by Gerard Klein
“She will remain my responsibility, Colonel,” Corson cut in.
Veran’s hard eyes rested on him for a second.
“For the time being that is doubtless preferable. Just make sure she’s not allowed to wander around the camp. I don’t like breaches of discipline. Good, you may go.”
The two soldiers flanking Corson spun on their heels. Helpless, he copied them, giving Antonella a shove for the sake of appearances. They started to march away.
“Captain!”
The harsh voice of Veran stopped them short. It was tinged with sarcasm.
“I must say I wouldn’t have expected to find a soldier of your caliber so . . . sentimental! I’ll see you tomorrow.”
They moved on. The soldiers walked like robots, their rhythmical paces showing how their discipline was surviving their fatigue. Unconsciously Corson fell into step. He had no illusions about his status, despite his weapon and his escort—or rather because of them. He was a prisoner.
The soldiers led them toward a group of gray tents which men were setting up with brisk well-drilled movements. Beforehand, they had carefully sterilized the surface of the clearing. The dry ground was covered with a thin carpet of ash. Where the Ptar of Murphy’s troops had passed, grass must have a lot of trouble growing again.
One of the soldiers lifted the flap of a tent which had already been guyed and indicated that they were to enter. Inside, the furniture was basic. Inflatable chairs surrounded a metal plate floating on air which served as a table. Two narrow bunks completed the list. But the sparseness of this setting made Corson feel more at ease than the luxury of ornate Dyoto.
He let his mind wander for a moment. How would the inhabitants of Uria react to this invasion? Although Veran’s troops were few in number, it was certain they would meet with no serious resistance. Naturally, by one means or another the news would reach the
Council in the future, but they had no army. Perhaps they had already been wiped out. Question: how could a government survive in the future when the past it sprang from had been effectively annihilated? The Urians might never have considered that problem, but it looked as though they were going to find out the answer even before they realized it was a problem. In some ways this immediate threat overshadowed the menace of the Monsters which Veran’s civilization appeared to have tamed under the name of—what was it?—“pegasones.”
And here was something else far too extraordinary to be a coincidence. Veran had popped out of nowhere, claimed to know him, and said he needed two hundred thousand pegasones. In less than six months, if he managed to catch the offspring of the Monster which Corson himself had helped to dump on Uria, he would have eighteen thousand of them. In less than a year he could have even more than he was asking for. Under favorable conditions Monsters reproduced rapidly, and took only months to reach full growth.
No, there wasn’t a chance in a billion that Veran had arrived here by accident. But why should he need a wild pegasone?
Ah! Maybe because . . .
Maybe tame pegasones couldn’t reproduce? Back on Earth, long ago, oxen had been used for pulling carts and plows. Thanks to a minor operation, they were far more docile than a normal bull, which was a ferocious beast. It would account for everything very neatly if Veran’s pegasones had undergone some similar treatment. Certainly it would explain why he needed a wild—undoctored—Monster.
At last Corson turned his attention back to Antonella. She had sat down on one of the inflatable chairs. She was staring at her hands. Flat on the metal plate, they were trembling slightly. Now she glanced up and waited for him to say something.
He sat down opposite her. Her face was drawn, but she was showing no sign of panic. Altogether she was behaving much better than he had expected.
“There’s a good chance that someone’s eavesdropping on us,” he began abruptly. “I’ll say this to you anyway. Colonel Veran strikes me as a reasonable type. This planet needs to be put to rights. I’m sure nothing will happen to you so long as you respect his authority, and mine. Moreover your presence may be useful to his plans.”
He hoped she understood that he was not betraying her and that he would do all he could to get them out of this with whole skins, but that he could not say anything else for the time being. Veran would have other matters on his mind apart from spying on them, but he was not the sort of person to take risks. If Corson had found himself in Veran’s shoes, he would certainly have bugged this tent.
A soldier lifted the entrance flap and cast a suspicious eye around the interior. A second wordlessly brought in two platters and set them on the table. Corson recognized their contents at once; military rations had scarcely changed. After a couple of false starts he showed Antonella how to heat the cans by breaking a seal and then how to open them without burning her fingers. Cutlery was built into the cans, and he ate with a good appetite. To his great surprise Antonella copied him without hesitation. He was beginning to develop a certain respect for these Urian civilians.
Naturally their precog talent must help them to keep their heads. It warned them of imminent danger, so perhaps they could cause Veran’s soldiers more trouble than they were expecting.
Having finished his meal, Corson rose. He made for the exit, but glanced back at Antonella before leaving.
“I’m going to take a turn around the camp and see if Colonel Veran’s principles of site defense agree with what I was taught. Maybe my experience will be useful to him. Don’t leave this tent on any account. Don’t show yourself, even. Don’t turn in before I get back. The—ah—necessary conveniences are under the bunks. I won’t be gone for more than an hour.”
She looked at him without speaking. He tried to read from her expression whether she had mistaken his intentions. He failed. If she was pretending, then she deserved an acting prize.
As though they had been waiting for him, the two soldiers were standing by the exit. He stepped forward and let the flap fall without provoking the least reaction.
“I’m going to tour the campsite,” he said in an arrogant tone.
Instantly one of the soldiers clicked his heels and fell in at his side. Discipline was plainly well in force among Veran’s men. That reassured him about Antonella’s immediate fate. This camp was on a war footing and the commander would not let his control slacken by a single notch. He had acted sensibly in forbidding Antonella to move around the camp and leaving her in Corson’s charge. He had other concerns than erecting a prison for a single captive. Besides, the sight of a woman might cause trouble with the rank and file. If he hadn’t hoped to make use of her, Veran would have liquidated Antonella right away. Later, when the camp was properly secure and the men were off duty, it would be a different matter.
Corson drove away that unpleasant thought and looked about him. The blackened soil of the clearing formed a circle several hundred meters across. Around the perimeter soldiers were hammering in stakes and linking them together with a glittering wire. An alarm system? Corson decided not. The men who were unreeling the wire wore heavy insulated clothing. So it must be a defensive barrier, then —and, despite its apparent fragility, no doubt a formidable one.
About a hundred tents occupied most of the space this enclosed. Corson searched with his eyes for a tent larger than the rest, or flying a command pennant, but in vain. Veran’s headquarters post was indistinguishable from the tents of his men.
A little farther on, a dull vibration made the soles of his feet tingle. Veran must be digging out an underground refuge. No doubt of it: this man knew his job.
On the far side of the clearing Corson counted twenty-seven pegasones. Judging by the number of tents, Veran had about six hundred men with him. If the rank of colonel was to be taken in the same sense as it had been in Corson’s time, at the start of his campaign Veran would have had a force of between ten and a hundred thousand. Aergistal must really have been a disaster. The 623rd Cavalry Regiment of the Ptar of Murphy must have been virtually wiped out. Veran must have disp
layed inhuman determination to reestablish control over the survivors and make them set up this camp as though nothing had happened. And he must be possessed of phenomenal ambition—to say nothing of limitless arrogance—if he thought of continuing the fight.
The fact that he was letting Corson inspect his defenses unhindered indicated pretty clearly the type of man he was. So did his expressed intention to muster a million men and enlist them in his phantom army. Was he bluffing? Perhaps. Unless he had unsuspected resources. Which brought Corson to a question he was astonished at having neglected for so long.
Whom had Veran been fighting against at Aergistal?
The pegasones were not hobbled, but they remained so absolutely still that from a short distance they could have been mistaken for the stumps of enormous multicolored trees. Their six great paws, each ending in six fingers, looked like roots. The eyes which encircled their bodies halfway up, a little above Corson’s head, shone only with a wan and fleeting light. Now and then one of them uttered a little plaintive cry, followed by a grunt like a pig’s. One might have thought that they were chewing the cud. They had nothing in common with the wild beast which Corson had been trying to study before the destruction of the Archimedes. On their flanks, a complicated harness had left deep scars, as though a hot iron had been seared into tree bark.
How could they be mounted? At first sight no part of their bodies seemed adapted for a saddle. And how many men could each of them carry? Veran’s demands suggested a rough guide: a million men, two hundred thousand pegasones ... So one of these beasts could cany at least four men and their equipment. And what part would they play in combat? Up to now it hadn’t occurred to Corson to think of any other function except that of assault vehicles. Their mobility and their primitive ferocity would make them ideal for a ground battle. Their ability to foresee the immediate future and to move a second
away in time would make them targets almost impossible to hit. But these pegasones which Corson was looking at scarcely seemed to be fierce. He would have sworn, too, that they were completely without intelligence, the reverse of the wild specimen wandering the forests of this planet in search of an ideal spot to reproduce.
The use of a living steed in warfare was not an idea unknown to Corson. During the Earth-Uria war, on worlds that were being fought over, he had run across barbarian allies of the Terrestrials who rode reptiles, hippogriffs, or even giant spiders. But he was himself more accustomed to a mechanized army. What surprised him here was the coexistence of an advanced technology and animal steeds. What sort of terrain had they fought over at Aergistal?
He couldn’t imagine. If only planets had names which described them! Perhaps this mysterious world was rocky, a place of peaks and precipices bathed in a steely light. But it could just as well be a planet of green and smiling valleys. For a brief moment he had wondered whether the name might simply designate another part of Uria itself, but both Antonella and Floria had insisted that no war had even involved Uria for a thousand-odd years, let alone been fought on its surface.
No, the battle where Veran had lost the majority of his forces must have taken place on some other world. For better or worse he must have embarked the remnant of his command on a cruiser and gone in search of a world where he could rebuild his army. He had picked on Uria, landed his men and their beasts, and sent his cruiser back to space for fear it might be trapped on the ground.
But— No, wait a moment!
Veran must be fresh from his battle. His men had still been in full combat rig when they intercepted Corson. They were dirty and exhausted. No matter how close Aergistal might be, no matter how fast Veran’s cruiser, it would have taken hours or days to cover an interstellar distance. He tried to recall the map of the Urian system. There were only two other planets in it, and both were gas giants which would not provide a battlefield ... at least not for humans. How about their moons? No: Antonella had spoken of taking a transmatter to one of the local moons; therefore they must be at peace. And this sector of space was thinly populated with stars. Aergistal must be located at least six light-years from Uria. Probably a lot more. The idea of a starship which could cross light-years in a few minutes seemed ridiculous. On the other hand . . .
Corson was the sole survivor of a universe six thousand years in the past. In sixty centuries a lot of new discoveries must have been made. Even what he had seen at Dyoto exceeded his powers of comprehension. A starship capable of almost Ultimate Velocity was scarcely harder to believe in than a society without a government or a city built entirely on antigrav.
While Corson was contemplating the warlike activity of the camp, a faint nostalgia overcame him. Although he had never been particularly bellicose himself, he felt at home again in this environment of taut efficiency. He followed with his eyes the man who was marching sentry go in front of the pegasones, his gun slung at an easy angle. He glanced at his bodyguard. The man did not seem to be concerned about the vast problems disturbing the universe. He must have lost friends in the battle of Aergistal, but one could not have deduced it from his attitude. Two days earlier, Corson had been like him. Strange, what two days could do to a man. Two days—and six thousand years. No, Corson corrected himself bitterly. Two days, six thousand years . . . and two women.
He turned to face the guard.
"Was it tough at Aergistal?”
The soldier did not stir. He was looking straight in front of him at a horizon which a timeless regulation fixed at a distance of six paces. Corson hardened his tone.
“Answer me, will you? I’m Captain Corson, remember!”
Finally the soldier did speak, in a clear voice, but barely parting his teeth.
“Colonel Veran will tell you about it himself. Those are his orders.”
Corson did not press him. The soldier wouldn’t anyway have been able to answer the next question he wanted to put. Even if he had been willing to. Where was Aergistal? As for the third—well, it made even less sense.
When was Aergistal?
For by now Corson was coming to the conclusion that the battle must have occurred far in the past. Veran’s ship must have crossed not only space but—like Corson—time as well. He must hail from an era when interstellar wars still took place, where the Security Office did not yet lay down the law.
He wondered how the Office would react when it learned about the presence of Veran on Uria.
He circled the pegasone park. Night fell, though the vanished sun still decorated the treetops with mauve plumes. A cool wind was rising. He shivered. For the first time he was really aware of how ridiculous his flimsy ornate garments were. No wonder the guard had trouble treating him as an officer! He regretted having destroyed his uniform. Even though it was unlike what Veran and his men wore, it would have given him a more military air. He smiled inwardly. He hadn’t been demobilized very long! Barely more than forty-eight hours. Perhaps Veran’s arrival had been providential. In his company, especially since the man seemed to have need of him, he might again take up the only profession he knew, that of arms. Never mind the risks. Danger was everywhere, in the forest where the Monster was at large, in space where he, Corson, was an outlaw, a war criminal . . . He might as well end his days among his compeers.
He scowled, thinking of Antonella. It was sensible to teach soldiers to keep away from real women, never to grant them more than a few minutes of female company. They complicated everything. As if the situation weren’t tangled enough already . . .
But he couldn’t simply dump her. He wasn’t going to. Even so . . .
His fists clenched in futile frustration. On the dark fringe of the forest the barrier wire shed a purple glow. It was absurd to wish he could escape.
“I’m going back,” he said, not addressing anyone in particular. The soldier fell into step at his heels.
He had scarcely dropped off when he found himself back on Earth. He was running along an underground passage walled with rough concrete, a thousand meters below the surface, his eyes stinging f
rom the glare of a snakelike neon tube. He was fleeing from something. His whole body vibrated to the beat of nuclear explosions which were taking place regularly, one a minute, a kilometer overhead. The bombs had been launched from too far away to be aimed at any special target. Urian ships had released them from the orbit of Pluto, or from even deeper into space, and nine tenths of them had been intercepted before reaching Earth’s atmosphere. Some failed to brake properly on entry and burned up in a flash, without time to explode. Four fifths of those that did reach the surface fell in the sea and caused no damage worth mentioning. Only one or two per cent struck a land mass. But the holds of the Urian fleet seemed to be bottomless. For the first time Earth itself was being bombarded, and overhead this hemisphere had been turned into a literal hell.
Naturally nobody was left up there. Those few who had not found room in the shelters in time had died in the first seconds of the attack. As he ran he mechanically repeated a calculation. At least two hundred million must be dead. All in ten seconds.
He didn’t know why he was running. It was impossible to stop him-
self, impossible even to slow down the legs that were bearing him along with the automatic frenzy of the pistons in an engine. He ran with his hands outstretched before him as though in a headlong fall, as though at any moment he was due to crash against some blank wall mindlessly upheaved from the ground. But the underground corridor was at least twenty kilometers long. The tempo of the explosions quickened and seemed to be echoing the sound of his feet. Someone was chasing him!
A light touch wakened him. He rolled over so suddenly that he made his narrow bunk wobble, and discerned in the gloom the form of Antonella leaning over him. He must have cried out in his sleep. His limbs were as limp as if he had just run a long race. It wasn’t the first time he had endured this dream. In sleep his memory often replayed the terrible punishment inflicted on Earth by the Princes of Uria. But it had never seemed so real before.
Antonella was whispering to him.
