Ensign Flandry

17

The Imperial squadron deployed and accelerated. It was no big force to cast out in so much blackness. True, at the core was the Sabik, a Star-class, what some called a pocket battleship; but she was old and worn, obsolete in several respects, shunted off to Saxo as the last step before the scrap orbit. No one had really expected her to see action again. Flanking her went the light cruiser Umbriel, equally tired, and the destroyers Antarctica, New Brazil, and Murdoch’s Land. Two scoutships, Encke and Ikeya-Seki, did not count as fighting units; they carried one energy gun apiece, possibly useful against aircraft, and their sole real value lay in speed and maneuverability. Yet theirs was the ultimate mission, the rest merely their helpers. Aboard each of them reposed a document signed by Admiral Enriques.

At first the squadron moved on gravities. It would not continue thus. The distance to be traversed was a few light-days, negligible under hyperdrive, appalling under true velocity. However, a sudden burst of wakes, outbound from a large orbit, would be detected by the Merseians. Their suspicions would be excited. And their strength in the Saxonian System, let alone what else they might have up ahead, was fully comparable to Captain Einarsen’s command. He wanted to enter this water carefully. It was deep.

But when twenty-four hours had passed without incident, he ordered the New Brazil to proceed at superlight toward the destination. At the first sign of an enemy waiting there, she was to come back.

Flandry and Dragoika sat in a wardroom of the Sabik with Lieutenant (j.g.) Sergei Karamzin, who happened to be off watch. He was as frantic to see new faces and hear something new from the universe as everyone else aboard. “Almost a year on station,” he said. “A year out of my life, bang, like that. Only it wasn’t sudden, you understand. Felt more like a decade.”

Flandry’s glance traveled around the cabin. An attempt had been made to brighten it with pictures and home-sewn draperies. The attempt had not been very successful. Today the place had come alive with the thrum of power, low and bone-deep. A clean tang of oil touched air which circulated briskly again. But he hated to think what this environment had felt like after a year of absolutely eventless orbit. Dragoika saw matters otherwise, of course; the ship dazzled, puzzled, frightened, delighted, enthralled her, never had she known such wonder! She poised in her chair with fur standing straight and eyes bouncing around.

“You had your surrogates, didn’t you?” Flandry asked. “Pseudosensory inputs and the rest.”

“Sure,” Karamzin said. “The galley’s good, too. But those things are just medicine, to keep you from spinning off altogether.” His young features hardened. “I hope we meet some opposition. I really do.”

“Myself,” Flandry said, “I’ve met enough opposition to last me for quite a while.”

His lighter kindled a cigaret. He felt odd, back in horizon blue, jetflares on his shoulders and no blaster at his waist: back in a ship, in discipline, in tradition. He wasn’t sure he liked it.

At least his position was refreshingly anomalous. Captain Einarsen had been aghast when Dragoika boarded—an Iron Age xeno on his vessel? But the orders from Enriques were clear. This was a vip who insisted on riding along and could cause trouble if she wasn’t humored. Thus Ensign Flandry was appointed “liaison officer,” the clause being added in private that he’d keep his pet savage out of the way or be busted to midshipman. (Nothing was said on either side about his being technically a prisoner. Einarsen had received the broadcast, but judged it would be dangerous to let his men know that Merseians were stopping Terran craft. And Enriques’ message had clarified his understanding.) At the age of nineteen, how could Flandry resist conveying the impression that the vip really had some grasp of astronautics and must be kept posted on developments? So he was granted communication with the bridge.

Under all cheer and excitement, a knot of tension was in him. He figured that word from the New Brazil would arrive at any minute.

“Your pardon,” Dragoika interrupted. “I must go to the—what you say—the head.” She thought that installation the most amusing thing aboard.

Karamzin watched her leave. Her supple gait was not impeded by the air helmet she required in a Terran atmosphere. The chief problem had been coiling her mane to fit inside. Otherwise her garments consisted of a sword and a knife.

“Way-hay,” Karamzin murmured. “What a shape! How is she?”

“Be so good as not to talk about her like that,” Flandry rapped.

“What? I didn’t mean any harm. She’s only a xeno.”

“She’s my friend. She’s worth a hundred Imperial sheep. And what she’s got to face and survive, the rest of her life—”

Karamzin leaned across the table. “How’s that? What sort of cruise are we on, anyway? Supposed to check on something the gatortails might have out in space; they didn’t tell us more.”

“I can’t, either.”

“I wasn’t ordered to stop thinking. And you know, I think this Starkad affair is a blind. They’ll develop the war here, get our whole attention on this sinkhole, then bang, they’ll hit someplace else.”

Flandry blew a smoke ring. “Maybe.” I wish I could tell you. You have no military right to know, but haven’t you a human right?

“What’s Starkad like, anyway? Our briefing didn’t say much.”

“Well—” Flandry hunted for words. They were bloodless things at best. You could describe, but you could not make real: dawn white over a running sea, slow heavy winds that roared on wooded mountainsides, an old and proud city, loveliness on a shadowy ocean floor, two brave races, billions of years since first the planet coalesced, the great globe itself … He was still trying when Dragoika returned. She sat down quietly and watched him.

“—and, uh, a very interesting paleolithic culture on an island they call Rayadan—”

Alarms hooted.

Karamzin was through the door first. Feet clattered, metal clanged, voices shouted, under the shrill woop-woop-woop that echoed from end to end of the long hull. Dragoika snatched the sword off her shoulder. “What’s happening?” she yelled.

“Battle stations.” Flandry realized he had spoken in Anglic. “An enemy has been … sighted.”

“Where is he?”

“Out there. Put away that steel. Strength and courage won’t help you now. Come.” Flandry led her into the corridor.

They wove among men who themselves pelted toward their posts. Near the navigation bridge was a planetary chartroom equipped for full audiovisual intercom. The exec had decided this would serve the vip and her keeper. Two spacesuits hung ready. One was modified for Starkadian use. Dragoika had gotten some drill with it en route to the squadron, but Flandry thought he’d better help her before armoring himself. “Here; this fastens so. Now hold your breath till we change helmets on you … Why did you come?”

“I would not let you fare alone on my behalf,” Dragoika said after her faceplate was closed.

Flandry left his own open, but heard her in his radio earplugs. The alarm penetrated them; and, presently, a voice:

“Now hear this. Now hear this. Captain to all officers and men. The New Brazil reports two hyperdrives activated as she approached destination. She is returning to us and the bogies are in pursuit. We shall proceed. Stand by for hyper-drive. Stand by for combat. Glory to the Emperor.”

Flandry worked the com dials. Tuning in on a bridge view-screen, he saw space on his own panel, black and star-strewn. Briefly, as the quantum field built up, the cosmos twisted. Compensators clicked in and the scene grew steady; but now Sabik outran light and kilometers reeled aft more swiftly than imagination could follow. The power throb was a leonine growl through every cell of his body.

“What does this mean?” Dragoika pressed close to him, seeking comfort.

Flandry switched to a view of the operations tank. Seven green dots of varying size moved against a stellar background. “See, those are our ships. The big one, that’s this.” Two red dots appeared. “Those are the enemy, as near as we can tell his positions. Um-m-m, look at their size. That’s because we detect very powerful engines. I’d say one is roughly equal to ours, though probably newer and better armed. The other seems to be a heavy destroyer.”

Her gauntlets clapped together. “But this is like magic!” she cried with glee.

“Not much use, actually, except to give a quick overall picture. What the captain uses is figures and calculations from our machines.”

Dragoika’s enthusiasm died. “Always machines,” she said in a troubled voice. “Glad I am not to live in your world, Dom-maneek.”

You’ll have to, I’m afraid, he thought. For a while, anyway. If we live.

He scanned the communications office. Men sat before banks of meters, as if hypnotized. Occasionally someone touched a control or spoke a few words to his neighbor. Electromagnetic radio was mute beyond the hull. But with hyperdrive going, a slight modulation could be imposed on the wake to carry messages. Sabik could transmit instantaneously, as well as receive.

As Flandry watched, a man stiffened in his seat. His hands shook a little when he ripped off a printout and gave it to his pacing superior. That officer strode to an intercom and called the command bridge. Flandry listened and nodded.

“Tell me,” Dragoika begged. “I feel so alone here.”

“Shhh!”

Announcement: “Now hear this. Now hear this. Captain to all officers and men. It is known that there are six Merseian warships in Saxo orbit. They have gone hyper and are seeking junction with the two bogies in pursuit of New Brazil. We detect scrambled communication between these various units. It is expected they will attack us. First contact is estimated in ten minutes. Stand by to open fire upon command. The composition of the hostiles is—”

Flandry showed Dragoika the tank. Half a dozen sparks drove outward from the luminous globelet which represented her sun. “They are one light cruiser, about like our Umbriel, and five destroyers. Then ahead, remember, we have a battleship and a quite heavy destroyer.”

“Eight against five of us.” Tendrils rose behind the faceplate, fur crackled, the lost child dropped out of her and she said low and resonant: “But we will catch those first two by themselves.”

“Right. I wonder … ” Flandry tried a different setting. It should have been blocked off, but someone had forgotten and he looked over Captain Einarsen’s shoulder.

Yes, a Merseian in the outercom screen! And a high-ranking one, too.

“—interdicted region,” he said in thickly accented Anglic. “Turn back at once.”

“His Majesty’s government does not recognize interdictions in unclaimed space,” Einarsen said. “You will interfere with us at your peril.”

“Where are you bound? What is your purpose?”

“That is of no concern to you, Fodaich. My command is bound on its lawful occasions. Do we pass peacefully or must we fight?”

Flandry translated for Dragoika as he listened. The Merseian paused, and she whispered: “He will say we can go on, surely. Thus he can join the others.”

Flandry wiped his brow. The room felt hot, and he stank with perspiration in his suit. “I wish you’d been born in our civilization,” he said. “You have a Navy mind.”

“Pass, then,” the Merseian said slowly. “Under protest, I let you by.”

Flandry leaned forward, gripping a table edge, struggling not to shout what Einarsen must do.

The Terran commander said, “Very good. But in view of the fact that other units are moving to link with yours, I am forced to require guarantees of good faith. You will immediately head due galactic north at full speed, without halt until I return to Saxo.”

“Outrageous! You have no right—”

“I have the right of my responsibility for this squadron. If your government wishes to protest to mine, let it do so. Unless you withdraw as requested, I shall consider your intentions hostile and take appropriate measures. My compliments to you, sir. Good day.” The screen was blanked.

Flandry switched away from Einarsen’s expressionless countenance and stood shaking. There trickled through the turmoil in him, I guess an old-line officer does have as much sense as a fresh-caught ensign.

When he brought Dragoika up to date, she said coolly, “Let us see that tank again.”

The Merseians ahead were not heeding the Terran order. They were, though, sheering off, one in either direction, obviously hoping to delay matters until help arrived. Einarsen didn’t cooperate. Like a wolf brought to bay, New Brazil turned on her lesser pursuer. Murdoch’s Land hurried to her aid. On the other side, Umbriel and Sabik herself accelerated toward the Merseian battlewagon. Antarctica continued as before, convoying the scoutboats.

“Here we go,” Flandry said between clenched jaws. His first space battle, as terrifying, bewildering, and exalting as his first woman. He lusted to be in a gun turret. After dogging his faceplate, he sought an exterior view.

For a minute, nothing was visible but stars. Then the ship boomed and shuddered. She had fired a missile salvo: the monster missiles which nothing smaller than a battleship could carry, which had their own hyperdrives and phase-in computers. He could not see them arrive. The distance was as yet too great. But close at hand, explosions burst in space, one immense fireball after another, swelling, raging, and vanishing. Had the screen carried their real intensity, his eyeballs would have melted. Even through airlessness, he felt the buffet of expanding gases; the deck rocked and the hull belled.

“What was that?” Dragoika cried.

“The enemy shot at us. We managed to intercept and destroy his missiles with smaller ones. Look there.” A lean metal thing prowled across the screen. “It seeks its own target. We have a cloud of them out.”

Again and again energies ran wild. One blast almost knocked Flandry off his feet. His ears buzzed from it. He tuned in on damage control. The strike had been so near that the hull was bashed open. Bulkheads sealed off that section. A gun turret was wrecked, its crew blown to fragments. But another nearby reported itself still functional. Behind heavy material and electromagnetic shielding, its men had not gotten a lethal dose of radiation: not if they received medical help within a day. They stayed at their post.

Flandry checked the tank once more. Faster than either battleship, Umbriel had overhauled her giant foe. When drive fields touched, she went out of phase, just sufficient to be unhittable, not enough that her added mass did not serve as a drag. The Merseian must be trying to get in phase and wipe her out before—No, here Sabik came!

Generators that powerful extended their fields for a long radius. When she first intermeshed, the enemy seemed a toy, lost among so many stars. But she grew in the screen, a shark, a whale, Leviathan in steel, bristling with weapons, livid with lightnings.

The combat was not waged by living creatures. Not really. They did nothing but serve guns, tend machines, and die. When such speeds, masses, intensities met, robots took over. Missile raced at missile; computer matched wits with computer in the weird dance of phasing. Human and Merseian hands did operate blaster cannon, probing, searing, slicing through metal like a knife through flesh. But their chance of doing important harm, in the short time they had, was small.

Fire sheeted across space. Thunder brawled in hulls. Decks twisted, girders buckled, plates melted. An explosion pitched Flandry and Dragoika down. They lay in each other’s arms, bruised, bleeding, deafened, while the storm prevailed.

And passed.

Slowly, incredulously, they climbed to their feet. Shouts from outside told them their eardrums were not ruptured. The door sagged and smoke curled through. Chemical extinguishers rumbled. Someone called for a medic. The voice was raw with pain.

The screen still worked. Flandry glimpsed Umbriel before relative speed made her unseeable. Her bows gaped open, a gun barrel was bent in a quarter circle, plates resembled sea-foam where they had liquefied and congealed. But she ran yet. And so did Sabik.

He looked and listened awhile before he could reconstruct the picture for Dragoika. “We got them. Our two destroyers took care of the enemy’s without suffering much damage. We’re hulled in several places ourselves, three turrets and a missile launcher are knocked out, some lines leading from the main computer bank are cut, we’re using auxiliary generators till the engineers can fix the primary one, and the casualties are pretty bad. We’re operational, though, sort of.”

“What became of the battleship we fought?”

“We sank a warhead in her midriff. One megaton, I believe … no, you don’t know about that, do you? She’s dust and gas.”

The squadron reunited and moved onward. Two tiny green flecks in the tank detached themselves and hastened ahead. “See those? Our scoutboats. We have to screen them while they perform their task. This means we have to fight those Merseians from Saxo.”

“Six of them to five of us,” Dragoika counted. “Well, the odds are improving. And then, we have a bigger ship, this one, than remains to them.”

Flandry watched the green lights deploy. The objective was to prevent even one of the red sparks from getting through and attacking the scouts. This invited annihilation in detail, but—Yes, evidently the Merseian commander had told off one of his destroyers to each of Einarsen’s. That left him with his cruiser and two destroyers against Sabik and Umbriel, which would have been fine were the latter pair not half crippled. “I’d call the odds even, myself,” Flandry said. “But that may be good enough. If we stand off the enemy for … a couple of hours, I’d guess … we’ve done what we were supposed.”

“But what is that, Domma-neek? You spoke only of some menace out here.” Dragoika took him by the shoulders and regarded him levelly. “Can you not tell me?”

He could, without violating any secrecy that mattered any longer. But he didn’t want to. He tried to stall, and hoped the next stage of combat would begin before she realized what he was doing. “Well,” he said, “we have news about, uh, an object. What the scouts must do is go to it, find out what it is like, and plot its path. They’ll do that in an interesting way. They’ll retreat from it, faster than light, so they can take pictures of it not where it is at this moment but where it was at different times in the past. Since they know where to look, their instruments can pinpoint it at more than a light-year. That is, across more than a year of time. On such basis, they can easily calculate how it will move for the next several years to come.”

Again dread stirred behind her eyes. “They can reach over time itself?” she whispered. “To the past and its ghosts? You dare too much, you vaz-Terran. One night the hidden powers will set free their anger on you.”

He bit his lip—and winced, for it was swollen where his face had been thrown against a mouth-control radio switch. “I often wonder if that may not be so, Dragoika. But what can we do? Our course was set for us ages agone, before ever we left our home world, and there is no turning back.”

“Then … you fare bravely.” She straightened in her armor. “I may do no less. Tell me what the thing is that you hunt through time.”

“It—” The ship recoiled. A drumroll ran. “Missiles fired off! We’re engaging!”

Another salvo and another. Einarsen must be shooting off every last hyperdrive weapon in his magazines. If one or two connected, they might decide the outcome. If not, then none of his present foes could reply in kind.

Flandry saw, in the tank, how the Merseian destroyers scattered. They could do little but try to outdodge those killers, or outphase them if field contact was made. As formation broke up, Murdoch’s Land and Antarctica closed in together on a single enemy of their class. That would be a slugfest, minor missiles and energy cannon and artillery, more slow and perhaps more brutal than the nearly abstract encounter between two capital ships, but also somehow more human.

The volleys ended. Dragoika howled. “Look, Domma-neek! A red light went out! There! First blood for us!”

“Yes … yes, we did get a destroyer. Whoopee!” The exec announced it on the intercom, and cheers sounded faintly from those who still had their faceplates open. The other missiles must have been avoided or parried, and by now were destroying themselves lest they become threats to navigation. Max Abrams would have called that rule a hopeful sign.

Another Merseian ship sped to assist the one on which the two Terrans were converging, while New Brazil and a third enemy stalked each other. Umbriel limped on an intercept course for the heavy cruiser and her attendant. Those drove straight for Sabik, which lay in wait licking her wounds.

The lights flickered and died. They came back, but feebly. So there was trouble with the spare powerplant, too. And damn, damn, damn, Flandry couldn’t do a thing except watch that tank!

The cruiser’s escort detached herself and ran toward Umbriel to harry and hinder. Flandry clenched his teeth till his jaws ached. “The greenskins can see we have problems here,” he said. “They figure a cruiser can take us. And they may be right.”

Red crept up on green. “Stand by for straight-phase engagement,” said the intercom.

“What did that mean?” Dragoika asked.

“We can’t dodge till a certain machine has been fixed.” It was as near as Flandry could come to saying in Kursovikian that phase change was impossible. “We shall have to sit and shoot.”

Sabik wasn’t quite a wingless duck. She could revert to sub-light, though that was a desperation maneuver. At superlight, the enemy must be in phase with her to inflict damage, and therefore equally vulnerable. But the cruiser did, now, possess an extra capability of eluding her opponent’s fire. Sabik had no shield except her antimissiles. To be sure, she was better supplied with those.

It looked as if a toe-to-toe match was coming.

“Hyperfield contact made,” said the intercom. “All units fire at will.”

Flandry switched to exterior view. The Merseian zigzagged among the stars. Sometimes she vanished, always she reappeared. She was a strictly spacegoing vessel, bulged at the waist like a double-ended pear. Starlight and shadow picked out her armament. Dragoika hissed in a breath. Again fire erupted.

A titan’s fist smote. A noise so enormous that it transcended noise bellowed through the hull. Bulkheads split asunder. The deck crashed against Flandry. He whirled into night.

Moments later he regained consciousness. He was falling, falling forever, and blind … no, he thought through the ringing in his head, the lights were out, the gravs were out, he floated free admidst the moan of escaping air. Blood from his nose formed globules which, weightless, threatened to strangle him. He sucked to draw them down his throat. “Dragoika!” he rasped. “Dragoika!”

Her helmet beam sprang forth. She was a shadow behind it, but the voice came clear and taut: “Domma-neek, are you hale? What happened? Here, here is my hand.”

“We took a direct hit.” He shook himself, limb by limb, felt pain boil in his body but marveled that nothing appeared seriously injured. Well, space armor was designed to take shocks. “Nothing in here is working, so I don’t know what the ship’s condition is. Let’s try to find out. Yes, hang onto me. Push against things, not too hard. It’s like swimming. Do you feel sick?”

“No. I feel as in a dream, nothing else.” She got the basic technique of null-gee motion fast.

They entered the corridor. Undiffused, their lamplight made dull puddles amidst a crowding murk. Ribs thrust out past twisted, buckled plates. Half of a spacesuited man drifted in a blood-cloud which Flandry must wipe off his helmet. No radio spoke. The silence was of a tomb.

The nuclear warhead that got through could not have been very large. But where it struck, ruin was total. Elsewhere, though, forcefields, bulkheads, baffles, breakaway lines had given what protection they could. Thus Flandry and Dragoika survived. Did anyone else? He called and called, but got no answer.

A hole filled with stars yawned before him. He told her to stay put and flitted forth on impellers. Saxo, merely the brightest of the diamond points around him, transitted the specter arch of the Milky Way. It cast enough light for him to see. The fragment of ship from which he had emerged spun slowly—luck, that, or Coriolis force would have sickened him and perhaps her. An energy cannon turret looked intact. Further off tumbled larger pieces, ugly against cold serene heaven.

He tried his radio again, now when he was outside screening metal. With her secondary engines gone, the remnants of Sabik had reverted to normal state. “Ensign Flandry from Section Four. Come in, anyone. Come in!”

A voice trickled through. Cosmic interference seethed behind it. “Commander Ranjit Singh in Section Two. I am assuming command unless a superior officer turns out to be alive. Report your condition.”

Flandry did. “Shall we join you, sir?” he finished.

“No. Check that gun. Report whether it’s in working order. If so, man it.”

“But sir, we’re disabled. The cruiser’s gone on to fight elsewhere. Nobody’ll bother with us.”

“That remains to be seen, Ensign. If the battle pattern should release a bogie, he may decide he’ll make sure of us. Go to your gun.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Dead bodies floated in the turret. They were not mutilated; but two or three thousand roentgens must have sleeted through all shielding. Flandry and Dragoika hauled them out and cast them adrift. As they dwindled among the stars, she sang to them the Song of Mourning. I wouldn’t mind such a send-off, he thought.

The gun was useable. Flandry rehearsed Dragoika in emergency manual control. They’d alternate at the hydraulic aiming system and the handwheel which recharged the batteries that drove it. She was as strong as he.

Thereafter they waited. “I never thought to die in a place like this,” she said. “But my end will be in battle, and with the finest of comrades. How we shall yarn, in the Land of Trees Beyond !”

“We might survive yet,” he said. Starlight flashed off the teeth in his bruised and blood-smeared face.

“Don’t fool yourself. Unworthy of you.”

“Unworthy my left one! I plain don’t intend to quit till I’m dead.”

“I see. Maybe that is what has made you vaz-Terran great.”

The Merseian came.

She was a destroyer. Umbriel, locked in combat with the badly hurt enemy cruiser, had inflicted grave harm on her, too. Murdoch’s Land was shattered, Antarctica out of action until repairs could be made, but they had accounted for two of her fellows. New Brazil dueled yet with the third. This fourth one suffered from a damaged hyperdrive alternator. Until her sweating engineers could repair it, which would take an hour or so, her superlight speed was a crawl; any vessel in better shape could wipe her from the universe. Her captain resolved he would go back to where the remnants of Sabik orbited and spend the interim cleaning them out. For the general order was that none but Merseians might enter this region and live.

She flashed into reality. Her missiles were spent, but guns licked with fire-tongues and shells. The main part of the battleship’s dismembered hulk took their impact, glowed, broke, and returned the attack.

“Yow-w-w!” Dragoika’s yell was pure exultation. She spun the handwheel demoniacally fast. Flandry pushed himself into the saddle. His cannon swung about. The bit of hull counter-rotated. He adjusted, got the destroyer’s after section in his cross-hairs, and pulled trigger.

Capacitors discharged. Their energy content was limited; that was why the gun must be laid by hand, to conserve every last erg for revenge. Flame spat across kilometers. Steel sublimed. A wound opened. Air gushed forth, white with condensing water vapor.

The destroyer applied backward thrust. Flandry followed, holding his beam to the same spot, driving inward and inward. From four other pieces of Sabik, death vomited.

“Man,” Flandry chanted, “but you’ve got a Tigery by the tail!”

Remorselessly, spin took him out of sight. He waited, fuming. When he could again aim, the destroyer was further away, and she had turned one battleship section into gas. But the rest fought on. He joined his beam to theirs. She was retreating under gravities. Why didn’t she go hyper and get the hell out of here? Maybe she couldn’t. He himself had been shooting to disable her quantum-field generator. Maybe he’d succeeded.

“Kursoviki!” Dragoika shrieked at the wheel. “Archers all! Janjevar va-Radovik for aye!”

A gun swiveled toward them. He could see it, tiny at its distance, thin and deadly. He shifted aim. His fire melted the muzzle shut.

The destroyer scuttled away. And then, suddenly, there was New Brazil. Flandry darted from his seat, caught Dragoika to him, held her faceplate against his breast and closed his own eyes. When they looked again, the Merseian was white-hot meteorites. They hugged each other in their armor.

Umbriel, Antarctica, and New Brazil: torn, battered, lame, filled with the horribly wounded, haunted by their dead, but victorious, victorious—neared the planet. The scoutships had long since finished their work and departed Empire-ward. Yet Ranjit Singh would give his men a look at the prize they had won.

On the cruiser’s bridge, Flandry and Dragoika stood with him. The planet filled the forward viewscreen. It was hardly larger than Luna. Like Terra’s moon, it was bereft of air, water, life; such had bled away to space over billions of years. Mountains bared fangs at the stars, above ashen plains. Barren, empty, blind as a skull, the rogue rushed on to its destiny.

“One planet,” the acting captain breathed. “One wretched sunless planet.”

“It’s enough, sir,” Flandry said. Exhaustion pulsed through him in huge soft waves. To sleep … to sleep, perchance to dream … “On a collision course with Saxo. It’ll strike inside of five years. That much mass, simply falling from infinity, carries the energy of three years’ stellar radiation. Which will have to be discharged somehow, in a matter of seconds. And Saxo is an F5, shortlived, due to start expanding in less than a begayear. The instabilities must already be building up. The impact—Saxo will go nova. Explode.”

“And our fleet—”

“Yes, sir. What else? The thing’s wildly improbable. Interstellar distances are so big. But the universe is bigger still. No matter how unlikely, anything which is possible must happen sometime. This is one occasion when it does. Merseian explorers chanced on the datum. Brechdan saw what it meant. He could develop the conflict on Starkad, step by step, guiding it, nursing it, keeping it on schedule … till our main strength was marshaled there, just before the blowup came. We wouldn’t be likely to see the invader. It’s coming in ’way off the ecliptic, and has a very low albedo, and toward the end would be lost in Saxo’s glare and traveling at more than 700 kilometers per second. Nor would we be looking in that direction. Our attention would be all on Brechdan’s forces. They’d be prepared, after the captains opened their sealed orders. They’d know exactly when to dash away on hyperdrive. Ours—well, the initial radiation will move at the speed of light. It would kill the crews before they knew they were dead. An hour or so later, the first wave of gases would vaporize their ships. The Empire would be crippled and the Merseians could move in. That’s why there’s war on Starkad.”

Ranjit Singh tugged his beard. The pain seemed to strengthen him. “Can we do anything? Plant bombs to blow this object apart, maybe?”

“I don’t know, sir. Offhand, I doubt it. Too many fragments would stay on essentially the same path, I believe. Of course, we can evacuate Starkad. There are other planets.”

“Yes. We can do that.”

“Will you tell me now?” Dragoika asked.

Flandry did. He had not known she could weep.