A Stone in Heaven

VI

Hooligan raised her lean form off the spacefield and hit the sky as fast as regulations allowed. Thunder trailed. Beyond atmosphere, she curved away as per flight plan, accelerating harder all the time. Presently she was far enough distant from regular traffic trajectories that she could unbind the full power of her gravs. Before long, Terra was visibly dwindling in eyesight, more quickly for each second that passed.

None of this was felt inboard, where fields maintained a steady one gee of weight. Only the faintest susurrus resounded, and most of that was from the ventilators which kept vernal breezes moving. Hooligan was a deceptive craft: small, but overpowered, with armament to match a corvette’s, equipment and data banks to match an explorer’s (and an Intelligence laboratory’s), luxury to match—but here Banner’s experience failed her.

In her stateroom, which gave on a private bath cubicle, she removed her disguise. It came off easier than she had expected, not just the dress and wig but the items which had altered her looks and prints to fit the passport Flandry had given her.

Sarah Pipelini—“Is this anybody real?” she had asked.

“Well, several real persons have found it convenient to be her for a while,” he replied. “She’s got the standard entries, in official records, birth, education, residence, employment, et cetera, plus occasional changes to stay plausible. I’ve a number of identities available. Sarah’s is the easiest to suit you to. Besides, creating her was fun.”

“I’m no good at playacting,” Banner said nervously. “It’s too short notice even to learn what her past life is supposed to have been.”

“No need. Simply memorize what’s in the passport. Stay close to me and don’t speak unless spoken to. No harm if you register excitement; that’s natural, when you’re off on a trip to far-off, exotic Hermes. It’ll also be natural for you to clutch my arm and give me intermittent adoring glances, if you can bring yourself to that.”

“You mean—?”

“Why, I thought it was obvious. We have to get you aboard. Besides the regular Naval clearance procedures, Cairncross will doubtless have agents unobtrusively watching. No surprise if I bring a lady along to help pass the time of voyage. In fact, that will reinforce the impression—together with just Chives coming otherwise—that I am indeed going where I’m supposed to. If I brought any of my staff, then his Grace might well demand that men of his be included. As is, I’ve already filed our list, the three of us, you described as a ‘friend.’ Cairncross may snigger when he reads it, but he should believe.” Flandry’s tone grew serious. “Of course, this is strictly a ruse. Have no fears.”

When he applied the deceptive materials, her face had burned beneath his fingers.

Now she showered the sweat of tension off her. For a moment she regarded her rangy form in the mirror and considered putting the glamorous gown on again. But once more she flushed, and chose the plainest coverall she had packed. She did brush her hair till it shone and let it flow free under a headband of lovely weave.

Emerging, she found the saloon where Flandry had said they would meet, and drew a quick breath. She had often seen open space, through a faceplate as well as a viewscreen. Yet somehow, at this instant, those star-fires crowding yonder clear blackness, that icy sweep of the galaxy, and Terra already a blue jewel falling away into depths beyond depths—reached in and seized her.

Music drew her back. A lilt of horns, flutes, violins … Mozart? Flandry entered. He too had changed clothes, his uniform for an open-necked bouffalon shirt, bell-bottomed slacks, curly-toed slippers. Is he being casual on my account? she wondered. If so, he still can’t help being elegant. The way he bears his head, and the light makes its gray come alive—

“How’re you doing?” he greeted. “Relaxed, I trust? You may as well be. We’ve a good two weeks’ travel before us.” He grinned. “At least, I hope we can make them good.”

“Won’t we have work to do?” she inquired hastily.

“Oh, the ship conns herself en route, and handles other routine like housekeeping. Chives handles the meals, which, believe me, will not be routine. He promises lunch in an hour.” Flandry gestured at a table of dark-red wood—actual mahogany? Banner had seen literary references to mahogany. “Let’s have an aperitif meanwhile.”

“But, but you admitted you know almost nothing about Ramnu. I’m sure you’ve loaded the data banks with information on it, but won’t you need a lot of that in your mind, also?”

He guided her by the elbow to a padded bench that curved around three sides of the table. Above it, on a bulkhead that shimmered slightly iridescent, was screened a picture she recognized: snowscape, three trudging peasants, a row of primitive houses, winter-bare trees, a mountain, all matching the grace of the music. Hiroshige had wrought it, twelve hundred years ago.

“Please sit,” he urged. They did. “My dear,” he continued, “of course I’ll have to work. We both will. But I’m a quick study; and what’s the use of laying elaborate plans when most of the facts are unknown? We’ll do best to enjoy yourselves while we can. For openers, you need a day off to learn, down in your bones, that for the nonce you’re safe.” Chives appeared. “What will you drink? Since I understand a seafood salad is in preparation, I’d recommend a dry white wine.”

“Specifically, sir, the Chateau Huon ’58,” said the Shalmuan.

Flandry raised his brows. “A pinot noir blanc?”

“The salad will be based upon Unan Besarian skimmerfish, sir.”

Flandry stroked his mustache. “I see. Then when we eat, we’ll probably want—oh, never mind, you’ll pick the bottle anyway. Very good, Chives.”

The servant left, waving his tail. Banner sighed. “Where can you possibly find time for gourmandizing, Admiral?” she asked.

“Why, isn’t that the purpose of self-abnegation, to gain the means of self-indulgence?” Flandry chuckled. “I’d prefer to be a decadent aristocrat, but wasn’t born to it; I’ve had to earn my decadence.”

“I can’t believe that,” she challenged.

“Well, at any rate, frankly, you strike me as being too earnest. Your father knew how to savor the cosmos, in his gusty fashion. So did your mother, in her quieter way, and I daresay she does yet. Why not you?”

“Oh, I do. It’s simply that—” Banner stared past him, into brilliance and darkness. She wasn’t given to revealing herself, especially on acquaintance as brief as this. However, Flandry was an old family friend, and they’d be together in running between the claws of death, and—and—

“I never had a chance to learn much about conventional pleasures,” she explained with difficulty. “Navy brat, you know, shunted from planet to planet, educated mostly by machines. Then the Academy; I had an idea of enlisting in Dad’s corps—yours—and a xenological background would help. But I got into the science entirely, instead, and left for Ramnu, and that’s where I’ve been ever since.” She met his eyes. They were kindly. “I wouldn’t want it any different, either,” she said. “I have the great good fortune to love what I do … and those I do it with, the Ramnuans themselves.”

He nodded. “I can see how it would make you its own. Nothing less than total dedication will serve, will it? On a world so strange.” His vision likewise sought the deeps outside. “Gods of mystery,” he whispered, “it wasn’t supposed to be possible, was it? A planet like that. Yes, I do have a brain-scorching lot of homework ahead of me. To start off, I don’t even know how Ramnu is supposed to have happened.”

Originally a dwarf sun had a superjovian attendant, a globe of some 3000 Terrestrial masses. Such a monster was, inevitably, of starlike composition, mainly hydrogen, with a small percentage of helium, other elements a mere dash of impurities.

Indeed, it must have been more nearly comparable to a star than to, say, Jupiter. The latter is primarily liquid, beneath a vast atmosphere; a slag of light metal compounds does float about in continent-sized pieces, but most solid material is at the core (if it can be called solid, under that pressure). The slow downdrift of matter, drawn by the gravity of the stupendous mass, releases energy; Jupiter radiates about twice what it receives from Sol, making the surface warm.

Increase the size by a factor of 10, and everything changes. The body glows red; it is liquid, or fiercely compressed gas, throughout, save that the heavy elements which have sunken to the center are squeezed into quantum degeneracy, rigid beyond any stuff we will ever hold in our hands. At the same time, because its gravitational grip upon itself is immense, a globe like this can form, and can survive, rather close to an ordinary sun. Energy input from light and solar wind is insufficient to blow molecules away from it.

Unless—

Close by, as astronomical distances go, was a giant star. It went supernova. This may have occurred by chance, when it was passing precisely far enough away. Likelier, giant and dwarf were companions, with precisely the right orbits around each other. In the second case, the catastrophe tore them apart, for mass was lost at such a rate that conservation of momentum whirled the pair off at greater than escape velocity.

A violence that briefly rivalled the combined output of billions of suns did more than this. It filled surrounding space with gas that, for millennia afterward, made a nebula visible across light-years, till at last expansion thinned it away into the abyss. The dwarf star may well have captured a little of that cloud, and moved up the main sequence.

The huge planet was too small for that; parameters were wrong for producing another Mirkheim. Bombardment and sheer incandescence blew away more than 90 percent of it, the hydrogen and helium. They volatilized mainly as a plasma, which interacted with the core of heavier elements through magnetic fields. Thus the rotation of that core was drastically slowed. It exploded too, out of super-compaction into a state we might call normal. This outburst was insufficient to shatter the remnant, though perhaps a fraction was lost. But the ball of silicon, nickel, iron, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, uranium … was molten for eons afterward.

Meanwhile, its lesser satellites, like its lesser sister planets, had been vaporized. A part of three big ones survived. The shrinkage of their primary sent them spiraling outward to new orbits. Movement was hindered by friction with the nebula, which was substantial for thousands of years. That may have caused an inner moon or two to crash on the planet, Certainly it moved the globe itself sunward.

When finally things had stabilized, there was Niku, a late G-type star of 0.48 Solar luminosity, unusual only in having a higher percentage of metals than is common for bodies its age (and this only if we have estimated that age correctly). There were four small, virtually airless planets. And there was Ramnu, circling Niku at a mean distance, which varied little, of 1.10 astronomical unit, in a period of 1.28 standard year. Its mass was 310 times the Terrestrial, its mean density 1.1 times—but the density was due to self-compression under 7.2 standard gees, for the overall compositions were similar. The axial tilt of Ramnu was about 4 degrees, its rotation period equal to 15.7 standard days.

As the stone cooled, it outgassed, forming oceans and a primordial atmosphere. Chemical evolution began. Eventually photosynthesizing life developed, and the pace of that evolution quickened. Today the atmosphere resembled Terra’s, apart from slight differences in proportions of constituents. The most striking unlikeness was its concentration, 4.68 times the Terrestrial at sea level, which meant 33.7 times the pressure. Thus, although irradiation from the sun was 0.4 what Terra gets, greenhouse effect kept the surface reasonably warm … but this fluctuated.

The world was discovered not by humans but by Cynthians, early in the pioneering era. Intrigued, they established a scientific base on its innermost moon and bestowed names from a mythology of theirs. Politico-economic factors, which also fluctuate, soon caused them to depart. Later, humans arrived, intending to stay and operate on a larger scale. But the facilities made available to them were never adequate, and lessened across the centuries. For all its uniqueness, Ramnu remained obscure, even among planetologists.

There are so many, many worlds, in this tiny segment of space we have somewhat explored.

When safely high in Sol’s potential well, Hooligan switched to secondary drive. Her oscillators gave her a pseudovelocity almost twice that of most vessels, better than half a light-year per hour. Yet she would take half a month to reach the region of Sol’s near neighbor Antares. Had she been able to range that far, it would have taken her twenty years to cross the galaxy. Their compensators cancelling the optical effects of continuous spatial displacement, her screens showed heaven slowly changing, as old constellations became new; unless made to amplify, on the fourth day they no longer showed Sol.

“Which shows you how we rate in the scheme of things, doesn’t it?” Flandry said apropos. He and Banner were relaxing over drinks after she had led him through a hard session of study. The drinks now totalled several.

She leaned elbows on the table and gave him a serious regard. “Depends on what you mean by that,” she replied. “If God can care about the workmanship in an electron, He can care about us.”

He looked back. It was worth doing, he thought. She wasn’t beautiful by conventional measures, but her face had good bones and was more alive than most—like her springy body and those leaf-green, sea-green eyes … “I didn’t know you were religious,” he said. “Well, Max was, though he made no production of it.”

“I’m not sure if I’d call myself religious,” she admitted. “I’m not observant in any faith. But Creation must have a purpose.”

He sipped his Scotch and followed the smoke-bite with a little water. “The present moment could make me believe that,” he said. “Unfortunately, I’ve seen too many moments which are not the least like it. I don’t find much self-created purpose in our lives, either. And our public creations, like the Empire, are exercises in absurdity.” He took forth his cigarette case. “Ah, well, we went through this argument at the age of eighteen or thereabouts, didn’t we? Smoke?”

She accepted, and they kindled together. He had selected for music a concert by an ensemble of tuned Freyan ornithoids. They twittered, they trilled, they sang of treetops and twilit skies. He had given the air a greenwood odor and made it summer-mild. The lights were low.

Banner seemed abruptly to have forgotten her surroundings. She inhaled as sharply as her gaze focused on him. “Did you?” she asked. “At just about that age, weren’t you serving the Empire … under my father? And afterward, everything you’ve done—No, don’t bother playing your cynicism game with me.”

He shrugged and laughed. “Touche! I confess I matured a trifle late. Max was a stout Imperial loyalist, of course, and I admired him more than any other man I’ve ever met, including the one alleged to have been my own father. So it took me a while to see what the Empire really is. Since then, if you must know, like everybody else who can think, I have indeed been playing games, for lack of better occupation. Mine happen to be useful to Terra—and, to be sure, to myself, since our pre-eminence is more fun than subjugation, barbarism, or death. But as for taking the Imperial farce seriously—”

He stopped, seeing appalled anger upon her. “Do you say my father was a fool?” cracked forth.

Am I drunk? flashed through him. A bit, maybe, what with alcohol poured straight over weariness and, yes, loneliness. I ought to have been more careful.

“I’m sorry, Banner,” he apologized. “I spoke heedlessly. No, your father was right at the time. The Empire was worth something then, on balance. Afterward, well, from his standpoint it doubtless continued to be. If he grew disappointed, he would have felt obliged to keep silent. He was that kind of man. I like to imagine that he lived and died in the hope of a renascence—which I wish I could share.”

Her countenance softened. “You don’t?” she murmured. “But why? The Empire keeps the Pax, holds the trade lanes open, fends off the outside enemy, guards the heritage—That’s what you’ve spent your life doing.”

Aye, she remains her father’s daughter, he saw. It explains much about her.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I was being grumpy.”

“No, you weren’t,” she declared. “I may not be a very skilled human-reader, but you meant your words. Unmistakably. Please tell me more.”

Her spirit is bent to the search for truth.

“Oh, it’s a long story and a longer thesis,” he said. “The Empire had value once. It still does, to a degree. Nevertheless, what was it ever in the first place, but the quickest and crudest remedy for chaos? And what brought on the chaos, the Troubles, except the suicide of an earlier order, which couldn’t muster the will to keep freedom alive? So again, as before, came Caesar.

“But a universal state is not a new beginning for a civilization, it’s the start of the death, and it has to follow the same course over and over through history, like a kind of slow but terminal sickness.”

He sipped, he smoked, feeling the slight burns of each. “I’d really rather not give you a lecture tonight,” he said. “I’ve spent hundreds of hours when I’d nothing else to do, reading and meditating; and I’ve talked to historians, psychodynamicists, philosophers; yes, nonhuman observers of us have had cogent remarks to make—But the point is simply that you and I happen to be living in a critical stage of the Empire’s decline, the interregnum between its principate and dominate phases.”

“You are getting abstract,” Banner said.

Flandry smiled. “Then let’s drop the subject and watch it squash. Chives will clean up the mess.”

She shook her head. Subtle shadows went over the curves around cheekbones and jawline. “No, please, not like that. Dominic—Admiral, I’m not entirely ignorant. I know about corruption and abuse of power, not to mention civil wars or plain stupidity. My father used to do some wonderful cursing, when a piece of particularly nauseous news came in. But he’d always tell me not to expect perfection of mortal beings; our duty was to keep on trying.”

He didn’t remark on her use of his first name, though his heart did. “I suppose that’s forever true, but it’s not forever possible,” he responded gravely. “Once as a young fellow I found myself supporting the abominable Josip against McCormac—Remember McCormac’s Rebellion? He was infinitely the better man. Anybody would have been. But Josip was the legitimate Emperor, and legitimacy is the root and branch of government. How else, in spite of the cruelties and extortions and ghastly mistakes it’s bound to perpetrate—how else, by what right, can it command loyalty? If it is not the servant of Law, then it is nothing but a temporary convenience at best. At worst, it’s raw force.

“And this is where we are today. Hans Molitor did his damnedest to restore the old institutions, which is why I did my damnedest for him. But we were too late. They’d been perverted too much for too long; too little faith in them remained. Now nobody can claim power by right—only by strength. Fear makes the rulers ever more oppressive, which provokes ever more unhappiness with them, which rouses dreams in the ambitious—”

He slapped the tabletop. “No, I do not like the tone of this conversation!” he exclaimed. “Can’t we discuss something cheerful? Tell me about Ramnuan funeral customs.”

She touched his hand. “Yes. Give me one word more, only one, and we’ll see if we can’t ease off. You’re right, Dad never gave up hope. Have you, really?”

“Oh, no,” he said with a smile and a dram of sincerity. “The sophont races will survive. In due course, they’ll build fascinating new civilizations. Cultures of mixed species look especially promising. Consider Avalon already.”

“I mean for us,” she insisted. “Our children and grandchildren.”

Do you still think of having children, Banner? “There too,” Flandry told her. “That is, I’m not optimistic about this period we’re in; but it can be made less terrible than it’d otherwise be. And that isn’t so little, is it—buying years for billions of sentient beings, that they can live in? But it’ll not be easy.”

“Which is why you’re bound where you are,” she said low. Her eyes lingered upon him.

“And you, my dear. And good old Chives.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “Now you’ve had your answer, such as it is, and I demand my turn. I want to discourse on anything else, preferably trivial. Or what say we play dance music and try a few steps? Else I’ll grow downright eager to study onward about our destination.”

Because of its gravity, which prevents the rise of very high lands, and because of the enormous out-welling of water from its interior, Ramnu has proportionately less dry surface than Terra. However, what it does have equals about 20 times the Terran, and some of the continents are Eurasia-sized. There are many islands.

Its surviving moons, what is left of them, are still of respectable mass: Diris, 1.69 Luna’s; Tiglaia, 4.45; Elaveli, 6.86, comparable to Ganymede. But only the first is close enough to have a significant tidal effect, and that is small and moves creepingly. Niku’s pull is slightly more. The oceans are less salty than Terra’s, with far less in the way of currents.

The weakness of the tides is partially offset by the weight and speed of ocean waves. Winds, slow but ponderous, raise great rollers across those immensities, which reach shore with crushing power. Hence sea cliffs and fjords are rare. Coasts are usually jumbles of rock, or long beaches, or brackish marshes.

Mountains are farther apart on the average than on Terra, and the tallest stands a mere 1500 meters. (There the steep pressure gradient has reduced air pressure to one-fourth its sea-level value.) Elevated areas do tend to spread more widely than on Terra, because of heavier erosion carrying material down from the heights as well as because of stronger forces raising them. In the working of those forces, plumes are more important than plate movement. Thus much landscape consists of hills or of high plains, carved and scored by wind, water, frost, creep, and similar action of the planet. Volcanoes are abundant and, while uplands are rapidly worn away, elsewhere new ones are always being lifted.

Given the thick atmosphere, small Coriolis force, and comparatively low irradiation, cyclonic winds are weak and cyclonic storms very rare. The boiling point of water, about 241°C at sea level, also has a profound effect on meteorology. Moisture comes more commonly as mist than as rain or snow, making haziness normal. Once formed in the quickly thinning upper air, clouds tend to be long-lived and to make overcasts. Above them, the sky is often full of ice crystals. When precipitation does occur, it is apt to be violent, and to bring radical changes in the weather.

Atmospheric circulation is dominated by two basic motions. First is the flow of cold air from the poles toward the equator, forcing warmer air aloft and poleward—Hadley cells. Second is the horizontal flow engendered by the temperature differential between day and night sides. Consequently, tropical winds tend to blow against the sun; the winds of the temperate zones generally have an equatorward slant; and storms are everywhere frequent about dawn and sunset, this being when precipitation is likeliest. In higher latitudes, cold fronts often collide, with impressive results. As observed before, though winds are slow by Terran standards, ceteris paribus, they push hard.

Even during interglacial periods, the polar caps are extensive; having fallen there frozen, water does not readily rise again. Moreover, the circulation patterns of air and water combine with the slight axial tilt to make for much greater dependence of climate on latitude alone than is true of terrestroid worlds. Because of that same axial tilt, plus the nearly circular orbit, there are no real seasons on Ramnu. The basic cycle is not of the year but of the half-month-long day.

Across it strides another cycle, irregular, millennial, and vast—that of the glaciers. Given its overall chilliness, its extensive cloud decks, and its reluctance to let water evaporate, Ramnu is always close to the brink of an ice age, or else over it. No more is necessary than the upthrust of a new highland in a high latitude. Accompanied as it is by massive vulcanism, which fills the upper atmosphere with dust that will be decades in settling, this makes snow fall; and given the pressure gradient, the snow line is low. The ice spreads outward and outward, sometimes through a single hemisphere, sometimes through both. Nothing stops it but the subtropical belts. Nothing makes it retreat but the sinking of the upland that formed it.

For the past billion years or more, Ramnu had alternated between glacial and interglacial periods. The former usually prevailed longer. Humans arrived when the ice was again on the march. Now it was advancing at terrible speed, kilometers each year. Whole ecologies withered before it. Native cultures fled or crumbled—as how many times before in unrecorded ages?

Banner sought help for them. A starfaring civilization could readily provide that. Intensive studies would be needed at first, of course, followed by research and development, but the answer was simple in principle. Orbit giant solar mirrors in the right sizes and numbers and paths, equipped with sensors, computers, and regulators so that they would continuously adjust their orientations to the optimum for a given set of conditions. Have them send down the right amounts of extra warmth to properly chosen regions. That was all. The glaciers would crawl back to the poles where they belonged, and never return.

Banner sought help. The Grand Duke of Hermes placed himself squarely in her way. Flandry could guess why.

Hooligan contained a miniature gymnasium. Her captain and passenger took to using it daily after work, together. Then they would return to their cabins, wash, dress well, and meet for cocktails before dinner.

In a certain watch, about mid-passage, they were playing handball. The sphere sprang between them, caromed off bulkheads, whizzed through space, smacked against palms, flew opponentward followed and met by laughter. Bare feet knew the springiness of deck covering, the jubilation of upward flight. Sweat ran down skin and across lips with arousing sting of salt. Lungs drew deep, hearts drummed, blood coursed.

She was ahead by a few points, but it hadn’t been easy and she was not a bit sure it would last. Seventeen years made amazingly little difference. He was nearly as fast and enduring as a youth.

And nearly as slim and supple, she saw. Above and below his shorts, under smooth brown skin, muscles went surging, not heavy but long, lively, greyhound and race horse muscles. Wetness made him gleam. He grinned at her, flash after white flash in those features that time had not blurred, simply whetted. She realized he was enjoying the sight of her in turn, more than he was the game. The knowledge tingled.

He took the ball, whirled on his heel, and sped it aside. Before it had rebounded, he was running to intercept. She was too. They collided. In a ridiculous tangle of limbs, they fell.

He raised himself to his knees. “Banner, are you all right?” As she regained her breath, she heard anxiety in his tone. Looking up, she saw it in his face.

“Yes,” she mumbled. “Just had the wind knocked out of me.”

“Are you sure? I’m bloody sorry. Both my left feet must’ve been screwed on backwards this morning.”

“Oh, not your fault, Dominic. Not any more than mine. I’m all right, really I am. Are you?” She sat up.

It brought them again in close contact, thighs, arms, a breast touching him. She felt his warmth and sweat through the halter. The clean man-smell enfolded her, entered her. Their lips were centimeters apart. I’d better rise, fast, she thought in a distant realm, but couldn’t. Their eyes were holding too hard. As if of themselves, hers closed partway, while her mouth barely opened.

The kiss lasted for minutes of sweetness and lightning.

When he reached below the halter, alarm shrilled her awake. She disengaged her face and pushed at his chest. “No, Dominic,” she heard herself say. It wavered. “No, please.”

If he insists, she knew, I won’t. And she did not know what she felt, or was supposed to feel, when he immediately let go.

He sprang to his feet and offered his assistance. They stood for a moment and looked. Finally he smiled in his wry fashion.

“I won’t say I’m sorry, because I don’t want to lie to you,” he told her. “It was delightful. But I do beg your pardon.”

She managed a shaken laugh. “I’m not sorry either, and no pardon is called for. We both did that.”

“Then—” He half reached for her, before his arm dropped. “Have no fears,” he said gently. “I can mind my manners. I’ve done it in the past … yes, right here.”

How many women has he traveled with? How few have denied him?

If only I can make him understand. If only I do myself.

She knotted her fists, swallowed twice, and forced out: “Dominic, listen. You’re a damned attractive man, and I’m no timid virgin. But I, I’m not wanton either.”

“No,” he said, with utmost gravity, “the daughter of Max and Marta wouldn’t be. I forgot myself. It won’t happen again.”

“I told you, I forgot too!” she cried. “Or—well, I w-wish we knew each other better.”

“I hope we will. As friends, whether or not you ever feel like more than that. Shake on it?”

Tears blurred the sight of him as they clasped hands. She blinked them off her lashes, vexedly. Too fast for her to stop it, her voice blurted, “Oh, hell, if I had a normal sex drive we’d be down on the deck yet!”

He cocked his head. “You mean you don’t? I decline to believe that.” In haste: “Not that it’d be any disgrace. Nobody is strong in every department, and no single department is at the core of life. But I think you’re mistaken. The cause is easy to see.”

She stared at her toes. “I’ve not had much to do … there … ever … nor missed it much.”

“Same cause. You’ve been too thoroughly directed toward the nonhuman.” He laid a hand on her shoulders. “That’s not wrong. In many ways, it’s wonderful. But it has given your emotions different expression from what’s customary, and I think that in turn has made you abit confused about them. Not to worry, dear.”

All at once her face was buried against him, and he was holding her around the waist and stroking her hair and murmuring.

Presently she could stand back. “Would you like to talk about it?” he asked. With a disarming chuckle: “I’ll bend a sympathetic ear, but it’ll also be a fascinated one. What is it like, to share the life of an alien … to be an alien?”

“Oh, no, you exaggerate,” she said. Relief billowed through her. Yes, I do want to talk about what matters to me. I can’t just go take a shower as if nothing had happened, I have to let out this fire. He’s shown me I needn’t be afraid to, because the talk needn’t be about us. “It’s basically nothing but a wide-band communication link, you know.”

(The collar that Yewwl wore was a piece of electronic sorcery. A television scanner saw in the same direction as her eyes. An audio pickup heard what she did. Thermocouples, vibrosensors, chemosensors analyzed their surroundings to get at least a clue to what she felt, smelled, tasted. The whole of the result became more than the sum of the parts, after it reached Banner.

(It did that by radio, at the highest frequencies to which Ramnu’s air was transparent. A well-shielded gram of radioisotope sufficed to power a signal that human-made comsats could detect and relay. A specialized computer in Wainwright Station received the signals and converted them back to sensory-like data. The ultimate translation, though, had to be by a human, brain and body alike, intellect, imagination, empathy developed through year after year. Seated beneath the helmet, before the video screen, hands flat on a pair of subtly vibrant plates, Banner could almost—almost—submerge herself in her oath-sister.

(How she wished it could be a two-way joining. But save when they were together in the flesh, they could merely speak back and forth, via a bone-conduction unit. Nevertheless, they were oath-sisters in truth. They were!)

“It’s not telepathy,” she said. “The channel won’t carry but a tiny fraction of the total information. Most of what I experience is actually my own intuition, filling in the gaps. I’ve spent my career training that intuition. I’m trying to discover how accurate it really is.”

“I understand,” Flandry replied. “And you aren’t linked continuously, or even as much as half the day, as a rule, let alone your absences from the planet. Still, you’ve been very deeply involved with this being. Your chief purpose has been to learn how to feel and think like her, hasn’t it? Without that, there can be no true comprehension. So of course you’ve been affected yourself, in the most profound way.”

They sat down on the rubbery deck and leaned against the bulkhead, side by side. “And therefore I won’t know you, Banner, before I know more about Yewwl,” he said. “Will you tell me?”

“How?” she sighed. “There’s too much. Where can I begin?”

“Wherever you like. I do have a fair stock of so-called objective facts to go on by now, remember. You’ve taken me well into the biology—”

Although the Ramnuan atmosphere resembles Terra’s percentagewise, the proportions of the minor constituents vary. Notably, we find less water vapor most places, because of the pressure and temperatures; more nitrogen oxides, because of frequent and tremendous lightning flashes; more carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, and sulfur oxides, because of vulcanism. These would not be what killed us, if we breathed the air directly; they would simply make it acrid and malodorous. What we would die of, pretty soon, would be oxygen and nitrogen. They are not present at concentrations which are intolerable for a limited span, but their pressure, under seven gravities, would force them into our lungs and bloodstreams faster than we can stand. Incidentally, that pull by itself forbids us to leave our home-conditioned base for any long while. Our cardiovascular system isn’t built for it. Gravanol and tight skinsuits help, but the stress quickly becomes too much.

Just the same, Ramnuan life reminds us of our kind in many ways. It employs proteins in water solution, carbohydrates, lipids, and the rest. The chemical details vary enormously. For example, the amino acids are not all identical; since weather provides abundant nitrates, “nitrogen-fixing microorganisms, while they do exist, are—like Terra’s anaerobic bacteria—archaic forms of rather minor ecological significance; et cetera endlessly. In a broad sense, though, evolution has followed a similar course to ours. Here too it has founded a plant and an animal kingdom.

The critical secondary element is sulfur. It is so common in the environment, thanks to vulcanism, that biology has adopted it somewhat as Terran biology has adopted phosphorus. On Ramnu, sulfur is vital to several functions, including reproduction. It is usually taken up by plants as sulfate, or in the tissues which herbivores and carnivores eat. Where an area is deficient in it, life is sparse. Forest fires help, redistributing it in ash which the dense atmosphere disperses widely. Most important are certain microbes which can metabolize the pure element.

When it becomes freshly abundant, as around an active volcano, these organisms multiply until sheer numbers make them visible, a yellow smoke in air, a hue in water. Dying, they enrich the soil. This is the Golden Tide whose coming has brought fertility to land after land, whose dwindling has brought famine till populations died sufficiently back. The natives also transport sulfur, on a far smaller scale; their trade in it has conditioned their histories more than the salt trade has those of humans.

Given the oxygen concentration and the incidence of lightning, fires kindle easily and burn fiercely. Outside of wetlands, such a thing as a climax forest scarcely exists; woods burn down too often. Vegetation has made various adaptations to this, deep roots or bulbs, rapid reseeding, and the like. Most striking is that of the huge, diverse botanical family which we call pyrasphale. It synthesizes a silicon compound which makes it incombustible.

The pyrasphales have numerous analogies to the grasses of Terra or the yerbs of Hermes. They are comparative latecomers, that have taken over the larger part of most lands and proliferated into a bewildering variety of forms. Many do bear a superficial resemblance to this or that grass. Their appearance was doubtless responsible for a period of massive extinction about fifty million years ago; they crowded out older plants, and countless animals could not digest their fireproofing. Later herbivores have adjusted, either excreting it unchanged or breaking it down with the help of symbiotic microbes.

Pyrasphale has not displaced everything else. Where it reigns alone, that is apt to be by default. Ordinarily, a landscape covered by it has stands of trees, shrubs, thorn, or cane as well.

The animals of Ramnu exhibit their own abundant analogies to those of Terra, including two sexes, vertebrates and invertebrates, exothermic and endothermic metabolisms. The typical vertebrate has a head in front, with jaws, nose, two eyes, two ears; it bears four true limbs; commonly it sports a tail. But the differences exceed the likenesses.

Among the most obvious is the general smallness, under that gravity. Outside the seas, the very biggest creatures mass a couple of tonnes; and they inhabit regions of lake and swamp, where the water supports most of their weight as they browse around. A plain may teem with herds of assorted species, but nearly every one is dog-sized or less. An occasional horse-tall beast may loom majestic above them. It has a special feature, of which more later. Otherwise, at first it strikes a human odd to see a graviportal build on an animal no bigger than a collie. The gracile forms are tiny.

The long, cold nights set a premium on endothermy. Exotherms must find a place to sleep where they won’t freeze (or, they hope, be dug up and eaten) or else start a new generation by sunset whose juvenile stage can survive. Plants have developed their own solutions to the same problem, including a family which secretes antifreeze and several families which make freezing a part of their life cycles.

An intermediate sort of animal has a high metabolism to keep warm at night but—outside the polar regions and highlands—must take shelter by day, lest it get too warm. Complete endothermy is harder to achieve than on Terra, since water evaporates reluctantly. The larger animals grow cooling surfaces such as big ears or dorsal fins. Flyers face less difficulty in this regard, for their wings provide those surfaces; but it is worth noting that none have feathers. They are abundant on Ramnu, where the gravity is more or less offset by the thickness of the atmosphere. The swift drop of pressure with altitude does make most of them stay close to the ground. A few scavengers can soar high. Then there are the gliders; but of these, too, more later.

Among the land Vertebrates, an order of viviparous endotherms exists which has no Terran parallel: the pleurochladoi. Between the fore- and hindlimbs, a pair of ribs has become the foundation, anchored to an elaborate scapular process, of two false limbs, which humans call extensors. It is thought that these lengths of muscle originated in a primitive, short-legged creature which thus found a way to hitch itself along a trifle faster. The development was so successful that descendants radiated into hundreds of kinds.

Extensors give added support; grasping, hauling, pushing, they give added locomotion. Hence they have enabled certain of their possessors to become as big as mustangs.

In quite a different direction, extensors produced the sub-order of gliding animals. These grew membranes from the forequarters to the tips of the extensors, and from the tips to the hindquarters. The membranes doubtless began as a cooling device, which they remain, but they have elaborated into airfoils—vanes. Such a beast can fold them and run around freely. Or it can stiffen the extensors, thereby spreading the vanes, and glide down from a height. Given favorable currents, it can go astonishingly far in the dense air, or perform extraordinary maneuvers. Thereby it gets fruit, prey, escape from enemies, easy transportation.

Most gliders are bat-sized, but a few have become larger, and a few of these have become bipedal. Among them are the sophonts.

Red-gold, Niku waxed bright among the stars. In less than a day, it would be the sun.

Flandry saw how Banner’s glance kept straying to its image in the screen. This was to have been a happy evenwatch, the last peaceful span they would know for a time they did not know—perhaps an eternity. Garbed in the finest they had along, they sipped their drinks in between dances until Chives set forth the best dinner he was capable of. Afterward Flandry had him join them in a valedictory glass, but the batman said goodnight as soon as that was done. Now—

Cognac was mellow on the tongue, fragrant in the nostrils, ardent along the throat and in the blood. Flandry didn’t smoke while he savored stuff as lordly as this. He did make it an obbligato to the sight and nearness of Banner. They were side by side; when she looked ahead, into the stars, he saw the proud profile. Tonight a silver circlet harnessed the tide of her mane. The hair flowed lustrous brown, touched by minute, endearing streaks of white. A bracelet Yewwl had given her, raw gemstones set in bronze, would have been barbarically massive on her left wrist, save that the casting was exquisite. She wore a deep-blue velvyl gown, long, low-cut, and though her bosom was small, the curve of it up toward her throat made him remember Botticelli.

He was not in love with her, nor—he supposed—she with him, except to the gentle degree that was only natural and that, in ordinary life, would only have added piquancy to friendship. He did find her attractive, and thought the cosmos of her as a person, in her own right, not merely because she was daughter to Max Abrams. So much had he come to respect her on this voyage that he no longer felt guilty about having brought her.

Soft in the background, music played as it had done for forty generations before theirs, the New World Symphony.

Abruptly she turned face and body about, toward him. The green eyes widened. “Dominic,” she asked, “why are you here?”

“Huh?” he responded inelegantly. Don’t let her get too serious. Help her stay happy. “Well, that depends on your exact meaning of the word ‘why.’ In an empirical sense, I am here because sixty-odd years ago, an operatic diva had an affair with a space captain. In the higher or philosophical sense—”

She interrupted by laying a hand over his. “Please don’t clown. I want to understand.” She sighed. “Though maybe you won’t want to tell me. Then I won’t insist; but I hope you will.”

He surrendered. “What is it you’d like to know?”

“Why you are here—bound for Ramnu instead of Hermes.” Quickly: “I know you had to investigate what Cairncross is hiding. If he really does plan a coup—”

Yes, I do believe that’s his aim. What else? As Grand Duke, he’s gone as far as he can, and he’s known to be a man of vaulting ambition. He’s popular among his people, and they are resentful of the Imperium; it’d be no trick to quietly collect personnel for the illicit preparation of war materiel, and he controls plenty of places where the work can go on in secret—Babur, Ramnu—When he’s ready, when he announces his intention, men will flock to his standard. It won’t take any enormous striking force if the operation is well organized. He can exploit surprise, punch through, kill Gerhart, and proclaim himself Emperor. When Terra lies hostage to his missiles, he won’t be directly attacked.

Fighting will occur elsewhere, no doubt, but it will be between those who’ll want to accept him and those who’ll not. Many will. Gerhart is not beloved. Cairncross can set forth the claim that he is righting grievous wrongs and intends to right others; that in this dangerous era, the Empire needs the leader of greatest, proven ability; even that he has a dash of Argolid in his ancestry. A lot of Navy officers will feel they should go along with him simply to end the strife before it ruins too much, and because he is now the alternative to a throne back up for grabs. Others, as his cause gathers momentum, will deem it prudent to join. Yes, Edwin has a good chance of pulling it off, amply good for a warrior born.

“—though things you’ve said about the Emperor do make me wonder if you care what happens to him,” Banner stumbled onward.

Flandry scowled. “I don’t, per se. However, he isn’t intolerably bad; in fact, he shows reasonable intelligence and restraint. Besides, well, he is a son of Hans, and I rather liked that old bastard. But mainly, we can’t afford a new civil war, and anybody who’d start one is a monster.”

Her fingers tightened across his. “You talked about buying years for people to live in.”

He nodded. “I’m no sentimentalist, but I’ve witnessed wars. I don’t relish the idea of sentient beings with their skins burnt off and their eyeballs melted, but not yet able to die.” He stopped. “Sorry. That’s not nice dinner table conversation.”

She gave him a faint smile. “No, but I’m not a perfectly nice person myself. All right, agreed, this has to be prevented. Before it’s too late, you have to find out if a coup is in the works, and in that case get proof that’ll make the Navy act. You think probably there’s evidence in the Nikuan System. But why are you going to collect it yourself? Wouldn’t it be wiser to proceed to Hermes and potter around, being harmless? Meanwhile I could accompany men of yours to Ramnu and they’d do the job.”

Flandry shook his head. “I considered that, obviously,” he replied; “but I’ve told you before, I’m afraid Cairncross is almost ready to strike. I dare not be leisurely.”

“Still, you could have covered your ass, couldn’t you?”

He blinked, then laughed. “Perhaps. Though on Hermes I’d be at Cairncross’ mercy, you realize.”

“But you could have made an excuse to stay home, and dispatched a crew in secret,” she persisted. “Feigned illness or whatnot. You’re too clever for anybody to make you go where you don’t want to.”

“You’re trying to flatter me,” he said. “You’re succeeding. As a matter of fact, with my usual humility I admit that you’ve pointed to the real reason. I’ve trained several excellent people, but none are quite as clever as me. None would have quite the probability of success that I do.” He preened his mustache. “Also, to be honest, I confess I was getting bored. I was much overdue for raising a bit of hell.”

Still her eyes would not release him. “Is that the whole truth, Dominic?”

He shrugged. “In a well-known phrase from an earlier empire, what is truth?”

Her tone shivered. “I think your underlying reason is this. The mission is dangerous. Failure means a terrible punishment for whoever went and got caught afterward. The fact that he went under your orders wouldn’t save him from the wrath of a Grand Duke whose ‘insulted honor’ the Imperium would find it politic to avenge.” She drew breath. “Dominic, you served under my father, and he was an officer of the old school. An officer does not send men to do anything he would not do himself. Isn’t that it, dear?”

“Oh, I suppose a bit of it is,” he grumbled.

Her glance dropped. How long the lashes lay, above those finely carven cheekbones. He saw the blood rise in face and bosom. “I felt sure, but I wanted to hear it from you,” she whispered. “We’ve got plenty of noble titles around these days, but damn few noble spirits.”

“Oh, hai, hai,” he protested. “You know better. I lie, I steal, I cheat, I kill, I fornicate and commit adultery, I use shocking language, I covet, and once I had occasion to make a graven image. Now can we relax and enjoy our evening?”

She raised her countenance to his. Her smile brightened. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Why, in your company I’d expect to enjoy exile.”

They had talked about that, what to do if the mission failed but they survived. A court martial would find him guilty of worse than insubordination; defiance of a direct Imperial command was treason. She was an accomplice. The maximum penalty was death, but Flandry feared they would get the “lighter” sentence of life enslavement. He didn’t propose to risk that. He’d steer for a remote planet where he could assume a new identity, unless he decided to seek asylum in the Domain of Ythri or collect a shipful of kindred souls and fare off into the altogether unknown.

Banner had agreed, in pain. She had far more to lose than he did, a mother, a brother and sister and their families, Yewwl and her lifework.

Has she found hope, now, beyond the wreckage of hope? His heart sprang for joy.

She leaned close. Her blush had faded to a glow, her look and voice were steady. “Dominic, dear,” she said, “ever since that hour in the gym, you’ve been the perfect knight. It isn’t necessary any longer.”