Mayday Orbit

by Poul Anderson

  He hefted his gun. “Think that chap upstairs will spot us?” he asked. He didn’t speak lowly, but the blowing immensities around reduced his voice to nothing.

  “Not yet,” she answered. “He is at extreme detector range.

  He cannot swoop down at every dubious flicker on his gauges, or he would never cover the territory he must.”

  “So . . . ignore him and hell go away?”

  “I fear not,” she said, troubled. “The Khan’s troopers are no fools. I’m familiar with that search pattern. That man and his fellows will circle about, patrolling where they are until nightfall. The net they have established by now is certain to enmesh us, as they know. If we ride further after dark, we must turn on die heaters of our varyaks or freeze to death. But those heaters will make us a torch to the infrared spotters.”

  Flandry rubbed his chin. Altaian garments were ridiculously short on him, which was bad for morale. He thanked his elegant gods for antibeard enzyme . . . and wished he dared smoke. "What do you advise?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “We must stay here. There are sleeping bags in the equipment, you know. They are well enough insulated to keep us alive if we fasten them together to make a double unit. Our body radiation won’t be so strong as to betray us'. . . unless the temperature drops very far.” “How close are we to your friends?”

  Bourtai rubbed tired, hazel eyes. “I cannot say. They move about, under the Khrebet and along the Kara Gobi fringe. At this time of year, they will be drifting southward, so we are probably not terribly far from some Tebtengrian ordu. Still, distances are never small on the steppe.” After a moment: “The Khan’s folk know, as well as we do, that our varyaks’ energy cells are nigh exhausted. If we live the night, tomorrow we shall have to walk. At that rate, we will probably be caught in a storm and frozen before we can find help.”

  Flandry glanced at lie battered, dusty vehicles. Wonderfully durable gadgets, he thought in a vague way. Largely handmade, of course, using small power tools; but made with the care and craftsmanship feasible in a nonmercantile economy. The radios could doubtlessly call several hundred kilometers. The first such signal would bring that aircraft overhead down like a stooping falcon.

  He eased himself onto his back and lay, letting his muscles throb. The ground was cold beneath. After a moment Bour-tai followed suit, snuggling close with a trustfulness that touched him.

  “If we do not escape, well, such is the space-time pattern,” she said, more calmly than he could have managed. “But if we do, what then is your plan, Orluk?”

  “Get word to Terra, I suppose. Don’t ask me how.”

  “Will not your friends come to avenge you when you do not return?”

  “No. The Khan need only tell the Betelgeuseans that I, regretably, died in some accident or riot or whatever, and will be cremated with full honors. The evidence is easy enough for him to fake. Any mutilated corpse about my size would do; one human looks so much like another to the untrained nonhuman. The Betelgeuseans will pass the word on to my organization. Naturally, some of my colleagues will suspect foul play, but they have so much else to do that the suspicion probably won’t be strong enough to act on. The most they will do is send another agent like myself. And this time, expecting him, the Khan can make preparations. He can camouflage his new military stuff, make sure our man talks only to the right people and sees only the right things. What can one man do against a planet?”

  “You have done somewhat already.”

  “But I told you, I caught Oleg by surprise.”

  “You will do more,” she continued serenely. “For instance, why can’t you smuggle a letter out with the help of some Betelgeusean? We Tebtengri can get agents into Ulan Baligh to contact the spacemen.”

  “I imagine that has occurred to the Khan. He will make damn sure that no person he is not absolutely certain of has any contact with any out-worlder. And he’ll have all export material searched with care before it leaves Altai.”

  "Write a letter in the Terran language. He won’t recognize what it says.” .

  “Hell get it translated.”

  “Oh, no.” Bourtai raised herself on one elbow. “There is not a human on Altai except yourself who reads the Anglic. Some Betelgeuseans do, of course, but no tribesmen. The language evolved after we lost contact with the mainstream of humanity, and there has been no pressing reason for anyone to learn it. Oleg himself reads only Altaian and the principal Betelgeusean language, Alfzarian. I know that for a fact. He mentioned it to me one night recently.”

  She spoke of the past year in a cool tone. Flandry gathered that in this culture it was no disgrace to have been a harem slave.

  “Even worse,” he said. “I can just see Oleg’s agents permitting a letter they couldn’t read to go out. Nor would they trust a Betelgeusean to translate it for them; the letter might offer a substantial bribe to fake that job. No, from now on until they know I’m dead, I don’t expect they’ll let anything they are not absolutely sure about come near a spaceship, or near a spacefarer.”

  Bourtai sat straight. Sudden, startling tears blurred her gaze. “But you cannot be helpless!” she cried. “You are from Terra!"

  He didn’t want to disillusion her. “We’ll see. First, let’s get out of the immediate mess.” Hastily, he plucked a stalk of grass and chewed. “This tastes almost like home. Remark* able similarity.”

  “Oh, but it is of Terrestrial origin.” Bourtai’s dismay changed mercurially to simple astonishment, that he should not know what was so everyday to her. “The first colonists here found the steppe a virtual desert. Only sparse plant forms grew, poisonous to man. All other native life had retreated into the Arctic and Antarctic. Our ancestors used genetic engineering on 'the seeds and small animals they had with them. They created strains adapted to local conditions, and released them. Terrestroid ecology soon took over the whole tropic belt.”

  Flandry noticed once again that Bourtai was no simple barbarian. She came from a genuine and fairly sophisticated civilization, even if it was on wheels. It would be an interesting culture to visit ... if he survived, which was dubious.

  Krasna was obviously an old sun, middle Population Two, which had drifted from the galactic nucleus into this spiral arm. Since the heavy elements are formed within the stars, scattered through space by nova-type processes, and accumulated in the next stellar generation, the most ancient stars have no planets. Krasna must be among the oldest ones which did; and it and its worlds were very poor in substances of middle and high atomic number. Which included many industrial metals.

  Being smaller than Sol, Krasna had matured very slowly. In the first billion years or so, internal heat had given Altai a more or less Terrestroid surface temperature. Protoplasmic life had evolved in shallow seas. Probably the first crude land forms had emerged. But then radioactivity was used up. Residual heat bled into space. At last only the dull sun furnished warmth, Altai froze. The process was slow enough that life did not become extinct, but adapted.

  Eventually equilibrium was reached. Altai lay ice-bound horn pole to pole. An old, old world: so old that one moon had finally come within the Roche limit, shattered and formed rings; so old that its sun had completed the first stage of hydrogen burning and moved into another set of nuclear reactions. And these were more intense. Krasna grew hotter and brighter. For the next several million years, it would continue to increase its output. In the end, Altai’s seas, liquid once more, would boil; beyond that, the planet itself would boil, as Krasna became nova; and beyond that lay the the white dwarf condition, where the star sank back down into ultimate darkness.

  But as yet the process was scarcely begun. Only the tropics had reached a temperature that men-children of a more massive and brilliant sun—could endure. Most of the planet’s water fled the equatorial belt and snowed down on the still frigid poles, leaving dry plains where a few plants struggled to re-adapt, but were destroyed by this invading green grass.

  Flandry’s mind touched, the remote futu
re of Terra, and recoiled. A gelid breeze slid around him. He grew aware of how stiff and chilly he was. And night had not even fallen!

  He groaned back to a sitting position. Bourtai sat calm. He envied her fatalism, but it was not in him to accept the chance of freezing while he cowered in a sack—or to walk, if he survived the dark hours, across hundreds of parched kilometers, through a cold that strengthened day by autumnal day.

  His mind scuttered about, a trapped weasel seeking any bolthole. Fire, fire, my chance of immortality for a fire— Hoy, there!

  He sprang to his feet, remembered the aircraft, and hit dirt again so fast that he bumped his bruised nose. The girl listened wide-eyed to his streaming, sputtering Anglic. When he had finished, she sketched a reverent sign. “I also pray the Spirit of the Mother that She guide us,” said Bourtai.

  Flandry showed his teeth in what was possibly a grin. “I, uh, wasn’t exactly praying, my dear. No, I think I’ve a plan. Wild, but—Now, listen.”

  “No!” she exclaimed when he had finished.

  The violence of her rejection startled him. “Not even to save our fives?” he asked.

  “Would it? I don’t see how.”

  “Well, I can’t guarantee anything, of course,” Flandry said. His lips moved upward, one-sidedly. “Or, rather, I can. I can promise you this scheme will give us the whole world and a new pair of skates. Because if it fails, I won’t be available for scolding purposes anyway.” He sat up, hugged his knees and squinted across pale, rippling kilometers. The sun seemed to topple nightward. “How it works will be simple enough. As soon as darkness comes, I’ll about on my varyak setting fires. The capacitors have a few kilometers left in them. This grass is so dry die whole prairie will flare up like a tinderbox. So well have smoke to screen us from view and warmth to blanket the radiation from our heaters.”

  “But do you not understand, Orluk? Just because die grass bums so easily, a steppe fire is the most dreaded thing on Altai. All other work, all fighting, even, stops when one is seen. Every person is law-bound to do nothing but quench it.” The girl shivered. “And you would set one deliberately!”

  “Uh-huh. Because I figured your custom must be just as you’ve described. Don’t you see? The Khan’s hunters will drop the search for us while they tackle the blaze. I suppose your usual method is to drop foam bombs from the air?” She nodded. “Well, then, if any of your people are in the neighborhood—which means within several hundred kilometers, since they’re bound to have sky patrols watching for a possible Khanist raid—and if they’re close enough to spot the fire, they’ll send aircraft to help, won’t they? Sure. When they arrive, we’ll break radio silence and holler for them to pick us up. I think, given your name, they will. They can probably snatch us and escape, don’t you agree? If they act fast. Until they show, we’ll duck and dodge about, using the fire for cover. Once rescued, we’ll be streaked northward to temporary safety, anyhow. Right? Yes, yes, the idea depends on several assumptions which may be dead wrong. But they don’t look too improbable, do they?”

  “No-no. But the law of Altai—”

  “Law be damned. We won’t bum off more than a few hundred hectares. Couple thousand at worst. In exchange for which, Altai gets a chance to call on Holy Mother Terra for her liberation.” As she still hesitated, he leaned closer and murmured: “Rather more important to me, personally, you get a chance to live and be free.”

  “What?” She looked at him blankly. He smiled. A slow blush stained her cheeks; the tilted, green eyes dropped.

  He caught her hands between his. “I never spumed any good luck that came my way,” he said. “And who ever had such good luck as to meet Bourtai Ivanskaya?”

  “What? But no, you are an orluk of Terra; I am only . . .” Her stammering died out She wasn’t used to courtliness; didn’t know what it meant. She trembled harder. He drew her close to him and kissed her.

  Little more than that happened. For one thing, he was too tired and hungry. But before long she sighed and whispered, “As you think best, Dominic . . .”

  Krasna touched the horizon, hung red and bloated for minutes, and was gone. Night fell with pyrotechnic swiftness. Stars sprang forth, the rings became a cold blaze, the wind grew fangs.

  Flandry mounted his varyak. There was a tiny serf#, and a faggot of twisted straw in Bourtai’s hand blossomed flame. She gave it to him. He kicked the motor into life whirled off. The grasses rustled, invisible, as he parted them.

  Several meters away, he leaned over and put the torch to the ground. A sheaf of red and yellow tongues licked up.

  He roared in a spiral, sowing his fires. By the time he rejoined the girl, they were coalescing into one. She bestrode her own machine, mute and unhappy. He must turn on her heater for her. The warmth from his needed a while to penetrate the numbness in his feet.

  The fire arose and bellowed. A curtain of light spread across the world, wavering, climbing, showering sparks like refugee stars. Smoke blotted out the rings and half of heaven. Flandry felt heat gusts and smelled bitterness. He guided himself and the girl in slow pursuit, over hot, charred ground where their shadows wobbled grotesquely on stubble.

  The airboat swooped low. Momentarily, its teardrop form was outlined against orange and raw gold. Flandry’s muscles braced themselves for a bullet storm. The craft buzzed up again, out of sight. He hadn’t been noticed. He wasn’t important . . . now.

  Bourtai fumbled with her radio receiver. The uneven light made her face leap from the murk. Then, as the nearest flames guttered, she vanished. Only the metal highlights on her varyak remained.

  Voices trickled through the crackle and cough: “—come in, Ulan Baligh . . . Our position is . . . Units from Jagatai Station . . .Stand by ... Prepare for . . . Windage . . . Danger . . .” She tuned them out, searching. The time seemed long before a new tone on a different band reached Flandry’s ears.

  “Aye, Noyon, it’s wildfire indeed. I see one Khanist vessel hovering. . . . Hold, a flock of them just registered on my radar screen, hither bound. Too small a squadron to stop the thing by itself. But they’re calling for reinforcements. I think they can handle the bum well enough.”

  The answer was faint with remoteness, mangled by static, but prideful. “None shall say the Mangu Tuman withheld aid against the common enemy. Call them and say a flight of ours will shortly be on its way under command of myself, Arghun Tiliksky.”

  “Must I tell that, Noyon? They might decide that shooting you down was worth violating the Yassa.”

  “They would not dare. Every man on Altai would call for their deaths.” With a dryness Flandry liked, the distant voice added, “Besides, I doubt if one officer of one ordu in the Tebtengri Shamanate is quite such a prize. Expect us within half an hour. Signing off.”

  Half an hour, Flandry’s mind repeated. He didn’t listen to the interchange between rebel scout and Khanist pilot. Their arrangement of truce Was brief, formal, and cold. He concentrated on staying near enough to the fire for its infrared radiation to screen his own, without getting so close that he would be seen.

  That took a little precision. The blaze grew with horrible speed. Now it lit the whole plain, and small animals fled squealing between his varyak wheels. The first firefighting squadron arrived and swooped beneath the smoke for a closer look. The thunder of their passage reverberated in his head. They rushed back beyond sight, and the bombs started falling. Where one struck, whiteness fountained, spread, and congealed in a sticky layer. A drop of this hit

  Flandry’s right hand. He spent several profane minutes ungluing his fingers.

  Driven by a strong wind, the conflagration was immune to backfires. The aircraft laid a foam barrier across its path. It halted, sputtered, shook loose defiant banners, and outflanked the obstacle. Flandry could have sworn it whooped in derision.

  Bourtai’s hand sought his and squeezed tight, as they drove across ashen wasteland and glowing coals. “Said I not?” she asked thinly. "Said I not?” He muttered what comfort he co
uld. Cinders blew up to streak their faces and stop their nostrils.

  Another team from a more distant station appeared. Presently, the fire was contained to the south as well as to the north. But eastward it overleaped a foam line too thin, curved about and established its private sunrise. The first squadron, having discharged all bombs, went back after more. Their dwindling noise was scarcely audible above the roar on the steppe.

  Bourtai rose in her saddle. Her eyes turned skyward. “Listen!” After a moment, Flandry heard the sound too. It was the whistle of aircraft in a hurry, coming down from the north. His heart fluttered. The girl, cooler than he when action was imminent, tuned her receiver.

  “Do you know these Mangu Tuman people?” he asked stupidly.

  “A little. They and mine, like all the Tebtengrian tribes, have met at Kievka Fair. And sometimes other occasions.” Curt orders rattled from the loud-speaker. “That is the frequency to call them on.”

  Flandry saw midget shapes sweep across the wall of flame, several kilometers away. The Tebtengri didn’t work in the sedate style of Oleg’s men, who hovered far above. They dive-bombed. His gaze shifted from them to the opposite horizon. The pattern grew slowly in his brain, pieced together from glimpses caught through roiling smoke and gushing lambencies.

  “They’re taking the eastern front, leaving the Khan’s units to work inward from north and south,” he said. “Hm. That means, to get close enough for a speedy rescue operation, we must go clear around and re-approach the fire from the east. We’d better get started. I don’t think, with the force they now have, the men will need much longer to put it out.”

  The girl’s brief smile flashed white in her sooty, shadowed countenance. Her machine streaked off. He took a backward spurt of dust in his mouth, spat it out with an obscene remark, and tried to pull alongside. But she was too fast. He could barely see her, in snatches, now a silhouette against the blaze, now a flying gleam in darkness. The varyak motors droned, louder even than the burning they neared. Wheels hit stones and holes, bounced, swayed, and pounded on.