only woman for quite a few light-years around. Never fear, I can mind my
manners. But I hope it won't bother you overmuch if I keep looking your
way."
She stood quiet awhile, except for the rise and fall of her breasts. Her
skin gleamed. A lock of hair clung bronzy to her right cheekbone. The
beryl eyes gazed beyond him. Suddenly they returned, focused, met his as
sabers meet in a fencing match between near friends. Her husky voice
grew hoarse and, without her noticing, stammered Serbic: "Do you
mean--Dominic, do you mean you never learned, while I was under ... I
love you?"
Meteorstruck, he heard himself croak, "No. I did try to avoid--as far as
possible, I let Chives question you, in my absence--"
"I resisted," she said in wonder, "because I knew you would be kind but
dared not imagine you might be for always."
"I'd lost hope of getting anybody who'd make me want to be."
She came to him.
Presently: "Dominic, darling, please, no. Not yet."
"--Do you want a marriage ceremony first?"
"Yes. If you don't mind too much. I know you don't care, but, well, did
you know I still say my prayers every night? Does that make you laugh?"
"Never. All right, we'll be married, and in style!"
"Could we really be? In St. Clement's Cathedral, by Father Smed who
christened and confirmed me--?"
"If he's game, I am. It won't be easy, waiting, but how can I refuse a
wish of yours? Forgive these hands. They're not used to holding
something sacred."
"Dominic, you star-fool, stop babbling! Do you think it will be easy for
me?"
XIII
----
The earliest signs of trouble reached them faintly across distance.
Fifty astronomical units from Zoria and well off the ecliptic plane, the
Hooligan phased out of hyperdrive into normal state. Engines idle, she
drifted at low kinetic velocity among stars, her destination sun only
the brightest; and instruments strained after traces.
Flandry took readings and made computations. His lips tightened. "A
substantial space fleet, including what's got to be a Nova-class
dreadnaught," he told Kossara and Chives. "In orbits or under
accelerations that fit the pattern of a battle-ready naval force."
The girl clenched her fists. "What can have happened?"
"We'll sneak in and eavesdrop."
Faster-than-light pseudospeed would give them away to detectors. (Their
Schrodinger "wake" must already have registered, but no commander was
likely to order interception of a single small vessel which he could
assume would proceed until routinely checked by a picket craft.)
However, in these far regions they could drive hard on force-thrust
without anybody observing or wondering why. Nearing the inner system,
where ships and meters were thick, Flandry plotted a roundabout course.
It brought him in behind the jovian planet Svarog, whose gravitational,
magnetic, and radiation fields screened the emissions of Hooligan.
Amidst all fears for home and kin, Kossara exclaimed at the majestic
sight as they passed within three million kilometers--amber-glowing
disc, swarming moons--and at the neatness wherewith the planet swung
them, their power again turned off, into the orbit Flandry wanted,
between its own and that of Perun to sunward.
"With every system aboard at zero or minimum, we should pass for a rock
if a radar or whatever sweeps us," he explained. "And we'll catch
transmissions from Dennitza--maybe intercept a few messages between
ships, though I expect those'll be pretty boring."
"How I hope you are right," Kossara said with a forlorn chuckle.
He regarded her, beside him in the control cabin. Interior illumination
was doused, heating, weight generator, anything which might betray. They
hung loosely harnessed in their seats, bodies if not minds enjoying the
air Chives kept circulating by a creaky hand-cranked fan. Against the
clear canopy, stars crowned her head. On the opposite side, still small
at this remove, Zoria blazed between outspread wings of zodiacal light.
"They're definitely Technic warcraft," he said, while wishing to speak
her praises. "The neutrino patterns alone prove it. From what we've now
learned, closer in, about their numbers and types, they seem to match
your description of the Dennitzan fleet, though there're some I think
must belong to the Imperium. My guess is, the Gospodar has gathered
Dennitza's own in entirety, plus such units of the regular Navy as he
felt he could rely on. In short, he's reached a dangerous brink, though
I don't believe anything catastrophic has happened yet."
"We are in time, then?" she asked gladly.
He could not but lean over and kiss her. "Luck willing, yes. We may need
patience before we're certain."
Fortune spared them that. Within an hour, they received the basic
information. Transmitters on Dennitza sent broadbeam rather than
precisely lased 'casts to the telsats for relay, wasting some cheap
energy to avoid the cost of building and maintaining a more exact
system. By the time the pulses got as far as Hooligan, their dispersal
guaranteed they would touch her; and they were not too weak for a good
receiver-amplifier-analyzer to reconstruct a signal. The windfall
program Flandry tuned in was a well-organized commentary on the
background of the crisis.
It broke two weeks ago. (Maybe just when Kossara and I found out about
each other? he wondered. No; meaningless; simultaneity doesn't exist for
interstellar distances.) Before a tumultuous parliament, Bodin
Miyatovich announced full mobilization of the Narodna Voyska, recall of
units from outsystem duty, his directing the Imperial Navy command for
Tauria to maintain the Pax within the sector, his ordering specific
ships and flotillas belonging to it to report here for assignment, and
his placing Dennitzan society on a standby war footing.
A replay from his speech showed him at the wooden lectern, carved with
vines and leaves beneath outward-sweeping yelen horns, from which
Gospodar had addressed Skupshtina since the days of the Founders. In the
gray tunic and red cloak of a militia officer, knife and pistol on hips,
he appeared still larger than he was. His words boomed across crowded
tiers in the great stone hall, seemed almost to make the stained-glass
windows shiver.
"--Intelligence reports have grown more and more disquieting over the
past few months. I can here tell you little beyond this naked fact--you
will understand the need not to compromise sources--but our General
Staff takes as grave a view of the news as I do. Scouts dispatched into
the Roidhunate have brought back data on Merseian naval movements which
indicate preparations for action ... Diplomatic inquiries both official
and unofficial have gotten only assurances for response, unproved and
vaguely phrased. After centuries, we know what Merseian assurances are
worth ...
"Thus far I have no reply to my latest message to the Emperor, and can't
tell if my courier has even caught up with him on the Spican frontier
... High Terran authorities whom I've been able to contact have denied
there is a Merseian danger at the present time. They've challenged the
validity of the information given me, have insisted their own is
different and is correct ...
"They question our motives. Fleet Admiral Sandberg told me to my face,
when I visited his command post, he believes our government has
manufactured an excuse to marshal strength, not against foreign enemies
but against the Imperium. He cited charges of treasonous Dennitzan
activity elsewhere in the Empire. He forbade me to act. When I reminded
him that I am the sector viceroy, he declared he would see about getting
me removed. I think he would have had me arrested then and there"--a
bleak half-smile--"if I'd not taken the precaution of bringing along
"He revealed my niece, Kossara Vymezal, whom I sent forth to track down
the origin of those lies--he claimed she'd been caught at subversion,
had confessed under their damnable mind-twisting interrogation--I asked
why I was not informed at once, I demanded she be brought home, and
learned--" He smote the lectern. Tears burst from his eyes. "She has
been sold for a slave on Terra." The assembly roared.
"Uyak Bodin, Uyak Bodin," Kossara herself wept. She lifted her hands to
the screen as if to try touching him.
"Sssh," Flandry said. "This is past, remember. We've got to find out
what's happening today and what brought it on."
She gulped, mastered her sobs, and gave him cool help. He had a fair
grasp of Serbic, and the news analyst was competent, but as always, much
was taken for granted of which a stranger was ignorant.
Ostensibly the Merseian trouble sprang from incidents accumulated and
ongoing in the Wilderness. Disputes between traders, prospectors, and
voortrekkers from the two realms had repeatedly brought on armed
clashes. Dennitzans didn't react to overbearingness as meekly as
citizens of the inner Empire were wont to. They overbore right back, or
took the initiative from the beginning. Several actions were doubtless
in a legal sense piracy by crews of one side or the other. Matters had
sharpened during the civil war, when there was no effective Imperial
control over humans.
Flandry had known about this, and known too that the Roidhunate had
asked for negotiations aimed at solving the problem, negotiations to
which Emperor Hans agreed on the principle that law and order were
always worth establishing even with the cooperation of an enemy. The
delegates had wrangled for months.
In recent weeks Merseia had changed its tack and made totally
unacceptable demands--for example, that civilian craft must be cleared
by its inspectors before entering the Wilderness. "They know that's
ridiculous," Flandry remarked. "Without fail, in politics that kind of
claim has an ulterior purpose. It may be as little as a propaganda ploy
for domestic consumption, or as much as the spark put to a bomb fuse."
"A reason to bring their strength to bear--while most of the Empire's is
tied up at Spica--and maybe denounce the Covenant of Alfzar and occupy a
key system in the Wilderness?" Kossara wondered.
"Could be ... if Merseia is dispatching warships in this direction,"
Flandry said. "The Imperium thinks not--thinks Dennitza concocted the
whole business to justify mobilization. The Merseians would've been
delighted to co-conspire, a behind-the-scenes arrangement with your
uncle whereby they play intransigent at the conference. Any split among
us is pure gain for them. From the Imperium's viewpoint, Dennitza has
done this either to put pressure on it--to get the disbanding decree
rescinded and other grievances settled--or else to start an out-and-out
rebellion."
He puffed on his cigarette, latest of a chain. "From your uncle's
viewpoint--I assume he was honest with you about his opinions and
desires--if he believes Merseia may be readying for combat, he dare not
fail to respond. Terra can think in terms of settling border disputes by
negotiation, even after several battles. Dennitza, though, will be under
attack. A tough, proud people won't sit still for being made pawns of.
And given the accusations against them, the horrible word about you--how
alienated must they not feel?"
The commentator had said: "Is it possible the connivance is between
Emperor and Roidhun? Might part of a secret bargain be that Merseia rids
the Imperium of troublesomely independent subjects? It would like to
destroy us. To it, we are worse than a nuisance, we are the potential
igniters of a new spirit within the Empire, whose future leadership may
actually come from among us. On the Terran side, the shock of such an
event would tend to unite the Empire behind the present bearer of the
crown, securing it for him and his posterity ... "
Flandry said: "I'm pretty sure that by now, throughout the Dennitzan
sphere of influence, a majority favors revolution. The Gospodar's
stalling, trying to bide his time in hopes the crisis will slack off
before fighting starts. Wouldn't you guess so, love? I suspect, however,
if it turns out he doesn't have to resist Merseia, he will then use his
assembled power to try squeezing concessions from Terra. His citizens
won't let him abstain--and I doubt if he wants to. And ... any wrong
action on the part of the Imperium or its Navy, or any wrong inaction,
anywhere along the line, will touch off rebellion."
"Well go straight to him--" she began.
Flandry shook his head. "Uh-uh. Most reckless thing we could do. Who
supplied those Intelligence reports that scared Miyatovich and his
staff--reports contradicted by findings of my Corps in separate
operations? If the Merseian fleet is making ominous motions, is this a
mere show for the Dennitzan scouts they knew would sneak into then:
space? How did the news about you get here so speedily, when the sale of
one obscure slave never rated a word on any Terran newscast? Could
barbarian activity in Sector Spica have been encouraged from outside,
precisely to draw the Emperor there and leave his officers on this
frontier to respond as awkwardly as they've done?"
He sighed. "Masks and mirages again, Kossara. The program we heard
showed us only the skin across the situation. We can't tell what's
underneath, except that it's surely explosive, probably poisonous.
Zorkagrad must be acrawl with Merseian undercover men. I'd be astonished
if some of them aren't high and trusted in the Gospodar's councils,
fending off any information they prefer he doesn't get. Aycharaych's
been at work for a long time."
"What shall we do?" she asked steadily.
Flandry's glance sought for Dennitza. It should be visible here, soft
blue against black. But the brightnesses which burned were too many.
"Suppose you and I pay a covert visit on your parents," he said. "From
there we can send a household servant, seemingly on an ordinary errand,
who can find
a chance to slip your uncle a word. Meanwhile Chives lands
at Zorkagrad port and takes quarters to be our contact in the city.
Shalmuan spacers aren't common but they do exist--not that the average
person hereabouts ever heard of Shalmu--and I'll modify one of our spare
documentations to support his story of being an innocent entrepreneur
just back from a long exploration, out of touch, in the Wilderness."
"It seems terribly roundabout," Kossara said.
"Everything is on this mission."
She smiled. "Well, you have the experience, Dominic. And it will give us
a little time alone together."
XIV
---
First the planet loomed immense in heaven, clouds and ice lending it a
more than Terran whiteness against which the glimpsed oceans became a
dazzlingly deep azure. Then it was no longer ahead, it was land and sea
far below. When Flandry and Kossara bailed out, it became a roar of
night winds.
They rode their gravbelts down as fast as they dared, while the Hooligan
vanished southward. The chance of their being detected was maybe slight,
but not nonexistent. They need have no great fear of being shot at; as a
folk who lived with firearms, the Dennitzans were not trigger-happy.
However, two who arrived like this, in time of emergency, would be
detained, and the matter reported to military headquarters. Hence
Kossara had proposed descending on the unpeopled taiga north of the
Kazan. The voivode of Dubina Dolyina must have patrols and instruments
active throughout his district.
Even at their present distance from it, she and Flandry could not have
left the vessel secretly in an aircraft. The captain of the picket ship