Harsh, gallant, indomitable, serving the god of battles so that it might be destroyed—working toward their own obliteration—the Free Companies roar down the pages of history, the banner of Mars streaming above them in the misty air of Venus. They were doomed as Tyrannosaur Rex was doomed, and they fought on as he did, serving, in their strange way, the shape of Minerva that stood behind Mars.
Now they are gone. We can learn much by studying the place they held in the Undersea Period. For, because of them, civilization rose again to the heights it had once reached on Earth, and far beyond.
“These lords shall light the mystery
Of mastery or victory,
And these ride high in history,
But these shall not return.”
The Free Companions hold their place in interplanetary literature. They are a legend now, archaic and strange. For they were fighters, and war has gone with unification. But we can understand them a little more than could the people of the Keeps.
This story, built on legends and fact, is about a typical warrior of the period—Captain Brian Scott of Doone’s Free Companions. He may never have existed—
I.
O, it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s “Thank you, Mr. Atkins,” when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play—
O, it’s “Thank you, Mr. Atkins,” when the band begins to play.
—R. Kipling circa 1900
SCOTT DRANK STINGING UISQUEPLUS AND GLOWERED ACROSS THE SMOKY tavern. He was a hard, stocky man, with thick gray-shot brown hair and the scar of an old wound crinkling his chin. He was thirty-odd, looking like the veteran he was, and he had sense enough to wear a plain suit of blue celoflex, rather than the garish silks and rainbow fabrics that were all around him.
Outside, through the transparent walls, a laughing throng was carried to and fro along the movable ways. But in the tavern it was silent, except for the low voice of a harpman as he chanted some old ballad, accompanying himself on his complicated instrument. The song came to an end. There was scattered applause, and from the hot-box overhead the blaring music of an orchestra burst out. Instantly the restraint was gone. In the booths and at the bar men and women began to laugh and talk with casual unrestraint. Couples were dancing now.
The girl beside Scott, a slim, tan-skinned figure with glossy black ringlets cascading to her shoulders, turned inquiring eyes to him.
“Want to, Brian?”
Scott’s mouth twisted in a wry grimace. “Suppose so, Jeana. Eh?” He rose, and she came gracefully into his arms. Brian did not dance too well, but what he lacked in practice he made up in integration. Jeana’s heart-shaped face, with its high cheekbones and vividly crimson lips, lifted to him.
“Forget Bienne. He’s just trying to ride you.”
Scott glanced toward a distant booth, where two girls sat with a man—Commander Fredric Bienne of the Doones. He was a gaunt, tall, bitter-faced man, his regular features twisted into a perpetual sneer, his eyes somber under heavy dark brows. He was pointing, now, toward the couple on the floor.
“I know,” Scott said. “He’s doing it, too. Well, the hell with him. So I’m a captain now and he’s still a commander. That’s tough. Next time he’ll obey orders and not send his ship out of the line, trying to ram.”
“That was it, eh?” Jeana asked. “I wasn’t sure. There’s plenty of talk.”
“There always is. Oh, Bienne’s hated me for years. I reciprocate. We simply don’t get on together. Never did. Every time I got a promotion, he chewed his nails. Figured he had a longer service record than I had, and deserved to move up faster. But he’s too much of an individualist—at the wrong times.”
“He’s drinking a lot,” Jeana said.
“Let him. Three months we’ve been in Montana Keep. The boys get tired of inaction—being treated like this.” Scott nodded toward the door, where a Free Companion was arguing with the keeper. “No noncoms allowed in here. Well, the devil with it.”
They could not hear the conversation above the hubbub, but its importance was evident. Presently the soldier shrugged, his mouth forming a curse, and departed. A fat man in scarlet silks shouted encouragement.
“—want any… Companions here!”
Scott saw Commander Bienne, his eyes half closed, get up and walk toward the fat man’s booth. His shoulder moved in an imperceptible shrug. The hell with civilians, anyhow. Serve the lug right if Bienne smashed his greasy face. And that seemed the probable outcome. For the fat man was accompanied by a girl, and obviously wasn’t going to back down, though Bienne, standing too close to him, was saying something insulting, apparently.
The auxiliary hot-box snapped some quick syllables, lost in the general tumult. But Scott’s trained ear caught the words. He nodded to Jeana, made a significant clicking noise with his tongue, and said, “This is it.”
She, too, had heard. She let Scott go. He headed toward the fat man’s booth just in time to see the beginning of a brawl. The civilian, red as a turkey cock, had struck out suddenly, landing purely by accident on Bienne’s gaunt cheek. The commander, grinning tightly, stepped back a pace, his fist clenching. Scott caught the other’s arm.
“Hold it, commander.”
Bienne swung around, glaring. “What business is it of yours? Let—”
The fat man, seeing his opponent’s attention distracted, acquired more courage and came in swinging. Scott reached past Bienne, planted his open hand in the civilian’s face, and pushed hard. The fat man almost fell backward on his table.
As he rebounded, he saw a gun in Scott’s hand. The captain said curtly, “Tend to your knitting, mister.”
The civilian licked his lips, hesitated, and sat down. Under his breath he muttered something about too-damn-cocky Free Companions.
Bienne was trying to break free, ready to swing on the captain. Scott bolstered his gun. “Orders,” he told the other, jerking his head toward the hot-box. “Get it?”
“—mobilization. Doonemen report to headquarters. Captain Scott to Administration. Immediate mobilization—”
“Oh,” Bienne said, though he still scowled. “O.K. I’ll take over. There was time for me to take a crack at that louse, though.”
“You know what instant mobilization means,” Scott grunted. “We may have to leave at an instant’s notice. Orders, commander.”
Bienne saluted halfheartedly and turned away. Scott went back to his own booth. Jeana had already gathered her purse and gloves and was applying lip juice.
She met his eyes calmly enough.
“I’ll be at the apartment, Brian. Luck.”
He kissed her briefly, conscious of a surging excitement at the prospect of a new venture. Jeana understood his emotion. She gave him a quick, wry smile, touched his hair lightly, and rose. They went out into the gay tumult of the ways.
Perfumed wind blew into Scott’s face. He wrinkled his nose disgustedly. During carnival seasons the Keeps were less pleasant to the Free Companions than otherwise; they felt more keenly the gulf that lay between them and the undersea dwellers. Scott pushed his way through the crowd and took Jeana across the ways to the center fast-speed strip. They found seats.
At a clover-leaf intersection Scott left the girl, heading toward Administration, the cluster of taller buildings in the city’s center. The technical and political headquarters were centered here, except for the laboratories, which were in the suburbs near the base of the Dome. There were a few small test-domes a mile or so distant from the city, but these were used only for more precarious experiments. Glancing up, Scott was reminded of the catastrophe that had unified science into something like a freemasonry. Above him, hanging without gravity over a central plaza, was the globe of the Earth, half shrouded by the folds of a black plastic pall. In every Keep on Venus there was a similar ever-present reminder of the lost mother planet.
Scott’s gaze went up farther, to the D
ome, as though he could penetrate the impervium and the mile-deep layer of water and the clouded atmosphere to the white star that hung in space, one quarter as brilliant as the Sun. A star—all that remained of Earth, since atomic power had been unleashed there two centuries ago. The scourge had spread like flame, melting continents and leveling mountains. In the libraries there were wire-tape pictorial records of the Holocaust. A religious cult—Men of the New Judgment—had sprung up, and advocated the complete destruction of science; followers of that dogma still existed here and there. But the cult’s teeth had been drawn when technicians unified, outlawing experiments with atomic power forever, making use of that force punishable by death, and permitting no one to join their society without taking the Minervan Oath.
“—to work for the ultimate good of mankind… taking all precaution against harming humanity and science… requiring permission from those in authority before undertaking any experiment involving peril to the race… remembering always the extent of the trust placed in us and remembering forever the death of the mother planet through misuse of knowledge—”
The Earth. A strange sort of world it must have been, Scott thought. Sunlight, for one thing, unaltered by the cloud layer. In the old days, there had been few unexplored areas left on Earth. But here on Venus, where the continents had not yet been conquered—there was no need, of course, since everything necessary to life could be produced under the Domes—here on Venus, there was still a frontier. In the Keeps, a highly specialized social culture. Above the surface, a primeval world, where only the Free Companions had their fortresses and navies—the navies for fighting, the forts to house the technicians who provided the latter-day sinews of war, science instead of money. The Keeps tolerated visits from the Free Companions, but would not offer them headquarters, so violent the feeling, so sharp the schism, in the public mind, between war and cultural progress.
Under Scott’s feet the sliding way turned into an escalator, carrying him into the Administration Building. He stepped to another way which took him to a lift, and, a moment or two later, was facing the door-curtain bearing the face of President Dane Crosby of Montana Keep.
Crosby’s voice said, “Come in, captain,” and Scott brushed through the curtain, finding himself in a medium-sized room with muraled walls and a great window overlooking the city. Crosby, a white-haired, thin figure in blue silks, was at his desk. He looked like a tired old clerk out of Dickens, Scott thought suddenly, entirely undistinguished and ordinary. Yet Crosby was one of the greatest socio-politicians on Venus.
Cinc Rhys, leader of Doone’s Free Companions, was sitting in a relaxer, the apparent antithesis of Crosby. All the moisture in Rhys’ body seemed to have been sucked out of him years ago by ultraviolet actinic, leaving a mummy of brown leather and whipcord sinew. There was no softness in the man. His smile was a grimace. Muscles lay like wire under the swarthy cheeks.
Scott saluted. Rhys waved him to a relaxer. The look of subdued eagerness in the cinc’s eyes was significant—an eagle poising himself, smelling blood. Crosby sensed that, and a wry grin showed on his pale face.
“Every man to his trade,” he remarked, semi-ironically. “I suppose I’d be bored stiff if I had too long a vacation. But you’ll have quite a battle on your hands this time, Cinc Rhys.”
Scott’s stocky body tensed automatically. Rhys glanced at him.
“Virginia Keep is attacking, captain. They’ve hired the Helldivers—Flynn’s outfit.”
There was a pause. Both Free Companions were anxious to discuss the angles, but unwilling to do so in the presence of a civilian, even the president of Montana Keep. Crosby rose.
“The money settlement’s satisfactory, then?”
Rhys nodded. “Yes, that’s all right. I expect the battle will take place in a couple of days. In the neighborhood of Venus Deep, at a rough guess.”
“Good. I’ve a favor to ask, so if you’ll excuse me for a few minutes, I’ll—” He left the sentence unfinished and went out through the door-curtain. Rhys offered Scott a cigarette.
“You get the implications, captain—the Helldivers?”
“Yes, sir. Thanks. We can’t do it alone.”
“Right. We’re short on manpower and armament both. And the Helldivers recently merged with O’Brien’s Legion, after O’Brien was killed in that polar scrap. They’re a strong outfit, plenty strong. Then they’ve got their specialty—submarine attack. I’d say we’ll have to use H-plan 7.”
Scott closed his eyes, remembering the files. Each Free Company kept up-to-date plans of attack suited to the merits of every other Company of Venus. Frequently revised as new advances were made, as groups merged, and as the balance of power changed on each side, the plans were so detailed that they could be carried into action at literally a moment’s notice. H-plan 7, Scott recalled, involved enlisting the aid of the Mob, a small but well-organized band of Free Companions led by Cinc Tom Mendez.
“Right,” Scott said. “Can you get him?”
“I think so. We haven’t agreed yet on the bonus. I’ve been telaudioing him on a tight beam, but he keeps putting me off—waiting till the last moment, when he can dictate his own terms.”
“What’s he asking, sir?”
“Fifty thousand cash and a fifty percent cut on the loot.”
“I’d say thirty percent would be about right.”
Rhys nodded. “I’ve offered him thirty-five. I may send you to his fort—carte blanche. We can get another Company, but Mendez has got beautiful sub-detectors—which would come in handy against the Helldivers. Maybe I can settle things by audio. If not, you’ll have to fly over to Mendez and buy his services, at less than fifty per if you can.”
Scott rubbed the old scar on his chin with a calloused forefinger. “Meantime Commander Bienne’s in charge of mobilization. When—”
“I telaudioed our fort. Air transports are on the way now.”
“It’ll be quite a scrap,” Scott said, and the eyes of the two men met in perfect understanding. Rhys chuckled dryly.
“And good profits. Virginia Keep has a big supply of korium… dunno how much, but plenty.”
“What started the fracas this time?”
“The usual thing, I suppose,” Rhys said disinterestedly. “Imperialism. Somebody in Virginia Keep worked out a new plan for annexing the rest of the Keeps. Same as usual.”
They stood up as the door-curtain swung back, admitting President Crosby, another man, and a girl. The man looked young, his boyish face not yet toughened under actinic burn. The girl was lovely in the manner of a plastic figurine, lit from within by vibrant life. Her blond hair was cropped in the prevalent mode, and her eyes, Scott saw, were an unusual shade of green. She was more than merely pretty—she was instantly exciting.
Crosby said, “My niece, Ilene Kane—and my nephew, Norman Kane.” He performed introductions, and they found seats.
“What about drinks?” Ilene suggested. “This is rather revoltingly formal. The fight hasn’t started yet, after all.”
Crosby shook his head at her. “You weren’t invited here anyway. Don’t try to turn this into a party—there isn’t too much time, under the circumstances.”
“O.K.,” Ilene murmured. “I can wait.” She eyed Scott interestedly.
Norman Kane broke in. “I’d like to join Doone’s Free Companions, sir. I’ve already applied, but now that there’s a battle coming up, I hate to wait till my application’s approved. So I thought—”
Crosby looked at Cinc Rhys. “A personal favor, but the decision’s up to you. My nephew’s a misfit—a romanticist. Never liked the life of a Keep. A year ago he went off and joined Starling’s outfit.”
Rhys raised an eyebrow. “That gang? It’s not a recommendation, Kane. They’re not even classed as Free Companions. More like a band of guerrillas, and entirely without ethics. There’ve even been rumors they’re messing around with atomic power.”
Crosby looked startled. “I hadn’t heard that.”
; “It’s no more than a rumor. If it’s ever proved, the Free Companions—all of them—will get together and smash Starling in a hurry.”
Norman Kane looked slightly uncomfortable. “I suppose I was rather a fool. But I wanted to get in the fighting game, and Starling’s group appealed to me—”
The cinc made a sound in his throat. “They would. Swashbuckling romantics, with no idea of what war means. They’ve not more than a dozen technicians. And they’ve no discipline—it’s like a pirate outfit. War today, Kane, isn’t won by romantic animals dashing at forlorn hopes. The modern soldier is a tactician who knows how to think, integrate, and obey. If you join our Company, you’ll have to forget what you learned with Starling.”
“Will you take me, sir?”
“I think it would be unwise. You need the training course.”
“I’ve had experience—”
Crosby said, “It would be a favor, Cinc Rhys, if you’d skip the red tape. I’d appreciate it. Since my nephew wants to be a soldier, I’d much prefer to see him with the Doones.”
Rhys shrugged. “Very well. Captain Scott will give you your orders, Kane. Remember that discipline is vitally important with us.”
The boy tried to force back a delighted grin. “Thank you, sir.”
“Captain—”
Scott rose and nodded to Kane. They went out together. In the anteroom was a telaudio set, and Scott called the Doone’s local headquarters in Montana Keep. An integrator answered, his face looking inquiringly from the screen.
“Captain Scott calling, subject induction.”
“Yes, sir. Ready to record.”
Scott drew Kane forward. “Photosnap this man. He’ll report to headquarters immediately. Name, Norman Kane. Enlist him without training course—special orders from Cinc Rhys.”
“Acknowledged, sir.”
The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology Page 23