The Long Night df-10

by Poul Anderson

  “Tell! Buy!”

  Yasmin nodded frantically. “I understand. I understand.” They carried a number of Sassanian gold coins. In an age when interstellar currency and credit had vanished, the metal had resumed its ancient economic function. The value varied from place to place, but was never low, and should be fabulous on Nike.

  “Good lady,” Yasmin said, “we are grateful for your kindness. But we have imposed too much. We should not take any of your men away from the hayfields when storms may be coming. If you will spare us two horses, we can make our own way to Vale and thence, of course, to your Engineer.”

  Like fun we will! We’ll turn east. Maybe we’ll ride horseback maybe we’ll take passage on a river boat—whatevei—looks safest—but we’re bound for his enemy, the Prater of Silva!

  “We’ll pay for them,” Yasmin said. “Our overlords provided us well with money. See.” She extended a coin. “Will this buy two horses and their gear?”

  Elanor gasped. She made a sign again, sat down and fanned herself. Her youngest child sensed his mother’s agitation and whimpered.

  “Is that gold?” she breathed. “Wait. Till Petar comes. He comes soon. We ask him.”

  That was logical. But suppose the man got suspicious. Yasmin glanced back at Dagny. The Krakener made an imperceptible gesture. Beneath their coveralls were holstered energy weapons.

  No! We can’t slaughter a whole, helpless family! I hope we won’t need to.

  I won’t! Not for anything!

  * * *

  Tom reached the fire-control turret as two aircraft peeled off their squadron and dove.

  The skyview was full of departing stormclouds, tinged bloody with dawn. Against them, his space-armored women looked tiny. Not so their hunters. Those devilfish shapes swelled at an appalling, speed. Tom threw himself into a manual-operation seat and punched for Number Two blastcannon. A cross-hair screen lit for him with what that elevated weapon “saw.” He twisted verniers. The auxiliary motors whirred. The vision spun giddily. There… the couple was separating… one to keep guard on him, its mate in a swoop after Dagny and Yasmin. Tom got the latter centered and pressed the discharge button.

  The screen stepped down the searing brightness of the energy bolt. Through the open manlock crashed the thunderclap that followed. The Hannoan craft exploded into red-hot shards that rained down upon the trees.

  “Gotcha!” Torn exulted. He fired two or three more times, raking toward the other boat where it hung on its negafield some fifty meters aloft. His hope was to scare it off and bluff its mates into holding their bombs—or whatever they had to drop on him; He didn’t want to kill again. The first shot had looked necessary if the girls were to live. But why add to the grudge against him?

  Not that he expected to last another five minutes.

  No! Wait! Tom swiveled around to another set of controls. Why hadn’t he thought of this at once?

  The nearby pilot had needed a couple of seconds to recover from the shock of what happened to his companion. Now he was bound hastily back upward. He was too late. Tom focused a tractor beam on him. Its generator hummed with power. Ozone stung the nostrils; rewiring job needed, a distant aspect of Tom took note. Most of him was being a fisherman. He’d gotten his prey, and on a heavy line—the force locked onto the air-boat was meant to grab kilotons moving at cosmic Veloities—but his catch was a man-eater. ‘And he wanted to land it just so.

  The vessel battled futilely to escape. Tom pushed it down near Firedrake’s hull, into the jumble of broken trees and canebrake that his own landing had made. Their branches probably damaged wings and fuselage, but their leaves, closing in above, hid any details of what was going on from the pilots overhead. Having jammed his capture against a fence of logs and brush, he held it there with a beam sufficiently narrow that the cockpit canopy wouldn’t be pulled shut. Quickly, with a second tractor-pressor projection, he rearranged the tangle in the clearing, shifting trunks, snapping limbs and tossing them about, until he had a fairly good view through a narrow slot that wouldn’t benefit observers in heaven. He trusted they were too poorly instrumented—or too agitated, or both—to see how useful the arrangement was for him, and would take the brief stirring they noticed as a natural result of a crash, heaped wood collapsing into a new configuration.

  Thereafter he, left the turret and made his way to the forward manlock. It was rather high off the ground; the access ladder had automatically extruded, plunging down into the foliage that fluttered shadowy’arotind the base of the hull. Torn placed Shimself in the chamber, visible from the sky, hardly noticeable from beneath, and studied his fish more closely.

  Fish: yes, indeed. In two senses.

  The pilot was that youthful squadron leader with “whom he had spoken before. Tom tuned his helmet radio in on the frantic talk that went between the downed man, his companions and Karol Weyer in Sea Gate. He gathered they had no prehensile force-beams on Nike, and only vaguely inferred the existence of such things from their experience with “friends.”

  Friends?-The raiders from space? Toni scowled.

  But he couldn’t stoplo think beyond this moment, His notion had been, to take a man and an aircraft—the latter probably the, more highly valuea—as hostages. They’d not nuke him now. But as for what followed, he must play his cards as he drew them. At worst, he’d gotten the girls free. Perhaps he could strike some kind of bargain, though it was hard to tell why any Nikean should feel bound to keep a promise made to an outworlder. At best…

  Hoy!

  The canopy slid back. Tom got a look at the plane’s interior. There was room for two in the cockpit, if one scrooched and aft of the seat was a rack of—something or other, he couldn’t see what, but it didn’t seem welded in place. His pulse leaped.

  The pilot emerged, in a dive flattening himself at once behinds a fallen tree. Weyer had said ther,several fruitless attempts lo get a reply from Tom: “You in the ship! You killed one of ours. Another, and your whole ship goes…Do you seize me?” (That must mean “understand?”) Next, to the flyboy: “Fish Aran, use own discretion.”

  So the young man, deciding he couldn’t sit where he was.forever, was trying to reach the woods. That took nerve. Tom laid his telescope to his good—eye—his faceplate was open—and searched out details. Fiber helmet, as already noted; green tunic with cloth insignia, no metal; green trousers tucked into leather boots; a sidearm, but no indication of a portable communicator or, for that matter, a watch. Tom made sure his transmitter was off, trod a little further out in the lock chamber, and bawled from lungs that had often shouted against a gale at sea:

  “Halt where you are! Or I’ll chop the legs from under you!”

  The pilot had been about to scuttle from his place. He froze. Slowly, he raised his gaze. Tom’s armored shape was apparent to him, standing in the open lock, but not discernible by his mates. Likewise the blaster Tom aimed. The pilot’s hand hovered at the butt of his own weapon.

  “Slack off, son,” the captain advised. “You wouldn’t come near me with that pipgun—I said ‘pip,’ not even ‘pop’—before I sizzled you. And I don’t want to. C’mon and let’s talk. That’s right; on your fept; stroll over here and use this nice ladder.”

  The pilot obeyed, though his scramble across the log jam was hardly a stroll. As he started up, Tom said: “They’ll see in a minute what you’re doin’, I s’pose, when you come above the foliage… Belay, there, I can see you quite well already… I want you to draw your gun, as if you’d decided to come aboard and reconnoiter ‘stead o’ heaciin’ for the nearest beer hall. Better not try shootin’ at me, though. My friends’d cut you down.”

  The Hannoan paused a moment, rigid with outrage, before he yielded. His face, approaching, showed pale and wet in the first light. He swung himself into the lock chamber. For an instant, he and Tom stood with guns almost in each other’s bellies. The spaceman’s gauntleted left hand struck like a viper, edge on, and the Nikean weapon clattered to the deck.

  �
��You—you broke my wrist!” The pilot lurched back, clutching his arm and wheezing.

  “I think not. I gauge these things pretty good if I do say so myself. And I do. March on ahead o’ me, please.” Tom conducted his prisoner into the passageway, gathering the fallen pistol en route. It was a slug-thrower, ingeniously ‘constructed with a minimum of steel. Tom found the magazine release and pressed it one-handed. The clip held ten high-caliber bullets. But what the hoo-hah! The cartridge cases were wood, the slugs appeared to be some heavy ceramic, with a mere skirt of soft metal for the rifling in the barrel to get a grip on!

  “No wonder you came along meek-like,” Tom said. “You never could’ve dented me.”

  The prisoner looked behind him. Footfalls echoed emptily around his words. “I think you are alone,” he said.

  “Aye-ya. I told you my chums could wiff you… if they were present. In here.” Tom indicated the fire control turret “Sit yourself. Now I’m goin’ t’other side o’ this room and shuck my armor, which is too hot and heavy for informal wear. Don’t get ideas about plungin’ across the deck at me. I can snatch my blaster and take aim quicker’n that.”

  The young man crouched in a chair and shuddered. His eyes moved like a trapped animal’s, around and around the crowding machines. “What do you mean to do?” he rattled. “You can’t get free. You’re alone. Soon the Engineer’s soldiers come, with ‘tillery, and ring you.”

  “I know. We should be gone by then, however. Look here, uh, what’s your name?”

  An aristocrat’s pride firmed the voice. “Yanos Aran, third son of Rober Aran, who’s chief computerman to Engineer Weyer’s self. I am a fish in the air force of Hanno—and you are a dirty friend!”

  “Maybe so. Maybe not.” Tom stripped fast, letting the pieces lie where they fell. He hated to abandon his suit, but it was too bulky and perhaps too detectable for his latest scheme.

  “Why not? Didn’t you business Evin Sato?”

  “You mean that plane I gunned?”

  “Yes. Evin Sato was my camarado.”

  “Well, I’m sorry about that, but wasn’t he fixin’ to shoot two o’ my people? We came down frien—intendin’ no harm, and you set on us like hungry eels. I don’t want to hurt you, Yanos, lad. In fact, I hope betwixt us we can maybe settle this whole affair. But—” Tom’s features assumed their grimmest look which had terrified stronger men than Aran—“you try any fumblydiddles and you’ll find out things about friendship that your mother never told you.”

  The boy seemed to crumple. “I… yes, I slave me to you,” he whispered.

  He wouldn’t stay crumpled long, Tom knew. He must be the scion of a typical knightly class. Let him recover from the dismay of the past half hour and the unbalancing effect of being surrounded by unknown power and he’d prove a dangerous pet. It was necessary to use him while he remained useable.

  Wherefore Tom, having peeled down to coveralls, gave him his orders in a few words. A slight demurral fetched a brutal cuff on the cheek. “And if I shoot you with this blaster, short range low intensity,” Tom added, “you won’t have a neat hole drilled through your heart. You’ll be cooked alive, medium rare, so you’ll be some days about dying. Seize me?”

  He didn’t know if he’d really carry out his threat, come worst to worst. Probably not.

  Having switched off the tractor beam, he brought Aran far down into the ship, to an emergency lock near the base. It was well hidden by leaves. The vague dawn-light aided concealment. They crept forth, and thence to the captured aircraft.

  It had taken a beating, Tom saw. The wingtips were crumpled, the fuselage punctured. (The covering was mostly some fluorosynthetic. What a metal shortage they must have here!) But it ought to fly anyhow, after a fashion. Given a gravity drive, however weak, airfoils were mainly for auxiliary lift and control.

  “In we go,” Tom said. He squeezed his bulky form behind Aran’s seat so that it concealed him. The blaster remained in his fist, ready to fire through the back.

  But there was no trouble. Aran followed instructions. He called his squadron: “—Yes, you’re right, I did ‘cide I’d try looking, at the ship. And no one! None aboard. ‘Least, none I saw. Maybe robos fought us, or maybe the rest of the crew got away, on foot, not seen. I found a switch, looked like a main powerline breaker, and opened it. Maybe now I can rise.”

  And he started the engine. The airboat climbed, wobbling on its damaged surfaces. A cheer sounded from the receiver. Tom wished he could see the face in the screen, but he dared not risk being scanned himself.

  “You land, if Engineer Weyer approves,” Aran directed. “Go aboard. Be careful. Me, best I take my craft back to base immediately.”

  Tom had figured that would be a natural move for a pilot on Nike, even a squadron leader. A plane was obviously precious. It couldn’t get to the repair shop too fast.

  He must now hope that Aran’s expression and tone didn’t give him away. The “fish” was no actor. But everyone was strung wire-taut. Nobody noticed how much more perturbed this fellow was. After a few further words had passed, Man signed off and started west.

  “Keep low,” Tom said. “Like you can’t get much altitude. Soon’s you’re out o’ their sight here, swing north. Find us a good secret place to land. I think we got a bucketful to say to each other, no?”

  One craft was bound eagerly down. The rest stayed at hover. They’d, soon learn that the spaceship was, indeed, deserted. Hence, they wouldn’t suspect what had happened to Aran until he failed, to report. However, that wasn’t a long, time. He, Roan Tom, had better get into a bolt-hole quick! .

  The volcano’s northern side was altogether wild. On the lower flanks, erosion had created, a rich lava soil and vegetation was dense. For some reason it was principally native Nikean, dominated by primitive but tree-sized “ferns.” An antigrav flyer could push its way under their soft branches and come to rest beneath the overhang of a cliff, camouflaged against aerial search.

  Tom climbed out of the cockpit and stretched to uncramp himself. The abri was rough stone at his back, the forest brooded shadowy before him. Flecks of copper sunlight on bluish-green fronds and the integuments of bumbling giant pseudo-insects made the scene look as if cast in metal. But water rilled nearby, and the smells of damp growth were organic enough.

  “C’mon, son. Relax with me,” Tom invited. “I won’t eat you. ‘Specially not if you’ve packed along a few sandwiches.”

  “Food? No.” Yanos Aran spoke as stiffly as he moved.

  “Well, then we’ll have to make do with what iron rations I got in my pockets.” Tom sighed. He flopped down on a chair-sized boulder, took out pipe and tobacco pouch, and consoled himself with smoke.

  He needed consolation. He was a fugitive on an un—known planet. His ship had been taken, his wives were out of touch; an attempt to raise Dagny on the plane’s transmitter, using a Krakener military band, had brought silence. She must already have discarded her telespace armor.

  “And all ‘count of a stupid lingo mistake!” he groaned. Aran sat down on another rock and regarded him with eyes in which alertness was replacing fear. “You say you are not truly our friend?”

  “Not in your sense. Look, where I come from, the Aran word ‘friend’ means… well, fellow you like, and who likes you. When I told your Engineer we were friends, I wanted him to understand we didn’t aim him any harm, in fact we could do good business with him.”

  “Business!” Aran exploded.

  “Whoops-la. Sorry. Said the wrong thing again, didn’t I?”

  “I think,” Aran replied slowly “what you have in mind is what we would call “change.’ You wanted to ‘change goods and services with our people. And to you, a ‘friend’ is what we call a ‘camarado.’ ”

  “Reckon so. What’re your definitions?”

  “A friend is a space raider such as did business with our planet some five years agone. They destroyed the last great cities we had left from the Terran Empire days, and none knows how man
y million Nikeans they killed.”

  “Ah, now we’re gettin’ somewhere. Let’s straighten out for me what did happen.”

  Aran’s hostility had not departed, but it had diminished. He was intelligent and willing to cooperate within the limits of loyalty to his own folk. Information rushed out of him.

  Nike did not appear to be unique, except in its planetology. Tom asked about that. Aran was surprised. Was his world so unusual per se?

  He knew only vague traditions and a few fragmentary written accounts of other planetary systems. Nike was discovered and colonized five hundred-odd years ago—about a thousand standard years. It was always a backwater. Fundamentally agricultural because of its shortage of heavy metals, it had no dense population, no major libraries or schools. Thus, when the Empire fell apart, knowledge vanished more quickly and thoroughly here than most places. Nikean society disintegrated; what had been an Imperial sub-province became hundreds of evanescent kingdoms, fiefs and tribes.

  The people were on their way back, Aran added defiantly. Order and a measure of, prosperity had been restored in the advanced countries. As yet, they paid mere lip service to an “Emperor,” but the concept of global government did now, exist, Technology was improving. Ancient apparatus was being repaired and put back into service, or being reproduced on the basis of what diagrams and manuals could be found. Schemes had been broached for making interplanetary ships. Some dreamers had hoped that in time the Nikeans might end their centuries-long isolation themselves, by re-inventing the lost theory and practice of hyperdrive.

  For that, of course, as for much else, the tinkering of technicians was insufficient. Basic scientific research must be done. But this was also slowly being started. Had not Aran remarked that his father was head cornputerman in the Engineer’s court? He used a highly sophisticated machine which had survived to the present day and which two generations of modern workers had finally learned how to operate.