Mayday Orbit

by Poul Anderson

  With unexpected loudness, shocking like a gunshot, he said, “Do they know we are here?”

  “Oh, yes. They have our ways. They will soon come meet us.” Juchi looked northward at the ruins that stood mountainous on the lakeshore. Snow had half buried those marble walls, white on white, with the sundown light bleeding across shattered colonnades. Frost from the Shaman's breath began to stiffen his beard.

  “I suppose they recognize the markings on our boat,”

  Flandry said. "But what if the Kha Khan sent a disguised vessel?”

  "That was tried once or twice, by Oleg’s father. His craft was destroyed by some means, while he was still far south of here. The dwellers are quite alert.” Juchi raised his arms and began swaying on his feet. He threw back his head and closed his eyes. A high-pitched chant rose from his lips.

  Flandry had no idea whether the old man was indulging superstition, practicing a ritual of courtesy, or doing what was actually needful to summon the glacier folk. He had been in too many strange places to dogmatize. He waited, his gaze ranging the scene.

  Beyond the ruins, westward along the lakeshore, a forest grew. White slender trees with intricate, oddly geometric branches flashed like icicles, like jewels. Their thin, bluish leaves vibrated continuously. It seemed that they should tinkle, that this whole forest was glass. Flandry had never known a wilderness so quiet. The snow between those gleaming boles was carpeted by low, gray plants. The rocks which thrust up here and there were almost buried under such lichenous growth. Had the place been less cold and hushed, it would have suggested a tropical richness.

  The lake reached out of sight, pale-blue between the snowbanks. As evening swept across the waters, the mists that hovered above were drawn white against shadow.

  Juchi had explained the biochemical basis of polar life on Altai. Originally protoplasmic, terrestroid, the native forms had been forced to adapt in past ages to falling temperature. They had done so by synthesizing methanol.

  A fifty-fifty mixture of methanol and water remained fluid to below minus forty degrees. When it finally did freeze, it did not expand into cell-disrupting ice crystals; it simply, and gradually, turned into slush. Vegetation and the more primitive animals remained functional till about seventy below, Centigrade; after that they did not die, but became dormant. The higher animals, being homeothermic, would not suspend animation till the air reached minus a hundred degrees.

  The polar lakes and rivers were likewise charged with alcohol accumulated from aquatic species as they died. Thus they remained fluid till midwinter. The chief problem of life in the glacial regions was to find minerals. Bacteria brought up some from below the permanent ice. Wherever rock was exposed, animals would travel far to lick and gnaw it; then, returning to their forests, they contributed the heavy atoms when they died. But in general, the Altaian ecology made do without. For example, no native animal possessed bones. Instead, chitinous and cartilaginous materials 'had been elaborated far beyond anything seen on Terra.

  Juchi’s account had sounded plausible and interesting in a warm kibitka on a grassy slope, with microtexts on hand to supply quantitative details. But when he stood on million-year-old snow, watching night creep like smoke between crystal trees and cyclopean ruins, hearing the Shaman chant in an unknown language beneath a huge green sunset sky, Flandry discovered that scientific explanations were but feeble attempts at the truth.

  One moon was aloft. He saw something drift across its copper shield. The objects—a flock of white spheres, ranging in diameter from a few centimeters to a giant bigger than the airboat—came nearer. Tentacles streamed from beneath the globes. Juchi broke off his call. “Ah,” he said matter-of-factly, “the aeromedusae. The dwellers cannot be far.”

  “What?” Flandry hugged himself. The cold was beginning to be felt now, as it gnawed through fur and leather toward flesh.

  “Our name for them. They look like primitive organisms, but actually they are well evolved, with sense organs and brains. They electrolyze hydrogen from water to inflate themselves. Propulsion is by air forced backwards. They feed on small game which they shock insensible through those tentacles. The Ice Folk have domesticated them.”

  Flandry stole a glance at a jagged wall, rearing above the gloom to catch a last sunbeam. “They did more than that, once,” he said with pity.

  The Shaman frowned a little. “We humans really have no idea whether the Dwellers have degenerated or not,” he said. “I daresay intelligence appeared on Altai in the first place as a response to worsening conditions—the warming of Krasna in the past few million years, after the planet’s biosphere was adapted to lower temperatures. Superficially it would appear that the new race built a superior civilization which has subsequently collapsed. The shortage of metals and the slow shrinkage of the ice caps might have been the cause . . . And yet that is not what the Dwellers themselves assert. They show no sense of having lost a glorious past.” His slanted eyes squinted in concentration as he sought words. “They—as nearly as I can understand them, —had deliberately abandoned their material civilization after they had found better methods.”

  Two beings came from the forest.

  At first glance they were like dwarfish, white-furred men. Then you saw details of squat build and rubbery limbs. The feet were long and webbed, expandable to broad snowshoes or foldable to short skis. The hands had three fingers opposed by a thumb set in the middle of the wrist. The ears were feathery tufts; fine tendrils waved above each round, black eye; sad, gray monkey faces peered from a ruff of hair. Their breath did not steam like human breath, for their body temperature was well below the Centigrade zero. One of them bore a stone lamp in which an alcohol flame wavered. The other had an intricately carved, white staff. In some undefinable way, the circling medusae appeared to be guided by it.

  They came near, halted, and waited. Nothing moved but the low wind, ruffling their fur and streaming the flame. Juchi stood just as quiet. Flandry made himself conform, though his teeth wanted to clap. He had seen many kinds of life, on worlds more foreign than this. But there was a strangeness here that got under his skin and crawled.

  The sun went down. Thin, dustless air gave no twilight. Stars burst forth in a sudden blackness. The edge of the rings painted a remote arc. The moon threw cuprous radiance over the snow and crowded the forest with shadows.

  A meteor split the sky with, noiseless lightning. Juchi seemed to take that as a signal. He began talking. His voice was like ice that tones as it contracts in midnight cold: not altogether a human voice. Flandry began to understand what a Shaman was and why he presided over the allied northland tribes. Few men indeed had the intelligence needed to master the Dwellers’ language and deal with them. Yet a large part of the Tebtengri strength lay in their relationship with these beings. Metal was traded for organic fuel and curious, plastic substances from Tengri Nor,' mutual defense was maintained against the Kha Khan’s sky raiders.

  A Dweller made reply. Juchi turned to Flandry. “I have related who you are and from whence you come, Orluk. They are not surprised. Before I spoke of your requirements, he said their—I do not know precisely what the word means, but it has something to do with communication—he said they could reach Terra herself, as far as mere distance was concerned, though only through dreams?”

  Flandry stiffened. It could be. How long had men been hunting for some faster-than-light equivalent of radio? A handful of centuries. What was that, compared to the age of the universe? Or even the age of Altai? He realized suddenly, not with his mere brain but with his whole organism, how old this planet was.

  “Telepathy?” he blurted. “I’ve never heard of telepathy with that great a range.”

  “No. That is not what the Dwellers mean. Were it so, they would have learned of this Merseian situation long ago, and warned us. His concept is not one that I can quite understand.” Juchi added with great care: “In fact, he admitted to me that every power the Dwellers possess looks useless for our purposes.”

>   Flandry sighed. “I might have known. A telepathic message to the Imperial Navy would have been too simple. No chance for heroics.”

  “The Dwellers say they freed themselves ages ago from those cumbersome buildings and engines we humans still use,” Juchi told him. “They have been free to think—to follow pure thought toward some unknowable ultimate—for longer than we can imagine. But by the same token, they have lost many purely material powers. They can withstand aggression from Ulan Baligh; but against the spaceships and atomic weapons of Merseia they would be helpless.”

  Half seen in red moonlight, an autochthone spoke.

  Juchi continued. “He says they do not fear racial death. If Merseia should exterminate them, they will accept it calmly for themselves. AH things end, yet nothing ever really ends. However, it would be preferable that their lesser brethren, the beasts and plants of the ice forest, have a few more million years to live, so that they also may approach truth.”

  Which is a fine, resounding ploy, thought Flandry, provided it be not the simple fact.

  “They, like us Tebtengri, are not unwilling to become clients of the Terrestrial Empire,” said Juchi. “To them, political status means nothing. They will never have enough in common with men to be troubled by any Imperial governor. They know Terra will not gratuitously harm them— whereas Merseia would, if only by provoking that planetwide battle of space fleets you have described. Therefore the Cold People will assist us in any way they can. But at present they know of no solution.”

  “Do these two speak for their whole race?” asked Flandry dubiously.

  “And for die forests and the waters," Juchi said.

  Flandry thought of a biosphere which was one great organism, and nodded. “If you say so, I’ll take your word. But if they can’t help . . ."

  Juchi gave an old man’s sigh, like wind over the acrid waters. “I had hoped they could. But now, have you no fresh plan of your own?"

  Flandry stood a long time, feeling the chill creep inward. At last he said: “If the only spaceships on Altai are at Ulan Baligh, then evidently we must get into the city somehow, to post our message. Have these folk any means of secretly contacting a Betelgeusean?”

  Juchi inquired. “No,” he translated the answer. “Not if the traders are closely guarded; and their awareness tells them that that is so.”

  The lamp bearer stooped forward so that the dull-blue fire brought his countenance out of darkness. Could as human an emotion as sorrow really be read into those eyes? Words droned. Juchi listened.

  “They can get us into the city, undetected, on any night which is cold enough,” he said. “The medusae can carry us through the air. They can actually see and avoid radar beams. A medusa is too cold to show on an infrared scope, and of course would not activate a metal detector. A single man borne in its tentacles would be too small to register on any grounded instrument.” The Shaman paused. “But what use is that? If we want to get anyone into Ulan Baligh, he can simply walk in, disguised."

  “An airboat, naturally, would be stopped at some traffic-control point outside town and investigated . . .” Flandry’s voice trailed off. He raised his face to the glittering sky, took the moonlight full in his eyes and was briefly dazzled. Tension tingled along his nerves.

  When at last he spoke, it was very slowly. And it was a mere recapitulation, intended to soothe the hammering within himself. “Do you remember, Juchi, that we talked about the possibility of radioing some Betelgeusean ship as it was still rising through the atmosphere? You said the Tebtengri have no set powerful enough to broadcast that far;- in any event, a broadcast would spill the beans, since the Khanists would hear too. Nor could we cast a tight beam, since we'd have no means of tracking the ship. It’d go beyond our range in seconds, even if we did lock a beam onto it.” “Aye, I remember.”

  “Well, let’s suppose a spaceship, a friendly spaceship, approached close to this planet without actually landing. Could the Ice Dwellers communicate with it?”

  Juchi asked and reported: “No. They have no radio sets whatsoever. Even if they did, their ’casting would be as liable to detection as ours. The risk looks great, Orluk. A ship could not come near without the Khan knowing; there are detector satellites in orbit. Even the tightest beam to such a vessel, shot up from the ground, would suffer some atmospheric dispersion. The risk that the Khanists could also receive our message looks great.”

  “M-m-m, yes. No harm in asking.” Flandry’s gaze continued to search skyward till he found Betelgeuse like a torch among the constellations. “Could we know there was such a ship in the neighborhood?”

  “I daresay, since it could not approach undetected, it would radio Ulan Baligh spaceport in the usual way. Anything else would be so suspicious that a patrol would be sent immediately.” Juchi conferred with the nonhumans. “Yes,” he said, “we could be apprised of the vessel’s presence. Our friends here suggest that we place men, carried by medusae, unnoticeably far above Ulan Baligh. They can carry receivers. By thus intercepting the space radio beam, they can listen to the conversation between the ship and the portmaster. Would that serve?”

  Flandry breathed out in a great freezing gust. “It might.” Suddenly and joyously, he laughed.

  Perhaps no such sound had ever before rung across Tengri Nor. The Dwellers started back, like frightened small animals. Juchi stood in shadow. For that instant, only Captain Dominic Flandry of Imperial Terra had light upon him. He stood with his head raised into the copper moonglow, and laughed like a boy.

  “By heaven,” he shouted, “we re going to try it!”

  IX

  An autumn gale came down off the pole. It gathered snow on its way across the steppe and struck Ulan Baligh near midnight. In minutes the high, red roofs were lost to sight. Close by a lighted window, a man could see horizontal white streaks, whirling out of darkness toward darkness. But if he removed himself a few meters, pushing through drifts already knee-deep, the light was gone. He stood blind, buffeted by the storm, and heard it rave.

  Flandry descended from the upper atmosphere. That cold had smitten so deep he thought he might never be warm again. In spite of an oxygen tank, his lungs were starving. He saw the blizzard from above as a moon-dappled, black blot. The early ice floes on Ozero Rurik were dashed to and fro along its southern fringe. Tentacles enmeshed him; he sat under a giant balloon that rushed earthward from the sky. Behind him trailed a flock of other medusae, twisting along air currents he could not feel, to avoid radar beams he could not see. Ahead of him flew a single globe, bearing a Dweller who huddled against a cake of ice; for the tropical storm was hell’s own sulfurous wind to the polar native.

  Once the snowfall enclosed him, even Flandry could sense how much warmer the air had become. Still chilly enough to kill him, though. He squinted into a nothingness that yelled. Once his numbed, dangling feet struck a roof-tree. The blow came as if from far away. Pale at first, strengthening as he neared, the red luminescence of the Prophet’s Tower shafted upward beyond sight.

  Flandry groped for the nozzle at his shoulder. The radiant spire enabled him to just barely see through the driven flakes. Another medusa crowded close, bearing a pressure tank of paint. Somehow, Flandry reached across the gap and made his hose fast.

  Now, artic intelligence, do you understand what I want you to do? Can you guide this horse of mine for me?

  The wind yammered reply. Deeper and steadier, he heard noises like blasting: the powerful breaths by which his medusa propelled itself. A gust threw him toward the tablet wall. His carrier wobbled in mid-air, fighting to maintain position. An inlaid letter loomed before him, big as a house, black upon shining white. He aimed his hose and squirted.

  Damn! The green jet was flung aside in a flaw of wind. He corrected his aim and saw the paint strike. It remained liquid even at this temperature. No matter, it was sticky enough, and would be dry before morning. The first tankful was quickly expended. Flandry coupled to another one, carried by another medusa. Blue this time.
All the Tebtengri had contributed all the squirtable paint they had—every hue in God’s rainbow. Flandry could but hope there would be enough.

  There was. He nearly fainted from cold and weariness before the end of the job. Even so, when the last huge stroke was done—each character was 150 meters tall—he could not resist adding an exclamation point at the very bottom.

  “Let’s go,” he whispered. Somehow, the Dweller knew and pointed his staff. The medusa flock sprang back through the clouds.

  Flandry had a moment’s glimpse of a military airboat. It had detached itself from the squadron patrolling above the spaceport. Maybe the pilot was going off duty. As the medusae topped the storm, entering clear moonlight and ringlight, the craft veered. Its guns stabbed blue bolts into the living globes. Flandry reached for the futile blaster at his hip. His fingers were like wood, he couldn’t close them!

  The medusae, all but his and the Dweller’s, whipped about. They swarmed around the vessel, laid tentacles fast and clung. The metal was nearly buried in their cluster. Electric fires crawled forth; sparks dripped. These creatures could build potential enough to break hydrogen from the water molecule. Flandry recalled that a metallic fuselage was a Faraday cage, immune to lightning. But when concentrated electric discharges burned holes, shattered glassite, spot-welded control circuits—the boat staggered. The medusae detached themselves. The boat plummeted.

  Flandry relaxed and let his animal bear him northward.

  The town seethed. There had been rioting in the Street of Gunsmiths, and blood still dappled the new-fallen snow. Armed men tramped on guards around palace and spaceport. Outside their formations, the mobs hooted. From the lakeshore encampments came war music. Pipes squealed, gongs crashed, the young warriors rode their varyaks in breakneck circles and cursed.