The Star Fox

I

Strictly speaking, the Phoenix is a constellation in the skies of the Solar System, about halfway between ecliptic plane and south celestial pole. It is a mistake to apply the name to that region of space, some hundred and fifty light-years in the same direction from Earth, where the suns of Alerion and New Europe are found. But because a human colony makes a number of the neighboring systems interesting—as places to visit, mine, trade, explore, fight, be related to—a name is required for such a vaguely defined territory. Once bestowed, however carelessly, it remains.

And perhaps this one was not altogether a misnomer. The Phoenix of myth is reborn in fire.

Nuclear energies bore Lamontagne the long way to Aurore. When he saw that that sun had a world where men could settle, he raised the tricolor like a flame in its heavens. Hope burned high in the folk who moved to New Europe, labored, begot, and bequeathed. Then the warcraft of Alerion came, with hellfire aboard.

A ship raised from the planet. Forces pulsed in her gravitrons, meshed with the interwoven fields of the cosmos, drove her out at ever-mounting speed. As Aurore fell behind, space grew less distorted by the star’s mass. She would soon reach a point where the metric approximated a straight line so nearly that it was safe to draw the forces entirely around her, cut off that induction effect known as inertia, and outpace light.

A million kilometers away, Fox II observed her: saw by visible light and infrared, felt with a ghostly quickly-brushing whisper of ’radar, heard faint ripples of her drive in space, snuffed the neutrinos from her engines, and came to carnivore alertness.

“Damn!” said Gunnar Heim. “We should have spotted that beast hours ago. They must have installed extra screening.”

First Officer David Penoyer studied the data-analysis tapes. “Seems to be a moderate-sized transport ship. Same class as the Ellehoi we took last month, I’d guess. If so, we’ve got more legs than she does.”

Heim gave a restless shove with one foot. His huge body made a free-fall curve through the air to a viewport. Stars crowded it beyond counting; the Milky Way rivered in silver around an endless clear black; nebulae and remote galaxies glimmered across more distance than man will ever comprehend. He had no time for awe; he stared outward with eyes gone wintry blue as a giant sun and said: “She’ll be outside the Mach limit long before we can come anywhere near matching velocities. I know it’s theoretically possible for a ship to lay alongside another going FTL, but it’s never been done and I’m not about to try. If nothing else, there’d be too much interstellar gas turbulence.”

“Well, but—Captain, we don’t have to make a prize of her. I mean, if we simply accelerate, we’ll catch her inside the limit. Then she’s either got to turn on the Machs and probably get ripped apart, or face our barrage.”

Heim’s blocky features bent into a grimace. “And she might take the chance rather than surrender. I’d hate to spoil our record. Four months of commerce raiding, eighteen Aleriona ships captured, and we haven’t had to kill anybody yet.” He ran a hand through his roan hair. “If only—Wait!” He swung about and pushed the intercom controls. “Captain to chief engineer. Listen, you can make a gravitron do everything but wash dishes. Could we safely make a very short FTL run from here?” Penoyer shaped a soundless whistle.

“The matter is one iow ’recise adjustment, skiwwer,” rumbled Uthg-a-K’thaq’s voice. “We succeeded in it when we lewt the Solar System. Wut now, awter cruising so long without an owerhaul—”

“I know.” Heim’s faded blue tunic wrinkled with his shrug. They didn’t have uniforms on Fox. “All right, I suppose we do simply have to destroy them. War isn’t a game of tiddlywinks,” he added, largely to himself.

“A moment, ’lease.” The intercom brought clicking noises. C.E. must be using his Naqsan equivalent of a slide rule.

Heim thought. “Yes-s-s. I hawe recalculated the sawety margin. It suwwices.”

“Whoops!” Heim’s yell rang between the bulkheads. “Hear that, Dave?” He pounded Penoyer on the back.

The blond man catapulted across the bridge, choked, and sputtered, “Yes, sir, very good.”

“Not just that we wont have to blot out lives,” Heim exulted. “But the money. All that lovely, lovely prize money.”

And a prize crew to take her back to Earth, the business part of him recalled. We’re damn near down to a skeleton complement. A few more captures and we’ll have to call a halt.

Fiercely: So we don’t sell the last one, but send word by. it. Whoever wants to sign on again can meet us at Staurn, where we’ll be refilling our magazines. With the kind of bank account I must have now, I can refit for a dozen more cruises. We won’t stop till we’re blown out of space—or the Federation gets off its duff and makes some honest war.

He gave himself entirely to the work of preparation. When battle stations were piped, a cheer shivered the length of the ship. Those were good boys, he thought with renewed warmth. They’d drawn reluctant lots to choose who must bring the seized Aleriona vessels home, and even so fights had broken out over the privilege of daily risking death in the Auroran System. Of course, the ones who stayed got a proportionately larger share of booty. But they had signed on his privateer for much more than that.

“Engines to full output!” If the enemy were on the qui vive, they would immediately observe on their instruments that another vessel orbited here. Radar alone was useless at such distances, for what was registered might as well be a meteorite: until it awoke.

“Internal field to standard!” Earth weight came back.

“Turning vectors: roll three points, pitch four and half points, yaw twelve points!” Stars wheeled across the ports.

“Acceleration maximum!” There was no sense of pressure in the compensating gee-field that webbed through the hull But the engines growled.

“Stand by for Mach drive! On the mark, five, four, three, two, one, zero!”

Starlight wavered, as if seen through a sheet of running water, and steadied again. In that brief passage, the fantastic acceleration of inertialessness did not build up a speed so great that aberration or Doppler effect counted. But the remote disc of Aurore shrank yet farther.

“Cut Mach drive!” An electronic signal had sent the command before Heim’s automatic words were well begun.

Computers chattered beneath Penoyer’s hands. Fox had returned to normal well ahead of the Aleriona ship. The latter was still traveling at more than the privateer’s kinetic velocity, but it would now be no trick to match vectors inside the Mach limit.

“Number Four Turret, give her one across the bows!” The missile streaked forth. Atomic fire dazzled momentarily among the constellations.

“Sparks, connect me on the universal band,” Heim ordered. He realized he was sweating.

The outflank maneuver would not have been possible save for Uthg-a-K’thaq’s non-human sensitivity in the tuning of a gravitronic manifold, and the engineer could have been mistaken.

But beneath the released terror, joy sang in the captain. We’ve got them! One more blow struck!

A siren wailed. The ship trembled. Automatons reacted; great clangings and thumps resounded through her plates. “My God!” Penoyer’s cry came thin. “They’re armed!” The viewports darkened, that eyes not be burned out by the intolerable brightnesses which blossomed around. Riven fragments of atoms sleeted through vacuum, were whirled away by the ship’s hydromagnetic field, spat X-rays into her material shielding and vanished starward. The meteorite detectors shouted of shrapnel thrown at kilometers per second by low-yield warheads.

Time was lacking in which to be afraid. “Parry her stuff,” Heim commanded his gunners.

“Laser Turret Three, see if you can cripple her Mach rings.”

Beyond so elementary a decision, he was helpless. Nor could his highly skilled men do a great deal more than transmit it to their robots. The death machines were too fast, too violent for human senses. Radar beams locked on, computers clicked, missiles homed on missiles and destroyed them before they could strike. A blinding beam of energy probed from the Aleriona craft. There was no stopping it; but before it inflicted more than minimal damage, Fox’s own heavy laser smote. Armor plate vaporized, the ray burned through, the enemy weapon went dark.

The Terrestrial fire-lance drew a seared line across the Aleriona hull as it probed for the exterior fittings of the interstellar drive. That was no easy target, with the relative position of the two vessels shifting so rapidly. But the computers solved the problem in milliseconds. The other ship crammed on acceleration, trying to shake loose. For a moment the laser pierced only emptiness.

Then, remorselessly, it found its mark again and gnawed away.

“Fire Control to bridge. His Mach’s disabled, sir.”

“Good. He can’t go FTL on us now, whatever happens,” Heim said. “Bridge to radio room.

Keep trying to make contact. Bridge to engine room. Prepare for velocity-matching maneuvers.”

The fight died away. It had not been long. The disproportion between a hastily armed merchantman and a cruiser equipped like a regular Navy unit was too great. Not ludicrous—a single missile that exploded near enough would have killed the human crew by radiation if nothing else—but nonetheless too great. Fox had warded off every thrust with an overwhelmingly larger concentration of immensely more powerful weapons. A dark peace descended in space.

The stars came back in the viewports.

“Whee-ew,” Penoyer said faintly. “Jolly near got us by surprise alone, didn’t he?”

“He obviously hoped to,” Heim nodded. “I suppose after today we’d better expect every unescorted transport to be able to fight back.” Those that were convoyed he left alone. They weren’t many, with Alerion’s strength stretched thin in the Marches and with quite a few warships searching the deeps for him. His prey were the carriers of the cargo which New Europe’s occupiers must have to make their conquest impregnable.

However closely he had skirted obliteration, he felt no delayed panic. If asked about that, he would have said he was blessed with a phlegmatic temperament. But the truth was that upwelling triumph left no room for other feelings. He must force himself to speak coolly: “I’m not worried.

Pleased, in fact. We showed up better in combat than I had a right to expect with such a higgledy-piggledy crew.”

“Oh, I don’t know, sir. You’ve drilled us aplenty.” Penoyer fumbled for a cigaret. “Those explosions may have been noticed. Somebody bigger might come out investigating.”

“Uh-huh. We won’t stay to admire the local scenery.”

“But what about this capture? She can’t make the Solar System.”

“We’ll park her in a cometary orbit, not likely to be detected, and repair at leisure—Hoy, there’s an answer to our call.”

The comscreen smoldered with the simulated light of a red dwarf sun. An Aleriona looked out. He was of rank, Heim saw from the fineness of the muliebrile visage, the luster of golden hair and silvery fur. Even in this moment of rage and grief, his language was music that would have haunted a Beethoven.

Heim shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t know the High Speech. Parlez-vous français?”

“Not truth,” sang the other captain. “In the star meadows fare we here aboard, needless of New Europe’s tongue. To you the rover yield we Meroeth.”

It was a relief finding one who had some English. So far there’d been two with Spanish, one each with French and Chinese. Otherwise sign language worked, when you had a gun in your hand. “You know what we are, then?” Heim said.

“All know now of that which is named for the swift animal with sharp teeth. Ill may you prosper,” crooned the Aleriona.

“Thanks. Now look. We’ll send a boarding party. Your crew will be brigged, but we don’t plan to mistreat anybody who doesn’t force us to. In fact, if you have any casualties—None? Good.

You’ll be taken to Earth in your ship and interned for the duration of the war.”

Within himself, Heim wondered about that. Earth was far, Sol itself lost to naked vision. He had no way to get their news. A prize crew could not return and rendezvous with a ship fighting alone against an empire, dependent for survival on unpredictable motion through immensity. He supposed Parliament had had to concede France’s claim that the World Federation was indeed at war with Alerion and his own expedition lawful. Otherwise Earth ships would be out here—Earth officials, at least, aboard Aleriona ships which invited his approach—to order him home.

But there was no word, no help, nothing in the six months since he had left except his own solitary battle. The last Aleriona prisoner he talked to had said the two fleets were still merely glaring at each other in the Marches, and he believed it. Are they deadlocked yet about whether to fight or negotiate? Will they never see that there can’t be negotiation with an enemy who’s sworn to whip us out of space, till we prove we can beat him? Merciful God, New Europe’s been gripped for almost a year!

Sorrow touched the lovely face in the screen. “Could we have gotten well-wrought engines of war, might we have slain you.” Hands slim, four-fingered, and double-jointed caressed one of the flowering vines that bedecked the bridge, as if seeking consolation. “Evilly built are your machines, men-creatures.”

Oh, ho! So this Q-boat was outfitted right on New Europe. Did somebody there get the idea?

“Cease acceleration and stand by to be boarded,” Heim said.

He cut the circuit and issued orders. Treachery was still possible. Fox must maintain her distance and send boats. He would have liked to go himself, but his duty was here, and every man was eager to make the trip. Like small boys playing pirate… well, they had taken some fabulous treasures.

Not that Meroeth was likely to hold much of interest. Alerion wanted New Europe as a strong point—above all, wanted simply to deny it to humans and thus deny the entire Phoenix—rather than a colony. The cargoes that went from The Eith to Aurore were industrial or military, and thus valuable. No important resources were sent back; at the end of so long a line of communications, the garrison of New Europe must devote everything they could to the task of producing and putting into orbit those defenses which would make the planet all but invulnerable.

Still, the ships didn’t always return empty. Some of the plunder Heim had taken puzzled him.

Was it going to Alerion for the sake of curiosity, or in a hope of eventual sale to Earth, or—?

Whatever the reason, his boys had not argued with luck when they grabbed a holdful of champagne.

Vectors were matched. The boats went forth. Heim settled himself in the main control chair and watched them, tiny bright splinters, until they were swallowed by the shadow of the great shark-nosed cylinder he guarded. His thoughts ran free: Earth, prideful cities and gentle skies; Lisa, who might have grown beyond knowing; Jocelyn, who had never quite left him—and then New Europe, people driven from their homes to the wilderness, a certain idiot dream about Madelon—The screen buzzed. He switched it on. Blumberg’s round face looked out at him from a shell of combat armor. The helmet was open. Heim didn’t know if the ember light within that ship could account alone for the man’s redness.

“Boarding party reporting, sir.” Blumberg was near stammering in his haste.

Unease tensed Heim’s belly muscles. “What’s wrong?” he demanded.

“Nothing… situation in hand… but sir! They’ve got humans aboard!”

II

A short inertialess flight took Fox so far outsystem that the probability of being detected was quite literally infinitesimal. Heim left the automatics in charge and decreed a celebration.

The mess seethed with men. Only twenty-five privateers remained, and a dozen New Europeans, in a room that had once held a hundred; but they filled it, shouting, singing, clashing their glasses, until the bulkheads trembled. In one corner, benign and imperturbable, Uthg-a-K’thaq snaked bottle after bottle of champagne from the cooler he had rigged, sent the corks loose with a pistol crack, and poured for all. Suitably padded, gunner Matsuo Hayashi and a lean young colonist set out to discover whether karate or Apache technique worked best. Dice rattled across the deck, IOU’s for loot against promises of suitably glowing introductions to girls on the planet, come victory. A trio of college-bred Ashanti stamped out a war dance while their audience made tom-toms of pots and pans. Endre Vadász leaped onto the table, his slim body poised while his fingers flew across the guitar strings. More and more of the French began to sing with him:

At first Heim was laughing too loudly at Jean Irribarne’s last joke to hear. Then the music grew, and it took him. He remembered a certain night in Bonne Chance. Suddenly he was there again. Roofs peaked around the garden, black under the stars, but the yellow light from their windows joined the light of Diane rising full. A small wind rustled the shrubs, to mingle scents of rose and lily with unnamed pungencies from native blooms. Her ,hand was trusting in his. Gravel scrunched beneath their feet as they walked toward the summerhouse. And somewhere someone was playing a tape, the song drifted down the warm air, earthy and loving.

His eyes stung. He shook his head harshly.

Irribarne gave him a close look. The New European was medium tall, which put him well below Heim, spare of build, dark-haired, long-headed, and clean-featured. He still wore the garments in which he had been captured, green tunic and trousers, soft boots, beret tucked in scaly leather belt, the .uniform of a planetary constabulary turned maquisard. Lieutenant’s bars gleamed on his shoulders.

“Pourquoi cette tristesse-soudaine?” he asked.

“Eh?” Heim blinked. Between the racket in here, the rustiness of his French, and the fact that New Europe was well on the way to evolving its own dialect, he didn’t understand.

“You show at once the trouble,” Irribarne said. Enough English speakers visited his planet, in the lost days, that town dwellers usually had some command of their language.

“Oh… nothing. A memory. I spent several grand leaves on New Europe, when I was a Navy man. But that was—Judas, last time was twenty-one years ago.”

“And so you think of aliens that slither through streets made empty of men. How they move softly, like hunting panthers!” Irribarne scowled into his glass, lifted it, and drained it in a convulsive gesture. “Or perhaps you remember a girl, and wonder if she is dead or else hiding in the forests. Hein?”

“Let’s get refills,” said Heim brusquely.

Irribarne laid a hand on his arm. “Un moment, s’il vous plait. The population of the whole planet is only five hundred thousand. The city people, that you would meet, they are much less.

Perhaps I know.”

“Madelon Dubois?”

“From Bonne Chance in origin? Her father a doctor? But yes! She married my own brother Pierre. They live, what last I heard.”

Darkness passed before Heim’s eyes. He leaned against the bulkhead, snapped after air, struggled back to self-control but could not slow his heart. “Gud she lov,” he breathed. It was as close to a prayer as he had come since childhood.

Irribarne considered him through shrewd, squinted brown eyes. “Ah, this matters to you.

Come, shall we not speak alone?”

“All right. Thanks.” Heim led the way. Irribarne was hard put to keep up. Behind them, arms around each other’s shoulders, the men were roaring forth:

while Vadász’s chords belled through all.

Heim’s cabin seemed the more quiet after he shut the door. Irribarne sat down and glanced curiously about the neat, compact room, Shakespeare, Bjørnson, and Kipling in book editions with worn bindings, micro reels of less literary stature, a model of a warship, pictures of a woman and a girl. “Votre famille?” he asked.

“Yes. My wife’s dead, though. Daughter’s with her grandfather on Earth.” Heim offered one of his few remaining cigars and began to stuff a pipe for himself. His fingers were not absolutely steady and he did not look at the other man. “How is your own family?”

“Well, thank you. Of course, that was a pair of weeks ago, when my force was captured.”

Irribarne got his cigar going and leaned back with a luxurious sigh. Heim stayed on his feet.

“How’d that happen, anyway? We’ve had no real chance to talk.”

“Bad luck, I hope. It is a uranium mine on the Cote Notre Dame. Not much uranium on Europe Neuve, you know, she is less dense than Earth. So to blow it up would be a good frappement-strike at Alerion. We took a sport submarine we found in Port Augustin, where the mountains come down to the Golfe des Dragons, and started. We knew the one thing those damned dryworlders do not have is submarine-detection equipment. But the mine was better guarded than we expected. When we surfaced to go ashore at night, a shell hit. Chemical explosive only, or I would not sit here. Their troopers waited and got, you say, the drop. There was talk about shooting us for an example, or what is worse to squeeze information from us. But the new high commander heard and forbid, I think he has come to have charge of hunting you, my friend, so this also we must thank you for. We were going to Alerion. They spoke about prisoner exchange.”

“I see.”

“But you make stalls. It is news of Madelon you wish, no?”

“Hell, I hate to get personal—Okay. We were in love, when I had a long sick leave on New Europe. Very innocent affair, I assure you. So damned innocent, in fact, that I shied away a bit and—Anyhow, next time I came back she’d moved.”

“Indeed so. To Chateau St. Jacques. I thought always Pierre got her… on the rebound? Now and then she has laughed about the big Norvegien when she was a girl. Such laughter, half happy, half sad, one always makes of young memories.” Irribarne’s gaze grew stiff. “Pierre is a good husband. They have four children.”

Heim flushed. “Don’t misunderstand me,” he said around his pipe. “I couldn’t have married better than I did either. It was just—she was in trouble, and I hoped I could help. Old friendship, nothing else.”

He didn’t believe he was lying. A few thoughts had crossed his mind, but they were not unduly painful to bury. That Madelon had lived gladly, that she still lived, was enough.

“You have that from us all,” Irribarne said heartily. “Now tell me more before we return to the festival. I hear you are a private raider commissioned by France. But why has the Navy been so slow? When do they come?”

God help me, Heim thought. I wanted to spare them till tomorrow.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Nom d’un chien!” Irribarne sat bolt upright. “What is it that you say?”

Slowly, Heim dragged the tale from himself: how it came about that the Deepspace Fleet lay chained and muzzled while Parliament wrangled, and quite possibly nothing except Fox’s buccaneering preventing a resumption of those talks which to Alerion were only a more effective kind of war.

“Mais… mais… mais… vous—cette astronef—” Irribarne checked his stutter, caught breath, and said carefully, “This ship has ranged in the Auroran System. Have you, yourself, taken no proof we live?”

“I tried,” Heim said. Back and forth he paced, smoke fuming, heels banging, big useless hands clasped behind his back till the nails stood white. “The prisoners who went home with my prizes, they could have been interrogated. Not easily; Aleriona don’t respond like humans; but somebody could’ve ripped the truth from them! I guess nobody did. “I also made a pass by New Europe. Not hard to do, if you’re quick. Most of their defense satellites still aren’t equipped, and we detected no warships too dose to outrun. So I got photographs, nice clear ones, showing plainly that only Coeur d’Yvonne was destroyed, that there never had been a firestorm across Garance. Sent them back to Earth. I suppose they convinced some people, but evidently not the right ones. Don’t forget, by now a lot of political careers are bound up with the peace issue. And even a man who might confess he was wrong and resign, if it involved just himself, will hesitate to drag his party down with him.

“Oh, I’m sure sentiment has moved in our favor. It’d already begun to do so when I left. Not long after, at Staurn for munitions, I met some late-comers from Earth. They told me the will to fight was becoming quite respectable. But that was four months ago!”

He shifted his pipe, stopped his feet, and went on more evenly: “I can guess what the next line of argument has been for the appeasement faction. ‘Yes, yes,’ they say, ‘the New Europeans still are alive. So isn’t the most important thing to rescue them? We won’t do that by war. Alerion can wipe them out any time she chooses. We have to trade their planet for their lives.’ That’s probably being said in Parliament tonight.”

Irribarne’s chin sank on his breast. “Un demi million d’hommes,” he mumbled. Abruptly:

“But they will die all the same. Can one not see that? We have only a few more weeks.”

“What?” Heim bellowed. His heart jolted him. “Is the enemy fixing to burn you out?”

That could be done quite easily, he knew in horror. A thousand or so megatons exploded at satellite height on a clear day will set a good part of a continent afire. Madelon!

“No, no,” the colonist said. “They need for themselves the resources of the planet, in fortifying the system. A continental firestorm or a radioactive poisoning, that would make large trouble for them too. But the vitamin C.”

Piece by piece, the story came out. Never doubting Earth would hurry to their aid, the seaboard folk of Pays d’Espoir fled inland, to the mountains and forests of the Haute Garance.

That nearly unmapped wilderness was as rich in game and edible vegetation as North America before the white man. With a high technology and no population pressure, the people were wealthy; hardly a one did not own hunting, fishing, and camping gear, as well as a flyer capable of going anywhere. Given a little camouflage and caution, fifty thousand scattered lodges and summer cottages were much too many for the Aleriona to find. On the rare occasions when they did find one, the inhabitants could resort to tent or cave or lean-to.

Portable chargers, equally able to use sunlight, wind, or running water, were also standard outdoor equipment, which kept up power cells. Ordinary miniature transceivers maintained a communications net. It did the enemy scant good to monitor. He had come with people that knew French, “but his own ossified culture had not allowed for provincial dialect, Louchébème, or Basque. The boldest men organized raids on him, the rest stayed hidden.

With little axial tilt, New Europe enjoys a mild and rainy winter in the temperate zone, even at fairly high altitudes. It seemed that the humans could hold out indefinitely.

But they were not, after all, on Earth. Life had arisen and evolved separately here, through two or three billion years. Similar conditions led to similar chemistry. Most of what a man needed he could get from native organisms. But similarity is not identity. Some things were lacking on New Europe, notably vitamin C. The escapers had packed along a supply of pills. Now the store was very low. Alerion held the farmlands where Terrestrial plants grew, the towns where the biochemical factories stood.

Scurvy is a slow killer, working its way through gums, muscles, digestion, blood, bones.

Most often the victim dies of something else which he no longer has the strength to resist. But one way or another, he dies.

“And they know it,” Irribarne grated. “Those devils, they know our human weakness. They need only wait.” He lifted one fist. “Has Earth forgotten?”

“No,” Heim said. “It’d be bound to occur to somebody. But Earth’s so confused…”

“Let us go there,” Irribarne said. “I myself, all my men, we are witnesses. Can we not shame them till they move?”

“I don’t know,” Heim said in wretchedness. “We can try, of course. But—maybe I’m being paranoid—but I can still imagine the arguments. ‘Nothing except negotiation can save you. Alerion will not negotiate unless we make prompt concessions.’

“I know damn well that once inside the Solar System, Fox won’t be allowed to leave again. The law, you see; only units under the Peace Authority can have nuclear weapons, or even weapon launchers, there. And we do. Our possession is legal now, on a technicality, but it won’t be when we enter Federation space.”

“Can you not dismantle your armament?”

“That’d take weeks. It’s been integrated with the ship. And—what difference? I tell you, your appearance on Earth might cost us the war. And that would set Alerion up to prepare the next aggression.” Heim thought of Madelon. “Or so I believe. Could be wrong, I suppose.”

“No, you are right,” Irribarne said dully.

“It might be the only way out. Surrender.”

“There must be another! I will not be so fanatic that women and children surely die. But a risk of death, against the chance to keep our homes, yes, that is something we all accepted when we went into the maquis.”

Heim sat down, knocked out his pipe, and turned it over and over in his hands while he stared at the model of his first command. Inexplicably his emotions began to shift. He felt less heavy, there was a stirring in him, he groped through blackness toward some vague, strengthening glimmer.

“Look,” he said, “let’s try to reason this through. Fox is keeping the war alive by refusing to quit. As long as we’re out here fighting, the people at home who think like us can argue that Alerion is being whittled down at no cost to the taxpayer. And, ja, they can beat the propaganda drums, make big fat heroes of us, stir the old tribal emotions. They haven’t the political pull to make the Authority order the Navy to move; but they have enough to keep us from being recalled.

I deduce this from the simple facts that the Navy has not moved and we have not been recalled.

“Obviously that’s an unstable situation. It’s only kept going this long, I’m sure, because France tied Parliament in legal knots as to whether or not there really was a war on. The deadlock will be resolved one way or another pretty soon. We want to tilt the balance our way.

“Okay, one approach is for you people to let it be known you are alive—let it be known beyond any possible doubt—and also make it plain you are not going to surrender. You’ll die before you give in. The way to do that is… let me think, let me think… yes. We’ve got Meroeth.

With some repairs, she can make the passage; or else we can make another capture. We stay here, though, ourselves. What we send is—not a handful of men-a hundred women and children.” Heim’s palm cracked against his knee. “There’s an emotional appeal for you!”

Irribarne’s eyes widened until they were rimmed with white. “Comment? You are crazy?

You cannot land on Europe Neuve.”

“The space defenses aren’t ready yet.”

“But… no, they do have some detector satellites, and warcraft in orbit, and—”

“Oh, it’s chancy,” Heim agreed. He had no real sense of that. Every doubt was smothered in upsurging excitement “We’ll leave Fox in space, with most of your men aboard. If we fail, she can snatch another prize and send your men back in that. But I think I have a way to get Meroeth down, and up again, and stay in touch meanwhile. We’ll need some computer work to make sure, but I think it might pan out. If not, well, you can show me how to be a guerrilla.”

“Ah.” Irribarne drew deeply on his cigar. “May I ask if this idea would seem so attractive, did it not offer a way to see Madelon?”

Heim gaped at him.

“Pardon,” Irribarne blurted. “That was not badly meant. Old friendship, as you said. I like a loyal man.” He extended his hand.

Heim took it and rose. “Come on,” he said rather wildly. “We can’t do anything till tomorrow. Let’s get back to the party.”

III

Elsewhere Fox plunged dark, every engine stilled, nothing but the minimum of life-support equipment in operation, toward the far side of the moon Diane. It was not garrisoned, and a diameter of 1275 kilometers makes a broad shield. Even so, the tender that went from her carried brave men. They might have been spotted by some prowling Aleriona warcraft, especially in the moments when they crammed on deceleration to make a landing. Once down on that rough, airless surface, they moved their boat into an extinct fumarole for concealment, donned space gear, and struck out afoot. Their trip around to the planet-facing hemisphere was a miniature epic; let it only be said that they completed their errand and got back. Rendezvous with the ship was much too risky to attempt. They settled in the boat and waited.

Not long after, a giant meteorite or dwarf asteroid struck New Europe, burning a hole across the night sky and crashing in the Ocean du Déstin a few hundred kilometers east of the Garance coast. A minor tidal wave shocked through the Baie des Pêcheurs, banged water-craft against their docks at Bonne Chance, raced up the Bouches du Carsac, and was still observable—a rumbling foam-crested front, sleekly black under the stars—as far inland as the confluence of the River Bordes. Atmospherics howled in every Aleriona detector.

They faded; alerted flyers returned to berth; the night stillness resumed.

For all but the men aboard Meroeth.

When the fifty thousand tons to which she was grappled hit the outermost fringes of atmosphere, she let go and dropped behind. But she could not retreat far. Too many kilometers per second of velocity must be shed in too few kilometers of distance, before ablation devoured her. That meant a burst of drive forces, a blast of energies from a powerplant strained to its ultimate. The enemy’s orbital detection system was still inadequate; but it existed in part, and there were also instruments on the ground. Nothing could hide this advent—except the running, growing storm in the immediate neighborhood of a meteorite.

Radar would not pierce the ions which roiled at the stone’s face and streamed back aft.

Optical and infrared pickups were blinded. Neutrino or gravitronic detectors aimed and tuned, with precision might have registered something which was not of local origin. But who would look for a ship in the midst of so much fury? Air impact alone, at that speed, would break her hull into a thousand flinders, which friction would then turn into shooting stars.

Unless she followed exactly behind the meteorite, using its mass for a bumper and heat shield, its flaming tail for a cloak.

No autopilot was ever built for that task. Gunnar Heim must do it. If he veered from his narrow slot of partial vacuum, he would die too quickly to know he was dead. For gauge he had only the incandescence outside, instrument readings, and whatever intuition was bestowed by experience. For guide he had a computation of where he ought to be, at what velocity, at every given moment, unreeling on tape before his eyes. He merged himself with the ship; his hands made a blur on the console; he did not notice the waves of heat, the bufferings and bellowings of turbulence, save as a thunderstorm deep in his body.

His cosmos shrank to a firestreak, his reason for being to the need of holding this clumsy mass nose-on to the descent pattern. Once, an age ago, he had brought his space yacht down on a seemingly disastrous path to Ascension Island. But that had been a matter of skillfully piloting a slender and responsive vessel. Tonight he was a robot, executing orders written for it by whirling electrons.

No: he was more. The feedback of data through senses, judgment, will, made the whole operation possible. But none of that took place on a conscious level. There wasn’t time!

That was as well. Live flesh could not have met those demands for more than a few seconds.

The meteorite, slowed only a little by the air wall through which it plunged, out-raced the spaceship and hit the sea—still with such force that water had no chance to splash but actually shattered. Meroeth was as yet several kilometers aloft, her own speed reduced to something that metal could tolerate. The pattern tape said CUT and Heim slammed down a switch. The engine roar whirred into silence.

He checked his instruments. “All’s well,” he said. His voice sounded strange in his ears, only slowly did he come back to himself, as if he had run away from his soul and it must now catch up. “We’re under the Bonne Chance horizon, headed southwest on just about the trajectory we were trying for.”

“Whoo-oo-oo,” said Vadász in a weak tone. His hair was plastered lank to the thin high-cheeked face; his garments were drenched.

“Bridge to engine room,” Heim said. “Report.”

“All in order, sir,” came the voice of Diego Gonzales, who was third engineer on Fox. “Or as much as could be expected. The strain gauges do show some warping in a couple of the starboard bow plates. Not too bad, though. Shall I turn on the coolers?”

“Well, do you like this furnace?” grumbled Jean Irribarne. Heat radiated from every bulkhead.

“Go ahead,” Heim decided. “If anyone’s close enough to detect the anomaly, we’ve had it anyway.” He kept eyes on the console before him, but jerked a thumb at Vadász. “Radar registering?”

“No,” said the Magyar. “We appear to be quite private.” Those were the only men aboard.

No more were needed for a successful landing; and in case of failure, Heim did not want to lose lives essential to Fox.

Gonzales, for instance, was a good helper in his department, but Uthg-a-K’thaq and O’Hara could manage without him. Vadász had been a fairly competent steward, and as a minstrel had a lot to do with keeping morale high. Nevertheless, he was expendable. One colonist sufficed to guide Meroeth, and Irribarne had pulled rank to win that dangerous honor. The rest must bring their story to Earth, did the present scheme miscarry. As for Heim himself—

“You can’t!” Penoyer had protested.

“Can’t I just?” Heim grinned.

“But you’re the skipper!”

“You can handle that job every bit as well as I, Dave.”

Penoyer shook his head. “No. More and more, I’ve come to realize it. Not only that this whole expedition was your idea and your doing. Not even the way you’ve led us, as a tactician, I mean, though that’s been like nothing since Lord Nelson. But damn it, Gunnar-r—sir—we won’t hang together without you!”

“I’m far too modest to have any false modesty,” Heim drawled. “What you say may well have been true in the beginning. We’re a motley gang, recruited from all over Earth and every man a rambunctious individualist. Then there was the anti-Naqsan prejudice. I had to get tough about that a few times, you remember. Now, though, after so long a cruise, so much done together—we’re a crew. A God damn ship. C.E.’s proved himself so well and so often that we haven’t a man left who won’t punch you in the nose if you say a nasty word about Naqsans. And as for tactics, Dave, half the stunts we’ve pulled were your suggestion. You’ll manage fine.”

“Well… but… but why you, sir, to go down? Any of us with a master pilot’s certificate can do it, and say wizard to the chance. You going bloody well doesn’t make sense.”

“I say it does,” Heim answered. “End of discussion.” When he used that tone, nobody talked further. Inwardly, however, he hadn’t felt the least stern. Madelon—No, no, ridiculous. Maybe it’s true that you never really fall out of love with anyone; but new loves do come, and while Connie lived he had rarely thought about New Europe. For that matter, his reunion with Jocelyn Lawrie on Staurn had driven most else out of his mind. For a while.

No doubt he’d only been so keyed up about Madelon because of… he wasn’t sure what. A silly scramble after his lost youth, probably. She was middle-aged now, placidly married, according to her brother-in-law she had put on weight. He wanted to see her again, of course, and chuckle affectionately over old follies. But all he need do was instruct Meroeth’s pilot to make sure the Irribarnes were among the evacuees.

Insuwwicient, as C.E. would burble, he thought. Common sense has very limited uses. This goes beyond. Too many unforeseen things could happen. I want to be in the nucleus, personally.

A new sound filled the hull, the keening of sundered air, deepening toward a hollow boom, as Meroeth dropped below sonic speed. Heim looked out the forward viewport. The ocean reached vast beneath, phosphor-tinged waves from horizon to horizon. A shadow loomed in the distance, which Vadász told him from the radar must be an island. So, the Iles des Rêves already, at the end of the Notre Dame peninsula. He wanted to get the archipelago between him and whatever guardian instruments were at the uranium mine farther north, before he switched the gravitrons back on. It would take some doing. This hulk wasn’t meant for aerodynamic maneuvers. He applied the least bit of lift to get her nose up.

Immensely preferable would have been to land in the Océan des Orages and come eastward over Pays d’Espoir, crossing unpopulated Terre Sauvage to reach the central mountains of the continent. But while meteorites are plentiful, his had had too many requirements to meet. It must be large, yet not too large to nudge into the right orbit in a reasonable time; the point at which Fox grappled and towed must be fairly near the planet but not dangerously near; the path after release must look natural; it must terminate in one of those seas at night. You couldn’t scout the Auroran System forever, but must settle for the first halfway acceptable chunk of rock that happened along. Meanwhile Meroeth could be reconverted: lights, temperature, air systems adjusted for human comfort, Mach units repaired, the interior stripped of plants and less understandable Aleriona symbols, the controls ripped out and a new set put in of the kind to which Terrestrials were accustomed. The bridge had a plundered look.

Onward the ship fell, slower and lower until the ocean seemed to rise and lick at her. Vadász probed the sky with his instruments, awkwardly—he had gotten hasty training—and intently. His lips were half parted, as if to give the word “Fire!” to Irribarne in the single manned gun turret.

But he found only night, unhurried winds, and strange constellations.

It would not have been possible to travel this far, undetected, across a civilization. But New Europe has 72 percent of Earth’s surface area; it is an entire world. Coeur d’Yvonne had been almost the only outpost on another continent than Pays d’Espoir, and that city was annihilated.

The Aleriona occupied Garance, where the mines and machines were: a mere fringe of immensity. Otherwise they must rely on scattered detector stations, roving flyers, and the still incomplete satellite system. His arrival being unknown to them, the odds favored Heim.

Nonetheless… careful, careful.

When the archipelago was behind him and his ship almost plowing water, he turned the engines on again. Like a flying whale, Meroeth swung about and lumbered westward. An island passed near. He made out surf on a beach overshadowed by trees, and imagined he could hear its wash and the soughing leaves, could even smell the warm odors of a semitropical forest. The sight was dim, only half real—indeed an island of dream. Men’s dreams, he thought angrily. No one else’s.

Crossing the Golfe des Dragons, he felt naked in so much openness and increased speed.

Northwestward now the ship ran. Diane hove into view, nearly full. The moon was smaller than Luna seen from Earth—twenty-two minutes angular diameter—and less bright, but still a blue-marked tawny cornucopia that scattered metal shards across the sea.

Then the mainland rose, hills and woods and distant snow-peaks. Heim reached for altitude.

“Better get on the radio, Jean,” he said. “We don’t want them to run and hide when they see us, not to mention attack. What’s the name of that place again where we’re headed?”

“Lac aux Nuages,” Irribarne said.

Heim studied a map. “Yes, I see it here. Big upland lake. Isn’t it too conspicuous to make a safe headquarters?”

“There is ample concealment, precisely because it is large and misty and has so many islands,” Irribarne answered. “Besides, if there is a raid one can always retreat into the wilderness around about.” The intercom bore the sound of his footsteps leaving the gun turret for the radio room, and presently a harsh clatter of Basque.

The land beneath grew ever more rugged. Rivers ran from the snows, leaped down cliffs, foamed into steep valleys, and were lost to sight among the groves. A bird flock rose in alarm when the ship passed over; there must be a million pairs of wings, blotting out half the sky.

Vadász whistled in awe. “Isten irgalmazzon! I wondered how long the people could stay hidden, even alive, in the bush. But three times their number could do it”

“Yeh,” Heim grunted. “Except for one thing.”

The lake appeared, a wide wan sheet among darkling trees, remotely encircled by mountains whose glaciers gleamed beneath the moon. Irribarne relayed instructions. Heim found the indicated spot, just off the north shore, and lowered ship. The concealing waters closed over him.

He heard girders groan a little, felt an indescribable soft resistance go through the frame to himself, eased off power, and let the hull settle in ooze. When he cut the interior gee-field, he discovered the deck was canted.

His heart thuttered, but he could only find flat words: “Let’s get ashore.” Even in seven tenths of Terrestrial gravity, it was a somewhat comical effort to reach the emergency escape lock without falling. When the four men were crowded inside, clothes bundled on their necks, he dogged the inner door and cranked open the outer one. Water poured icily through. He kicked to the surface and swam as fast as possible toward land. Moonlight glimmered on the guns of the men who stood there waiting for him.

IV

The tent was big. The trees that surrounded it were taller yet. At the top of red-brown trunks, they fountained in branches whose leaves overarched and hid the pavilion under cool sun-flecked shadows. Their foliage was that greenish gold hue the native “grasses” shared, to give the Garance country its name. Wind rustled them. Through the open flap, Heim could look down archways of forest to the lake. It glittered unrestfully, outward past the edge of vision. Here and there lay a wooded island, otherwise the only land seen in that direction was the white-crowned sierra. Blue with distance, the peaks jagged into a deep blue sky.

Aurore was not long up. The eastern mountains were still in shadow, the western ones still faintly flushed. They would remain so for a while; New Europe takes more than seventy-five hours to complete a rotation. The sun did not look much different from Earth’s: about the same apparent size, a little less bright, its color more orange than yellow. Heim had found Vadász in the dews at dawn, watching the light play in the mists that streamed over the lake, altogether speechless.

That time was ended. So too was the hour when Colonel .Robert de Vigny, once constabulary commandant, now beret-crowned king of the maquis, returned to headquarters. (He had not been directing a raid, but finding some technicians and arranging for their transportation to the Ravignac lodge, where a major hydroelectric generator needed repairs. Of such unglamorous detail work is survival made.) Ended even was the first gladness of reunion, with Irribarne who had been lost, with Vadász after a year and Heim after a generation. “Eon, passons aux affaires sirieuses,” he said, and sat down behind his desk.

Vadász found a chair, slumped low, and stared at his boots. Heim kept his feet, met the green gaze, but found no words. “You tell him, Jean,” he mumbled at length. “My French is shot to hell.”

De Vigny stiffened himself, like a man expecting a blow. He was grizzled and not tall, but his back was rifle straight and the face might have belonged to a Trajan. “Continuez,” he said without tone. The Basque snapped to attention. “Repos,” de Vigny invited, but Irribarne seemed unable to stand at ease while the news jerked out of him.

At the end, the colonel remained expressionless. One hand drummed a little on the desktop.

“So,” he said most quietly, in French. “Earth has abandoned us.”

“Not all Earth!” Vadász exclaimed.

“No, true, you are here.” The mask dissolved; one could see muscles tighten along jaws and mouth, calipers deepen on either side of the gray toothbrush mustache, a pulse at the base of the throat. “And, I gather, at considerable risk. What is your plan, Captain Heim?” Now the privateer found words more easily. He stayed with English, though, which de Vigny could follow. “As I explained to Lieutenant Irribarne, Earth needs to be convinced of two things. First, that you people survive; second, that you won’t go along with any appeasement that costs you your homes.

Well, the men of yours who’re now in space, on my ship, might be a clinching proof of the first point. But men have always bragged about how hard they’ll fight, so any such claims they may make could be discounted.”

“And rightly so,” de Vigny remarked. “One has often in history heard nations declare they will fight to the last man, but none have ever done it. And there has never been any question of fighting to the last woman and child. If Earth does not soon come to help, I shall most certainly try to save us by making whatever bargain I can with Alerion.”

“I’m coming to that,” Heim said. “If we can send some of your women and children, it’ll make the whole thing more real to the average Earth-dweller. They’d be a powerful help to the faction there which does want victory. Three ways: plain old emotional appeal; living proof that standing up to Alerion doesn’t necessarily mean total disaster; and, well, a woman who says her people don’t want to surrender is more convincing than a man. The balance of opinion at home seems to be pretty delicate. They might be enough by themselves to tip it.”

“They might. You deal in hypotheses, Monsieur Captain. I must deal with the reality that we shall soon be getting sick.”

“If they also carried word you aren’t about to—what then?”

“Hein?” De Vigny balled his fist. “What do you propose?”

“That we get you your vitamins. Look, aren’t the Aleriona having a lot of trouble operating your machines? And aren’t you causing still more with your raids?”

“Yes. But this is hardly significant.”

“It is when they’re in a tearing hurry to complete the space fortifications and I’ve thrown them way behind schedule. I think if you offered to leave them alone, and maybe even send them some technicians, they’d swap. Give you the pills you need. Of course, you’d have to make sure those really were vitamin C capsules, but that shouldn’t be too hard to arrange.”

“What?” Irribarne cried. “Bargain with the enemy?”

“It is not uncommon in war.” De Vigny stroked his chin. “Indeed, those are the terms I was planning to make, if I could, when we are desperate. They will understand we are buying time in the hope of deliverance. But if they do not know that deliverance may, after all, be expected—Yes. Why should they not take an easy way of getting us off their necks? They will assume we can be dealt with later… To be sure, they may demand unconditional surrender, insist we come down to the lowlands where we can be penned up.”

“If they do,” Heim said, “I think we might manage to grab warehouse stocks, or even manufacturing facilities. A joint operation between your forces and my ship. Or if that doesn’t look feasible—” He swallowed bitterness. “We can throw in an offer that I go home.”

“Name of a name,” de Vigny breathed. “That would surely fetch them. But let us make the less costly proposal first, not admitting we have any communication with you, and hold this bargaining counter in reserve.”

“Oh, sure. Besides, we have to get the transport with the evacuees safely away, which needs surprise.”

De Vigny considered him. “You are most strangely concerned about a hundred or two of women and children. I attach less importance to them. Our continued existence here, as free men, is more apt to make Earth move. However… two hundred saved are still two hundred, so have your way. But how do you propose to get such a lumbering, over-loaded craft beyond the Mach limit?”

“Fox will make a covering raid when I send word.”

“What? She is that close, undetected? How the devil? And how can a maser beam find her when Aleriona radar can’t?”

“My engineer is off explaining the setup to your technical staff. Let us stick to the tactical side for now. The diversion should be ample. One well-armed ship, striking by surprise, can raise all kinds of hell. Once Meroeth’s in space, Fox will escort her to the limit. According to all our information—from instruments, radio monitor, captured documents, and so forth; we’ve got a man who can puzzle out the language if you give him time—most of the enemy strength here is chasing through the Auroran System and beyond, looking for me. So we ought to be out of danger well before they can bring more power to bear against us than Fox can handle.”

The colonel frowned. “You juggle too many unknowns for my taste.”

“Or mine,” Heim said dryly. “But one way to clear away some of ’em is obvious. Let me go along with your delegation to the Aleriona. They won’t know I’m not just another colonist. But I know them pretty well. I ought to, after so many years sparring with them. I also have a professional Navy eye, which they won’t be expecting. Endre should come too. He’s got a poet’s grasp of non-human psychologies.

Between us, we can not only help you make a better deal, but carry back a lot of useful information to base our specific plans on.”

“M-m-m… well—” De Vigny pondered a moment. Then, crisply: “So be it. Time is short, and we do not really have much to lose. This, then, is the schedule as I understand it We begin at once to arrange evacuation. During the next few days, the people chosen can flit in by ones and twos.

We must also load supplies, and must not be observed doing it. But my men .can run a cargo tube from the forest to one of your locks below water, without exposing it to the sky.

“Meanwhile I establish radio contact with the Aleriona and ask for a parley. They will doubtless agree, especially since their new chief of naval operations seems, from Lieutenant Irribarne’s account, to be a rather decent fellow. I daresay they will receive our representatives already tomorrow.

“If we can reach an agreement, cessation of guerrilla operations and perhaps the supplying of some engineers in exchange for vitamins—good. Whether that works out or not, the delegation returns here.

“Then your ship attacks to get this transport safely away. “After that, if we are provided with the capsules, you continue your warfare in space as long as possible. If not, and if we cannot steal them, I call the enemy again and offer an end to your activities, provided he supplies us. This he is virtually sure to accept.

“At large cost or small, we shall have gained time, during which we hope Earth will come to help. Am I right?”

Heim nodded and got out his pipe. “That’s the idea,” he said.

De Vigny’s nostrils dilated. “Tobacco? One had almost I forgotten.”

Heim chuckled and threw the pouch on the desk. De Vigny picked up a little bell and rang it.

And aide-de-camp materialized in the tent entrance, saluting. “Find me a pipe,” de Vigny said.

“And, if the captain does not object, you may find one for yourself too.”

“At once, my colonel!” The aide dematerialized.

“Well.” De Vigny unbent a trifle. “Thanks are a poor thing, I monsieur. What can New Europe do for you?” Heim grew conscious of Vadász’s half jocose, half sympathetic regard, blushed, and said roughly, “I have an old friend on this planet, who’s now Jean Irribarne’s sister-in-law. See to it that she and her family are among the evacuees.”

“Pierre will not go when other men stay,” the Basque said gently.

“But they shall most certainly come here if you wish,” de Vigny said. He rang for another aide. “Lieutenant, why do you not go with Major Legrand to my own flyer? It has a set which can call to anywhere in the Haute Garance. If you will tell the operator where they are, your kin—”

.When that was done, he said to Heim and Vadász, “I shall be most busy today, it is plain. But let us relax until after lunch. We have many stories to trade.”

And so they did.

When at last de Vigny must dismiss them, Heim and Vadász were somewhat at loose, ends.

There was little to see. Though quite a few men were camped around the lake, the shelters were scattered and hidden, the activity unobtrusive. Now and then a flyer came by, as often as not weaving between tree trunks under the concealing foliage. Small radars sat in camouflage, watching for the unlikely appearance of an Aleriona vessel. The engineers could not install their loading tube to the ship before night, unless one of the frequent fogs rose to cover their work.

Men sat about yarning, gambling, doing minor chores. All were eager to talk with the Earthlings, but the Earthlings soon wearied of repeating themselves. Toward noon a degree of physical tiredness set in as well. They had been up for a good eighteen hours.

Vadász yawned. “Let us go back to our tent,” he suggested. “This planet has such an inconvenient rotation. You must sleep away a third of the daylight and be awake two thirds of the night.”

“Oh, well,” Heim said. “It wouldn’t be colonizable otherwise.”

“What? How?”

“You don’t know? Well, look, it has only half Earth’s mass, and gets something over 85 percent of the irradiation. The air would’ve bled away long ago, most of it, except that air loss is due in large part to magnetic interaction with charged particles from the sun. Even a G5 star like Aurore spits out quite a bit of stuff. But slow spin means a weak magnetic field.”

“Another thanks due to Providence,” the Hungarian said thoughtfully.

“Huh!” Heim snorted. “Then we’ve got to blame Providence for Venus keeping too much atmosphere. It’s a simple matter of physics. The smaller a planet is, and the closer to its sun, the less difference of angular momentum between the inner and outer sections of the dust cloud that goes to form it. Therefore, the less rotation.”

Vadász clapped his shoulder. “I do not envy you your philosophy, my friend. God is good.

But we are in mortal danger of becoming serious. Let us, I say, return to the tent, where I have a flask of brandy, and—”

They were not far from it then, were crossing a meadow where flame-colored blossoms nodded in the golden grass. Jean Irribarne stepped from under the trees. “Ah,” he hailed, “vous voilà. I have looked for you.”

“What about?” Heim asked.

The lieutenant beamed. “Your friends are here.” He turned and called, “ ’Allo-o-o!”

They came out into the open, six of them. The blood left Heim’s heart and flooded back. He stood in a sunlit darkness that whirled.

She approached him timidly. Camp clothes, faded and shapeless, had today been exchanged for a dress brought along to the woods and somehow preserved. It fluttered light and white around her long-legged slenderness. Aurore had bleached the primly braided brown hair until it was paler than her skin; but still it shone, and one lock blew free above the heart-shaped face. Her eyes were violet.

“Madelon,” he croaked.

“Gunnar.” The handsome woman took both his hands. “C’est si ban te voir encore. Bienvenu.”

“A nej—” the breath rasped into him. He pulled back his shoulders. “I was surprised,” he said limpingly. “Your daughter looks so much like you.”

“Pardon?” the woman struggled with long unused English.

Her husband, an older and heavier version of Jean, interpreted while he shook Heim’s hand.

Madelon laughed. “Oui, oui, tout le monde le dit. Quand j’etais jeune, peutêtre. Danielle, je voudrais que tu fasses la connaissance de mon vieil ami Gunnar Heim.”

“Je suis très honorée, monsieur.” She could scarcely be heard above the wind as it tossed the leaves and made light and shadow dance behind her. The fingers were small and cool in Heim’s, quickly withdrawn.

In some vague fashion he met teenage Jacques, Cecile, and Yves. Madelon talked a lot, without much but friendly banalities coming through the translations of the Irribarae brothers. All the while Danielle stood quiet. But at parting, with promises of a real get-together after sleep, she smiled at him.

Heim and Vadász watched them leave, before going on themselves. When the forest had closed upon her, the minstrel whistled. “Is that indeed the image of your one-time sweetheart, yonder girl?” he asked.

“More or less,” Heim said, hardly aware that he talked to anyone else. “There must be differences, I suppose. Memory plays tricks.”

“Still, one can see what you meant by—Forgive me, Gunnar, but may I advise that you be careful? There are so many years to stumble across.”

“Good Lord!” Heim exploded angrily. “What do you take me for? I was startled, nothing else.”

“Well, if you are certain… You see, I would not wish to—”

“Shut up. Let’s find that brandy.” Heim led the way with tremendous strides.

Day crept toward evening. But life kept its own pace, which can be a fast one in time of war.

At sunset Heim found himself on a ness jutting into the lake, alone with Danielle.

He was not sure how. There had been the reunion and a meal as festive as could be managed, in the lean-to erected near the Irribarne flyer. Champagne, which he had taken care to stow aboard Meroeth, flowed freely. Stiffness dissolved in it. Presently they sprawled on the grass, Vaduz’s guitar rang and most voices joined his. But Heim and Made-Ion kept somewhat apart, struggling to talk, and her oldest daughter sat quietly by.

They could not speak much of what had once been. Heim did not regret that, and doubted Madelon did. Meeting again like this, they saw how widely their ways had parted; now only a look, a smile, a bit of laughter could cross the distance between. She was an utterly good person, he thought, but she was not Connie or even Jocelyn. And, for that matter, he was not Pierre.

So they contented themselves with trading years. Hers had been mild until the Aleriona came. Pierre, the engineer, built dikes and power stations while she built their lives. Thus Heim found himself relating the most. It came natural to make the story colorful.

His eyes kept drifting toward Danielle.

Finally—this was where the real confusion began as to what had happened—the party showed signs of breaking up. He wasn’t sleepy himself, though the wine bubbled in his head, and his body demanded exercise. He said something about taking a stroll. Had he invited the girl along, or had she asked to come, or had Madelon, chuckling low in the way he remembered, sent them off together with a remark about his needing a guide? Everybody had spoken, but between his bad French and hammering pulse he wasn’t sure who had said what. He did recall that the mother had given them a little push toward the deeper forest, one hand to each.

Song followed them a while (“Aupres de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon—”), but by the time they reached the lakeshore they heard simply a lap-lap of wavelets, rustic of leaves, flute of a bird. Aurore was going down behind the western peaks, which stock black against a cloud bank all fire and gold. The same long light made a molten bridge on the water, from the sun toward him and her. But eastward fog was rolling, slow as the sunset, a topaz wall that of the top broke into banners of dandelion yellow in a sky still clear with day. The breeze cooled his skin.

He saw her clasp arms together. “Avez-vous froid, mademoiselle?” he asked, much afraid they would have to go back. She smiled even before he took off his cloak, probably at what he was doing to her language. He threw it over her shoulders. When his hands brushed along her neck, he felt his sinews go taut and withdrew in a hurry.

“Thank you.” She had a voice too light for English or Norwegian, which turned French into song. “But will you not be cold?”

“No. I am fine.” (Damn! Did fin have the meaning he wanted?) “I am—” He scratched around for words. “Too old and… poilu?… too old and hairy to feel the weather.”

“You are not old, Monsieur Captain,” she said gravely.

“Ha!” He crammed fists into pockets. “What age have you? Nineteen? I have a daughter that which she—I have a daughter a few years less.”

“Well—” She laid a finger along her jaw. He thought wildly what a delicate line that bone made, over the small chin to a gentle mouth; and, yes, her nose tipped gaily upward, with some freckles dusted across the bridge. “I know you are my mother’s age. But you do not look it, and what you have done is more than any young man could.”

“Thanks. Thanks. Nothing.”

“Mother was so excited when she heard,” Danielle said. “I think Father got a little jealous.

But now he likes you.”

“Your father is a good man.” It was infuriating to be confined to this first-grade vocabulary.

“May I ask you something, monsieur?” “Ask me anybody.” The one rebellious lock of hair had gotten free again.

“I have heard that we who go to Earth do so to appeal for help. Do you really think we will matter that much?”

“Well, uh, well, we had a necessity to come here. That is to say, we have now made establish communication from your people to mine in space. So we can also take people like you away.”

A crease of puzzlement flitted between her brows. “But they have spoken of how difficult it was to get so big a ship down without being seen. Could you not better have taken a little one?”

“You are very clever, mademoiselle, but—” Before he could construct a cover-up, she touched his arm (how lightly!) and said:

“You came as you did, risking your life, for Mother’s sake. Is that not so?”

“Uh, uh, well, naturally I thought over her. We are old friends.”

She smiled. “Old sweethearts, I have heard. Not all the knights are dead, Captain. I sat with you today, instead of joining in the music, because you were so beautiful to watch.”

His heart sprang until he realized she had been using the second person plural. He hoped the sunset light covered the hue his face must have. “Mademoiselle,” he said, “your mother and I are friends. Only friends.”

“Oh, but of course. I understand. Still, it was so good of you, everything you have done for us.” The evening star kindled above her head. “And now you will take us to Earth. I have dreamed about such a trip since I was a baby.”

There was an obvious opening to say that she was more likely to make Earth sit up and beg than vice versa, but he could only hulk over her, trying to find a graceful way of putting it She sighed and looked past him.

“Your men too, they are knights,” she said. “They have not even your reason to fight for New Europe. Except perhaps Monsieur Vadász?”

“No, Endre has no one here,” Heim said. “He is a troubadour.”

“He sings so wonderfully,” Danielle murmured. “I was listening all the time. He is a Hungarian?”

“By birth. Now he has no home.” Endre, you’re a right buck, but this is getting to be too much about you. “I have—have—When you arrive on Earth, you and your family use my home. I come when I can and take you in my ship.”

She clapped her hands. “Oh, wonderful!” she caroled. “Your daughter and I, we shall become such good friends. And afterward, a voyage on a warship—What songs of victory we will sing, homeward bound!”

“Well—um—We return to camp now? Soon is dark.” Under the circumstances, one had better be as elaborately gentlemanly as possible.

Danielle drew the cloak tight around her. “Yes, if you wish.” He wasn’t sure whether that showed reluctance or not. But as she started walking immediately, he made no comment, and they spoke little en route.

The party was indeed tapering off. Heim’s and Danielle’s return touched off a round of good-nights. When she gave him back his cloak, he dared squeeze her hand. Vadász kissed it, with a flourish.

On their way back through leafy blue twilight, the minstrel said, “Ah, you are the lucky one still.”

“What do you mean?” Heim snapped.

“Taking the fair maiden off that way. What else?”

“For God’s sake!” Heim growled. “We just wanted to stretch our legs. I don’t have to rob cradles yet.”

“Are you quite honest, Gunnar?… No, wait, please don’t tie me in a knot. At least, not in a granny knot. It is only that Mlle. Irribarne is attractive. Do you mind if I see her?”

“What the’ blaze have I got to say about that?” Heim retorted out of his anger. “But listen, she’s the daughter of a friend of mine, and these colonial French have a medieval notion of what’s proper. Follow me?”

“Indeed. No more need be said.” Vadász whistled merrily the rest of the way. Once in his sleeping bag, he drowsed off at once. Heim had a good deal more trouble doing so.

Perhaps for that reason, he woke late and found himself alone in the tent. Probably Diego was helping de Vigny’s sappers and Endre had wandered off—wherever. It was not practical for guerrillas to keep a regular mess, and the campstove, under a single dim light, showed that breakfast had been prepared. Heim fixed his own, coffee, wildfowl, and a defrosted chunk of the old and truly French bread which is not for tender gums. Afterward he washed, depilated the stubble on his face, shrugged into some clothes, and went outside.

No word for me, evidently. If any comes, it’ll keep. I feel restless. How about a swim? He grabbed a towel and started off.

Diane was up. Such light as came through the leaves made the forest a shifting bewilderment of black and white, where his flash-beam bobbed lonely. The air had warmed and cleared. He heard summery noises, whistles, chirps, croaks, flutters, none of them quite like home. When he emerged on the shore, the lake was a somehow bright sable, each little wave tipped with moonfire. The snowpeaks stood hoar be-nearth a universe of stars. He remembered the time on Staurn when he had tried to pick out Achernar; tonight he could do so with surety, for it burned great in this sky. His triumph, just about when Danielle was being born—

“Vous n’etes pas vieux, Monsieur le Capitaine.”

He stripped, left the beam on to mark the spot, and waded out. The water was cold, but he needed less will power than usual to take the plunge when it was waist deep. For a time he threshed about, warming himself, then struck out with long quiet strokes. Moonlight rippled in his wake. The fluid slid over his skin like a girl’s fingers.

Things are looking up, he thought with a growing gladness. We really do have a good chance to rescue this planet. And if part of the price is that I stop raiding—why, I’ll be on Earth too.

Did it sing within him, or had a bird called from the ness ahead?

No. Birds don’t chord on twelve strings. Heim grinned and swam forward as softly as he was able. Endre’s adrenal glands would benefit from a clammy hand laid on him from behind and a shouted “Boo!”

The song strengthened in his ears:

As it ended, Heim saw Vadász seated on a log, silhouetted against the sky. He was not alone.

Her voice came clear through the night. “Oh, c’est beau. Je n’aurais jamais cru que les allemands pouvaient avoir une telle sensibilité.”

Vadász laughed. “Vous savez, Goethe vecut il y a long-temps. Mais pourquoi rappeler de vieilles haines pendant une si belle nuit?”

She shivered. “L’haine n’est pas morte. Elle nous entoure.”

He drew his cloak around them both. “Oubliez tout cela, mademoiselle. L’affaire est en bonne mains. Nous sommes Venus id pour admirer, parler, et chanter, n’est-ce pas?”

“Out.” Hesitantly: “Mais mes parents—”

“Pff! Il n’est pas tard. La nuit, le jour, c’est la même chose pour les Neo-Européens. Vous n’avez pas confiance en moi? Je suis aussi innocent qu’une grenouille perdue de rhumatismes.

Vous avez entendu mes coassements.”

Danielle giggled. “Coassez encore, je vous en prie.”

“Le souhait d’une si charmante demoiselle est un ordre. Ah… quelque chose à la Magyar?

Un chant d’amour.”

The strings toned very softly, made themselves a part of night and woods and water.

Vadász’s words twined among them. Danielle sighed and leaned a bit closer. Heim swam away.

No, he told himself, and again: No. Endre isn’t being a bastard. He asked me.

The grip on his throat did not loosen. He ended his quietness and churned the water with steamboat violence. He’s… He’s young. I could have been her father. But I junked the chance. I thought it had come back. No. I’m being ridiculous. Oh, Connie, Connie! Ved Guid—

His brain went in rage to the tongue of his childhood. By God, if he does anything—I’m not too old to break a man’s neck.

What the hell business is it of mine? He stormed ashore and abraded himself dry. Clothes on, he stumbled through the woods. There was a bottle in the tent, not quite empty.

A man waited for him. He recognized one of de Vigny’s aides. “Well?”

The officer sketched a salute. “I ’ave a message for you, monsieur. The colonel ’as contact the enemy. They receive a delegation in Bonne Chance after day ’as break.”

“Okay. Good night.”

“But, monsieur—”

“I know. We have to confer. Well, I’ll come when I can. We’ve plenty of time. It’s going to be a long night.” Heim brushed past the aide and closed his tent flap.

VI

Below, the Carsac Valley rolled broad and rich. Farmsteads could be seen, villages, an occasional factory surrounded by gardens—but nowhere man; the land was empty, livestock run wild, weeds reclaiming the fields. Among them flowed the river, metal-bright in the early sun.

When he looked out the viewports of the flyer where he sat, Heim saw his escort, four Aleriona military vehicles. The intricate, gaily colored patterns painted on them did not soften their barracuda outlines. Guns held aim on the unarmed New Europeans. We could change from delegates to prisoners in half a second, he thought, and reached for his pipe.

“Pardon.” Lieutenant Colonel Charles Navarre, head of the eight-man negotiation team, tapped his shoulder. “Best lock that away, monsieur. We have not had tobacco in the maquis for one long time.”

“Damn! You’re right. Sorry.” Heim got up and stuck his smoking materials in a locker.

“They are no fools, them.” Navarre regarded the big man carefully. “Soon we land. Is anything else wrong with you, Captain Alphonse Lafayette?”

“No, I’m sure not,” Heim said in English. “But let’s, go down the list. My uniform’s obviously thrown together, but that’s natural for a guerrilla. I don’t look like a typical colonist, but they probably won’t notice, and if they do it won’t surprise them.”

“Comment?” asked another officer.

“Didn’t you know?” Heim said. “Aleriona are bred into standardized types. From their viewpoint, humans are so wildly variable that a difference in size and coloring is trivial. Nor have they got enough familiarity with French to detect my accent, as long as I keep my mouth shut most of the time. Which’ll be easy enough, since I’m only coming along in the hope of picking up a little naval intelligence.”

“Yes, yes,” Navarre said impatiently. “But be most careful about it.” He leaned toward Vadász, who had a seat in the rear. “You too, Lieutenant Gaston Girard.”

“On the contrary,” the minstrel said, “I have to burble and chatter and perhaps irritate them somewhat. There is no other way to probe the mood of non-humans. But have no fear. This was all thought about. I am only a junior officer, not worth much caution on their part.” He smiled tentatively at Heim. “You can vouch for how good I am at being worthless, no, Gunnar?”

Heim grunted. Pain and puzzlement nickered across the Magyar’s features. When first his friend turned cold to him, he had put it down to a passing bad mood. Now, as Heim’s distantness persisted, there was no chance—in this crowded, thrumming cabin—to ask what had gone wrong.

The captain could almost read those thoughts. He gusted out a breath and returned to his own seat forward. I’m being stupid and petty and a son of a bitch in general, he knew. But I can’t forget Danielle, this sunrise with the fog drops like jewels in her hair, and the look she gave him when we said good-by. Wasn’t I the one who’d earned it?

He was quite glad when the flyer started down.

Through magnification before it dropped under the horizon, he saw that Bonne Chance, had grown some in twenty years. But it was still a small city, nestled on the land’s seaward shoulder: a city of soft-hued stucco walls and red tile roofs, of narrow ambling streets, suspension bridges across the Carsac, a market square where the cathedral fronted on outdoor stalls and outdoor cafes, docks crowded with water-craft, and everywhere trees, Earth’s green chestnut and poplar mingled with golden bellefleur and gracis. The bay danced and dazzled, the countryside rolled ablaze with wild-flowers, enclosing the town exactly as they had done when he wandered hand in hand with Madelon.

Only… the ways were choked with dead leaves; houses stared blank and blind; boats moldered in the harbor; machines rusted silent; the belfry rooks were dead or fled and a fauquette cruised the sky on lean wings, searching for prey. The last human thing that stirred was the aerospace port, twenty kilometers inland.

And those were not men or men’s devices bustling over its concrete. The airships bringing cargo had been designed by no Terrestrial engineer. The factories they served were windowless prolate domes, eerily graceful for all that they were hastily assembled prefabs. Conveyors, trucks, lifts were man-made, but the controls had been rebuilt for hands of another shape and minds trained to another concept of number. Barracks surrounded the field, hundreds of buildings reaching over the bills; from above, they looked like open-petaled bronze flowers. Missiles stood tall among them, waiting to pounce. Auxiliary spacecraft clustered in the open. One was an armed pursuer, whose snout reached as high as the cathedral cross.

“It must belong to a capital ship in planetary orbit,” Heim decided. “And if that’s die only such, the other warships must be out on patrol. Which is maybe worth knowing.”

“I do not see how you can use the information,” Navarre said. “A single spacecraft of the line gives total air superiority when there is nothing against it but flyers. And our flyers are not even military.”

“Still, it’s always helpful to see what you’re up against. Uh, you’re sure their whole power is concentrated here?”

“Yes, quite sure. This area has most of our industrial facilities. There are garrisons elsewhere, at certain mines and plants, as well as at observation posts. But our scouts have reported those are negligible in themselves.”

“So… I’d guess, then, knowing how much crowding Aleriona will tolerate—let me think—I’d estimate their number at around fifty thousand. Surely the military doesn’t amount to more than a fifth of that. They don’t need more defense. Upper-type workers—what we’d call managers, engineers, and so forth—are capable of fighting but aren’t trained for it. The lower-type majority have had combativeness bred out. So we’ve really only got ten thousand Aleriona to worry about.

How many men could you field?”

“Easily a hundred thousand—who would be destroyed the moment they ventured out of the forests.”

“I know. A rifle isn’t much use when you face heavy ground and air weapons.” Heim grimaced.

The flyer touched concrete at the designated point and halted. Its escort remained hovering.

Navarre stood up. “Sortons,” he said curtly, and led the way out the door. Twenty Aleriona of the warrior class—lean, broad of chest, hair tight-braided under the conical helmets, faces handsome rather than beautiful, and expressionless—waited in file. The long sunrays turned their scaly garments almost incandescent. They did not draw the crooked swords at their belts or point their guns at the newcomers; they might have been statues. Their officer stepped forward, making the droop-tailed bow with fingertips lightly touching that signified respect. He was taller than his followers, though still below average human height.

“Well are you come,” he sang in fairly good French. “Wish you rest or refreshment?”

“No, thank you,” Navarre said, slowly so that the alien could follow his dialect. Against the fluid motion that confronted him, his stiffness looked merely lumpy. “We are prepared to commence discussions at once.”

“Yet first ought you be shown your quarters. Nigh to the high masters of the Garden of War is prepared a place as best we might.” The officer trilled an order. Several low-class workers appeared. They did not conform to Earth’s picture of Aleriona—their black-clad bodies were too heavy, features too coarse, hair too short, fur too dull, and there was nothing about them of that inborn unconscious arrogance which marked the leader breeds. Yet they were not servile, nor were they stupid. A million years of history, its only real change the glacial movement toward an ever more unified society, had fitted then—very genes for this part. If the officer was a panther and his soldiers watchdogs, these were mettlesome horses.

In his role as aide, Vadász showed them the party’s baggage. They fetched it out, the officer whistled a note, the troopers fell in around the humans and started off across the field. There was no marching; but the bodies rippled together like parts of one organism. Aurore struck the contact lenses which protected them from its light and turned their eyes to rubies.

Heim’s own eyes shifted back and forth as he walked. Not many other soldiers were in evidence. Some must be off duty, performing one of those enigmatic rites that were communion, conversation, sport, and prayer to an Aleriona below the fifth level of mastery. Others would be at the missile sites or on air patrol. Workers and supervisors swarmed about, unloading cargo, fetching metal from a smelter or circuit parts from a factory to another place where it would enter some orbital weapon. Their machines whirred, clanked, rumbled. Nonetheless, to a man the silence was terrifying. No shouts, no talk, no jokes or curses were heard: only an occasional melodic command, a thin weaving of taped orchestral music, the pad-pad of a thousand soft feet.

Vadász showed his teeth in a grin of sorts. “Ils considérent la vie très sérieusement,” he murmured to Navarre. “Je parierais qu’ils ne font jamais de plaisanteries douteuses.”

Did the enemy officer cast him a look of incomprehension? “Taisez vous!” Navarre said.

But Vadász was probably right, Heim reflected. Humor springs from a certain inward distortion. To that great oneness which was the Aleriona soul, it seemed impossible: literally unthinkable.

Except… yes, the delegates to Earth, most especially Admiral Cynbe, had shown flashes of a bleak wit. But they belonged to the ultimate master class. It suggested a difference from the rest of their species which—He dismissed speculation and went back to observing as much detail as he could.

The walk ended at a building some hundred meters from the edge of the field. Its exterior was no different from the other multiply curved structures surrounding it. Inside, though, the rooms had clearly been stripped, the walls were raw plastic and floors were stained where the soil of flowerbeds had been removed. Furniture, a bath cubicle, Terrestrial-type lights, plundered from houses, were arranged with a geometric precision which the Aleriona doubtless believed was pleasing to men. “Hither shall food and drink be brought you,” the officer sang. “Have you wish to go elsewhere, those guards that stand outside will accompany.”

“I see no communicator,” Navarre said.

“None there is. With the wilderness dwellers make you no secret discourse. Within camp, your guards bear messages. Now must we open your holders-of-things and make search upon your persons.”

Navarre reddened. “What? Monsieur, that violates every rule of parley.”

“Here the rule is of the Final Society. Wish you not thus, yourselves you may backtake to the mountains.” It was hard to tell whether or not that lilting voice held insult, but Heim didn’t think so. The officer was stating a fact.

“Very well,” Navarre spat. “We submit under protest, and this shall be held to your account when Earth has defeated you.”

The Aleriona didn’t bother to reply. Yet the frisking was oddly like a series of caresses.

No contraband was found, there not being any. Most of the colonists were surprised when the officer told them, “Wish you thus, go we this now to seek the Intellect Masters.” Heim, recalling past encounters, was not. The Aleriona overlords had always been more flexible than their human counterparts. With so rigid a civilization at their beck, they could afford it.

“Ah… just who are they?” Navarre temporized.

“The imbiac of planetary and space defense are they, with below them the prime engineering operator. And then have they repositories of information and advice,” the officer replied. “Is not for you a similarity?”

“I speak for the constabulary government of New Europe,” Navarre said. “These gentlemen are my own experts, advisers, and assistants. But whatever I agree to must be ratified by my superiors.”

Again the girlish face, incongruous on that animal body, showed a brief loosening that might betoken perplexity. “Come you?” the song wavered.

“Why not?” Navarre said. “Please gather your papers, messieurs.” His heels clacked on the way out.

Heim and Vadász got to the door simultaneously. The minstrel bowed. “After you, my dear Alphonse,” he said. The other man hesitated, unwilling. But no, you had to maintain morale. He bowed back: “After you, my dear Gaston.” They kept it up for several seconds.

“Make you some ritual?” the officer asked.

“A most ancient one.” Vadász sauntered off side by side with him.

“Never knew I such grew in your race,” the officer admitted.

“Well, now, let me tell you—” Vadász started an energetic argument. He’s doing his job right well, Heim conceded grudgingly.

Not wanting to keep the Magyar in his consciousness, he looked straight ahead at the building they were approaching. In contrast to the rest, it lifted in a single high curve, topped with a symbol resembling an Old Chinese ideogram. The walls were not blank bronze, but scored with micro-grooves that turned them shiftingly, bewilderingly iridescent. He saw now that this was the source of the music, on a scale unimagined by men, that breathed across the port.

No sentries were visible. An Aleriona had nothing to fear from his underlings. The wall dilated to admit those who neared, and closed behind them.

There was no decompression chamber. The occupiers must find it easier to adapt themselves, perhaps with the help of drugs, to the heavy wet atmosphere of this planet. A hall sloped upward, vaguely seen in the dull red light from a paraboloidal ceiling. The floor was carpeted with living, downy turf, the walls with phosphorescent vines and flowers that swayed, slowly keeping time to the music, and drenched the air with their odors. The humans drew closer together, as if for comfort. Ghost silent, ghost shadowy, they went with their guards to the council chamber.

It soared in a vault whose top was hidden by dusk, but where artificial stars glittered wintry keen. The interior was a vague, moving labyrinth of trellises, bushes, and bowers. Light came only from a fountain at the center, whose crimson-glowing waters leaped five meters out of a bowl carved like an open mouth, cascaded down again, and filled every corner of the jungle with their clear splash and gurgle. Walking around it, Heim thought he heard wings rustle in the murk overhead.

The conqueror lords stood balanced on tails and clawed feet, waiting. There were half a dozen all told. None wore any special insignia of rank, but the light flickered lovingly over metal-mesh garments, lustrous hair, and silver-sparked white fur. The angelic faces were in repose, the emerald eyes altogether steady.

To them the officer genuflected and the soldiers dipped their rifles. A few words were sung.

The guards stepped back into darkness and the humans stood alone.

One Aleriona master arched his back and hissed. Almost instantly, his startlement passed.

He trod forward so that his countenance came into plain view. Laughter belled from him, low and warm.

“Thus, Captain Gunnar Heim,” he crooned in English. “Strangeness, how we must ever meet. Remember you not Cynbe ru Taren?”

VII

So shattered was Heim’s universe that he was only dimly aware of what happened. Through the red gloom, trillings went among the Aleriona. One bristled and cried an order to the guards.

Cynbe countermanded it with an imperious gesture. Above the racket of his pulse, Heim heard the admiral murmur: “You would they destroy on this now, but such must not become. Truth, there can be no release; truth alike, you are war’s honored prisoners.” And there were more songs, and at last the humans were marched back to their quarters. But Heim remained.

Cynbe dismissed his fellow chieftains and all but four guards. By then the sweat was drying on the man’s skin, his heartbeat was slowed, the first total despair thrust down beneath an iron watchfulness. He folded his arms and waited.

The Aleriona lord prowled to the fountain, which silhouetted him as if against liquid flames.

For a while he played with a blossoming vine. The sole noises were music, water, and unseen circling wings. It was long before he intoned, softly and not looking at the man:

“Hither fared I to have in charge the hunt for you the hunter. Glad was my hope that we might meet in space and love each the other with guns. Why came you to this dull soil?”

“Do you expect me to tell you?” Heim rasped.

“We are kinfolk, you and I. Sorrow, that I must word-break and keep you captive. Although your presence betokens this was never meant for a real parley.”

“It was, however. I just happened to come along. You’ve no right to hold the New Europeans, at least.”

“Let us not lawsplit. We two rear above such. Release I the others, home take they word to your warship. Then may she well strike. And we have only my cruiser Jubalcho to meet her.

While she knows not what has happened to you her soul, Fox II abides. Thus gain I time to recall my deep-scattered strength.”

The breath hissed between Heim’s teeth. Cynbe swung about. His eyes probed like fire weapons. “What bethink you?”

“Nothing!” Heim barked frantically.

It raced within him: He believes I took Fox down. Well, that’s natural. Not knowing about our meteorite gimmick, he’d assume that only a very small or a very fast craft could sneak past his guard. And why should I come in a tender? Fox on the surface could do tremendous damage, missile this base and strike at his flagship from a toadhole position. I don’t know what good it is having him misinformed, but—play by ear, boy, play by ear. You haven’t got anything left except your rusty old wits.

Cynbe studied him a while. “Not long dare I wait to act,” he mused. “And far are my ships.”

Heim forced a jeering note: “The practical limit of a maser beam is about twenty million kilometers. After that, if nothing else, the position error for a ship gets too big. And there’s no way to lock onto an accelerating vessel till she’s so close that you might as well use an ordinary ’caster. Her coordinates change too fast, with too many unpredictables such as meteorite dodging.

So how many units have you got on known orbits within twenty million kilometers?”

“Insult me not,” Cynbe replied quietly. He stalked to the wall, brushed aside a curtain of flowers and punched the keys of an infotrieve. It chattered and extruded a print-out. He brooded over the symbols. “Inisant the cruiser and Savaidh the lancer can we reach. All ignorant must the others wheel their way, until one by one they return on slow schedule and find only battle’s ashes.”

“What are the factors for those two?” Heim inquired. Mostly he was holding at bay the blood-colored stillness. It jarred him—not too much to jam the numbers into his memory—when Cynbe read off in English the orbital elements and present positions.

“Hence have I sent my race-brothers to summon them,” the Aleriona went on. “At highest acceleration positive and negative, Savaidh takes orbit around Europe Neuve in eighteen hours, Inisant in twenty-three. I think not the Fox-folk will dread for you thus soon. With three warcraft aloft, this entire planet do we scan. Let your ship make the least of little moves, and destruction shall thunder upon her unstoppable. Although truth, when ready for smiting we shall send detector craft all places and seek her lair.”

His tone had not been one of threat. It grew still milder: “This do I tell you in my thin hoping you yield her. Gallant was that ship, unfitting her death where the stars cannot see.”

Heim pinched his lips together and shook his head.

“What may I offer you for surrender,” Cynbe asked in sadness, “unless maychance you will take my love?”

“What the devil!” Heim exclaimed.

“We are so much alone, you and I,” Cynbe sang. For the first time scorn touched his voice, as he jerked his tail in the direction of the warriors who stood, blank-faced and uncomprehending, half hidden in the twilight. “Think you I am kin to that?”

He glided closer. The illumination played over shining locks and disconcertingly fair countenance. His great eyes lingered on the man. “Old is Alerion,” he chanted, “old, old. Long-lived are the red dwarf stars, and late appears life in so feeble a radiance. Once we had come to being, our species, on a planet of seas vanished, rivers shrunk to trickles in desert, a world niggard of air, water, metal, life—uncountable ages lingered we in savagehood. Ah, slow was the machine with coming to us. What you did in centuries, we did in tens upon thousands of years; and when it was done, a million years a-fled, one society alone endured, swallowed every other, and the machine’s might gave it upon us a grip not to be broken. Starward fared the Wanderers, vast-minded the Intellects, yet were but ripples over the .still deep of a civilization eternity-rooted. Earth lives for goals, Alerion for changelessness. Understand you that, Gunnar Heim?

Feel you how ultimate the winter you are?”

“I—you mean—”

Cynbe’s fingers stroked like a breath across the human’s wrist. He felt the hair stir beneath them, and groped for a handhold in a world suddenly tilting. “Well, uh, it’s been theorized. That is, some people believe you’re just reacting because we threaten your stability. But it doesn’t make sense. We could reach an accommodation, if all you want is to be let alone. You’re trying to hound us out of space.”

“Thus must we. Sense, reason, logic are what, save instruments of most ancient instinct? If races less powerful than we change, that makes nothing more than pullulation among insects. But you, you come in ten or twenty thousand years, one flick of time, come from the caves, bear weapons to shake planets as is borne a stone war-ax, you beswarm these stars and your dreams reach at the whole galaxy, at the whole cosmos. That can we not endure! Instinct feels doom in this becoming one mere little enclave, given over helpless to the wild mercy of those who bestride the galaxy. Would you, could you trust a race grown strong that feeds on living brains?

No more is Alerion able to trust a race without bounds to its hope. Back to your own planets must you be cast, maychance back to your caves or your dust.”

Heim shook the soft touch loose, clenched his fists and growled: “You admit this, and still talk about being friends?”

Cynbe confronted him squarely, but sang with less than steadiness: “Until now said I ‘we’ for all Alerion. Sure is that not truth. For when first plain was your menace, plain too was that those bred stiff-minded, each for a one element of the Final-Society, must go down before you who are not bound and fear not newness. Mine was the master type created that it might think and act as humans and so overmatch them.” His hands smote together. “Lonely, lonely!”

Heim looked upon him in his beauty and desolation, and found no words.

Fiercely the Aleriona asked: “Guess you not how I must feel alone, I who think more Earthman than any save those few created like me? Know you not that glory there was to be on Earth, to lock with minds that had also no horizon, drown in your books and music and too much alive eye-arts? Barren are we, the Intellect Masters of the Garden of War; none may descend from us for troubling of Alerion’s peace; yet were we given the forces of life, that our will and fury rear tall as yours, and when we meet, those forces bind us through rites they knew who stood at Thermopylae. But… when you seized me, Gunnar Heim, that once you ransomed your daughter with me… afterward saw I that too was a rite.”

Heim took a backward step. Coldness ran down his spine and out into every nerve end.

Cynbe laughed. The sound was glorious to hear. “Let me not frighten you, Star Fox captain.

I offer only that which you will take.” Very gently: “Friendship? Talk? Together-faring? I ask you never betrayal of your people. Well might I order a wresting from you of your knowledge and plans, but never. Think you are a war captive, and no harm that you share an awareness with your captor, who would be your friend.”

My God, it leaped in Heim. The sounds about him came through as if across a barrier of great distance or of fever. Give me some time and… and I could use him.

“Recall,” Cynbe urged, “my might on Alerion stands high. Well can I someday make a wall for the race that bred you, and so spare them that which is extinction.”

No! Sheer reflex. I won’t. I can’t.

Cynbe held out one hand. “Clasp this, as once you did,” he begged. “Give me oath you will seek no escape nor warning to your breedmates. Then no guard shall there be for you; freely as myself shall you betread our camps and ships.”

“No!” Heim roared aloud.

Cynbe recoiled. His teeth gleamed forth. “Little the honor you show to me,” he whispered.

“I can’t give you a parole,” Heim said. Whatever you do don’t turn him flat against you.

There may be a chance here somewhere. Better dead, trying for a break, than—

Something flashed across his brain. It was gone before he knew what it was. His consciousness twisted about and went in a pursuit that made the sweat and heart-banging take over his body again. Somehow, though every muscle was tight and the room had taken on an aspect of nightmare, he said dryly:

“What’d be the use? I credit you with not being an idiot. You’d have an eye kept on me—now wouldn’t you?”

Where a man might have been angered, Cynbe relaxed and chuckled. “Truth, at the least until Fox II be slain. Although afterward, when better we know each the other—”

Heim captured the thought that had run from him. Recognizing it was like a blow. He couldn’t stop to weigh chances, they were probably altogether forlorn and he would probably get himself killed. Let’s try the thing out, at least. There’s no commitment right away. If it’s obviously not going to work, then I just won’t make the attempt.

He ran a dry tongue over dry lips, husked, and said, “I couldn’t give you a parole anyway, at any time. You don’t really think like a human, Cynbe, or you’d know why.”

Membranes dimmed those eyes. The golden head drooped. “But always in your history was honor and admiration among enemies,” the music protested.

“Oh, yes, that. Look, I’m glad to shake your hand.” Oddly, it was no lie, and when the four slim fingers coiled around his Heim did not let go at once. “But I can’t surrender to you, even verbally,” he said. “I guess my own instincts won’t let me.”

“No, now, often have men—”

“I tell you, this isn’t something that can be put in words. I can’t really feel what you said, about humans being naturally horrible to Aleriona. No more can you feel what I’m, getting at. But you did give me some rough idea. Maybe I could give you an idea of… well, what it’s like to be a man whose people have lost their homes.”

“I listen.”

“But I’d have to show you. The symbols, the—You haven’t any religion as humans understand it, you Aleriona, have you? That’s one item among many. If I showed you some things you could see and touch, and tried to explain what they stand for, maybe—Well, how about it? Shall we take a run to Bonne Chance?”

Cynbe withdrew a step. Abruptly he had gone catlike.

Heim mocked him with a chopping gesture. “Oh, so you’re scared I’ll try some stunt? Bring guards, of course. Or don’t bother, if you don’t dare.” He half turned. “I’d better get back to my own sort.”

“You play on me,” Cynbe cried.

“Nah. I say to hell with you, nothing else. The trouble is, you don’t know what you’ve done on this planet. You aren’t capable of knowing.”

“Arvan!” Heim wasn’t sure how much was wrath in that explosion and how much was something else. “I take your challenge. Go we this now.”

A wave of weakness passed through Heim. Whew! So I did read his psychology right. Endre couldn’t do better. The added thought came with returning strength. “Good,” he accepted shakily.

“Because I am anxious for you to realize as much as possible. As you yourself said, you could be a powerful influence for helping Earth, if the war goes against us. Or if your side loses—that could happen, you know; our Navy’s superior to yours, if only we can muster the guts to use it—in that case, I’d have some voice in what’s to be done about Alerion. Let’s take Vadász along. You remember him, I’m sure.”

“Ye-e-es. Him did I gaintell in your party, though scant seemed he to matter. Why wish you him?”

“He’s better with words than I am. He could probably make it clearer to you.” He speaks German, and I do a little. Cynbe knows English, French, doubtless some Spanish—but German?

The admiral shrugged and gave an order. One soldier saluted and went out ahead of the others, who accompanied the leaders—down the hall, into the morning, across the field to a military flyer. Cynbe stopped once, that he might slip contacts over eyeballs evolved beneath a red coal of a sun.

Vadász waited with his guards. He looked small, hunched, and defeated. “Gunnar,” he said dully, “what’s this?”

Heim explained. For a moment the Hungarian was puzzled. Then hope lit in his visage.

“Whatever your idea is, Gunnar, I am with you,” he said, and masked out expression, Half a dozen troopers took places at the rear of the vehicle. Cynbe assumed the controls. “Put us down in the square,” Heim suggested, “and we’ll stroll around”

“Strange are your ways,” Cynbe cantillated. “We thought you were probed and understood, your weakness and shortsightedness in our hands, but then Fox II departed. And now—”

“Your problem is, sir, that Aleriona of any given class, except no doubt your own, are stereotypes,” Vadász said. “Every human is a law to himself.” Cynbe made no reply. The flyer took off. It landed minutes later. The party debarked. Silence dwelt under an enormous sky.

Fallen leaves covered the pavement and overflowed the dry fountain, where Lamontagne’s effigy still stood proud. A storm had battered the market booths, toppled café tables and chairs, ripped the gay little umbrellas. Only the cathedral rose firm. Cynbe moved toward it. “No,” Heim said, “let’s make that the end of the tour.”

He started in the direction of the river. Rubbish rustled from his boots, echoes flung emptily back from walls. “Can’t you see what’s wrong?” he asked. “Men lived here.”

“Hence-driven are they,” Cynbe answered. “Terrible to me Aleriona is an empty city. And yet, Gunnar Heim, was this a… a dayfly. Have you such rage that the less than a century is forsaken?”

“It was going to grow,” Vadász said.

Cynbe made an ugly face.

A small huddle of bones lay on the sidewalk. Heim pointed. “That was somebody’s pet dog,” he said. “It wondered where its gods had gone, and waited for them, and finally starved to death.

Your doing.”

“Flesh do you eat,” Cynbe retorted.

A door creaked, swinging back and forth in the breeze off the water. Most of the house’s furniture could still be seen inside, dusty and rain-beaten. Near the threshold sprawled the remnants of a rag doll. Heim felt tears bite his eyes.

Cynbe touched his hand. “Well remember I what are your children to you,” he crooned.

Heim continued with long strides. “Humans live mostly for their children,” Vadász said.

The riparian esplanade came in sight. Beyond its rail, the Carsac ran wide and murmurous toward the bay. Sunlight flared off that surface, a trumpet call made visible.

Now! Heim thought. The blood roared in him. “One of our poets said what I mean,” he spoke slowly. “Wenn wir s5nd an der Fluss gekommen, und im Falls wir die Moglichkeit sehen, dann werden wir ausspringen und nach dem Hafen schwimmen.”

He dared not look to see how Vadász reacted. Dimly he heard Cynbe ask, in a bemused way, “What token those words?”

With absolute coolness, Vadász told him, “Man who is man does not surrender the hope of his loins unless manhood has died within.”

Good lad! Heim cheered. But most of his consciousness crawled with the guns at his back.

They started west along the embankment. “Still apprehend I not,” Cynbe sang. “Also Aleriona make their lives for those lives that are to come. What difference?”

Heim didn’t believe he could hide his purpose much longer. So let it be this moment that he acted—the chance did not look too bad—let him at worst be shattered into darkness and the end of fear.

He stopped and leaned on the rail. “The difference,” he said, “you can find in the same man’s words. Ich werde diesen Wesen in das Wasser stürzen. Dann springen wir beide. It’s, uh, it’s hard to translate. But look down here.”

Vadász joined them. Glee quirked his lips, a tiny bit, but he declared gravely: “The poem comes from a saying of Heraclitus. ‘No man bathes twice in the same river.’ ”

“That have I read.” Cynbe shuddered. “Seldom was thus dreadful a thought.”

“You see?” Heim laid a hand on his shoulder and urged him forward, until he also stood bent over the rail. Hts gaze was forced to the flowing surface, and held there as if . hypnotized. “Here’s a basic human symbol for you,” Heim said. “A river, bound to the sea, bound to flood a whole countryside if you dam it. Motion, power, destiny, time itself.”

“Had we known such on Alerion—” Cynbe whispered. “Our world raised naked rock.”

Heim closed fingers on his neck. The man’s free hand slapped down on the rail. A surge of arm and shoulder cast him and Cynbe across. They struck the current together.

VIII

His boots dragged him under. Letting the Aleriona go, he writhed about and clawed at the fastenings. The light changed from green to brown and then was gone. Water poured past, a cool and heavy force that tumbled him over and over. One off—two off—he struck upward with arms and legs. His lungs felt near bursting. Puff by grudged puff, he let out air. His mind began to wobble.

Here goes, he thought, a breath or a firebeam. He stuck out as little of his face as he could, gasped, saw only the embankment, and went below again to swim.

Thrice more he did likewise, before he guessed he had come far enough to risk looking for Vadász. He shook the wetness from hair and eyes and continued in an Australian crawl. Above the, tinted concrete that enclosed the river, frees trapped sunlight in green and gold. A few roofpeaks showed, otherwise his ceiling was the sky, infinitely blue.

Before long Vadász’s head popped into sight. Heim waved at him and threshed on until he was under a bridge. It gave some protection from searchers. He grabbed a pier and trod water.

The minstrel caught up and panted.

“Kárhoztatás, Gunnar, you go as if the devil himself were after you!”

“Isn’t he? Though it helps a lot that the Aleriona don’t see so well here. Contacts stop down the brightness for them, but Aurore doesn’t emit as much of the near infrared that they’re most sensitive to as The Eith does.” Heim found it calming to speak academically. It changed him from a hunted animal to a military tactician. “Just the same, we’d better stay down as much as we can.

And stay separate, too. You know the old Quai des Coquillages—it’s still there? Okay, I’ll meet you underneath it. If one of us waits an hour, let him assume the other bought a farm.”

Since Vadász looked more exhausted than himself, Heim started first. He didn’t hurry, mostly he let the current bear him along, and reached the river mouth in good shape: so good that the sheer wonder of his escape got to him. He spent his time beneath the dock simply admiring light-sparkles on water, the rake of masts, the fluid chill enclosing his skin, the roughness of the bollard he held, the chuckle against hulls and their many vivid colors. His mood had just begun to ravel away in worry (Damn, I should’ve told Endre what I know) when the Magyar arrived.

“Will they not seek us here first?” Vadász asked.

“M-m, I doubt it,” Heim said. “Don’t forget, they’re from, a dry planet. The idea of using water for anything but drinking doesn’t come natural to them; you notice they’ve left all these facilities untouched, though coast-wise transport would be a handy supplement to their air freighters. Their first assumption ought to be that we went ashore as soon as we could and holed up in town. Still, we want to get out of here as fast as possible, so let’s find a boat in working order.”

“There you must choose. I am a landlubber by heritage.”

“Well, I never got along with horses, so honors are even.”

Heim risked climbing onto the wharf for an overview. He picked a good-looking pleasure craft, a submersible hydrofoil, and trotted to her. Once below, she’d be undetectable by any equipment the Aleriona had.

“Can we get inside?” the minstrel asked from the water.

“Ja, she’s not locked. Yachtsmen trust each other.” Heim unslipped the lines, pulled the canopy back, and extended an arm to help Vadász up on deck. They tumbled into the cabin and closed the glasite. “Now, you check the radio while I have a look at the engine.”

A year’s neglect had not much hurt the vessel. In fact, the sun had charged her accumulators to maximum. Her bottom was foul, but that could be lived with. Excitement surged in Heim. “My original idea was to find a communicator somewhere in town, get word to camp, and then skulk about hoping we wouldn’t be tracked down and wouldn’t starve,” he said. “But now—hell, we might get back in person! It’ll at least be harder for the enemy to pick up our message and send a rover bomb after the source, if we’re at sea. Let’s go.”

The motor chugged. The boat slid from land. Vadász peered anxiously out the dome. “Why are they not after us in full cry?” he fretted.

“I told you how come. They haven’t yet guessed we’d try this way. Also, they must be disorganized as a bawdy-house on Monday morning, after what I did to Cynbe.” Nonetheless, Heim was glad to leave obstacles behind and submerge. He went to the greatest admissible depth, set the ’pilot for a southeasterly course, and began peeling off his wet clothes.

Vadász regarded him with awe. “Gunnar,” he said, in a tone suggesting he was not far from tears, “I will make a ballad about this, and it will not be good enough, but still they will sing it a thousand years hence. Because your name will live that long.”

“Aw, shucks, Endre. Don’t make my ears burn.”

“No, I must say what’s true. However did you conceive it?”

Heim turned up the heater to dry himself. The ocean around—murky green, with now and then a curiously shaped fish darting by—would dissipate infrared radiation. He had an enormous sense of homecoming, as if again he were a boy on the seas of Gea. For the time being, it overrode everything else. The frailty and incompleteness of his triumph could be seen later; let him now savor it.

“I didn’t,” he confessed. “The idea sort of grew. Cynbe was eager to… be friends or whatever. I talked him into visiting Bonne Chance, in the hope something might turn up that I could use for a break. It occurred to me that probably none of his gang could swim, so the riverside looked like the best place. I asked to have you along because we could use German under their noses. Also, having two of us, doubled the odds that one would get away.”

Vadász’s deference cracked in a grin. “That was the most awful Schweindeutsch I have yet heard. You are no linguist.”

Memory struck at Heim. “No,” he said harshly. Trying to keep his happiness a while, he went on fast: “We were there when I thought if I could pitch Cynbe in the drink, his guards would go all out to save him, rather than run along the bank shooting at us. If you can’t swim yourself, you’ve got a tough job rescuing another nonswimmer.”

“Do you think he drowned?”

“Well, one can always hope,” Heim said, less callously than he sounded. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they lost at least a couple of warriors fishing him out. But we’ve likely not seen the last of him. Even if he did drown, they can probably get him to a revival machine before brain decay sets in. Still, while he’s out of commission, things are apt to be rather muddled for the enemy. Not that the organization can’t operate smoothly without him. But for a while it’ll lack direction, as far as you and I are concerned, anyhow. That’s the time we’ll use to put well out to sea and call de Vigny.”

“Why… yes, surely they can send a fast flyer to our rescue.” Vadász leaned back with a cat-outside-canary smile. “La belle Danielle is going to see me even before she expected. Dare I say, before she hoped?”

Anger sheeted in Heim. “Dog your hatch, you clot-brain!” he snarled. “This is no picnic. We’ll be lucky to head off disaster.”

“What—what—” Color left Vadász’s cheeks. He winced away from the big man. “Gunnar, did I say—”

“Listen.” Heim slammed a fist on the arm of his seat “Our amateur try at espionage blew up the whole shebang. Have you forgotten the mission was to negotiate terms to keep our people from starving? That’s out. Maybe something can be done later, but right now we’re only concerned with staying alive. Our plan for evacuating refugees is out the airlock too. Cynbe jumped to the conclusion that Fox herself is on this planet. He’s recalled a lancer and a cruiser to supplement his flagship. Between them, those three can detect Meroeth raising mass, and clobber her. It won’t do us any good to leave her doggo, either. They’ll have air patrols with high-gain detectors sweeping the whole planet. So there goes de Vigny’s nice hidey-hole at Lac aux Nuages.

For that matter, with three ships this close to her position, Fox herself is in mortal danger.

“You blithering, self-centered rockhead! Did you think I was risking death just so we could escape? What the muck have we got to do with anything? Our people have got to be warned!”

With a growl, he turned to the inertial navigator panel. No, they weren’t very far out yet. But maybe he should surface anyway, take his chances, to cry what he knew at this instant.

The boat pulsed around him. The heater whirred and threw waves of warmth across his bide.

There was a smell of oil in the air. Outside the ports, vision was quickly blocked—as he had been blocked, thwarted, resisted and evaded at every turn. “Those ships will be here inside an Earth day,” he said. “Fox better make for outer space, the rest of us for the woods.”

“Gunnar—” Vadász began.

“Oh, be quiet!”

The minstrel flushed and raised his voice. “No. I don’t know what I have done to be insulted by you, and if you haven’t the decency to tell me, that must be your affair. But I have something to tell you, Captain. We can’t contact Fox in time.”

“Huh?” Heim whirled to face him.

“Think for a moment. Diego has his big maser set erected near the lake. But morning is well along, and Diane is nearly full. It set for the Haute Garance hours ago. It won’t rise again for, I guess, thirty hours.”

“Satan… i… helvede,” Heim choked. Strength drained from him. He felt the ache in his flesh and knew he had begun to grow old.

After a time in which he merely stared, Vadász said to him, timidly: “You are too much a man to let this beat you. If you think it so important, well, perhaps we can get Meroeth aloft. Her own communicator can reach the moon. The enemy satellites will detect her, and the cruiser close in. But she is lost anyway, you inform me, and she can surrender. We only need three or four men to do it. I will be one of them.”

Lightning-struck, Heim sprang to his feet. His head bashed the canopy. He looked up and saw a circle of sunlight, blinding on the ocean surface, above him.

“Are you hurt?” Vadász asked.

“By heaven—and hell—and everything in between.” Heim offered his hand. “Endre, I’ve been worse than a bastard. I’ve been a middle-aged adolescent. Will you forgive me?”

Vadász gripped hard. Perception flickered in his eyes. “Oh, so,” he murmured. “The young lady… Gunnar, she’s nothing to me. Mere pleasant company. I thought you felt the same.”

“I doubt that you do,” Heim grunted. “Never mind. We’ve bigger game to hunt. Look, I happen to know what the orbits and starting positions of those ships were. Cynbe saw no reason not to tell me when I asked—I suppose unconsciously I was going on the old military principle of grabbing every piece of data that comes by, whether or not you think you’ll ever use it. Well, I also know their classes, which means I know their capabilities. From that we can pretty well compute their trajectories. They can be pinpointed at any given time—close enough for combat purposes, but not close enough for their ground base to beam them any warning. Okay, so that’s one advantage we’ve got however small. What else?”

He began to pace, two steps to the cabin’s end, two steps back, fist beating palm and jaw muscles standing in knots.

Vadász drew himself aside. Once more the cat’s grin touched his mouth. He knew Gunnar Heim in that mood.

“Listen.” The captain hammered out the scheme as he spoke. “Meroeth’s a big transport. So she’s got powerful engines. In spite of her size and clumsiness, she can move like a hellbat when empty. She can’t escape three ships on patrol orbit. But at the moment there’s only one, Cynbe’s personal Jubalcho. I don’t know her orbit but the probabilities favor her being well away at any given time that Meroeth lifts. She could pursue, sure, and get so close that Meroeth can’t outrun a missile. But she ain’t gonna—I hope—because Cynbe knows that wherever I am, Fox isn’t likely very distant and he’s got to protect his base against Fox till his reinforcements arrive. Or if the distance is great enough, he’ll assume the transport is our cruiser, and take no chances!”

“So… okay… given good piloting, Meroeth has an excellent probability of making a clean getaway. She can flash a message to Fox. But then—what? If Fox only takes us aboard, we’re back exactly where we started. No, we’re worse off, because the New Europeans have run low on morale, and losing their contact with us could well push them right into quitting the fight. So—wait—let me think—Yes!” Heim bellowed. “Why not? Endre, we’ll go for broke!” The minstrel shouted his answer.

Heim reined in his own eagerness. “The faster we move, the better,” he said. “We’ll call HQ at the lake immediately. Do you know Basque, or any other language the Aleriona don’t that somebody on de Vigny’s staff does?”

“I fear not. And a broadcast, such as we must make, will doubtless be monitored. I can use Louchébème, if that will help.”

“It might, though they’re probably on to it by now… Hm. We’ll frame something equivocal, as far as the enemy’s concerned. He needn’t know it’s us calling from a sub. Let him assume it’s a maquisard in a flyer. We can identify ourselves by references to incidents in camp.

“We’ll tell de Vigny to start lightening the spaceship as much as possible. No harm in that, since the Aleriona know we do have a ship on the planet. It’ll confirm for them that she must be in the Haute Garance, but that’s the first place they’d look anyhow.” Heim tugged his chin. “Now… unfortunately, I can’t send any more than that without tipping my hand. We’ll have to deliver the real message in person. So we’ll submerge right after you finish calling and head for a rendezvous point where a flyer is to pick us up. How can we identify that, and not have the enemy there with a brass band and the keys to the city?”

“Hm-m. Let me see a map.” Vadász unrolled a chart from the pilot’s drawer. “Our radius is not large, if we are to be met soon. Ergo—Yes. I will tell them… so-and-so many kilometers due east of a place—” he blushed, pointing to Fleurville, a ways inland and down the Cote Notre Dame—“where Danielle Irribarne told Endre Vadász there is a grotto they should visit. That was shortly before moon-set. We, um, sat on a platform high in a tree and—”

Heim ignored the hurt and laughed. “Okay, lover boy. Let me compute where we can be in that coordinate system.”

Vadász frowned. “We make risks, acting in this haste,” he said. “First we surface, or at least lie awash, and broadcast a strong signal so near the enemy base.”

“It won’t take long. We’ll be down again before they can send a flyer. I admit one might be passing right over us this minute, but probably not.”

“Still, a New European vessel has to meet us. No matter if it goes fast and takes the long way around over a big empty land, it is in daylight and skirting a dragon’s nest. And likewise for the return trip with us.”

“I know.” Heim didn’t look up from the chart on his knees. “We could do it safer by taking more time. But then we’d be too late for anything. We’re stuck in this orbit, Endre, no matter how close we have to skim the sun.”

IX

“Bridge to stations, report.”

“Engine okay,” said Diego Gonzales.

“Radio and main radar okay,” said Endre Vadász.

“Gun Turret One okay and hungry,” said Jean Irribarne. The colonists in the other emplacements added a wolfish chorus.

Easy, lads, Heim thought. If we have to try those popguns on a real, functioning warship, we’re dead. “Stand by to lift,” he called. Clumsy in his spacesuit, he moved hands across the board.

The lake frothed. Waves swept up its beaches. A sighing went among the trees, and Meroeth rose from below. Briefly her great form blotted out the sun, where it crawled toward noon, and animals fled down wilderness trails. Then, with steadily mounting velocity, she flung skyward.

The cloven air made a continuous thunderclap. Danielle and Madelon Irribarne put hands to tormented ears. When the shape was gone from sight, they returned to each other’s arms.

“Radar, report!” Heim called through drone and shiver.

“Negative,” Vadász said.

Higher and higher the ship climbed. The world below dwindled, humped into a curve, turned fleecy with clouds and blue with oceans. The sky went dark, the stars blazed forth.

“Signal received on the common band,” Vadász said. “Jubalcho must have spotted us. Shall I answer?”

“Hell no,” Heim said. “All I want is her position and vector.”

The hollow volume of Meroeth trapped sound, bounced echoes about, until a booming rolled from stem to stern and port to starboard. It throbbed in Heim’s skull. His open faceplate rattled.

“Can’t find her,” Vadász told him. “She must be far off.” But she found us. Well, she has professional detector operators. I’ve got to make do with whatever was in camp. No time to recruit better-trained people.

We should be so distant that she’d have to chase us for some ways to get inside the velocity differential of her missiles. And she should decide her duty is to stay put. If I’ve guessed wrong on either of those, we’ve hoisted our last glass. Heim tasted blood, hot and bitter, and realized he had caught his tongue between his teeth. He swore, wiped his face, and drove the ship.

Onward and outward, New Europe grew smaller among the crowding suns. Diane rose slowly to view. “Captain to radio room. Forget about everything else. Lock that maser and cut me in on the circuit.” Heim reached for racked instruments and navigational tables. “I’ll have the figures for you by the time you’re warmed up.”

If we aren’t destroyed first. Please… let me live that long. I don’t ask for more. Please, Fox has got to be told. He reeled off a string of numbers.

In his shack, among banked meters that stared at him like troll eyes, Vadász punched keys.

He was no expert, but the comsystem computer had been preprogrammed for him; he need merely feed in the data and punch the directive “Now.” A turret opened to airlessness. A transceiver thrust its skeletal head out for a look at the universe. A tight beam of coherent radio waves speared from it.

There were uncertainties. Diane was orbiting approximately 200,000 kilometers on the other side of New Europe, and Meroeth was widening that gulf with ever-increasing speed. But the computer and the engine it controlled were sophisticated; the beam had enough dispersion to cover a fairly large circle by the time it reached the target area; it had enough total energy so that its amplitude then was still above noise level.

Small, bestrewn with meteoritic dust, in appearance another boulder among thousands on the slope of a certain crater wall, an instrument planted by the men from the boat sat waiting. The signal arrived. The instrument—an ordinary microwave relay, such as every spaceship carries by the score, with a solar battery—amplified the signal and bounced it in another tight beam to another object high on a jagged peak. That one addressed its next fellow; and so on around the jagged desert face of the moon. Not many passings were needed. The man’s-height horizon on Diane is about three kilometers, much greater from a mountaintop, and the last relay only had to be a little ways into that hemisphere which never sees New Europe.

Thence the beam leaped skyward. Some 29,000 kilometers from the center of Diane, it found Fox II.

The problem had been: how could a spaceship lurk near a hostile planet from which detectors probed and around which warcraft spun? If she went free-fall, every system throttled down to the bare minimum, her neutrino emission would not register above the cosmic background. But optical, infrared, and radar eyes would still be sure to find her. Unless she interposed the moon between herself and the planet. No … She dared not land and sit there naked to anyone who chanced close when the far hemisphere was daylit. She could not assume an orbit around the satellite, for she would move into view. She could not assume a concentric orbit New Europe itself, for she would revolve more slowly—thus drop from behind her shield—Or would she?

Not necessarily! In any two-body system there are three points where the secondary’s gravitation combines with the primary’s in such a way that a small object put there will remain in place, on a straight line through the larger bodies. It is not stable; eventually the object will be perturbed out of its resting spot; but “eventually” is remote in biological time. Fox put herself at the most distant Lagrangian point and orbited in the moon-disc’s effortless concealment.

The maneuver had never been tried before. But then, no had ever before needed to have a warship on call, unbeknownst to an enemy who occupied the ground where he meant to be. Heim thought it would become a textbook classic, if he lived to brag about it.

“Meroeth to Fox II,” he intoned. “Meroeth to Fox II. Now hear this and record. Record.

Captain Heim to Acting Captain Penoyer, stand by for orders.”

There could be no reply, except to Lac aux Nuages. The system, simple and hastily built, had been conceived in the belief that he would summon his men from there. If anything was heisenberg at the other end, he wouldn’t know until too late. He spoke into darkness. “Because of unexpected developments, we’ve been forced to lift directly, without passengers. It doesn’t seem as if we’re being pursued. But we have extremely important intelligence, and on that basis a new plan.”

“First: we know there is only one capital ship in orbit| around New Europe. All but two others are scattered beyond recall, and not due back for quite some time, sentry vessel is the enemy flagship Jubalcho, a cruiser. I don’t know the exact class—see if you can find her in Jane’s-but she’s doubtless only somewhat superior to Fox.”

“Second: the enemy learned we were on the planet recalled the two vessels in reach. They are presently accelerating toward New Europe. The first should already commenced deceleration.

That is the lancer Savaidh. The other is the cruiser Inisant. Check them out too; but I think they are ordinary Aleriona ships of their respective classes. The ballistic data are approximately as follows—” He cited the figures.

“Now, third: the enemy probably believes Meroeth is Fox. We scrambled with so much distance between that contrary identification would have been difficult or impossible, and I also we took him by surprise. So I think that as far as he knows, Fox is getting away while the getting is good. But he cannot communicate with the other ships till they are near the planet, and he doubtless wants them on hand anyway.

“Accordingly, we have a chance to take them piecemeal. Now hear this. Pay no attention to the lancer. Meroeth deal with her; or if I fail, she’s no major threat to you. Moreover, nuclear explosions in space would be detected and alert the enemy. Stay put, Fox, and plot an interception for Inisant. She won’t be looking for you. Relative-velocity will be high. If you play your cards right, you have an excellent probability of putting a missile in her while warding anything else she has time to throw.”

“After that, come get me. My calculated position and orbit at the time are approximately as follows.” Again a string of numbers. “If I’m a casualty, proceed at discretion. But bear in mind that New Europe will be guarded by only one cruiser!”

Heim sucked air into his lungs. It was hot and had an electric smell. “Repeating message,” he said. And at the end of the third time: “The primary relay point seems to be going under Diana’s horizon, on our present course. I’ll have to sign off. Gunnar Heim to Dave Penoyer and the men of Fox II—good hunting! Over and out”

Then he sat in his seat, looked to the stars in the direction of Sol, and wondered how Lisa was doing.

Increment by increment, Meroeth piled on velocity. It didn’t seem long—though much desultory conversation had passed through the intercom—before the moment came to reverse and slow down. They mustn’t have a suspicious vector when they encountered Savaidh.

Heim went to the saloon for a snack. He found Vadász with a short red-haired colonist who slurped at his cup as if he had newly come off a Martian desert. “Ah, mon capitaine,’’ the latter said cheerily, “je n’avais pas bu de café depuis un sacre longtemps. Merci beaucoup!”

“You may not have much to thank me for in a while,” Heim said.

Vadász cocked his head. “You shouldn’t look so grim, Gun-sir,” he chided. “Everybody else is downright cocky.”

“Tired, I guess.” Heim slumped into the Aleriona settle.

“I’ll fix you up. A grand Danois of a sandwich, hm?” Vadász bounced out. When he returned with the food, he had his guitar slung over his back. He sat down on the swinging his legs, and began to chord and sing:

“There was a rich man and he lived in Jerusalem, Glory, hallelujah, in-ro-de-rung!—”

The memory came back. A grin tugged at Heim’s lips. Presently he was beating time; toward the end, he joined in the choruses. That’s the way! Who says we can’t take them? He returned to the bridge with a stride of youth.

And time fled. And battle stations were sounded. And Savaidh appeared in the viewports.

The hands that had built her were not human. But the tool was for the same job, under the same laws of physics, as Earth’s own lancers. Small, slim, leopard-spotted for camouflage and thermal control, leopard deadly and beautiful, the ship was so much like his own old Star Fox that Heim’s hand paused. Is it right to kill her—this way? A legitimate ruse of war. Yes. He punched the intercom. “Bridge to radio. Bridge to radio.

Begin distress signal.”

Meroeth spoke, not in any voice but in the wailing radio pattern which Naval Intelligence had long known was regulation for Alerion. Surely the lancer captain (was this his first command?) ordered an attempt at communication. There no reply. The gap closed. Relative speed was slight by spaceship standards; but Savaidh grew swiftly before Heim’s eyes.

Unwarned, the Aleriona had no reason to doubt this was one of their own vessels. The transport was headed toward Mach limit; not directly for The Eith, but then, none of them did, lest the raider from Earth be able to predict their courses. Something had gone wrong. Her communications must be out. Probably her radio officer had cobbled together a set barely able to cry, “SOS!” The trouble was clearly not with her engines, since she was under power. What, then? Breakdown of radiation screening? Air renewal? Thermostats? Interior gee field? There were so many possibilities. Life was so terribly frail, here where life was never meant to be.

Or… since the probability of her passing near the warship by chance, in astronomical immensity, was vanishingly small… did she bear an urgent message? Something that, for some reason, could not be transmitted in the normal way? The shadow of Fox II lay long and cold across Alerion.

“Close spacesuits,” Heim ordered. “Stand by.” He clashed his own faceplate shut and lost himself in the task of piloting. Two horrors nibbled at the edge of consciousness. The lesser one, because least likely, was that the other captain would grow suspicious and have him blasted. The worst was that Savaidh would continue her rush to Cynbe’s help. He could not match accelerations with a lancer.

Needles wavered before his eyes. Radar-vectors-fan-pulse—Savaidh swung about and maneuvered for rendezvous. Heim cut drive to a whisper. Now the ships were on nearly parallel tracks, the lancer decelerating heavily while the transport ran almost free. Now they were motionless with respect to each other, with a kilometer of vacuum between. Now the lancer moved with infinite delicacy toward the larger vessel.

Now Heim rammed down an emergency lever. At full sidewise thrust, Meroeth hurtled to her destiny.

There was no time to dodge, no time to shoot. The ships crashed together. That shock roared through plates and ribs, ripped metal apart, hurled unharnessed Aleriona to their decks or against their bulkheads with bone-cracking violence.

A spaceship is not thickly armored, even for war. She can withstand the impact of micrometeorites; the larger stones, which are rare, she can detect and escape; nothing can protect from nuclear weapons, when once they have struck home. Meroeth’s impact speed was not great, but her mass was. Through Savaidh she sheared. Her own hull gave way. Air purled out in a frosty cloud, quickly lost to the light-years. Torn frameworks wrapped about each other. Locked in a stag’s embrace, the ruined ships tumbled on a lunatic orbit. Aurore flared radiance across their guts; the stars looked on without pity.

“Prepare to repel boarders!”

Heim didn’t know if his cry had been transmitted through his helmet jack to the others.

Likely not. Circuits were ripped asunder. The fusion reaction in the power generator had guttered out. Darkness, weightlessness, airlessness flowed through the ship. It didn’t matter. His men knew what to do. He undid his harness by feel and groped aft to the gun turret he had chosen for himself.

Most of the Aleriona crew must be dead. Some might survive, in spacesuits or sealed compartments. If they could find a gun still workable and bring it to bear, they’d shoot. Otherwise they’d try for hand-to-hand combat. Untrained for space, the New Europeans couldn’t withstand that. The controls of Heim’s laser had their own built-in illumination. Wheels, levers, indicators glowed like watch-fires. He peered along the barrel, out the cracked glasite, past wreckage where shadows slid weirdly as the system rotated; he suppressed the slight nausea due Coriolis force, forgot the frosty glory of constellations, and looked for his enemy.

It came to him, a flicker across tautness, that he had brought yet another tactic to space warfare: ramming. But that wasn’t new. It went back ages, to when men first adventured past sight of land. Olaf Tryggvason, on the blood-reddened deck of the Long Serpent.

No. To hell with that. His business was here and now: to stay alive till Fox picked him up.

Which wouldn’t be for along time.

A weapon spat. He saw only the reflection of its beam off steel, and squinted till the dazzle passed. One for our side. I hope. A heavy vibration passed through the hull and his body. An explosion? He wasn’t sure. The Aleriona might be wild enough to annihilate him, along with themselves, by touching off a nuclear warhead. The chances were against it, since they’d need tools that would be hard to find in that mass out yonder. But—Well, war was mostly waiting.

A spacesuited figure crawled over a girder. The silhouette was black and unhuman against the stars, save where sunlight made a halo on the helmet. One survivor, at least, bravely striving to—Heim got him in the sights and fired. Vapor rushed from the pierced body. It drifted off into space. “I hated to do that,” Heim muttered to the dead one. “But you could have been carrying something nasty, you know.”

His shot had given him away. A beam probed at his turret. He crouched behind the shield.

Intolerable brightness gnawed centimeters away from him. Then more bolts struck. The enemy laser winked out “Good man!” Heim gasped. “Whoever you are!”

The fight did not last long. No doubt the Aleriona, if any were left, had decided to hole up and see what happened. But it was necessary to remain on guard.

In the dreamlike state of free-fall, muscles did not protest confinement, Heim let his thoughts drift where they would. Earth, Lisa, Jocelyn… New Europe, Danielle , .. there really wasn’t much, in a man’s life that mattered. But those few things mattered terribly.

Hours passed.

It was anticlimax when Fox’s lean shape closed in. Not that Heim didn’t cheer—so she had won!—but rendezvous was tricky; and then he had to make his way through darkness and ruin until he found an exit; and then signal with his helmet radio to bring a tender into safe jumping distance; and then come aboard and get a shot to counteract the effects of the radiation he had taken while unscreened in space; and then transfer to the cruiser—The shouts and backslappings, bear hugs and bear dances, seemed unreal in his weariness.

Not even his victory felt important He was mainly pleased that a good dozen Aleriona were alive and had surrendered. “You took Inisant?” he asked Penoyer.

“Oh, my, yes. Wizard cum spiff! One pass, and she was a cloud of isotopes. What next sir?”

“Well—” Heim rubbed sandy eyes. “Your barrage will have been detected from New Europe.

Now when Inisant is overdue, the enemy must realize who lost. He may have guessed you went after Savaidh next, and be attempting an interception. But it’s most likely that he’s stayed pretty close to base. Even if he hasn’t, he’ll surely come back there. Do you think we can beat Jubalcho?”

Penoyer scowled. “That’s a pitchup, sir. According to available data, she has more teeth, though we’ve more acceleration. I’ve computed several tactical patterns which give us about an even chance. But should we risk it?”

“I think so,” Heim said. “If we get smeared, well, let’s admit that our side won’t have lost much. On the other hand, if we win we’ve got New Europe.”

“Sir?”

“Sure. There are no other defenses worth mentioning. We can knock out their ground-based missiles from space. Then we give air support to the colonists, who’re already preparing a march on the seaboard. You know as well as I do, no atmospheric flyer ever made has a fish’s chance on Friday against a nuclear-armed spaceship. If the Aleriona don’t surrender, well simply swat them out of the sky, and then go to work on their ground troops. But I expect they will give in. They’re not stupid. And… then we’ve got hostages.”

“But—the rest of their fleet—”

“Uh-huh. One by one, over a period of weeks or months, they’ll come in. Fox should be able to bushwhack them. Also, well have the New Europeans hard at work, finishing the space defenses. Evidently there isn’t much left to do there. Once that job’s completed, the planet’s nearly impregnable, whatever happens to us.

“Somewhere along the line, probably rather soon, another transport ship will come in, all unsuspecting. We’ll nobble her and send off a load of New Europeans as originally planned.

When Earth hears they’re not only not dead, not only not at the point of defeat, but standing space siege and doing a crackling hell of a job at it… why, if Earth doesn’t move then, I resign from the human race.”

Heim straightened. “I’m no damned hero, Dave,” he finished. “Mainly I want to get home to the pipe and slippers. But don’t you think a chance like this is worth taking?”

Penoyer’s nostrils flared. “By… by Jove,” he stammered.

“Very good. Make course for New Europe and call me if anything happens.”

Heim stumbled to his cabin and toppled into sleep.

Vadász’s hand shook him awake. “Gunnar! Contact’s made—with Jubalcho—we’ll rendezvous inside half an hour.” Nothing remained of tiredness, fear, doubt, or even anger. Heim went to the bridge with more life running through his veins than ever since Connie departed. Stars filled the viewports, so big and bright in the crystal dark that it seemed lie could reach out and touch them.

The ship murmured and pulsed. His men stood by their weapons; he could almost sense their oneness with him and with her. He took his place of command, and it was utterly right that Cynbe’s voice should ring from the speaker.

“Star Fox captain, greet I you again? Mightily have we striven. You refuse not battle this now?”

“No,” said Heim. “We’re coming in. Try and stop us.”

The laughter of unfallen Lucifer replied. “Truth. And I thank you, my brother. Let come what that time-flow brings that you are terrible enough to live with… I thank you for this day.”

“Good-by,” Heim said, and thought, a little surprised, Why, that means “God be with you.”

“Captain of mine,” Cynbe sang, “fare you well.” The radio beams cut out. Dark and silent, the two ships moved toward their meeting place.

X

A man came to New Europe from Normandy in the early days and built himself a house on the sea cliffs. Steeply fell the land, with golden trees and ripples of wind : through grasses and wildflowers, until it made its sudden downward plunge: a country of hills that shouldered into the sky, which was clangorous with birds, of glens, lakes, waterfalls, and eastward a salt blueness edged only by the curve of the world. In those times he had little to work with save native wood and stone; he chose them for beauty. The house he fashioned lifted gables like outlined mountains. Within there were spacious rooms, _carved wainscoting, great fireplaces, rafters so high that they were often lost in shadows. Broad windows opened upon the land, of which the house had become another part. And the man built well, as folk do who see themselves only one link in a chain of generations.

But Bonne Chance grew from hamlet to city a hundred kilometers south. Colonists sought more the valleys than the heights. Though this dwelling was not distant when one could fly, the man’s heirs moved where wealth and people were. The house stood long empty.

It did not suffer much. Strong and patient, it waited. The time came at last, and it was made a gift of honor.

Rear Admiral Moshe Peretz, commanding blastship Jupiter, Deepspace Fleet of Earth’s World Federation, set his borrowed flyer down on the landing strip and went out. A fresh breeze swayed the nearby garden, clouds ran white, sunlight speared between them to dance on a restless ocean. He walked slowly, a short man, very erect in his uniform, with combat ribbons on his breast that freed him to admire a view or a blossom.

Gunnar Heim came out to welcome him, also in uniform: but his was different, gray tunic, a red stripe down the trousers, a fleur-de-lis on the collar. He towered over his guest, bent down a face that had known much sun of late, grinned in delight, and engulfed the other man’s hand in one huge paw. “Hey, Moshe, it’s good to see you again! How many years?”

“Hello,” Peretz said.

Heim released him, stung and surprised. “Uh… anything wrong?”

“I am all right, thank you. This is a nice home you have.”

“Needs a lot of work yet, after all the neglect, but I like it. Want to see the grounds before we go in?”

“If you wish.”

Heim stood for a moment before he sighed and said, “Okay, Moshe. Obviously you accepted my dinner invitation for more reasons than to jaw with your old Academy classmate. Want to discuss ’em now? There’ll be some others coming pretty soon.”

Peretz regarded him closely, out of brown eyes that were pained, and said, “Yes, let us get it over with.”

They started walking across the lawn. “Look at the matter from my side,” Peretz said.

“Thanks to you, Earth went action. We beat the Aleriona decisively in the Marches, “and now they have sued for peace. Wonderful. I was proud know you. I pulled every wire in sight so that I could command the ship that went officially to see how New Europe doing, how Earth could help reconstruct, what sort of memorial we should raise for the dead of both planets—because victory was not cheap, Gunnar.”

“Haven’t your men been well treated?” Heim asked.

Yes, certainly.” Peretz sliced the air with his hand, as if chopping at a neck. “Every liberty party has been wined and dined till it could hardly stagger back to the tender. But… I issued those passes most reluctantly, only because I did not want to make a bad situation worse. After all—when we find this planet ringed with defense machines—machines which are not going to be decommissioned—when a ship of World Federation is told how near she may come—what do you expect a Navy man to think?”

Heim bit his lip. “Ja. That was a mistake, ordering you around. I argued against it in council, but they outvoted me. I give you my oath no insult was intended, not by anyone. The majority feeling was simply that we’d better express our sovereignty at the outset. Once the precedent has been accepted, we’ll relax.”

“But why?” His rage flickered to death, leaving Peretz no more than hurt and bewildered.

“This fantastic declaration of independence… what kind of armed forces have you? Your fleet can’t amount to more than your own old privateer and perhaps a few Aleriona prizes. Otherwise there is just the constabulary. What strength can half a million people muster?”

“Are you threatening us, Moshe?” Heim asked gently.

“What?” Peretz jarred to a stop and gaped. “What do you mean?”

“Is Earth going to reconquer us? You could, of course. It’d be bloody and expensive, but you could.”

“No—no—did the occupation drive everyone here paranoid?”

Heim shook his head. “On the contrary, we rely on Earth’s, good will and sense. We expect you to protest, but we know you won’t use force. Not when your planet and ours have so lately shed blood together.”

“But… see here. If you want national status, well, that concerns mainly yourselves and the French government. But you say you are leaving the whole Federation!”

“We are,” Heim answered. “Juridically, at least. We hope to make mutually beneficial treaties with Earth as a whole, and we’ll always stand in a special relationship to France. In fact, President de Vigny thinks France won’t object at all, will let us go with her blessings.”

“M-m-m… I am afraid he is right,” said Peretz grimly. He began walking again, stiff-gaited.

“France is still rather cool toward the Federation. She won’t leave it herself, but she will be glad to have you do so for her, as long as French interests are not damaged.”

“She’ll get over her grudge,” Heim predicted.

“Yes, in time. Did you break loose for the same cause?”

Heim shrugged. “To a certain extent, no doubt. The Conference of Chateau St. Jacques was one monstrous emotional scene, believe me. The plebiscite was overwhelmingly in favor of independence. But there were better reasons than a feeling of having been let down in an hour of need. Those are the ones that’ll last.”

“De Vigny tried to convince me,” Peretz snorted.

“Well, let me try in less elegant language. What is the Federation? Something holy, or an instrument for a purpose? We think it’s a plain old instrument, and that it can’t serve its purpose out here.”

“Gunnar, Gunnar, have you forgotten all history? Do you know what a breakup would mean?”

“War,” Heim nodded. “But the Federation isn’t going to die. With all its faults, it’s proved itself too good for Earth to scrap. Earth’s a single planet, though. You can orbit it in ninety minutes. The nations live cheek by jowl. They’ve got to unify, or they’ll kill each other.” His gaze swept the horizon. “Here we have more room.”

“But—”

“The universe is too big for any one pattern. No man can understand or control it, let alone a government. The proof is right at hand. We had to trick and tease and browbeat the Federation into doing what we could see, with our own eyes, was necessary—because it didn’t see. It wasn’t able to see. If man is going to live throughout the galaxy, he’s got to be free to take his own roads, the ones his direct experience shows him are best for his circumstances. And that way, won’t the race realize all its potential? Is there any other way we can, than by trying everything out, everywhere?” Heim clapped Peretz’s back. “I know. You’re afraid of interstellar wars in the future, if planets are sovereign. Don’t worry. It’s ridiculous. What do entire, self-sufficient, isolated worlds have to fight about?”

“We just finished an interstellar war,” Peretz said.

“Uh-huh. What brought it on? Somebody who wasn’t willing to let the human race develop as it should. Moshe, instead of trying .to freeze ourselves into one shape, instead of staying small because we’re scared of losing control, let’s work out something different. Let’s find how many kinds of society, human and non-human, can get along without a policeman’s gun pointed at them. I don’t think there is any limit.”

“Well—” Peretz shook his head. “Maybe. I hope you are right. Because you have committed us, blast you.” He spoke without animosity.

After a minute: “I must confess I felt better when President de Vigny apologized officially for keeping our ship at arm’s length.”

“You have my personal apologies,” Heim said low.

“All right!” Peretz thrust out his hand, features crinkled with abrupt laughter. “Accepted and forgotten, you damned old squarehead.”

His trouble lifted from Heim, too. “Great!” he exclaimed.

“Come on inside and we’ll buckle down to getting drunk. Lord, how much yarning we’ve got to catch up on!”

They entered the living room and settled themselves. A maid curtsied. “What’ll you have?”

Heim asked. “Some items of food are still in short supply, and of course machinery’s scarce, which is why I employ so many live servants. But these Frenchmen built big wine cellars.”

“Brandy and soda, thanks,” Peretz said.

“Me too. We are out of Scotch on New Europe. Uh will there be cargoes from Earth soon?”

Peretz nodded. “Some are already on the way. Parliament will scream when I report what you have done, and there will be talk of an embargo, but you know that won’t come to anything.

If we aren’t going to fight, to hold you against your will, it is senseless to antagonize you with annoyances.”

“Which bears out what I said.” Heim put the drink orders into French.

“Please, don’t argue any more. I told you I have accepted your fait accompli.” Peretz leaned forward. “But may I ask something, Gunnar? I see why New Europe did what it did. But you yourself—You could have come home, been a world hero, and a billionaire with your prize money. Instead you take citizenship here—well, blaze, they are nice people, but they aren’t yours!”

“They are now,” Heim said quietly.

He took out his pipe and tamped it full. His words ran on, almost of themselves:

“Mixed motives, as usual. I had to stay till the war was over. There was a lot of fighting, and afterward somebody must mount guard. And… well… I’d been lonely on Earth. Here I found a common purpose with a lot of absolutely first-class men. And a whole new world, elbow room, infinite possibilities. It dawned on me one day, when I was feeling homesick—what was I homesick for? To go back and rot among my dollars?

“So now, instead, I’m New Europe’s minister of space and the navy. We’re short of hands, training, equipment, everything; you name it and we probably haven’t got it. But I can see us grow, day by day. And that’s my doing!”

He struck fire and puffed. “Not that I intend to stay in government any longer than necessary,” he went on. “I want to experiment with pelagic farming; and prospect the other planets and asteroids in this system; and start a merchant spaceship yard; and—shucks, I can’t begin to tell you how much there is. I can’t wait to become a private citizen again.”

“But you do wait,” Peretz said.

“Heim looked out a window at sea and sun and sky. “Well,” he said, “it’s worth some sacrifice. There’s more involved than this world. We’re laying the foundations of—he hunted for words—“admiralty. Man’s, throughout the universe.”

The maid came in with her tray. Heim welcomed her not only for refreshment, but as an excuse to change the subject.

He wasn’t much of a talker on serious matters. A man did what he must; that sufficed.

The girl ducked her head. “Un voleur s’approche, monsieur,” she reported.

“Good,” Heim said. “That’ll be Endre Vadász and his wife. You’ll like them, Moshe. He was the man who really bailed us out of this mess. Now he’s giving his Magyar genes full rein on a 10,000-hectare ranch in the Bordes Valley—and he’s still one solar flare of a singer.”

“I look forward.” Peretz followed the maid’s departure with an appreciative eye. “Do you know, Gunnar,” he murmured, “I observe a very sound reason for you to stay here. The proportion of pretty girls on New Europe is fabulous, and every one of them seems to idolize you.”

A brief bleakness crossed Heim’s eyes. “I’m afraid the mores here are a little different from Earth’s. Oh, well.” He raised his glass. “Skål.”

“Shalom.”

Both men got up when the Vadászes entered. “Bienvenu,” Heim said, shook his friend’s hand with gladness, and kissed Danielle’s. By now he’d learned how to do that with authority.

It was a surprise, he thought as he looked at her, how fast a certain wound was healing. Life isn’t a fairy tale; the knight who kills the dragon doesn’t necessarily get the princess. So what?

Who’d want to live in a cosmos less rich and various than the real one? You commanded yourself as you did a ship—with discipline, reasonableness, and spirit—and thus you came to port. By the time he fulfilled his promise to stand godfather to her firstborn, why, his feelings toward her would be downright avuncular.

No, he realized with a sudden quickening of blood, it wouldn’t even take that long. The war was over. He could send for Lisa. He had little doubt that Jocelyn would come along.