Rise of the Terran Empire

by Poul Anderson

  The lights went out. After an hour they flickered back on again, but men had rioted and killed each other in the dark.

  Commander Jansky recalled all personal weapons on the grounds that the crew could no longer be trusted with them. The men drew up a petition to get them back. When it was refused, there was muttering of revolt.

  Spacemen, you have wandered too far. You have wandered beyond the edge of creation, and now there is only death.

  The hours dragged into days. When the ship's timepieces started disagreeing, time ceased to have meaning.

  Basil Donovan sat in his cabin. There was a bottle in his hand, but he tried to go slow. He was waiting.

  When the knock came, he leaped from his seat and every nerve tightened up and screamed. He swore at himself. They wouldn't knock when they came for him. "Go on, enter—" His voice wavered.

  Helena Jansky stepped inside, closing the door after her. She had thinned, and there was darkness in her eyes, but she still bore herself erect. Donovan had to salute the stubborn courage that was in her. The unimaginative peasant blood—no, it was more than that, she was as intelligent as he, but there was a deep strength in that tall form, a quiet vitality which had perhaps been bred out of the Families of Ansa. "Sit down," he invited.

  She sighed and ran a hand through her dark hair. "Thanks."

  "Drink?"

  "No. Not on duty."

  "And the captain is always on duty. Well, let it go." Donovan lowered himself to the bunk beside her, resting his feet on Wocha's columnar leg. The Donarrian muttered and whimpered in his sleep. "What can I do for you?"

  Her gaze was steady and grave. "You can tell me the truth."

  "About the Nebula? Why should I? Give me one good reason why an Ansan should care what happens to a Solarian ship."

  "Perhaps only that we're all human beings here, that those boys have earth and rain and sunlight and wives waiting for them."

  And Valduma—no, she isn't human. Fire and ice and storming madness, but not human. Too beautiful to be flesh.

  "This trip was your idea," he said defensively.

  "Donovan, you wouldn't have played such a foul trick and made such a weak, self-righteous excuse in the old days."

  He looked away, feeling his cheeks hot. "Well," he mumbled, "why not turn around, get out of the Nebula if you can, and maybe come back later with a task force?"

  "And lead them all into this trap? Our subtronics are out, you know. We can't send information back, so we'll just go on and learn a little more and then try to fight our way home."

  His smile was crooked. "I may have been baiting you, Helena. But if I told you everything I know, it wouldn't help. There isn't enough."

  Her hand fell strong and urgent on his. "Tell me, then! Tell me anyway."

  "But there is so little. There's a planet somewhere in the Nebula, and it has inhabitants with powers I don't begin to understand. But among other things, they can project themselves hyperwise, just like a spaceship, without needing engines to do it. And they have a certain control over matter and energy."

  "The fringe stars—these beings in the Nebula really have been their 'gods'?"

  "Yes. They've projected themselves, terrorized the natives for centuries, and carry home the sacrificial materials for their own use. They're doubtless responsible for all the ships around here that never came home. They don't like visitors." Donovan saw her smile, and his own lips twitched. "But they did, I suppose, take some prisoners, to learn our language and anything else they could about us."

  She nodded. "I'd conjectured as much. If you don't accept theories involving the supernatural, and I don't, it follows almost necessarily. If a few of them projected themselves aboard and hid somewhere, they could manipulate air molecules from a distance so as to produce the whisperings—" She smiled afresh, but the hollowness was still in her. "When you call it a new sort of ventriloquism, it doesn't sound nearly so bad, does it?"

  Fiercely, the woman turned on him. "And what have you had to do with them? How are you so sure?"

  "I—talked with one of them," he replied slowly. "You might say we struck up a friendship of sorts. But I learned nothing, and the only benefit I got was escaping. I've no useful information." His voice sharpened. "And that's all I have to say."

  "Well, we're going on!" Her head lifted pridefully.

  Donovan's smile was a crooked grimace. He took her hand, and it lay unresisting between his fingers. "Helena," he said, "you've been trying to psychoanalyze me this whole trip. Maybe it's my turn now. You're not so hard as you tell yourself."

  "I am an officer of the Imperial Navy." Her haughtiness didn't quite come off.

  "Sure, sure. A hard-shelled career girl. Only you're also a healthy human being. Down underneath, you want a home and kids and quiet green hills. Don't lie to yourself, that wouldn't be fitting to the Lady Jansky of Torgandale, would it? You went into service because it was the thing to do. And you're just a scared kid, my dear." Donovan shook his head. "But a very nice-looking kid."

  Tears glimmered on her lashes. "Stop it," she whispered desperately. "Don't say it."

  He kissed her, a long slow kiss with her mouth trembling under his and her body shivering ever so faintly. The second time she responded, shy as a child, hardly aware of the sudden hunger.

  She pulled free then, sat with eyes wide and wild, one hand lifted to her mouth. "No," she said, so quietly he could scarce hear. "No, not now—"

  Suddenly she got up and almost fled. Donovan sighed.

  Why did I do that? To stop her inquiring too closely? Or just because she's honest and human, and Valduma isn't? Or—

  Darkness swirled before his eyes. Wocha came awake and shrank against the farther wall, terror rattling in his throat. "Boss—boss, she's here again—"

  Donovan sat unstirring, elbows on knees, hands hanging empty, and looked at the two who had come. "Hello, Valduma," he said.

  "Basil—" Her voice sang against him, rippling, lilting, the unending sharp laughter beneath its surprise. "Basil, you have come back."

  "Uh-huh." He nodded at the other. "You're Morzach, aren't you? Sit down. Have a drink. Old home week."

  The creature from Arzun remained erect. He looked human on the outside, tall and gaunt in a black cape which glistened with tiny points of starlight, the hood thrown back so that his red hair fell free to his shoulders. The face was long and thin, chiseled to an ultimate refinement of classical beauty, white and cold. Cold as space-tempered steel, in spite of the smile on the pale lips, in spite of the dark mirth in the slant green eyes. One hand rested on the jeweled hilt of a sword.

  Valduma stood beside Morzach for an instant, and Donovan watched her with the old sick wildness rising and clamoring in him.

  You are the fairest thing which ever was between the stars, you are ice and flame and living fury, stronger and weaker than man, cruel and sweet as a child a thousand years old, and I love you. But you are not human, Valduma.

  She was tall, and her grace was a lithe rippling flow, wind and fire and music made flesh, a burning glory of hair rushing past her black-caped shoulders, hands slim and beautiful, the strange clean-molded face white as polished ivory, the mouth red and laughing, the eyes long and oblique and gold-flecked green. When she spoke, it was like singing in Heaven and laughter in Hell. Donovan looked at her, not moving.

  "Basil, you came back to me?"

  "He came because he had to." Morzach of Arzun folded his arms, eyes smoldering in anger. "Best we kill him now."

  "Later, perhaps later, but not now." Valduma laughed aloud.

  Suddenly she was in Donovan's arms. Her kisses were a rain of fire. There was thunder and darkness and dancing stars. He was aware of nothing else, not for a long, long time.

  She leaned back in his grasp, smiling up at him, stroking his hair with one slender hand.

  His cheek was bloody where she had scratched him. He looked back into her eyes—they were cat's eyes, split-pupiled, all gold and emerald without the huma
n white. She laughed very softly. "Shall I kill you now?" she whispered. "Or drive you mad first? Or let you go again? What would be most amusing, Basil?"

  "This is no time for your pranks," said Morzach sharply. "We have to deal with this ship. It's getting dangerously close to Arzun, and we've been unable yet to break the morale and discipline of the crew. I think the only way is to wreck the ship."

  "Wreck it on Arzun, yes!" Valduma's laughter pulsed and throbbed. "Bring them to their goal. Help them along, even. Oh, yes, Morzach, it is a good thought!"

  "We'll need your help," said the creature-man to Donovan. "I take it that you're guiding them. You must encourage them to offer no resistance when we take over the controls. Our powers won't stand too long against atomic energy."

  "Why should I help you?" Donovan's tones were hoarse. "What can you give me?"

  "If you live," said Valduma, "and can make your way to Drogobych, I might give you much." She laughed again, maniac laughter which did not lose its music. "That would be diverting!"

  "I don't know," he groaned. "I don't know—I thought a bargain could be made, but now I wonder."

  "I leave him to you," said Morzach sardonically, and vanished.

  "Basil," whispered Valduma. "Basil, I have—sometimes—missed you."

  "Get out, Wocha," said Donovan,

  "Boss—she's toombar—"

  "Get out!"

  Wocha lumbered slowly from the cabin. There were tears in his eyes.

  IV

  The Ganymede's engines rose to full power and the pilot controls spun over without a hand on them.

  "Engine room! Engine room! Stop that nonsense down there!"

  "We can't—they're frozen—the converter has gone into full without us—"

  "Sir, I can't budge this stick. It's locked somehow."

  The lights went out. Men screamed.

  "Get me a flashlight!" snapped Takahashi in the dark. "I'll take this damned panel apart myself."

  The beam etched his features against night. "Who goes?" he cried.

  "It's I." Jansky appeared in the dim reflected glow. "Never mind, Takahashi. Let the ship have her way."

  "But ma'm, we could crash—"

  "I've finally gotten Donovan to talk. He says we're in the grip of some kind of powerbeam. They'll pull us to one of their space stations and then maybe we can negotiate—or fight. Come on, we've got to quiet the men."

  The flashlight went out. Takahashi's laugh was shrill. "Better quiet me first, Captain."

  Her hand was on his arm, steadying, strengthening. "Don't fail me, Tetsuo. You're the last one I've got. I just had to paralyze Scoresby."

  "Thanks—thanks, chief. I'm all right now. Let's go."

  They fumbled through blindness. The engines roared, full speed ahead with a ghost on the bridge. Men were stumbling and cursing and screaming in the dark. Someone switched on the battle-stations siren, and its howl was the last voice of insanity.

  Struggle in the dark, wrestling, paralyzing the berserk, calling on all the iron will which had lifted humankind to the stars—slow restoration of order, men creeping to general quarters, breathing heavily in the guttering light of paper torches.

  The engines cut off and the ship snapped into normal matter state. Helena Jansky saw blood-red sunlight through the viewport. There was no time to sound the alarm before the ship crashed.

  "A hundred men. No more than a hundred men alive."

  She wrapped her cloak tight about her against the wind and stood looking across the camp. The streaming firelight touched her face with red, limning it against the utter dark of the night heavens, sheening faintly in the hair that blew wildly around her strong bitter countenance. Beyond, other fires danced and flickered in the gloom, men huddled around them while the cold seeped slowly to their bones. Here and there an injured human moaned.

  Across the ragged spine of bare black hills they could still see the molten glow of the wreck. When it hit, the atomic converters had run wild and begun devouring the hull. There had barely been time for the survivors to drag themselves and some of the cripples free, and to put the rocky barrier between them and the mounting radioactivity. During the slow red sunset, they had gathered wood, hewing with knives at the distorted scrub trees reaching above the shale and snow of the valley. Now they sat waiting out the night.

  Takahashi shuddered. "God, it's cold!"

  "It'll get colder," said Donovan tonelessly. "This is an old planet of an old red dwarf sun. Its rotation has slowed. The nights are long."

  "How do you know?" Lieutenant Elijah Cohen glared at him out of a crudely bandaged face. The firelight made his eyes gleam red. "How do you know unless you're in with them? Unless you arranged this yourself?"

  Wocha reached forth a massive fist. "You shut up," he rumbled.

  "Never mind," said Donovan. "I just thought some things would be obvious. You saw the star, so you should know it's the type of a burned-out dwarf. Since planets are formed at an early stage of a star's evolution, this world must be old too. Look at these rocks—citrified, back when the stellar energy output got really high just before the final collapse; and nevertheless eroded down to bare snags. That takes millions of years."

  He reflected that his reasoning, while sound enough, was based on foreknown conclusions. Cohen's right. I have betrayed them. It was Valduma, watching over me, who brought Wocha and myself unhurt through the crash. I saw, Valduma, I saw you with your hair flying in the chaos, riding witch-like through sundering ruin, and you were laughing. Laughing! He felt ill.

  "Nevertheless, the planet has a thin but breathable atmosphere, frozen water, and vegetable life," said Takahashi. "Such things don't survive the final hot stage of a sun without artificial help. This planet has natives. Since we were deliberately crashed here, I daresay the natives are our earlier friends." He turned dark accusing eyes on the Ansan. "How about it, Donovan?"

  "I suppose you're right," he answered. "I knew there was a planet in the Nebula, the natives had told me that in my previous trip. This star lies near the center, in a 'hollow' region where there isn't enough dust to force the planet into its primary, and shares a common velocity with the Nebula. It stays here, in other words."

  "You told me—" Helena Jansky bit her lip, then slowly forced the words out: "You told me, and I believed you, that there was nothing immediately to fear when the Nebulites took over our controls. So we didn't fight them; we didn't try to overcome their forces with our own engines. And it cost us the ship and over half her crew."

  "I told you what happened to me last time," he lied steadfastly. "I can't help it if things were different this trip."

  She turned her back. The wind blew a thin hissing veil of dry snow across her ankles. A wounded man suddenly screamed out there in the dark.

  How does it feel, Donovan? You made her trust you and then betrayed her for a thing that isn't even human. How does it feel to be a Judas?

  "Never mind recriminations," said Takahashi. "This isn't the time to hold trials. We've got to decide what to do."

  "They have a city on this planet," said Donovan. "Drogobych, they call it, and the planet's name is Arzun. It lies somewhere near the equator, they told me once. If they meant us to make our own way to it—and it would be like them—then it may well be due south. We can march that way, assuming that the sun set in the west."

  "Nothing to lose," shrugged the Terran. "But we haven't many weapons, a few assorted sidearms is all, and they aren't much use against these creatures anyway."

  Something howled out in the darkness. The ground quivered, ever so faintly, to the pounding of heavy feet.

  "Wild animals yet!" Cohen grinned humorlessly. "Better sound battle stations, Captain."

  "Yes, yes, I suppose so." She blew her whistle, a thin shrilling in the windy dark. As she turned around, Donovan saw a gleam running along her cheek. Tears?

  The noise came closer. They heard the rattle of claws on stone. The Terrans moved together, guns in front, clubs and rocks and bar
e hands behind. They have guts, thought Donovan. God, but they have guts!

  "Food would be scarce on a barren planet like this," said Ensign Chundra Dass. "We seem to be elected."

  The hollow roar sounded, echoing between the hills and caught up by the thin harrying wind. "Hold fire," said Helena. Her voice was clear and steady. "Don't waste charges. Wait—"

  The thing leaped out of darkness, a ten-meter length of gaunt scaled body and steel-hard claws and whipping tail, soaring through the snow-streaked air and caught in the vague uneasy firelight, Helena's blaster crashed, a lightning bolt sizzled against the armored head.