The Man Without a Planet

ONE

RAUL LINTON WENT INTO THE WAR a boy, young, untried, full of patriotism, ambition and ideals, thrilled by bugles and banners and the heart-stirring sight of great ships lifting against the dark their blazing torches. He came out in ’68 a man, seasoned and tempered by twelve endless years of war, and miraculously unscarred.

Unscarred, that is, only in a sense. Somehow his strapping six foot four inches of lean-muscled body has escaped maiming in the bloodiest, most savage war ever fought between the stars. But his mind, or soul or character—call it what you will—was seared deeply and forever. Like most other men in the Naval vanguard, exposed to the assault and ravishment of planets, he came to pray for death. Any­thing to put an end to the madness and ferocity of what historians would neatly label the Third Imperial War—and to that consummation he labored valiantly and single-mindedly. But instead of being fried with his ship, caught in a barrage of planet-mounted lasers, or blasted to incandescent gas by a computer-guided mobile bomb, he went on from year to year unscathed, and earned a reputation for cool- mindedness and courage that embarrassed him.

Instead of the clean, swift death and long, quiet, dream­less sleep he hungered for, he won medals and promotions. He went from Flight Lieutenant to Wing-Commander in three years. He would have ended as Fleet Admiral, pilot­ing a desk at Naval Headquarters on Trelion V, except that he refused to play the game as others did. Something about him, something in his cold, hard eyes and scornful, mock­ing laugh, gave him the reputation of a maverick and made them distrust him even while they praised (and rewarded) what they miscalled his “bravery.”

Most boys grow up slowly, sheltered in home surroundings, then in a richly-traditioned university, then in the patterned life of career and marriage. Raul Linton grew up on the bridge of scoutship, forward of the assault line, when they “scorched” Darogir. Thirteen nitrogen bombs light quite a bonfire—bright enough and hot enough to do more than just boil off a planet’s oceans and turn the crust into one huge black scab of radioactive slag. They can also bum through the crysalis of conventions, traditions, courtesy, religion, prejudice and second-hand ideas boys are taught to accept as civiliza­tion.

Several hundred thousand men and women and children died on Darogir in a trifle over eight minutes. And all be­cause the fleet had orders to rendezvous near the Center- worlds in two days, and had no time to lay siege to a re­calcitrant planet—nor even, it seems, to give it a chance to surrender.

Orders are orders.

And rebels have no right to exist, anyway.

So Raul Linton, there on the bridge, watching an entire planet in flames, decided if this was civilization—it was not for him.

But he was no traitor. He went on fighting, but all he hoped for was a swift, clean end—a death “with honor” as Naval men say. Instead he won honors, but no death. What career-men dream of—swift promotions to flag rank—came his way without being sought. He was well on his way to what they call “a brilliant career”—and then they took another look at this long, lean, cold-eyed Herculian— and didn’t like what they saw.

Raul had a way of smiling silently at the absurd. And he found the Navy absurd, with its trimmings of bannerets, ti­tles, ranks, courtesies, traditions, all like the sugary frosting on a cake, laid over the raw and ugly realities of cold­blooded “expedient” mass-murder.

And he found the war absurd—tragically so. All the Mica Stars wanted was self-rule. They were hardly the blood-lust­ing fiends, dripping with gore and slavering for conquest, that Imperial propagandists made them out to be. Of course, they were unwise not to be humans … although the Vruu Kophe didn’t have much to say in the matter, when they evolved from intelligence-prone arachnidae. But “spiders” they were, in a sense, and lots of humans find spiders repulsive. Squirmy things to be stepped on—or “scorched” with a bar­rage of nitrogen bombs. What matter if the “spiders” have a culture sixteen thousand years old. Schools of incredibly beautiful bardic verse. Musical compositions as complex as to make a Bach fugue look like a nursery rhyme. Tapes­tries so subtle as to employ thirty-two distinct colors, visible to Vruu Kophe sight, that is, not to “human” eyes.

So Raul found the war absurd.

Perhaps he even found the Imperium absurd.

He didn’t say.

But he offended people—the wrong people. So, instead of ending out the war behind a desk on Trelion V, with four platinum crowns on his shoulder-strap and perhaps a Knighthood or even a Baronetcy to his name, he stayed on the front, still fighting. They didn’t know this was what he really wanted; perhaps they wouldn’t have let him stay on fighting if they had.

And when the Mica Stars were finally crashed and the Third Imperial War came to its eventual, heroic, triumphal end in the fifth year of the Empery of His Magnificence, Arban Fourth, otherwise known as Year 407 of the Imper­ium, or 3468 a.d., if you go by the old-style dating, Raul Linton found himself at loose ends—and somehow still alive.

He resigned his commission at Petraphar, although they promised him a Fleet-Commandership if he would serve on during the Occupation of the Mica Cluster. But he, who had endured the unendurable and had earned a chest-full of ribands and decorations, including the Order of Arion Imperator (second class), and the Gold Star of Valiance twice, had no stomach for what he knew would be happening dur­ing an occupation. He had had a taste of it during the temporary occupation of Nordonn III during his third cam­paign—and had earned a court martial when he broke up a gang of happy, drunken noncoms, busily engaged in burn­ing Vruu Kophe women alive with flame pistols while “regulating” a native border village.

So, at 31, he found himself drifting, having politely—for him—declined the honor of reenlistment at next-higher-rank. Perhaps the powers-that-be were relieved, after all. They didn’t press him too hard, and were glad to give him a Na­val homecoming pass good for six months on any official ship.

But he wasn’t quite ready for home yet.

He drifted.

From Petraphar he bought passage to Narlion IV—bought passage, please note, having torn up his six months’ travel pass at the de-enlistment station. His friends thought he was mad not to take advantage of free Naval transport, but he was done with the Space Navy forever. And besides, he had twelve years’ untouched pay banked and secure, in good platinum Imperials.

Narlion IV was a pleasure-world. Endless, continent-long beaches of snowy sand, fringed with pseudo-palms like brok­en emeralds, laced with glistening foam and washed with clear green waters on which you could boat or aquaski or just laze about on a floater in the warmly golden sunshine, bath­ing and baking out twelve years’ accumulation of bone-deep exhaustion.

Not to mention the casinos and the thousand games of “chance” so-called, that beckoned to the fat-pursed tourist … and women. The Narlionid women are small and sleek with almond eyes and flesh like ripe gold fruit. Beachwear in these days of highly advanced Galactic culture dwindled to a miniscule garment of strictly utilitarian purpose: a pouch to hold locker and hotel keys, generally strapped to the left wrist. Hence, everywhere Raul looked along the white beaches he was confronted with nude breasts and thighs and bottoms. The Narlionid are a friendly, hospitable race, and their wo­men would have been happy to offer the ultimate in hospi­tality to a raw-boned, red-headed Herculipn of his manly inches—but Raul Linton felt uncomfortable with women and rarely enjoyed their company.

This is not to say he was either an invert or a celibate, but just old-fashioned. Sleek, soft women did not stir him. He came of rugged border stock. His home-world, Bar- nassa, had been settled two centuries ago in the high days of Mardax and Ralric Second. His forebears had been har­dy, pioneering folk, men and women both capable of handling a land-breakfer, or dozer-derrick combo, or a laser rifle when the Spring migration came and iophodons swarmed over farmland and field. Women with soft hands and softer heads interested him little: his ideal was a woman who could work, and fight, right alongside her man if need there was.

He despised the merely ornamental woman.

And he drifted on.

After a few months baking mahogany-brown in Narlion’s golden sun, he bought passage on a freight packet Rim- wards to Argain in the Web Stars. Here the great Galadrus Imperator University reared its white roofs under a blue-white A5 spectrum star, similar to Altair. Here he had once dreamed of an education, among the cool, cloistered walks and gardens, absorbing knowledge in the university the Em­peror Galadrus—one of Raul’s favorite historical figures—had founded in the third year of his Empery.

Here, for one hundred sixty years or so, the statesmen, scientists, poets and legalists of the Imperium had come to leam … and had gone forth to do great things among the stars.

Raul had once hoped to be one of them.

But how could he settle, now, into the quiet grooves of a scholastic life, with blood and flame and thunder within him, marking him?

He drifted on.

For two years he occupied himself with drifting. And at last he came home.

The Hercules Cluster was, in these days, one of the bor­ders of Imperial authority. Beyond it lay the Outworlds, law­less and troublesome, fomenting treason, stirring with war and constant rumors of war that occasionally boiled over into Imperial territory. It was wild and savage country in this year of 3470, uncomfortable to many, lacking in the luxuries and amenities of “civilization”—a virtual exile to government officials. To Raul, it was home.

The Cluster was considered a full Province, and a Provinical Viceroy, Lord Cheviot, ruled at the Provincial Cap­ital, a planet called Omphale, or Arthenis II. Raul’s home-world, Bamassa, lay only five light-years Rimwards. So he stopped at Omphale. And here, for several months he stayed.

And for several months he was treated with a certain cool cordiality. Obviously something of his Naval reputation had preceded him, and doubtless exaggerated in the telling and re-telling. No doubt they thought of him as a malcontent, a rebel against authority, a potential troublemaker. But, still, there was some cordiality expressed. It may be that they expected him to apply for a government job. The Lin­tons had something of a hereditary tradition in Provin­cial Administration, stretching back two centuries to Colonial days, when an Admiral Marus Linton had been First Colonial Administrator of Bamassa during the great Empery of Mardax, and, after him, of Ralric Second. For something like six or seven generations a Linton had always been in the government, as Regional Coordinator, System Administrator, or Planetary Commissioner. The name was in good odor hereabouts, regardless of how it may or may not have smelled back on Trelion V.

However, he asked for nothing. He looked up old friends and investigated the management of his estate, or of what little was left of it. Family fortunes had been on the de­cline ever since the days of Arban Second; his father had died when Raul was little and Migal his older brother had inherited most of the property and holdings, and promptly mortgaged them, wasted the money, and died a pauper and a drunkard. There was little enough for Raul to investigate: a few score acres on Bamassa given over to silkweed, a few manufactories on the outskirts of the city. He passed the time aimlessly, unambitiously.

One of the old friends he looked up was Gundorm Varl, a huge, bluff, thunderous bull of a man who had served Raul’s father for twenty years in various canaoities, personal friend, servant, confidant, agent, general factotum and jack-of-all-trades. Gundorm had been “too old” to go to war when his young master answered the clarion call of Empire. But the two were lifelong friends from the day when young Raul, a boy of eight, had used his pitifully small belt-knife to cut Gundorm Varl free of a kraken-vine, patiently sawing through the lashing, thorn-edged and leather-tough tendrils, ignoring the fact that his tunic and a large portion of his back were being slashed to ribbons by the whipping fronds. He saved the older man’s life, at the expense of spending the next five months in a hospital bed. He had made a friend for life, though, and that was worth any expense.

They had an epic reunion. Scarcely a bar or winehouse in Omphale City that they did not wreck. Enough fiery green chark was consumed to float the Viceregal yacht. And then new whispers, slanders and suspicions got started.

Gundorm Varl had been against the war from the very beginning. Fine sort of war that would carry off his young master—scarce more than a boy—and leave him behind, un­wanted, “too old.” He had never ceased to pooh-pooh Glorious Imperial Service, Heroic Naval Tradition, Our Brave Boys In Imperial Scarlet, and all the other worn-out rags and tags of verbal garbage dumped freely about in wartime. He was “a suspicious person of unwholesome political opin­ions. A consorter with known malcontents. A derider and mocker of Imperial Naval Policy… .”

Gundorm and Raul came under semi-official scrutiny. It became known that they were seen in all sorts of Unsuitable Company—border fanners, wandering bards, Cluster natives, and even members of various fringe religio-political reform groups only an inch or two away from revolutionary.

Official eyebrows were lifted. A Linton was expected to consort with his own kind, the Old Colonial Landed Aris­tocracy. Yes, even a Linton whose holdings had been wasted and sold by a drunkard elder brother. Officially, it was not understood why a Linton with a brilliant Naval his­tory behind him should visit native places—discussing re­ligion with a naked, filthy Shaman of the Iote Brotherhood, guesting with an Upland chieftain. This was ultra-conserva­tism, needlessly suspicious, even downright nosy, but the Galactic Empire had just spent twelve weary years of bloody, savage, unnecessary war, and government agents were super- sensitive about such matters, especially here on the touchy, troublesome borders of the Imperium.

Of course a Linton could not for one moment be sus­pected of revolutionary sentiments: but a dozen-year inter­stellar blood-bath can bring about even stranger things than an Old Family Herculian turned seditious rebel.

Raul Linton was aware of these whispers, and at first they amused him. Far from being a rebel, he was heartsick with all politics of every hue. He simply found hardy native company more pleasurable and less artificial and hypocriti­cal than the Landed Gentry, their provincialism of thought and outlook, their mindless adherence to tradition, custom and third-hand ideas.

He still had that chill, mocking smile, and those hard, clear, measuring eyes. And now, impatient of Public Opinion and Official Eyebrows Being Lifted, he began almost to flaunt his unbelief in “accepted” modes of speech, behavior and thought. Officialdom held its hand, and continued scru­tiny, pondering his strange, unwholesome actions.

He did keep strange company. Of course, young Linton had always been a great friend of the Herculian natives— those dusky but humanoid, deliberately backwards and un- technological inhabitants whose rude culture seemed hardly to have been disturbed or even ruffled by the coming of Imperial Expeditionary Forces two hundred years ago. As a boy he had striven and rode and hunted with the younger sons of native princelings on Barnassa and Omphale; as a man, however, such conduct was unbecoming to a former officer of flag rank in His Magnificence’s Imperial Space Navy.

Ubiquitous government spies, ever sensitive to reflect the currents and eddies of Official thought, wasted no time once it was seen that Linton was mixing with decidedly unwhole­some company. Simply because he and Gundorm Varl fre­quented native winehouses of this or that political persua­sion, he became reported through devious bypaths as a se­cret member of almost each and every one of the Cluster’s ten thousand and one different secret (and seditious) polit­ical cults and religiously revolutionary societies. Of course, it was too much for even the low mentality of a Provincial Administrator, to swallow his simultaneous adherence to thir­ty-six totally different and furiously partisan political persua­sions: but they did begin to read his mail and monitor his communicator. His luggage, even, was searched while he was out of his public-house on an all-night binge with Gundorm Varl and a few old school friends of his boyhood. No evi­dence of an incriminatory nature was discovered (of course), but it was noticed—and noted—that he had disposed of (probably sacriligiously sold) his ribands and medals and all the Imperial honors he had won during Naval service. Official jaws tightened at this information.

Then the crowning discovery.

He had been seen by a government spy in the company of Sharl the Yellow-Eyed, a known major agent for the exiled and rebellious Kahani of Valadon, who was herself known to be intriguing with the most powerful and treach­erous of all petty monarchs among the Outworlds beyond the Imperial border, the Arthon of Pelaire.

Steps must be taken.

Thus, and without further delay, Raul Linton, late of the Imperial Naval Service but now of no visible means of sup­port and known to be mixing with dubious company, was Sent For by the Border Administrator.

In the ancient tradition of governments, they had done exactly the wrong thing. The worst possible thing. And, al­though hardly anyone in the Hercules Cluster could have been expected to know it, at this early juncture, the his­tory of a thousand stars was forever changed because of this act.