Ensign Flandry

15

Saxo glittered white among the myriads. But it was still so far that others outshone it. Brightest stood Betelgeuse. Flandry’s gaze fell on that crimson spark and lingered. He sat at the pilot board, chin in hand, for many minutes; and only the throb of the engine and murmur of the ventilators were heard.

Persis entered the control room. During the passage she had tried to improvise a few glamorous changes of garment from the clothes in stock, but they were too resolutely utilitarian. So mostly, as now, she settled for a pair of shorts, and those mostly for the pockets. Her hair swept loose, dark-bright as space; a lock tickled him when she bent over his shoulder, and he sensed its faint sunny odor, and her own. But this time he made no response.

“Trouble, darling?” she asked.

“ ‘It ain’t the work, it’s them damn decisions,’ ” he quoted absently.

“You mean which way to go?”

“Yes. Here’s where we settle the question. Saxo or Betelgeuse?”

He had threshed the arguments out till she knew them by heart, but he went on anyhow: “Got to be one or the other. We’re not set up to lie doggo on some undiscovered planet. The Empire’s too far; every day of travel piles up chances for a Merseian to spot our wake. They’ll have sent couriers in all directions—every kind of ship that could outrun our skulker’s course—soon’s they learned we escaped. Maybe before, even. Their units must be scouring these parts.

“Saxo’s the closer. Against heading there is the consideration they can keep a pretty sharp watch on it without openly using warcraft in the system. Any big, fast merchantman could gobble us, and the crew come aboard with sidearms. However, if we were in call range, I might raise Terran HQ on Starkad and pass on the information we’re carrying. Then we might hope the Merseians would see no further gain in damaging us. But the whole thing is awful iffy.

“Now Betelgeuse is an unaligned power, and very jealous of her neutrality. Foreign patrols will have to keep their distance, spread so thin we might well slip through. Once on Alfzar, we could report to the Terran ambassador. But the Betelgeuseans won’t let us enter their system secretly. They maintain their own patrols. We’d have to go through traffic procedures, starting beyond orbital radius of the outermost planet. And the Merseians can monitor those com channels. A raider could dash in quick-like and blast us.”

“They wouldn’t dare,” Persis said.

“Sweetheart, they’d dare practically anything, and apologize later. You don’t know what’s at stake.”

She sat down beside him. “Because you won’t tell me.”

“Right.”

He had gnawed his way to the truth. Hour upon hour, as they fled through Merseia’s dominions, he hunched with paper, penstyl, calculator, and toiled. Their flight involved nothing dramatic. It simply meandered through regions where one could assume their enemies rarely came. Why should beings with manlike biological requirements go from a dim red dwarf star to a planetless blue giant to a dying Cepheid variable? Flandry had ample time for his labors.

Persis was complaining about that when the revelation came. “You might talk to me.”

“I do,” he muttered, not lifting his eyes from the desk. “I make love to you as well. Both with pleasure. But not right now, please!”

She flopped into a seat. “Do you recall what we have aboard for entertainment?” she said. “Four animations: a Martian travelogue, a comedian routine, a speech by the Emperor, and a Cynthian opera on the twenty-tone scale. Two novels: Outlaw Blastman and Planet of Sin. I have them memorized. They come back to me in my dreams. Then there’s a flute, which I can’t play, and a set of operation manuals.”

“M-hm.” He tried putting Brechdan’s figures in a different sequence. It had been easy to translate from Merseian to Terran arithmetic. But what the devil did the symbols refer to? Angles, times, several quantities with no dimensions specified … rotation? Of what? Not of Brechdan; no such luck.

A nonhuman could have been similarly puzzled by something from Terra, such as a periodic table of isotopes. He wouldn’t have known which properties out of many were listed, nor the standardized order in which quantum numbers were given, nor the fact that logarithms were to the base ten unless e was explicit, nor a lot of other things he’d need to know before he could guess what the table signified.

“You don’t have to solve the problem,” Persis sulked. “You told me yourself, an expert can see the meaning at a glance. You’re just having fun.”

Flandry raised his head, irritated. “Might be hellish important for us to know. Give us some idea what to expect. How in the name of Copros can Starkad matter so much? One lonesome planet!”

And the idea came to him.

He grew so rigid, he stared so wildly out into the universe, that Persis was frightened. “Nicky, what’s wrong?” He didn’t hear. With a convulsive motion, he grabbed a fresh sheet of paper and started scrawling. Finished, he stared at the result. Sweat stood on his brow. He rose, went into the control room, returned with a reel which he threaded into his microreader. Again he wrote, copying off numbers. His fingers danced on the desk computer. Persis held herself moveless.

Until at last he nodded. “That’s it,” he said in a cold small voice. “Has to be.”

“What is?” she could then ask.

He twisted around in his chair. His eyes took a second to focus on her. Something had changed in his face. He was almost a stranger.

“I can’t tell you,” he said.

“Why not?”

“We might get captured alive. They’d probe you and find you knew. If they didn’t murder you out of hand, they’d wipe your brain—which to my taste is worse.”

He took a lighter from his pocket and burned every paper on the desk and swept the ashes into a disposal. Afterward he shook himself, like a dog that has come near drowning, and went to her.

“Sorry,” he smiled. “Kind of a shock for me there. But I’m all right now. And I really will pay attention to you, from here on in.”

She enjoyed the rest of the voyage, even after she had identified the change in him, the thing which had gone and would never quite come back. Youth.

The detector alarm buzzed. Persis drew a gasp and caught Flandry’s arm. He tore her loose, reaching for the main hyper-drive switch.

But he didn’t pull it, returning them to normal state and kinetic velocity. His knuckles stood white on the handle. A pulse fluttered in his throat. “I forgot what I’d already decided,” he said. “We don’t have an especially good detector. If she’s a warship, we were spotted some time ago.”

“But this time she can’t be headed straight at us.” Her tone was fairly level. She had grown somewhat used to being hunted. “We have a big sphere to hide in.”

“Uh-huh. We’ll try that if necessary. But first let’s see which way yonder fellow is bound.” He changed course. Stars wheeled in the viewports, otherwise there was no sensation. “If we can find a track on which the intensity stays constant, we’ll be running parallel to him and he isn’t trying to intercept.” Saxo burned dead ahead. “S’pose he’s going there—”

Minutes crawled. Flandry let himself relax. His coverall was wet. “Whew! What I hoped. Destination, Saxo. And if he’s steered on a more or less direct line, as is probable, then he’s come from the Empire.”

He got busy, calculating, grumbling about rotten civilian instrumentation. “Yes, we can meet him. Let’s go.”

“But he could be Merseian,” Persis objected. “He needn’t have come from a Terran planet.”

“Chance we take. The odds aren’t bad. He’s slower than us, which suggests a merchant vessel.” Flandry set the new path, leaned back and stretched. A grin spread across his features.

“My dilemma’s been solved for me. We’re off to Starkad.”

“Why? How?”

“Didn’t mention it before, for fear of raising false hopes in you. When I’d rather raise something else. But I came here first, instead of directly to Saxo or Betelgeuse, because this is the way Terran ships pass, carrying men and supplies to Starkad and returning home. If we can hitch a ride … you see?”

Eagerness blossomed in her and died again. “Why couldn’t we have found one going home?”

“Be glad we found any whatsoever. Besides, this way we deliver our news a lot sooner.” Flandry rechecked his figures. “We’ll be in call range in an hour. If he should prove to be Merseian, chances are we can outspeed and lose him.” He rose. “I decree a good stiff drink.”

Persis held her hands up. They trembled. “We do need something for our nerves,” she agreed, “but there are psycho-chemicals aboard.”

“Whisky’s more fun. Speaking of fun, we have an hour.”

She rumpled his hair. “You’re impossible.”

“No,” he said. “Merely improbable.”

The ship was the freighter Rieskessel, registered on Nova Germania but operating out of the Imperial frontier world Irumclaw. She was a huge, potbellied, ungainly and unkempt thing, with a huge, potbellied, ungainly and unkempt captain. He bellowed a not quite sober welcome when Flandry and Persis came aboard.

“Oh, ho, ho, hoi Humans! So soon I did not expect seeing humans. And never this gorgeous.” One hairy hand engulfed Flandry’s, the other chucked Persis under the chin. “Otto Brummelmann is me.”

Flandry looked past the bald, wildly bearded head, down the passageway from the airlock. Corroded metal shuddered to the drone of an ill-tuned engine. A pair of multi-limbed beings with shiny blue integuments stared back from their labor; they were actually swabbing by hand. The lights were reddish orange, the air held a metallic tang and was chilly enough for his breath to smoke. “Are you the only Terran, sir?” he asked.

“Not Terran. Not me. Germanian. But for years now on Irumclaw. My owners want Irumclagian spacehands, they come cheaper. No human language do I hear from end to end of a trip. They can’t pronounce.” Brummelmann kept his little eyes on Persis, who had donned her one gown, and tugged at his own soiled tunic in an effort at getting some wrinkles out. “Lonely, lonely. How nice to find you. First we secure your boat, next we go for drinks in my cabin, right?”

“We’d better have a private talk immediately, sir,” Flandry said. “Our boat—no, let’s wait till we’re alone.”

“You wait. I be alone with the little lady, right? Ho, ho, hoi” Brummelmann swept a paw across her. She shrank back in distaste.

On the way, the captain was stopped by a crew member who had some question. Flandry took the chance to hiss in Persis’ ear: “Don’t offend him. This is fantastic luck.”

“This?” Her nose wrinkled.

“Yes. Think. No matter what happens, none of these xenos’ll give us away. They can’t. All we have to do is stay on the good side of the skipper, and that shouldn’t be hard.”

He had seen pigpens, in historical dramas, better kept up than Brummelmann’s cabin. The Germanian filled three mugs, ignoring coffee stains, with a liquid that sank fangs into stomachs. His got half emptied on the first gulp. “So!” he belched. “We talk. Who sent you to deep space in a gig?”

Persis took the remotest corner. Flandry stayed near Brummelmann, studying him. The man was a failure, a bum, an alcoholic wreck. Doubtless he kept his job because the owners insisted on a human captain and couldn’t get anyone else at the salary they wanted to pay. Didn’t matter greatly, as long as the mate had some competence. For the most part, antiquated though her systems must be, the ship ran herself.

“You are bound for Starkad, aren’t you, sir?” Flandry asked.

“Yes, yes. My company has a Naval contract. Irumclaw is a transshipment point. This trip we carry food and construction equipment. I hope we go on another run soon. Not much pleasure in Highport. But we was to talk about you.”

“I can’t say anything except that I’m on a special mission. It’s vital for me to reach Highport secretly. If Donna d’Io and I can ride down with you, and you haven’t radioed the fact ahead, you’ll have done the Empire a tremendous service.”

“Special mission … with a lady?” Brummelmann dug a blackrimmed thumb into Flandry’s ribs. “I can guess what sort of mission. Ho, ho, ho!”

“I rescued her,” Flandry said patiently. “That’s why we were in a boat. A Merseian attack. The war’s sharpening. I have urgent information for Admiral Enriques.”

Brummelmann’s laughter choked off. Behind the matted whiskers, that reached to his navel, he swallowed. “Attack, you said? But no, the Merseians, they have never bothered civilian ships.”

“Nor should they bother this one, Captain. Not if they don’t know I’m aboard.”

Brummelmann wiped his pate. Probably he thought of himself as being in the high, wild tradition of early spacefaring days. But now his daydreams had orbited. “My owners,” he said weakly. “I have obligation to my owners. I am responsible for their ship.”

“Your first duty is to the Empire.” Flandry considered taking over at blaster point. No; not unless he must; too chancy. “And all you need do is approach Starkad in the usual fashion, make your usual landing at Highport, and let us off. The Merseians will never know, I swear.”

“I—but I—”

Flandry snatched an idea from the air. “As for your owners,” he said, “you can do them a good turn as well. Our boat had better be jettisoned out here. The enemy has her description. But if we take careful note of the spot, and leave her power-plant going for neutrino tracing, you can pick her up on your way home and sell her there. She’s worth as much as this entire ship, I’ll bet.” He winked. “Of course, you’ll inform your owners.”

Brummelmann’s eyes gleamed. “Well. So. Of course.” He tossed off the rest of his drink. “By God, yes! Shake!”

He insisted on shaking hands with Persis also. “Ugh,” she said to Flandry when they were alone, in an emptied locker where a mattress had been laid. She had refused the captain’s offer of his quarters. “How long to Starkad?”

“Couple days.” Flandry busied himself checking the spacesuits he had removed from the boat before she was cast adrift.

“I don’t know if I can stand it.”

“Sorry, but we’ve burned our britches. Myself, I stick by my claim that we lucked out.”

“You have the strangest idea of luck,” she sighed. “Oh, well, matters can’t get any worse.”

They could.

Fifteen hours later, Flandry and Persis were in the saloon. Coveralled against the chill but nonetheless shivering, mucous membranes aching from the dryness, they tried to pass time with a game of rummy. They weren’t succeeding very well.

Brummelmann’s voice boomed hoarse from the intercom: “You! Ensign Flandry! To the bridge!”

“Huh?” He sprang up. Persis followed his dash, down halls and through a companionway. Stars glared from the viewports. Because the optical compensator was out of adjustment, they had strange colors and were packed fore and aft, as if the ship moved through another reality.

Brummelmann held a wrench. Beside him, his first mate aimed a laser torch, a crude substitute for a gun but lethal enough at short range. “Hands high!” the captain shrilled.

Flandry’s arms lifted. Sickness caught at his gullet. “What is this?”

“Read.” Brummelmann thrust a printout at him. “You liar, you traitor, thought you could fool me? Look what came.”

It was a standard form, transcribed from a hypercast that must have originated in one of several automatic transmitters around Saxo. Office of Vice Admiral Juan Enriques, commanding Imperial Terrestrial Naval forces in region— Flandry’s glance flew to the text.

General directive issued under martial law: By statement of his Excellency Lord Markus Hauksberg, Viscount of Ny Kalmar on Terra, special Imperial delegate to the Roidhunate of Merseia … Ensign Dominic Flandry, an officer of his Majesty’s Navy attached to the delegation … mutinied and stole a spaceboat belonging to the realm of Ny Kalmar; description as follows … charged with high treason … Pursuant to interstellar law and Imperial policy, Ensign Flandry is to be apprehended and returned to his superiors on Merseia … All ships, including Terran, will be boarded by Merseian inspectors before proceeding to Starkad … Terrans who may apprehend this criminal are to deliver him promptly, in their own persons, to the nearest Merseian authority … secrets of state—

Persis closed her eyes and strained fingers together. The blood had left her face.

“Well?” Brummelmann growled. “Well, what have you to say for yourself?”

Flandry leaned against the bulkhead. He didn’t know if his legs would upbear him. “I … can say … that bastard Brechdan thinks of everything.”

“You expected you could fool me? You thought I would do your traitor’s work? No, no!”

Flandry looked from him, to the mate, to Persis. Weakness vanished in rage. But his brain stayed machine precise. He lowered the hand which held the flimsy. “I’d better tell you the whole truth,” he husked.

“No, I don’t want to hear, I want no secrets.”

Flandry let his knees go. As he fell, he yanked out his blaster. The torch flame boomed blue where he had been. His own snap shot flared off that tool. The mate yowled and dropped the red-hot thing. Flandry regained his feet. “Get rid of your wrench,” he said.

It clattered on the deck. Brummelmann backed off, past his mate who crouched and keened in pain. “You cannot get away,” he croaked. “We are detected by now. Surely we are. You make us turn around, a warship comes after.”

“I know,” Flandry said. His mind leaped as if across ice floes. “Listen. This is a misunderstanding. Lord Hauksberg’s been fooled. I do have information, and it does have to reach Admiral Enriques. I want nothing from you but transportation to Highport. I’ll surrender to the Terrans. Not to the Merseians. The Terrans. What’s wrong with that? They’ll do what the Emperor really wants. If need be, they can turn me over to the enemy. But not before they’ve heard what I have to tell. Are you a man, Captain? Then behave like one!”

“But we will be boarded,” Brummelmann wailed.

“You can hide me. A thousand possible places on a ship. If they have no reason to suspect you, the Merseians won’t search everywhere. That could take days. Your crew won’t blab. They’re as alien to the Merseians as they are to us. No common language, gestures, interests, anything. Let the greenskins come aboard. I’ll be down in the cargo or somewhere. You act natural. Doesn’t matter if you show a bit of strain. I’m certain everybody they’ve checked has done so. Pass me on to the Terrans. A year from now you could have a knighthood.”

Brummelmann’s eyes darted back and forth. The breath rasped sour from his mouth.

“The alternative,” Flandry said, “is that I lock you up and assume command.”

“I … no—” Tears started forth, down into the dirty beard. “Please. Too much risk—” Abruptly, slyly, after a breath: “Why, yes. I will. I can find a good hiding spot for you.”

And tell them when they arrive, Flandry thought. I’ve got the upper hand and it’s worthless. What am I to do?

Persis stirred. She approached Brummelmann and took his hands in hers. “Oh, thank you,” she caroled.

“Eh? Ho?” He gawped at her.

“I knew you were a real man. Like the old heroes of the League, come back to life.”

“But you—lady—”

“The message doesn’t include a word about me,” she purred. “I don’t feel like sitting in some dark hole.”

“You … you aren’t registered aboard. They will read the list. Won’t they?”

“What if they do? Would I be registered?”

Hope rushed across Flandry. He felt giddy with it. “There are some immediate rewards, you see,” he cackled.

“I—why, I—” Brummelmann straightened. He caught Persis to him. “So there are. Oh, ho, ho! So there are!”

She threw Flandry a look he wished he could forget.

He crept from the packing case. The hold was gut-black. The helmet light of his spacesuit cast a single beam to guide him. Slowly, awkward in armor, he wormed among crates to the hatch.

The ship was quiet. Nothing spoke but powerplant, throttled low, and ventilators. Shadows bobbed grotesque where his beam cut a path. Orbit around Starkad, awaiting clearance to descend—must be. He had survived. The Merseians had passed within meters of him, he heard them talk and curled finger around trigger; but they had gone again and the Rieskessel resumed acceleration. So Persis had kept Brummelmann under control; he didn’t like to think how.

The obvious course was to carry on as he had outlined, let himself be taken planetside and turn himself in. Thus he would be certain to get his message through, the word which he alone bore. (He had wondered whether to give Persis those numbers, but decided against it. A list for her made another chance of getting caught; and her untrained mind might not retain the figures exactly, even in the subconscious for narcosynthesis to bring forth.) But he didn’t know how Enriques would react. The admiral was no robot; he would pass the information on to Terra, one way or another. But he might yield up Flandry. He would most likely not send an armed scout to check and confirm, without authorization from headquarters. Not in the face of Hauksberg’s message, or the command laid on him that he must take no escalating action save in response to a Merseian initiative.

So at best, the obvious course entailed delay, which the enemy might put to good use. It entailed a high probability of Brechdan Ironrede learning how matters stood. Max Abrams (Are you alive yet, my father?) had said, “What helps the other fellow most is knowing what you know.” And, finally, Dominic Flandry wasn’t about to become a God damned pawn again!

He opened the hatch. The corridor stretched empty. Unhuman music squealed from the forecastle. Captain Brummelmann was in no hurry to make planetfall, and his crew was taking the chance to relax.

Flandry sought the nearest lifeboat. If anyone noticed, well, all right, he’d go to Highport. But otherwise, borrowing a boat would be the smallest crime on his docket. He entered the turret, dogged the inner valve, closed his faceplate, and worked the manual controls. Pumps roared, exhausting air. He climbed into the boat and secured her own airlock. The turret’s outer valve opened automatically.

Space blazed at him. He nudged through on the least possible impetus. Starkad was a huge wheel of darkness, rimmed with red, day blue on one edge. A crescent moon glimmered among the stars. Weightlessness caught Flandry in an endless falling.

It vanished as he turned on interior gravity and applied a thrust vector. He spiraled downward. The planetary map was clear in his recollection. He could reach Ujanka without trouble—Ujanka, the city he had saved.