The Long Way Home

2

Lord Brannoch dhu Crombar, Tertiary Admiral of the Fleet, High Noble of Thor, ambassador of the League of Alpha Centauri to the Solar Technate, did not look like a dignitary of any civilized power. He was gigantic, six and a half feet tall, so wide in the shoulders that he seemed almost squat; the yellow mane of a Thorian chieftain fell past ears in which jeweled rings glittered to the massive collarbone, the eyes were blue and merry under a tangled forest of brow, the face was blunt and heavy and sun-browned, seamed with old scars. His lounging pajamas were of Centaurian cut, complete with trousers, and overly colorful; a diamond loop circled his throat. He was also known as a sportsman, hunter, duellist, a mighty lover and a roisterer with an unsurpassed knowledge of the dives on a dozen planets. The apartment which his enormous body seemed to fill was overcrowded with color, ornament, trophies, hardly a book-spool in sight.

All of which fitted in well enough with his character, but was likewise maintained as camouflage for one of the shrewdest brains in the known universe.

It might have been observed that the drink in his hand as he relaxed on the balcony was not his home planet’s rotgut but one of the better Venusian vintages, and that he sipped it with real appreciation. But there was no one to notice except four monsters in a tank, and they didn’t care.

Morning sunlight flooded over him, gilding the airy spires and flexible bridgeways of Lora against a serene heaven. He was, as befitted his rank, high in the upper levels of the city, and its voice drifted to him in a whisper, the remote song of machines that were its heart and brain and nerve and muscle. At only one point in his visual range did the smooth harmony of metal and tinted plastic end, where the city dropped clifflike four thousand feet to the surrounding parks. The few human figures abroad on the flanges and bridgeways were ants, almost invisible at this distance. A service robot rolled past them, bound for some job too complex for a merely human slave.

Brannoch felt relaxed and peaceful. Things were going well. His sources of information were operating quietly and efficiently, already he knew much about Sol which would be of value when the war started; he had bagged a dragon in Minister Tanarac’s African preserve, he had won grandly the last time he visited Luna Casino, he had bought a very satisfactory girl a few days ago, the last mail ship from Centauri had reported his estates on Freyja were yielding a bumper crop—of course, the news was more than four years old, but still welcome. Life could be worse.

The apologetic buzz of the robophone interrupted his reflections. Too lazy to get up, he steered the chair over to it. Someone who knew his special and highly unofficial number was calling, but that could be a lot of people. He thumbed the switch, and an unfamiliar face looked at him. The caller bowed ritually, covering his eyes, and said humbly: “Audience requested with you, my lord.”

“Now?” asked Brannoch.

“P-p-presently, my lord, when c-convenient.” The stutter would be taken for the normal nervousness of an underling in such an august presence, in case this secret line was tapped—which Brannoch knew very well it was. Actually, the pattern of repeated consonants was an identifying password. This was Varis t’u Hayem, a petty Minister and a captain in the Solar militechnic intelligence corps, dressed in civilian clothes and wearing a life-mask. He would not be reporting in person unless it was a matter of urgency. Brannoch led him through a routine of giving his assumed name and business, told him to come up, and cut the circuit. Only then did he allow himself a frown.

Rising, he made a careful check of the concealed roboguns and of the needler under his own tunic. It could be an attempt at assassination, if Chanthavar’s counterspies had learned enough. Or it could—

He went swiftly over t’u Hayem’s background, and a wry, half-pitying grin twisted his mouth. It was so easy, so terribly easy to break a man.

You met this proud, ambitious aristocrat, whose only real fault was youth and inexperience, at a couple of receptions, drew him out—oh, simple, simple, with the dazzling glow of your own birth and rank behind you. Your agents in his corps got his psychorecord for you, and you decided he was promising material. So you cultivated him, not much, but even a little attention from the agent of a foreign power was overwhelming if you were a High Noble, an admiral, and an ambassador. You pulled one or two wires for him. You introduced him to really top-flight company, gorgeous appareled nobles of every known state, their magnificent women, their cultivated conversation and splendid homes and rare wines. You gave him the idea that he was listening at the door to plans which would shake the stars- Naturally he did some favors for you, nothing to violate his oath, just stretching a point here and there.

You took him to pleasure houses operated with real imagination. You got him gambling, and at first he won incredible sums. Then you moved in for the kill.

In a few days his fortune was gone, he was sunk a light-year down in debt, his superiors were getting suspicious of him because of his association with you, his creditors (who were your creatures, which he did not know) attacked his property and wife—you have him. And for some three years, now, he had been your spy within his own corps, because only you and your organization propped him up, and because even a tiny illegality performed for you made it possible to blackmail him. Some day, if he gave you something really valuable, you might even buy his wife (with whom he was so foolish as to be in love) and give her back to him.

Very easy. Brannoch had neither pleasure nor pain in making a tool out of what had been a man. It was part of his job; in so far as he had any feeling about his broken men, it was one of contempt that they should ever have been so vulnerable.

The outer door of the suite scanned t’u Hayem’s fingers and retinae and opened for him. He entered and bowed with the proper formulas. Brannoch did not invite him to sit down. “Well?” he said.

“Most radiant lord, I have information which may be of interest to you. I thought I had best bring it personally.”

Brannoch waited. The pseudo-face before him twitched with an eagerness that some might have thought pathetic.

“My lord, I am as you know stationed at Mesko Field. The day before yesterday, a strange spaceship entered Earth’s atmosphere and was made to land there.” T’u Hayem fumbled in his tunic and brought out a spool which he threaded into a scanner. His hands shook. “Here is a picture of it.”

The scanner threw a three-dimensional image above the table top. Brannoch whistled. “Stormblaze! What kind of a ship is that?”

“Incredibly archaic, my lord. See, they even use rockets —a uranium-fission pile for energy, reaction mass expelled as ions—”

Brannoch enlarged the image and studied it. “Hm-m-m. yes. Where is it from?”

“I don’t know, my lord. We referred the question to the Technon itself—records division—and were told that the design is of the very earliest days of space travel, well before gravity control was discovered. Possibly from one of the oldest of the lost colonies.”

“Hm-m-m. Then, the crew must be—have been—outlaws. I can’t see explorers taking off knowing they wouldn’t be back for perhaps thousands of years. What about the crew?” Brannoch turned a knob, and the next image was of three humans in outlandish gray uniform, clean-shaven, hair cut short in the style of Solar Ministers. “That all?”

“No, my lord. If that were all, I wouldn’t have considered the business so important. But there was a nonhuman with them, a race unknown to anyone including the records division. We got a picture, snapped hastily—”

The alien was shown running. Big beast—eight feet long including the thick tail, bipedal with a forward-crouching gait, two muscular arms ending in four-fingered hands. It could be seen to be male and presumably a mammal, at least it was covered with smooth mahogany fur. The head was lutrine: round, blunt-snouted, ears placed high, whiskers about the mouth and above the long yellow eyes.

“My lord,” said t’u Hayem in a near whisper, “they emerged and were put under arrest pending investigation. Suddenly the alien made a break for it. He’s stronger than a human, trampled down three men in his path, moved faster than you would think. Anaesthetic guns opened up on him -rather, they should have, but they didn’t. They didn’t go off! I snapped a shot at him with my hand blaster, and the circuit was dead—nothing happened. Several others did too. A small robot shell was fired after him, and crashed. A piloted scoutplane swooped low, but its guns didn’t go off, the control circuits went dead, and it crashed too. The nearest gate was closed, but it opened for him as he approached it. One man close by focused a neutral tracker on him as he went into the woods, but it didn’t work till he was out of its range.

“Since then, we have been striving to hunt him down, there are patrols all over the district, but no trace has been found. My lord, it doesn’t seem possible!”

Brannoch’s face might have been carved in dark wood. “So,” he murmured. His eyes rested on the image of captured motion. “Quite naked, too. No weapon, no artifact. Are there any estimates of the range of his... power?”

“Roughly five hundred yards, my lord. That was approximately the distance within which our apparatus failed. He moved too fast for longer-range weapons to be brought against him in those few seconds.”

“How about the humans?”

“They seemed as shocked as we, my lord. They were unarmed and made no attempt to resist us. Their language was unknown. At present they are under psychostudy, which I imagine will include a course in Solar, and I’ve no access to them. But the records division tells us, from the documents aboard, that the language is—” T’u Hayem searched his memory. “Old American. The documents are being translated, but I haven’t been told of any findings made.”

Old American! thought Brannoch. How old is that ship, anyway? Aloud: “What other material do you have?”

“Stats of all the documents, pictures and whatever else was found aboard, my lord. It... it wasn’t easy to get them.”

Brannoch grunted indifferently. “Is that all?”

T’u Hayem’s mouth fell open. “All, my lord? What else could I do?”

“Much,” said Brannoch curtly. “Among other things, I want a complete report on the findings of the interrogators, preferably a direct transcript. Also the exact disposition made of this case, daily bulletins of progress on the alien hunt... yes, much.”

“My lord, I haven’t the authority to—”

Brannoch gave him a name and address. “Go to this fellow and explain the problem—at once. He’ll tell you whom to get in touch with at the field and how to apply the right pressures.”

“My lord”—T’u Hayem wrung his hands—“I thought perhaps, my lord... you know m-my wife—”

“I’ll pay you the flat rate for this stuff, applied against your debts,” said Brannoch. “If it turns out to be of some value, I’ll consider a bonus. You may go.”

Silently, t’u Hayem bowed and backed out.

Brannoch sat motionless for a while after he was gone, and then ran through the series of stat-pictures. Good clear ones, page after page of writing in a language that was very strange to him. Have to get this translated, he thought, and the file cabinet in his brain gave the name of a scholar who would do it and keep a closed mouth.

He lounged a bit longer, then rose and went to the north wall of the room. It showed a moving stereo-pattern, very conventional; but behind it was a tank of hydrogen, methane, and ammonia at a thousand atmospheres pressure and minus one hundred degrees temperature, and there was visual and aural apparatus.

“Hello, you Thrymkas,” he said genially. “Were you watching?”

“I was,” said the mechanical voice. Whether it was Thrymka-1, -2, -3, or -4 which spoke, Brannoch didn’t know, nor did it matter. “We are all in linkage now.”

“What do you think?”

“Apparently this alien has telekinetic powers,” said the monsters unemotionally. “We assume these to be simply over electronic flows, because it is noted that everything he controlled or disabled involved electronic tubes. Only a small amount of telekinetic energy would be needed to direct the currents in vacuum as he wished and thus to take over the whole device.

“With high probability, this means that he is telepathic to some degree: sensitive to electrical and other neural pulses and capable of inducing such currents in the nervous systems of others. However, he could hardly have read the minds of his guards. Thus his action was probably just to remain free until he could evaluate his situation; but what he will then do is unpredictable until more is known of his psychology.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought, too,” said Brannoch. “How about the ship—any ideas?”

“Verification must await translation of those documents, but it seems probable that the ship is not from some lost colony but from Earth herself—the remote past. In the course of wanderings, it chanced on the planet of this alien and took him along. The distance of said planet depends on the age of the ship, but since that seems to date from about five thousand years ago, the planet cannot be more than twenty-five hundred light-years removed.”

“Far enough,” said Brannoch. “The known universe only reaches a couple of hundred.”

He took a turn about the room, hands clasped behind his back. “I doubt that the humans matter,” he said, “Especially if they really did come from Earth; then they’re only of historical interest. But this alien, now—that electron-control effect is a new phenomenon. Just imagine what a weapon!” His eyes blazed. “Put the enemy guns out of action, even turn them on their owners—disable the Technon itself- Father!”

“The same thought has doubtless occurred to the Solar authorities,” said the Thrymans.

“Uh-huh. Which is why they’re pressing the hunt so hard.

If they don’t catch him, these human friends of his may know how to do it. Even if they do make the capture, he’s still likely to be influenced by his crewmates. Which makes the fellow of more importance than I’d realized—” Brannoch prowled the floor, turning the fact over in his mind.

All at once, he felt very alone. He had his aides here, his bodyguard, his agents, his spy ring, but they were few among the hostile billions of Sol. It would take almost four and a half years to get a message home... as long for the fleet to come here—

Sharp within him rose the image of his home. The steep, windy mountains of Thor, whistling stormy skies, heath and forest and broad fair plains, gray seas rolling under the tidal drag of three moons, the dear hard pull of the planet’s mass; the hall of his ancestors, stone and timber rearing heavily to smoky rafters and ancient battle flags, his horses and hounds and the long halloo of hunting; the proud quarrelsome nobles, the solid, slow-spoken yeomen; great hush of winter snowfall and the first green flames of spring—the love and longing for his planet was an ache within his breast.

But he was a ruler, and the road of kings is hard. Also, and here he grinned, it would be fun to sack Earth, come the day.

His mission had suddenly narrowed. He had to get this alien for Centauri, so the scientists back home could study the power and duplicate it in a military unit. Failing that, he had to prevent Sol from doing the same—by killing the creature if necessary. He dismissed the idea of joining the chase with his own agents: too much of a giveaway, too small a chance of success. No, it would be better to work through those human prisoners.

But what hold could he get on men whose world was five thousand years in its grave?

Returning to the scanner, he went back through its spool. Some of the frames showed pictures and other objects which must be of a personal nature. There was one photograph of a woman which was quite excellent.

An idea occurred to him. He walked back onto the balcony, picked up his wineglass, and toasted the morning with a small laugh. Yes, it was a fine day.