detected the fleet's setting out. Some would have gone to tell their
masters, others would have dogged the force, trying to learn where it
was bound. (A few of those had been spotted and destroyed, but not
likely all.) No matter how carefully plotted its course, and no matter
that its destination was a thinly trafficked part of space, during the
three-week journey its hyperwake must have been picked up by several
travelers who passed within range. So many strange hulls together,
driving so hard through Merseian domains, was cause to bring in the
Navy.
If Miyatovich was to do anything to Chereion, he must get there, finish
his work, and be gone before reinforcements could arrive. Scouts of his,
prowling far in advance near a sun whose location seemed to be the
Roidhunate's most tightly gripped secret, would have carried too big a
risk of giving away his intent. He must simply rush in full-armed, and
hope.
"We can take them, can't we?" he asked.
Rear Admiral Raich, director of operations, nodded.
"Oh, yes. They're outnumbered, outgunned. I wonder why they don't
withdraw."
"Merseians aren't cowards," Captain Yulinatz, skipper of the
dreadnaught, remarked. "Would you abandon a trust?"
"If my orders included the sensible proviso that I not contest lost
cases when it's possible to scramble clear and fight another day--yes, I
would," Raich said. "Merseians aren't idiots either."
"Could they be expecting help?" Miyatovich wondered. He gnawed his
mustache and scowled.
"I doubt it," Raich replied. "We know nothing significant can reach us
soon." He did keep scouts far-flung throughout this stellar vicinity,
now that he was in it. "They must have the same information to base the
same conclusions on."
Flandry, who stood among them, his Terran red-white-and-blue gaudy
against their indigo or gray, cleared his throat. "Well, then," he said,
"the answer's obvious. They do have orders to fight to the death. Under
no circumstances may they abandon Chereion. If nothing else, they must
try to reduce our capability of damaging whatever is on the planet."
"Bonebrain doctrine," Raich grunted.
"Not if they're guarding something vital," Miyatovich said. "What might
it be?"
"We can try for captures," Yulinatz suggested: reluctantly, because it
multiplied the hazard to his men.
Flandry shook his head. "No point in that," he declared. "Weren't you
listening when he talked en route? Nobody lands on Chereion except by
special permission which is damn hard to get--needs approval of both the
regional tribune and the planet's own authorities, and movements are
severely restricted. I don't imagine a single one of the personnel we're
killing and being killed by has come within an astronomical unit of the
globe."
"Yes, yes, I heard," Yulinatz snapped. "What influence those beings must
have."
"That's why we've come to hit them," the Gospodar said in his beard.
Yulinatz's glance went to the tank. A green point blinked: a cruiser was
suffering heavily from three enemy craft which paced her. A yellow point
went out, and quickly another: two corvettes lost. His tone grew raw.
"Will it be worth the price to us?"
"That we can't tell till afterward." Miyatovich squared his shoulders.
"We could disengage and go home, knowing we've thrown a scare into the
enemy. But we'd never know what opportunity we did or did not forever
miss. We will proceed."
In the end, a chieftain's main duty is to say, "On my head be it."
"Gentlemen."
Flandry's word brought their eyes to him. "I anticipated some such
quandary," he stated. "What we need is a quick survey--a forerunner to
get a rough idea of what is on Chereion and report back. Then we can
decide."
"If the guard is this thick at this distance," Yulinatz added, "what
chance has the best speedster ever built for any navy of getting
anywhere near?"
Miyatovich, comprehending, swallowed hard.
"I brought along my personal boat," Flandry said. "She was not built for
a navy."
"No, Dominic," Miyatovich protested.
"Yes, Bodin," Flandry answered.
Vatre Zvezda unleashed a salvo. No foes were close. None could match a
Nova-class vessel. She was huge, heavy-armored, intricately
compartmented, monster-powered in engines, weapons, shielding fields,
less to join battle than to keep battle away from the command posts at
her heart. Under present conditions, it was not mad, but it was
unreasonable that she fired at opponents more than a million kilometers
distant. They would have time to track those missiles, avoid them or
blow them up.
The reason was to cover Hooligan's takeoff.
She slipped from a boat lock, through a lane opened momentarily in the
fields, outward like an outsize torpedo. Briefly in her aft-looking
viewscreens the dreadnaught bulked, glimmering spheroid abristle with
guns, turrets, launch tubes, projectors, sensors, generators, snatchers,
hatches, watchdomes, misshapen moon adrift among the stars. Acceleration
dwindled her so fast that Yovan Vymezal gasped, as if the interior were
not at a steady Dennitzan gravity but the full unbalanced force had
crushed the breath from him.
In the pilot's chair, Flandry took readings, ran off computations,
nodded, and leaned back. "We won't make approach for a good
three-quarters of an hour," he said, "and nothing's between us and our
nominal target. Relax." '
Vymezal--a young cadre lieutenant of marines, Kossara's cousin and in a
sturdy male fashion almost unendurably like her--undid his safety web.
He had been invited to the control cabin as a courtesy; come passage
near the enemy destroyer they were aimed at, he would be below with his
dozen men, giving them what comfort he could in their helplessness, and
Chives would be here as copilot. His question came hesitant, not
frightened but shy: "Sir, do you really think we can get past? They'll
know pretty soon we're not a torp, we're a manned vessel. I should think
they won't be satisfied to take evasive action, they'll try for a kill."
"You volunteered, didn't you? After being warned this is a dangerous
mission."
Vymezal flushed. "Yes, sir. I wouldn't beg off if I could. I was just
wondering. You explained it's not necessarily a suicide mission."
The odds are long that it is, my boy.
"You said," the earnest voice stumbled on, "your oscillators are well
enough tuned that you can go on hyper-drive deep into a gravity
well--quite near the sun. You planned to make most of our transit that
way. Why not start at once? Why first run straight at hostile guns? I'm
just wondering, sir, just interested."
Flandry smiled. "Sure you are," he replied, "and I'm sorry if you
supposed for a minute I suppose otherwise. The reason is simple. We've a
high kinetic velocity right now with respect to Chereion. You don't lose
energy of relativistic motion merely because for a while you quantum-hop
around the light-speed limit. Somewhere along the line, we have to match
our vector to the planet's. That's better done here, where we have elbow
room, than close in, where space may be crammed with defenses. We gain
time--time to increase surprise at the far end--by
A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows
posing as a missile while we adjust our velocity. But a missile should
logically have a target. Within the cone of feasible directions, that
destroyer seemed like our best bet. Let me emphasize, the operative word
is 'bet.'"
Vymezal eased and chuckled. "Thank you, sir. I'm a dice addict. I know
when to fade."
"I'm more a poker player." Flandry offered a cigarette, which was
accepted, and took one for himself. It crossed his mind: how strange he
should still be using the box which had snapped shut on his son, and
give it no particular thought.
Well, why throw away a tool I'd want duplicated later? I've been taught
to avoid romantic gestures except when they serve a practical demagogic
purpose.
Vymezal peered ahead at the ruby sun. Yes, his profile against the
star-clouds of Sagittarius was as much like Kossara's as young Dominic's
had been like Persis'. What can I write to Persis? Can I? Maybe my
gesture is to carry this cigarette case in my pocket for the rest of my
days.
"What information have we?" the lieutenant almost whispered.
"Very little, and most we collected personally while we approached,"
Flandry said. "Red dwarf star, of course; early type, but still billions
of years older than Sol or Zoria, and destined to outlive them. However,
not unduly metal-poor," as Diomedes is where I put her at stake for no
more possible win than the damned Empire. "Distribution of higher
elements varies a good bit in both space and time. The system appears
normal for its kind, whatever 'normal' may mean: seven identified
planets, Chereion presumably the only vitafer. We can't predict further;
life has no such thing as a norm. I do expect Chereion will be, m-m,
interesting."
And not an inappropriate place to leave my bones. Flandry inhaled
acridity and gazed outward. With all the marvels and mysteries yonder,
he wasn't seeking death. In the last few weeks, his wounds had scarred
over. But scar tissue is not alive. He no longer minded the idea of
death. He wished, though, it had been possible to leave Chives behind,
and Kossara's cousin.
A magnifying screen emblazoned the Merseian destroyer, spearhead on a
field of stars.
"Torpedo coming, sir," Chives stated. "Shall I dispose of it?" His
fingers flicked across the gun control board before him. A firebolt
sprang hell-colored. Detector-computer systems signaled a hit. The
missile ceased accelerating. Either its drive was disabled or this was a
programmed trick. In the second case, if Hooligan maintained the same
vector, a moment's thrust would bring it sufficiently close that
radiation from the exploding warhead could cripple electronics, leave
her helpless and incidentally pass a death sentence on her crew.
"Keep burning till we're sure," Flandry ordered. That required a quick
change of course. Engines roared, steel sang under stress,
constellations whirled. He felt his blood tingle and knew he was still a
huntsman.
Flame fountained. A crash went through hull and flesh. The deck heaved.
Shouts came faintly from aft.
Gee-fields restabilized. "The missile obviously had a backup detonator,"
Chives said. "It functioned at a safe remove from us, and our force
screens fended off a substantial piece of debris without harm. Those
gatortails are often inept mechanicians, would you not agree, sir?" His
own tail switched slim and smug.
"Maybe. Don't let that make you underestimate the Chereionites." Flandry
studied the readouts before him.
His pulse lifted. They were matched to their goal world. A few minutes
at faster-than-light would bring them there, and--
"Stand by," he called.
XX
--
The eeriest thing was that nothing happened.
The planet spun in loneliness around its ember sun. Air made a thin
bordure to its shield, shading from blue to purple to the winter sky of
space. Hues were iron-rusty and desert-tawny, overlaid by blue-green
mottlings, hoar polar caps, fierce glint off the few shrunken seas which
remained. A small, scarred moon swung near.
It had to be the world of Flandry's search. No other was possible. But
who stood guard? War raved through outer space; here his detectors
registered only a few automatic traffic-control stations in orbit,
easily bypassed. Silence seeped through the hull of his vessel and
filled the pilot's cabin.
Chives broke it: "Analysis indicates habitability for us is marginal,
sir. Biotypes of the kind which appear to be present--sparsely--have
adapted to existing conditions but could not have been born under them.
Given this feeble irradiation, an immense time was required for the loss
of so much atmosphere and hydrosphere." He paused. "The sense of age and
desolation is quite overwhelming, sir."
Flandry, his face in the hood of a scannerscope, muttered, "There are
cities. In good repair, fusion powerplants at work ... though putting
out very little energy for complexes their size ... The deserts are
barren, the begrown regions don't look cultivated--too saline, I'd
guess. Maybe the dwellers live on synthetic food. But why no visible
traffic? Why no satellite or ground defenses?"
"As for the former, sir," Chives ventured, "the inhabitants may
generally prefer a contemplative, physically austere existence. Did not
Aycharaych intimate that to you on various occasions? And as for the
latter question, Merseian ships have maintained a cordon, admitting none
except an authorized few."
"That is"--the tingle in Flandry sharpened--"if an intruder like us ever
came this close, the game would be up anyway?"
"I do not suggest they have no wiles in reserve, sir."
"Ye-e-es. The Roidhunate wouldn't keep watch over pure philosophers."
Decision slammed into Flandry like sword into sheath. "We can't learn
more where we are, and every second we linger gives them an extra chance
to notice us and load a trap. We're going straight down!"
He gave the boat a surge of power.
Nonetheless, his approach was cautious. If naught else, he needed a
while to reduce interior air pressure to the value indicated for the
surface ahead of them. (Sounds grew muffled; pulse quickened; breast
muscles worked enough to feel. Presently he stopped noticing much,
having always taken care to maintain a level of acclimation to thin air.
But he was glad that gravity outside would be weak, about half a gee.)
Curving around the night hemisphere, he studied light-bejeweled towers
set in the middle of rock and sand wastes, wondered greatly at what he
saw, and devised a plan of sorts.
"We'll find us a daylit place and settle along
side," he announced on the
intercom. "If they won't talk to us, we'll maybe go in and talk to
them." For his communicator, searching all bands, had drawn no hint of--
No! A screen flickered into color. He looked at the first Chereionite
face he could be certain was not Aycharaych's. It had the same spare
beauty, the same deep calm, but as many differences of sculpture as
between one human countenance and the next. And from the start, even
before speech began, he felt a ... heaviness: nothing of sardonic humor
or flashes of regret.
"Talk the conn, Chives," he directed. A whistling had begun, and the
badlands were no longer before but below him. Hooligan was an easier
target now than she had been in space; she had better be ready to dodge
and strike back.
"You are not cleared for entry," said the screen in Eriau which was
mellow-toned but did not sing like Aycharaych's. "Your action is
forbidden under strict penalties, by command of the Roidhun in person,
renewed in each new reign. Can you offer a justification?"
Huh? jabbed through Flandry. Does he assume this is a Merseian boat and
I a Merseian man? "Em--emergency," he tried, too astonished to invent a
glib story. He had expected he would declare himself as more or less
what he was, and hold his destination city hostage to his guns and
missiles. Whether or not the attempt could succeed in any degree, he had
no notion. At best he'd thought he might bear away a few hints about the