A Stone in Heaven

XII

The technician who reported at the garage, in response to Banner’s intercom call, was shocked. “Donna, you can’t do that!” he protested. “Going out by yourself, at night, no preparation, not even a shot of gravanol—it’s suicide.”

“It’s necessary, and I expect to survive,” she clipped. “We’ve no time to squander, and gravanol spends hours reaching full effect. I’ve just a short ways to go, on an errand that can’t wait, and I’ll return immediately.”

“Uh, let me accompany you, at least.”

“No. You’re on watch. Anyway, it’d take half an hour to rig both of us. Now help me. That’s an order.”

The sight of his concern softened her a mite. He was a pleasant young Hermetian who had shyly mentioned to her that a girl waited at home, and after his contract here was up they’d have the stake they needed to start a business. But … quite likely he was in the Cairncross Pioneers. She retained her martinet manner.

He set his jaw and obeyed. Armor against Ramnuan conditions was more complex than a spacesuit; you could not put it on single-handed. The minutes dragged past, clocked by her pulse. She smelled her sweat and felt it creep down her skin. Never before had she imagined that making ready—undergarb, bracings, harness, outer pieces, their assembly upon her, checkoff, tests, assistance to a gravsled, connection to life support units, strap-in, more checks and tests, closure of canopy—would be torture.

After a century of heartbeats, the vehicle did at last lift off the ferrocrete and slide silently forward. It passed among larger ones, both crawlers and flyers, most intended for remote-controlled, telemetered use. A sled was hardly more than a flexible means for a person or two to get about for brief periods, ordinarily operating out of a mothervessel. For instance, they might want to inspect something at close range, and perhaps send the collector robot forth from its bay aft of the cockpit, to gather specimens or take pictures.

When Dominic suggested this plan, he didn’t know how risky the passage might become for me, Banner recalled, and I didn’t tell him. She was no longer sure that that had been wise. Not that she feared for herself; no, exertion and hazard would be overwhelmingly welcome. But if she failed to convey the information to Flandry that Yewwl had bought for the price which has no end—

The inner gate of the sally port swung back. Banner steered into the lock. For a spell she was closed off, as if in a tomb; then a valve opened, she heard the air of Ramnu whistle inward, the outer gate turned, and she came forth.

The sled had no room for an interior-field generator. Seven Terran gravities laid hold on Banner. It was not as bad, at first, as a crossing from spaceship to dome with no special equipment. The suit in its manifold modules supported her, gave pressure that helped against downward pooling of body fluids, gently helped her draw breath; elastic bands ran from wrists and elbows to a framework above the well-cushioned seat; safety webs embraced; she had swallowed a couple of stimpills, which pumped strength and alertness up from her cellular reserves. Yet already she felt the brutal heaviness through and through her, even as she peered around.

The sled was not airtight; ambient pressure was safest in so lightly built a shell. She heard every sound loudened and tonally shifted: despite hull and helmet, louder than a Ramnuan would, whose ears were not meant for Terra’s thin atmosphere. The night had become quiet, but she sensed the movement of scuttering animals, the trek of wings overhead—and high, faint, rapidly increasing, the noise of ships bound downward. She was barely in time.

With the deftness of experience, she turned the sled north and kicked in the power. The wind of her passage drowned out the booming from above, and the Sol-light on the spacefield fast receded to naught. Alone in the dark, she adjusted the helmet’s optics for nocturnal vision.

There was scant light to amplify, though, and she couldn’t see far with any clarity. Stars glistened scattered in blackness, moons looked shrunken and lost. The Kiiong River wound as a triple belt, ebon in the middle, gray-white on the edges where freezing advanced from either bank. The forest was a shapeless murk, the veldt hoar. Ponds and rivulets lay locked into ice. And still the cold deepened, as the week-long night wore on.

She could remember when it had only been this frigid in the last few hours before dawn. Now those were often lethal. The sun would rise on entire herds which had perished and on great reaches of land where many plants would not enter the daylight half of their cycles ever again. Yewwl, your grandchildren will see death driven back to its polar home. This I swear by my own hope for life. If sentience did not abate the accidents of a blind universe, what meaning had sentience itself?

And yet—Nothing seems to stand in the way of it but this secret struggle for the throne. I daresay if Cairncross became Emperor, he’d be quite willing to hear my petition—if I hadn’t antagonized him—Is it too late to make amends?

She thrust the treachery from her with her whole force. The agony of a single world could not be weighed against the ruin of scores. The possible ruin. Dominic said Cairncross must be planning a neat, quick, precise operation. Its aftermath may not be as bad as he fears. And those other planets are mostly abstractions to me, names, something read, something seen on a show, they do not hold my people.

But Dominic is real! came to her. I’m pledged to him, his cause … am I not? I owe him much … how much of it done for my father’s sake, how much for the abstract people, how much for the sheer game he is always playing? I’ll never know. Maybe he doesn’t either. He gives away nothing of his inmost self, not to anybody.

In a chamber of her spirit that was warm and softly lit, Max Abrams knocked out his pipe, leaned back in his worn old armchair, and said to his little girl with a solemnity that smiled, “Miri, a lot of qualities are known as virtues, but most of them don’t do more than please or convenience folks. Real virtue wears different faces, of course, but it doesn’t come in different kinds. One way or another, what it always amounts to is loyalty.”

And if we are not loyal to our few friends, what else—in these years of the Empire—have we?

Being sure why she fled, she glanced at a clock. Cairncross would have entered Wainwright Station and learned. He’d scarcely wait passive for her to do whatever she intended. He didn’t know which way she’d gone, and his means for search were limited, but he would order out a hunt regardless. Flying well above the river, she was conspicuous to several sorts of instruments. It behooved her to commence evasive tactics, ground-hugging zigzags over the veldt and between its kopjes. Those were dangerous. The sled had rudimentary automation; she was the pilot, growing more weary and mind-blunted every minute. A slight error, and seventy meters per second per second of acceleration would smash her into the planet.

A laugh fluttered in her throat. She’d enjoy her flight. Or at least, while it happened she wouldn’t have time for remembering.

Hour by hour, ice grew outward over the lake. Flandry contemplated a move to deeper, still-open water before his telltale on the surface was immobilized and perhaps incapacitated. Suddenly the alarm rang, and the grindstone of his vigil exploded into flying shards.

He had stayed in the pilot’s seat as much as possible, and was there now. An image was transitting the watch-screen, unclear but recognizable. Blasphemy crackled from his lips. That was a spacecraft. Far aloft though it cruised, he identified it as a corvette: agile enough to operate in atmosphere, armed enough to kill a larger ship or lay a city waste.

Luck had broken down—not that it hadn’t been flimsy all along. If it had lasted, then Banner would have fared here peacefully, he’d have taken her aboard, she’d have told him what Yewwl had or had not observed, and on that basis they would have decided their next action. As was, a ducal party had arrived first. Hearing of recent events, it was inquest of him he could merely hope that it sought her also. Chances were, he was safe from immediate detection. She would not be. While her vehicle was small, the radiations of its systems weak, those were powerful and subtle instruments yonder. She’d have to do a masterly job of skulking. I’d not be able to. Ramnu is too strange to me. Is it to her?

The ship dropped slowly under the distance-veiled horizon. If it was tracing a standard search pattern, it would cross twice more, low and high but keeping this spot in its field of survey. He could make nothing but the roughest estimate of when it would be back, forty-five minutes, give or take half that.

Banner, where are you?

As if it had heard, a speaker brought her voice, likewise faint and indistinct but sufficient to make him cry out. “Dominic, I’m close by. I lay in a gully till I figured that ship must be gone, and I’m using minimum amplitude on the radio.” Her words rushed. “Yevvwl found clues, oh, yes. Production of combat gear, uniforms, possible military rations, certainly more palladium than a civilian economy can account for, and maybe—this isn’t sure—maybe a plant for fissionable isotopes. A fight broke out and I, I’m afraid she’s been killed. At the same moment, three spacecraft announced they were coming in on us, with the Duke aboard. I scrambled.

“That’s the basic information, Dominic. Make what you can of it. Don’t risk calling me back or picking me up. I’ll be all right. You be careful, dear, and get home safe.”

“Like hell,” he barked into the transmitter. “Hell in truth. Stay put for five minutes, then come to the shore and hover at a hundred meters. We’ll work close and open the forward cargo lock. Can you steer in through that?”

“Y-yes,” she stammered, “but, oh, if it lets that ship spot you—”

“Then her captain will mightily regret it,” Flandry said. “Chives,” he added at the intercom, “stand by for reversion to normal weight and liftoff, followed by take-on of a gravsled in the Number One hold and whatever medical attention Donna Abrams may require.”

Hardly above treetop level, Hooligan slunk north to the Guardian Mountains. Beyond these, she found herself over a vast whiteness, the glacier, where Cairncross’ men would scarcely be. Her skipper stood her on her tail and speared skyward. Stratospherically high, he retrieved navigational data and told the autopilot to make for Dukeston at an aircraft rate. Thus he would be less liable to detection; besides, he needed time with Banner.

She reclined on the saloon bench, against cushions Chives had arranged. The hands shook with which she brought a cup of tea to her mouth. Framed in loosened brown hair, ivory pale, her countenance had thinned during the short while past; bones stood beautifully outlined and eyes smoldered copper-flame green. The view was of stars and a cloud-bright edge of Ramnu.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Better.” He could barely hear. She quirked a slight smile. “I suffered no permanent damage. The stim’s wearing off, I begin to feel how exhausted I am, but I can stay awake an hour or two yet.”

He sat down beside her. “I’m afraid we need you for longer than that.” He grimaced. “More stim, a tranquilizer, intravenous nutrients—rotten practice. You’re tough, though. Later you can take a month off and recuperate. There shouldn’t be any demands on you, homebound, and not too many after you’ve arrived.”

Despite her tiredness, a quick intelligence seized on his words. “I? Just what does that mean, Dominic?”

“Nothing is predictable,” he said hurriedly. “I want to minimize the stress on you, that’s all. You’ve gotten an undue share of it, you know.” He took forth his cigarette case and they both drank smoke. “But first we must have a complete account of what Yewwl found, for immediate reference and an eventual report.” He laid a taper on the-table. “I’ve already put in the background. You describe in detail what happened at Dukeston.”

Her head drooped. “I don’t know if I can without crying,” she whispered.

He took her hand. “Cry if you want to.” She did not see him wince as he remarked, “We’re used to hearing that in the Corps.”

At the end, he held her close, but not for long. They were too near their goal. He and Chives medicated her, and he gave her his arm to lean on while they made their way to the control cabin. Sometimes she gulped or hiccoughed, but she buckled firmly in beside him.

The strike was meteor swift. It had to be, for surely the place possessed ground defenses. Hooligan burst from the sky, trailing a thunderclap. Guided by Banner, who was guided by a ghost of Yewwl, Flandry aimed at the forbidden building on the hilltop. A torpedo flew ahead, set for low yield. Fire, smoke, debris erupted from the roof. Flandry brought his vessel about and employed energy beams like scalpels, widening the hole, baring the interior. Aircraft and missiles darted toward her where she hung. She cut them down with a few sword-slashes, swung her nose high, and climbed. Walls trembled to the noise of her speed. She was out of sight in seconds.

Flandry worked a minute or two with the autopilot. Hooligan curved around and departed from Ramnu. The planet became a shield, emblazoned azure, argent, and sable, against the stars.

“You can rest a piece,” Flandry told Banner, and left her for the laboratory. He soon emerged, stark-ness on his face. “Yes,” he said, “the readings and pictures are plenty good; they clinch the case. That plant was producing fissionables. I don’t know where those were processed for warheads, but the outer moon is a logical guess.”

She considered him, where he stood tall and, now, a trifle stooped before her. The surrounding luxury of the saloon seemed as remote as a constellation. She wasn’t fatigued any more, the drugs in her would not permit that, but she felt removed somehow from her body, though it was as if she heard a chill singing go along its nerves. Her mind was passionlessly clear.

“So we have the evidence?” she asked. “We can bring it to Terra for the Navy to act on?”

He stared past her. “Matters aren’t that simple, I’m afraid,” he replied, flat-voiced. “Cairncross will shortly have an excellent idea of the situation. He knows Gerhart can’t afford to bargain with him and won’t show clemency if he surrenders. Maybe he’ll flee. But you’ve heard my supposition that, as boldly as he’s moved, he’s almost ready to fight. Forewarning will rule out any immediate blow at Terra, but can’t stop him from mobilizing and deploying his strength before a task force can get here. He could carry on a hit-and-run campaign for years—especially if he accepts the sub rosa help the Merseians will be delighted to offer. He’d hope for luck in battle; and his vanity would convince him that, one by one, the worlds will rally to his standard.” He nodded. “Yes, Cairncross is a warrior born. My opinion is that if he sees himself as having any kind of chance, he’ll fight.”

Banner glanced back at Ramnu, already dwindled enough that the screen framed its entire image. Might such a war touch it, and forever end the dream she and Yewwl had dreamed against the Ice? She knew that then she would sorrow for as long as she lived.

“What can be done?” she inquired.

Flandry grinned like a death’s head. “Well,” he answered, “our friend can’t have many major installations, and each must be cram-full of materiel. The unexpected loss of a single one should cripple him. I’ve set our course for Elaveli.”