“You see,” she said, “after I cast off the rope—Wait! Don't lecture me again about that I—I stepped just the merest few paces into the fog, and then, after all, the plants I had seen turned out to be the same old zigzag ones I named Cryp-togami Urani, so I started back and you were gone.”
“Gone! I hadn’t moved.”
“You were gone,” she repeated imperturbably. “I just walked a short distance and then shouted, but the shouts just sort of muffled out. And then I heard a couple of shots in another direction, and started that way—and suddenly the chain gang came plunging out of the fog!”
“What’d you do?”
“What could I do? They were too close for me to draw my gun, so I ran. They’re fast, but so am I, and I kept ahead until I began to lose breath. Then I discovered that by sharp dodging I could keep away—they don’t turn very quickly— and I managed for a few minutes, although that blinding fog kept me in danger of tripping. And then I had an inspiration!”
“You needed one!” he muttered.
She ignored him. “Do you remember when I mentioned Fabre and his studies of the pine processionary caterpillars? Well, one of his experiments was to lead the procession around the edge of a big garden vase and close the circle! He did away with the leader, and do you know what happened?”
“I can guess.”
“Youre right. Lacking leadership, the circle just kept revolving for hours, days, I don't know how long, until at last some caterpillar dropped from exhaustion, and a new leader was created by the gap. And suddenly that experiment occurred to me, and I set about duplicating it. I dodged back toward the rear end of my procession, with the front end following mel”
“I see!” muttered Ham.
“Yes. I intended to close the circle and dodge outside, but something went wrong. I caught up with the rear all right, but I was just about worn out and I stumbled or something, and the next thing I remember was lying on the ground with the feet of the things pounding by my face. And I was inside the circle!”
“You probably fainted from exhaustion.”
“I never faint,” said Patricia with dignity.
“You did when I got you out.”
“That,” she retorted, “was simply a case of going to sleep after about forty hours of staying awake without food. Fainting, or syncope, is quite different, being due to an undersupply of blood to the brain—”
“All right,” cut in Ham. “If fainting needs a brain, obviously you couldn't faint. Go on.”
“Well,” she resumed placidly, “there I was. I could have shot a break in the circle, of course, but that would have brought an attack, and besides, I hadn't the least idea where the Gaea was. So I sat there, and I sat a week or ten days or a month—”
“Forty hours.”
“And the fog shapes kept rustling over the file of sausage creatures, and they kept flickering and rustling and whispering until I thought I'd go mad. It was terrible—even knowing what they were, it was terrible!”
“Knowing what— Do you know what they are?”
aI figured out one good guess. In fact, I had suspicion as soon as I saw Cullens infra-red photographs."
“Then what the devil are they?”
“Well, you see I had a good chance to examine the chain things at close range, and they’re not perfect creatures.”
Til say they’re not!"
“I mean they’re not fully developed. In fact, they’re larvae. And I think the fog shapes are what they grow up to be. That’s why the fog shapes led the things to us. Don’t you see? The chain creatures are their children. It’s like caterpillar and moth!"
“Well, that’s possible, of course, but what about the weird faces of the fog shapes and their ability to change size?”
"They don’t change size. See here—the light on that part of Uranus comes from directly overhead, doesn’t it? Well, any shadows are thrown straight down, then; that’s obvious. So what we saw—all that flickering, shifting crew of gargoyles—were just the shadows of floating things, flying things, projected on the fog. That’s why the fog shapes grew and shrank and changed shape; they were just shadows following some winged creature that moved up and down and around. Do you see?"
"It sounds plausible. We’ll report it that way, and in eighty years, when the north pole of Uranus gets around to the sunlight again, somebody can run up and check the theory. Maybe Harbord’ll pilot them. Eh, Harbord? Think you’d be willing to visit the place again in eighty years?"
“Not with a woman aboard,’’ grunted the astrogator.
After the complete exploration of the Solar System, what? Inevitably, first colonization, then expansion to explore and colonize the planets of other stars. This is a task that will cover thousands of years of humanity’s busy future, but to round out this collection here is an adventure from that greater time: the time of a Terr an Empire spanning the stars. It’s Foul Anderson with a novelette of that space empire’s crack troubleshooter, Flandry, whose exploits he chronicled in such well-liked Ace novels as t(Earthman, Go Home!” and uMayday Orbit?
TIGER BY THE TAIL by Poul Anderson
Captain Flandry opened his eyes and saw a metal ceiling. Simultaneously, he grew aware of the thrum and quiver which meant he was aboard a spaceship running on ultra-drive.
He sat up with a violence that sent the dregs of alcohol swirling through his head. He'd gone to sleep in a room somewhere in the stews of Catawrayannis, with no prospect or intention of leaving the city for an indefinite time—let alone the planetl Now—
The chilling realization came that he was not aboard a human ship. Humanoid, yes, from the size and design of things, but no vessel ever built within the borders of the Empire, and no foreign make that he knew of.
Even from looking at this one small cabin, he could tell. There were bunks, into one of which he had fitted pretty well, but the sheets and blankets weren’t of plastic weave. They seemed—he looked more closely—the sheets seemed to be of some vegetable fiber, the blankets of long bluish-gray hair. There were a couple of chairs and a table in the middle of the room, wooden, and they must have seen better days, for they were elaborately handcarved, and in an intricate interwoven design new to Flandry—and planetary artforms were a hobby of his. The way and manner in which the metal plating had been laid was another indication, and—
He sat down again, buried his whirling head in his hands, and tried to think. There was a thumping in his head and a vile taste in his mouth which liquor didn't ordinarily leave— at least not the stuff he’d been drinking—and now that he remembered, he'd gotten sleepy much earlier than one would have expected when the girl was so good-looking—
Drugged—oh, no! Tell me Tm not as stupid as a stereofilm hero! Anything but thatI
But who’d have thought it, who'd have looked for it? Certainly the people and beings on whom he'd been trying to get a lead would never try anything like that. Besides, none of them had been around, he was sure of it. He’d simply been out building part of the elaborate structure of demimonde acquaintances and information which would eventually, by exceedingly indirect routes, lead him to those he was seeking. He’d simply been out having a good time—quite a good time, in fact—and—
And now someone from outside the Empire had him. And now what?
He got up, a little unsteadily, and looked around for his clothes. No sign of them. And he'd paid three hundred credits for that outfit, too. He stamped savagely over to the door. It didn't have a photocell attachment; he jerked it open and found himself looking down the muzzle of a blaster.
It was of different design from any he knew, but it was quite unmistakable. Captain Flandry sighed, relaxed his taut muscles, and looked more closely at the guard who held it*
He was humanoid to a high degree, perhaps somewhat stockier than Terrestrial average—and come to think of it, the artificial gravity was a little higher than one gee—and with very white skin, long tawny hair and beard, and oblique violet eyes. His ears were pointed an
d two small horns grew above his heavy eyebrow ridges, but otherwise he was manlike enough. With civilized clothes and a hooded cloak he could easily pass himself off for human.
Not in the getup he wore, of course, which consisted of a kilt and tunic, shining berylium-copper cuirass and helmet, buskins over bare legs, and a murderous looking dirk. As well as a couple of scalps hanging at his belt.
He gestured the prisoner back, and blew a long hollow blast on a horn slung at his side. The wild echoes chased each other down the long corridor, hooting and howling with a primitive clamor that tingled faintly along Captain Flandry's spine.
He thought slowly, while he waited: No intercom, apparently not even speaking tubes laid the whole length of the ship. And household articles of wood and animal and vegetable fibres, and that archaic costume there—They were barbarians, all right. But no tribe that he knew about.
That wasn't too surprising, since the Terrestrial Empire and the half-dozen other civilized states in the known Galaxy ruled over several thousands of intelligent races and had some contact with nobody knew how many thousands more. Many of the others were, of course, still planet-bound, but quite a few tribes along the Imperial borders had mastered a lot of human technology without changing their fundamental outlook on things. Which is what comes of hiring barbarian mercenaries.
The peripheral tribes were still raiders, menaces to the border planets and merely nuisances to the Empire as a whole. Periodically they were bought off, or played off against each other—or the Empire might even send a punitive expedition out. But if one day a strong barbarian race under a strong leader should form a reliable coalition-then vae victisl
A party of Flandry1s captors, apparently officers, guardsmen, and a few slaves, came down the corridor. Their leader Was tall and powerfully built, with a cold arrogance in his pale-blue eyes that did not hide a calculating intelligence. There was a golden coronet about his head, and the robes that swirled around his big body were rainbow-gorgeous. Flandry recognized some items as having been manufactured within the Empire. Looted, probably.
They came to a halt before him and the leader looked him up and down with a deliberately insulting gaze. To be thus surveyed in the nude could have been badly disconcerting, but Flandry was immune to embarrassment and his answering stare was bland.
The leader spoke at last, in strongly accented but fluent Anglic: “You may as well accept the fact that you are a prisoner, Captain Flandry.”
They’d have gone through his pockets, of course. He asked levelly, “Just to satisfy my own curiosity, was that girl in your pay?”
“Of course. I assure you that the Scothani are not the brainless barbarians of popular Terrestrial superstition, though—” a bleak smile—“it is useful to be thought so.”
“The Scothani? I don't believe I've had the pleasure—”
“You have probably not heard of us, though we have had some contact with the Empire. We have found it convenient to remain in obscurity, as far as Terra is concerned, until the time is ripe. But—what do you think caused the Alarri to invade you, fifteen years ago?”
Flandry thought back. He had been a boy then, but he had, of course, avidly followed the news accounts of the terrible fleets that swept in over the marches and attacked Vega itself. Only the hardest fighting at the Battle of Mirzan had broken the Alarri. Yet it turned out that they’d been fleeing still another tribe, a wild and mighty race who had invaded their own system with fire and ruin. It was a common enough occurrence in the turbulent barbarian stars; this one incident had come to the Empire’s notice only because the refugees had tried to conquer it in turn. A political upheaval within the Terrestrial domain had prevented closer investigation before the matter had been all but forgotten.
“So you were driving the Alarri before you?” asked Flandry with as close an approximation to the right note of polite interest as he could manage in his present condition.
“Aye. And others. The Scothani have quite a little empire now, out there in the wilderness of the Galaxy. But, since we were never originally contacted by Terrestrials, we have, as I say, remained little known to them.”
So—the Scothani had learned their technology from some other race, possibly other barbarians. It was a familiar pattern, Flandry could trace it out in his mind. Spaceships landed on the primitive world, the initial awe of the natives gave way to the realization that the skymen weren't so different after all—they could be killed like anyone else; traders, students, laborers, mercenary warriors visited the more advanced worlds, brought back knowledge of their science and technology; factories were built, machines produced, and some tribal king used the new power to impose his rule on all his planet; and then, to unite his restless subjects, he had to turn their faces outward, promise plunder and glory if they followed him out to the stars—
Only the Scothani had carried it farther than most. And lying as far from the Imperial border as they did, they could build up a terrible power without the complacent, politics-ridden Empire being more than dimly aware of the fact— until the day when—
Vae victis!
“Let us have a clear understanding,” said the barbarian chief. “You are a prisoner on a warship already light years from LIynathawr, well into the Imperial marches and bound for Scotha itself. You have no chance of rescue, and mercy depends entirely on your own conduct. Adjust it accordingly.” “May I ask why you picked me up?” Flandry’s tone was mild.
“You are of noble blood, and a high-ranking officer in the Imperial intelligence service, You may be worth something as a hostage. But primarily we want information.”
“But I-”
“I know.” The reply was disgusted. “You re very typical of your miserable kind. I’ve studied the Empire and its decadence long enough to know that. You’re just another worthless younger son, given a high-paying sinecure so you can wear a fancy uniform and play soldier. You don’t amount to anything.”
Flandry let an angry flush go up his cheek. “Look here—" “It’s perfectly obvious,” said the barbarian. “You come to LIynathawr to track down certain dangerous conspirators. So you register yourself in the biggest hotel in Catawrayannis as Captain Dominic Flandry of the Imperial Intelligence Service, you strut around in your expensive uniform dropping dark hints about your leads and your activities—and these consist of drinking and gambling and wenching the whole night and sleeping the whole day!” A cold humor gleamed in the blue eyes. “Unless it is your intention that the Empire’s enemies shall laugh themselves to death at the spectacle.”
“If that’s so,” began Flandry thinly, “then why—”
“You will know something. You can’t help picking up a lot of miscellaneous information in your circles, no matter how hard you try not to. Certainly you know specific things about the organization and activities of your own corps which we would find useful information. We’ll squeeze all you know out of you! Then there will be other services you can per-form, people within the Empire you can contact, documents you can translate for us, perhaps various liaisons you can make—eventually, you may even earn your freedom/' The barbarian lifted one big fist. “And in case you wish to hold anything back, remember that the torturers of Scotha know their trade/’
“You needn't make melodramatic threats/’ said Flandry sullenly.
The fist shot out, and Flandry fell to the floor with darkness whirling and roaring through his head. He crawled to hands and knees, blood dripping from his face, and vaguely he heard the voice: “From here on, little man, you are to address me as befits a slave speaking to a crown prince of Scotha.w
The Terrestrial staggered to his feet. For a moment his fists clenched. The prince smiled grimly and knocked him down again. Looking up, Flandry saw brawny hands resting on blaster butts—not a chance, not a chance.
Besides, the prince was hardly a sadist. Such brutality was the normal order among the barbarians—and come to think of it, slaves within the Empire could be treated similarly.
And th
ere was the problem of staying alive—
“Yes, sir/’ he mumbled.
The prince turned on his heel and walked away.
They gave him back his clothes, though someone had stripped the gold braid and the medals away. Flandry looked at the soiled, ripped garments and sighed. Tailor-made—!
He surveyed himself in the mirror as he washed and shaved. The face that looked back was wide across the cheekbones, straight-nosed and square-jawed, with carefully waved reddish-brown hair and a mustache trimmed with equal attention. Probably too handsome, he reflected, wiping the blood from under his nose, but he'd been young when he had the plasticosmetician work on him. Maybe when he got out of this mess he should have the face made over to a slightly more rugged pa tern to fit his years. He was in his thirties now, after all—getting to be a big boy, Dominic.
The fundamental bone structure of head and face was his own, however, and so were the eyes—large and bright, with a hint of obliquity, the iris of that curious gray which can seem any color, blue or green or black or gold. And the trim, medium-tall body was genuine too. He hated exercises, but went through a dutiful daily ritual since he needed sinews and coordination for his work—and, too, a man in condition was something to look at among the usually flabby nobles of Terra; he’d found his figure no end of help in making his home leaves pleasant.
Well, cant stand here admiring yourself all day, old fellow. He slipped blouse, pants, and jacket over his silkite undergarments, pulled on the sheening boots, tilted his officer’s cap at an angle of well-gauged rakishness, and walked out to meet his new owners.
The Scothani weren’t such bad fellows, he soon learned. They were big brawling lusty barbarians, out for adventure and loot and fame as warriors; they had courage and loyalty and a wild streak of sentiment that he liked. But they could also fly into deadly rages, they were casually cruel to anyone that stood in their way, and Flandry acquired a not too high respect for their brains. It would have helped if they’d washed oftener, too.
Adventures on Other Planets Page 31
