’s Empire, making you dominant instead among the oxygen breathers. You were given to understand that humans and Ymirites simply did not get along. The technical experts on Ardazir itself, who helped you get started, were they Ymirite?”

  “A few,” said Svantozik. “Chiefly, of course, they were oxygen breathers. That was far more convenient.”

  “You thought those were mere Ymirite clients, did you not?” pursued Flandry. “Think, though. How do you know any Ymirites actually were on Ardazir? They would have to stay inside a force-bubble ship all the time. Was anything inside that ship, ever, except a remote-control panel? With maybe a dummy Ymirite? It would not be hard to fool you that way. There is nothing mysterious about vessels of that type, they are not hard to build, it is only that races like ours normally have no use for such elaborate additional apparatus — negagrav fields offer as much protection against material particles, and nothing protects against a nuclear shell which has made contact.

  “Or, even if a few Ymirites did visit Ardazir … how do you know they were in charge? How can you be sure that their oxygen-breathing ‘vassals’ were not the real masters?”

  Svantozik laid back his lip and rasped through fangs: “You flop bravely in the net, Captain. But a mere hypothesis—”

  “Of course I am hypothesizing.” Flandry stubbed out his cigaret. His eyes clashed so hard with Svantozik’s, flint gray striking steel gray, that it was as if sparks flew. “You have a scientific culture, so you know the simpler hypothesis is to be preferred. Well, I can explain the facts much more simply than by some cumbersome business of Ymir deciding to meddle in the affairs of dwarf planets useless to itself. Because Ymir and Terra have never had any serious trouble. We have no interest in each other! They know no terrestroid race could ever become a serious menace to them. They can hardly detect a difference between Terran and Merseian, either in outward appearance or in mentality. Why should they care who wins?”

  “I do not try to imagine why,” said Svantozik stubbornly. “My brain is not based on ammonium compounds. The fact is, however—”

  “That a few individual Ymirites, here and there, have performed hostile acts,” said Flandry. “I was the butt of one myself. Since it is not obvious why they would, except as agents of their government, we have assumed that that was the reason. Yet all the time another motive was staring us in the face. I knew it. It is the sort of thing I have caused myself, in this dirty profession of ours, time and again. I have simply lacked proof. I hope to get that proof soon.

  “When you cannot bribe an individual — blackmail him!”

  Svantozik jerked. He raised himself from elbows to hands, his nostrils quivered, and he said roughly: “How? Can you learn any sordid secrets in the private life of a hydrogen breather? I shall not believe you even know what that race would consider a crime.”

  “I do not,” said Flandry. “Nor does it matter. There is one being who could find out. He can read any mind at close range, without preliminary study, whether the subject is naturally telepathic or not. I think he must be sensitive to some underlying basic life energy our science does not yet suspect. We invented a mind-screen on Terra, purely for his benefit. He was in the Solar System, on both Terra and Jupiter, for weeks. He could have probed the inmost thoughts of the Ymirite guide. If Horx himself was not vulnerable, someone close to Horx may have been. Aycharaych, the telepath, is an oxygen breather. It gives me the cold shudders to imagine what it must feel like, receiving Ymirite thoughts in a protoplasmic brain. But he did it. How many other places has he been, for how many years? How strong a grip does he have on the masters of Urdahu?”

  Svantozik lay wholly still. The stars flamed at his back, in all their icy millions.

  “I say,” finished Flandry, “that your people have been mere tools of Merseia. This was engineered over a fifteen-year period. Or even longer, perhaps. I do not know how old Aycharaych is. You were unleashed against Terra at a precisely chosen moment — when you confronted us with the choice of losing the vital Syrax Cluster or being robbed and ruined in our own sphere. You, personally, as a sensible hunter, would cooperate with Ymir, which you understood would never directly threaten Ardazir, and which would presumably remain allied with your people after the war, thus protecting you forever. But dare you cooperate with Merseia? It must be plain to you that the Merseians are as much your rivals as Terra could ever be. Once Terra is broken, Merseia will make short work of your jerry-built empire. I say to you, Svantozik, that you have been the dupe of your overlords, and that they have been the helpless, traitorous tools of Aycharaych. I think they steal off into space to get their orders from a Merseian gang — which I think I shall go and hunt!”

  XVII

  As the two flitters approached the nebula, Flandry heard the imprisoned Ardazirho howl. Even Svantozik, who had been here before and claimed hard agnosticism, raised his ruff and licked dry lips. To red-blind eyes, it must indeed be horrible, watching that enormous darkness grow until it had gulped all the stars and only instruments revealed anything of the absolute night outside. And ancient myths .will not die: within every Urdahu subconscious, this was still the Gate of the Dead. Surely that was one reason the Merseians had chosen it for the lair from which they controlled the destiny of Ardazir. Demoralizing awe would make the Packmasters still more their abject puppets.

  And then, on a practical level, those who were summoned — to report progress and receive their next instructions — were blind. What they did not see, they could not let slip, to someone who might start wondering about discrepancies.

  Flandry himself saw sinister grandeur: great banks and clouds of blackness, looming in utter silence on every side of him, gulfs and canyons and steeps, picked out by the central red glow. He knew, objectively, that the nebula was near-vacuum even in its densest portions: only size and distance created that picture of caverns beyond caverns. But his eyes told him that he sailed into Shadow Land , under walls and roofs huger than planetary systems, and his own tininess shook him.

  The haze thickened as the boats plunged inward. So too did the light, until at last Flandry stared into the clotted face of the infra-sun. It was a broad blurred disc, deep crimson, streaked with spots and bands of sable, hazing at the edges into impossibly delicate coronal arabesques. Here, in the heart of the nebula, dust and gas were condensing, a new star was taking shape.

  As yet it shone simply by gravitational energy, heating as it contracted. Most of its titanic mass was still ghostly tenuous. But already its core density must be approaching quantum collapse, a central temperature of megadegrees. In a short time (a few million years more, when man was bones and not even the wind remembered him) atomic fires would kindle and a new radiance light this sky.

  Svantozik looked at the instruments of his own flitter. “We orient ourselves by these three cosmic radio sources,” he said, pointing. His voice fell flat in
a stretched quietness. “When we are near the … headquarters … we emit our call signal and a regular ground-control beam brings us in.”

  “Good.” Flandry met the alien eyes, half frightened and half wrathful, with a steady compassionate look. “You know what you must do when you have landed.”

  “Yes.” The lean grim head lifted. “I shall not betray anyone again. You have my oath, Captain. I would not have broken troth with the Packmasters either, save that I think you are right and they have sold Urdahu.”

  Flandry nodded and clapped the Ardazirho’s shoulder. It trembled faintly beneath his hand. He felt Svantozik was sincere, though he left two armed humans aboard the prize, just to make certain the sincerity was permanent. Of course, Svantozik might sacrifice his own life to bay a warning — or he might have lied about there being only one installation in the whole nebula — but you had to take some risks.

  Flandry crossed back to his own vessel. The boarding tube was retracted. The two boats ran parallel for a time.

  Great unborn planets. It had been a slim clue, and Flandry would not have been surprised had it proved a false lead. But … it has been known for many centuries that when a rotating mass has condensed sufficiently, planets will begin to take shape around it.

  By the dull radiance of the swollen sun, Flandry saw his goal. It was, as yet, little more than a dusty, gassy belt of stones, strung out along an eccentric orbit in knots of local concentration, like beads. Gradually, the forces of gravitation, magnetism, and spin were bringing it together; ice and primeval hydrocarbons, condensed in the bitter cold on solid particles, made them unite on colliding, rather than shatter or bounce. Very little of the embryo world was visible: only the largest nucleus, a rough asteroidal mass, dark, scarred, streaked here and there by ice, crazily spinning, the firefly dance of lesser meteors, from mountains to dust motes, which slowly rained upon it.