Agent of the Terran Empire df-5

by Poul Anderson

  “Or human. If you knew how close I was to — No. Go on.”

  “Well, tell the enemy that you told me you’d betrayed me in a fit of pique, and now you regretted it. And I, being wildly in love with you — which again is highly believable—” She gave his predictable gallantry no response whatsoever. “I told you there was a possible escape for you. I said this: The Ardazirho are under the impression that Ymir is behind them. Actually, Ymir leans toward Terra, since we are more peace-minded and therefore less troublesome. The Ymirites are willing to help us in small ways; we keep this fact secret because now and then it saves us in emergencies. If I could only set a spaceship’s signal to a certain recognition pattern, you could try to steal that ship. The Ardazirho would assume you headed for Walton’s fleet, and line out after you in that direction. So you could give them the slip, reach Ogre, transmit the signal pattern, and request transportation to safety in a force-bubble ship.”

  Her eyes stretched wide with terror. “But if Svantozik hears that — an’ ’tisn’t true—”

  “He won’t know it’s false till he’s tried, will he?” answered Flandry cheerfully. “If I lied, it isn’t your fault. In fact, since you hastened to tattle, even about what looked like an escape for you, it’ll convince him you’re a firm collaborationist.”

  “But — no, Dominic. ’Tis … I don’t dare—”

  “Don’t hand me that, Kit. You’re one girl in ten to the tenth, and there’s nothing you won’t dare.”

  Then she did begin to sob.

  After she had gone, Flandry spent a much less happy time waiting. He could still only guess how his enemy would react: an experienced human would probably not be deceived, and Svantozik’s ignorance of human psychology might not be as deep as hoped. Flandry swore and tried to rest. The weariness of the past days was gray upon him.

  When his cell door opened, he sprang up with a jerkiness that told him how thin his nerves were worn.

  Svantozik stood there, four guards poised behind. The Ardazirho officer flashed teeth in a grin. “Good hunting, Captain,” he greeted. “Is your den comfortable?”

  “It will do,” said Flandry, “until I can get one provided with a box of cigars, a bottle of whisky, and a female.”

  “The female, at least, I tried to furnish,” riposted Svantozik.

  Flandry added in his suavest tone: “Oh, yes, I should also like a rug of Ardazirho skin.”

  One of the guards snarled. Svantozik chuckled. “I too have a favor to ask, Captain,” he said. “My brothers in the engineering division are interested in modifying a few spaceships to make them more readily usable by humans. You understand how such differences as the location of the thumb, or that lumbar conformation which makes it more comfortable for us to lie prone on the elbows than sit, have influenced the design of our control panels. A man would have trouble steering an Ardazirho craft. Yet necessarily, in the course of time, if the Great Hunt succeeds and we acquire human subjects — we will find occasion for some of them to pilot some of our vehicles. The Kittredge female, for example, could profitably have a ship of her own, since we anticipate usefulness in her as a go-between among us and the human colonists here. If you would help her — simply in checking over one of our craft, and drawing up suggestions—”

  Flandry grew rigid. “Why should I help you at all?” he said through clenched jaws.

  Svantozik shrugged. “It is very minor assistance. We could do it ourselves. But it may pass the time for you.” Wickedly: “I am not at all sure that good treatment, rather than abuse, may not be the way to break down a man. Also, Captain, if you must have a rationalization, think: here is a chance to examine one of our vessels close up. If later, somehow, you escape, your own service would be interested in what you saw.”

  Flandry stood a moment, altogether quiet. Thought lanced through him: Kit told. Svantozik naturally prefers me not to know what she did tell. So he makes up this story — offers me what he hopes I’ll think is a God-sent opportunity to arrange for Kit’s escape — He said aloud, urbanely: “You are most kind, my friend of the Janneer Ya. But Miss Kittredge and I could not feel at ease with ugly guards like yours drooling over our shoulders.”

  He got growls from two warriors that time. Svantozik hushed them. “That is easily arranged,” he said. “The guards can stay out of the control turret.”

  “Excellent. Then, if you have some human-made tools—”

  They went down hollow corridors, past emplacements where artillery slept like nested dinosaurs, across the furious arctic day, and so to a spaceship near the outworks. Through goggles, the man studied her fiercely gleaming shape. About equivalent to a Terran Comet class. Fast, lightly armed, a normal complement of fifteen or so, but one could handle her if need be.

  The naked hills beyond wavered in heat. When he had stepped through the airlock, he felt dizzy from that brief exposure.

  Svantozik stopped at the turret companionway. “Proceed,” he invited cordially. “My warriors will wait here until you wish to return — at which time you and the female will come dine with me and I shall provide Terran delicacies.” Mirth crossed his eyes. “Of course, the engines have been temporarily disconnected.”

  “Of course,” bowed Flandry.

  Kit met him as he shut the turret door. Her fingers closed cold on his arm. “Now what’ll we do?” she gasped.

  “Easy, lass.” He disengaged her. “I don’t see a bugscrambler here.” Remember, Svantozik thinks I think you are still loyal to me. Play it, Kit, don’t forget, or we’re both done! “There are four surly-looking guards slouched below,” he said. “I don’t imagine Svantozik will waste his own valuable time in their company. A direct bug to the office of someone who knows Anglic is more efficient. Consider me making obscene gestures at you, O great unseen audience. But is anyone else aboard, d’you know?”

  “N-no—” Her eyes asked him, through fear: Have you forgotten? Are you alerting them to your plan?

  Flandry wandered past the navigation table to the main radio transceiver. “I don’t want to risk someone getting officious,” he murmured. “You see, I’d first like to peek at their communication system. It’s the easiest thing to modify, if any alterations are needed. And it could look bad, unseen audience, if we were surprised at what is really a harmless inspection.” I trust, he thought with a devil’s inward laughter, that they don’t know I know they know I’m actually supposed to install a password circuit for Kit.

  It was the sort of web he loved. But he remembered, as a cold tautening, that a bullet was still the ultimate simplicity which clove all webs.

  He took the cover off and began probing. He could not simply have given Kit the frequencies and wave shapes in a recognition signal: because Ardazirho equipment would not be built just like Terran, nor calibrated in metric units. He must examine an actual set, dismantle parts, test them with oscilloscope and static meters — and, surreptitiously, modify it so that the required pattern would be emitted when a single hidden circuit was closed.

  She watched him, as she should if she expected him to believe this was her means of escape. And doubtless the Ardazirho spy watched too, over a bugscreen. When Flandry’s job was done, it would be Svantozik who took this ship to Ogre, generated the signal, and saw what happened.

  Because the question of whose side the Ymirite Dispersal truly was on, overrode everything else. If Flandry had spoken truth to Kit, the lords of Urdahu must be told without an instant’s pause.

  The man proceeded, making up a pattern as he went and thinking wistfully how nice it would be if Ymir really did favor Terra. Half an hour later he resealed the unit. Then he spent another hour ostentatiously strolling around the turret examining all controls.

  “Well,” he said at last, “we might as well go home, Kit.”

  He saw the color leave her face. She knew what that sentence meant. But she nodded. “Let’s,” she whispered.

  Flandry bowed her through the door. As she came down the companionway, the guards at
its base got up. Their weapons aimed past her, covering Flandry, who strolled with a tigerish leisure.

  Kit pushed through the line of guards. Flandry, still on the companionway, snatched at his pocket. The four guns leaped to focus on him. He laughed and raised empty hands. “I only wanted to scratch an itch,” he called.

  Kit slipped a knife from the harness of one guard and stabbed him in the ribs.

  Flandry dove into the air. A bolt crashed past him, scorching his tunic. He struck the deck with flexed knees and bounced. Kit had already snatched the rifle from the yelling warrior she had wounded. It thundered in her hands, point-blank. Another Ardazirho dropped. Flandry knocked aside the gun of a third. The fourth enemy had whipped around toward Kit. His back was to Flandry. The man raised the blade of his hand and brought it down again, chop to the skull-base. He heard neckbones splinter. The third guard sprang back, seeking room to shoot. Kit blasted him open. The first one, stabbed, on his knees, reached for a dropped rifle. Flandry kicked him in the larynx.

  “Starboard lifeboat!” he rasped.

  He clattered back into the turret. If the Ardazirho watcher had left the bugscreen by now, he had a few minutes’ grace. Otherwise, a nuclear shell would probably write his private doomsday. He snatched up the navigator’s manual and sprang out again.

  Kit was already in the lifeboat. Its small engine purred, warming up. Flandry plunged through the lock, dogged it behind him. “I’ll fly,” he panted. “I’m more used to non-Terran panels. You see if you can find some bailing-out equipment. We’ll need it.”

  Where the devil was the release switch? The bugwatcher had evidently quit in time, but any moment now he would start to wonder why Flandry and Party weren’t yet out of the spaceship — There! He slapped down a lever. A hull panel opened. Harsh sunlight poured through the boat’s viewscreen. Flandry glanced over its controls. Basically like those he had just studied. He touched the Escape button. The engine yelled. The boat sprang from its mother ship, into the sky.

  Flandry aimed southward. He saw the fortress whirl dizzily away, fall below the horizon. And still no pursuit, not even a homing missile. They must be too dumbfounded. It wouldn’t last, of course … He threw back his head and howled out all his bottled-up laughter, great gusts of it to fill the cabin and echo over the scream of split atmosphere.

  “What are you doin’?” Kit’s voice came faint and frantic. “We can’t escape this way. Head spaceward before they overhaul us!”

  Flandry wiped his eyes. “Excuse me,” he said. “I was laughing while I could.” Soberly: “With the blockade, and a slow vessel never designed for human steering, we’d not climb 10,000 kilometers before they nailed us. What we’re going to do is bail out and let the boat continue on automatic. With luck, they’ll pursue it so far before catching up that they’ll have no prayer of backtracking us. With still more luck, they’ll blow the boat up and assume we were destroyed too.”

  “Bail out?” Kit looked down at a land of stones and blowing ash. The sky above was like molten steel. “Into that?” she whispered.

  “If they do realize we jumped,” said Flandry, “I trust they’ll figure we perished in the desert. A natural conclusion, I’m sure, since our legs aren’t so articulated that we can wear Ardazirho spacesuits.” He grew grimmer than she had known him before. “I’ve had to improvise all along the way. Quite probably I’ve made mistakes, Kit, which will cost us a painful death. But if so, I’m hoping we won’t die for naught.”

  XIV

  Even riding a grav repulsor down, Flandry felt how the air smote him with heat. When he struck the ground and rolled over, it burned his skin.

  He climbed up, already ill. Through his goggles, he saw Kit rise. Dust veiled her, blown on a furnace wind. The desert reached in withered soil and bony crags for a few kilometers beyond her, then the heat-haze swallowed vision. The northern horizon seemed incandescent, impossible to look at.

  Thunder banged in the wake of the abandoned lifeboat. Flandry stumbled toward the girl. She leaned on him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I think I twisted an ankle.”

  “And scorched it, too, I see. Come on lass, not far now.”

  They groped over tumbled gray boulders. The weather monitor tower rippled before their eyes, like a skeleton seen through water. The wind blasted and whined. Flandry felt his skin prickle with ultraviolet and bake dry as he walked. The heat began to penetrate his bootsoles.

  They were almost at the station when a whistle cut through the air. Flandry lifted aching eyes. Four torpedo shapes went overhead, slashing from horizon to horizon in seconds. The Ardazirho, in pursuit of an empty lifeboat. If they had seen the humans below — No. They were gone. Flandry tried to grin, but it split his lips too hurtfully.

  The station’s equipment huddled in a concrete shack beneath the radio transmitter tower. The shade, when they had staggered through the door, was like all hopes of heaven.

  Flandry uncorked a water bottle. That was all he had dared take out of the spaceboat supplies; alien food was liable to have incompatible proteins. His throat was too much like a mummy’s to talk, but he offered Kit the flask and she gulped thirstily. When he had also swigged, he felt a little better.

  “Get to work, wench,” he said. “Isn’t it lucky you’re in Vixen’s weather engineering department, so you knew where to find a station and what to do when we got there?”

  “Go on,” she tried to laugh. It was a rattling in her mouth. “You built your idea aroun’ the fact. Let’s see, now, they keep tools in a locker at every unit—” She stopped. The shadow in this hut was so deep, against the fury seen through one little window, that she was almost invisible to him. “I can tinker with the sender, easily enough,” she said. Slow terror rose in her voice. “Sure, I can make it ’cast your message, ’stead o’ telemeterin’ weather data. But … I just now get to thinkin’ … s’pose an Ardazirho reads it? Or s’pose nobody does? I don’t know if my service is even bein’ manned now. We could wait here, an’ wait, an’—”

  “Easy.” Flandry came behind her, laid his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. “Anything’s possible. But I think the chances favor us. The Ardazirho can hardly spare personnel for something so routine and, to them, unimportant, as weather adjustment. At the same time, the human engineers are very probably still on the job. Humanity always continues as much in the old patterns as possible, people report to their usual work, hell may open but the city will keep every lawn mowed … Our real gamble is that whoever spots our call will have the brains, and the courage and loyalty, to act on it.”

  She leaned against him a moment. “An’ d’you think there’s a way for us to be gotten out o’ here, under the enemy’s nose?”

  An obscure pain twinged in his soul. “I know it’s unfair, Kit,” he said. “I myself am a hardened sinner and this is my job and so on, but it isn’t right to hazard all the fun and love and accomplishment waiting for you. It must be done, though. My biggest hope was always to steal a navigation manual. Don’t you understand, it will tell us where Ardazir lies!”

  “I know.” Her sigh was a small sound almost lost in the boom of dry hot wind beyond die door. “We’d better start work.”

  While she opened the transmitter and cut out the meter circuits, Flandry recorded a message: a simple plea to contact Emil Bryce and arrange the rescue from Station 938 of two humans with vital material for Admiral Walton. How that was to be done, he had no clear idea himself. A Vixenite aircraft would have little chance of getting this far north undetected and undestroyed. A radio message — no, too easily intercepted, unless you had very special apparatus — a courier to the fleet — and if that was lost, another and another—

  When she had finished, Kit reached for the second water bottle. “Better not,” said Flandry. “We’ve a long wait.”

  “I’m dehydrated,” she husked.

  “Me too. But we’ve no salt; heat stroke is a real threat. Drinking as little as possible will stretch our survival time. Why the devil ar
en’t these places air conditioned and stocked with rations?”

  “No need for it. They just get routine inspection … at mid-winter in these parts.” Kit sat down on the one little bench. Flandry joined her. She leaned into the curve of his arm. A savage gust trembled in the hut walls, the window was briefly blackened with flying grit.

  “Is Ardazir like this?” she wondered. “Then ’tis a real hell for those devils to come from.”

  “Oh, no,” answered Flandry. “Temulak said their planet has a sane orbit. Doubtless it’s warmer than Terra, on the average, but we could stand the temperature in most of its climatic zones, I’m sure. A hot star, emitting strongly in the UV, would split water molecules and kick the free hydrogen into space before it could recombine. The ozone layer would give some protection to the hydrosphere, but not quite enough. So Ardazir must be a good deal drier than Terra, with seas rather than oceans. At the same time, judging from the muscular strength of the natives, as well as the fact they don’t mind Vixen’s air pressure, Ardazir must be somewhat bigger. Surface gravity of one-point-five, maybe. That would retain an atmosphere similar to ours, in spite of the sun.”

  He paused. Then: “They aren’t fiends, Kit. They’re fighters and hunters. Possibly they’ve a little less built-in kindliness than our species. But I’m not even sure about that. We were a rambunctious lot too, a few centuries ago. We may well be again, when the Long Night has come and it’s root, hog, or die. As a matter of fact, the Ardazirho aren’t even one people. They’re a whole planetful of races and cultures. The Urdahu conquered the rest only a few years ago. That’s why you see all those different clothes on them — concession to parochialism, like an ancient Highland regiment. And I’ll give odds that in spite of all their successes, the Urdahu are not too well liked at home. Theirs is a very new empire, imposed by overwhelming force; it could be split again, if we used the right tools. I feel almost sorry for them, Kit. They’re the dupes of someone else — and Lord, what a someone that is! What a genius!”