The 13th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 26 Great SF Stories!

by Lake, Jay

  Donovan lifted one corner of his mouth la a tired smile. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If I could get one machine for the whole community I’d be satisfied. Can’t be done. We’re trying to start a small factory of our own up at the manor, but it’s slow work.”

  “I’m sure if anyone can do anything it’s you, sir.”

  Donovan looked quizzically at the open countenance across the table, “Sam,” he asked, “why do you people keep turning to the Family? We led you, and it was to defeat. Why do you want anything more to do with nobles? We’re not even that, any longer. We’ve been stripped of our titles. We’re just plain citizens of the Empire now like you, and the new rulers are Terran. Why do you still think of us as your leaders?”

  “But you are, sir! You’ve always been. It wasn’t the king’s fault, or his men’s, that Terra had so much more’n we did. We gave ’em a fight they won’t forget in a hurry!”

  “You were in my squadron, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. CPO on the Ansa Lancer, I was with you at the Battle of Luga.” The deep-set eyes glowed. “We hit ’em there, didn’t we, sir?”

  “So we did.” Donovan couldn’t suppress the sudden fierce memory. Outnumbered, outgunned, half its ships shot to pieces and half the crews down with Sirius fever, the Royal Lansteaders had still made naval history and sent the Imperial Fleet kiyoodling back to Sol. Naval historians would be scratching their heads over that battle for the next five centuries. Before God, they’d fought!

  * * * *

  He began to sing the old war-song, softly at first, louder as Sam joined him—

  Comrades, hear the battle tiding,

  hear the ships that rise and yell

  faring outward, standard riding—

  Kick the Terrans back to hell!

  The others were listening, men raised weary heads, an old light burned in their eyes and tankards clashed together. They stood up to roar out the chorus till the walls shook.

  Lift your glasses high,

  kiss the girls good-bye,

  (Live well; my friend, live well, live you well)

  for we’re riding,

  for we’re riding,

  for we’re riding out to Terran sky! Terran sky! Terran sky!

  We have shaken loose our thunder

  where the planets have their way,

  and the starry deeps of wonder

  saw the Impies in dismay.

  Lift your glasses high,

  kiss the girls good-bye—

  The workmen in the street heard it and stopped where they were. Some began to sing. The Imperial superintendent yelled, and an Ansan turned to flash him a wolfish grin. A squad of blue-uniformed Solarian marines coming toward the inn went on the double.

  Oh, the Emp’ror sent his battle

  ships against us in a mass,

  but we shook them like a rattle

  and we crammed them—

  “Hi, there! Stop that!”

  The song died, slowly and stubbornly, the men stood where they were and hands clenched into hard-knuckled fists. Someone shouted an obscenity.

  The Terran sergeant was very young, and he felt unsure before those steady, hating eyes. He lifted his voice all the louder: “That will be enough of that. Any more and I’ll run you all in for lèse majesté. Haven’t you drunken bums anything better to do than sit around swilling beer?”

  A big Ansan smith laughed with calculated raucousness.

  The sergeant looked around, trying to ignore him. “I’m here for Captain Donovan—Earl Basil, if you prefer. They said he’d be here. I’ve got an Imperial summons for him.”

  The noble stretched out a hand. “This is he. Let’s have that paper.”

  “It’s just the formal order,” said the sergeant. “You’re to come at once.”

  “Commoners,” said Donovan mildly, “address me as ‘sir.’”

  “You’re a commoner with the rest of ’em now.” The sergeant’s voice wavered just a little.

  “I really must demand a little respect,” said Donovan with drunken precision. There was an unholy gleam in his eyes. “It’s a mere formality, I know, but after all my family can trace itself farther back than the Empire, whereas you couldn’t name your father.”

  Sam Olman snickered.

  “Well, sir—” The sergeant tried elaborate sarcasm. “If you, sir, will please be so good as to pick your high-bred tail off that chair, sir, I’m sure the Imperium would be mostly deeply grateful to you, sir.”

  “I’ll have to do without its gratitude, I’m afraid.” Donovan folded the summons without looking at it and put it in his tunic pocket. “But thanks for the paper. I’ll keep it in my bathroom.”

  “You’re under arrest!”

  Donovan stood slowly up, unfolding his sheer two meters of slender, wiry height. “All right, Wocha,” he said. “Let’s show them that Ansa hasn’t surrendered yet.”

  He threw the tankard into the sergeant’s face, followed it with the table against the two marines beside him, and vaulted over the sudden ruckus to drive a fist into the jaw of the man beyond.

  Wocha rose and his booming cry trembled in the walls. He’d been a slave of Donovan’s since he was a cub and the man a child, and if someone had liberated him he wouldn’t have known what to do. As batman and irregular groundtrooper he’d followed his master to the wars, and the prospect of new skull-breaking lit his eyes with glee.

  For an instant there was tableau, Terrans and Ansans rigid, staring at the monster which suddenly stood behind the earl. The natives of Donarr have the not uncommon centauroid form, but their bodies are more like that of a rhinoceros than of a horse, hairless and slaty blue and enormously massive. The gorilla-armed torso ended in a round, muzzled, ape-like face, long-eared, heavy-jawed, with canine tusks hanging over the great gash of a mouth. A chair splintered under his feet, and he grinned.

  “Paraguns—” cried the sergeant.

  All hell let out for noon. Some of the customers huddled back into the corners, but the rest smashed the ends off bottles and threw themselves against the Terrans. Sam Olman’s remaining arm yanked a marine to him and bashed his face against the wall. Donovan’s fist traveled a jolting arc to the nearest belly and he snatched a rifle loose and crunched it against the man’s jaw. A marine seized him from behind, he twisted in the grip and kicked savagely, whirled around and drove the rifle butt into the larynx.

  “Kill the bluebellies! Kill the Impies! Hail, Ansa!”

  Wocha charged into the squad, grabbed a hapless Terran in his four-fingered hands, and swung the man like a club. Someone drew his bayonet to stab the slave, it glanced off the thick skin and Wocha roared and sent him reeling. The riot blazed around the room, trampling men underfoot, shouting and cursing and swinging.

  “Donovan, Donovan!” shouted Sam Olman. He charged the nearest Impy and got a bayonet in the stomach. He fell down, holding his hand to his wound, screaming.

  The door was suddenly full of Terrans, marines arriving to help their comrades. Paraguns began to sizzle, men fell stunned before the supersonic beams and the fight broke up. Wocha charged the rescuers and a barrage sent his giant form crashing to the floor.

  They herded the Ansans toward the city jail. Donovan, stirring on the ground as consciousness returned, felt handcuffs snap on his wrists.

  * * * *

  Imperial summonses being what they were, he was bundled into a grounder and taken under heavy guard toward the ordered place. He leaned wearily back, watching the streets blur past. Once a group of children threw stones at the vehicle. “How about a cigarette?” he said.

  “Shut up.”

  To his mild surprise, they did not halt at the military government headquarters—the old Hall of Justice where the Donovans had presided before
the war—but went on toward the suburbs, the spaceport being still radioactive. They must be going to the emergency field outside the city. Hm. He tried to relax. His head ached from the stunbeam.

  A light cruiser had come in a couple of days before, H.M. Ganymede. It loomed enormous over the green rolling fields and the distance-blued hills and forests, a lance of bright metal and energy pointed into the clear sky of Ansa, blinding in the sun. A couple of spacemen on sentry at the gangway halted as the car stopped before them. “This man is going to Commander Jansky.”

  “Aye, aye. Proceed.”

  Through the massive airlock, down the mirror-polished companionway, into an elevator and up toward the bridge—Donovan looked about him with a professional eye. The Impies kept a clean, tight ship, he had to admit.

  He wondered if he would be shot or merely imprisoned. He doubted if he’d committed an enslaving offense. Well, it had been fun, and there hadn’t been a hell of a lot to live for anyway. Maybe his friends could spring him, if and when they got some kind of underground organized.

  He was ushered into the captain’s cabin. The ensign with him saluted. “Donovan as per orders, ma’m.”

  “Very good. But why is he in irons?”

  “Resisted orders, ma’m. Started a riot. Bloody business.”

  “I—see.” She nodded her dark head. “Losses?”

  “I don’t know, ma’m, but we had several wounded at least. A couple of Ansans were killed, I think.”

  “Well, leave him here. You may go.”

  “But—ma’m, he’s dangerous!”

  “I have a gun, and there’s a man just outside the door. You may go, ensign.”

  Donovan swayed a little on his feet, trying to pull himself erect, wishing he weren’t so dirty and bloody and generally messed up. You look like a tramp, man, he thought. Keep up appearances. Don’t let them outdo us, even in spit and polish.

  “Sit down, Captain Donovan,” said the woman.

  He lowered himself to a chair, raking her with deliberately insolent eyes. She was young to be wearing a commander’s twin planets—young and trim and nice looking. Tall body, sturdy but graceful, well filled out in the blue uniform and red cloak; raven-black hair falling to her shoulders; strong blunt-fingered hands, one of them resting close to her sidearm. Her face was interesting, broad and cleanly molded, high cheekbones, wide full mouth, stubborn chin, snub nose, storm-gray eyes set far apart under heavy dark brows. A superior peasant type, he decided, and felt more at ease in the armor of his inbred haughtiness. He leaned back and crossed his legs.

  “I am Helena Jansky, in command of this vessel,” she said. Her voice was low and resonant, the note of strength in it. “I need you for a certain purpose. Why did you resist the Imperial summons?”

  Donovan shrugged. “Let’s say that I’m used to giving orders, not receiving them.”

  “Ah—yes.” She ruffled the papers on her desk. “You were the Earl of Lanstead, weren’t you?”

  “After my father and older brother were killed in the war, yes.” He lifted his head. “I am still the Earl.”

  She studied him with a dispassionate gaze that he found strangely uncomfortable. “I must say that you are a curious sort of leader.” she murmured. “One who spends his time in a tavern getting drunk, and who on a whim provokes a disorder in which many of his innocent followers are hurt or killed, in which property difficult to replace is smashed—yes, I think it was about time that Ansa had a change of leadership.”

  Donovan’s face was hot. Hell take it, what right had she to tell him what to do? What right had the whole damned Empire to come barging in where it wasn’t wanted? “The Families, under the king, have governed Ansa since it was colonized,” he said stiffly. “If it had been such a misrule as you seem to think, would the commons have fought for us as they did?”

  II

  Again that thoughtful stare. She saw a tall young man, badly disarrayed, blood and dirt streaking his long, thin-carved, curve-nosed features, an old scar jagging across his high narrow forehead. The hair was yellow, the eyes were blue, the whole look that of an old and settled aristocracy. His bitter voice lashed at her: “We ruled Ansa well because we were part of it, we grew up with the planet and we understood our folk and men were free under us. That’s something which no upstart Solar Empire can have, not for centuries, not ever to judge by the stock they use for nobility. When peasants command spaceships—”

  Her face grew a little pale, but she smiled and replied evenly, “I am the Lady Jansky of Torgandale on Valor—Sirius A IV—and you are now a commoner. Please remember that.”

  “All the papers in the Galaxy won’t change the fact that your grandfather was a dirt farmer on Valor.”

  “He was an atomjack, and I’m proud of it. I suggest further that an aristocrat who has nothing to trade on but his pedigree is very ragged indeed. Now, enough of that.” Her crisp tones snapped forth. “You’ve committed a serious offense, especially since this is still occupied territory. If you wish to cooperate with me, I can arrange for a pardon—also for your brawling friends. If not, the whole bunch of you can go to the mines.”

  Donovan shook his head, trying to clear it of alcohol and weariness and the ringing left by the parabeam. “Go on,” he said, a little thickly. “I’ll listen, anyway.”

  “What do you know of the Black Nebula?”

  She must have seen his muscles jerk. For an instant he sat fighting himself, grasping at rigidity with all the strength that was in him, and the memory was a blaze and a shout and a stab of pure fear.

  Valduma, Valduma!

  The sudden thudding of his heart was loud in his ears, and he could feel the fine beads of sweat starting forth on his skin. He made a wrenching effort and pulled his mouth into a lopsided grin, but his voice wavered: “Which black nebula? There are a lot of them.”

  “Don’t try to bait me.” Her eyes were narrowed on him, and the fingers of one hand drummed the desktop. “You know I mean the Black Nebula. Nobody in this Galactic sector speaks of any other.”

  “Why—well—” Donovan lowered his face to hide it till he could stiffen the mask, rubbing his temples with manacled hands. “It’s just a nebula. A roughly spherical dustcloud, maybe a light-year in diameter, about ten parsecs from Ansa toward Sagittari. A few colonized stars on its fringes, nothing inside it as far as anyone knows. It has a bad name for some reason. The superstitious say it’s haunted, and you hear stories of ships disappearing—Well, it gets a pretty wide berth. Not much out there anyway.”

  His mind was racing, he thought he could almost hear it click and whirr as it spewed forth idea after idea, memory after memory. Valduma and the blackness and they who laughed. The Nebula is pure poison, and now the Empire is getting interested. By God, it might poison them! Only would it stop there? This time they might decide to go on, to come out of the blackness.

  Jansky’s voice seemed to come from very far away: “You know more than that, Donovan. Intelligence has been sifting Ansan records. You were the farthest-ranging space raider your planet had, and you had a base on Heim, at the very edge of the Nebula. Among your reports, there is an account of your men’s unease, of the disappearance of small ships which cut through the Nebula on their missions, of ghostly things seen aboard other vessels and men who went mad. Your last report on the subject says that you investigated personally, that most of your crew went more or less crazy while in the Nebula, and that you barely got free. You recommend the abandonment of Heim and the suspension of operations in that territory. This was done, the region being of no great strategic importance anyway.

  “Very well.” The voice held a whipcrack undertone. “What do you know about the Black Nebula?”

  Donovan had fought his way back to impassivity. “You have about the whole story already,” he said. “There were all sorts of illusions as we
penetrated, whisperings and glimpses of impossible things and so on. It didn’t affect me much, but it drove many toward insanity and some died. There was also very real and unexplainable trouble—engines, lights, and so on. My guess is that there’s some sort of radiation in the Nebula which makes atoms and electrons misbehave; that’d affect the human nervous system too, of course. If you’re thinking of entering it yourself, my only advice is—don’t.”

  “Hm.” She cupped her chin in one hand and looked down at the papers. “Frankly, we know very little about this Galactic sector. Very few Terrans were ever here before the war, and previous intercourse on your part with Sol was even slighter. However, Intelligence has learned that the natives of almost every inhabited planet on the fringes of the Nebula worship it or at least regard it as the home of the gods.”

  “Well, it is a conspicuous object in their skies,” said Donovan. He added truthfully enough: “I only know about Heim, where the native religion in the area of our base was a sort of devil-worship centered around the Nebula. They made big sacrifices—foodstuffs, furs, tools, every conceivable item of use or luxury—which they claimed the devil-gods came and took. Some of the colonists thought there was something behind the legends, but I have my doubts.” He shrugged. “Will that do?”

  “For the time being.” Jansky smiled with a certain bleak humor. “You can write a detailed report later on, and I strongly advise you not to mislead me. Because you’re going there with us.”

  Donovan accepted the news coldly, but he thought the knocking of his heart must shake his whole body. His hands felt chilly and wet. “As you wish. Though what I can do—”

  “You’ve been there before and know what to expect. Furthermore, you know the astrogation of that region; our charts are worse than sketchy, and even the Ansan tables have too many blank spots.”