"Ha?" The little black eyes blinked. "I come so we could be sure we talked safe."
Eric shoved back his frustration. Here was another step he could take toward his desire. "I worked it out while you were on your way. Then Lennart called, as we'd been hoping, right after you arrived.
"You go quietly with your agents to your midocean retreat, Ronga, as if for a few days' relaxation from the harassment the government's doubtless been giving you."
Van Rijn's mustaches vibrated. "Who told you about there?"
Eric felt progressively better as he spoke. "David Falkayn. Remember the night on your yacht, how toward morning, when we seemed pretty well talked out, he and I went topside for a breath of fresh air before the car came for me? He described your various private landing facilities, in case of need, and Ronga seems to me like the best bet."
That wasn't all he told, he thought. Already then, he knew what he aimed to do and had a fair idea of how to go about it. Today I have been, I still am acting at his behest as much as I am at my own.
"Well, now," he continued into the prawnlike stare, "each of my cruisers carries a speedster—outfitted for interstellar travel, I mean. I'll personally order one down, to land at Ronga. Some Commonwealth naval functionary will have to grant clearance. I'm wagering he'll just retrieve a listing of Ronga as bearing a civilian field suitable for that kind of vessel, and not check any further, like whose property it is. He won't dare to delay me. I've been acting mighty touchy—you noticed how I snooted Lennart—in hopes that word will go out to handle me with velvyl waldos.
"To avoid phone taps, I suggest you visit my ambassador after you leave here—get him out of bed if necessary—and hand him my commissions of your agents as officers of the Hermetian navy. Then bring to the island, and hand to them, my orders that they're to leave the Solar System according to instructions delivered verbally. They'll take the speedster after she's touched down; you can talk her pilot back to his ship. She carries several weeks' worth of basic supplies. Can you see to it that the nonhumans have along whatever supplementary nutrients they require?
"I don't imagine the boat will meet any problems getting cleared to lift, either. The person in charge will assume I want to visit my ships in their orbits. But once away from Earth, she'll head for the deeps. Space is big enough that it's unlikely she can be intercepted, if your man knows his trade. The Commonwealth navy isn't deployed against possible outward movements, as the Baburites were at Hermes."
A laugh clanked forth. "Oh, yes, I'll get any amount of thunder about this," Eric finished. "I'll enjoy pointing out that I've been entirely within my rights. We are not interned, and as yet we are not under the Commonwealth supreme command. 'Tisn't my fault if their officer took for granted I wanted a jaunt for myself. I'm not obliged to explain any orders I issue to personnel of mine—though as a matter of fact, 'tis quite reasonable that I'd send scouts to see from afar, if they can, how Hermes is doing. Yes, the brouhaha should be the first fun I've had since you smuggled me out of Rio."
Van Rijn stood moveless for seconds. Then: "Oh, ho, ho, ho!" he bellowed. "You is my son for sure, a chip off the old blockhead, ja, in you the Mendelian excessives is bred true! Let me find a bottle Genever I said should come with the office gear, and we will drink a wish to the enemy—bottoms up!"
"Later," Eric replied. Warmth touched him. "Yes, I do look forward to getting imperially drunk with you . . . Dad. But right now we've got to keep moving. I'll take your word for it that nobody can have traced you to this place. However, if you're out from under surveillance, if your whereabouts are unknown for long at a time, it could start the watchers speculating, not?"
He reached for writing materials. "Give me again the names of Falkayn's partners," he requested.
Van Rijn started where he stood. "Falkayn's? David? No, no, boy. I got others standing by."
Eric was surprised. "Of course you're reluctant to send him back into danger. But have you anybody more competent?"
"No." Van Rijn began ponderously pacing. "Ach, I admit I hate seeing Coya try not to show she grieves while he is gone. Nevertheleast I would send him, except—Well, you heard, that night on the boat. He will not go arrange a getting together of the independent company heads like he is supposed to. He does not lie to me about that. Give him a chance, he goes to Hermes."
"Why, yes. Should I object?"
"Tombs and torment!" van Rijn spluttered. "What can he do there? Get himself killed? Then what has all this pile of maneuvers been for?"
"I'm assuming he didn't boast when he told me, that dawn on your yacht, he and his gang can slip down onto the planet unbeknownst," Eric said. "Once there, yes, quite likely he will stay for the duration. That's good from my viewpoint, because his advice and leadership should be valuable. He also said it'd be harder to get a vessel back into space, but his partners have a sporting chance of being able to do it, after they've left him off. They have a record of such stunts. So they'll assemble your entrepreneurs for you. Though frankly, I've no clear idea of what you think those can accomplish."
"Little, maybe," van Rijn conceded. "And yet . . . I got a hunch on my back, son. It says we should work through what is left of the League, and maybe we find out the reasons for Babur's actions and how we can change them. Because on the face of it, they make no sense." He lifted a slab of a hand. "Oh, ja, I know, wars often do not. Still, I wonder and wonder what the Babur leaders imagine they can gain by imperialism against us." He knuckled his forehead. "Somewhere in this thick old noggin is fizzling an idea . . . .
"Davy will insist on going first to Hermes. Then could well be that Adzel and Chee never manage to continue. The jeopardy cannot change its spots. Let me send somebody else than them. Please."
That his father should finally use that word to him gave Eric a curious pang. "I'm sorry," he said. "It has to be Falkayn, no matter what terms he sets. You see, I've got to carry a rose in my tail—uh, that's Hermetian—I've got to guard my rear, legally, for the sake of my own men. Falkayn has my nationality. And his partners don't belong to the Commonwealth either, do they? Then I have a right to commission them. Have you any equally qualified spacers on tap that that's true of?"
Suddenly van Rijn looked shrunken. "No," he whispered.
He's old, passed through Eric, weary, and, here at last, forsaken. He wanted to clasp the bent shoulders. But he could merely say, "Does it make such a difference? At most, we'll set up a liaison, first with my home, later with your colleagues. We hope 'twill prove useful." He made his next words ring. "The issue, though, will depend on how well we fight."
Van Rijn gave him a long regard. "You do not see, do you, boy?" he asked, low and harshly. "Win, lose, or draw, much more war means the end of the Commonwealth like we has known it, and the League, and Hermes. You beg the saints we do not have to fight to what we call a decision." He was mute for a little. "Maybe we is already too late. Hokay, let us go ahead the way you want."
Burnt orange shading to molten gold and far-flung coral, sunset lay extravagant over the ocean. Light bridged the waters from horizon to surf. High in the west stood Venus. Beneath a lulling of waves, Ronga was wholly quiet. The day's odors of blossoms were fading away as air cooled.
Adzel came along a beach that edged the outside of the atoll. On his left a stand of palms glowed against eastern violet. On his right side, the scales shimmered. Chee Lan rode him; her fur seemed gilded. They were spending their last hour before they returned to space.
She said into a silence that had held them both for a while: "After this is done with, if we're still alive, I'm going back to Cynthia. For aye."
Adzel rumbled an inquiring sound.
"I've been thinking about it since the trouble began," she told him—or did she tell herself? "And tonight . . . the beauty here disturbs me. It's too much like home, and too much unlike. I try to recall the living forests of Dao-lai, malo trees in flower and wings around them, everywhere wings; but all I see is this. I try to remember folk I care abou
t, and all I have left is their names. It's a cold way to be."
"I'm glad your appetite for wealth is sated," Adzel said.
She bristled. "Why in chaos was I confessing to you, you overgrown gruntosaur? You wouldn't know what homesickness is. You can pursue your silly enlightenment anywhere you may be, till you've run the poor thing ragged."
The great head shook; and that, meaning no, was a gesture learned among humans, not seen in any land on Woden. "I am sorry, Chee. I did not mean to sound smug, simply happy on your account."
She calmed as fast as she had flared and gave him a purr. He continued doggedly, "I thought in my vanity that I was indeed free of birth ties. But this sun is dim, these horizons are narrow, and often in my dreams I gallop again with comrades across a wind-singing plain. And I long for a wife, I who am supposed to have such wishes only when a female is near me in her season. Or is it young that I really want, tumbling about my feet till I gather them up in my arms?"
"Yes, that," Chee murmured. "A lover I can be kind to, for always."
The beach thinned as it bent around a grove. Passing by, he and she came in sight of Falkayn and Coya, who faced each other with hands joined and had no vision of anything else. Adzel did not slacken his steady pace; he and his rider neither watched nor averted their eyes. Of three races and one fellowship, these four had little they need conceal between them.
"Oh, I regret nothing," said the Wodenite. "The years have been good. I will but wish my children have the same fortune I did, to fare among miracles."
"I likewise," Chee answered, "though I'm afraid—I'm afraid we've had the best of what there was. The time that is coming—" Her voice trailed off.
"You are not compelled to endure the future today," Adzel counseled. "Let us savor this final adventure of ours for what it is."
The Cynthian shook herself, as if she had climbed out of a glacial river, and leaped back to her olden style. "Adventure?" she snarled. "Crammed in a hull half the size of Muddlin' Through, with none of our pet amusements? Not even a computer that can play poker!"
XV
At first Hermes was a blue star. It grew to a sapphire disk marbled with white weather, darkened where its single huge continent lay, elsewhere a shining of seas sun-brightened or moon-shimmery. Later it filled half the firmament and was no longer ahead but below.
Here was the danger point. Her crew had ridden Streak in on a hyperbolic orbit, entering the Maian System from well off its ecliptic plane, nuclear power plant shut down and life support apparatus running at minimum activity off electric capacitors. Thus if any radar from a guardian Baburite ship fingered her, she would most likely be taken for a meteoroid from interstellar space, a fairly common sort of object. But now, lest she burn in the atmosphere, Falkayn must briefly apply thrust to give her the precise velocity required.
Readouts glided before his eyes, data on air density and its gradient, gravity, altitude, planetary curvature, the boat's ever-changing vectors. A computation flashed forth: in thirty seconds, aerodynamic descent would be feasible, given the correct amount of deceleration, and would bring the speedster down at such-and-such a point. He must decide whether to take advantage of that opportunity or wait for the next. Then less negagrav force would be needed; but the hull would grow hotter and the place of landing would be different. Acting half on reason, half on trained instinct, he pressed the button which elected the immediate option.
With no internal field to compensate, deceleration crammed him forward into his safety web. Weight dragged on his body, darkness went tattered across his vision, thunder sounded through his skull. After minutes the drive cut off and he was flying free on a shallow slant. This high in the stratosphere, stars still shone in a heaven gone blue-black.
"Are you all right back there?" he croaked into the intercom.
"As all right as any other squashed tomato," Chee grumbled from the weapons control turret.
"Oh, I found the maneuver quite refreshing, after so long a time weightless," Adzel said in the engine compartment. "I can't wait to disembark and stretch my legs." Aboard Streak he had had no room for anything except isometric exercises and pushups. He must vacate the recreation chamber, the only one in which he could extend himself, whenever his shipmates wanted a workout—either that or risk becoming a backstop for a handball.
"You may get in more jogging than you really want," Chee said dourly, "if somebody's detector registered our power output."
"We were over the middle of the Corybantic Ocean," Falkayn reminded her. "The odds should favor us . . . . Whoops, here we start bouncing."
The boat struck the interface of stratosphere and troposphere at a small, calculated angle. Like a stone skimmed across water, she rebounded from the denser gas. Shock drummed through her structure. For a while she flew on, almost free, rising higher toward space, then curving downward to strike and leap again . . . again . . . again. Each pass was deeper in the atmosphere, at a lower speed. The sky outside turned blue by day, starry only as she rounded the night side. A wail of cloven air swelled to a hurricane roar. Land and sea began to fill more view than heaven did.
At last she was mere kilometers above the surface, acting now as a lifting body. Falkayn tapped a button to demand her geographical coordinates, computed from the continuous signals of navigation satellites. Eagerly he compared a map in his hands. He was over Greatland, bound for a setdown in the Thunderhead Mountains. Below him stretched the sunlit desert of the continental interior, red soil rising in fantastic wind-sculptured yardangs, scantily begrown with yerb, empty of man. If he hadn't been observed yet, he doubted he would be. So he could use the engine to bring the vessel quite near Hornbeck, ancestral home of the Falkayns.
Chee's voice was a swordcut across his hopes. "Yao leng! Two aircraft from northeast and southeast, converging on our track."
"You sure?" Falkayn almost shouted.
"Radar and . . . yes, by all doom and hell, neutrino emission, nuclear power plants. I don't think they're spaceable, but they're big, and you can bet they're well heeled."
Oh, no, oh, no, twisted in Falkayn. We were spotted. How? Well, the occupation force must be bigger and more dispersed than Eric realized, for whatever reason. After all, he was gone before it took over . . . . Somebody noted an energy burst high up, and queried a centrum which said it probably was nothing Baburite, and a widespread detector net got busy, and we were discovered, and the nearest military flyers were scrambled to check on us.
He shoved out the dismay in him and asked, "Any prospect of shooting them down when they come close?"
"Poor, I'd say," Chee replied.
Falkayn nodded. Streak wasn't Muddlin' Through. In atmosphere and a strong gravity field, she was much less agile than machines intended for such conditions. She had no forcefield generator capable of stopping a missile, and her unarmored sides were desperately vulnerable to rays. Before she could strike a first-class fighting aircraft, it would likeliest have blown her apart.
To attempt a return to space would be as senseless as to try combat here. Tracking devices already had a lock on her. Warcraft in orbit must already have been alerted.
The three had discussed this, and every other contingency they could think of, during their voyage. "Okay," Falkayn said. "Where'll they meet us, Chee?"
"In about another five hundred kilometers, if everybody keeps his present vector," the Cynthian told him.
"Give thanks for so much luck. We'll be well over the Thunderheads, a section of them that I knew as a boy. I'll land us short of our destination, and we'll bolt into the woods. Maybe we can shake pursuit. You two, leave your posts right away; no further point in your staying on watch. Chee, collect our supplemental rations." They could all eat most of the native life, but it lacked certain vitamins and trace minerals. "Adzel, get the traveling gear." A bundle of that had been prepared in advance, including impellers on which they could fly if they did elude enemy search. "Stand by at the personnel lock, but buckle onto stanchions. I'll be slammin
g on brakes quite soon."
Trailing a sonic boom that shivered the ground below, Streak continued her long descent. The mountains reared ghost-blue over the worldrim, then starkly gray and tawny, then beneath the speedster, rock, crags, talus slopes, eternal snows. Peaks raked at her as she crossed their divide. The eastern heights were gentler, falling in long curves toward the Apollo Valley, beyond which lay the Arcadian Hills, the coastal plain, Starfall, and the Auroral Ocean. In the moister air of this side, clouds drifted, alpine meadows glimmered autumnally pale, the lower slopes lay mantled in forest.
Here we go! Falkayn cut in the drive afresh. With a surge of force, the spaceboat shuddered to a virtual halt, tipped to a vertical position, sank, struck. Her landing jacks bit into topsoil, found solidity, adjusted themselves to hold her steady. By then Falkayn was out of his seat. A dose of equilibrol had compensated his organs of balance for the time under zero gee. He swung himself down a companion, dashed along a corridor, found the airlock open and sped over the gangway after his partners.
Rise of the Terran Empire Page 18