The Avatar

by Poul Anderson

Centrifugal force, equal to about one-tenth gee, put the airlock under him, but the airlock contained rungs. Beyond its outer valve, the gangtube offered him another set, closely spaced because it was accordion-folded to minimum length. Fluoro-light cast odd shadows among the pleats. He bounded down. Low-weight had a magic of its own.

  Emerging, he took a short fixed ladder to a balcony-like platform intended to help the unloading of baggage. Thence a second ladder went to the deck; but he stopped where he was and looked. This was the moment before he charged or fled.

  Five meters high, a broad corridor arched out of sight on either hand, convex above him, concave below. He saw doors along it which shut off disused facilities. A hatchway led to a spoke, passageway to the rim. The hall was drably painted and carpeted; the draft from ventilator grilles came loud, with a faint smell of oil, a sign of recent neglect.

  Men clustered beneath him. Save for Troxell, who was in business tunic and slacks, they wore coveralls. Each had a bolstered sidearm: slugthrower, not stunner. Brodersen counted. Twenty-one. A measure of optimism lifted in him. The stunt’s worked so far. They’re here, the lot of them, including the communications and control officers, maintenance technics, quartermaster—

  It was what he had gotten the colonel to agree to. Lock his present captives in the auditorium. (Brodersen had ascertained where it was located.) Bring his entire following to meet the newcomers and help them escort the nonhumans (who might conceivably use nonhuman capabilities in attempting a break) to a safe place.

  “Greeting, sir,” Troxell called in English. His bass echoed the least bit between bare panels. “Everything in order?”

  “Aye,” Brodersen said.

  “Come on down.”

  “Wait a minute. I want a man at my back.”

  “Huh?”

  “Can’t be too cautious, can we? Very well, Sergei.”

  Zarubayev appeared, bearing a tommy gun. He sprang to join his captain. The agents showed surprise. Bearded, long-haired, dressed like them, the Russian jarred on their expectations.

  Here we go. Brodersen whipped forth his pistol. Zarubayev’s gun swept downward. “Not a move!” Brodersen shouted. “Hands up before we shoot!”

  “What the hell—” Troxell’s roar cut off when Zarubayev’s weapon chattered. The warning burst whanged nastily off the opposite bulkhead. The warders froze.

  “Hands on heads,” Brodersen commanded. “Quick!—Okay, boys, come on through.”

  Weisenberg and Leino joined him. They bore automatic rifles, and bundled on their backs were more firearms.

  “Stay as you are and nobody will get hurt,” Brodersen said. “But whoever acts funny will die. Is that clear? He will die.”

  Inwardly he begged that that not happen. Those fellows were doing naught but their job. He’d encountered some like them, though, when he truly wore the uniform of the Union, whom he’d helped kill. The commitments on either side had been irreconcilable.

  His glance flicked right and left. Zarubayev was smiling, as if he enjoyed this. Maybe he did. Weisenberg stood tense, his mouth stretched out of shape, though his piece never wavered. Leino’s face was wet and strained, helmeted in dank hair, and he breathed hard, but he didn’t seem frightened either. And me, well, they used to call me the Great Stone Phiz, Brodersen remembered.

  Back at the airlock, Dozsa and Caitlín were his reserves, guarding a line of retreat. He wondered how they looked. It was no picnic carrying out a paramilitary operation with amateurs. He’d assigned posts as thoughtfully as might be. Zarubayev, though Demeter born, had grown restless and spent a few years in the PC, interplanetary corps, before he went to work for Chehalis; he’d seen no fighting but had gotten plenty of drill and maneuver. Leino, raised in the wilderness, was a champion marksman. Weisenberg could make any tool a part of his body, and a weapon is a tool. All three had ample space experience. Dozsa did too, but not with arms and seldom outside a ship. Pegeen—Yes, I did what I could in the time that I had. Whether I gauged well, we’re about to learn.

  Rage racked Troxell’s visage. “Are you crazy?” he yelled. “What is this piracy? Do you imagine you can get away clear you sons o’bitches, you—” He choked.

  “Take it easy,” Brodersen answered. “I told you we mean no harm unless you force us. Listen. Our aim is to free the Emissary crew. They’re being detained under false pretenses. You’ve been hoodwinked. Ira Quick is a crook, and you’ll see him on trial before long.”

  “Prove it!” an agent challenged.

  Brodersen shook his head. “As Antony told Cleopatra, I am not prone to argue. The newscasts will inform you. Today you’ll follow orders.

  “Move over there, by that door marked 14.” He pointed. It was well clear of the spoke entrance. “Bunch together. I want you in easy range of this guy.” He jerked a thumb at Zarubayev. “He’ll watch you while the rest of us go spring the prisoners. Then we’ll disarm you and lock you up. We’ll leave you a hand drill or a hammer and chisel or whatever we figure you can use to break free in an hour or two, after we’re gone. Do you understand? We’d hate to harm anybody. We’re not bandits, we’re trying to set right a terrible wrong that threatens the Union. Consider yourselves under citizen’s arrest, obey us, and everything will be fine. But I repeat, we’ll shoot if we must.

  “Move! Keep those hands on your scalps. Move!”

  They shuffled from him. He was aware of the scuff, of panting and trembling and muttered maledictions, of sweat and glares. “Stop,” he cried. To Leino and Weisenberg: “Proceed.”

  They ignored the ladder and jumped, falling like autumn leaves. He followed. The impact was light in feet and knees. The hatch was two bounds off. It stood open. Brodersen waved his partners through. When they were gone, his free hand grabbed a rail, he swung himself into the companionway.

  A pistol crack whipped him to a halt. Twice. Thrice. It stabbed his eardrums. He twisted about where he stood. The bunch of agents was breaking up like a glob of dropped mercury. Men scampered off or flopped to the deck, drew their guns, and fired. Zarubayev’s raved, a couple of bodies below crumpled, then he reeled back. Blood spouted from his neck and belly.

  Brodersen blazed into the foe. Through him there flashed: A fanatic, a devotee, a hero… must’ve hunkered down a bit when two or three others hid him… yanked his rod out and let fly… knowing he’d almost surely miss, but he’d trigger a fusillade—I’ll never know who it was—

  He heard Troxell bellow, saw the survivors retreat, when Dozsa reached the platform, crouched above Zarubayev, and sprayed the corridor with metal. It wailed as it ricocheted, through the rattle of explosions. Troxell’s party disappeared up the curvature of this world.

  He won’t continue a fire fight under these conditions. Pistols are too inaccurate, especially here… low weight, Coriolis vectors, the sighting wrong—

  Two men sprawled dead, their shapes gone graceless, their features hideous. Three more were badly wounded. One dragged himself away, legs trailing, one stared at a shattered kneecap and whimpered, one sat slumped against a bulkhead, going into shock. Zarubayev’s blood dripped off the platform, slow and scarlet, slow and scarlet. Dozsa snarled at the edge. Caitlín stood by him now, wild of countenance, cursing in a torrent, but swinging her weapon steadily back and forth.

  What Troxell will try to do is block us from freeing the prisoners.

  Brodersen’s paralysis broke. It had only lasted a few seconds. “Hold the fort!” he shouted. “Keep well covered! We’ll be back!” He swarmed along a short circular staircase to the elevator.

  Weisenberg and Leino were there. The senior engineer had obviously had to restrain the junior from rushing up to join the battle, which would have been useless or worse. They were still wrestling. “Let’s go,” Brodersen said, and pushed the button for it.

  The elevator was little more than a steel slab at right angles to a belt which carried it. Three more served the same passageway. Between them, easy to step onto, were ladders, liberally supplied with
resting places. Those were for emergency use. The shaft extended almost nine hundred meters. Staring into its bleakly illuminated depths, Brodersen saw it converge in perspective on an atom-small terminus, and dizziness touched him.

  Weisenberg sagged down onto a bench and stared at the floor. “Eli, Eli,” he mumbled, “that this had to be.”

  Leino, on his feet, gripped the rail as if to crumple it and shook his rifle aloft. His Upland speech came raw: “They fell on their own deeds, they swinehounds.”

  “We’re not done with them yet.” Brodersen’s response was mechanical. Most of him howled, I led Pegeen into this, Pegeen. “I feel sure they hope to catch us at the auditorium.”

  Weisenberg glanced up, instantly alert. “Can they?”

  “Dunno. You heard what I managed to worm out of Troxell concerning the layout here. I didn’t dare push too hard.”

  “Jesu Kriste,” Leino groaned, “this thing crawls.”

  “It’s meant to,” Weisenberg told him. “Change of gravity and air pressure. You need time to adapt. Whichever the enemy takes won’t be any faster. And they retreated spinward from us. The auditorium is antispinward from here. We’ll have a slight jump on them.”

  “Yes, and just the three of us have them outgunned,” Brodersen added. “Sit yourself, Martti. Recover your strength.”

  He set an example, after choosing a rifle from Leino’s load, but his mind gave no cooperation. Pegeen. Lis. Barbara. Mike. The stars.

  Once as a boy, on a sail cruise through the San Juan Islands, he’d developed a galloping earache. There was nothing to do but endure until the drum broke and relieved the satanic pain. That took a couple of hours. This five-minute ride felt longer.

  But then it ended. He led the way in a rush, up a stairwell which continued past the hatch to the deck. For the hundred-odd meters he could see until curvature blocked vision, the corridor lifted before him like a ramp. Though he was never climbing while he pounded through its hollowness, Earth weight dragged at him. Breath surged rough in his gullet.

  A double door beneath a photomural, Armstrong on Luna—He’d expected to shoot out the lock, but the fastening was a mere latch, a steel bar between two brackets that must have been hastily welded on after he called from space. He cast it loose and flung the portal wide.

  Ranked in their hundreds, seats confronted a stage as empty as they were. Nearby, the Emissary explorers rose in amazement. Most were sloppily clad, they blurred together for Brodersen as he sped toward them, until he saw Joelle—Judas priest, her hair is gray, she’s skinny, well, eight years—He saw the alien, chimerical cross between an otter, a lobster, a seal, a duck, a kangaroo, an alligator, a porpoise, no, none of those really, nothing he could name, nothing his vision was ready for, a brown blur—“We’re springing you!” he bawled. “We’re your friends! We’re getting you out of here! Joelle, do you know me?”

  “Freedom, freedom, freedom!” Leino chanted.

  A tall man stepped out of the group. Brodersen recognized Captain Langendijk. Weisenberg ran to meet him. Brodersen and Joelle stopped, stared, held out hands toward each other.

  Weisenberg and Langendijk halted. “This is a rescue,” the engineer said between gasps. “You’re unlawfully held—we’ve come to set you free—make the truth known—we’ve met resistance—may have to fight our way back to our ship—here, arm yourselves—”

  “Dan,” Joelle marveled. Her eyes were enormous, ebon, in the ivory face.

  He collected his wits. “Hurry along,” he wheezed, and caught her by the wrist. She in turn gestured at the nonhuman, which moved toward her.

  A man joined them. “Daniel!” he exclaimed. “Por todos los santos—” Carlos Francisco Miguel Rueda Suárez. He had grown bald.

  A hefty blond woman followed. Brodersen recalled fleetingly the name Frieda von Moltke. The rest milled, bewildered. Brodersen started back up the aisle he was in. It wouldn’t do to get blockaded.

  “Hurry, hurry!” he shouted. Once beyond the doors, Weisenberg and Leino could pass out the stuff they carried. After that, let Troxell beware. His engineers were at Brodersen’s heels, yelling, waving. Still most of the captives dithered. Langendijk urged them on, but they weren’t soldiers, nor bound by the heart to these wild invaders. Clamor and weapons roused an instinct to hide. They needed a few minutes for comprehension.

  Brodersen re-entered the corridor. His right hand gripped his rifle, his left Joelle. The alien tagged close behind her. Leino came immediately after. Weisenberg paused in the doorway to beckon at the laggards. Von Moltke took the chance to work a tommy gun loose from the bundle on his back. Rueda Suárez started to do likewise.

  Down the bend of the deck came Troxell and his men. Their front rank carried by the legs a couple of large tables, tops facing forward—shields.

  Brodersen could never afterward quite remember what happened. A new fight erupted. He and those with him backed down the hall; they zigzagged, they knelt, they dropped, they ran further, they kept shooting, and somehow none of them was hit. Somehow the enemy was gone when they reached the next spoke.

  He guessed their fire had been too heavy, allowing pistols too little chance to be effective. Or the agents had run low on ammo. Or both. Troxell would have kept enough to hold trapped the Emissary people who’d not moved out at once. A return to the auditorium would be suicide.

  Joelle shook Brodersen back to full awareness. “Listen, Dan, we must go to a particular storeroom. Fidelio—the Betan the alien here can’t eat our food. We have supplies for him.”

  “Huh?” he said. “No. Too risky.”

  “Not if we hurry.” Rueda snapped. “Almighty God, Daniel, Fidelio’s our link to his entire race!”

  “Okay,” Brodersen decided. “Lead us. On the double.”

  The storeroom wasn’t far off, nor was it locked, and the rations were packed handily for carrying, apparently mostly freeze-dried. Burdened, the party sought the nearest shaft, piled on the elevator, and rode it to the hub.

  They said almost nothing on the way. They were stunned. Brodersen counted: himself, Joelle, the alien, Weisenberg, Rueda, Leino, von Moltke. Four saved: well, that was plenty, if they could bear witness at Earth. If not, he’d be footnoted in history as a desperado who got killed in a raid he attempted for an obscure purpose.

  The elevator delivered them. They sped down a hall that was sharply rounded. There was the platform. There stood Pegeen, Dozsa, Pegeen, Pegeen. She cheered. Brodersen did not see Zarubayev, who must have been carried inboard. She could have done that in this scant weight. Did he live? That question must wait its turn. Troxell would soon find a course of action. They’d better be gone before then.

  Brodersen’s company scrambled up the ladder and into the ship, followed by him. He made for the nearest intercom unit. “Su, get us the hell on our way,” he rasped.

  Valves closed. The engine awoke. At low acceleration, Chinook withdrew from the machinery around her and regained open space.

  Fingers plucked Brodersen’s sleeve. He looked about and saw von Moltke. “If you please, Mr. Captain,” she said with a hoarse accent, “I hear your gunner is a casualty. I hear too your armament is like on Emissary.”

  “Yes,” he said, stupid in his exhaustion, “yes, it is.”

  “I was a gunner in Emissary” she reminded him. “I can check details by your engineers. Let me shoot out the transmission dishes on the Wheel and the ship. Best I disable the ship too. Then they cannot tell Earth about us.” As he hesitated: “I doubt they haff called, but they will soon unless we prefent. If we prefent, no harm to them. They must sit quiet till somebody worries and sends a speedster to check. Meanwhile, howeffer, you are carrying out what plan you haff. Correct?”

  “All right,” he said, “I authorize. Coordinate it with Phil, Chief Engineer Weisenberg, that is, and with our linker, Granville,” while he longed for nothing but Caitlín.

  Minutes later, a slicing energy beam made the San Geronimo Wheel mute. It did no further damage; but a
missile left Emissary a whirl of fragments. That hurt.

  Two more felonies, Brodersen thought. We’d better build us a damn good case for deserving an executive pardon.

  Never mind now. The immediate objective is just to survive.

  No. Above and before that, sleep. He barely managed to put affairs temporarily in order and start the ship on a course he deemed proper before he stumbled to bed.

  Sergei had died. Caitlín held Brodersen close.

  XX

  AGAIN AT AN EARTH GRAVITY, Chinook made for the T machine. On the route prescribed, the trip would take six Earth days.

  “Our best bet is to conform for the time being, while we try to work out a strategy,” Brodersen had explained. “Else they’ll come after us, and a watchship has more legs than we do. We for sure can’t outrun a tracker missile.”

  Von Moltke had probably saved him and his following from that, his mind added. News of his assault would have provided the perfect excuse to order this vessel blown out of existence. That would not by itself relieve Quick and company of the embarrassment created by the Emissary travelers left behind, not to mention whatever questions were occurring to Troxell’s outfit; but presumably they could cope. They would certainly try to cope, and even failure on their part might prove lethal.

  As was, while Chinook remained at large, bearing the possibility of exposing the whole affair, Langendijk’s faction should be safe from everything worse than continued imprisonment. Indeed, from a tactical viewpoint it was good that Brodersen had not succeeded in releasing them. Now the cause of—liberty?—did not have all its eggs in one highly breakable basket. Half by chance, his operation had worked well.

  No. It didn’t. Men are hurt, men are dead. The agents among them are bad enough. I can live with that—their fighting us was almost criminally reckless; maybe being penned up for weeks drove them a little crazy—but Sergei is dead, my own man, my friend.

  He had awakened beside Caitlín, for a moment conscious only of her. Then the memory rolled over him. His shuddering breath roused her, to embrace and murmur to him for a long while. “It’s a war we’re in, Daniel, my darling, and men have ever fallen in war. Yours is just, a strife like what they waged against tyrants and foreign overlords again and again on Earth, and us today the happier for it. I knew Sergei too, aye, better than I’ve told you. He joyed in the universe; but if he must leave it, proud would he be that this was why.” Thus did she slowly give him back his heart, until he could rise and go about his work.