Mayday Orbit Read online

  MAYDAY ORBIT

  by

  POUL ANDERSON

  ACE BOOKS, INC.

  1120 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, N.Y. 10036

  PLANET OF THE GOLDEN HORDE

  The squad’s eyes registered the girl’s blaster even as their chief spoke. Someone yelled. Bourtai fired into the thick of them. Ionic lightning crashed. Captain Sir Dominic Flandry dropped.

  A bolt sizzled where he had been. He fired, wide-beamed, the energy too diluted to kill even at short range but scorching four men at once. As their screams lifted, he bounced back to his feet, overlapped the fallen frontline, stiff-armed a warrior beyond, and hit the landing. . . .

  This was the beginning of Flandry’s hair-raising mission to Altai, one of the neutral planets between the two warring galactic cultures. But it also looked like the end of the adventure, for beyond his escape lay the man-killing frozen wastes of an ultra-polar zone.

  Turn this book over

  for second complete novel

  POUL ANDERSON was born in Bristol, Pennsylvania, and was graduated as a physics major from the University of Minnesota. Writing was a hobby of his, and he sold a few stories while in college. With jobs hard to find after graduation, he continued to write and found to his surprise that he was not a scientist at all, but-a bom writer. Best known for his science-fiction, he has also written mysteries, non-fiction, and historical novels.

  Poul Anderson lives in Orinda, California, with his wife and young daughter.

  Novels of his published in Ace Books editions include :

  PLANET OF NO RETURN (D-199),

  STAR WAYS (D-255),

  WAR OF THE WING-MEN (D-303),

  SNOWS OF GANYMEDE (D-303),

  WAR OF TWO WORLDS (D-335),

  WE CLAIM THESE STARS (D-407),

  &

  EARTHMAN GO HOME1 (D-479).

  Copyright ©, 1961, by Ace Books, Inc. All Rights Reserved

  no man’s world

  Copyright ©, 1961, by Ace Books, Inc.

  Printed in U.S.A.

  I

  Seen on approach, against crystal darkness and stars crowded into foreign constellations, Altai was beautiful. A good half of either hemisphere was polar cap. There. the snowfields were tinged rosy by sunlight, while ice shimmered blue and green. The tropical belt of steppe and tundra shaded from bronze to tarnished gold, strewn with quicksilver lakes. Three planetary radii out in space there spun a double ring, meteoric dust, subtle rainbow iridescence girdling the equator. Beyond hung two moons like copper coins among the stars.

  Captain Sir Dominic Flandry, field agent, Naval Intelligence Corps of the Terrestrial Empire, pulled his gaze reluctantly back to die spaceship's bridge. “I see where the name comes from,” he remarked. In the language of this planet’s human colonists, which he had learned electronically from a Betelgeusean trader, Altai meant Golden. “But Krasna is a misnomer for the sun. It isn’t really red, to the human eye, anyhow. Not nearly as red as your home star. More of an orange-yellow, I’d say.”

  The blue visage of Zalat, who commanded the battered merchant vessel, twisted into the grimace which was his race’s equivalent of a shrug. He was moderately humanoid, though only half as tall as a man, stout, hairless, clad in a metal, mesh tunic. “I zuppose it was de, you zay, contrazt” He spoke Terrestrial Anglic with an unnecessarily thick accent, as if to show that the independence of the Betelgeusean System—buffer state between the hostile realms of Terra and Merseia—did not mean it had nothing to contribute to the mainstream of interstellar culture.

  Flandry would rather have practiced his Altaian, especially since Zalat’s Anglic vocabulary was so small as to limit conversation to platitudes. But he deferred. As the sole passenger of alien species, with special dietary requirements, he depended on the captain’s good will. Also, he wanted the Betelgeuseans to take him at face value. Officially, his job was only to re-establish contact between Altai and the rest of humankind. The mission was so unimportant that Terra didn’t even give him a ship of his own, but let him negotiate passage as best he might. So, he let Zalat chatter.

  “After all,” the skipper continued, “Altai was first colonized more dan zeven hoondert Terra-years a-pazt: in de verrry dawn, you zay, of interztellar travel. Little was known about w’at to eggzpect. Krazna muzt have zeemed deprez-zingly cold and red, after Zol. Now-to-days, we have more aztronautical zophizticazhion.”

  Flandry looked back at the stars: more than he could count, more than he could imagine. An estimated four million of them, included in that vague sphere called the Terrestrial Empire, was an insignificant portion of this one spiral arm of this one commonplace galaxy. Even if you added the nonhuman empires, the sovereign suns like Betelgeuse, and the reports o( a few explorers who had gone extremely far in the old days, that part of die universe known to man was terrifyingly small. And it would always remain so.

  “Just how often do you come here?” he asked, largely to drown out the silence.

  “About onze a Terra-year,” answered Zalat. “However, dere is oder merchantz on diz route bezides me. I have de fur trade, but Altai alzo produzes gemz, mineralz, hidez, variouz organic productz, even dried meatz, which are in zome demand at home. Zo dere is usually a Betelgeuzean zhip or two at Ulan Baligh.”

  "Will you be here long?

  "I hope not. It is a tediouz plaze for a nonhuman. One pleazure houze for uz has been eztablizhed, but—” Zalat made another face “—wid de dizturbanzez going on, dough, fur trapping and caravans have been much hampered. Lazt time I had to wait a mont’ for a full cargo. Diz time may be worze.”

  Oh-ho, thought Flandry. But aloud he merely said, “If the metals and machinery you bring in exchange are as valuable as you claim, I wonder why some Altaians don’t acquire spaceships and start trading on their own.”

  “Dey have not a mercantile kind of zivilizazhion,” Zalat replied. “Remember, we Betelgeuzeanz have been coming here for lezz dan a zentury. Before den, Altai was izolated. De original zhips dat brought de coloniztz were long ago worn out. Dey demzelves had never been interezted enough in re-eztablizhing galactic contact to build new craft. Remember, deir planet is zo poor in heavy metalz dat zuch conztruction would be verry eggzpenzive for dem.

  “Now-to-days, might be, zom of de younger Altaian malez have zome wizh to try zuch an enterprize. But lately de Kha Khan has forbidden any of his zubjectz from leaving de planet, eggzept a few truzted and verry cloze-mout’ per-zonal reprezentativez in de Betelgeuzean Zyztem. Diz pro-hibizhion is one reazon for de inzurreczhionz againzt him.”

  “Yeh.” Flandry gave the ice fields a hard look. “Anybody who wants to get off that ball of permafrost, and can’t, has my sympathy. If it were my planet, I think I’d look around for an enemy to sell it to.”

  But still I’m going there, he reflected. Talk about your unsung heroes! The more the Empire cracks and crumbles, the more frantically a few of us have to scurry around patching it. Otherwise the Long Night might come in our own sacrosanct lifetimes.

  And in this particular instance, his mind ran on, I have reason to believe that an enemy is trying to buy the planet.

  II

  From the polar snows of Altai, broad, shallow rivers wound southward over the steppes. Where two of them Zeya and Talyma, met at Ozero Rurik, the city named Ulan Baligh was founded by the first colonists. It had never been large; today, the only permanent, human settlement on the planet, it had some twenty thousand residents. But the number of people in its environs was usually greater than this. For tribesmen were always arriving here to trade or confer or attend the rites in the Prophet’s Tower. They walled the southern edge of town with tents and trucks; their encampments spilled around the primitive spaceport and raised smoke for kilometers
along the lakeshore.

  As his ship descended, Captain Flandry was more interested in something less picturesque. He had bribed an engineer to let him use a magnifying viewport in the after turret. Through this he saw that monorail tracks wove a spider strand around Ulan Baligh, that flatcars upon them held cradled missiles, that some very modem military aircraft lazed on their gravebeams in the sky, that tanks and beetle-cars prowled about in quantity, that the barracks and emplacements for an armored brigade were under construction west of the city, that a squat building near the central market place must house a negagrav generator powerful enough to shield the entire urban area; all of this was new. None of it had been built in any factories controlled by the Terrestrial Empire.

  “However, the stuff could well have been supplied by my little green chums,” he murmured to himself. “If the Merseians got a base here in the buffer region, outflanking us at Catawrayannis . . . well, it wouldn’t be decisive by itself. But it would strengthen their hand quite a bit. And eventually, when their hand looks strong enough, they’re going to start the big war.”

  Not for the first time, .he suppressed a bitterness over his own people, too rich to spend treasure in an open attack on the menace—most of them even denying that any menace existed, for what power would dare break the Pax Terrestria? After all, he thought wryly, he enjoyed his furloughs home precisely because Terra was decadent.

  But at this moment Terra was also some 300 light-years distant; and he had work on hand.

  Through his mind flickered a review of those hints Intelligence had gathered in the Betelgeuse region. Traders had casually mentioned curious goings-on at some place named Altai. They had little specific information to relate, for they took no interest in the affairs of the place except insofar as their commerce with it was affected. The information they did reveal, when Terra’s men stood them drinks, led to the Imperial archives, where the planet was identified as an ancient human colony far off the regular space lanes, not so much lost as overlooked.

  A proper investigation would have required several months and several hundred agents. Being spread horribly thin over far too many stars, Intelligence sent just one man. At the Terran Embassy on Betelgeuse VI, Flandry was given a slim dossier on Altai, a stingy advance on an expense account, and an order to learn just what the devil was going on out there. After which, overworked men and machines forgot about him. They would remember when he reported back, or if they got news he had died in some unusual fashion. But if neither of these things happened, Altai might well lie obscure for another decade.

  Which could be a trifle too long, Flandry thought.

  Elaborately casual, he strolled from the turret back to his cabin. The Altaians must not suspect he had seen their new military installations. Or, if they did come to suspect his knowledge, they must not realize that he realized the equipment was there for any other purpose than suppressing a local rebellion. The Khan had been careless in not hiding this evidence of out-world connection, doubtless because he had not expected a Terran investigator would show up. He would certainly not be so careless as to knowingly let the investigator take significant information home again.

  At the cabin, Flandry dressed with his normal care. According to report, the Altaians were people after his own heart: they liked color on their clothes, in great gobs. He chose a shimmerite blouse, green, embroidered vest, purple trousers with a gold stripe tucked into tooled-leather half boots, crimson sash and cloak, black beret slanted rakishly over his sleek seal-brown hair. He himself was a tall well-muscled man; his long face bore high cheekbones and a straight nose, gray eyes and a neat mustache. But then, he patronized Terra’s best biosculptor.

  The spaceship landed at one end of the concrete field. Another Betelgeusean ship was cradled opposite, confirming Zalat’s remark about the interstellar trade. Not precisely brisk—maybe two dozen ships per standard year—but continuous; and, by now, doubtless important to the local economy.

  As he stepped from the debarkation lock, Flandry felt the exhilaration of a gravity only three-fourths Terrestrial. But it was quickly lost when the air stung him. Ulan. Baligh lay at eleven degrees north latitude. With an axial tilt about like Terra’s, a wan, dwarf sun, and no oceans to moderate the climate, Altai knew seasons almost to the equator. The northern hemisphere was past autumnal equinox, approaching winter. A wind streaking off the pole sheathed Flandry in chill, hooted around his ears and snatched the beret from his head.

  He grabbed it back, swore, and confronted the portmaster with less dignity than he had planned. “Greeting,” he said' with the formal idiom he had learned. “May peace dwell in your yurt. This person is named Dominic Flandry and ranges the Empire of Terra.”

  The Altaian blinked narrow, black eyes. Otherwise, his face remained a mask. It was a wide, rather flat countenance, but not purely mongoloid. Hook nose, thick, short beard, and light skin bespoke a caucasoid admixture as much as did the hybrid language. His frame was short and heavy-set. He was dressed in a wide-brimmed fur hat with a chinstrap, a leather jacket lacquered in some complicated pattern, pants of thick felt and fleece-lined boots. An old-style machine pistol was holstered at his left hip, a broad knife on his right.

  “We have not had any such visitors. ...” He paused, collected himself, and bowed. “Be welcome, all guests who come with honest words,” he said ritually. “This person is named Pyotr Gutchluk, of the Kha Khan’s sworn men.” He turned to Zalat. “Captain, you and your crew may proceed directly to the yamen. I shall see you there later about the legal formalities. First, I must personally conduct so distinguished a guest as this to the palace.”

  He clapped his hands. Two servants appeared, similar in dress and looks to himself. Their eyes glittered, seldom leaving the Terran. However wooden they kept their faces here, this was a thunderbolt in their lives. Flandry’s luggage was loaded onto a small electrotruck of antique design. “Of course,” Pyotr Gutchluk said, half inquiringly, “so great an orluk as yourself would prefer a varyak to a tul-yak.”

  “Of course,” said Flandry, wishing his language education had included those words.

  A varyak turned out to be a local breed of motorcycle. A massive-two-wheeler, smoothly powered from a bank of energy capacitors, it had a jump-seat and luggage rack aft, a machine-gun mount forward. (But no actual weapon in this case, he noted.) The steering was by a crossbar which the knees guided. Other apparatus, including a two-way radio, were controlled from a manual panel behind the windscreen. When the vehicle was slow or stationary, an outrigger wheel could be lowered on the left for support. Pyotr Gutchluk offered Flandry a goggled crash helmet from a saddlebag, hopped aboard his own machine, and took off at 200 kilometers an hour.

  The Terran accelerated to keep up. The wind slashed over the screen, into his face, and nearly tore him loose. He started to slow down. But for Imperial prestige, kept a stiff upper lip and somehow managed to stay on Gutchluk’s tail.

  As they roared into die city, he acquired the knack. Finally he could even look around. Quite a view they had here.

  Ulan Baligh formed a crescent along the flat shores of a bay in the lake. Beyond, the waters lapped indigo. Overhead were deep-blue sky and the rings. Pale by day, they were a frosty halo above the orange sun. Gutchluk was taking an overhead road suspended from pylons that were .cast like dragons holding the cables in their teeth. It seemed for official use only; no one else was upon it save an occasional varyak patrol. Below him, Flandry saw steeply-curved red tile roofs above ancient stone walls, tinged ruddy by the sun. All buildings were large; residential ones held several families each, commercial ones were jammed with tiny shops. The streets were wide, clean-swept, full of nomads and wind. Most traffic was pedestrian.

  Ahead loomed the palace walls. Flandry glimpsed gardens within, and the royal house at the center. It was a giant version of tile city tenements, but gaudily painted, with wooden dragons forming colonnades and bronze dragons on the roof. However, it was overshadowed by the Prophet’s Tower,
a kilometer or so away. Everything else was, too.

  From the vague Betelgeusean descriptions, Flandry had deduced that most Altaians professed a sort of Moslem-Buddhist synthesis, codified centuries ago by the Prophet Subotai. The religion had only this one temple, but that was enough. A sheer two kilometers it reared up into the thin hurried air as if it would spear a moon. Basically a pagoda shape, blinding-red in color, it had one flat side facing north. That wall was a single tablet on which, in a contorted Sino-Cyrillic alphabet, the words of the Prophet were inlaid, holy forever. Even Flandry, who had scant reverence in his heart, felt a moment’s awe. A stupendous will had raised that spire above these plains.

  The elevated road swooped downward again. Gutchluk’s varyak slammed to a halt outside the palace gates. Flandry, taller than any local man, had some trouble with his steering bar. He almost crashed into the wrought, bronze bars. He untangled his legs and veered barely in time. The swerve nearly threw him. High on the wall, a- guard leaned on his portable rocket launcher and laughed. Flandry heard him. Damn! That couldn’t be permitted. He continued 'riding in a curve. The ring he steered around Gutchluk was so tight that both could easily have been killed. At the last moment he slapped down die third wheel and let the cycle slow to a halt. While it was still moving, he jumped up onto the saddle and took a bow.

  “By the Ice People!” exclaimed the portmaster. Sweat shone on his face. He wiped it off with a shaky hand. “They breed reckless men on Terra.”

  “Oh, no,” said Flandry. He wished he dared mop his own wet skin. “A bit demonstrative, perhaps, but never reckless. We always know exactly what we’re doing.”

  Once again he had occasion to thank loathed hours of calisthenics and judo practice for a responsive body. As the gates opened, Flandry putt-putted through under the awed gaze of the Khan’s soldiers.