Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra

by Poul Anderson

  "You thought those were mere Ymirite clients, did you not?" pursued Flandry. "Think, though. How do you know any Ymirites actually were on Ardazir? They would have to stay inside a force-bubble ship all the time. Was anything inside that ship, ever, except a remote-control panel? With maybe a dummy Ymirite? It would not be hard to fool you that way. There is nothing mysterious about vessels of that type, they are not hard to build, it is only that races like ours normally have no use for such elaborate additional apparatus—negagrav fields offer as much protection against material particles, and nothing protects against a nuclear shell which has made contact.

  "Or, even if a few Ymirites did visit Ardazir... how do you know they were in charge? How can you be sure that their oxygen-breathing ‘vassals' were not the real masters?"

  Svantozik laid back his lip and rasped through fangs: "You flop bravely in the net, Captain. But a mere hypothesis—"

  "Of course I am hypothesizing." Flandry stubbed out his cigarette. His eyes clashed so hard with Svantozik's, flint gray striking steel gray, that it was as if sparks flew. "You have a scientific culture, so you know the simpler hypothesis is to be preferred. Well, I can explain the facts much more simply than by some cumbersome business of Ymir deciding to meddle in the affairs of dwarf planets useless to itself. Because Ymir and Terra have never had any serious trouble. We have no interest in each other! They know no terrestroid race could ever become a serious menace to them. They can hardly detect a difference between Terran and Merseian, either in outward appearance or in mentality. Why should they care who wins?"

  "I do not try to imagine why," said Svantozik stubbornly. "My brain is not based on ammonium compounds. The fact is, however—"

  "That a few individual Ymirites, here and there have performed hostile acts," said Flandry. "I was the butt of one myself. Since it is not obvious why they would, except as agents of their government, we have assumed that that was the reason. Yet all the time another motive was staring us in the face. I knew it. It is the sort of thing I have caused myself, in this dirty profession of ours, time and again. I have simply lacked proof. I hope to get that proof soon.

  "When you cannot bribe an individual—blackmail him!"

  Svantozik jerked. He raised himself from elbows to hands, his nostrils quivered, and he said roughly: "How? Can you learn any sordid secrets in the private life of a hydrogen breather? I shall not believe you even know what that race would consider a crime."

  "I do not," said Flandry. "Nor does it matter. There is one being who could find out. He can read any mind at close range, without preliminary study, whether the subject is naturally telepathic or not. I think he must be sensitive to some underlying basic life energy our science does not yet suspect. We invented a mind-screen on Terra, purely for his benefit. He was in the Solar System, on both Terra and Jupiter, for weeks. He could have probed the inmost thoughts of the Ymirite guide. If Horx himself was not vulnerable, someone close to Horx may have been. Aycharaych, the telepath, is an oxygen breather. It gives me the cold shudders to imagine what it must feel like, receiving Ymirite thoughts in a protoplasmic brain. But he did it. How many other places has he been, for how many years? How strong a grip does he have on the masters of Urdahu?"

  Svantozik lay wholly still. The stars flamed at his back, in all their icy millions.

  "I say," finished Flandry, "that your people have been mere tools of Merseia. This was engineered over a fifteen-year period. Or even longer, perhaps. I do not know how old Aycharaych is. You were unleashed against Terra at a precisely chosen moment—when you confronted us with the choice of losing the vital Syrax Cluster or being robbed and ruined in our own sphere. You, personally, as a sensible hunter, would cooperate with Ymir, which you understood would never directly threaten Ardazir, and which would presumably remain allied with your people after the war, thus protecting you forever. But dare you cooperate with Merseia? It must be plain to you that the Merseians are as much your rivals as Terra could ever be. Once Terra is broken, Merseia will make short work of your jerry-built empire. I say to you, Svantozik, that you have been the dupe of your overlords, and that they have been the helpless, traitorous tools of Aycharaych. I think they steal off into space to get their orders from a Merseian gang—which I think I shall go and hunt!"

  XVII

  As the two flitters approached the nebula, Flandry heard the imprisoned Ardazirho howl. Even Svantozik, who had been here before and claimed hard agnosticism, raised his ruff and licked dry lips. To red-blind eyes, it must indeed be horrible, watching that enormous darkness grow until it had gulped all the stars and only instruments revealed anything of the absolute night outside. And ancient myths will not die: within every Urdahu subconscious, this was still the Gate of the Dead. Surely that was one reason the Merseians had chosen it for the lair from which they controlled the destiny of Ardazir. Demoralizing awe would make the Packmasters still more their abject puppets.

  And then, on a practical level, those who were summoned—to report progress and receive their next instructions—were blind. What they did not see, they could not let slip, to someone who might start wondering about discrepancies.

  Flandry himself saw sinister grandeur: great banks and clouds of blackness, looming in utter silence on every side of him, gulfs and canyons and steeps, picked out by the central red glow. He knew, objectively, that the nebula was near-vacuum even in its densest portions: only size and distance created that picture of caverns beyond caverns. But his eyes told him that he sailed into Shadow Land, under walls and roofs larger than planetary systems, and his own tininess shook him.

  The haze thickened as the boats plunged inward. So too did the light, until at last Flandry stared into the clotted face of the infra-sun. It was a broad blurred disc, deep crimson, streaked with spots and bands of sable, hazing at the edges into impossibly delicate coronal arabesques. Here, in the heart of the nebula, dust and gas were condensing, a new star was taking shape.

  As yet it shone simply by gravitational energy, heating as it contracted. Most of its titanic mass was still ghostly tenuous. But already its core density must be approaching quantum collapse, a central temperature of megadegrees. In a short time (a few million years more, when man was bones and not even the wind remembered him) atomic fires would kindle and a new radiance light this sky.

  Svantozik looked at the instruments of his own flitter. "We orient ourselves by these three cosmic radio sources," he said, pointing. His voice fell flat in a stretched quietness. "When we are near the... headquarters... we emit our call signal and a regular ground-control beam brings us in."

  "Good." Flandry met the alien eyes, half frightened and half wrathful, with a steady compassionate look. "You know what you must do when you have landed."

  "Yes." The lean grim head lifted. "I shall not betray anyone again. You have my oath, Captain. I would not have broken troth with the Packmasters either, save that I think you are right and they have sold Urdahu."

  Flandry nodded and clapped the Ardazirho's shoulder. It trembled faintly beneath his hand. He felt Svantozik was sincere, though he left two armed humans aboard the prize, just to make certain the sincerity was permanent. Of course, Svantozik might sacrifice his own life to bay a warning—or he might have lied about there being only one installation in the whole nebula—but you had to take some risks.

  Flandry crossed back to his own vessel. The boarding tube was retracted. The two boats ran parallel for a time.

  Great unborn planets. It had been a slim clue, and Flandry would not have been surprised had it proved a false lead. But... it has been known for many centuries that when a rotating mass has condensed sufficiently, planets will begin to take shape around it.

  By the dull radiance of the swollen sun, Flandry saw his goal. It was, as yet, little more than a dusty, gassy belt of stones, strung out along an eccentric orbit in knots of local concentration, like beads. Gradually, the forces of gravitation, magnetism, and spin were bringing it together; ice and primeval hydrocar
bons, condensed in the bitter cold on solid particles, made them unite on colliding, rather than shatter or bounce. Very little of the embryo world was visible: only the largest nucleus, a rough asteroidal mass, dark, scarred, streaked here and there by ice, crazily spinning; the firefly dance of lesser meteors, from mountains to dust motes, which slowly rained upon it.

  Flandry placed himself in the turret by Chives. "As near as I can tell," he said, "this is going to be a terrestroid planet."

  "Shall we leave a note for its future inhabitants, sir?" asked the Shalmuan, dead-pan.

  Flandry's bark of laughter came from sheer tension. He added slowly, "It does make you wonder, though, what might have happened before Terra was born—"

  Chives held up a hand. The red light pouring in turned his green skin a hideous color. "I think that is the Merseian beam, sir."

  Flandry glanced at the instruments. "Check. Let's scoot."

  He didn't want the enemy radar to show two craft. He let Svantozik's dwindle from sight while he sent the Hooligan leaping around the cluster. "We'd better come in about ten kilometers from the base, to be safely below their horizon," he said. "Do you have them located, Chives?"

  "I think so, sir. The irregularity of the central asteroid confuses identification, but.... Let me read the course, sir, while you bring us in."

  Flandry took the controls. This would come as close to seat-of-the-pants piloting as was ever possible in space. Instruments and robots, faster and more precise than live flesh could ever hope to be, would still do most of the work; but in an unknown, shifting region like this, there must also be a brain, continuously making the basic decisions. Shall we evade this rock swarm at the price of running that ice cloud?

  He activated the negagrav screens and swooped straight for his target. No local object would have enough speed to overcome that potential and strike the hull. But sheer impact on the yielding force field could knock a small vessel galley west, dangerously straining its metal.

  Against looming nebular curtains, Flandry saw two pitted meteors come at him. They rolled and tumbled, like iron dice. He threw in a double vector, killing some forward velocity while he applied a "downward" acceleration. The Hooligan slid past. A jagged, turning cone, five kilometers long, lay ahead. Flandry whipped within meters of its surface. Something went by, so quickly his eyes registered nothing but an enigmatic firestreak. Something else struck amidships. The impact rattled his teeth together. A brief storm of frozen gases, a comet, painted the viewscreens with red-tinged blizzard.

  Then the main asteroid swelled before him. Chives called out figures. The Hooligan slipped over the whirling rough surface. "Here!" cried Chives. Flandry slammed to a halt. "Sir," added the Shalmuan. Flandry eased down with great care. Silence fell. Blackness lowered beyond the hull. They had landed.

  "Stand by," said Flandry. Chives' green face grew mutinous. "That's an order," he added, knowing how he hurt the other being, but without choice in the matter. "We may possibly need a fast get-away. Or a fast pursuit. Or, if everything goes wrong, someone to report back to Walton."

  "Yes, sir." Chives could scarcely be heard. Flandry left him bowed over the control panel.

  His crew, minus the two humans with Svantozik, were already in combat armor. A nuclear howitzer was mounted on the Donarrian's centauroid back, a man astride to fire it. The pieces of a rocket launcher slanted across the two Gorzunis' double shoulders. The Scothanian cried a war chant and swung his pet wrecking bar so the air whistled. The remaining five men formed a squad in one quick metallic clash.

  Flandry put on his own suit and led the way out.

  He stood in starless night. Only the wan glow from detector dials, and the puddle of light thrown in vacuum by a flashbeam, showed him that his eyes still saw. But as they adjusted, he could make out the very dimmest of cloudy red above him, and blood-drop sparks where satellite meteors caught sunlight. The gravity underfoot was so low that even in armor he was near weightlessness. Yet his inertia was the same. It felt like walking beneath some infinite ocean.

  He checked the portable neutrino tracer. In this roil of nebular matter, all instruments were troubled, the dust spoke in every spectrum, a million-year birth cry. But there was clearly a small nuclear-energy plant ahead. And that could only belong to one place.

  "Join hands," said Flandry. "We don't want to wander from each other. Radio silence, of course. Let's go."

  They bounded over the invisible surface. It was irregular, often made slick by frozen gas. Once there was a shudder in the ground, and a roar travelling through their bootsoles. Some giant boulder had crashed.

  Then the sun rose, vast and vague on the topplingly near horizon, and poured ember light across ice and iron. It climbed with visible speed. Flandry's gang released hands and fell into approach tactics: dodge from pit to crag, wait, watch, make another long flat leap. In their black armor, they were merely a set of moving shadows among many.

  The Merseian dome came into view. It was a blue hemisphere, purple in this light, nestled into a broad shallow crater. On the heights around there squatted negafield generators, to maintain a veil of force against the stony rain. It had been briefly turned off to permit Svantozik's landing: the squat black flitter sat under a scarp, two kilometers from the dome. A small fast warcraft—pure Merseian, the final proof—berthed next to the shelter, for the use of the twenty or so beings whom it would accommodate. The ship's bow gun was aimed at the Ardazirho boat. Routine precaution, and there were no other defenses. What had the Merseians to fear?

  Flandry crouched on the rim and tuned his radio. Svantozik's beam dispersed enough for him to listen to the conversation: "—no, my lords, this visit is on my own initiative. I encountered a situation on Vixen so urgent that I felt it should be made known to you at once, rather than delaying to stop at Ardazir—" Just gabble, bluffing into blindness, to gain time for Flandry's attack.

  The man checked his crew. One by one, they made the swab-O sign. He led them forward. The force field did not touch ground; they slithered beneath it, down the crater wall, and wormed towards the dome. The rough, shadow-blotted rock gave ample cover.

  Flandry's plan was simple. He would sneak up close to the place and put a low-powered shell through. Air would gush out, the Merseians would die, and he could investigate their papers at leisure. With an outnumbered band, and so much urgency, he could not afford to be chivalrous.

  "—thus you see, my lords, it appeared to me the Terrans—"

  "All hands to space armor! We are being attacked!"

  The shout ripped at Flandry's earphones. It had been in the Merseian Prime language, but not a Merseian voice. Somehow, incredibly, his approach had been detected.

  "The Ardazirho is on their side! Destroy him!"

  Flandry hit the ground. An instant later, it rocked. Through all the armor, he felt a sickening belly blow. It seemed as if he saw the brief thermonuclear blaze through closed lids and a sheltering arm.

  Without air for concussion, the shot only wiped out Svantozik's boat. Volatilized iron whirled up, condensed, and sleeted down again. The asteroid shuddered to quiescence. Flandry leaped up. There was a strange dry weeping in his throat. He knew, with a small guiltiness, that he mourned more for Svantozik of the Janneer Ya than he did for the two humans who had died.

  "—attacking party is about sixteen degrees north of the sunrise point, 300 meters from the dome—"

  The gun turret of the Merseian warship swivelled about.

  The Donarrian was already a-gallop. The armored man on his back clung tight, readying his weapon. As the enemy gun found its aim, the nuclear howitzer spoke.

  That was a lesser blast. But the sun was drowned in its noiseless blue-white hell-dazzle. Half the spaceship went up in a fiery cloud, a ball which changed from white to violet to rosy red, swelled away and was lost in the nebular sky. The stern tottered, a shaken stump down which molten steel crawled. Then, slowly, it fell. It struck the crater floor and rolled earthquaking to the cliffs, where
it vibrated and was still.

  Flandry opened his eyes again to cold wan light. "Get at them!" he bawled.

  The Donarrian loped back. The Gorzuni were crouched, their rocket launcher assembled in seconds, its chemical missile aimed at the dome. "Shoot!" cried Flandry. It echoed in his helmet. The cosmic radio noise buzzed and mumbled beneath his command.

  Flame and smoke exploded at the point of impact. A hole gaped in the dome, and air rushed out. Its moisture froze; a thin fog overlay the crater. Then it began to settle, but with slowness in this gravitational field, so that mists whirled around Flandry's crew as they plunged to battle.

  The Merseians came swarming forth. There were almost a score, Flandry saw, who had had time to throw on armor after being warned. They crouched big and black in metal, articulated tail-plates lashing their boots with rage. Behind faceless helmets, the heavy mouths must be drawn into snarls. Their hoarse calls boomed over the man's earphones.

  He raced forward. The blast from their sidearms sheeted over him. He felt heat glow through insulation, his nerves shrank from it. Then he was past the concerted barrage.

  A dinosaurian shape met him. The Merseian held a blaster, focused to needle beam. Its flame gnawed at Flandry's cuirass. The man's own energy gun spat—straight at the other weapon. The Merseian roared and tried to shelter his gun with an armored hand. Flandry held his beam steady. The battle gauntlet began to glow. The Merseian dropped his blaster with a shriek of anguish. He made a low-gravity leap towards his opponent, whipped around, and slapped with his tail.

  The blow smashed at Flandry. He went tumbling across the ground, fetched against the dome with a force that stunned him, and sagged there. The Merseian closed in. His mighty hands snatched after the Terran's weapon. Flandry made a judo break, yanking his wrist out between the Merseian's fingers and thumb. He kept his gun arm in motion, till he poked the barrel into the enemy's eye slit. He pulled the trigger. The Merseian staggered back. Flandry followed, close in, evading all frantic attempts to break free of him. A second, two seconds, three, four, then his beam had pierced the thick super-glass. The Merseian fell, gruesomely slow.