Poul Anderson's Planet Stories

by Poul Anderson

  He did not report to his colonel when he entered the castle. That would have been asking for a hypnoprobe. But it was pretty clear that Bargen’s job had been secret, none of his messmates would have known of it—so if they saw Bargen scurrying around the place, too busy for conversation, it would not occur to them that anything had gone wrong. Of course, the deception could only last a few hours, but Flandry was betting that he would only need that long.

  In fact, he reflected grimly, I’m betting my life.

  Ella the slave, who had been Ella Mclntyre and a free woman of Varrak’s hills, did not like the harem. There was something vile about its perfumed atmosphere, and she hoped the duke would not send for her that night. If he did—well, that was part of the price. But she was left alone. There was a dormitory for the lesser inmates, like a luxurious barracks, and a wide series of chambers for them to lounge in, and silent nonhuman slaves to bring them food. She prowled restlessly about as the day waned. The other women watched her but said little; such new arrivals must be fairly common.

  But she had to make friends, fast. The harem was the most logical place for the duke to hide his prisoner, secrecy and seclusion were the natural order of things here. But it would be a gossipy little world. She picked an alert-looking girl with wide bright eyes, and wandered up to her and smiled shyly. “Hello,” she said. “My name is Ella.”

  “Just come in, I suppose?”

  “Yes. I’m a present. Ummm—ah—how is it here?”

  “Oh, not such a bad life. Not much to do. Gets a little boring.” Ella shivered at the thought of a lifetime inside these walls, but nodded meekly. The other girl wanted to know what was going on outside, and Ella spent some hours telling her.

  The conversation finally drifted the way she hoped. Yes—something strange. The whole western suite had been sealed off, with household troopers on guard at the door to the hallway. Somebody new must be housed there, and speculation ran wild on the who and why.

  Ella held her tension masked with a shivering effort. “Have you any idea who it might be?” she asked brightly.

  "I don’t know. Maybe some alien. His Grace has funny tastes. But you’ll find that out, my dear.”

  Ella bit her lips.

  That night she could not sleep at all. It was utterly dark, a thick velvety black full of incense, it seemed to strangle her. She wanted to scream and run, run between the stars till she was back in the loved lost hills of Varrak. A lifetime without seeing the sun or feeling the hill-wind on her face! She turned wearily, wondering why she had ever agreed to help Flandry.

  But if he lived and came to her, she could tell him what he wanted to know. If he lived! And even if he did, they were in the middle of a fortress. He would be flayed alive, and she—God, let me sleep. Just let me sleep and forget.

  The fluorotubes came on again with morning, a cold dawn. She bathed in the swimming pool and ate her breakfast without tasting. She wondered if she looked as tired and haggard as she felt.

  A scaled hand touched her shoulder. She whirled about with a little shriek and looked into a beaked reptile face. It spoke hissingly: “You are the new concubine?”

  She tried to answer but her throat tightened up.

  “Come.” The guard turned and strode away. Numbly, she went after him. The chatter in the harem died as she went by, and the eyes that followed were frightened. A girl was not summoned by an armed guard for pleasure.

  They went down a long series of chambers. At the end there was a door. It opened at the guard’s gesture, and he waved her in. As he followed, the door closed behind him.

  The room was small and bare. It held a chair with straps and wires and a switchboard; she recognized the electronic torture machine which left no marks on the flesh. In another chair crouched a being who was not human. Its small hunched body was wrapped in gorgeous robes, and great lusterless eyes regarded her from the bulging hairless head.

  “Sit down.” A thin hand waved her to the electronic chair, and she took it helplessly. “I want to talk to you. You will do well to answer without lies.” The voice was high and squeaky, but there was nothing ridiculous about the goblin who spoke. “For your information, I am Sarlish of Jagranath, which lies beyond the Empire; I am his Grace’s chief intelligence officer, so you see this is no routine matter. You were brought here by a man of whom I have suspicions. Why?”

  “As—a gift—sir,” she whispered.

  “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,” said Sarlish surprisingly. “I did not learn of it till this morning, or I would have investigated sooner. You are just a common slave?”

  “Yes—sir—he bought me on Varrak before coming here—”

  “Varrak, eh? I’d like to hypnoprobe you, but that would leave you in no fit state for his Grace tonight if you should be innocent. I think—” Sarlish stroked his meager chin contemplatively. “Yes. A bit of pain will disorganize your mind enough so that if you are lying, the proper questions will bring out inconsistencies. After that we can see about the probe. I am sorry.” He gestured to the guard.

  Ella leaped up, yelling. The guard snatched for her and she ducked free, driving a kick at his belly. He grunted and stepped back. She threw herself at the door. As it opened, the reptile hands closed on her arm. Whirling, she brought the extended fingers of her free hand into his eyes. He screamed and backed away.

  “Ah, so,” murmured Sarlish. He took out a stunner and aimed it judicially at the struggling pair.

  “I wouldn’t try that, Dollie,” said a voice in the doorway.

  Sarlish spun about to face a blaster. “Bargen!” he cried, dropping his weapon. Then, slowly: “No, Captain Flandry, isn’t it?”

  “In person, and right in the traditional nick of time.” The blinded guard lurched toward him. Flandry shot him with a narrow beam. Sarlish sprang from his chair at fantastic speed and scuttled between his legs, bringing him down. Ella leaped over the Terran and caught the gnome with a flying tackle. Sarlish hissed and clawed. She twisted at his neck in sheer self-defense, and suddenly the thin spine snapped and Sarlish kicked once and was still.

  “Nice going!” Flandry scrambled to his feet. With a quick motion, he peeled off the face mask. “Too hot in this damned thing. All right, did you find our princess?”

  “This way.” A swift cold gladness was in the girl. She bent and picked up the dead guard’s blaster. “I’ll show you. But can we—?”

  “Not by ourselves. But I’ve signaled Chives. Got at a radio just before coming here. Though how he’s going to find exactly where we are, I don’t know. I’ve had to assume you’d succeeded—” Flandry zigzagged to avoid a flock of screaming girls. “Wow! No wonder the duke has nonhuman servants here!”

  “Behind that wall—we’ll have to go around, through the hall,” panted Ella.

  “And be shot as we come? No, thanks!” Flandry began assembling scattered chairs and divans into a rough barricade before the wall. “Cut our way through, will you?”

  Plastic bubbled and smoked as Ella’s flame attacked it. Flandry went on: “I bluffed my way in here by saying I had to fetch someone. A girl told me where you’d been taken. Imagine the only reason I got away with it is that no man would dare come in here unless he had orders from Alfred himself. But now there’s the devil to pay, and I only hope Chives can locate us in time and not get himself blown out of the sky.” He looked along the barrel of his blaster, down the arched length of the room to the rest of the suite. “Here they come!”

  A troop of guards burst into sight. Flandry set his blaster to needle beam—that gave maximum range, but you had to be skillful to hit anything at such a distance. One of the men toppled. A curtain of fire raged before the others. The heat of it scorched his face. He picked off another man, and another. But the rest were circling around, getting within wide-beam range, and one shot could fry him. “Get that wall cut!”

  “Here goes!” Ella jumped back as the circle she had burned collapsed outward. A drop of molten plastic stung her skin. The ba
rricade burst into flame as a beam caught it. She tumbled through the hole, heedless of its hot edges, and Flandry followed her.

  The girl inside crouched against the wall, mouth open with terror. She was dark, with a pretty, vacuous face that showed the Imperial blood.

  “Lady Megan?” snapped Flandry.

  “Yes,” she whimpered. “Who are you?”

  “At your service, your highness—I hope.” Flandry sent a wide beam out through the hole in the wall. A man screamed his agony. The agent reflected bitterly how many brave folk—probably including Ella and himself—were dead because a spoiled brat had wanted a new kind of thrill.

  The door swung inward. Ella blasted as it did, and there was a roar of disintegrating flesh and bone and armor. Flandry heaved a sofa up against the sagging door. Poor protection—they could only hold out for minutes.

  He turned a sweating, smoke-blackened face to the princess. “I take it you know the duke kidnapped you, your Highness?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she whined. “But he wasn’t going to hurt me—”

  “So you think! I happen to know he intended to kill you.” That wasn’t exactly true, but it served its purpose. If they lived, Megan wouldn’t get him in trouble for endangering her life. She even began babbling something about a reward, and Flandry hoped she would remember it later. If there was a later.

  He had one advantage. The duke could not use heavy stuff to blow them all up without killing his prisoner. But— He passed out three gas masks.

  The outer wall glowed. A circle was being cut from it, big enough to let a dozen men through at a time. Flandry and Ella could blast the first wave, but the next would overpower them.

  Smoke swirled heavy and bitter in the room. It was hot, stinking of sweat and blood. Flandry grinned crookedly. “Well, darling,” he said, “it was a nice try.” Ella’s hand stroked his hair, briefly.

  Something bellowed outside. The walls trembled, and he heard the rumble and crash of falling masonry. Outside, the noise of blasters and bullets grew to a storm.

  “Chives!” whooped Flandry.

  “What?” asked Megan faintly.

  “Salade of Alfred au naturel with Chives,” burbled Flandry. “You must meet Chives, your Highness. One of nature’s noblemen. He—how the hell did he do it?”

  A volcano growled outside, the walls glowed red, and then there was silence.

  Flandry pulled the burning sofa away and risked a glance into the corridor. It was a ruin, scorched and tumbled by the full impact of a naval blaster canon. The attacking troopers had simply ceased to exist. A series of smashed walls showed open sky far beyond. Hovering in the wreckage was his own lean speedster.

  “Chives,” said Flandry in awe, “merely swooped up to the fortress at full drive, blew his way in with the guns and bombs, and opened up on the duke’s men.”

  The airlock swung wide, and a green head looked out. “I would recommend haste, sir,” said Chives. “The alarm is out, and they have fighting ships.”

  He extended a ladder. Flandry and the girls tumbled up it, the airlock clanged shut behind them, and the boat took off with a yell. Behind it, a small cruiser lifted from the military field.

  “How did you find us?” gasped Flandry. “I didn’t even know where the harem was myself when I called you.”

  “I assumed there would be fighting, sir,” said Chives modestly. “Blasters ionize the air. I used the radiation detectors to fix your direction as I approached.” He set the boat on autopilot and moved over to the tiny galley.

  Flandry studied the viewscreens as the planet fell beneath them. “That cruiser—” he muttered. “No—look at the radar—we’re distancing it. This can of ours has legs. We’ll make it to Varrak all right.”

  He glanced about the cabin. Ella was trying to soothe a hysterical Megan. She looked up at him for a moment and he saw glory in her eyes.

  “Our only worry,” he said, “is that dear Alfred might rise in open revolt now that he’s exposed. If that happens, Merseia would probably move in and we’d have a general war on our hands.”

  Chives looked up from the stove. “His Grace was directing the assault on your stronghold, sir,” he said. “When I fired on the soldiers, I fear I took the liberty of disintegrating the duke as well. Does her Highness take sugar or lemon in her tea?”

  DUEL ON SYRTIS

  The night whispered the message. Over the many miles of loneliness it was borne, carried on the wind, rustled by the half-sentient lichens and the dwarfed trees, murmured from one to another of the little creatures that huddled under crags, in caves, by shadowy dunes. In no words, but in a dim pulsing of dread which echoed through Kreega's brain, the warning ran—

  They are hunting again.

  Kreega shuddered in a sudden blast of wind. The night was enormous around him, above him, from the iron bitterness of the hills to the wheeling, glittering constellations light-years over his head. He reached out with his trembling perceptions, tuning himself to the brush and the wind and the small burrowing things underfoot, letting the night speak to him.

  Alone, alone. There was not another Martian for a hundred miles of emptiness. There were only the tiny animals and the shivering brush and the thin, sad blowing of the wind.

  The voiceless scream of dying traveled through the brush, from plant to plant, echoed by the fear-pulses of the animals and the ringingly reflecting cliffs. They were curling, shriveling and blackening as the rocket poured the glowing death down on them, and the withering veins and nerves cried to the stars.

  Kreega huddled against a tall gaunt crag. His eyes were like yellow moons in the darkness, cold with terror and hate and a slowly gathering resolution. Grimly, he estimated that the death was being sprayed in a circle some ten miles across. And he was trapped in it, and soon the hunter would come after him.

  He looked up to the indifferent glitter of stars, and a shudder went along his body. Then he sat down and began to think.

  It had started a few days before, in the private office of the trader Wisby.

  "I came to Mars," said Riordan, "to get me an owlie."

  Wisby had learned the value of a poker face. He peered across the rim of his glass at the other man, estimating him.

  Even in God-forsaken holes like Port Armstrong one had heard of Riordan. Heir to a million-dollar shipping firm which he himself had pyramided into a System-wide monster, he was equally well known as a big game hunter. From the firedrakes of Mercury to the ice crawlers of Pluto, he'd bagged them all. Except, of course, a Martian. That particular game was forbidden now.

  He sprawled in his chair, big and strong and ruthless, still a young man. He dwarfed the unkempt room with his size and the hard-held dynamo strength in him, and his cold green gaze dominated the trader.

  "It's illegal, you know," said Wisby. "It's a twenty-year sentence if you're caught at it."

  "Bah! The Martian Commissioner is at Ares, halfway round the planet. If we go at it right, who's ever to know?" Riordan gulped at his drink. "I'm well aware that in another year or so they'll have tightened up enough to make it impossible. This is the last chance for any man to get an owlie. That's why I'm here."

  Wisby hesitated, looking out the window. Port Armstrong was no more than a dusty huddle of domes, interconnected by tunnels, in a red waste of sand stretching to the near horizon. An Earthman in airsuit and transparent helmet was walking down the street and a couple of Martians were lounging against a wall. Otherwise nothing—a silent, deadly monotony brooding under the shrunken sun. Life on Mars was not especially pleasant for a human.

  "You're not falling into this owlie-loving that's corrupted all Earth?" demanded Riordan contemptuously.

  "Oh, no," said Wisby. "I keep them in their place around my post. But times are changing. It can't be helped."

  "There was a time when they were slaves," said Riordan. "Now those old women on Earth want to give 'em the vote." He snorted.

  "Well, times are changing," repeated Wisby mildly. "When the fir
st humans landed on Mars a hundred years ago, Earth had just gone through the Hemispheric Wars. The worst wars man had ever known. They damned near wrecked the old ideas of liberty and equality. People were suspicious and tough—they'd had to be, to survive. They weren't able to—to empathize the Martians, or whatever you call it. Not able to think of them as anything but intelligent animals. And Martians made such useful slaves—they need so little food or heat or oxygen, they can even live fifteen minutes or so without breathing at all. And the wild Martians made fine sport—intelligent game, that could get away as often as not, or even manage to kill the hunter."

  "I know," said Riordan. "That's why I want to hunt one. It's no fun if the game doesn't have a chance."

  "It's different now," went on Wisby. "Earth has been at peace for a long time. The liberals have gotten the upper hand. Naturally, one of their first reforms was to end Martian slavery."

  Riordan swore. The forced repatriation of Martians working on his spaceships had cost him plenty. "I haven't time for your philosophizing," he said. "If you can arrange for me to get a Martian, I'll make it worth your while."

  "How much worth it?" asked Wisby.

  They haggled for a while before settling on a figure. Riordan had brought guns and a small rocketboat, but Wisby would have to supply radioactive material, a "hawk," and a rockhound. Then he had to be paid for the risk of legal action, though that was small. The final price came high.

  "Now, where do I get my Martian?" inquired Riordan. He gestured at the two in the street. "Catch one of them and release him in the desert?"

  It was Wisby's turn to be contemptuous. "One of them? Hah! Town loungers! A city dweller from Earth would give you a better fight."

  The Martians didn't look impressive. They stood only some four feet high on skinny, claw-footed legs, and the arms, ending in bony four-fingered hands, were stringy. The chests were broad and deep, but the waists were ridiculously narrow. They were viviparous, warm-blooded, and suckled their young, but gray feathers covered their hides. The round, hook-beaked heads, with huge amber eyes and tufted feather ears, showed the origin of the name "owlie." They wore only pouched belts and carried sheath knives; even the liberals of Earth weren't ready to allow the natives modern tools and weapons. There were too many old grudges.