The Avatar

by Poul Anderson

  “We should be meeting together, the way we are not only voices to each other,” Caitlín protested.

  “Yeah, but I told you, our sunward speed—”

  “Could we not be cutting it the while, aye, and aiming toward that Wheel of infamy? If we do decide to be meek after all, then they’ll not know on Earth what we did beforehand, will they, now?”

  “By God, you may be right. Hold on, everybody.” Brodersen tugged his chin as he reflected aloud. “Let’s see… killing our present vector and applying one for rendezvous… yeah, I’d guesstimate we can maneuver for two-three hours before radars that’re a.u. distant from us can spot the difference… finite signal speed, large probable error… and besides, the way we’re supposed to go lies in that general direction—Yes!” He slapped his desktop, a gunshot noise and a violent countermotion of his harnessed body. “I’ll bet my left ball against your virginity, Pegeen, we can lay a course clear to the Wheel, such that none of ’em yonder, no closer than the orbit of Mars, can tell we aren’t working toward the path they want us in.”

  His tone approached a roar: “Stef and Phil! Start us braking. Half a gee. That won’t commit us beyond redemption in a couple of hours.”

  “Had we not best beam a message to Earth at once, to say we will obey?” Zarubayev asked.

  “Sure, sure,” Brodersen agreed. “The order specifies the form of our reply. Nothing but the number one-oh-one, addressed to a particular Astro Board official but with no identification of us. They really are leaning into the secrecy, aren’t they? Okay, Stef, put it out on the laser.

  “Su,” he went on, “do you savvy what this is about? Before we can plan, we need more facts. Hook yourself up and compute if we can reach the Wheel while looking, from the inner System, as if we’re just angling toward the prescribed track. That is, how long might we reasonably be occulted by it? Take account of every station which may be fingering us, but don’t forget to figure in how much the radar disc of the Wheel may be enlarged by its radiation shield. Can do?”

  “Wiz probability only.” Granville’s reply was cooler than anyone would have awaited who did not know her well. “No guarantee.”

  “Shucks, all we ever do in this universe is play odds. How long will you need?”

  “‘Alf an hour, per’aps, mostly for to search out the data.”

  “Good. If your answer is positive, we’ll start boosting whichever way you figure is optimum for getting to the Wheel unbeknownst. Then we’ll meet in the common room and wrangle. I favor a rescue operation for the Emissary people. You may disagree,” Brodersen told his crew at large. “Put your arguments together while you wait. Think hard. Pray for guidance, if you’re so inclined … but think!”

  Afterward, in his mind, he rehearsed what they said—not actual words, which were scattered in fragments, spoken into each other’s mouths, disorganized as words always are when several human beings try to reason together—but a kind of synopsis, an attempt to frame the different spirits wherein they left the gathering.

  Sergei Zarubayev, glacier-practical: “What choice has the cabal left itself except to kill us?”

  Stefan Dozsa, roughly, his fist punishing his knee: “And they will continue in the government. They may well become the government. So it goes from despotism to tyranny.”

  Philip Weisenberg, ashiver with emotion he seldom showed: “This looks like our first chance, man’s first chance, to find the Others. Will we let it be the last?”

  Martti Leino, furious: “No! God damn you, Daniel Brodersen, haven’t you gotten the family you’re supposed to be responsible for in enough trouble already?”—but later he yielded, sullenly, in part because he was alone, in part because Dozsa gibed at his courage till the skipper stopped that.

  Caitlín Mulryan, aloud and ablaze: “What do you mean, saying I must stay inboard whilst you make your raid? I’ll have you know—” and she too needed calming down before she gave reluctant consent to his tactics.

  Susanne Granville, softly: “Why would I ’ave come along, my captain, if not to follow you?”

  Himself: “Maybe I overplayed my hand, making for here. I do honestly think not. I did underestimate the opposition—mainly, I suppose, Aurie Hancock. But it stands to reason they’d’ve acted as fast and decisively if we’d gone straight to Earth; and we’d’ve had far less room for maneuver; and for sure we’d not have the evidence we do, that Emissary is back.

  “Well, ’twill be mighty easy to send her off toward Sirius, manned by the corpses of her crew, and not much harder to dispose of us. I’m not saying this will happen, but I am saying ’twouldn’t surprise me. You want to sit idle under such a risk?

  “If we can snake Langendijk’s band out of yon jail—I’m personally convinced it is a jail—‘What then?’ you ask. I don’t know, except that then we’ve got the real clinching proof. The pictures we’ve taken of Emissary through the scanners we might have faked, but how can we have faked the people? And, you know, they may have picked up some useful capabilities wherever they’ve been.

  “We mustn’t count on that, of course. I’ve developed a couple of alternative battle plans which I’d like to sketch out for you. They’re strictly tentative. We’ll have to see how the bones roll. We’re not playing poker any more, you realize, we’re shooting craps.

  “If you accept my notions, I’ll next have to try and find out if there is any possibility of us pulling off a whizzer at the Wheel. Maybe there isn’t.”

  Weisenberg cut insignia out of sheet metal, Caitlín did a little retailoring, and Brodersen was attired like a rear admiral in the space corps of the Peace Command. Alone in the command center, he waited for the outercom to establish contact for him.

  Silence enfolded his head, somehow deepened by the low weight which settled him in his chair. He heard the breath in his nostrils, felt the collar at his throat. Stars glistered multitudinous in the screens, the Milky Way gleamed around its lanes of darkness, the Solar disc stood pharaonic between wings of light. High magnification in one display showed him his target, spokes and rim slowly turning as if to grind an unknown grist. The captive ship was not in that field and he didn’t reset the scanner toward her, for he had seen and made a record; he had seen.

  Leino’s initial protest rose while he waited, to move spookily around within him. Have I the right? I’m committed now, hut should I ever have begun? It could be that Quick and his bunch are trying to protect us from something ghastly.

  Ha! his rational and his willful selves responded together.

  Well, but should I have stayed home anyway? the ghost wondered. Less on account of Lis, though she’s who Martti was thinking of, than Barbara and Mike. Their own dear fetches came to snuggle in his lap; he could nearly feel the warmth and scent the gentle odor that only small children have. It’s not as if Demeter won’t be ample for their lifetimes. In fact, an opening to the galaxy ’ud mean all sorts of revolution, maybe good—I believe that but might be wrong—or maybe bad, but nothing for sure any longer… the kind of surety their father ought to make for them….

  He stiffened. Horse shit! he flung forth for an exorcism. Must I tramp over this ground again? The Union isn’t stable, no country is, the realfor-certain hell is brewing on Earth itself and Demeter’s a hop through the gate from here. But everywhere around is a universeful of newness, new homes, new knowledge, new ideas. The single thing it hasn’t got is absolute security. No part of it does. The closest we can come to that is through opportunity.

  Hoy, the buzzer. End of sermon, huh?

  He pressed accept. The telescreen presented the image of a young man, in civilian garb but of disciplined bearing. Nonetheless, astonishment registered. Brodersen’s anxieties went down a notch. Obviously they’d received no word at the Wheel.

  “Peace Command special mission,” he said. “Matthew Fry, admiral, commanding transport Chinook.” His pseudonym he borrowed from Caitlín’s housesitter. As for his ship, a fictitious designation was unadvisable; Reina-class craft were
too few.

  About three seconds passed while light waves bore his statement across space, plus reaction time at the far end, plus the time for a reply to arrive—eleven heartbeats; Brodersen counted them, and at the back of his brain felt pleased that they were no more. “Sir, you—pardon, sir,” the young man gulped. “We had no inkling anyone was anywhere near us.”

  What I reckoned on. Why should you keep a lookout? And why should Quick notify you? That might cause you to wonder a bit. Nor will his radars show if we go the whole way to you, because you’ll be occulting us for hours.

  I did fear that you might’ve overheard the radio message to us. But again, you had no cause to be listening. Any communication to you will go on a nice economical laser beam, your orbit being exactly known.

  “You weren’t supposed to have that information till now,” Brodersen said. “Connect me with your chief: sealed circuit.”

  Time. “Sir, he’s off duty, asleep. Can it wait?”

  Brodersen had been alert for such a chance to learn more. He put on his martinet expression. “Insubordinate, are you?” he barked. “State your service, rank, and name.”

  Time. It was hard to browbeat a person through a transmission lag like this. However, a top-deck PC officer was impressive, especially in space where he held almost life-and-death powers. “Pardon, sir? I, yes, of course, I’ll buzz Colonel Troxell at once.”

  “I required your service, rank, and name. You will give them to me.”

  Time. He in the Wheel blanched and said helplessly: “North American secret service, Lieutenant Samuel Webster, sir.”

  So that’s who I’m dealing with. Yeah, Quick’s North American. It figures. “You’d better learn to snap to orders if you don’t want to get busted, Lieutenant Webster. Well, I won’t put you on report. Get me the colonel.”

  Time. “Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!”

  More time passed, minutes. Brodersen wished his image allowed him to light his pipe.

  A burly man, hair hastily brushed and tunic hastily thrown on, appeared in the screen. “Troxell speaking.” His gaze probed. “Admiral, uh, Fry? Welcome, sir. You catch us unprepared, I’m afraid, but we’ll do our best.” The closing of his lips which signified that he was through talking had a military snap.

  “Very good,” Brodersen said. “First, you will maintain total outercom silence except to this ship. If you happen to get a message, I want to know what it is and dictate your reply. I’ll give you the reason shortly. Second, I want to raise my acceleration to a gee, which will let me dock at the Wheel in five or six hours. Is that feasible?”

  Time. “Well… yes… but—Admiral, as a routine matter I’d like to see your orders.”

  Not unexpected. “Will you transmit me yours, Colonel?”

  Time. “What? Pardon. Kindly explain.”

  Brodersen chuckled as he supposed Admiral Fry would. “You’re operating under extreme security. The North American secret service isn’t noted for passing confidential documents around carelessly. Neither is the Peace Command. We’ll put both our Omega spools in your reader when I arrive, and compare.” Scanning for transmission would automatically wipe the encoded information.

  Time. “Your mission’s really that secret?”

  “Since it relates to yours, yes. Colonel, brace yourself. You’ve been guarding the members of the Emissary expedition. Are you ready to add a follow-up load of nonhumans?”

  The effect was as powerful as Brodersen had hoped. (Otherwise he might have turned tail then and there and tried to convey his news to another spacecraft or two, an isolated asteroid base or two, before the watchships hunted him down—poor though the chances were that that would do any good.) Troxell’s doubts vanished. They had been feeble from the outset, for he had no grounds for suspecting that anybody outside the government and the Faraday crew had any intimation of the facts.

  Still, Brodersen must work warily, though with unlimited brass. In effect, he, holding two pair, was seeking to bluff out a full house. Pretending to knowledge he did not possess, he must get it from Troxell under guise of telling his own story.

  As for that: After Emissary returned, the PC had planted an extra guard on the Phoebean T machine. A strange vessel did emerge. She was boarded and her crew made prisoners without resistance. Having already leased Chehalis’ well-equipped but idle exploratory ship, the PC took them and their essentials away for safekeeping. To forestall any speculations, Fry declared when he entered the Solar System that his destination was Vesta, and went spaceward of his true goal before doubling back toward it.

  Troxell believed. No fool, he nevertheless was predisposed to believe. Brodersen had anticipated that. The warders of the Wheel—twenty-one total, as he learned by feigning a slight misunderstanding—must be of more or less Actionist ideology. Else Quick, studying dossiers, doubtless getting depth-psych examinations made of volunteers “for a confidential assignment of utmost importance,” would not have picked them.

  Soon Troxell was eager to talk. He needed to justify himself, he who had been penned in for these many weeks with his prisoners who were also his accusers. Brodersen listened patiently, encouragingly to all the antistellar theses. For a minute he was tempted to deny that the detention was proper, an act decided upon by the Council. But no. A few sentences can’t overturn a man’s faith.

  Meanwhile his heart slammed, skin chilled and tingled, soul hallooed, behind a hard-held calm—for in between chunks of the lecture, he caught mentions of truth. The Emissary crew had been eight years at the far end of their gate. They had lost three members. Carlos and Joelle were alive. They maintained the aliens were friendly and anxious to begin cultural exchange.

  They had an alien with them.

  Brodersen could hit on no safe way to find out what the creature looked like. He gathered that it could live under Terrestrial conditions, was of approximately human size, and claimed to be the sole representative its race would send unless mankind freely chose to establish relations—“And later they dispatched a ship of their own regardless, huh?” Troxell said. “How dumb do they suppose we are?”

  “Well, they may have found reasons to change their minds,” Brodersen temporized. “It has to be investigated, and you’ve got the only people with experience of them.

  “Besides, maybe more important, the Council has decided that we must have far better intelligence of them before we can allow anything to happen. I hope our arresting this group will drive the point home and we won’t need to take more drastic measures. You well realize. Colonel, we can’t have public hysteria either. Hence the secrecy.”

  Time. “Yes, of course, Admiral Fry, no argument. Let’s discuss arrangements, shall we? What precautions have you in mind?”

  —Eventually the conference ended.

  Full Earth weight had resumed as Chinook drove onward. The Wheel had grown in sight enough to notice. When outside communication went on standby, the crew became free to load the intercom with jabber. Brodersen knew he must get them properly organized. The venture would be precarious at best.

  He stood up, stretched and eased, stretched and eased, till the hardest knots were out of his muscles. Hell take hurry he decided. Oh, I’ll brief them and drill them as well as I can. But that’s not awfully well; won’t fill more than an hour or two. First we should rest.

  First I will go back to Pegeen. It could be our last while together.

  XIX

  ON DELICATE THRUSTS of her auxiliary motors, Chinook aligned herself with the open hub of the Wheel. Flame-tinged vapors gushed across night and dissipated. That made possible a rapid bleedoff of the enormous electrostatic potential which shielded her against cosmic rays. When she was well positioned, gliding in on a carefully monitored trajectory, a gyro within her began to turn. Her hull gathered spin until it was rotating slightly faster than the station. By then she was quite near.

  Her people sat still to avoid motion sickness from radial weight variations and Coriolis force. Brodersen drew comfort from the stea
dy tones of the control officer ahead. His cover yarn account for Chinook’s absence of insignia other than a registry number and his flamboyant company emblem, as well as the presence of an energy gun turret counterbalanced by a missile tube. Just the same, they might have grown suspicious—perhaps on Earth, to send a warning hither at the speed of light. But evidently not. His heart slugged, though, his jaws ached from being clenched, sweat trickled cold along his ribs and reeked. More than a quarter of a Terrestrial century had gone by since last he was in combat.

  The spaceship drifted into the hub at a few meters per second. She was very little off center. (That had better be the case. A vessel her size had scant clearance.) Soft-surfaced roller bearings upon them brought Chinook to a halt, bow projecting out the front end, stern and focusing tubes out the rear. Her spin became identical with that of her surroundings at the instant when her main personnel and cargo locks were opposite the correct entry ports. This caused the Wheel to gain angular momentum, but the change was minuscule. After a sufficient number of dockings had significantly affected rotation, a jet in the rim would reduce it.

  Since this visitor had no freight to discharge, only a gangtube reached forth to osculate the exit for the crew. A reserve tank filled it with air. Equalized pressure activated a sensor which flashed a green light and beeped. You may come on through.

  Brodersen ran wooden tongue over sandy lips. Yet otherwise, as of old, he was abruptly cool, too busy to be nervous. “Okay,” he told his men. “Remember our doctrine and signals.” He blew a kiss to Caitlín, who stood behind them, a submachine gun in her clasp. Susanne was elsewhere, linked to her computer and, through it, to the whole ship, which would respond to any command she gave. Limited input restricted her to a few basic actions, but Brodersen was glad of even that much backup.

  Caitlín touched lips to the muzzle of her weapon and dipped it in his direction. He turned from the glory of her. “Good luck,” he wished all his folk, and went ahead.