The Rebel Worlds

VIII

No boat remained spaceworthy. Where destruction was not total, crucial systems had been knocked out. Time was lacking to make repairs or cannibalize. One of the four craft offered a weak hope. Though its fusion generator was inoperative, its accumulators could energize the two drive cones that seemed usable; and the instruments and controls were undamaged. An aerodynamic landing might be possible. Every rated pilot was killed or wounded — but Flandry had flown combat aircraft before he transferred to the Intelligence Corps.

The engineers had barely finished ascertaining this much when it became urgent to abandon ship. They would soon strike atmosphere. That would complete the ruin of the hull. Struggling through airlessness, weightlessness, lightlessness, hale survivors dragged hurt to the boat housing. There wasn’t room for all those bodies if they stayed space armored. Flandry pressurized from tanks and, as each man cycled through the airlock, had his bulky gear stripped off and sent out the disposal valve. He managed to find stowage for three suits, including his — which he suddenly remembered he must not wear when everyone else would be unprotected. That was more for the sake of the impellers secured to them than for anything else.

Those worst injured were placed in the safety-webbed chairs. The rest, jammed together down the aisle, would depend for their lives on the gee-field. Flandry saw Kathryn take her stand among them. He wanted wildly to give her the copilot’s chair; the field circuits might well be disrupted by the stresses they were about to encounter. But Ensign Havelock had some training in this kind of emergency procedure. His help could be the critical quantum that saved her.

A shudder went through boat and bones, the first impact on Dido’s stratosphere. Flandry shot free.

The rest was indescribable: riding a meteorite through incandescence, shock, thunderblast, stormwind, night, mountains and caverns of cloud, rain like bullets, crazy tilting and whirling of horribly onrushing horizon, while the noise roared and battered and vibrations shook brains in skulls and devils danced on the instrument panel.

Somehow Flandry and Havelock kept a measure of control. They braked the worst of their velocity before they got down to altitudes where it would be fatal. They did not skip helplessly off the tropopause nor flip and tumble when they crossed high winds in the lower atmosphere. They avoided peaks that raked up to catch them and a monstrous hurricane, violent beyond anything Terra had ever known, that would have sundered their boat and cast it into the sea. Amidst the straining over meters and displays, the frantic leap of hands over pilot board and feet on pedals, the incessant brutality of sound, heat, throbbing, they clung to awareness of their location.

Their desire was wholly to reach Port Frederiksen. Their descent took them around the northern hemisphere. Identifying what had to be the largest continent, they fought their way to the approximately correct latitude and slanted down westward above it.

They could have made their goal, or come near, had their initial velocity been in the right direction. But the instrumental survey had been expedited by throwing Asieneuve into a retrograde orbit. Now the planet’s rotation worked against them, forcing extra energy expenditure in the early stages of deceleration. By the time the boat was approaching a safe speed, its accumulators were drained. Overloaded, it had no possibility of a long ballistic glide. There was nothing to do but use the last stored joules for setting down.

Nor could the tail jacks be employed. Unharnessed, men would be crushed beneath their fellows if the gee-field gave way. Flandry picked out an open area surrounded by forest. Water gleamed between hummocks and sedgy clumps. Better marsh then treetops. The keel skids hissed beneath a last rumble of engine; the boat rocked, bucked, slewed around, and came to rest at a steep angle; flying creatures fled upward in clamorous thousands; and stillness was.

A moment’s dark descended on Flandry. He pulled out of it to the sound of feeble cheers. “E-e-everybody all right?” he stuttered. His fingers trembled likewise, fumbling with his harness.

“No further injuries, sir,” said one voice. “Maybe not,” another responded. “But O’Brien died on the way down.”

Flandry closed his eyes. My man, pierced him. My men. My ship. How many are left? I counted … Twenty-three with only small hurts, plus Kathryn and me. Seventeen — sixteen — seriously wounded. The rest — Those lives were in my hands!

Havelock said diffidently, “Our radio’s out, sir. We can’t call for help. What does the captain wish?”

Rovian, I should have collected that chunk, not you. The lives that are left are still in my murderous-clumsy hands.

Flandry forced his lids back up. His ears were ringing almost too loudly for him to hear his own words, but he thought they sounded mechanical. “We can’t maintain our interior field long. The final ergs are about to go. Let’s get our casualties outside before we have to contend with local pull on a slanted deck.” He rose and faced his men. Never had he done anything harder. “Lady McCormac,” he said. “You know this planet. Have you any recommendations?”

She was hidden from him by those packed around her. The husky tones were unshaken. “Equalize pressures slowly. If we’re anywhere near sea level, that air is half again as thick as Terran. Do you know where we are?”

“We were aiming for the Aenean base.”

“If I remember rightly, this hemisphere’s in its early summer. S’posin’ we’re not far below the arctic circle, we’ll have more day than night, but not very much more. Bear in mind the short spin period. Don’t count on a lot of light.”

“Thanks.” Flandry issued the obvious commands.

Saavedra, the communications officer, found some tools, took the panel off the radio transceiver, and studied it. “I might be able to cobble something together for signalling the base,” he said.

“How long’ll that take you?” Flandry asked. A little potency was returning to his muscles, a little clarity to his brain.

“Several hours, sir. I’ll have to haywire, and jigger around till I’m on a standard band.”

“And maybe nobody’ll happen to be listening. And when they do hear us, they’ll have no triangulate and — Uh-uh.” Flandry shook his head. “We can’t wait. Another ship’s on her way here. When she finds the derelict we shot up, she’ll hunt for us. An excellent chance of finding us, too: a sweep with metal detectors over a planet as primitive as this. I don’t want us anywhere near. She’s likely to throw a missile.”

“What shall we do, then, sir?” Havelock asked.

“Does my lady think we’ve a chance of marching overland to the base?” Flandry called.

“Depends on just where we are,” Kathryn replied. “Topography, native cultures, everything’s as variable on Dido as ’tis on most worlds. Can we pack plenty of food?”

“Yes, I imagine so. Boats like this are stocked with ample freeze-dried rations. I assume there’s plenty of safe water.”

“Is. Might be stinkin’ and scummy, but no Didonian bug has yet made a human sick. Biochemistry’s that different.”

When the lock was opened full, the air turned into a steam bath. Odors blew strange, a hundred pungencies, fragrant, sharp, rotten, spicy, nameless. Men gasped and tried to sweat. One rating started to pull off his shirt. Kathryn laid a hand on his arm. “Don’t,” she warned. “No matter clouds, enough UV gets past to burn you.”

Flandry went first down the accommodation ladder. Weight was hardly changed. He identified a tinge of ozone in the swamp reeks and thought that an increased partial pressure of oxygen might prove valuable. His boots squelched into ankle-deep muck. The sounds of life were coming back: chatter, caw, whistle, wingbeats. They were loud in the dense air, now that his hearing had recovered. Small animals flitted among leaves in the jungle.

It was not like a rain forest on a really terrestroid world. The variety of trees was incredible, from gnarly and thorny dwarfs to soaring slim giants. Vines and fungoids covered many dark trunks. Foliage was equally diverse in its shapes. Nowhere was it green; browns and deep reds predominated, though purples and golds blent in; the same held for the spongy, springy mat on the land. The overall effect was one of somber richness. There were no real shadows, but Flandry’s gaze soon lost itself in the gloom under the trees. He saw more brush than he liked to think about pushing his way through.

Overhead the sky was pearl gray. Lower cloud strata drifted across its featurelessness. A vaguely luminous area marked Virgil. Recalling where the terminator was, he knew this district was still at morning. They’d leave before sundown if they worked.

He gave himself to helping. The labor was hard. For that he was grateful. It rescued him from dead men and a wrecked ship.

First the wounded must be borne to higher, drier ground. Their injuries were chiefly broken bones and concussions. If your armor was ripped open in space, that was generally the end of you. Two men did have nasty abdominal gashes from bits of metal whose entry holes had been sufficiently small for them or friends to slap on patches before their air could flee them. One man was unconscious, skin chill, breath shallow, pulse thready. And O’Brien had died.

Luckily, the medical officer was on his feet. He got busy. Arriving with an armful of equipment, Flandry saw Kathryn giving him skilled assistance. He remembered in dull surprise that she’d disappeared for a while. It didn’t seem like her not to plunge straight into a task.

By the time the last item had been unloaded, she had finished her nurse’s job and supervised a burial party. He glimpsed her doing some of the digging herself. When he slogged to her, O’Brien was laid out in the grave. Water oozed upward around him. He had no coffin. She had covered him with the Imperial flag.

“Will the captain read the service?” she asked.

He looked at her. She was as muddy and exhausted as he, but stood straight. Her hair clung wet to head and cheeks, but was the sole brightness upon this world. Sheathed on a belt around her coverall, he recognized the great blade and knuckleduster haft of his Merseian war knife.

Stupid from weariness, he blurted, “Do you want me to?”

“He wasn’t the enemy,” she said. “He was of Hugh’s people. Give him his honor.”

She handed him the prayerbook. Me? he thought. But I never believed — She was watching. They all were. His fingers stained the pages as he read aloud the majestic words. A fine drizzle began.

While trenching tools clinked, Kathryn plucked Flandry’s sleeve. “A minute, of your courtesy,” she said. They walked aside. “I spent a while scoutin’ ’round,” she told him. “Studied the vegetation, climbed a tree and saw mountains to west — and you wouldn’t spy many pteropods at this season if we were east of the Stonewall, so the range ahead of us must be the Maurusian — well, I know roughly where we are.”

His heart skipped a beat. “And something about the territory?”

“Less’n I’d wish. My work was mainly in Gaetulia. However, I did have my first season in this general area, more for trainin’ than research. Point is, we’ve got a fair chance of findin’ Didonians that’ve met humans; and the local culture is reasonably high; and if we do come on an entity that knows one of our pidgins, it’ll be a version I can talk, and I should be able to understand their lingo after a little practice.” The black brows knitted. “I’ll not hide from you, better if we’d come down west of the Maurusians, and not just “cause that’d shorten our march. They have some wild and mean dwellers. However, maybe I can bargain for an escort to the other side.”

“Good. You didn’t perchance find a trail for us?”

“Why, yes. That’s what I was mainly searchin’ for. We wouldn’t make a kilometer ’fore sundown through muscoid and arrowbush, not if we exhausted our blasters burnin’ them. I’ve found one just a few meters from the swamp edge, aimed more or less our way.”

“Sizzle it,” Flandry said, “but I wish we were on the same side, you and I!”

“We are,” she smiled. “What can you do but surrender at Port Frederiksen?”

His failure rose in him, tasting of vomit. “Doubtless nothing. Let’s get loaded and start.” He turned on his heel and left her, but could not escape the look that followed him. It burned between his shoulderblades.

The stuff from the boat weighed heavily on men who must also take turns carrying the wounded on improvised stretchers. Besides food, changes of clothing, utensils, handguns, ammunition, ripped-off plastic sheeting for shelters, and other necessities, Flandry insisted on taking the three spacesuits. Havelock ventured to protest: “If the captain please, should we lug them? The impellers could be handy for sending scouts aloft, but they aren’t good for many kilometers in planet gravity, nor will their radios reach far. And I don’t imagine we’ll meet any critters that we have to wear armor to fight.”

“We may have to discard things,” Flandry admitted, “but I’m hoping for native porters. We’ll tote the suits a ways, at least.”

“Sir, the men are dead on their feet as is!”

Flandry stared into the blond young face. “Would you rather be dead on your back?” he snapped. His eyes traversed the weary, dirty, stoop-shouldered creatures for whom he was responsible. “Saddle up,” he said. “Lend me a hand, Citizen Havelock. I don’t intend to carry less than anybody else.”

A sighing went among them through the thin sad rain, but they obeyed.

The trail proved a blessing. Twigs and gravel mixed into its dirt — by Didonians, Kathryn said — gave a hard broad surface winding gradually through inwalling forest toward higher country.

Dusk fell, layer by layer. Flandry made the group continue, with flashbeams to show the way. He pretended not to hear the sotto voce remarks behind his back, though they hurt. Night fell, scarcely cooler than day, tomb black, full of croakings and distant cries, while the men lurched on.

After another nightmare hour, Flandry called a halt. A brook ran across the trail. High trees surrounded and roofed a tiny meadow. His light flew about, bringing leaves and eyes briefly out of murk. “Water and camouflage,” he said. “What do you think, my lady?”

“Good,” she said.

“You see,” he tried to explain, “we have to rest, and daybreak will be soon. I don’t want us observed from the air.”

She didn’t reply. I rate no answer, who lost my ship, he thought.

Men eased off their burdens. A few munched food bars before collapsing into sleep with their fellows. The medical officer, Felipe Kapunan, said to Flandry, “No doubt the captain feels he should take first watch. But I’ll be busy the next hour or two, seeing to my patients. Dressings need change, they could use fresh enzymes, anti-radiation shots, pain killers — the standard stuff, no help necessary. You may as well rest, sir. I’ll call you when I finish.”

His last sentence was scarcely heard. Flandry went down and down into miraculous nothingness. His last knowledge was that the ground cover — carpet weed, Kathryn named it, despite its being more suggestive of miniature red-brown sponges — made a damp but otherwise gentle mattress.

The doctor shook him awake as promised and offered him a stimpill. Flandry gulped it. Coffee would have been welcome, but he dared not yet allow a campfire. He circled the meadow, found a seat between two enormous roots, and relaxed with his back against the bole. The rain had paused.

Dawn was stealthy on Dido. Light seemed to condense in the hot rank air, drop by drop, like the mists whose tendrils crawled across the sleepers. Except for the clucking brook and drip of water off leaves, a great silence had fallen.

A footstep broke it. Flandry started to rise, his blaster half out of the sheath. When he saw her, he holstered the weapon and bowed around his shivering heart. “My lady. What … what has you awake this early?”

“Couldn’t sleep. Too much to think ’bout. Mind if I join you?”

“How could I?”

They sat down together. He contrived his position so that it was natural to watch her. She looked into the jungle for a space. Exhaustion smudged her eyes and paled her lips.

Abruptly she faced back to him. “Talk with me, Dominic Flandry,” she pleaded. “I think ’bout Hugh … now I can hope to meet him again … Can I stay with him? Wouldn’t there always be that between us?”

“I said,” a cosmic cycle ago, “that if he’d, well, let a girl like you get away from him, for any cause, he’s an idiot.”

“Thanks.” She reached across and squeezed his hand. He felt the touch for a long while afterward. “Shall we be friends? First-name friends?”

“I’d love that.”

“We should make a little ceremony of it, in the Aenean way.” Her smile was wistful. “Drink a toast and — But later, Dominic, later.” She hesitated. “The war’s over for you, after all. You’ll be interned. No prison; a room in Nova Roma ought to do. I’ll come visit when I can, bring Hugh when he’s free. Maybe we’ll talk you into joinin’ us. I do wish so.”

“First we’d better reach Port Frederiksen,” he said, not daring anything less banal.

“Yes.” She leaned forward. “Let’s discuss that. I told you I need conversation. Poor Dominic, you save me from captivity, then from death, now ’tis got to be from my personal horrors. Please talk practical.”

He met the green eyes in the wide strong face. “Well,” he said, “this is quite a freakish planet, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “They think it started out to be Venus type, but a giant asteroid collided with it. Shock waves blew most of the atmosphere off, leavin’ the rest thin enough that chemical evolution could go on, not too unlike the Terran — photosynthesis and so forth, though the amino acids that developed happened to be mainly dextro- ’stead of levorotatory. Same collision must’ve produced the extreme axial tilt, and maybe the high rotation. ’Cause of those factors, the oceans aren’t as inert as you might ’spect on a moonless world, and storms are fierce. Lot of tectonic activity: no s’prise, is it? That’s believed to be the reason we don’t find traces of past ice ages, but do find eras of abnormal heat and drought. Nobody knows for sure, though. In thousands of man-lifetimes, we’ve barely won a glimpse into the mysteries. This is a whole world, Dominic.”

“I understand that,” he said. “Uh, any humanly comfortable areas?”

“Not many. Too hot and wet. Some high and polar regions aren’t as bad as this, and Port Frederiksen enjoys winds off a cold current. The tropics kill you in a few days if you’re not protected. No, we don’t want this planet for ourselves, only for knowledge. It belongs to the autochthons anyway.” Her mood turned suddenly defiant: “When Hugh’s Emperor, he’ll see that all autochthons get a fair break.”

“If he ever is.” It was as if someone else sat down at a control console in Flandry’s brain and made him say, “Why did he bring in barbarians?”

“He must’ve gone elsewhere himself and needed them to guard Virgil.” She looked aside. “I asked a couple of your men who’d watched on viewscreens, what that ship was like. ’Twas Darthan, from their descriptions. Not truly hostile folk.”

“As long as they aren’t given the chance to be! We’d offered Pax, and nevertheless they fired.”

“They … well, Darthans often act like that. Their culture makes it hard for them to believe a call for truce is honest. Hugh had to take what he could get in a hurry. After everything that’d happened, what reason had he to tell them someone might come for parley? He’s mortal! He can’t think of everything!”

Flandry slumped. “I suppose not, my lady.”

A fluting went through the forest. Kathryn waited a minute before she said gently, “You know, you haven’t yet spoken my right name.”

He replied in his emptiness: “How can I? Men are gone because of what I did.”

“Oh, Dominic!” The tears broke forth out of her. He fought to hold back his own.

They found themselves kneeling together, his face hidden against her breasts, his arms around her waist and her left around his neck, her right hand smoothing his hair while he shuddered.

“Dominic, Dominic,” she whispered to him. “I know. How well I know. My man’s a captain too. More ships, more lives than you could count. How often I’ve seen him readin’ casualty reports! I’ll tell you, he’s come to me and closed the door so he could weep. He’s made his errors that killed men. What commander hasn’t? But somebody’s got to command. It’s your duty. You weigh the facts best’s you’re able, and decide, and act, and long’s you did do your best, you never look back. You needn’t. You mustn’t.

“Dominic, we didn’t make this carnivore universe. We only live here, and have to try and cope.

“Who said you were in error? Your estimate was completely reasonable. I don’t believe any board of inquiry ’ud blame you. If Hugh couldn’t foresee you’d come with me, how could you foresee — ? Dominic, look up, be glad again.”

A moment’s hell-colored light struck through the eastern leaves. Seconds after, the air roared and a queasy vibration moved the ground.

Men stumbled to their feet. Flandry and Kathryn bounded apart. “What’s that?” cried Saavedra.

“That,” Flandry yelled into the wind that had arisen, “was the second barbarian ship making sure of our boat.”

A minute later they heard the ongoing thunderclap of a large body traveling at supersonic speed. It faded into a terrible whistle and was gone. The gust died out and startled flying creatures circled noisily back toward their trees.

“High-yield warhead,” Flandry judged. “They meant to kill within several kilometers’ radius.” He held a wet finger to the normal dawn breeze. “The fallout’s bound east; we needn’t worry. I’m stonkerish glad we hiked this far yesterday!”

Kathryn took both his hands. “Your doin’ alone, Dominic,” she said. “Will that stop your grief?”

It didn’t really. But she had given him the courage to think: Very well. Nothing’s accomplished by these idealistic broodings. Dead’s dead. My job is to salvage the living … and afterward, if there is an afterward, use whatever tricks I can to prevent my superiors from blaming me too severely.

No doubt my conscience will. But maybe I can learn how to jettison it. An officer of the Empire is much more efficient without one.

“At ease, men,” he said. “Well spend the next rotation period here, recuperating, before we push on.”