“Not many are still sane,” Belug told him deliberately. Rusch puffed smoke and made no reply.
“If I give in on the one item,” said Belug, “I have a right to test your sincerity by the other. We keep our prisoners.”
Rusch’s own face had gone quite pale. The room grew altogether silent.
“Very well,” he said after a long time. “Let it be so.”
***
Without a word, Major Othkar Graaborg led his company into the black cruiser. The words came from the spaceport, where police held off a hooting, hissing, rock-throwing mob. It was the first time in history that Norron folk had stoned their own soldiers.
His men tramped stolidly behind him, up the gangway and through the corridors. Among the helmets and packs and weapons, racketing boots and clashing body armor, their faces were lost, they were an army without faces.
Graaborg followed a Kolreshite ensign, who kept looking back nervously at these hereditary foes, till they reached the bunkroom. It had been hastily converted from a storage hold, and was scant cramped comfort for a thousand men.
“All right, boys,” he said when the door had closed on his guide. “Make yourselves at home.”
They got busy, opening packs, spreading bedrolls on bunks. Immediately thereafter, they started to assemble heavy machine guns, howitzers, even a nuclear blaster.
“You, there!” The accented voice squawked indignantly from a loudspeaker in the wall. “I see that. I got video. You not put guns together here.”
Graaborg looked up from his inspection of a live fission shell. “Obscenity you,” he said pleasantly. “Who are you, anyway?”
“I executive officer. I tell captain.”
“Go right ahead. My orders say that according to treaty, as long as we stay in our assigned part of the ship, we’re under our own discipline. If your captain doesn’t like it, let him come down here and talk to us.” Graaborg ran a thumb along the edge of his bayonet. A wolfish chorus from his men underlined the invitation.
No one pressed the point. The cruiser lumbered into space, rendezvoused with her task force, and went into nonspatial drive. For several days, the Norron army contingent remained in its den, more patient with such stinking quarters than the Kolreshites could imagine anyone being. Nevertheless, no spaceman ventured in there; meals were fetched at the galley by Norron squads.
Graaborg alone wandered freely about the ship. He was joined by Commander von Brecca of Ostarik, the head of the Double Kingdom’s naval liaison on this ship: a small band of officers and ratings, housed elsewhere. They conferred with the Kolreshite officers as the necessity arose, on routine problems, rehearsal of various operations to be performed when Earth was reached a month hence—but they did not mingle socially. This suited their hosts.
The fact is, the Kolreshites were rather frightened of them. A spaceman does not lack courage, but he is a gentleman among warriors. His ship either functions well, keeping him clean and comfortable, or it does not function at all and he dies quickly and mercifully. He fights with machines, at enormous ranges.
The ground soldier, muscle in mud, whose ultimate weapon is whetted steel in bare hands, has a different kind of toughness.
Two weeks after departure, Graaborg’s wrist chronometer showed a certain hour. He was drilling his men in full combat rig, as he had been doing every “day” in spite of the narrow quarters.
“Ten-SHUN!” The order flowed through captains, lieutenants, and sergeants; the bulky mass of men crashed to stillness.
Major Graaborg put a small pocket amplifier to his lips. “All right, lads,” he said casually, “assume gas masks, radiation shields, all gun squads to weapons. Now let’s clean up this ship.”
He himself blew down the wall with a grenade.
Being perhaps the most thoroughly trained soldiers in the universe, the Norron men paused for only one amazed second. Then they cheered, with death and Hell in their voices, and crowded at his heels.
Little resistance was met until Graaborg picked up von Brecca’s naval command, the crucial ones, who could sail and fight the ship. The Kolreshites were too dumfounded. Thereafter the nomads rallied and fought gamely. Graaborg was handicapped by not having been able to give his men a battle plan. He split up his forces and trusted to the intelligence of the noncoms.
His faith was not misplaced, though the ship was in poor condition by the time the last Kolreshite had been machine-gunned.
Graaborg himself had used a bayonet, with vast satisfaction.
***
M’Katze Unduma entered the office in the Witch Tower. “You sent for me, Your Lordship?” he asked. His voice was as cold and bitter as the gale outside.
“Yes. Please be seated.” Margrave Hans von Thoma Rusch looked tired. “I have some news for you.”
“What news? You declared war on Earth two weeks ago. Your army can’t have reached her yet.” Unduma leaned over the desk. “Is it that you’ve found transportation to send me home?”
“Somewhat better news, your excellency.” Rusch leaned over and tuned a telescreen. A background of clattering robots and frantically busy junior officers came into view.
Then a face entered the screen, young, and with more life in it than Unduma had ever before seen on this sullen planet. “Central Data headquarters—oh, yes, Your Lordship.” Boyishly, against all rules: “We’ve got her! The Bheoka just called in…she’s ours!”
“Hmm-mm-mmm. Good.” Rusch glanced at Unduma. “Bheoka is the super-dreadnought accompanying Task Force Two. Carry on with the news.”
“Yes, sir. She’s already reducing the units we failed to capture. Admiral Sorrens estimates he’ll control Force Two entirely in another hour. Bulletin just came in from Force Three. Admiral Gundrup was killed in the fighting, but Vice Admiral Smitt has assumed command and reports three-fourths of the ships are in our hands. He’s delaying fire until he sees how it goes aboard the rest. Also–”
“Never mind,” said Rusch. “I’ll get the comprehensive report later. Remind Staff that for the next few hours all command decisions had better be made by officers on the spot. After that, when we see what we’ve got, broader tactics can be prepared. If some extreme emergency doesn’t arise, it’ll be a few hours before I can get over to HQ.”
“Yes, sir. Sir, I…may I say–” So might the young Norron have addressed a god.
“All right, son, you’ve said it.” Rusch turned off the screen and looked at Unduma. “Do you realize what‘s happening?”
The ambassador sat down; his knees seemed all at once to have melted. “What have you done?” It was like a stranger speaking.
“What I planned quite a few years ago,” said the Margrave.
He reached into his desk and brought forth a bottle. “Here, your excellency. I think we could both use a swig. Authentic Terrestrial Scotch. I’ve saved it for this day.”
But there was no glory leaping in him. It is often thus: you reach a dream and you only feel how tired you are.
Unduma let the liquid fire slide down his throat.
“You understand, don’t you?” said Rusch. “For seven centuries, the Elephant and the Whale fought, without being able to get at each other’s vitals. I made this alliance against Earth solely to get our men aboard their ships. But a really large operation like that can’t be faked. It has to be genuine—the agreements, the preparations, the propaganda, everything. Only a handful of officers, men who could be trusted to…to infinity”—his voice cracked, and Unduma thought of the war prisoners sacrificed, of the hideous casualties in the steel corridors of spaceships, of Norron gunners destroying Kolreshite vessels and the survivors of the Norron detachments that failed to capture them—“only a few could be told, and then only at the last instant. For the rest, I relied on the quality of our troops. They’re good lads, every one of them, and therefore adaptable. They’re especially adaptable when suddenly told to fall on the men they’d most like to kill.”
He tilted the bottle afresh. “It’s p
roving expensive,” he said in a slurred, hurried tone. “It will cost us as many casualties, no doubt, as ten years of ordinary war. But if I hadn’t done it, there could have easily been another seven hundred years of war. Couldn’t there? Couldn’t there have been? As it is, we’ve already broken the spine of the Kolreshite fleet. She has plenty of ships yet, to be sure, she is still a menace, but she's crippled. I hope Earth will see fit to join us. Between them, Earth and Norstad-Ostarik can finish off Kolresh in a hurry. And after all, Kolresh did declare war on you, had every intention of destroying you. If you won’t help, well, we can end it by ourselves, now that the fleet is broken. But I hope you’ll join us.”
“I don’t know,” said Unduma. He was still wobbling in a new cosmos. “We’re not a…a hard people.”
“You ought to be,” said Rusch. “Hard enough, anyway, to win a voice for yourselves in what’s going to happen around Polaris. Important frontier, Polaris.”
“Yes,” said Unduma slowly. “There is that. It won’t cause any hosannahs in our streets, but…yes, I think we will continue the war, as your allies, if only to prevent you from massacring the Kolreshites. They can be rehabilitated, you know.”
“I doubt that,” grunted Rusch. “But it’s a detail. At the very least, they’ll never be allowed weapons again.” He raised a sardonic brow. “I suppose we, too, can be rehabilitated, once you get your peace groups and psychotechs out here. No doubt you’ll manage to demilitarize us and turn us into good plump democrats. All right, Unduma, send your Civilizing missionaries. But permit me to give thanks that I won’t live to see their work completed!”
The Earthman nodded, rather coldly. You couldn’t blame Rusch for treachery, callousness, and arrogance—he was what his history had made him—but he remained unpleasant company for a Civilized man. “I shall communicate with my government at once, Your Lordship, and recommend a provisional alliance, the terms to be settled later,” he said. “I will report back to you as soon as…ah, where will you be?”
“How should I know?” Rusch got out of his chair.
The winter night howled at his back. “I have to convene the Ministry, and make a public telecast, and get over to Staff, and—no. The devil with it! If you need me inside the next few hours, I’ll be at Sorgenlos on Ostarik. But the matter had better be urgent!”
AMONG THIEVES BACKSTORY
by Karen Anderson
Poul was a fan as well as a pro in the early years. He had been active in the Minneapolis Fantasy Society for some years before 1947 and his first sale, and on moving to Berkeley in 1953 for our marriage he naturally followed me into the Elves’, Gnomes’, and Little Men’s Science Fiction, Chowder and Marching Society. (I’d come a few months earlier from Maryland myself and was active in the Washington Science Fiction Association.) We both threw ourselves into everything they did, including committee membership for the 1954 Worldcon and 1956 Westercon.
Poul had been so popular in the MFS that several members followed him to Berkeley; notably the Larsons and the Rostomilys. Their games were what started me on poker. We were very broke and we played for match-sticks at a tenth of a cent: I remember one lucky night when I won all of fourteen cents. That was when a copy of ASF could be had for a quarter.
But it was luck. I hadn’t developed the skills, especially while drinking, that came later in the Eastbay poker circle that included Rog and Honey Phillips, Mick McComas, Reg Bretnor, and notably Tony Boucher. And I certainly hadn’t learned by the convention when Poul and I were in that game with Hans . . .
What convention? Since the story that arose ran in ASF in 1957, I’d guess it was the ’56 Westercon, at the Leamington in Oakland. At any rate, one night we’d gone drinking late from one fan party to another until we reached one where a small group including Hans were playing penny-ante poker amongst a lot of talking. I don’t know how we first met Hans. Poul may have known him from past days, they might have struck up a correspondence through a magazine, or we may have met him first at this convention.
Penny-ante . . . we could stand that. We sat in. Besides playing, Poul and Hans did a lot of talking. Eventually I ran out of change and didn’t want to break into a dollar, and Poul thought it was time for bed. The other players, including Hans, wanted us to stay. He wanted to give me something to go on with, but Poul demurred. So Hans offered us an exchange. “Put my name in a story,” he said, “and I’ll stake Karen to a dollar’s worth of pennies.”
And so it was agreed:
Poul was to write a story with him as a lead character who was a thoroughgoing villain. Moreover, his name was to be given in full: Hans von Thoma Rusch.
Hence Poul’s idea of a villainous character.
Editor’s Introduction to:
“FLY-BY-NIGHT”
by Larry Niven
Larry Niven has been building the Known Space universe for fifty years. He started when science fiction was in a phase known as New Wave, concentrating on character development over story. Niven wrote imaginative hard science fiction, and his stories restored that to favor, largely with stories of Known Space. When our friend, editor, and publisher Jim Baen suggested that Larry open up Known Space for others to write stories in, he initially declined, then thought it over and allowed contributions to one period—the Man/Kzin Wars.
The Kzinti were already known to readers, and in fact had inspired the tiger warrior Kilrathi in the Wing Commander universe; the series took off, and a number of well known writers contributed to it. The series continues to this day.
The first of the Man/Kzin wars took place in a universe in which neither race had learned faster than light travel, and continued long after both Kzinti and humanity learned how to travel faster than light. There were four wars, each deadly, and each of which threatened the existence of the human race. This story takes place after the wars ended in a complicated treaty called the Covenant, but could start again at any time.
Most Kzinti owe allegiance to the Patriarchy. They have many customs. One is that they must earn a name; otherwise they have only designations. Fly-By-Night belongs to a very unusual group of Kzinti with a different history, but he is Kzin.
Human customs have also changed, as we developed near immortality and star drives. The galaxy is a big place, and there may even be ways to get outside it. The universe is very large. The Covenant allows Man and Kzin to live in peace.
The Covenant may not last forever. Perhaps there will be war.
“FLY-BY-NIGHT”
by Larry Niven
The windows in Odysseus had been skylights. The doors had become hatches. I ran down the corridor looking at numbers. Seven days we’d been waiting for aliens to appear in the ship’s lobby, and nothing!
Nothing until now. I felt good. Excited. I ran full tilt, not from urgency but because I could. I’d expected to reach Home as frozen meat in one of these Ice Class cargo modules.
I reached 36, stooped and punched the steward’s bell. Just as the door swung down, I remembered not to grin.
A nightmare answered.
It looked like an octopus underwater, except for the vest. At the roots of five eel’s-tail segments each four feet long, eyes looked up at me. We never see Jotoki often enough to get used to them. The limbs clung to a ladder that would cross the cabin ceiling when the gravity generators were on.
I said, “Legal Entity Paradoxical, I have urgent business with Legal Entity Fly-By-Night.”
The Jotok started to say, “Business with my master—” when its master appeared below it on the ladder.
This was the nightmare I’d been expecting: five to six hundred pounds of orange and sienna fur, sienna commas marking the face, needle teeth just showing points, looking up at me out of a pit. Fly-By-Night wore a kind of rope vest, pockets all over it, and buttons or corks on the points of all ten of its finger claws.
“—is easily conducted in virtual fashion,” the Jotok concluded.
What I’d been about to say went clean out of my head. I asked, “Why
the buttons?”
Lips pulled back over a forest of carnivore teeth, LE Fly-By-Night demanded, “Who are you to question me?”
“Martin Wallace Graynor,” I said. Conditioned reflex.
The reading I’d done suggested that a killing snarl would leave a Kzin mute, able to express himself only by violence. Indeed, his lips wanted to retract, and it turned his Interworld speech mushy. “LE Graynor, by what authority do you interrogate me?”
My antic humor ran away with me. I patted my pockets elaborately.“Got it somewhere–”
“Shall we look for it?”
“I–”
“Written on your liver?”
“I have an idea. I could stop asking impertinent questions?”
“A neat solution.” Silently the door swung up.
Ring.
The Jotok may well have been posing himself between me and his enraged master, who was still wearing buttons on his claws, and smiling. I said, “Don’t kill me. The Captain has dire need of you and wishes that you will come to the main workstation in all haste.”
The Kzin leapt straight up with a half turn to get past the Jotok and pulled himself into the corridor. I did a pretty good backward jump myself.
Fly-By-Night asked, “Do you know why the Captain might make such a request?”
“I can guess. Haste is appropriate.”
“Had you considered using the intercom, or virtual mail?”
“Captain Preiss may be afraid they can listen to our electronics.”
“They?”
“Kzinti spacecraft. The Captain hopes you can identify them and help negotiate.”
He stripped off the corks and dropped them in a pocket. His lips were all right now. “This main workstation, would it be a control room or bridge?”
“I’ll guide you.”
***
The Kzin was twisted over by some old injury. His balance was just a bit off. His furless pink tail lashed back and forth, for balance or for rage. The tip knocked both walls, toc toc toc. I’d be whipped bloody if I tried to walk beside him. I stayed ahead.
There Will Be War Volume X Page 34
