The Star Fox

I

Gunnar Heim halted in midstride. He stood a while, turning his head in search of the voice that had risen out of the dark.

It was some distance off, almost lost in the background of machine rumble to landward of the docks. But only one man was likely to be making his mock with that sinister old ballad, in San Francisco on this night.

Heim started after the sound. He could still move fast and softly when he wanted to. In a moment his ears picked up the ring and snarl of a guitar played in anger.

Warehouses bulked black on his right. At this hour not very long before dawn, the city had dimmed; there was only a reddish haze above the roofs, and the remote luminous leap of the palace towers on Nob Hill. To the left a cargo submarine lay like a sleek moon-scaled dragon, but no longshore robots or men were at work around it. The bay was ebony and a shimmer of glade.

Kilometers distant, the hills on the eastern shore made a wall besprinkled with artificial stars. The real stars were wan, and so was the defense satellite that climbed rapidly into view—as if all suns had withdrawn from a planet gone strengthless. Luna stood at half phase near the zenith. He could not see the light-spot of Apollo City on the dark side, through the damp autumn air.

Heim rounded a shed by the pier and saw the minstrel. He sat on a bollard, looking out across the water, a man more small and shabby than expected. His fingers leaped across the twelve strings as if attacking an enemy, and the moon gleamed off tears on his face.

Heim paused in the shadow of the wall. He ought not to interrupt. They had related, in the Spaceman’s Rest, that the buck was drunk and wild. “And when he’d spent his last millo, he wanted to sing for booze,” the bartender said. “I told him we didn’t want none of that here. He said he’d sung his way through a dozen planets and what was wrong with Earth that nobody wanted to listen to him. I said the strip show was coming on the 3V in a minute and that’s what the customers wanted, not any of his foreign stuff. So he yelled about singing to the stars or some such pothead notion. I told him go ahead, get out before I threw him out. And out he went. That was about an hour ago. Friend of yours?”

“Maybe,” Heim said.

“Uh, you might go look for him then. He could get into trouble. Somebody might go for an expensive gutbucket like he was hauling.”

Heim nodded and tossed off his beer. The Welfare section of any large city was bad to be alone in after nightfall. Even the police of Western countries made little effort to control those whom the machines had displaced before birth. They settled for containing that fury and futility in its own district, well away from the homes of people who had skills the world needed. On his walk-abouts through the subculture of the irrelevant men, Heim carried a stun pistol. He had had use for it on occasion.

They knew him locally, though. He had told them he was a retired spaceman—anything nearer the truth would have been unwise—and before long he was accepted as a genial drinking or gambling companion, less odd than many of the floaters who drifted in and out of their indifferent purview. He waved at several acquaintances, some feral and some surrendered to hopelessness, and left the bar.

Since the minstrel had probably headed for the Embarcadero, Heim did too. His stride lengthened as he went. At first there had been no sense of mission about finding the fellow. It had merely been an excuse to go on yet another slumming trip. But the implications grew in his mind.

And now that his search was ended, the song caught at him and he felt his pulse accelerate.

This stranger might indeed have the truth about that which had happened among yonder constellations.

As the older tale, also of tyranny, treachery, and death, crashed to its end, Heim reached a decision.

Silence followed, except for the lapping of water and the ceaseless throb of that engine which was the city. Heim trod forth.

“Good evening,” he said.

The minstrel jerked where he sat, drew a ragged breath, and twisted about. Heim spread his hands, smiling. “I’m harmless,” he said. “Was just admiring your performance. Mind if I join you?”

The other wiped at his eyes, furiously. Then the thin sharp face steadied into a considering look. Gunnar Heim was not one you met unperturbed, in such an area. He was nigh two meters tall, with breadth to match. His features were blunt and plain, an old scar zigzagging across the brow, under reddish-brown hair that in this forty-sixth year of his age was peppered with gray.

But he was decently clad, in the high-collared tunic and the trousers tucked into soft half-boots that were the current mode. The hood of his cloak was thrown back. His weapon did not show.

“Well—” The minstrel made a spastic shrug. “This is a public place.” His English was fluent, but bore a heavier accent than his French.

Heim took a flat bottle of whisky from his pocket. “Will you drink with me, sir?”

The minstrel snatched it. After the first swallow he gusted, “Ahhh!” Presently: “Forgive my bad manners. I needed that.” He raised the flask. “Isten éltesse,” he toasted, drank again, and passed it back.

“Skål.” Heim took a gulp and settled himself on the wharf next to the bollard. What he had already drunk buzzed in him, together with a rising excitement. It was an effort to stay relaxed.

The minstrel came down to sit beside him. “You are not American, then?” he asked. His tone wavered a bit; he was obviously trying to make unemotional conversation while the tears dried on his high cheekbones.

“I am, by naturalization,” Heim said. “My parents were Norwegian. But I was born on Gea, Tau Ceti II.”

“What?” The hoped—for eagerness sprang into the singer’s countenance. He sat up straight.

“You are a spaceman?”

“Navy, till about fifteen years ago. Gunnar Heim is my name.”

“I… Endre Vadász.” The agile fingers disappeared in Heim’s handshake. “Hungarian, but I have spent the last decade off Earth.”

“Yes, I know,” Heim said with care. “I saw you on a news program recently.”

Vadász’s lips writhed. He spat off the dock.

“You didn’t get a chance to say much during the interview,” Heim angled.

“No. They were cautious to mute me. ‘So you are a musician, Mr. Vadász. You have worked your way by any means that came to hand, from star to star, bearing the songs of Mother Earth to the colonists and the non-humans. Isn’t that interesting!’ ” The guitar cried out under a stroke.

“And you wanted to tell about New Europe, and they kept steering you from the subject. I wondered why.”

“The word had come to them. From your precious American authorities, under pressure from the big brave World Federation. It was too late to cancel my announced appearance, but I was to be gagged.” Vadász threw back his head and laughed, a coyote bark under the moon. “Am I paranoid? Do I claim I am being persecuted? Yes. But what if the conspiracy against me is real?

Then does my sanity or lunacy make any difference?”

“M-m-m.” Heim rubbed his chin and throttled back the emotions within himself. He was not an impetuous man. “How can you be sure?”

“Quinn admitted it, when I reproached him afterward. He said he had been told the station might lose its license if it, ah, lent itself to allegations which might embarrass the Federation in this difficult time. Not that I was too surprised. I had had talks with officials, both civil and military, since arriving on Earth. The kindest thing any one of them said was that I must be mistaken. But they had seen my proofs. They knew.”

“Did you try the French? They’d be more likely to do something, I should think.”

“Yes. In Paris I got no further than an assistant undersecretary. He was frightened of my story and would not refer me to anyone higher who might believe. I went on to Budapest, where I have kin. My father arranged for me to see the foreign minister himself. He was at least honest with me. New Europe was no concern of Hungary, which could in any event not go against the whole Federation. I left his office and walked for many hours. Finally I sat down in the dark by the Freedom Memorial. I looked at Imre Nagy’s face, and it was only cold bronze. I looked at the figures of the martyrs, dying at his feet, and knew why no one will listen to me. So I got very drunk.” Vadász reached for the bottle. “I have been drunk most of the time since.”

Now we ask him! flared in Heim. His voice would not remain calm any longer; but Vadász didn’t notice. “Your story, I gather from what bits and pieces have leaked past this ‘unofficial official censorship’—your story is that the people are not dead on New Europe. Right?”

“Right, sir. They fled into the mountains, every one. of them.”

“The Haute Garance,” Heim nodded. He had all he could do merely to nod. “Good guerrilla country. Lots of cover, most never mapped, and you can live off the land.”

“You have been there!” Vadász set the bottle down and stared.

“Pretty often, while in the Navy. It was a favorite spot to put in for overhaul and planet leave. And then I spent four months in a stretch on New Europe by myself, recovering from this.”

Heim touched the mark on his forehead.

Vadász peered close through the dappled moonlight. “Did the Aleriona do that to you?”

“No. This was over twenty years ago. I bought it while we were putting down the Hindu-German trouble on Lilith, which .you’re probably too young to remember. The skirmishes with Alerion didn’t begin till later.” Heim spoke absently. For this moment the drive and ferocity in him were overlaid byRed roofs and steep narrow streets of Bonne Chance, winding down along the River Carsac to the Bale des Pecheurs, which lay purple and silver to the world’s edge. Lazy days, drinking Pernod in a sidewalk cafe and lapping up the ruddy sunshine as a cat laps milk. When he got better, hunting trips into the highlands with Jacques Boussard and Toto Astier… good bucks, open of heart and hand, a little crazy as young men ought to be. Madelon—” He shook himself and asked roughly, “Do you know who is, or was, in charge?”

“A Colonel de Vigny of the planetary constabulary. He assumed command after the mairie was bombed, and organized the evacuation.”

“Not old Robert de Vigny? My God! I knew him.” Heim’s fist clenched on the concrete.

“Yes, in that case the war is still going on.”

“It cannot last,” Vadász mumbled. “Given time, the Aleriona will hunt everyone down.”

“I know the Aleriona too,” Heim said. He drew a long breath and looked at the stars. Not toward the sun Aurore. Across a hundred and fifty light-years, it would be lost to his eyes; and it lay in the Phoenix anyway, walled off from him by the heavy curve of Earth. But he could not look straight at the minstrel while he asked, “Did you meet one Madelon Dubois? That’d be her maiden name. I expect she’s long married.”

“No.” Vadász’s drink-slurred voice became instantly clear and gentle. “I am sorry, but I did not.”

“Well—” Heim forced a shrug. “The chances were way against it There’s supposed to be half a million people on New Europe. Were the… the casualties heavy?”

“I heard that Coeur d’Yvonne, down in Pays d’Or, was struck by a hydrogen missile. Otherwise—no, I do not believe so. The fighting was mostly in space, when the Aleriona fleet disposed of the few Federation Navy ships that happened to be near. Afterward they landed in force, but in uninhabited, areas at first, so that except for a couple of raids with nothing worse than lasers and chemical bombs, the other towns had time to evacuate. They had been called on to surrender, of course, but de Vigny refused and so many went off with him that the rest came too.”

Damn it, I have got to keep this impersonal. At least till I know more. “How did you escape?

The newscasts that mentioned you when you first arrived were vague about it. Deliberately, I suppose.”

Vadász made the bottle gurgle. “I was there when the attack came,” he said, thickly again.

“The French commandeered a merchant vessel and sent it after help, but it was destroyed when scarcely above the atmosphere. There was also a miner in from Naqsa.” He got the non-human pronunciation nearly right “You may know that lately there has been an agreement, the Naqsans may dig in Terre du Sud for a royalty. So far off, they had seen nothing, knew nothing, and cloud cover above Garance would keep them ignorant After a radio discussion, the Aleriona commander let them go, I daresay not wanting to antagonize two races at once. Of course, the ship was not allowed to take passengers. But I had earlier flitted down for a visit and won the captain’s fancy—that a human should be interested in his songs, and even learn a few—so he smuggled me aboard and kept me hidden from the Aleriona inspectors. De Vigny thought I could carry his message—hee, hee!” Vadász’s laugh was close to hysteria. Fresh tears ran out of his eyes.

“From Naqsa I had to, what you call, bum my way. It took time. And was all, all for nothing.”

He laid the guitar across his knees, strummed, and sang low:

Heim took the bottle, then abruptly set it down so hard that it clanked. He jumped to his feet and began pacing. His shadow wove back and forth across the minstrel, his cloak fluttered against the moonlight on the water.

“Nej, ved fanden!” he exploded.

“Eh?” Vadász bunked up at him.

“Look, do you say you have proof?”

“Yes. I have offered to testify under drugs. And de Vigny gave me letters, photographs, a whole microfilm packet with every bit of information he could scrape together. But no one on Earth will admit it is genuine. Few will even look at it.”

“I will,” Heim said. The blood roared in his ears.

“Good. Good. Right here, the package is.” Vadász fumbled in his soiled tunic.

“No, wait till later. I’ll take your word for now. It fits in with every other scrap of fact I’ve come across.”

“So I have convinced one man,” Vadász said bitterly.

“More than that.” Heim drew a long breath. “Look, friend, with due respect for you—and I respect anyone who’s had the guts to go out and make his own kind of life—I’m not a raggedy-ass self-appointed troubadour. I’m boss and chief owner of Heimdal.”

“The nuclear motor makers?” Vadász shook his head, muzzily. “No. Non. Nein. Nyet. You would never be here. I have seen your motors as far from home as the Rigel Domain.”

“Uh-huh. Damn good motors, aren’t they? When I decided to settle on Earth, I studied the possibilities. Navy officers who’ve resigned their commissions and don’t want to go into the merchant fleet have much too good a chance of ending down among the unemployables. But I saw that whoever was first to introduce the two-phase control system the Aleriona invented would lock gravs on the human market and half the non-human ones. And… I’d been there when Tech Intelligence dissected an Aleriona ship we captured in the set-to off Achemar. My father-in-law was willing to stake me. So today I’m—oh, not one of the financial giants. But I have ample money.”

“Also, I’ve kept in touch with my Academy classmates. Some of them are admirals by now.

They’ll pay attention to my ideas. And I’m a pretty good contributor to the Libertarian Party, which means that Twyman will listen to me too. He’d better!”

“No.” The dark tousled head moved from side to side, still drooping. “This cannot be. I cannot have found someone.”

“Brother, you have.” Heim slammed a fist into his palm with a revolver noise. A part of him wondered, briefly, at his own joy. Was it kindled by this confirmation that they were not dead on New Europe? Or the chance that he, Gunnar Heim, might personally short-circuit Alerion the damned? Or simply and suddenly a purpose, after five years without Connie? He realized now the emptiness of those years. No matter. The glory mounted and mounted. He bent down, scooped up the bottle with one hand and Vadász with the other. “Skål!” he shouted to Orion the Hunter, and drank a draught that made the smaller man gape. “Whoo-oo! Come along, Endre. I know places where, we can celebrate this as noisily as we damn please. We shall sing songs and tell tales and drink the moon down and the sun up and then shall go to work. Right?”

“Y-yes—” Still dazed, Vadász tucked his guitar under an arm and wobbled in Heim’s wake.

The bottle was not quite empty when Heim began “The Blue Landsknechts,” a song as full of doom and hell as he was. Vadász hung the guitar from his neck and chorded. After that they got together on “La Marseillaise,” and “Die Beiden Grenadiere,” and “Skipper Bullard,” and about that time they had collected a fine bunch of roughneck companions, and all in all it turned out to be quite an evening.

II

1700 hours in San Francisco was 2000 in Washington, but Harold Twyman, senior senator from California and majority leader of United States representatives in the Parliament of the World Federation, was a busy man whose secretary could not arrange a sealed-call appointment any earlier on such short notice as Heim had given. However, that suited the latter quite well. It gave him time to recover from the previous night without excessive use of drugs, delegate the most pressing business at the Heimdal plant to the appropriate men, and study Vadász’s evidence.

The Magyar was still asleep in a guest room. His body had a lot of abuse to repair.

Shortly before 1700 Heim decided he was sufficiently familiar with the material Robert de Vigny had assembled. He clicked off the viewer, rubbed his eyes, and sighed. An assortment of aches still nibbled at him. Once—Lord, it didn’t seem very long ago!—he could have weathered twenty times the bout he’d just been through, and made love to three or four girls, and been ready to ship out next morning. I’m at the awkward age, he thought wryly. Too young for antisenescence treatment to make any difference, too old for—what? Nothing, by Satan! I simply sit too much these days. Let me get away for a bit and this paunch I’m developing will melt off. He sucked in his stomach, reached for a pipe, and stuffed the bowl with unnecessary violence.

Why not take a vacation? he thought. Go into the woods and hunt; he had a standing invitation to use Ian McVeigh’s game preserve in British Columbia. Or sail his catamaran to Hawaii. Or order out his interplanetary yacht, climb the Lunar Alps, tramp the Martian hills; Earth was so stinking cluttered. Or even book an interstellar passage. He hadn’t seen his birthplace on Gea since his parents sent him back to Stavanger to get a proper education.

Afterward there had been Greenland Academy, and the Deepspace Fleet, and Earth again, always too much to do.

Sharply before him the memory rose: Tau Ceti a ball of red gold in the sky; mountains coming down to the sea as they did in Norway, but the oceans of Gea were warm and green and haunted him with odors that had no human name; the Sindabans that were his boyhood playmates, laughing just like him as they all ran to the water and piled into a pirogue, raised the wingsail and leaped before the wind; campfire on the island, where flames sprang forth to pick daoda fronds and the slim furry bodies of his friends out of a night that sang; chants and drums and portentous ceremonies; and—and—No. Heim struck a light to his tobacco and puffed hard. I was twelve years old when I left.

And now Far and Mor are dead, and my Sindabans grown into an adulthood which humans are still trying to understand. I’d only find an isolated little scientific base, no different from two score that I’ve seen elsewhere. Time is a one-way lane.

Besides—his gaze dropped to the micros on his desk—there’s work to do here.

Footfalls clattered outside the study. Glad of any distraction, Heim rose and walked after them. He ended in the living room. His daughter had come home and flopped herself in a lounger.

“Hi, Lisa,” he said. “How was school?”

“Yechy.” She scowled and stuck out her tongue. “Old Espinosa said I gotta do my composition over again.”

“Spelling, eh? Well, if you’d only buckle down and learn—”

“Worsen correcting spelling. Though why they make such a fuss about that, me don’t know!

He says the semantics are upwhacked. Old pickleface!”

Heim leaned against the wall and wagged his pipe stem at her. “ ‘Semantics’ is a singular, young’un. Your grammar’s no better than your orthography. Also, trying to write, or talk, or think without knowing semantic principles is like trying to dance before you can walk. I’m afraid my sympathies are with Mr. Espinosa.”

“But Dad!” she wailed. “You don’t realize! I’d have to do the whole paper again from go!”

“Of course.”

“I can’t!” Her eyes, which were blue like his own—otherwise she was coming to look heartbreakingly like Connie—clouded up for a squall. “I got a date with Dick—Oh!” One hand went to her mouth.

“Dick? You mean Richard Woldberg?” Lisa shook her head wildly. “The blaze you don’t,” Heim growled. “I’ve told you damn often enough you’re not to see that lout.”

“Oh, Dad! J-j-just because—”

“I know. High spirits. I call it malicious mischief and a judge that Woldberg Senior bought, and I say any girl who associates with that crowd is going to get in trouble. Nothing so mild as pregnancy, either.” Heim realized he was shouting. He put on his court-martial manner and rapped: “Simply making that date was not only disobedience but disloyalty. You went behind my back. Very well, you’re confined to quarters for a week whenever you’re not in school. And I expect to see your composition tomorrow, written right.”

“I hate you!” Lisa screamed. She flung out of the lounger and ran. For a second the bright dress, slender body, and soft brown hair were before Heim’s gaze, then she was gone. He heard her kick the door of her room, as if to make it open for her the faster.

What else could I do? he cried after her, but of course there was no reply. He prowled the long room, roared at a maid who dared come in with a question, and stalked forth to stand on the terrace among the roses, glaring across San Francisco.

The city lay cool and hazed under a lowering sun. From here, on Telegraph Hill, his view ranged widely over spires and elways, shining water and garden islands. That was why he had picked this suite, after Connie died in that senseless flyer smash and the Mendocino County house got too big and still. In the past year or so Lisa had begun to whine about the address being unfashionable. But the hell with her.

No. It was only that fourteen was a difficult age. It had to be only that. And without a mother—He probably should have remarried, for Lisa’s sake. There’d been no lack of opportunity.

But at most the affairs had ended as… affairs… because none of the women were Connie. Or even Madelon. Unless you counted Jocelyn Lawrie, but she was hopelessly lost in her damned peace movement and anyway—Still, he could well be making every mistake in the catalogue, trying to raise Lisa by himself. Whatever had become of the small dimpled person to whom he was the center of the universe?

He glanced at his watch and swore. Past time to call Twyman.

Back in the study he had a wait while the secretary contacted her boss and sealed the circuit.

He couldn’t sit; he paced the room, fingering his books, his desk computer, 1% souvenirs of the lancer to whose command he had risen. Hard had it been to give up Star Fox. For a year after his marriage, he’d remained in the Navy. But that wouldn’t work out, wasn’t fair to Connie. He stroked a hand across her picture, without daring to animate it right now. Not hard after all, sweetheart. Well worth everything.

The phone chimed and the secretary said, “The senator is on the line, sir.” Her image gave way to Twyman’s distinguished gray head. Heim sat down, on the edge of the chair.

“Hello, Gunnar,” Twyman said. “How’s everything?”

“Comme ci, comme ça,” Heim answered. “A little more ci than ça, I think. How’s with you?”

“Rushed damn near to escape velocity. The Aleriona crisis, you know.”

“Uh-huh. That’s what I wanted to talk about”

Twyman looked alarmed. “I can’t say much.”

“Why not?”

“Well , .. well, there really isn’t much to say yet. Their delegation has only been here for about three weeks, you remember, so no formal discussions have commenced. Diplomacy between different species is always like that. Such a fantastic lot of spadework to do, information exchange, semantic and xenological and even epistemological studies to make, before the two sides can be halfway sure they’re talking about the same subjects.”

“Harry,” said Heim, “I know as well as you do that’s a string of guff. The informal conferences are going on right along. When Parliament meets with the Aleriona, you boys on the inside will have everything rigged in advance. Arguments marshaled, votes lined up, nothing left to do but pull the switch and let the machine ratify the decision you’ve already made.”

“Well, ah, you can’t expect, say, the Kenyan Empire representatives to understand something so complex—”

Heim rekindled his pipe. “What are you going to do, anyhow?” he asked.

“Sorry, I can’t tell you.”

“Why not? Isn’t the Federation a ‘democracy of states’? Doesn’t its Constitution guarantee free access to information?”

“You’ll have as much information as you want,” Twyman snapped, “when we start to operate on an official basis.”

“That’ll be too late.” Heim sighed. “Never mind. I can add two and two. You’re going to let Alerion have New Europe, aren’t you?”

“I can’t—”

“You needn’t. The indications are everywhere. Heads of state assuring their people there’s no reason to panic, we’re not going to have a war. Politicians and commentators denouncing the ‘extremists.’ Suppression of any evidence that there might be excellent reason to go to war.”

Twyman bristled. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve met Endre Vadász,” Heim said.

“Who?—Oh, yes. That adventurer who claims—Look, Gunnar, there is some danger of war. I’m not denying that. Prance especially is up in arms, demonstrations, riots, mobs actually tearing down the Federation flag and trampling on it. We’ll have our hands full as is, without letting some skizzy like him inflame passions worse.”

“He’s not a skizzy. Also, Alerion’s whole past record bears him out. Ask any Navy man.”

“Precisely.” Twyman’s voice grew urgent. “As we move into their sphere of interest, inevitably there’ve been more and more clashes. And can you blame them? They were cruising the Phoenix region when men were still huddled in caves. It’s theirs.”

“New Europe isn’t. Men discovered and colonized it.”

“I know, I know. There are so many stars—The trouble is, we’ve been greedy. We’ve gone too far, too fast.”

“There are a lot of stars,” Heim agreed, “but not an awful lot of planets where men can live. We need ’em.”

“So does Alerion.”

“Ja? What use is a people-type world to them? And even on their own kind of planet, why didn’t they ever colonize on anything like our scale, till we came along?”

“Response to our challenge,” Twyman said. “What would you do if an alien culture started grabbing planetary systems as near to Sol as Aurore is to The Eith?” He leaned back. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. The Aleriona are no saints. They’ve sometimes been fiends, by our standards. But we have to inhabit the same cosmos with them. War is unthinkable.”

“Why?” drawled Heim.

“What? Gunnar, are you out of your brain? Haven’t you read any history? Looked at the craters? Understood how close a call the Nuclear Exchange was?”

“So close a call that ever since the human race has been irrational on the subject,” Heim said. “But I’ve seen some objective analyses. And even you must admit that the Exchange and its aftermath rid us of those ideological governments.”

“An interstellar war could rid us of Earth!”

“Twaddle. A planet with space defenses like ours can’t be attacked from space by any fleet now in existence. Every beam would be attenuated, every missile intercepted, every ship clobbered.”

“That didn’t work for New Europe,” Twyman said. He was getting angry.

“No, of course not. New Europe didn’t have any space fortresses or home fleet. Nothing but a few lancers and pursuers that happened to be in the vicinity—when Alerion’s armada came.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Gunnar. The affair was simply another clash, one that got out of hand.”

“So the Aleriona say,” Heim murmured. “If that’s the truth, how come none, not one, of our vessels escaped?”

Twyman ignored him. “We’ll never be sure who fired the first shot. But we can be sure the Aleriona wouldn’t have missiled New Europe if our commander hadn’t tried to pull his ships down into atmosphere for a toadhole maneuver. What other conceivable reason was there?”

If New Europe really was missiled, Heim thought. But it wasn’t.

The senator checked indignation, sat silent for a bit, and went on almost mildly. “The whole episode illustrates how intolerable the situation has become, how matters are bound to escalate if we don’t halt while we still can. And what do we want to fight for? A few wretched planets? We need only let Alerion’s traditional sphere alone, and the rest of the galaxy is open to us. Fight for revenge? Well, you can’t laugh off half a million dead human beings, but the fact remains that they are dead. I don’t want to send any more lives after theirs.”

“Okay,” Heim said with equal quietness. “What do, you figure to do?”

Twyman studied him before answering: “You’re my friend as well as a political backstop. I can trust you to keep your mouth shut. And to support me, I think, once you know. Do I have your promise?”

“Of secrecy… well… yes. Support? That depends. Say on.”

“The details are still being threshed out. But in general, Alerion offers us an indemnity for New Europe. A very sizable one. They’ll also buy out our other interests in the Phoenix. The exact terms have yet to be settled—obviously they can’t pay in one lump—but the prospect looks good. With us out of their sphere, they’ll recognize a similar one for humans around Sol, and keep away. But we aren’t building any walls, you understand. We’ll exchange ambassadors and cultural missions. A trade treaty will be negotiated in due time.

“There. Does that satisfy you?”

Heim looked into the eyes of a man he had once believed honest with himself, and said:

“No.”

“Why not?” Twyman asked most softly.

“From a long-range viewpoint, your scheme ignores the nature of Alerion. They aren’t going to respect our sphere any longer than it takes them to consolidate the one you want to make them a present of. And I do mean a present—because until a trade treaty is agreed on, which I predict will be never, how can we spend any of that valuta they so generously pay over?”

“Gunnar, I know friends of yours have died at Aleriona hands. But it’s given you a persecution complex.”

“Trouble is, Harry,” Heim stole from Vadász, “the persecution happens to be real. You’re the one living in a dream. You’re so obsessed with avoiding war that you’ve forgotten every other consideration. Including honor.”

“What do you mean by that?” Twyman demanded.

“New Europe was not missiled. The colonists are not dead. They’ve taken to the hills and are waiting for us to come help them.”

“That isn’t so!”

“I have the proof right here on my desk.”

“You mean the documents that—that tramp forged?”

“They aren’t forgeries. It can be proved. Signatures, fingerprints, photographs, the very isotope ratios in film made on New Europe. Harry, I never thought you’d sell out half a million human beings.”

“I deny that I am doing so,” Twyman said glacially. “You’re a fanatic, Mister Heim, that’s all. Even if it were true what you say… how do you propose to rescue anyone from a planet occupied and space-guarded? But it isn’t true. I’ve spoken to survivors whom the Aleriona brought here. You must have seen them yourself on 3V. They witnessed the bombardment.”

“Hm. You recall where they were from?”

“The Coeur d’Yvonne area. Everything else was wiped clean.”

“So the Aleriona say,” Heim retorted. “And doubtless the survivors believe it too. Any who didn’t would’ve been weeded out during interrogation. I say that Coeur d’Yvonne was the only place hit by a nuke. I say further that we can fight if we must, and win. A space war only; I’m not talking the nonsense about ‘attacking impregnable Alerion’ which your tame commentators keep putting into the mouths of us ‘extremists,’ and Earth is every bit as impregnable. I say further that if we move fast, with our full strength, we probably won’t have to fight. Alerion will crawfish.

She isn’t strong enough to take us on… yet. I say further and finally that if we let down those people out there who’re trusting us, we’ll deserve everything that Alerion will eventually do to us.” He tamped his smoldering pipe. “That’s my word, Senator.”

Twyman said, trembling: “Then my word, Heim, is that we’ve outgrown your kind of sabertooth militarism and I’m not going to let us be dragged back to that level. If you’re blaze enough to quote what I’ve told you here in confidence, I’ll destroy you. You’ll be in the Welfare district, or correction, within a year.”

“Oh, no,” Heim said. “I keep my oaths. The public facts can speak for themselves. I need only point them out.”

“Go ahead, if you want to waste your money and reputation. You’ll be as big a laughingstock as the rest of the warhawk crowd.”

Taken aback, Heim grimaced. In the past weeks, after the news of New Europe, he had seen what mass media did to those who spoke as he was now speaking. Those who were influential, that is, and therefore worth tearing down. Ordinary unpolitical people didn’t matter. The pundits simply announced that World Opinion Demanded Peace. Having listened to a good many men, from engineers and physicists to spacehands and mechanics, voice their personal feelings, Heim doubted if world opinion was being correctly reported. But he couldn’t see any way to prove that.

Conduct a poll, maybe? No. At best, the result would frighten some professors, who would be quick to assert that it was based on faulty statistics, and a number of their students, who would organize parades to denounce Heim the Monster.

Propaganda? Politicking? A Paul Revere Society?… Heim shook his head, blindly, and slumped.

Twyman’s face softened. “I’m sorry about this, Gunnar,” he said. “I’m still your friend, you know. Regardless of where your next campaign donation goes. Call on me any time.” He hesitated, decided merely to add “Good-by,” and switched off.

Heim reached into his desk for a bottle he kept there. As he took it forth, his gaze crossed the model of Star Fox which his crew had given him when he retired. It was cast in steel, retrieved from that Aleriona battlewagon into which the lancer put an atomic torpedo at Achernar.

I wonder if the Aleriona make trophies of our wrecks. Hm. Odd. I never thought about it before. We know so little of them. Heim put his feet on the desk and tilted the bottle to his lips. Why don’t I corner one of their delegation and ask?

And then he choked on his drink and spluttered; his feet thumped to the floor, and he never noticed. The thought had been too startling. Why not?

III

The ceiling glowed with the simulated light of a red dwarf sun, which lay like blood on leaves and vines and slowly writhing flowers. A bank of Terrestrial room instruments—phone, 3V, computer, vocascribe, infotrieve, service cubicle, environmental control board—stood in one corner of the jungle with a harsh incongruity. The silence was as deep as the purple shadows.

Unmoving, Cynbe waited.

The decompression chamber finished its cycle and Gunnar Heim stepped out. Thin dry atmosphere raked his throat. Even so, the fragrances overwhelmed him. He could not tell which of them—sweet, acrid, pungent, musky—came from which of the plants growing from wall to wall, reaching to the ceiling and arching down again in a rush of steel-blue leaves, exploding in banks of tawny, crimson, black, and violet blossoms. The reduced gravity seemed to give a lightness to his head as well as his frame. Feathery turf felt like rubber underfoot The place was tropically warm; he sensed the infrared baking his skin.

He stopped and peered about. Gradually his eyes adjusted to the ember illumination. They were slower to see details of shapes so foreign to Earth.

“Imbiac dystra?” he called uncertainly. “My lord?” His voice was muffled in that tenuous air.

Cynbe ru Taren, Intellect Master of the Garden of War, fleet admiral, and military specialist of the Grand Commission of Negotiators, trod out from beneath his trees. “Well are you come, sir,” he sang. “Understand you, then, the High Speech?”

Heim made the bowing Aleriona salute of a ranking individual to a different-but-equal. “No, my lord, I regret. Only a few phrases. It’s a difficult language for any of my race to learn.”

Cynbe’s beautiful voice ranged a musical scale never invented by men. “Wish you a seat, Captain Heim? I can dial for refreshment.”

“No, thank you,” the human said, because he didn’t care to lose whatever psychological advantage his height gave him, nor drink the wine of an enemy. Inwardly he was startled. Captain Heim? How much did Cynbe know?

There would have been ample time to make inquiries, in the couple of days since this audience was requested. But one couldn’t guess how interested an Aleriona overlord was in a mere individual. Very possibly Heim’s wish had been granted at Harold Twyman’s urging, and for no other reason. The senator was a strong believer in the value of discussion between opponents.

Any discussion. We may go down, but at least we’ll go down talking.

“I trust your trip hither was a pleasant one?” Cynbe cantillated.

“Oh… all right, my lord, if, uh, one doesn’t mind traveling with sealed eyelids after being thoroughly searched.”

“Regrettable is this necessity to keep the whereabouts of our delegation secret,” Cynbe agreed. “But your fanatics—” The last word was a tone-and-a-half glissando carrying more scorn than Heim would have believed possible.

“Yes.” The man braced himself. “In your civilization, the populace is better… controlled.” I haven’t quite the nerve to say “domesticated” but I hope he gets my meaning.

Cynbe’s laughter ran like springtime rain. “You are a marksman, Captain.” He advanced with a movement that made cats look clumsy. “Would your desire be to walk my forest as we discuss?

You are maychance not enrolled with the few humans who set ever a foot upon Alerion.”

“No, my lord, I’m sorry to say I haven’t had the pleasure. Yet”

Cynbe halted. For a moment, in the darkling light, they regarded each other. And Heim could only think how fair the Aleriona was.

The long-legged, slightly forward-leaning body, 150 centimeters tall, its chest as deep and waist as spare as a greyhound’s, the counterbalancing tail never quite at rest, he admired in abstraction. How the sleek silvery fur sparkled with tiny points of light; how surely the three long toes of either digitigrade foot took possession of the ground; how graciously the arms gestured; how proudly the slim neck lifted. The humans were rare who could have dressed like Cynbe, in a one-piece garment of metallic mesh, trimmed at throat and wrists and ankles with polished copper. It revealed too much.

The head, though, was disturbing. For the fur ended at the throat, and Cynbe’s face-marble-hued, eyes enormous below arching brows, nose small, lips vividly red, wide cheekbones and narrow chin—could almost have been a woman’s. Not quite: there were differences of detail, and the perfection was inhuman. Down past the pointed ears, along the back and halfway to the end of the tail, rushed a mane of hair, thick, silken fine, the color of honey and gold. A man who looked overly long at that face risked forgetting the body.

And the brain, Heim reminded himself.

A blink of nictitating membrane dimmed briefly the emerald of Cynbe’s long-lashed feline eyes. Then he smiled, continued his advance, laid a hand on Heim’s arm. Three double-jointed fingers and a thumb closed in a gentle grip. “Come,” the Aleriona invited.

Heim went along, into the murk under the trees. “My lord,” he said in a harshened tone, “I don’t want to waste your time. Let’s talk business.”

“Be our doings as you choose, Captain.” Cynbe’s free hand stroked across a phosphorescent branch.

“I’m here on behalf of the New Europeans.”

“For the mourned dead? We have repatriated the living, and indemnified they shall be.”

“I mean those left alive on the planet. Which is nearly all of them.”

“Ah-h-h-h,” Cynbe breathed.

“Senator Twyman must have warned you I’d bring the subject up.”

“Truth. Yet assured he the allegation is unbelieved.”

“Most of his side don’t dare believe it Those who do, don’t dare admit it.”

“Such accusations could imperil indeed the peace negotiations.” Heim wasn’t sure how much sardonicism lay in the remark. He stumbled on something unseen, cursed, and was glad to emerge from the bosket, onto a little patch of lawn starred with flowers. Ahead rose the inner wall, where some hundred books were shelved, not only the tall narrow folios of Alerion but a good many ancient-looking Terrestrial ones. Heim couldn’t make out the titles. Nor could he see far past the archway into the next room of the suite; but somewhere a fountain was plashing.

He stopped, faced the other squarely, and said: “I have proof that New Europe was not scrubbed clean of men—in fact, they retreated into the mountains and are continuing resistance to your occupation force. The evidence is in a safe place”—Goodness, aren’t we melodramatic?—“and I was planning to publicize it. Which would, as you say, be awkward for your conference.”

He was rather desperately hoping that the Aleriona didn’t know the facts of life on Earth well enough to understand how forlorn his threat was. Cynbe gave him no clue. There was only an imperturbable upward quirk of mouth, and: “Seeming is that you have decided upon another course, Captain.”

“That depends on you,” Heim answered. “If you’ll repatriate those people also, I’ll give you the evidence and say no more.”

Cynbe turned to play with a vine. It curled about his hand and reached its blossoms toward his face. “Captain,” he sang presently, “you are no fool. Let us assume your belief is truth. We shall speak of a folk in wrath under the mountain peaks. How shall they be made come to our ships?”

“They’re fighting because they expect help. If representatives of the French government told them to return here, they would. The parley can be arranged by radio.”

“But the entity France, now, would it so cooperate?”

“It’d have no choice. You know even better than I, a majority of the Federation doesn’t want to fight over New Europe. About the only thing that could provoke such a war is the plight of the settlers. Let them come back unharmed and… and you’ll have your damned conquest.”

“Conceivable that is.” Light rippled red down Cynbe’s locks when he nodded. His gaze remained with the blooms. “But afterward?” he crooned. “Afterward?”

“I know,” Heim said. “The New Europeans would be living proof you lied—not only about them, but about the entire battle. Proof that things didn’t happen because someone got trigger happy, but because you planned your attack.” He swallowed a nasty taste. “Well, read Terrestrial history, my lord. You’ll find we humans don’t take these matters as seriously as we might. Lies are considered a normal part of diplomacy, and a few ships lost, a few men killed, are all in the day’s work. If anything, this concession of yours will strengthen the peace party. ‘Look,’ they’ll say, ‘Alerion isn’t so bad, you can do business with Alerion, our policies saved those lives and avoided an expensive war.’ Unquote.”

Now the muliebrile face did turn about, and for a while the eyes lay luminous upon Heim.

He felt his pulse grow thick. The sound of the fountain seemed to dwindle and the hot red dusk to close in.

“Captain,” Cynbe sang, almost too low to hear, “The Eith is an ancient sun. The Aleriona have been civilized for beyond a million of your years. We sought not far-flung empire, that would crack an order old and stable; but our Wanderers ranged and our Intellects pondered.

Maychance we are wiser in the manifold ways of destiny than some heedless newcomer.

Maychance we have read your own inwardness more deeply than have you yourselves.”

“ ‘Afterward’ did I say. The word carries another freight when echoed through a million of years. My regard was to no gain for a decade, a generation, a century. I speak beyond.

“Between these walls, let truth be what you have claimed. Then let truth also be that Alerion cannot hithersend five hundred thousand of individuals to leaven their race with anger.

“Had they yielded, the case were otherwise. We would have told Earth this battle was one more incident than tolerable and now we must have our own sphere where no aliens fare. But any of your colonists enwished to stay might do so, did they become subject to Alerion. We would offer inspection, that Earth might be sure they were not oppressed. For such little enclaves are significanceless; and Alerion has ways to integrate them into civilization; ways slow, as you look upon time, ways subtle, ways quite, quite certain.

“The colonists yielded not, I say between these walls. Even could we capture them alive, in so much wilderness—and we cannot—even then could they not become subject to Alerion. Not as prisoners, forever dangerous, forever an incitement that Earth deliver them. Yet if the entity France commanded them home: in their nerves, that were betrayal of folk who had not surrendered, and they must strive for a Federation government of males more brave. I look in the future and I see how they shame the others of you—yes, yes, Captain, such intangibles make your history, you are that kind of animal. Truth, there would not be war to gain back Europe Neuve.

Those bones grow dry before leaders as I speak of come to power. But when the next debatable issue arises—ah-h-h.”

So there is to be a next issue, Heim thought. Not that he’s told me anything I hadn’t already guessed. I wonder, though, when the second crisis is scheduled. Maybe not in my lifetime. But surely in Lisa’s.

His voice came out flat and remote, as if someone else spoke: “Then you’re not going to admit the colonists are alive. What will you do? Hunt them down piecemeal?”

“I command space fleets, Captain, not groundlings.” Astonishingly, Cynbe’s lashes fluttered and he looked down at his hands. The fingers twined together. “I have said more than needful, to you alone. But then, I am not Old Aleriona. My type was bred after the ships began their comings from Earth. And… I was at Achernar.” He raised his eyes. “Star Fox captain, as Earth’s men do, will you clasp my hand farewell?”

“No,” said Heim. He turned on his heel and walked toward the compression chamber.

IV

His escort of Peace Control troopers unsealed his eyes and let him off the official flyer at Port Johnson in Delaware. They’d taken longer on whatever circuitous route they followed than he had expected. There was barely time to make his appointment with Coquelin. He hurried to the beltway headed for the civilian garages, elbowed aboard through the usual crowd, and found he must stand the whole distance.

Fury had faded during the hours he sat blind, exchanging banalities with the earnest young officer of his guards (“Weather Reg really muffed the last hurricane, don’t you think?”… “Yes, too bad about New Europe, but still, we’ve outgrown things like imperialism and revenge, haven’t we? Anyhow, the galaxy is big.”… “I sure envy you, the, way you’ve traveled in space. We get around in this job, of course, but seems like the places and people on Earth get more alike every year.”) or thinking his own thoughts. He hadn’t really expected to accomplish anything with the Aleriona. The attempt was nothing but a duty.

Grayness remained in him. I don’t see what I can do in Paris either.

A shabby man, unnecessarily aggressive, pushed him. He controlled his temper with an effort—he hated crowds—and refrained from pushing back. You couldn’t blame the poor devil for being hostile to one whose good clothes revealed him a member of the technoaristocracy.

That’s why we’ve got to move into space, he told himself for the thousandth time. Room. A chance to get out of this horrible huddle on Earth, walk free, be our own men, try out new ways to live, work, think, create, wonder. There was more happiness on New Europe, divided among half a million people, than these ten billion could even imagine.

What is it in them—fear? inertia? despair? plain old ignorance?—makes them swallow that crock about how the rest of the universe is open to us?

Because it was a crock. Habitable planets aren’t that common. And most of those that exist have intelligent natives; a good many of the rest have already been colonized by others. Heim did not want his race forced to the nearly ultimate immorality of taking someone else’s real estate away.

Though more was involved in the Phoenix affair. A loss of nerve; throughout history, yielding to an unjustifiable demand for the sake of a few more years of peace has been the first step on a long downward road. An admission of the essentially vicious principle of “interest spheres”; there should not be any boundaries in space. And, to be sure, appalling fatuity: a blank refusal to read the record which proved Alerion’s intentions toward Earth, a positive eagerness to give the enemy the time and resources he needed to prepare for his next encroachment But what can a man do?

Heim claimed his flyer at the garage and fretted while TrafCon stalled about sending him aloft. Quite a time passed before the pattern of vehicle movement released him. He went on manual for a while, to have the satisfaction of personally getting away. The gravitrons in this Moonraker were custom-built, with power to lift him far into the stratosphere. Otherwise the flyer was nothing special; he was fairly indifferent to creature comforts. He set the autopilot for Orly, took a long hot bath, got some whale from the freezer and made himself a ’burger for lunch, and bunked out for a couple of hours.

The clock woke him with the “Light Cavalry Overture” and handed him a mug of coffee. He changed into fresh clothes—somewhat formal, gold on the collar and down the pants—while the flyer slanted in for a landing. Momentarily he debated whether to go armed, for he would be carrying Vadász’s package. But no, that might start more argument than it was worth. If he failed here too, he doubted if there would be any further use for New Europe’s appeal. No action would be possible, except to get roaring drunk and afterward consider emigration to an especially remote planet.

Entering the Douane office, he showed his ID and got a thirty-day permit. France, being less crowded than most countries, was rather stuffy about letting people in. But this official was balm and unguents from the moment he saw Heim’s name. “Ah, yes, yes, monsieur, we ’ave been told to expect ce pleasure of your company. A car is waiting for you. Does monsieur ’ave any baggage ’e wishes carried? No? Bien, cis way, please, and ’ave a mos’ pleasant visit.”

Quite a contrast with what Endre Vadász must have experienced. But he was only a musician of genius. Gunnar Heim headed a well-known manufacturing concern and was son-in-law to Curt Wingate, who sat on the board of General Nucleonics. If Gunnar Heim requested a private interview with Michel Coquelin, minister of extraterrestrial affairs and head of French representatives in the World Parliament, why, of course, of course.

Even so, he had crowded his schedule. Twyman had leaned backward to oblige him about seeing Cynbe; nevertheless, the peacemongers were fairly sure to have agents keeping tabs on him, and if he didn’t move fast they might find ways to head him off.

The car entered Paris by ground. Blue dusk was deepening into night. The trees along the boulevards had turned their leaves, red and yellow splashed against Baron Haussmann’s stately old walls or scrittling among the legs of pretty girls as they walked with their men. The outdoor cafes had little custom at this season. Heim was as glad of that Paris could have made him remember too many things.

The car stopped at the Quai d’Orsay and let him out. He heard the Seine lap darkly against its embankment, under the thin chill wind. Otherwise the district was quiet, with scant traffic, the whirr of the city machines nearly lost. But sky-glow hid the stars.

Gendarmes stood guard. Their faces were tense above the flapping capes. All France was tensed and bitter, one heard. Heim was conducted down long corridors where not a few people were working late, to Coquelin’s office.

The minister laid aside a stack of papers and rose to greet him. “How do you do,” he said.

The tone was weary but the English flawless. That was luck; Heim’s French had gotten creaky over the years. Coquelin gestured at a worn, comfortable old-style chair by his desk. “Please be seated. Would you like a cigar?”

“No, thanks, I’m a pipe man.” Heim took his out.

“I too.” Coquelin’s face meshed in crow’s feet and calipers when he smiled; he sat down and began to load a still more disreputable briar. He was short but powerfully built, square of countenance, bald of dome, with very steady brown eyes. “Well, Mr. Heim, what can I do for you?”

“Uh… it concerns New Europe.”

“I thought so.” The smile died.

“In my opinion—” Heim decided he was being pompous.

“M. Coquelin,” he said, “I believe Earth ought to do whatever is necessary to get New Europe back.”

Coquelin’s look went over his guest’s features, centimeter by centimeter, while he started his pipe. “Thank you for that,” he said at length. “We have felt lonely in France.”

“I have some material here that might help.”

The least intake of breath went through Coquelin’s teeth. “Proceed, if you please.”

He sat altogether expressionless, smoking, never glancing away, while Heim talked. Only once did he interrupt: “Cynbe? Ah, yes, I have met him. The one they have quartered at—No, best I not say. Officially I am not supposed to know. Go on.”

In the end he opened the packet, slipped a few films into the viewer on his desk, read, and nodded. The stillness quivered near breaking point Heim puffed volcano-like, stared out the window into darkness, shifted his bulk so the chair groaned, and listened to his own heartbeat Finally Coquelin muttered, “There have been rumors about this.” After another silence: “I shall see that you and Vadász join the Légion d’Honneur. Whatever happens.”

“What will?” Heim asked. His jaws ached with being clamped together.

Coquelin shrugged. “Nothing, probably,” he said, dull-voiced. “They are determined to buy what they call peace.”

“Oh. Yes, you’d know. So I can tell you I also know the plan.”

“That Alerion shall have Europe Neuve? Good, we can speak freely. I am naturally honor bound not to reveal what is being decided until my fellow committeemen agree, and it would be a futile act with disastrous political consequences if I broke that promise. So I am most glad to have an outside listener.” Coquelin passed a hand across his eyes. “But there is little we can say, no?”

“There’s plenty!” Heim exclaimed. “Come the formal meeting, you can show this stuff to Parliament, with scientific proof it’s genuine. You can ask them how anyone can hope to get reelected after selling out so many human beings.”

“Yes, yes.” Coquelin stared at his pipe bowl, where the fire waxed and waned, waxed and waned. “And some will say I lie. That my evidence is forged and my scientists are bribed. Others will say alas, this is terrible, but—half a million people? Why, a few missiles striking population centers on Earth could kill twenty tunes that many, a hundred times; and we had no right to be in the Phoenix; and nothing matters except to make friends with Alerion, for otherwise we must look for decades of war; so we can only weep for our people out there, we cannot help them.” His grin was dreadful to see. “I daresay a monument will be raised to them. Martyrs in the cause of peace.”

“But this is ridiculous! Earth can’t be attacked. Or if it can, then so can Alerion, and they won’t provoke that when we have twice their strength. A single flotilla right now could drive them out of the Auroran System.”

“Half the Navy has been recalled for home defense. The other half is out in the Marches, keeping watch on the Aleriona fleet, which is also maneuvering there. Even some of the admirals I have consulted do not wish to spare a flotilla for Aurore. For as you must know, monsieur, the numbers available on either side are not large, when a single nuclear-armed vessel has so much destructive capability.”

“So we do nothing?” Heim grated. “Why, at the moment even one ship could—could make serious trouble for the enemy. They can’t have any great strength at Aurore as yet. But give them a year or two and they’ll make New Europe as unattackable as Earth.”

“I know.” Coquelin swiveled around, rested his elbows oh his desk, and let his head sink between his shoulders. “I shall argue. But… tonight I feel old, Mr. Heim.”

“My God, sir! If the Federation won’t act, how about France by herself?”

“Impossible. We cannot even negotiate as a single country with any extraterrestrial power, under the Constitution. We are not allowed any armed force, any machine of war, above the police level. Such is reserved for the Peace Control Authority.”

“Yes, yes, yes—”

“In fact—” Coquelin glanced up. A muscle twitched in one cheek. “Now that I think about what you have brought me, these documents, I do not know if I should make them public.”

“What?”

“Consider. France is furious enough. Let the whole truth be known, including the betrayal, and I dare not predict what might happen. It could well end with Peace Control troops occupying us. And, yes, that would hurt the Federation itself, even more than France. One must put loyalty to the Federation above anything else. Earth is too small for national sovereignty. Nuclear weapons are too powerful.”

Heim looked at the bent head, and the rage in him seemed about to tear him apart. “I’d like to go out myself!” he shouted.

“This would be piracy,” Coquelin sighed.

“No… wait, wait, wait.” The thought flamed into being. Heim sprang to his feet. “Privateers.

Once upon a time there were privately owned warships.”

“Eh, you have read a little history, I see.” Some life came back to Coquelin. He sat straighter and watched the huge, restless figure with eyes again alert. “But I have read more. Privateering was outlawed in the nineteenth century. Even countries not signatory to that pact observed the prohibition, until it came to be regarded as a part of international law. Admitted, the Federal Constitution does not mention so archaic a matter. Still—”

“Exactly!” Heim roared; or was it the demon that had come to birth in his skull?

“No, no, flout the law and the Peace Control forces arrive. I am too old and tired, me, to stand trial before the World Court. To say nothing of the practical difficulties. France cannot declare war by herself. France cannot produce nuclear weapons.” Coquelin uttered a small sad chuckle. “I am a lawyer by past profession. It there were a, you say loophole? I could perhaps squirm through. But here—”

Word by word, Heim said: “I can get hold of the weapons.”

Coquelin leaped in his seat. “Qu’est-ce que vous dites?”

“Off Earth. I know a place. Don’t you see—Alerion has to put space defenses in orbit around New Europe, or she can’t hold it against any determined attack.” Heim was leaning on the desk now, nose to nose with the other, talking like a machine gun. “New Europe has only a limited industry. So the Aleriona will have to bring most of the stuff from home. A long supply line. One commerce raider—what’d that do to their bargaining position? What’d it do for our own poor buffaloed people? One ship!”

“But I have told you—”

“You told me it was physically and legally impossible. I can prove the physical possibility.

And you said you were a lawyer.”

Coquelin rose too, went to the window, and stared long out across the Seine. Heim’s pace quivered the floor. His brain whirled with plans, data, angers, hopes; he had not been so seized by a power since he bestrode his bridge at Alpha Eridani.

And then Coquelin turned about. His whisper filled the silence: “Peut-etre—” and he went to the desk and began punching keys on an infotrieve.

“What are you after?” Heim demanded.

“Details of the time before quite every country had joined the Federation. The Moslem League did not recognize that it had any right as a whole to deal with them. So during the troubles, the Authority was charged with protecting Federation interests in Africa.” Coquelin gave himself entirely to his work. Once, though, he met Heim’s eyes. His own danced in his head.

“Mille remercîments, mon frère,” he said. “It may be for no more than this night, but you have given me back my youth.”

V

Endre Vadász took the lid off the kettle, inhaled a sumptuous odor, gave the contents a stir, and recovered them. “Almost done, this,” he said. “I had better make the salad. Have you the materials ready?”

Lisa Heim blushed. “I… I’m afraid I’m not so good at slicing cucumbers and stuff,” she said.

“Poof to that.” Vadász scooped the disorderly pile of greens into a bowl. “For a cadet, you do very well… Find me the seasonings, will you? One must needs be an engineer to operate this damned machine shop you call a kitchen… As I was saying, small one, when I so rudely interrupted myself, we shall yet win you to your cook and bottle washer (j.g.) rating. Charge, a boar’s head erased with an apple gules in its mouth, field barry of six vert and or. That’s for cabbage and clotted cream.”

Lisa giggled and hopped onto the table, where she swung her legs and watched Vadász with embarrassing warmth. He had only tried to be good company to his host’s daughter while her father was away. He gave the herbs and spices more attention than was really necessary.

“My mother taught me a Spanish saying,” he remarked, “that it takes four men to make a salad: a spendthrift for the oil, a philosopher for the seasonings, a miser for the vinegar, and a madman for the tossing.”

Lisa giggled again. “You’re cute.”

“Er—here we go.” Vadász got to work, singing.

“Is that a real old song too?” Lisa asked when he paused for breath. He nodded. “I just love your songs,” she said.

Vadász continued hastily.

Lisa grabbed a skillet and spoon to beat out time as, she joined him in the chorus.

“Hi-ro-de-rungl Hi-ro-de-rung!” chimed in a bull basso. Gunnar Heim stormed through the door.

“Skinna-ma-rinky doodle doo, skinna-ma-rinky doodle doo, (“Daddy!” “Gunnar!”).

“Glory, hallelujah, hi-ro-de-rung!” He snatched Lisa off the table, tossed her nearly to the ceiling, caught her, and began to whirl her around the floor. Vadász went merrily on. Helm took the chorus while he stamped out a measure with the girl, who squealed.

“Oh, Daddy!” Lisa collapsed in a laughing fit.

“Welcome home,” Vadász said. “You timed yourself well.”

“What’s going on here, anyway?” Heim inquired. “Where are the servants? Why put a camp stove in a perfectly good kitchen?”

“Because machines are competent enough cooks but will never be chefs,” Vadász said. “I promised your daughter a goulash, not one of those lyophilized glue-stews but a genuine handmade Gulyás and sneeze-with-joy in the spices.”

“Oh. Fine. Only I’d better get me—”

“Nothing. A Hungarian never sets the table with less than twice as much. You may, if you wish, contribute some red wine. So, once more, welcome home, and it is good to see you in this humor.”

“With reason.” Heim rubbed his great hands and smiled like a happy tiger. “Yes, indeedy.”

“What have you done, Daddy?” Lisa asked.

“’Fraid I can’t tell you, jente min. Not for a while.” He saw the first symptoms of mutiny, chucked her under the chin, and said, “It’s for your own protection.”

She stamped her foot. “I’m not a child, you know!”

“Come, now; come, now,” interrupted Vadász. “Let us not spoil the mood. Lisa, will you set a third place? We are eating in the high style, Gunnar, in your sunroom.”

“Sure,” she sighed. “If I can have the general intercom on, vid and audio both. Can I, please, Daddy?”

Heim chuckled, stepped out to the central control panel, and unlocked the switch that made it possible to activate any pickup in the apartment from any other room. Vadász’s voice drifted after him:

and on to the end.

When Heim came back, he remarked in an undertone, because she’d be watching and listening, “Lisa doesn’t want to miss a second of you, eh?”

The finely molded face turned doleful. “Gunnar, I didn’t mean—”

“Oh, for crying in the beer!” Heim slapped Vadász on the back. “You can’t imagine how much I’d rather have her in orbit around you than some of that adolescent trash. Everything seems to be turning sunward for me.”

The Magyar brightened. “I trust,” he said, “this means you have found a particularly foul way to goosh our friends of Alerion.”

“Shh!” Heim jerked a thumb at the intercom screen. “Let’s see, what wine should I dial for your main course?”

“Hey, ha, this is quite a list. Are you running a hotel?”

“No, to be honest, my wife tried to educate me in wines but never got far. I like the stuff but haven’t much of a palate. So except when there’s company, I stay with beer and whisky.”

Lisa appeared in the screen. She laughed and sang,

Vadász put thumb to nose and waggled his fingers. She stuck out her tongue. They both grinned, neither so broadly as Heim.

And supper was a meal with more cheer, more sense of being home, than any he could remember since Connie died. Afterward he could not recall what was said—banter, mostly—it had not been real talk but a kind of embracement.

Lisa put the dishes in the service cubicle and retired demurely to bed; she even kissed her father. Heim and Vadász went downramp to the study. He closed the door, took Scotch from a cabinet, ice and soda from a coldbox, poured, and raised his own glass.

Vadász’s clinked against it. “And a voice valedictory…” the minstrel toasted. “Who is for Victory? Who is for Liberty? Who goes home?”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Heim, and did, deeply. “Where’s it from?”

“One G. K. Chesterton, a couple of centuries ago. You have not heard of him? Ah, well, they no longer care for such unsophisticated things on Earth. Only in the colonies are men so naive as to think victories are possible.”

“Maybe we can make ’em change their minds here, too.” Heim sat down and reached for a pipe.

“Well,” Vadász said, in a cool tone but with a kind of shiver through his slim form, “now we come to business. What has happened, these last several days while I fretted about idle?”

“I’ll begin from the beginning,” Heim said. He felt no compunction about revealing what Twyman had admitted, since this Listener could be trusted. His acquaintance with Vadász, though brief, had been somewhat intense.

The Magyar wasn’t surprised anyway. “I knew they had no intention to get New Europe back when none would hear me.”

“I found a buck who would,” Heim said, and went on with his account. As he finished, Vadász’s jaw fell with a nearly audible clank.

“A privateer, Gunnar? Are you serious?”

“Absodamnlutely. So’s Coquelin, and several more we talked with.” Heim’s mirth had dissolved. He drew hard on his pipe, streamed the smoke out through dilated nostrils, and said:

“Here’s the situation. One commerce raider in the Phoenix can make trouble out of all proportion to its capabilities. Besides disrupting schedules and plans, it ties up any number of warships, which either have to go hunt for it or else run convoy. As a result, the Aleriona force confronting ours in the Marches will be reduced below parity. So if then Earth gets tough, both in space and at the negotiations table—we shouldn’t have to get very tough, you see, nothing so drastic that the peacemongers can scream too loud—one big naval push, while that raider is out there gobbling Aleriona ships—We can make them disgorge New Europe. Also give us some concessions for a change.”

“It may be. It may be.” Vadasz remained sober. “But how can you get a fighting craft?”

“Buy one and refit it. As for weapons, I’m going to dispatch a couple of trusty men soon, in a company speedster, to Staurn—you know the place?”

“I know of it. Ah-ha!” Vadasz snapped his fingers. His eyes began to glitter.

“Yep. That’s where our ship will finish refitting. Then off for the Auroran System.”

“But… will you not make yourself a pirate in the view of the law?”

“That’s something which Coquelin is still working on. He says he thinks there may be a way to make everything legal and, at the same time, ram a spike right up the exhaust of Twyman and his giveaway gang. But it’s a complicated problem. If the ship does have to fly the Jolly Roger, then Coquelin feels reasonably sure France has the right to try the crew, convict them, and pardon them. Of course, the boys might then have to stay in French territory, or leave Earth altogether for a colony—but they’ll be millionaires, and New Europe would certainly give them a glorious reception.”

Heim blew a smoke ring. “I haven’t time to worry about that,” he continued. “I’ll simply have to bull ahead and take my chances on getting arrested. Because you’ll understand how Coquelin and his allies in the French government—or in any government, because not every nation on Earth has gone hollowbelly—well, under the Constitution, no country can make warlike preparations. If we did get help from some official, that’d end every possibility of legalizing the operation. We’d better not even recruit our men from a single country, or from France at all.

“So it depends on me. I’ve got to find the ship, buy her, outfit her, supply her, sign on crew, and get her off into space—all inside of two months, because that’s when the formal talks between Parliament and the Aleriona delegation are scheduled to begin.” He made a rueful face. “I’m going to forget what sleep’s like.”

“The crew—” Vadász frowned. “A pretty problem, that. How many?”

“About a hundred, I’d say. Far more than needful, but the only way we can finance this venture is to take prizes, which means we’ll need prize crews. Also… there may be casualties.”

“I see. Wanted, a hundred skilled, reliable spacemen, Navy experience preferred, for the wildest gamble since Argilus went courting of Witch Helena. Where do you find them?… Hm, hm, I may know a place or two to look.”

“I do myself. We can’t recruit openly for a raider, you realize. If our true purpose isn’t kept secret to the last millisecond, we’ll be in the calaboose so fast that Einstein’s ghost will return to haunt us. But I think, in the course of what look like ordinary psych tests, I think we can probe attitudes and find out who can be trusted with the truth. Those are the ones we’ll hire.”

“First catch your rabbit,” Vadász said. “I mean find a psychologist who can be trusted!”

“Uh-huh. I’ll get Wingate, my father-in-law, to co-opt one. He’s a shrewd old rascal with tentacles everywhere, and if you think you and I are staticked about Alerion, you should listen to him for a while.” Heim squinted at the model of Star Fox, shining across the room. “I don’t believe ordinary crewmen will be too hard to find. When the Navy appropriation was cut, three years ago, a good many fellows found themselves thumb-twiddling on planet duty and resigned in disgust. We can locate those who came to Earth. But we may have trouble about a captain and a chief engineer. People with such qualifications don’t drift free.”

“Captain? What do you mean, Gunnar? You’ll be captain.”

“No.” Heim’s head wove heavily back and forth. A good deal of his bounce left him. “I’m afraid not. I want to—God, how I want to!—but, well, I’ve got to be sensible. Spaceships aren’t cheap. Neither are supplies, and especially not weapons. My estimates tell me I’ll have to liquidate all my available assets and probably hock everything else, to get that warship. Without me to tend the store, under those conditions, Heimdal might well fail. Lord knows there are enough competitors who’ll do everything they can to make it fail. And Heimdal, well, that’s something Connie and I built—her father staked us, but she worked the office end herself while I bossed the shop, those first few tough years. Heimdal’s the only thing I’ve got to leave my daughter.”

“I see.” Vadász spoke with compassion. “Also, she has no mother. You should not risk she lose her father too.”

Heim nodded.

“You will forgive me, though, if I go?” Vadász said.

“Oh, ja, ja, Endre, I’d be a swine to hold you back. You’ll even have officer rank: chief steward, which means mainly that you oversee the cooking. And you’ll bring me back some songs, won’t you?”

Vadász could not speak. He looked at his friend, chained to possessions and power, and there ran through his head:

But the rhythm got into his blood, and he realized what Heim had done and what it meant, leaped to his feet, and capered around the study shouting his victorious music aloud till the walls echoed,

VI

From WORLDWEEK:

31 October

Gunnar Heim, principal of the American firm Heimdal Motors, has purchased the starship Pass of Balmaha from British Minerals, Ltd. The transaction astonished shipping circles by its speed. Heim made a cash offer that was too good to turn down, but insisted on immediate occupancy.

He has announced that he plans to send an expedition in search of new worlds to colonize. “We seem to have lost out in the Phoenix,” he told 3V interviewer John Phillips. “Frankly, I am shocked and disgusted that no action has been taken in response to Alerion’s attack on New Europe. But I can’t do much about it except try to find us some new place—which I hope we’ll have the nerve to defend.”

As large and powerful as a naval cruiser, Glasgow—built Pass of Balmaha was originally intended to prospect for ores. But no deposits were found sufficiently rich to pay the cost of interstellar shipment when the Solar System still has workable mines. The ship has therefore been in Earth orbit for the past four years. Sir Henry Sherwin, chairman of the board of British Minerals, told Phillips, “We’re overjoyed to get rid of that white elephant, but I must confess I feel a bit guilty about it.”

7 November

U.S. Senator Harold Twyman (Libn., Calif.), high-ranking member of the Federal pre-formal negotiations team conferring with the delegation from Alerion, issued a statement Thursday denying rumors of a planned sell-out of New Europe.

“Certainly we are already talking business with them,” he said. “And that, by the way, is a slow and difficult process. The Aleriona are alien to us, biologically and culturally. In the past we have had far too little contact with them, and far too much of what we did have was hostile. You don’t get understanding out of a battle. Some of the finest xenologists on Earth are working day and night, trying to acquire a knowledge in depth that we should have gotten three decades ago.

“But we do know that the Aleriona share some things with mankind. They too are rational beings. They too wish to live. Their ancient civilization, which achieved a million years of stability, can teach us a great deal. And no doubt we can teach them something. Neither can do this, however, until we break the vicious circle of distrust, competition, fight, and retaliation.

“That’s why the Deepspace Fleet has been ordered not to fire except in self-defense. That’s why we aren’t crowding the government of Alerion—if it is anything like what we understand by a government—to get out of the Auroran |System. That’s why we are taking our time with the honorable delegation: who, remember, came to us on Alerion’s own I initiative.

“Under the Constitution, only Parliament as a whole is empowered to negotiate with non-human states. Certainly the Executive Committee will observe this law. But you can’t expect a body as large, diverse, and busy as Parliament to do the spadework in a case so intricate. Its duly appointed representatives were given that duty. We hope in a few more weeks to have a complete draft treaty ready for submission. At that time we shall be prepared to meet every conceivable objection to it. Meanwhile, however, it would be too great a handicap for us to operate in a glare of publicity.

“But we do not, repeat not, plan to betray any vital interest of the human race. Negotiation is a mutual process. We shall have to give a little as well as take a little. The Aleriona realize this too, perhaps better than some members of our own young and arrogant species. I am confident that, in the last analysis, all men of good will are going to agree that we have opened a new and hopeful era of cosmic history. The people of New Europe have not died in vain.”

14 November

Retired Vice Admiral Piet van Rinnekom, 68, was set upon by about twenty men as he neared his house in Amsterdam on Monday evening, and badly beaten.

When the police arrived, the assailants fled shouting taunts of “Warmonger!”

They appeared to be of mixed nationality. Van Rinnekom has been an outspoken opponent of what he describes as “appeasement of Alerion,” and is the author of the so-called Manhood Petition, whose backers are trying to gather one billion signatures in favor of Earth using force, if necessary, to regain New Europe.

Most sociologists consider this sheer lunacy.

His condition is listed as serious.

At his Chicago office, Dr. Jonas Yore, founder and president of World Militants for Peace, issued the following statement: “Naturally this organization regrets the incident and hopes for Admiral van Rinnekom’s recovery. But let us be honest. He has only gotten a taste of the very violence he advocated. The issue before us is one of life and death. WMP stands for life. Unhappily, a great many uninformed people have let their emotions run away with them and are crying for blood with no thought of the consequences. WMP exists to fight this tendency, to fight for sanity, to give atavism its deathblow, by any means required. We make no threats. But let the militarists beware.”

21 November

Last Tuesday mankind throughout the Solar System watched an unprecedented event. Cynbe ru Taren, a member of the Aleriona delegation to Earth, appeared on an official 3V broadcast and answered questions put to him by Crown Prince Umberto of Italy, who represented the World Federation.

The questions were selected from an estimated forty million sent in by people around the globe, with Cynbe choosing a dozen from the final list. As he remarked, with a grim humor he displayed throughout the interview, “Thirteen bears for you an unhappy freight. It numbered either that one who betrayed or that one who was slain.”

In general, he repeated statements already made about the New Europe tragedy. How did it happen? “Our ships were on maneuvers. Near Aurore did they pass, for Alerion recognizes no other claim of sovereignty in the Phoenix.

Maychance the Terrestrial chief believed this was attack, for truth is we had many. When fired on, we made response, with more than he may have awaited.

His remnants entered atmosphere for an outflank with radiation protection. That it might save itself, our closest detachment launched weapons of multiple megatonnage. Grief, the settled fringe of that continent they named Pays d’Espoir was lineally beneath. At orbital height the warheads kindled a firestorm. Terrible it ran, from end to end of that coast. When we could land, we found none alive, and but few in the southern region, where also a missile struck. Those we have hither brought, with our own mourning. Yet their Thirteenth-the-Betrayer was that captain who took them not into account when he plunged.”

Why does Alerion now keep possession? “Naught but woe came ever from this intermingling. Time and again have humans ordered us from planets we discovered thousands of years agone, whose peace is now broken with machines and alien feet. And truth, we have often felt need to forbid places, even force them evacuated of the first few men. Races that knew us long grow latterly hostile to us, unrestful by what men have told and sold them. Resources we need are taken away. From such has come tension, which unseldom bursts in battle.

Long past is that hour we should have ended it.”

Why doesn’t Alerion let an inspection team from Earth visit New Europe?

“As we understand the symbolism of your culture, this were an admission of weakness and wrongness. Too, we cannot hazard espionage, or yet a suicide mission with nuclear bombs ensmuggled. I say never your Parliament would such plot, but you have individuals who are otherwise, some in high command.

Maychance later, when faith has been achieved…”

28 November

The Aleriona Craze, already well established in North America, gained so much momentum from delegate Cynbe ru Taren’s recent 3V appearance that in the past week it has swept like a meteorite through the upper-class teen-agers of most countries. Quite a few in Welfare have caught the fever too. Now girls blessed with naturally blonde long hair flaunt it past their sisters waiting in line to buy wigs and metal mesh jerkins-like their brothers. No disciplinary measure by parents or teachers seems able to stop the kids warbling every word they utter.

You need ear seals not to be assaulted by the minor-key caterwaulings of “Alerion, Alerion” from radio, juke, and taper. The slithering Aleriona Ramble has driven even the Wiggle off the dance floors. On Friday the city of Los Angeles put an educational program on the big screen at La Brea Park, a rebroadcast of the historic interview; and police fought three hours to halt a riot by five thousand screaming high-schoolers.

In an effort to learn whether this is a mere fad or a somewhat hysterical expression of the world’s sincere desire for peace, our reporters talked with typical youngsters around the globe. Some quotes:

Lucy Thomas, 16, Minneapolis: “I’m just in hyperbolic orbit about him. I play the show back even when I’m asleep. Those eyes—they freeze you and melt you at the same time. Yee-ee!”

Pedro Fraga, 17, Buenos Aires: “They can’t be male. I won’t believe they are.”

Machiko Ichikawa, 15, Tokyo: “The Samurai would have understood them.

So much beauty, so much valor.”

Simon Mbulu, 18, Nairobi: “Of course, they frighten me. But that is part of the wonder.”

In Paris, Georges de Roussy, 17, threatened surlily: “I don’t know what’s gotten into those young camels. But I’ll tell you this. Anybody we saw in that costume would get her wig cut off, and her own hair with it.”

No comment was available from the still hidden delegates.

5 December

Lisa Heim, 14, daughter of manufacturer and would-be exploration entrepreneur Gunnar Heim of San Francisco, disappeared Wednesday. Efforts to trace her have so far been unsuccessful, and police fear she may have been kidnapped. Her father has posted a reward of one million American dollars for “anything that helps get her back. I’ll go higher than this in ransom if I have to,” he added.

VII

Uthg-a-K’thaq twisted his face downward as far as he could, which wasn’t much, and pointed his four chemosensor tendrils directly at Heim. In this position the third eye on top of his head was visible to the man, aft of the blowhole. But it was the front eyes, on either side of those fleshy feelers, that swiveled their gray stare against him. A grunt emerged from the lipless gape of a mouth: “So war, you say. We ’rom Naqsa know little ow war.”

Heim stepped back, for to a human nose the creature’s breath stank of swamp. Even so, he must look upward; Uthg-a-K’thaq loomed eighteen centimeters over him. He wondered fleetingly if that was why there was so much prejudice against Naqsans.

The usual explanation was their over-all appearance. Uthg-a-K’thaq suggested a dolphin, of bilious green-spotted yellow, that had turned its tail into a pair of short fluke-footed legs. Lumps projecting under the blunt head acted as shoulders for arms that were incongruously anthropoid, if you overlooked their size and the swimming-membranes that ran from elbows to pelvis. Except for a purse hung from that narrowing in the body which indicated a sort of neck, he was naked, and grossly male. It wasn’t non-humanness as such that offended men, said the psychologists, rather those aspects which were parallel but different, like a dirty joke on Homo sapiens. Smell, slobbering, belching, the sexual pattern. But mainly they’re also space travelers, prospectors, colonizers, freight carriers, merchants, who’ve given us stiff competition, Heim thought cynically.

That had never bothered him. The Naqsans were shrewd but on the average more ethical than men. Nor did he mind their looks; indeed, they were handsome if you considered them functionally. And their private lives were their own business. The fact remained, though, most humans would resent even having a Naqsan in the same ship, let alone serving under him. And…

Dave Penoyer would be a competent captain, he had made lieutenant commander before he quit the Navy, but Heim wasn’t sure he could be firm enough if trouble of that nasty sort broke out.

He dismissed worry and said, “Right. This is actually a raiding cruise. Are you still interested?”

“Yes. Hawe you worgotten that horriwle den you wound me in?”

Heim had not. Tracking rumors to their source, he had ended in a part of New York Welfare that appalled even him. A Naqsan stranded on Earth was virtually helpless. Uthg-a-K’thaq had shipped as technical adviser on a vessel from the planet that men called Caliban, whose most advanced tribe had decided to get into the space game. Entering the Solar System, the inexperienced skipper collided with an asteroid and totaled his craft. Survivors were brought to Earth by the Navy, and the Calibanites sent home; but there was no direct trade with Naqsa and, in view of the crisis in the Phoenix where his world also lay, no hurry to repatriate Uthg-a-K’thaq.

Damnation, instead of fooling with those Aleriona bastards, Parliament ought to be working out a distressed-spaceman covenant.

Bluntly, Heim said, “We haven’t any way of testing your mind in depth as we can for our own sort. I’ve got to trust your promise to keep quiet. I suppose you know that if you pass this information on, you’ll probably get enough of a reward to buy a ride home.”

Uthg-a-K’thaq burbled in his blowhole. Heim wasn’t sure whether it represented laughter or indignation. “You hawe my word. Also, I am wothered awout Alerion. Good to strike at them.

And, suq, will there not we loot to share?”

“Okay. You’re hereby our chief engineer.” Because the ship has got to leave soon, and you’re the only one I could get who knows how to repair a Mach Principle drive. “Now about details—”

A maid’s voice said over the intercom, which was set for one-way only: “Mail, sir.”

Heim’s heart shuddered, as it daily did. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’ll be back. Make yourself comfortable.”

Uthg-a-K’thaq hissed something and settled his glabrous bulk on the study couch. Heim jogged out.

Vadisz sat in the living room, bottle to hand. He hadn’t spoken much or sung a note in the past few days. The house was grown tomb silent. At first many came; police, friends, Curt Wingate and Harold Twyman arrived at the same hour and clasped hands; of everyone Heim knew well only Jocelyn Lawrie had remained unheard from. That was all a blur in his memory; he had continued preparations for the ship because there was nothing else to do, and he scarcely noticed when the visits stopped. Drugs kept him going. This morning he had observed his own gauntness in an optex with faint surprise—and complete indifference.

“Surely the same null,” Vadász mumbled.

Heim snatched the stack of envelopes off the table. A flat package lay on the bottom. He ripped the plastic off. Lisa’s face looked forth. His hands began to shake so badly that he had trouble punching the animator button. The lips that were Connie’s opened.

“Daddy,” said the small voice. “Endre. I’m okay. I mean, they haven’t hurt me. A woman stopped me when I was about to get on the elway home. She said her bra magnet had come loose and would I please help her fix it I didn’t think anybody upper-class was dangerous. She was dressed nice and talked nice and had a car there and everything. We got in the car and blanked the bubble. Then she shot me with a stunner. I woke up here. I don’t know where it is, a suite of rooms, the windows are always blanked. Two women are staying with me. They aren’t mean, they just won’t let me go. They say it’s for peace. Please do what they want.” Her flat speech indicated she was doped with antiphobic. But suddenly herself broke through. “I’m so lonesome!” she cried, and the tears came.

The strip ended. After a long while Heim grew aware that Vadász was urging him to read a note that had also been in the package. He managed to focus on the typescript.

Mr. Heim:

For weeks you have lent your name and influence to the militarists.

You have actually paid for advertisements making the false and inflammatory claim that there are survivors at large on New Europe. Now we have obtained information which suggests you may be plotting still more radical ways to disrupt the peace negotiations.

If this is true, mankind cannot allow it. For the sake of humanity, we cannot take the chance that it might be true.

Your daughter will be kept as a hostage for your good behavior until the treaty with Alerion has been concluded, and for as long thereafter as seems wise. If meanwhile you publicly admit you lied about New Europe, and do nothing else, she will be returned.

Needless to say, you are not to inform the police of this message. The peace movement has so many loyal supporters in so many places that we will know if you do. In that event, we will be forced to punish you through the girl. If on the other hand you behave yourself, you to receive occasional word from her.

Yours for peace and sanity.

He had to read three or four times before it registered.

“San Francisco meter,” Vadász said. He crumpled the plastic and hurled it at the wall. “Not that that means anything.”

“Gud i himlen.” Heim stumbled to a lounger, fell down, and sat staring into the unspeakable.

“Why don’t they go straight after me?”

“They have done so,” Vadász answered.

“Personally!”

“You would be a risky target for violence. A young and trusting girl is easier.”

Heim had a feeling that he was about to weep. But his eyes remained two coals in his skull.

“What can we do?” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” Vadász said like a robot. “So much depends on who they are. Obviously not anyone official. A government need only arrest you on some excuse.”

“The Militants, then. Jonas Yore.” Heim rose and walked toward the exit.

“Where are you going?” Vadász grabbed his arm. It was like trying to halt a landslip.

“For a gun,” Heim said, “and on to Chicago.”

“No. Hold. Stop, you damned fool! What could you do except provoke them into killing her?”

Heim swayed and stood.

“Yore may or may not know about this,” Vadász said. “Certainly no one has definite information about your plans, or they would simply tip the Peace Control. The kidnappers could be in the lunatic fringe of the Militants. Emotions are running so high. And that sort must needs be dramatic, attack people in the street, steal your daughter, strut their dirty little egos—yes, Earth has many like them in the upper classes too, crazed with uselessness. Any cause will do. ‘Peace’ is merely the fashionable one.”

Heim returned to the bottle. He poured himself a drink, slopping much. Lisa is alive, he told himself. Lisa is alive, Lisa is alive. He tossed the liquor down his gullet. “How long will she be?” he screamed.

“Hey?”

“She’s with fanatics. They’ll still hate me, whatever happens. And they’ll be afraid she can identify them. Endre, help me!”

“We have some time,” Vadász snapped. “Use it for something better than hysterics.”

The glow in Heim’s stomach spread outward. I’ve been responsible for lives before, he thought, and the old reflexes of command awoke. You construct a games theoretical matrix and choose the course with smallest negative payoff. His brain began to move. “Thanks, Endre,” he said.

“Could they be bluffing about spies in the police?” Vadász wondered.

“I don’t know, but the chance looks too big to take.”

“Then… we cancel the expedition, renounce what we have said about New Europe, and hope?”

“That may be the only thing to do.” It whirred in Heim’s head. “Though I do believe it’s wrong also, even to get Lisa home.”

“What is left? To hit back? How? Maybe private detectives could search—”

“Over a whole planet? Oh, we can try them, but—No, I was fighting a fog till I got the idea of the raider, and now I’m back in the fog and I’ve got to get out again. Something definite, that they won’t know about before too late. You were right, there’s no sense in threatening Yore. Or even appealing to him, I guess. What matters to them is their cause. If we could go after it—”

Heim bellowed. Vadász almost got knocked over in the big man’s rush to the phone. “What in blue hell, Gunnar?”

Heim unlocked a drawer and took out his private directory. It now included the unlisted number and code of Michel Coquelin’s sealed circuit. And 0930 in California was—what? 1730?—in Paris. His fingers stabbed the buttons.

A confidential secretary appeared in the screen. “Bureau de—oh, M. Heim.”

“Donnez-vous moi M. le Minister tout de suite, s’il vous plaît.” Despite the circumstances, Vadász winced at what Heim thought was French.

The secretary peered at the visage confronting him, sucked down a breath, and punched.

Coquelin’s weary features.

“Gunnar! What is this? News of your girl?”

Heim told him. Coquelin turned gray. “Oh, no,” he said. He had children of his own.

“Uh-huh,” Heim said. “I see only one plausible way out. My crew’s assembled now, a tough bunch of boys. And you know where Cynbe is.”

“Are you crazy?” Coquelin stammered.

“Give me the details: location, how to get in, disposition of guards and alarms,” Heim said.

“I’ll take it from there. If we fail, I won’t implicate you. I’ll save Lisa, or try to save her, by giving the kidnappers a choice: that I either cast discredit on them and their movement by spilling the whole cargo; or I get her back, tell the world I lied, and show remorse by killing myself. We can arrange matters so they know I’ll go through with it.”

“I cannot—I—”

“This is rough on you, Michel, I know,” Heim said. “But if you can’t help me, well, then I’m tied. I’ll have to do exactly what they want. And half a million will die on New Europe.”

Coquelin wet his lips, stiffened his back, and asked: “Suppose I tell you, Gunnar. What happens?”

VIII

“Space yacht Flutterby, GB-327-RP, beaming Georgetown, Ascension Island. We are in distress. Come in, Georgetown. Come in, Georgetown.”

The whistle of cloven air lifted toward a roar. Heat billowed through the forward shield. The bridge viewports seemed aflame and the radar screen had gone mad. Heim settled firmer into his harness and fought the pilot console.

“Garrison to Flutterby.” The British voice was barely audible as maser waves struggled through the ionized air enveloping that steel meteorite. “We read you. Come in, Flutterby.”

“Stand by for emergency landing,” David Penoyer said. His yellow hair was plastered down with sweat. “Over.”

“You can’t land here. This island is temporarily restricted. Over.” Static snarled around the words.

Engines sang aft. Force fields wove their four-dimensional dance through the gravitrons. The internal compensators held steady, there was no sense of that deceleration which made the hull groan; but swiftly the boat lost speed, until thermal effect ceased. In the ports a vision of furnaces gave way to the immense curve of the South Atlantic. Clouds were scattered woolly above its shiningness. The horizon line was a deep blue edging into space black.

“The deuce we can’t,” Penoyer said. “Over.”

“What’s wrong?” Reception was loud and clear this time.

“Something blew as we reached suborbital velocity. We’ve a hole in the tail and no steering pulses. Bloody little control from the main drive. I think we can set down on Ascension, but don’t ask me where. Over.”

“Ditch in the ocean and we’ll send a boat. Over.”

“Didn’t you hear me, old chap? We’re hulled. We’d sink like a stone. Might get out with spacesuits and life jackets, or might not. But however that goes, Lord Ponsonby won’t be happy about losing a million pounds’ worth of yacht. We’ve a legal right to save her if we can. Over.”

“Well—hold on, I’ll switch you to the captain’s office—”

“Nix. No time. Don’t worry. We won’t risk crashing into Garrison. Our vector’s aimed at the south side. We’ll try for one of the plateaus. Will broadcast a signal for you to home on when we’re down, which’ll be in a few more ticks. Wish us luck. Over and out.”

Penoyer snapped down the switch and turned to Heim. “Now we’d better be fast,” he said above the thunders. “They’ll scramble some armed flyers as soon as they don’t hear from us.”

Heim nodded. During those seconds of talk Connie Girl had shot the whole way. A wild dark landscape clawed up at her. His detectors registered metal and electricity, which must be at Cynbe’s lair. Green Mountain lifted its misty head between him and the radars at Georgetown. He need no longer use only the main drive. That had been touch and go!

He cut the steering back in. The boat swerved through an arc that howled like a wolf. A tiny landing field carved from volcanic rock appeared in the viewports. He came down in a shattering blast of displaced air. Dust vomited skyward.

The jacks touched ground. He slapped the drive to Idle and threw off his harness. “Take over, Dave,” he said, and pounded for the main airlock.

His score of men arrived with him, everyone spacesuited.

Their weapons gleamed in the overhead illumination. He cursed the safety seal that made the lock open with such sadistic slowness. Afternoon light slanted through. He led the way, jumped off the ramp before it had finished extruding, and crouched in the settling dust.

There were three buildings across the field, as Coquelin had said: a fifteen-man barracks, a vehicle shed, and an environmental dome. The four sentries outside the latter held their guns in a stupefied fashion, only approximately pointed at him. The two men on a mobile GTA missile carrier gaped. Georgetown HQ had naturally phoned them not to shoot if they detected a spacecraft. The rest of the guard were pouring from quarters.

Heim counted. Some weren’t in sight yet… He lumbered toward them. “Emergency landing,” he called. “I saw your field—”

The young man with Peace Control lieutenant’s insignia, who must be in charge, looked dismayed. “But—” He stopped and fumbled at his collar.

Heim came near. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Why shouldn’t I have used your field?”

That was a wicked question, he knew. Officially PCA didn’t admit this place existed.

The Aleriona overlords who comprised the delegation could not be housed together. They never lived thus at home; to offer them less than total privacy would have been an insult, and perhaps risky of all their lives. So they must be scattered around Earth. Ascension was a good choice. Little was here nowadays except a small World Sea Police base. Comings and goings were thus discreet.

“Orders,” the lieutenant said vaguely. He squinted at the argent spear of the yacht. “I say, you don’t look damaged.” You could fake a name and registry for Connie Girl, but not unsoundness. The last couple of men emerged from barracks. Heim raised his arm and pointed.

“On her other side,” he said. He chopped his hand down and clashed his faceplate shut.

Two men in the airlock stepped back. The gas cannon they had hidden poked its nose out.

Under fifty atmospheres of pressure, the anesthetic aerosol boiled forth.

A sentry opened fire. Heim dove for dirt. A bullet splintered rock before his eyes. The yellow stream gushed overhead, rumbling. And now his crew were on their way, with stunners asnicker. No lethal weapons; he’d hang before he killed humans doing their duty. But this was an attack by men who had seen combat against men whose only job had been to prevent it. Death wasn’t needed.

The short, savage fight ended. Heim rose and made for the dome. Zucconi and Lupowitz came behind, a ram slung between them on a gravity carrier. Around the field, Connie Girl’s medical team started to check the fallen Peacemen and give what first aid was indicated.

“Here,” said Heim into his suit radio. Zucconi and Lupowitz set down the ram and started the motor.. Five hundred kilos of tool steel bashed the dome wall at sixty cycles. The narcotic fog clamored with that noise. The wall smashed open. Heim leaped through, into the red sun’s light.

A dozen followed him. “He’s somewhere in this mess,” Heim said. “Scatter. We’ve got maybe three minutes before the cops arrive.”

He burst into the jungle at random. Branches snapped, vines shrank away, flowers were crushed underfoot. A shadow flitted—Cynbe! Heim plunged.

A laser flame sizzled. Heim felt the heat, saw his combat breastplate vaporizing in coruscant fire. Then he was upon the Aleriona. He wrenched the gun loose. Mustn’t close in—he’d get burned on this hot metal. Cynbe grinned with fury and whipped his tail around Heim’s ankles. Heim fell, but still Cynbe hung on. His followers arrived, seized their quarry, and frogmarched away the Intellect Master of the Garden of War. Outside, Cynbe took a breath of vapor and went limp.

I hope the biomeds are right about this stuff’s being harmless to him, Heim thought.

He ran onto the field and had no more time for thought. A couple of PCA flyers were in the sky. They stooped like hawks. Their guns pursued Heim’s crew. He saw the line of explosions stitch toward him, heard the crackle and an overhead whistle through his helmet. “Open out!” he yelled. His throat was afire. Sweat soaked his undergarments. “Let ’em see who you’re toting!”

The flyers screamed about and climbed.

They’ll try to disable my boat. If we can’t get away fast—

The ramp was ahead, hell-road steep.

A squadron appeared over Green Mountain. Heim stopped at the bottom of the ramp. His men streamed past. Now Cynbe was aboard. Now everyone was. A flyer dove at him. He heard bullets sleet along the ramp at his heels.

Over the coaming! Someone dogged the lock. Connie Girl stood on her tail and struck for the sky. Heim lay where he was for some time.

Eventually he opened his helmet and went to the bridge. Space blazed with stars, but Earth was already swallowing them again. “We’re headed back down, eh?” he asked.

“Right-o,” Penoyer answered. The strain had left him, his boyish face was one vast grin.

“Got clean away, above their ceiling and past their radar horizon before you could say fout.”

Then a long curve above atmosphere, but swiftly, racing the moment when Peace Control’s orbital detectors were alerted, and now toward the far side of the planet. It had been a smooth operation, boded well for the privateer. If they carried it the whole way through, that was.

Heim lockered his suit and got back steadiness from the routine of an intercom check with all stations. Everything was shipshape, barring some minor bullet pocks in the outer plates. When Lupowitz reported, “The prisoner’s awake, sir,” he felt no excitement, only a tidal flow of will.

“Bring him to my cabin,” he ordered. The boat crept downward through night. Timing had been important. The Russian Republic was as amiably inept about TrafCon as everything else, and you could land undetected after dark on the Siberian tundra if you were cautious. Heim felt the setdown as a slight quiver. When the engines ceased their purr, the silence grew monstrous.

Two armed men outside his cabin saluted in triumph. He went through and closed the door.

Cynbe stood near the bunk. Only his tailtip stirred, and his hair in the breeze from a ventilator. But when he recognized Heim, the beautiful face drew into a smile that was chilling to see. “Ah-h-h,” he murmured.

Heim made the formal Aleriona salute. “Imbiac, forgive me,” he said. “I am desperate.”

“Truth must that be”—it trilled in his ears—“if you think thus to rouse war.”

“No, I don’t. How could I better disgrace my side of the argument? I just need your help.”

The green eyes narrowed. “Strange is your way to ask, Captain.”

“There wasn’t any other. Listen. Matters have gotten so tense between the war and peace factions on Earth that violence is breaking out. Some days ago my daughter was stolen away. I got a message that if I didn’t switch sides, she’d be killed.”

“Grief. Yet what can I do?”

“Don’t pretend to be sorry. If I backed down, you’d have a distinct gain, so there was no point in begging your assistance. Now, no matter what I myself do, I can’t trust them to return her. I had to get a lever of my own. I bribed someone who knew where you were, recruited this gang of men, and—and now we’ll phone the head of the organized appeasement agitators.”

Cynbe’s tail switched his heels. “Let us suppose I refuse,” said the cool music.

“Then I’ll kill you,” Heim said without rancor. “I don’t know if that scares you or not. But your delegation meets Parliament in another week. They’ll be handicapped without their military expert. Nor are things likely to proceed smoothly, after such a stink as I can raise.”

“Will you not terminate my existence in every case, Captain, that I never denounce you?”

“No. Cooperate and you’ll go free. I simply want my daughter back. Why should I commit a murder that’ll have the whole planet looking for the solution? They’d be certain to find me. The general type of this vessel is sufficient clue, since I’ve no alibi for the time of the kidnapping.”

“Yet have you not said why I shall not accuse you.”

Heim shrugged. “That’d be against your own interest. Too sordid a story would come out. A father driven wild by the irresponsible Peace Militants, and so forth. I’d produce my documents from New Europe in open court. I’d testify under neoscop what you admitted when last we talked.

Oh, I’d fight dirty. Sentiment on Earth is delicately balanced. Something like my trial could well tip the scales.”

Cynbe’s eyes nictitated over. He stroked his chin with one slim hand.

“In fact,” Heim said, “your best bet is to tell PCA you were taken by an unidentified bunch who wanted to sabotage the treaty. You persuaded them this was the worst thing they could do, from their own standpoint, and they let you go. Then insist that our own authorities hush the entire affair up. They will, if you say so, and gladly. A public scandal at this juncture would be most inconvenient.” Still the Aleriona stood hooded in his own thoughts. “Cynbe,” said Heim in his softest voice, “you do not understand humans. We’re as alien to you as you are to us. So far you’ve juggled us pretty well. But throw in a new factor, and what are all your calculations worth?”

The eyes unveiled. “Upon you I see no weapon,” Cynbe crooned. “If I aid you not, how will you kill me?”

Heim flexed his fingers. “With these hands.”

Laughter belled forth. “Star Fox captain, let us seek the radiophone.”

It was late morning in Chicago. Jonas Yore’s Puritan face looked out of the screen with loathing. “What do you want, Heim?”

“You know about my girl being snatched?”

“No. I mean, I’m sorry for her if not for you, but how does it concern me? I have no information.”

“I got word the kidnappers are skizzies in the peace faction. Wait, I don’t accuse you of having any part in it. Every group has bolshes. But if you passed the word around quietly, personal calls to your entire membership list, directly or indirectly you’d get to them.”

“See here, you rotten—”

“Turn on your recorder. This is important. I want to present Delegate Cynbe ru Taren.” In spite of everything, Heim’s heart came near bursting.

The Aleriona glided into pickup range. “My lord!” Yore gasped.

“In honor’s name did Captain Heim appeal me-ward,” Cynbe sang. “A bond is between us that we did battle once. Nor may my ancient race drink of shame. Is not yonder child returned, we must depart this planet and invoke that cleansing which is in open war. Thus do I command your help.”

“M-m-my lord—I—Yes! At once!”

Heim switched off the set. The air whistled from his lungs and his knees shook. “Th-th-thanks,” he stuttered. “Uh… uh… as soon as Vadász lets me know she’s arrived, we’ll take off.

Deliver you near a town.”

Cynbe watched him for a time before he asked: “Play your chess, Captain? Of Earth’s every creation, there is the one finest. And well should I like that you not have her enminded a while.”

“No, thanks,” Heim said. “You’d win on fool’s mate every time. I’d better see about getting our false identification removed.”

He was glad of the winter cold outside.

They were almost through when Cynbe appeared in the airlock, etched black across its light.

His tone soared: “Captain, be swift. The wandersinger calls from your home. She is again.”

Heim didn’t remember running to the phone. Afterward he noticed bruises on shin and shoulder. But he did lock the radio-room door.

Lisa looked at him. “Oh, Daddy!”

“Are you all right?” he cried. His hands reached out. The screen stopped them.

“Yes. They… they never hurt me. I got doped. When I woke up, we were parked here in town. They told me, take an elway from there. I was still dopey and didn’t pay any attention—no number—Please hurry home.”

“I’ll—ja. Two, three hours.”

The remnants of the drug left her more calm than him. “I think I know how it happened, Daddy. I’m awful sorry. That night you and Endre talked about your—you know—well, you’d forgot to turn off the general intercom switch. I listened from my room.”

He remembered how slinky and mysterious she had acted in the following couple of weeks.

He’d put that down to an attempt at impressing Vadász. Now the knowledge of his carelessness hit him in the belly.

“Don’t,” she asked. “I never told. Honest. Only when Dick and some other kids teased me ’cause I wouldn’t go in for that stupid Aleriona stuff, I got mad and told them one human was worth a hundred of those crawlies and my father was going to prove it. I never said more. But I guess word got back to somebody, ’cause those women kept asking me what I’d meant. I told them I was just bragging. Even when they said they’d beat me, I told them it was just a brag, and I guess they believed that because they never did beat me. Please don’t be too mad, Daddy.”

“I’m not,” he said harshly* “I’m more proud than I deserve. Now go to bed and rest. I’ll be home as fast as I can.”

“I missed you so much.”

She switched off. Then Heim could weep.

Connie Girl purred aloft, and down again a kilometer outside Krasnoe. Heim escorted Cynbe to the ground. It was frozen, and rang underfoot. A few lights shone from outlying houses, dim compared to the winter stars.

“Here.” Awkwardly, Heim proffered a heated cloak. “You’ll want this.”

“My thanks,” blew from under the frost-cold locks. “When your authorities fetch me, I shall tell as you suggested. Wisest for Alerion is thus; and for I, who would not see you further hurt.”

Heim stared at the thin snowcrust. It sparkled like Cynbe’s fur. “I’m sorry about what I did,” he mumbled. “It was no way to treat you.”

“No more of anger in-dwells.” Cynbe’s song dropped low. “I knew not humans hold their young so dear. Well may you fare.”

“Good-by.” This time Gunnar Heim shook hands.

The boat took off afresh, found orbital height, and went toward Mojave Port along a standard trajectory. As far as the world was concerned, she had gone out to check on the loading of the star cruiser. Heim was surprised to note how calmly he could now wait to see his daughter again.

And when it’d be for such a short time, too. The ship must depart in a few more days, with him her captain.

That had to be, he saw. The evil had grown so mighty that he dared not challenge it with less than his whole strength: which was found among the stars, not on this sick Earth. Nor would he be worthy to be Lisa’s father, if he sent men against that thing whose creatures had tried to devour her, and did not go himself.

She’d be safe in Wingate’s care_ As for the Heimdal company, it might or might not survive without him, but that really made no difference. Lisa’s grandfather would provide for her, whatever happened. And don’t forget the chance of prize money!

Laughter welled in Heim. Maybe I’m rationalizing a selfish, atavistic desire to raise hell. Okay, what if I am? This is the way it’s going to be.

IX

They had celebrated an early Christmas. The tree glittered forlorn in the living room.

Outside, a surf of rain drove against the windows.

“It’s so awful,” Lisa said. “That there has to be war.”

“There doesn’t, pony,” Heim answered. “In fact, that’s what we’re trying to prevent.”

She regarded him in bewilderment.

“If we don’t stand up to Alerion,” Heim said, “there’ll be trouble and more trouble, worse each time, and we’ll forever lose, until at last Earth is driven into a corner. And when it’s cornered, the human race always does fight, with everything it’s got. Planet against planet—that would be the real Ragnarok. What we have to do is show them right now that we aren’t going to be pushed. Then we and they can talk business. Because space truly is big enough for everybody, as long as they respect each other’s right to exist” He put on his cloak. “We’d better start.”

They went downshaft in silence to the garage, and entered his flyer—himself, his daughter, her grandfather, two hard-looking men who must keep watch over her until this affair had been outlived, and Vadász. Out the doors they glided, and rose through storm. The hull shivered and resounded. But when they got into the upper lanes, blue stillness encompassed them, with clouds below like snow mountains.

Wingate lit a cigar and puffed, his nutcracker face squinched together. Finally he barked, “I hate these good-by waits, sitting around wishing you could think of something to say. Let’s tune in Parliament”

“Not worth while,” Heim replied. “They expect a full week of preliminary debate before they invite the Aleriona delegation. Every two-cent politician wants to make sure he’s heard at least once.”

“But according to the news yesterday, France came out near the top of the alphabetical draw.

Coquelin will probably start to speak any minute.”

“Hell-oh, go ahead.” Heim was chiefly conscious of the slight form huddled between him and Vadász.

The time was not much later in Mexico City than here, but you couldn’t tell that from inside the Capitol. The view swept across the Chamber of Council, faces and faces and faces, white, brown, black, amber, their eyes zeroed on the rostrum as the speaker for Finland stepped down.

President Fazil knocked with his gavel; through that waiting quiet, the sound was like nails being driven into a coffin. Wingate, whose Spanish was not the best, dialed for English translation.

“—the honorable spokesman for France, M. Michel Coquelin.”

Heim set the ’pilot and leaned back to watch. The square shape trudged down the aisle deliberately, almost scornfully, and took a stance at the lectern. The camera zoomed in on a countenance shockingly aged, but one which might have been cast in iron.

“Mr. President, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen. I shall not detain you long at this point The world knows the French feeling about New Europe. My country wishes to make her position entirely clear and to advance a certain argument. Since this is sure to precipitate considerable discussion, I request leave to defer my address until the other honorable spokesmen have finished theirs.”

“You see?” Heim said. “He has to gain time for us to get clear. It was bad luck that France came on so early in the session, but he’ll handle it.”

“What’s he going to say, anyhow, Daddy?” Lisa asked. “He can’t let you be called pirates!”

Heim grinned. “You’ll find out.”

“Mr. President! Point of order.” The camera wheeled around and closed in on Harold Twyman. He had jumped to his feet and looked angry. “In so grave a matter, a departure from precedence must be approved in the form of a motion.”

Coquelin raised his brows. “I fail to see why there should be any objection to France yielding precedence,” he said.

“Mr. President, distinguished members of this body,” Twyman rapped, “the honorable spokesman for France has warned us that he intends a surprise. This is a time for serious discussion, not for debater’s tricks. If we find ourselves forced to rebut an unexpected assertion, our meeting with the honorable delegates of Alerion may easily be postponed another week.

There has already been too much delay. I insist that this chamber vote upon whether to let M.

Coquelin play with us or not.”

“Mr. President—” The Frenchman’s retort was cut off. Fazil slammed his gavel and said:

“The chair finds the point well taken, if perhaps somewhat heatedly expressed. Does anyone wish to make a motion that the French statement be deferred until every other national spokesman has finished his remarks?”

“Oh, oh,” Vadász muttered. “This does not look good.”

Heim reached out and adjusted the ’pilot for top speed. The engine hum strengthened. Above it he heard a member of the Argentine group say, “I so move,” and a Dutchman, “I second.”

“It has been moved and seconded—”

“What if they don’t let him?” Lisa wailed.

“Then we’ve got to go like bats out of Venus,” Heim said.

Coquelin began to speak in favor of the motion. After a few minutes, Vadász clicked his tongue and said admiringly: “Never did I hear anything so long-winded. That man is an artist.”

“Um,” Wingate grunted. “He may antagonize ’em.”

“Obviously,” said Heim in a bleak tone, “he doesn’t expect to win, no matter what”

Debate droned back and forth. The flyer left the storm behind and fled over a huge wrinkled landscape. Far to the east gleamed the Sierra peaks. We could lose all that beauty someday, Heim thought.

Mojave Field sprawled into view. He slanted down on the beam and saw Connie Girl poised in the open. Garaging, formalities of clearance, the long walk across concrete under a glaring sunwas the light what blinded him?

They stopped at the ramp. “Well,” said Wingate gruffly, “you can’t waste time. God ride with you, Son.” He let the handclasp die.

Lisa came into Heim’s arms. “Daddy, Daddy, I’m sorry, I c-c-can’t help bawling.”

“Blaze to that.” He ruffled her hair and held her close against his chest. “We’ll be back, you know. Rich and famous and a million stories to tell.” He swallowed. “You… you’ve been… you are a good girl. I couldn’t have asked for a finer girl. So long. Plain old pa gensyn.”

He gave her to Vadász, who embraced her very lightly and bestowed a kiss on the wet cheek.

“Isten veled,” the Magyar said low. “I shall bring you home a song.”

Hastily, then, they mounted the ramp, stood waving while it retracted, and saw the lock close before them.

“Thanks, Endre,” Heim said. He turned on his heel. “Let’s get cracking.”

The yacht could have sprung straight into orbit. But better not show unseemly haste. Heim took her up according to the beams. The sky darkened and stars awoke, until blackness was a jewel box. Vadász fiddled with the com controls and eventually succeeded in getting a satellite relay from Mexico.

Debate on a procedural motion was not unlimited. The voting started before Connie Girl had made rendezvous. A roll call tolled overwhelming defeat.

“Mr. President,” Coquelin’s voice lifted from the 3V, blurred, small as an insect’s, “this is a strange development. France had looked for the normal courtesies. Since I am required to make my country’s basic policy statement today, I will. However, I note the time is near midday, and I warn the distinguished representatives that I shall be speaking at some length. Accordingly, I suggest that first we adjourn for lunch.”

“The chair so rules,” Fazil conceded. “This meeting will resume at 1400 hours sharp.” His gavel clubbed down.

“An artist, I tell you,” Vadász laughed.

“A couple hours isn’t much time to get under way, with a crew new to the ship,” Heim reminded him.

The great torpedo shape hove in sight and waxed as he closed until it filled his bow vision.

As yet she was un-camouflaged, and sunlight lay furious on the stern assembly; drive units, Mach rings, boathouses, turrets, hatches cast long shadows on the metal flanks.

“Yacht Connie Girl calling cruiser Fox II, We are coming in. Please stand by. Over.”

Wingate had argued about the change of cognomen. “I know what your old command meant to you, Gunnar,” he said. “But you’ll get enough people mad without taking the name of a Navy ship.”

“I’m not, exactly,” Heim said. “Last I heard, foxes were still in the public domain. Besides, I damn well figure to rub people’s noses in what the Navy ought to be doing. What it wants to do, in fact.”

Number Four boathouse stood open for him. He cradled the yacht—she was about the size of a regular auxiliary—and fretted while airpumps filled the shell. The corridors beyond were bustle and clangor. He’d had the men aboard for assignments and instruction, but nonetheless he wished terribly there had been time for a shakedown cruise.

First Officer Penoyer saluted on the bridge. “Welcome, sir.” Until Dave greeted him so, he had not really remembered how alone the captain is. “Full roster present Work proceeding.

Estimated time of acceleration, 2300 hours GMT.”

“Knock at least an hour off that,” Heim said.

“Sir?”

“You heard me.” Heim sat down and riffled through the manual of operations. “Here, for instance. The C.E. doesn’t have to check out the internal field compensators again. If they fail, we’ll accelerate at no more than one-point-five gee; once in free fall, we can stand weightlessness till they’re fixed. Not that I expect any trouble in his department anyway. He’s good. Have him proceed directly to tuning the pulse manifolds. The more carefully that job is done, the nearer Sol we can go FTL.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” With noticeable distaste, Penoyer flicked the intercom and spoke to Uthg-a-K’thaq. Heim continued his search for corners that might be cut.

And somehow, in some typically human left-handed fashion, the job was done. At 2145 klaxons hooted, orders echoed, atoms flamed in fusion generators, and gravitational forces laid hold of space. Slowly, smoothly, with a deep purr felt less within the ears than the bones, Fox II slipped her moorings to Earth and departed orbit.

Heim stood on the bridge and watched his world recede. Still she dominated heaven, vast and infinitely fair, clouds and seas and a sapphire rim of sky. He had observed the continents in their nights and days as he rounded her: Africa, whence man came; Asia, where first he was more than a savage; Europe, where he outgrew myth and measured the stars; Australia, long-sought dream; Antarctica of the heroes. But he was happy that his last sight as he drove star-ward was of America, where the law was first written that all men are free.

Doubts and fears, even homesickness, had fallen away. He was committed now, and joy dwelt within him.

“Stations report condition satisfactory,” Penoyer announced after a while.

“Very good. Carry on.” Heim found the intercom and called the steward’s department.

“Endre? D’you have things in hand so they can get along without you for a spell?… Okay, come onto the bridge. And bring your guitar. We’ll want a song or two.”

The Magyar’s voice was troubled. “Captain, have you been listening to Parliament?”

“Uh… no. Too busy. Good Lord, they started fresh more than an hour ago, didn’t they?”

“Yes. We’re picking up the beam to Mars. I have watched and—well, they did not let Coquelin delay. He tried, with a long introductory speech, and the chair ruled he must keep to the point Then he tried to introduce the evidence about New Europe, and someone objected and they decided to vote on whether that was germane now. The roll is still being called, but already he has a majority against him.”

“Oh-oh.” Heim was not shaken, on this day when he commanded anew a ship for Earth. But the need for action stabbed through his nerves. “Mr. Penoyer,” he directed, “signal for maximum acceleration and order all hands to emergency stations.”

The mate gulped and obeyed. “Have Sparks shunt that debate to our 3V,” Heim went on.

“Mr. Vadász, please come to the bridge.” His chuckle was fiat. “Yes, bring your guitar.”

“What’s the problem, sir?” Penoyer asked in unease.

“You’ll see,” Heim replied. “France is about to throw a nuke into the whole machine. Our plan was to have Fox well away by then. Now we’ll need luck as well as brains and beauty.”

The screen flickered to fuzzy motion. Coquelin was nearly drowned out by the risen rumble of engines. Earth dwindled among the stars and Luna’s pocked face grew nearer.

“—this assembly is determined to give my country not one centimeter. As you like, ladies and gentlemen. I wished to say this gradually, for the blow is heavy at best. Now you must hear me whether you are ready or not.”

The camera zoomed so close that Coquelin’s visage filled the screen. That was a lousy trick, Heim thought. But, if he wasn’t letting his own prejudices hoodwink him, this time it didn’t work.

Instead of underscoring every blemish—warts, moles, hairs, wrinkles—the close-up showed anger and unbreakable strength. Heim believed himself confirmed when the view moved back after a minute, to make Coquelin another man shuffling papers on a lectern.

“Mr. President, honorable delegates—” The translation could only suggest how the voice shifted, became the dry detached recital of an attorney making a technical point. “The Federation was founded and still exists to end the tragic anarchy that prevailed among nations before, to bring them under a law that serves the good of all. Now law cannot endure without equal justice.

The popularity of an argument must be irrelevant. Only the lawful cause may be admitted. In the name of France, I therefore advance the following points.”

“1. The Constitution forbids each member nation to keep armed forces above the police level or to violate the territorial integrity of any other member nation in any way. To enforce this, the Peace Control Authority is vested with the sole military power. It may and must take such measures as are necessary to stop aggressive acts, including conspiracy to commit such acts. The individuals responsible must be arrested and brought to trial before the World Court.”

“2. The naval branch of the Authority has been used beyond the Solar System, albeit only in relatively minor actions to suppress insurrection and riot or to protect the lives and property of humans on distant planets. By authorizing such action, and by negotiating agreements with various aliens, the Federation has de facto and de jure assumed the posture with respect to non-human societies that was traditional between governments on Earth prior to the Constitution.

Hence Earth as a whole is a sovereign state with the lawful prerogative of self-defense.”

“3. By attacking New Europe and subsequently occupying it, Alerion has committed an act of territorial aggression.

“4. If Alerion is not regarded as a sovereign state, negotiation of this dispute is legally impossible, and the Authority is required to take military measures against what can only be considered banditry.”

A roar went through the hall. Fazil banged his desk. Coquelin waited, sardonicism playing over his mouth. When order had been restored, the spokesman of France said:

“Evidently this assembly does consider Alerion to be sovereign like Earth. So, to proceed—

“5. If Alerion is indeed a legitimate state, then by the preamble to the Constitution it belongs to the family of nations. Therefore it must be regarded as either (a) obliged to refrain from territorial aggression on pain of military sanctions, or (b) not so obliged, since it is not a member of the Federation.

“6. In case (a), Alerion is automatically subject to military sanctions by the Peace Control Authority. But in case (b), the Authority is also required, by the Constitution and by past precedent, to safeguard the interests of individual humans and of member states of the Federation.

Note well, the Authority has that obligation. Not this honorable assembly, not the World Court, but the Peace Control Authority, whose action must under the circumstances be of a military nature.

“7. Accordingly, in either case an automatic state of war now exists between Alerion and the World Federation.”

Chaos broke loose.

Vadász had come in. He watched the scene for a time, as hundreds stood booing or cheering or screaming to be recognized, before he murmured: “Is that not a weak point there?”

“No,” said Heim. “Remember the Moslem League case. Also, I reread the Constitution, and it’s quite clear. Of course, it helps that the thing was written before we’d met any non-humans comparable to us.” He turned to the mate. “Radar reports?”

“Eh? Oh-oh, yes. A large craft about 10,000 kilometers starboard high, vector roughly like ours.”

“Damn! That’d be one of the Navy units, pulled in to guard Earth. Well, we’ll have to see what happens.” Heim ignored the mob scene on the 3V, rested his eyes on the cold serenity of the Milky Way and thought that this, at least, would endure.

Somehow quiet was enforced. Coquelin waited until the silence had become deathly. He raised another typewritten sheet and resumed in the same parched tone:

“8. In the event of territorial aggression, member states of the Federation are required to give every appropriate assistance to the Peace Control Authority, in the name of the Federation.”

“9. In the judgment of France, this imposes an inescapable duty to provide armed assistance to the colonists of New Europe. However, a member of the Federation is prohibited the manufacture or possession of nuclear weapons.”

“10. There is no prohibition on individuals obtaining such weapons outside the Solar System for themselves, provided that they do not bring them back to the Solar System.”

“11. Nor is there any prohibition on the unilateral authorization by a member state of the Federation of a private military expedition which so outfits itself. We grant that privateers were formerly required to be citizens of the country whose flag they flew, and that this might conflict with the national disarmament law. We grant also that eventually the issuance of letters of marque and reprisal was banned, by the Declaration of Paris in 1856. But while such treaties remain binding on their signatories, including France, they are not binding on the Federation as a whole, which is not a signatory and indeed has members such as the United States of America which never were signatories. And we have seen that the Federation is a sovereign state, possessing all rights and responsibilities not explicitly waived.

“12. Therefore the Federation has the unrestricted right to issue letters of marque and reprisal.

“13. Therefore, and in view of paragraphs 7, 8, and 9, France has the right and the duty to issue letters of marque and reprisal in the name of the Federation.

“France has done so.”

The 3V shrieked—more faintly each minute, as Fox II accelerated outward and outward.

When she lost the Mars beam and reception ended, the racket in the Capitol had not yet subsided.

Penoyer said, “Whew! What’s next?”

“An interminable debate,” Heim said. “Coquelin will fight for every comma. Meanwhile nothing can be done about jellyfishing to Alerion. Hopefully, the people with guts will see they aren’t beaten at the outset, will rally round and—I don’t know.”

“But us?”

“Maybe we can escape before someone realizes who that French privateer must be. Not that they can legally stop us without an Admiralty warrant; and you know how long that takes to get.

But a nuclear shell is kind of final, and whoever fires it will have powerful friends in court.”

Vadász strummed his guitar and began to sing softly: “Morgenrot, Morgenrot—” Heim wondered what that was, until he remembered the old, old Austrian cavalry song: Morning red, morning red, Wilt thou shine upon me dead? Soon the trumpets will be blowing, Then must I to death be going, I and many trusty friends!—

But it wasn’t really sad, it had been chorused by troops of young merry men as they galloped with sunlight wild on banners and lances.

He laughed aloud. “Hey! An idea. There were exactly thirteen points in Coquelin’s speech. I wonder if he did that on purpose?”

None answered, except the plangent strings. He gave himself to thoughts… Lisa, Connie, Madelon, Jocelyn… Earth and Moon lay far behind.

“PCA-SN Neptune to cruiser Fox II. Come in, Fox II.”

The voice rocketed them from their seats. “Judas,” Penoyer whispered, “that’s a blastship.”

Heim checked the radar tapes. “The one paralleling us. She’s gone to an interception course.

And if they use English on us, when we’ve got a French registry, they know—” He bit his lip and settled before the com relay console. “Fox II to Neptune,” he said. “We read you. The master speaking. What’s on your mind? Over.”

“This is Rear Admiral Ching-Kuo, commanding Neptune. Cease acceleration and stand by to be boarded. Over.”

Sickness fountained in Heim. “What do you mean?” he blustered. “We have clearance.

Over.”

“You are suspected of illegal intentions. You are ordered to return to Earth orbit. Over.”

“Have you a warrant? Over.”

“I will show you my authorization when I board, Captain. Over.”

“That’ll be too late, if you don’t have any. Establish video contact and show me now.

Otherwise I am not bound to obey. Over.”

“Captain,” said Ching-Kuo, “I have my orders. If you do not follow instructions, I shall be forced to fire on you. Over.”

Heim’s gaze flew among the stars. No, no, no, not this! Another hour and we’d have been away! One hour!

A flaring went through him. “You win, Admiral,” he said; it sounded like a stranger talking.

“Under protest, I yield. Give us time to compute a velocity-matching vector and we’ll meet you.

Over and out.”

He slammed down the switch and opened the intercom to the engine room. “Captain to chief engineer,” he said. “Are you there?”

“Indeed,” Uthg-a-K’thaq belched. “All is satiswactory.”

“No. Somebody’s uncorked the bottle on hell. There’s a blastship which says if we don’t stop and surrender, he’ll shoot. Prepare for Mach drive.”

“Captain!” Penoyer yelled. “This deep in the sun’s field?”

“If the sync is perfect, we can do it,” Heim said. “If not… we’re dead, no more. Uthg-a-K’thaq, do you believe we can?”

“Gwurru! What a thing to ask!”

“You overhauled those engines yourself,” Heim said. “I trust you.”

Vadász’s guitar shouted at his back.

For a moment the intercom bore only the throb of machines. Then: “Cawtain, I am not God.

Wut I think the chance is good for us. And I trust you.”

Heim opened the general intercom. “Now hear this,” he said; music raged around the words.

“All hands stand by for Mach drive.”

Penoyer clenched his fists. “Aye, aye, sir.” The drone from aft rose until it was the noise of gales and great waters. Space twisted. Stars danced in the viewports.

Long ago, Ernst Mach of Austria (“Morgenrot, Morgenrot—”) had held the key. Nothing exists in isolation. Inertia has no meaning without an inertial frame of reference: which must be the entire universe. Einstein showed inertial and gravitational mass are the same. But as for the phenomena themselves—Gravitation is describable by equations of a warped space. Inertia is, then, an inductive effect of the cosmic gravitational field on mass. If your gravitrons can bend space, not the small amount needed for lift and thrust, but through a closed curve, your ship has no resistance to accelerative force. Theoretically, you can go as fast as you like. There are no more boundaries.

Neptune fired. The missile lagged by a million kilometers. Her captain yammered for instrument readings. Perhaps, oh, surely, surely, his prey had been torn apart by the forces generated with imperfect mesh of space curvatures here where the sun’s power was still all-dominant. Nothing registered, no wreckage, no trace, except the howl of hydrogen atoms flung in bow wave and wake by a ship outpacing light. He dared not pursue.

Heim straightened. One by one, he eased his muscles. “Well,” he said, “we got away with it.”

The words were poor for the victory within him. Vadász was doing better: