Space Dreadnoughts

At the barren heart of midnight, at the precise stroke of twelve, the Farlan Empire—Henlo’s empire—would be dying.

Henlo looked forward to death with distaste. But being a realist, he accepted personal extinction as he accepted the death of his entire, tremendous creation. And there was no longer anything he could do to stop the Earthman.

At midnight, the implacable statistics of his birth would shunt him aside, forever stripped of his leadership. Worse, the Earthmen would have a free hand while he lived along uselessly, somewhere, with his books and courtesy guards. And the guards would be fiercely single-minded young men with no ears for anything he might say, dedicated to nothing but the continuance of his life at the new ruler’s whim.

He doubted very much that the fierce young men could save the empire that had once been his pride and his glory. He was senile. No one would talk to him, or listen to him, though everyone would be most respectful. How ironic that he could still be respected and accorded every courtesy despite his statistical senility.

It did not matter that only he was equipped, and that by luck, to recognize the deadly, never-ceasing danger and take steps to prevent it. No matter how brilliant his successor—no doubt long-since picked and impatiently waiting—he could not understand about the Earthmen. And Henlo could not tell him. They would never even see each other, and any memoranda Henlo left behind would be discarded without being read. What purpose could there be in listening to a replaced Empire Builder, or reading his words? He was senile and the verdict could not be reversed.

He watched the shadows sweep along the avenues of Farla City, and reflected with bitterness on the laws and customs of Farla. They determined inexorably that a man, on reaching the age of one hundred, became automatically senile. Well, the rule had doubtless served its purposes in the past.

Farla turned, and the years followed. There were customs which were honored in the breach, and his personal list of these was longer than most. But not even he could prevent Farla from revolving only two hundred and seven times before it went once around the sun. He was trapped by the unalterable fact of his birthdate.

Laws. Customs. Only once in his life had he met a man who understood their basis completely.

Henlo looked out in complete frustration at the city that was no longer his. And even more vividly than before the years began to unroll backwards in his mind’s eye vision, coalescing into patterns of long ago. It seemed only yesterday somehow…

I

Captain D’ Henlo of the Farlan Starfleet sat in the cabin of his first fleet command, trying desperately to sleep. Around him, echoing through the companionways and vibrating from the plates, were the thousand and one sounds of fitting-out.

Hurried footsteps bounded through the companionways, and auxiliary motors throughout the ship rumbled with overload or howled at sudden slack as supplies were hoisted aboard and dispersed into bunkers and loading chutes. At intervals, the open circuit of the ship’s Intervoice rattled the cabin speaker’s grille with tinny messages.

A small part of Henlo’s mind monitored this babble, precisely as a musician’s ear studies the notes of a tuning orchestra. But only a small part—and only the sudden emergence of a false note brought the constant noise to the full attention of his thoughts. Ship’s noises had long since ceased to interfere with Henlo’s natural ability to snatch a few moments of sleep from the rigors of his routine.

It was the thought of death and defeat—of the destruction of his fleet, and of the inevitable end of the Farlan Union—which now kept him in a state of constant, chill apprehension, and denied him all repose.

The Vilkai controlled the Galaxy. They had driven the Earthmen back to the Rim before that pale, furless race had even fairly begun the burgeoning rush of expansion which seemed its sure, remorseless destiny. They had scoured the universe clean of opposition, controlled its commerce, and levied their supplies from the shadowy remnants of a dozen lesser empires which were now mere puppet districts in the greater domain. Only Farla stood in their way, and that only for as long as it suited their predatory plans.

Theoretically, they were not all-powerful. They were over-extended, and they were barbarians. The overextended barbarian invariably tends to go home and return at a later date, when he has seen to the conception of a new generation of barbarians and filled out his lean ribs. He is, moreover, given to quarrelling and dissension within his own ranks, and the pursuit of loot in preference to the more exacting demands of strategy.

The primary objective of a barbarian is not the conquest of territory for its own sake, or the prosecution of some political dogma. It is individual power and individual glory. That is his weakness, and a well-led, well-disciplined professional military force can cut him to ribbons, no matter what the size of his horde.

Unfortunately Farla, unlike Earth, which had simply been unprepared, was not well-led, or well-organized.

Captain D’ Henlo’s short, almost vestigial tail lashed nervously. He had no desire to see his career cruelly interrupted by the sawing of a Vilk trophy-knife. Possibly, had he been a few years farther along in the ranks, he might have attempted to engineer some pressure at the capital. It was barely possible that he might gain something there, knowing as he did that the admirals of war are rarely the same men as the admirals of peace.

But the possibility was only an improbability. He knew his own worth and talents, and his contacts at the capital were rightly suspicious of his political ability. There were certain things beyond the pale of custom, and promotion over the heads of half the Fleet priority list was one of them. It might very well have caused a general mutiny.

Not in the ranks, perhaps, for the ranks no longer cared who led them. But the officers would be furious, and the officers could smash the government immediately. Governments being covetous of governing, it followed as a logical premise that D’ Henlo, genius or not, was doomed to be just another ship commander involved in the last, gasping flicker of life in the race of Farlans.

He bared his teeth in a snarl at the inevitable, but he recognized that inevitable for what it was.

Grimly, he tried to bore himself to sleep by recounting the various incompetencies of his staff-level superiors, the ministers of state, and the ruler himself. He reasoned, with absolute assurance, that this amusement could easily still be incomplete at the time when his fur would be flapping from some Vilk rooftree.

The Intervoice put a sudden, loud quietus on his hopes of sleep.

“With the Captain’s pardon, a Fleet Messenger requests permission to call and deliver.”

“Granted,” Henlo said, and, scratching his thigh with annoyance, unlatched his door.

II

The messenger handed him the usual sealed letter, saluted, and withdrew to the companionway. The message was brief—a few lines directing Henlo to report immediately to the Port Director’s office for transportation.

Henlo looked at it with narrowed, speculative eyes. Tapping its folded length against his hip, he paced softly back and forth.

It meant something important, certainly. The bare word ‘transportation,’ without further amplification, conveyed as much. But what, precisely, did it mean? A secret conference of some kind, apparently—too secret to be entrusted to a Fleet Messenger.

He throttled the impulsive thought that it might, against all logic and reason, be his promotion to admiralty. He had not achieved his present status by acting against logic. It followed, then, that he was either being court martialed for some unknown offense, or was being entrusted with a special mission. Of the two possibilities, the latter seemed the more likely. His last intelligences from the capital had indicated only growing strength among his contacts.

Still, he hated uncertainty. He called for his personal vehicle with a rasp in his voice, and stalked up the companionway at a pace that forced the messenger to bound.

Ten minutes later he sprang from his vehicle, the messenger having peeled off to go it afoot, and marched into the Port Director’s office, whence, shortly, he emerged by way of the rooftop platform. There he stepped into an official flyer, and was blasted across the sky at a screaming pace which almost, but not quite, matched the janglings galloping through his nerves. By the time he arrived at the capital he was still outwardly cool, as befitted his position, but he would have attacked mountain sajaks barehanded.

From its very beginning, the conference strained his nerves even more intolerably. It soon became evident that he was to be interviewed by the complete cabinet, and, when he finally entered the presence of the twelve men, he found himself confronted by a long table behind which they stood and stared at him silently.

He sat down and waited, his eyes slowly traveling up and down the table, his mental catalogues spinning as he tried to determine what course of conduct to pursue from his information about each man individually.

Finally, the Minister for Preparedness picked up a file— Henlo’s own Fleet dossier—opened it, studied it for a moment, and put it down. With that formal signal that the hearing had begun, the Minister for the Fleet began to speak.

“You are Captain D’ Henlo,” he stated.

Henlo nodded. “I am.”

“In command of Torener, City-Class sub-battleship, Fleet, currently fitting out at Port Terag.”

“Yes.”

The Minister for the Fleet nodded, and turned D’ Henlo over to the Minister for Preparedness.

“Captain Henlo,” the minister said, “we’ll begin by assuming that only the passage of time lies between you and important commands. Your record indicates as much, and your decorations bear it out.”

Henlo could see no advantage to himself in permitting the Minister to continue to believe that flattery could in any way alter his ingrained habits of caution and reserve.

“That is correct,” he said coldly and matter-of-factly. The Minister for Preparedness grinned with one corner of his mouth, and nodded a brief acknowledgment of the situation.

“Let us, then, proceed in accordance with that appraisal,” he said, this time sounding far more sincere.

“Captain Henlo,” he continued, “I am sure you realize that the Fleet is totally incapable of prosecuting a successful defense of the Farlan Union against the Vilkai hordes. I believe, too, that you are perfectly aware of the factors which create that incapability. But I shall not compromise you—or ourselves—by asking you to confirm this belief. Let it suffice for me to tell you that we are about to appoint a new Admiral-in-Chief.”

Inasmuch as Henlo had been keeping his features and bodily posture carefully inexpressive, he did not betray himself. But the tension of his nerves very nearly touched the danger point.

And still, something—some firmly-rooted, stubborn belief in his own thought processes—did not permit him to hope that the impossible gift was about to be given.

“Moreover,” the Minister for Preparedness went on, “we are about to appoint to this high position a man who is a completely unknown and obscure officer in the Reserve.”

Henlo’s tail jumped once, quivered, and lashed out again in a vicious blow at the unheeding air. Then he had control of himself once more.

“Allow me to congratulate you on your composure,” the minister said. “I hope it is indicative of the attitude with which other officers will greet the news.”

Inwardly, Henlo was a riot of triggered emotions and flashing thought. He, too, congratulated himself on having lost control where it would not be noticed. But that was the only crumb of comfort he could offer himself.

A Reserve officer! Well, perhaps—just perhaps—that might not be the mortal insult a line officer’s jump would have been. Paradoxically, Reserve officers were so far beyond the pale that most line men considered them incapable of affecting a regular fleet man enough to insult him. It remained to be seen how they’d react to following a pariah’s orders.

But to have that as yet unnamed man do the very thing that Henlo had decided was impossible for himself! Henlo could not, honestly, decide whether to chuckle at such audacity or be overwhelmed with resentment. In either case, his emotional attitude would have no effect on the plan which he was already beginning to formulate for the man’s eventual removal.

He returned his full attention to the Minister of Preparedness.

“The officer,” the minister resumed, “is L’ Miranid, and I assure you that he is a military genius. We are fully confident that, under his command, the Fleet will be able to defeat the Vilkai hordes.”

Ah? And where had they found this paragon? But that was relatively unimportant. Probably he’d been instructing in tactics at some insignificant school. Offhand, Henlo could recall no one named Miranid, but it was a likely-enough name. He pried at its etymology and decided that it probably derived from the occupational cognomen “ranis,” or metalworker. Which, of course, meant smith, and was at least of some use as an insight on the man’s hereditary character. Most descendants of smiths called themselves by the plain ‘Kalvit.’

There was the faint possibility that Miranid might suffer from the fatal weakness of pretentiousness. With that theory as a tentative start, Henlo was able to give part of his mind something with which to occupy itself while he outwardly devoted all his attention to the minister.

“Therefore,” the minister was saying, “we have assigned your ship, Torener, to his flag. You will make the requisite preparations to quarter him in accordance with his station.”

Henlo nodded.

“And, you will serve not only as ship commander under his direction, but will be his aide for the duration of hostilities.”

Henlo nodded again, inwardly glowing with satisfaction. He’d have the man where he could observe his character— and learn from him.

The Minister for Preparedness picked up Henlo’s dossier again, leafed to the very last page, and extracted the flimsy.

“I will now read the following officer’s dossier copy of orders as issued by the Minister for the Fleet and endorsed by the Minister for Preparedness:

“Subject: Elevation in rank.

“A vacancy for the position of Admiral-in-Chief of the Grand Farlan Starfleet exists due to the death in battle of Admiral L’ Miranid.

“Vice-Admiral D’ Henlo is therefore directed to assume command of the Grand Farlan Starfleet with the title and permanent rank of Admiral-in-Chief.

“As signed, endorsed and executed this day …”

The Minister for Preparedness stopped reading at that point, and returned the flimsy to its place in the file.

“The date, unfortunately, is yet to be determined,” he said, staring fixedly at Henlo. “It will coincide with the date of that battle which, in your judgment, determines the issue beyond doubt in Farla’s favor. Have I made myself clear?”

Henlo nodded. “Yes, sir, very clear.” As Henlo spoke he sent a quick look up and down the ministerial ranks. The thought struck him that the ministers might be incapable of educating good line officers, but that they were certainly nonpareils at picking assassins.

“I may assume,” he said, “that my elevation to the rank of Vice-Admiral will come at some convenient time during the next year?”

“We had thought,” the Minister for the Fleet said, “to implement it as of this date.”

“I would respectfully suggest that it be withheld until I have furnished a convenient pretext in the form of significant battle action,” Henlo replied.

The Minister for Preparedness nodded slowly. “An excellent suggestion.” He looked at Henlo shrewdly. “May I say, Captain Henlo, that you are an even more remarkable man than your record would indicate.”

Henlo accepted the compliment gracefully. He hated equivocal situations. Now he could be sure that he would also have to guard against the Ministry’s attempts to assassinate him.

All in all, it had been a nerve-wracking but remarkable and satisfying session.

III

Henlo returned to Torener with his nerves in the fine, whetted condition which had always produced his best thinking. He called in his Executive Officer immediately, and issued orders for the provision of admiral’s facilities aboard ship.

“Are we going to carry Rahoul’s flag, sir?” the exec asked.

“That’s right,” Henlo said, and grinned nastily at his subordinate’s disconcerted expression. He had fully expected the story of Miranid’s promotion to become current almost immediately. It only remained for him to discover just what, in the exec’s estimation, constituted subtle probing.

“Ah—I meant Admiral Miranid, of course, rather than the late Commander,” the man said hastily. “A mistake of the tongue.”

“Undoubtedly. A bit character revealing, wouldn’t you say?”

The exec departed in hasty confusion. Nevertheless, Henlo reflected, he would have used exactly the same approach himself, three years earlier. In about six years, that officer might require judicious attention.

Every carefully analyzed little fragment of psychological data helped keep a man’s fur on.

But all this was merely automatic routine. What mattered now was Miranid. What manner of man was he? Henlo had no intention of following his carefully implied orders until he’d had a chance to suck the ephemeral admiral dry of any useful political techniques he might have developed.

And, for that matter, precisely why did Miranid have to be removed?

Miranid did not arrive before Torener was completely fitted-out and ready to take her place with the fleet. In that interval, Henlo managed to keep his own tensions from showing, and was also able to get a fair idea of the reactions his subordinate officers would manifest.

Heaven only knew what the regular officers in the remainder of the fleet were thinking. Aboard Torener, Henlo awaited his arrival with a mixture of curiosity and amusement. The admiral would find it rough going.

Miranid arrived at night. A thin, close-packed man with thick but dull fur, he marched up the lowered ship’s ramp with a lithe grace and quickness to his movements that reminded Henlo of something wild.

The formalities were short, as usual, since the admiral was presumed competent until proved otherwise. As a matter of fact, Henlo had arranged it nicely, with the ship’s officers lined up in order of rank and with himself at their head, of course. The required minimal exchange of salutes finished the entire ceremony in a quarter of an hour.

Rahoul, who had set something of a standard for incapability, had been welcomed to the Ministerial Office Building with three full hours of music, saluting, and drill, during the progress of which he had grown increasingly restive. At the conclusion, he had taken the un-subtle hint, and not even presented himself at the Ministry before going home and suiciding.

“My compliments on your evident good health,” Miranid said, in the usual formula.

“And mine on yours,” Henlo replied neutrally enough.

They exchanged no further amenities. Miranid assumed command immediately, and, with a startling familiarity for the more esoteric flight characteristics of the City Class, had Torener blasted up to spearhead the formation in which the remainder of the fleet lay.

Henlo wondered, briefly, whether he was going to make his command address to the fleet immediately, or wait until all ships had acknowledged Torener’s arrival. Apparently, some of them were being deliberately laggard in so doing.

Miranid threw a quick glance at the Admiral’s Plot board which had been installed in one of the control room bulkheads. The white lights marking the positions of friendly ships were only sparsely modified to pink by the brilliant red “Your Position Determined and Acknowledged” lights.

He grunted, and for a moment Henlo thought he was going to turn the ship back to Captain’s command and make the bold stroke of beginning the customary address immediately, regardless of whether those ships pretended not to know of his presence.

Miranid was across the compartment in three strides, and in the Master Navigator’s chair. “Grab holds,” he lashed out, and Henlo got a palm around a stanchion just as Torener spurted ahead.

The Plot board went crazy. His head spinning, his free arm busy fending off loose equipment that came flying at him, Henlo realized dimly, and with horror, that Miranid had interlocked all of the fleet’s navigators with his own controls.

It was over in a third of an hour. Unspeaking, his hands flashing over the navigation board, and with the same highly unexpected familiarity with the capacities of even the most inconsequential Fleet vessels, the new admiral had the entire armada whipped into a compact group along unfamiliar but, to Henlo, brilliant organizational lines. And the entire Grand Farlan Starfleet was leaving the home system rapidly behind, pursuing a course which Henlo recognized as being the most deceptive possible while still permitting rapid diversion toward the very part of the Vilkai territories which Henlo had long decided was ripest for attack.

So much for Miranid’s first move. When he flicked the switch that unlocked the other ships’ navigating computers, the second began almost instantly.

The admiral threw a look over his shoulder at the Plot chart. In the same motion, he scooped up an Intervoice microphone.

“Gunnery.”

“Gunnery here.”

“Coordinates as indicated—” He punched out a position for the gun computers. “Fire!”

And Regra, an off-screen destroyer that had instantly attempted to go into turnover and return to the home system, burst apart.

Then, at last, Miranid switched over to General Comm and made his command address to the fleet. It was this:

“Have I made myself clear?”

He switched off, got out of the chair, and stalked by Henlo.

“Your ship, Captain,” he said.

“Thank you, sir,” Henlo said unsteadily, and Miranid clanged the airtight hatch behind him as he strode away toward his cabin. In the control compartment, officers and men with anomalous expressions began picking up the loose gear they had assumed it was safe to unlatch once Torener had rendezvoused with the fleet.

IV

Once again, Henlo sat in his cabin, trying to sleep. And again, it was not the innumerable creakings and drummings of a ship running under constant acceleration that kept him from succeeding. His thoughts were in a hopeless muddle.

Where had they found Miranid—or, rather, and with much more apparent logic—where had Miranid been before he chose to reveal himself?

Point Number One: No officer in the fleet—and Henlo had checked thoroughly—had ever heard of any officer, Reserve or no, named L’ Miranid. Most of them had simply shrugged their ignorance off, and none of them were actively curious. This despite the fact that Henlo would have wagered heavily on the fleet’s containing so thorough a cross-section of all Fleet officers that, between them, they must have met or heard of everyone who had ever held a relatively minor post.

Point Number Two: The Fleet was Miranid’s, pin, stock, and barrel. Not one of the line Fleet officers would now dream of challenging his authority. Apparently, Henlo was the only one who still questioned its validity.

Point Number Three: The reason behind the sudden switch in the officers’ attitudes was painfully apparent— painfully because Henlo had to admit that it was also the cause of his own unaccustomed confusion. Miranid had over-awed them all.

In a society based on the supremacy of the strong over the weak, that had been an audacious maneuver. And Miranid had carried it off without a flaw.

What hurt was that Henlo was himself over-awed, a totally unfamiliar sensation, and one which sat badly on his stomach.

In the first place, Miranid had followed what was, in retrospect, the most logical and effective plan. He had acted in a manner so dramatically ruthless that he had made the Fleet understand that he was capable of besting it single-handed.

Now that he had seen the triumph demonstrated, and felt its effect, Henlo had to admire it. But he could never have initiated it, or, having thought of it, dared take the risk.

Miranid was a genius!

Well, he’d planned to learn from the man, hadn’t he? Apparently, Miranid was going to be his post-graduate course.

Henlo felt a surge of returning confidence. Of all the Fleet officers, only he had a powerful shield against Miranid’s awe-inspiring strength.

The strong man dies as easily as the weak, and Miranid’s life was in Henlo’s hand.

That, above all other things, was Henlo’s source of hidden—and therefore even stronger—strength.

Once again, D’ Henlo was not given his sleep. Once again, the Intervoice called him.

“Admiral’s request and wish: Captain D’ Henlo to report at once to Admiral’s cabin.”

Henlo stood up, grunted, “Complying,” and, his tail not quite bar-steady, walked down the companionway to Miranid’s cabin.

When he knocked, he heard Miranid pushing back a chair before his voice came through the door. “Will you enter?”

“With your permission,” Henlo replied, according to formula. Apparently, Miranid was going to maintain his advantage by standing in Henlo’s presence—which would, most probably, be a seated one.

“Granted,” came from beyond the door.

Henlo shrugged. He felt no qualms about the traditional position of inferiority. It meant nothing. But it might be advantageous to pretend otherwise.

He stepped in, and Miranid turned away from his desk. “Please stand,” he said briefly, spreading a star chart on the desk. “I’d like you to know my plans for the next few days.”

“Of course, Admiral,” Henlo said, moving forward to the chart and grimacing briefly behind Miranid’s back. The man was thoroughly unpredictable.

He comforted himself with the thought that persistent unpredictability was predictable.

“I assume, Captain, that you’ve had time to decide against opposing me,” Miranid said casually, touching the fleet’s present position with one point of his dividers.

Henlo’s whiskers quivered in the general ripple that crossed his facial fur.

“Therefore,” Miranid went on in the same tone, “here’s our plan for the time being.” The dividers twirled from point to point, like a dancer describing an involuted spiral, and one point sank into the chart at Ceroii, a Vilkan holding some light-years within their ragged frontier. “So. Three days under acceleration, two in braking. We come out of hyperspace three Standard hours before we reach there. Can you tell me why I’m giving them that much warning?”

Henlo had recovered by a considerable application of will. He decided to play Miranid’s game for the time being.

Moreover, the admiral was using substantially the same tactics he had himself planned, but never, of course, hoped to see executed.

“I would say, sir, that your plan is to make Ceroii a diversion. Three hours’ warning will permit them to call for help, but not to mount a substantial defense. I suggest, respectfully, that you then intend to move rapidly to some other sector—Ganelash, or Dira, either of which is liable to be left open by the Vilkan rush to defend at Ceroii—or perhaps even to split the fleet and attack both. Your subsequent maneuvers would depend on what sector would next be left vulnerable by the inevitable rushing-about which these tactics will produce among the enraged barbarians.”

Miranid nodded. “Quite correct, Captain. I congratulate you as an apt strategist. A quality which,” he added dryly, “seems to be rare in the Grand Farlan Starfleet.”

Henlo could not decide exactly how the remark was meant—whether as an observation that it was remarkable for anyone to be as good as Miranid, or simply as the normal Reserve officer’s opportunity to make some pointed observations.

Miranid held up a finger. “One correction. I will split the fleet after Ceoii—but into three parts. Some Vilkan sub-chief may just keep his head sufficiently to launch direct retaliation at Farla. We’ll need some ships to delay any such move until we can catch him from behind. I plan to use Vice-Admiral Y’ Gern. Does this agree with your estimation of him?”

“Your grasp of the characters of your officers is remarkable,” Henlo managed to say.

It was quite true. Gern was perhaps the one Vice-Admiral in the fleet who had any stomach to him, together with the strength to command such an action. But the important part of that last announcement had been Miranid’s revelation of his intention of attacking Ganelash and Dira with only one-third of a fleet at each vital point. It just might be done, but it would be hot work. And the casual manner in which the man had provided for the englobement of any possible retaliators was an even more astonishing indication of just how Miranid’s tactical mind worked.

It was the same basic principle which had given him the fleet within an hour of his first setting foot on his flagship. He out-thought his opponents completely, and then let their own efforts provide him with the means for unfolding his tactics.

Where, where had they found Miranid?

“I’ll ask you, as my aide, to draw up the detailed battle plan, Captain Henlo,” Miranid said.

“Yes, sir,” Henlo replied. It was a plain indication that their conference had ended. “With your permission?”

“You may leave.”

Henlo returned to his own cabin, and once more tried to find an hour’s time in which to sleep.

V

Ceroii was, effectively speaking, dust, and Ganelash flamed under Henlo’s guns. Four parsecs away, he knew, Larharis, temporarily carrying Miranid’s flag, was giving Dira the same breakfast.

Henlo’s original thesis—and Miranid’s, obviously—was being proved correct. The Vilkan horde was not a homogenous body, and the Vilk forces, though numerous, were not organized. They could roll up empires like a pack of sajaks stampeding cattle, but they were highly vulnerable to the rush-and-slash tactics that Miranid was using.

Particularly were they vulnerable when inter-tribal jealousies did more to help than another fleetful of guns. A half-day’s travel from Ganelash, for instance, was a numerous force of Vilks. If Henlo knew of them, they assuredly knew of Henlo and what he was doing. But those ships were busy idling, waiting until the Farlans were through. The Vilk commander was a sworn blood-enemy of Ganelash’s defender, and he preferred to wait and then move in to finish the job—and pick up the loot. Whether he would even bother to swipe at the Farlans was problematical.

And as far as Henlo knew, Vice-Admiral Gem’s detachment had yet to detect even one Vilkan ship blazing toward Farla.

Henlo surveyed the ruined planet below and signaled for the action to be broken off. It might be just as well to leave those hungry Vilks some unbroken loot to occupy them.

The fleet rendezvoused around Gern, and Henlo noticed that there had been few casualties—fewer even than he’d anticipated. Once he’d listened to his brother officers, he discovered the reason. They were almost unanimous in their nearly un-Farlan admiration for Miranid, and were working with a coordination no previous Admiral-in-Chief had been able to beg out of them.

Henlo scratched the side of his nose, telling himself that if he were the Minister for Preparedness, he would most certainly have the man killed the instant victory was assured.

But how could anyone have anticipated this development? It had so come about that the man had been wise beyond his knowledge. However, the final battle was still a good time away and might never come. He had leisure in which to investigate—and meanwhile there was a war to prosecute…

The war continued in much the same pattern as before, at least in its early months. Miranid was continually nipping at soft spots, then gouging away the even softer areas which their defense would expose. It was Miranid’s initiative at every battle, and he carried it off well.

He persistently refused to close with Vilkan fleets in space, where the only available loot and glory would be in the destruction of his own fleet, and thus he avoided overwhelming opposition. Instead, he attacked planetary bases, which were difficult to defend but easy to destroy. He attacked with utter ruthlessness, devoting no thought, apparently, to the fact that the bases were almost completely inhabited by subject nationals of former independent empires, and only garrisoned by Vilks.

There was logic behind that, too. Each planet constituted the loot and physical embodiment of glory belonging to some Vilkan war-prince. His cousin princes were invariably only too glad to assign that loot to their own coffers after the Farlans had left. Then, with their ships crammed, they would retreat to their faraway home planets to celebrate before returning to the now perceptibly diminishing frontier. If they returned at all, for, after all, they had anxious heirs at home.

The Farlan power was not in their guns—it was in Miranid’s phenomenal mind.

VI

Once again, the fleet rendezvoused, and once again Miranid conferred with Vice-Admiral Henlo. Henlo had his own flagship now, for the fleet had been reinforced to almost half-again its original strength, and functioned as a loose group of semi-autonomous units.

Henlo’s old executive officer had Torener now, and Henlo occasionally wondered what inspirations the man drew from pacing the same bridge that Miranid had trod. Grandiose ones, probably, for he noticed that Torener was constantly being crippled in over-audacious actions. Well, so much the better. Perhaps, someday, Torener might not rendezvous at all.

His Vice-Admiralty, Henlo reflected, together with the fleet’s strength being so augmented as to give him a substantial command, was strongly indicative of sentiments in the ministries. They looked for a speedy end to the fabulously successful war—and to L’ Miranid. To hasten the day, Henlo’s own position was being strengthened.

That reckless gamble with the unpredictable might yet prove the costliest mistake their august ministerial ambitions could make. The over-paid assassin might sometimes thus be provided with the price of empire.

But that was for another, albeit hastened, day, he reminded himself as his aide knocked on Miranid’s door.

There was the usual exchange of formulas, and then Henlo, leaving his aide in the companionway, entered Miranid’s cabin.

“Henlo, I compliment you on your evident good health.”

“And I you on yours, Admiral,” Henlo replied. Miranid, as usual, was alone in his quarters, and the chart in his hand, and the desk on which he laid it, might have been the same as those aboard the now-forgotten Torener.

But the situation, Admiral, Henlo commented to himself, is not precisely the same.

Miranid had not changed. The thick fur was just as thick—and just as lifeless in sheen—and the tail was as stiff and rigidly unmoving as ever. It was Henlo who had changed—Henlo, whose horizons became more glowingly attainable with every planet that marked the smoking, death-blazoned track into Vilkai.

“Well, Henlo, it seems we constantly meet in situations which are superficially the same, but fundamentally different,” Miranid remarked, and for a moment Henlo’s heart stood still. He’d been away from the admiral too long. He had forgotten the man’s almost terrifying perception of mind.

Not for the first time—but for the first time so strongly— Henlo wondered if that perception could possibly be so limited as not to fully comprehend what the ministries had in mind for him—and whom they had chosen to supplant him.

But Miranid, apparently at least, was referring to something else.

“As you’ve no doubt realized,” he said, “we can no longer hope to capitalize so successfully on the inherent barbarian weaknesses of our enemies. Up to now, we have been operating entirely outside their actual borders. But the day the first Vilkan females and pups die will be the day the entire horde forgets everything but the preservation of the communal hearth.

“We shall then see,” he added drily, “which among all our heroes of the Grand Farlan Starfleet are merely men.”

“I’ve been thinking along much the same lines,” Henlo agreed.

Miranid nodded. “A happy faculty.”

And again, Henlo could not determine within himself just how the admiral had intended the comment to be taken.

“Did you know, Henlo, that certain eminent military tacticians have proved to my satisfaction that war in space is impossible?”

Henlo arched the fur over his eyes. “I haven’t heard the theory.”

“No, I didn’t think you had,” Miranid said in a rambling tone of voice. “However, our present situation is a splendid example.

“Consider. If you picture the present Vilkan holdings as a solid sphere in space, bristling with weapons pointed outward, and our own fleet as a hollow sphere designed to contain and crush it, then you must allow that all Farla with half the Galaxy to help it could not supply us with enough strength to keep our sphere impenetrable from the inside at all points. With the further problem of uncertain ship detection in hyperspace we could not prevent repeated breakthroughs from the inside.

“Once our hollow sphere is broken it is caught between two fires, and gradually decimated if it does not withdraw into a larger, and even more porous, sphere—which can again be broken. Thus, stalemate, eventual disgust, and, finally inconclusive peace at an inconclusive price.

“Now, since we are not going to be foolish enough to form such a sphere the only alternative is to attempt an attack by a knife-like method. We can spit, split, slice, or whittle.

“Spitting is out of the question. If we try to drive through, we expose ourselves to attack from all sides. The splitting procedure gives rise to the same objections. This leaves slicing or whittling—and since a whittle is only a small slice, or a slice a large whittle, let us discuss them simultaneously.”

Miranid looked steadily at Henlo.

“I will not whittle if I can slice, but I cannot slice, and for the same reason, I cannot whittle. For this is not a clay sphere, Henlo, but a steel ball—and red-hot, to boot. With every stroke I make, I will lose a greater percentage of my available ships than the enemy will.

“His supply lines are short—I’ve shortened them for him. His ships can land, be repaired, refueled, and re-armed, their crews replaced by fresh men, and sent back into battle a hundred times for each new ship that can reach me from Farla. I have a limited supply of men, equipment, and food. With every stroke, I wear down my sharpness a little more.”

He paused an instant, then went on, “Until, finally, I attack the sphere for one last time and my dull, worn knife slips off the surface without leaving an impression. So, again, stalemate, eventual disgust, and no true peace—that is, no peace which will not leave conditions immediately ripe for another useless war.

“I would say, as a matter of fact, that this same theory makes true peace impossible so long as any wars are attempted.”

Miranid grinned at Henlo, his professorial mood abruptly ended. “Fortunately, in this special case, we can do the impossible on both counts.”

Henlo granted that it all seemed to make sense—and that Miranid was holding some effective strategy between his ears. It was less easy, however, to understand why the lecture had been launched in the first place. After all, if Miranid had his strategy carefully planned, all the situation required was for him to simply lay that strategy out, and have Henlo execute it.

It could only mean that Miranid’s purposes extended far beyond the mere winning of a war—a fact which Henlo naturally assumed in connection with anyone engaged in any sort of activity. But this was the first time that Miranid had ever revealed his thoughts so candidly.

Was Miranid, too, conscious that things might come to an unexpectedly large head at that last battle?

Henlo noticed with a start that Miranid had deliberately been giving him time to arrive at his conclusions. The admiral grinned again, but now resumed the thread of the discussion without making any comment.

“Our barbarian friends have another weakness, which we have up to this point not been able to utilize without compromising its existence. I’ve carefully saved it until now, and they have considerately not discovered it within themselves.

“The Vilks, of course, were able to make war quite successfully. Since they were operating as a horde of mobile independent principalities, and since they were after loot and glory only, they were never forced to gain what civilized nations would term ‘victory,’ or ‘conquest.’

“They were reapers, harvesting the same field again and again, and gradually extending their borders. They had no time for the re-education of subject peoples to their own ideals or patriotic causes—a fact further implemented by their total lack of such civilized appurtenances. They merely informed their vassals that they had become the property of whatever Vilk it happened to be, and levied tribute accordingly. They left it to the natural fertility of the Vilk soldier to gradually erase all traces of independent nationality among such nations as could interbreed, and to the natural inertia of generations of slavery among such as could not.

“The result has been the gradual accumulation, in Vilk ranks, of a number of Vilks who are not Vilks.”

Miranid seemed anxious to stress the point.

“And these Vilks may be good, barbarian Vilks like all the rest of them. But some of them inevitably feel that their particular kind of Vilk is better fitted to rule the communal roost.

“A situation, you will agree, which does not apply among such civilized communities as Farla, which may have its internal dissensions, but no special uniforms of hide-color, limb-distribution, or digital anomalies around which infra-nationalistic sentiments may be rallied.”

Miranid stabbed the chart with his dividers. “We will slice here, here, and here, with most of our lighter units supported by some heavier groups. You and I, Henlo, will take the remainder of the main fleet and spit right through to Vilkai, where we will crown some highly un-Vilkish Vilk king of the Vilks, and then leave him to perish.

“The entire sorry mess will slash itself to suicide in the petty nationalistic squabbles which are sure to follow the precedent we set them. We will be enabled to do so quite easily by the allies which our housewifely intelligence corps has neatly suborned for us.”

Miranid stared down at the chart, his weight on his spread arms.

“Henlo,” he said thoughtfully, “I think we may have come, finally, to our last battle.”

VII

The deceleration of apparent time had begun for Henlo a few moments before, when he had reached that same conclusion. He realized, on the level of cold reason, that it was not time which was slowing. It was his own thoughts which were speeding, driving through his brain so fast that they tricked the time-sense geared to his normal thinking pace. But, nevertheless, it seemed to him that the world was drowned in glue through which only he moved with ease and fluidity.

It was a phenomenon of mind that came to him in battles and conspiracies, and he enjoyed it, in one special part of his mind, whenever it came. And it was a paradox of the situation that he thereby enjoyed it less, for he arrived at his inevitable conclusion sooner, and thus ended the moment stolen from mortality.

“It would certainly seem so,” he said calmly, in agreement with Miranid’s conviction. “But we can still lose the war. Something can go wrong. And if it does, every other battle will have been wasted.”

Miranid nodded. “You’re quite right. But I don’t think anything disastrous will happen. So plan this battle as though it were the last, definitely.”

He grinned. The lopsided expression was known throughout the fleet, and the men—officers and crew—had long ago nicknamed him “The Laughing Genius.”

“Because,” he said, “even if it isn’t, we’ll never plan another.”

No, thought Henlo, we never will. Even if it is.

“Your permission?”

“Granted.”

Henlo turned to go, and was at the door when Miranid called him back. The admiral was looking at him cautiously, as if trying to decide how far he might go. Finally he seemed to come to a conclusion, for he spoke abruptly.

“Henlo,” he said, “you’re a first-class phenomenon, for Farla. Somehow, you got by the System, probably by being infinitely superior in your special kind of politics to the people who administer it. But are you phenomenon enough to have figured out what your rapid promotions are leading up to?”

“Admiral?” Henlo looked puzzled. He was not, but he looked it, which, among Farlans, amounted to the same thing for conversational purposes.

Miranid looked at him shrewdly. “I thought so.” He shook his head, his eyes enigmatical with an emotional shading which just might have been admiration.

“One favor, Henlo.”

“Surely, sir. What is it?”

“Would you repeat, for what you may classify as my whimsical amusement, the standard Farlan textbook definition of paranoia?”

“Paranoia, sir? Why, I believe paranoia is that form of psychosis which is characterized by delusions in the subject of benevolence toward the world in general and of his almost certain inferiority to all other individuals. It’s accompanied by an irrational persistence in believing only good of others.

“It is most easily detected by the manifestation of the following symptoms: incurable addiction to literal truth in the transmission of information, and an unshakable conviction that the method of success is the commission of as many genuinely altruistic favors as possible to as many individuals as possible. The altruism is coupled with the expectation of genuinely reciprocal action on the part of other individuals.”

“Thank you, Henlo,” Miranid said, as if chuckling at some secret joke. “I just wanted to hear it again.”

Henlo ended the conversation with a few neutral conclusion-formula phrases, and left to plan his battle.

His battle, not Miranid’s. It was obvious, now, that Miranid knew that there was something strong and sinister upwind. But he only knew it in the same manner that Henlo was cognizant of something similar planned for himself. Logic dictated that no man as powerful as either of them had become could be permitted to live.

But while Henlo could be almost certain that none of his subordinates would dare take the risk, Miranid must, this near the end of his extraordinary appointment, be trying desperately to determine who it was that had been given the orders for his assassination.

Come to think of it, Miranid had just as many reasons— just as many identical reasons—for believing that none of his subordinates would dare… Including Henlo…

Including Henlo!

Suddenly, Henlo found himself wondering desperately who his unobtrusive executioner might be. And very shortly thereafter realized just how shrewd and sharp a parallel Miranid had drawn between them. For there could be no doubt that Miranid understood completely that his own sudden promotion could only result in assassination, once his usefulness had come to an end.

He realized, too, the significance of Miranid’s request for the definition of paranoia. Only the insane could expect anything else. And both he and Miranid were eminently sane men. Too sane, perhaps, to let themselves be murdered and murdered murderer in turn?

Miranid had wondered how close to death he had stepped, and then had stepped safely away, by expressing his conclusion that this might not be the last battle.

And he had been right. It would be the last against the Vilks, perhaps, but not their last. Not their last together.

Cold logic drove Henlo to the conclusion that he could not let Miranid die, if he himself hoped to live.

He began to reason accordingly. Once more he spent his allotted nap-time in thought, but the sacrifice was worth the price. By the time he was ready to begin particularizing Miranid’s general plan for the conquest of Vilkai, the far more important plan was carefully drawn up and filed safely in his brain.

VIII

The lesser plan worked perfectly. While the lighter part of the Farlan fleet chopped at one side of the tight Vilk sphere, Miranid, with Henlo on his bridge, led the stabbing force that hissed toward Vilkai.

They met no serious opposition. With every solar system their forces left behind them, their fleet grew in groups of eight ships, twelve, or twenty, each led by a fierce-visaged nominal Vilk who was actually a Ganelash, or Diran, or Tylhean, or whatever other kind of Vilk by adoption he might racially be.

A few of them stayed with their ships, but most of them turned command over to the fleet’s general control, and came to Miranid’s flagship. There they and the admiral and Henlo stood and plotted out each new contact with each successive race of ‘Vilks,’ each of whom, of course, were convinced that in their people rested true Vilk destiny.

Still, they got along well enough together aboard the ship. They and the Farlan admiral seemed to understand each other, despite the language barriers. Henlo appraised them all for first-class fighting men, as good as anything Farla was likely to turn up, and in far greater numbers.

He suspected strongly that Miranid’s quoted theory might well have proven correct in the case of the Vilks, at least. And he made the first move of the greater battle. Somehow, in the course of an otherwise unimpressive battle, Torener, still fighting with Henlo’s old executive officer still commanding, was “accidentally” caught in the flagship’s gunfire and completely destroyed.

Henlo felt easier in his stomach. But, of course, it had only been a move directed by the logic of probabilities, which had never yet in the history of man been so acted upon as to produce more than a probable certainty.

“Most regrettable,” Miranid had commented when Henlo reported the accident to him. His whiskers had twitched, and Henlo felt sure that, though there had been no actual exchange of plans between them, Miranid’s own moves would mesh neatly with his own, once they had been decided on.

To guard against the outside contingency that they might, at this point, mesh too neatly, he took every possible precaution against being so far physically from Miranid as the battle progressed that any accident to himself might not be mutual.

More and more, Henlo realized, the pressure of events and actions was welding them together into a tacit alliance—an alliance that was not so much the product of mutual desire as the result of their sharing a common, deadly danger.

They were well-matched, but they were, nevertheless, peculiar bedfellows.

“Odd people, these, to be working together,” Miranid commented casually one day when he and Henlo were standing some distance away from the allied chiefs. Henlo, of course, saw the actual meaning behind the parallel, and nodded.

“And yet, similar,” Miranid went on. “Nature seems to have chosen the symmetrical quadruped as the basic form with which to supplement most of her intelligences. Some of them she has turned into bipeds by making them walk erect, and others she has tilted onto their forelimbs. But they are all basically the same, and one intelligence is basically capable of understanding another.”

“I see your meaning exactly, sir,” Henlo replied, and Miranid grinned his trademark laugh…

Vilkai was almost an anti-climax. It fell without serious opposition to half the spearheading segment, while the remainder of the heavy fleet formed a sphere around the system and then expanded outward, relentlessly crushing Vilk ships against the bottom of the hollow globe which the lighter ships had formed from outside.

The formation was, of course, extremely porous. But the surviving Vilks were successfully scattered and thus broken up into the small tribes which Miranid desired—to trouble whatever king sat on the sham throne at Vilkai.

Now, Henlo knew, he and Miranid had been set free to fight their personal war with the Farlan ministries. Taut, keyed-up to fighting pitch, he hurried down the companionway to Miranid’s quarters.

IX

“Well, Henlo, the fleet celebrates,” the admiral said drily while the sounds of men savagely drunk with joy and victory, glory and alcohol, according to their weaknesses, echoed through the ship’s gaping metal corridors.

Henlo smiled. “Sir, I compliment you on your evident and continued good health,” he said.

“And I you on yours,” Miranid replied. “So it was you they detailed.” He grinned. “A poor choice,-as they’ll find out.” He took a small flask of amber fluid out of a cabinet, poured it into a cup, and stood looking at it thoughtfully.

“I’d offer you some of this, Henlo, but I don’t think you’d like it. It’s an acquired taste, for all the merchants say. For that matter, I don’t even know if I’ll like it, with these taste buds.”

He raised the cup to his mouth, and took a sip. Then he threw his head back and said something with a ritual ring to it, but in a language so foreign that even Henlo could understand that his tongue and vocal cords had difficulty in forming the sounds properly. Then he drained the cup and shook himself with pleasure. It was the first time Henlo had ever seen him display normal gratification at some appealing vice.

He set the cup down and grinned at Henlo. “That’s my genuine trademark, Admiral-in-Chief D’ Henlo. One toast in skaatch to the Agency when I finish a job. But you wouldn’t know.”

Henlo looked at him with complete mystification, and Miranid widened his grin. “You were going to suggest your announcing to Farla that I had died in battle, weren’t you. In accordance with the orders handed you by the Minister for Preparedness. A most engaging rascal. But he should have done something about his inability to recognize superior talent—meaning yours, not mine.”

“Substantially, that was my plan, yes,” Henlo said, still trying to glean all of Miranid’s implications from his almost incomprehensible remarks. “The next step, of course, would have been to play on your remarkable popularity with the fleet. We would have jointly revealed the entire plot to them, declared that no such government was fit to rule, and staged a coup.”

“Thereafter ruling together in prosperous harmony, eh, my Machiavellian comrade?”

Henlo tried to find some meaning for the exotic word, as he had tried for skaatch, and similarly failed.

“Well, that’s precisely what we shall do, up to a point,” Miranid assured him. “But with one modification. Just before we reach Farla, I shall die most convincingly—and most, to remove all doubts from the minds of the fleet, naturally. My dying wish shall be to be buried in space, in a lifeboat. That lifeboat, conveniently enough for me, shall be pointed toward Earth.

“I might hastily add, at this point, Henlo, that my fur may be grafted and my tail false, but the weapons built into me are far from imitations. I should not advise your indulging your natural instincts when I tell you, as I tell you now, that I am an Earthman.”

Henlo’s tail lashed violently, and his eyes dilated. He had not lost control of himself so thoroughly since his youth. He stared at Miranid for several silent moments, then moved his hand slowly toward his sidearm.

Miranid chuckled. “I didn’t think you’d bluff.” He flexed his shoulders and something small and glittering pushed its nose out of the thick, dead fur at the base of his heavy pectorals. “That’s one of them, Henlo. Just one, and don’t make me stretch any farther, or it will go off.” The glittering thing was pointed directly at Henlo’s skull. “Besides, you need me. You need me right up to the last, when I chug off valiantly in my steel mausoleum. You’ll never get the fleet to accept your succession to leadership unless I pass it to you.”

Henlo stared malevolently at the Earthman, and his lipless mouth compressed until it almost disappeared. But he took his hand away from the sidearm.

“I am, as I’ve said, an Earthman—a hired soldier, if you’ll believe there are such people. And believe me, the Minister for Preparedness was only too glad to get me— neglecting to realize that I had his little schemes figured out before he even conceived them.

“After all,” he said depreciatingly, “We’ve got paranoids on Earth, too.”

Henlo failed to understand the reference.

“And, for what it’s worth as a compliment—a genuine, sincere, altruistic compliment, Henlo—even if I could, I wouldn’t take my chances with you, on Farla. After all, I’m getting old, and you’re bound to improve over even the remarkable standard you now maintain.”

Miranid really smiled then, with the mellow warmth of an undefeated soldier-philosopher cheered by wine.

“Can an entire society be psychotic and not realize it? Apparently it can. All of you Farlans have passed over the borderline. You are all paranoids. You are all twice as mad as March hares. But you have a beautiful way of rationalizing it—exemplified in the Farlan definition of paranoia. So long as you hold fast to that definition, which is the exact opposite of the truth in all respects, you will continue to believe that black is white, and white black!”

X

Henlo walked slowly away from the window.

The years he had bought so painfully were gone, dribbled away in hours here and half-hours there, and now suddenly it was as though that half-century had never been, except in the memory of a senile old man.

Slowly, through the spinning of the years, he had put the structure together, guessing what he must and confirming when he could, until he could see it, looming over Farla, casting shadows deeper than the night.

For one man—even the Laughing Genius the fleet still remembered so fondly and so erroneously—could never have arranged so complicated a negotiation, or had himself so well disguised and indoctrinated. And Miranid—the Earthman, rather, an Earthman named Smith—had just once, in one cryptic phrase, mentioned an agency. The Agency.

There were agencies of various kinds on Farla, dealing in services and commodities, and collecting their percentages. A pity, he thought, that none of them dealt in years. But it was The Agency which would have the necessary facilities for locating, offering, and indoctrinating the required talent.

Smith. Smith, and how many more like him? The leaders of the Vilk tribes that had allied themselves with the fleet? Yes… and the others. The others he knew were agents. The great leaders of the hundred empires that had sprung remarkably to life from the blasted ashes of the Vilk’s captive nations, all squabbling among themselves, all fighting stalemate wars—and all hating Farla, for it had been Farlan ships and Farlan guns that had systematically scoured their planets.

The barbarian empire was gone, collapsed in its own blood, as Smith had predicted. In its place were a hundred civilizations, pressing close to Farla’s borders.

Bit by bit, he had given his frontiers away to them, rather than fight. Piece by piece, they had tattered Farla’s hide. For he did not dare leave Farla to lead the fleet—he had too many heirs at home. And the fleet, in any case, was weaker than ever. He had not dared leave it intact, or permit it to have able officers.

Governments were covetous of governing, he had once told himself.

He laughed bitterly. Here, in this impregnable fortress-dungeon that was his capitol, he was the government. And his heirs had waited patiently, once he’d taught them its impregnability. But now it was over. They’d waited patiently, as the Earthmen were waiting.

Wars in space were impossible. But the strength of Farla’s fleet had not been in her guns, but in Smith’s mind. An Earthman’s mind.

And he wondered now, as the darkest shadows fell, how much was in the minds of the Earthmen. Had they, as he himself once had, chosen the definite situation in preference to the equivocal? Had they deliberately given him all these hints, knowing that he must act as he had, stripping Farla’s strength in exchange for her life, rather than ever hire an Agency hero to give Farla another poison dose of treacherous strength?

Certainly, they had never even attempted to contact him. But were they waiting now, only until his successor took his place, to offer pat salvation to the bleeding Farlan Empire? Waiting for this new opportunity?

They had used Farla to destroy Vilkai, and Farla to destroy Farla. Would they use Farla again, to sub-divide space into smaller and smaller empires until there were no longer any foes to throw their ships back to the piddling solar system from whence they came?

He did not know. But he suspected.

He suspected. But he did not know.

And there had been nothing for him to do but follow either one track or the other, and both roads led to Earth.

Soon, he suspected, all roads, all over the Galaxy, would lead to Earth. To wily, scheming Earth.

The die had been cast.