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  Venture Science Fiction

  January 1957

  Volume 1, Number 1

  Custom eBook created by

  Jerry eBooks

  May 2019

  CORPORAL Maiden Barbara Whitley of Freetoon, hereditary huntress, wing leader of the crossbow cavalry, and novice in the Mysteries, halted her orsper and peered through a screen of brush. Breath sucked sharply between her teeth.

  From this edge of the forest, the Ridge mountains rolled away in a green blaze of grass to the wide floor of the Holy River valley. Tall white clouds walked in a windy sky. With midsummer approaching, both suns were visible. Ay was a spark so bright it hurt the eyes, following the great golden fireball of Bee down toward the western horizon. Minos was waxing, huge and banded, in its eternal station a little south of the zenith. The moon Ariadne was a pale half-disc. The other moons had not yet risen, or were drowned by daylight, but the six hours of night to come would be bright.

  It was on the thing in the valley, five kilometers away, that Barbara focused her eyes.

  It stood upright, like a lean finless war-dart, and she estimated its height as 40 meters. That was much smaller than the Ship of Father. But it was nearly the same shape, if the hints dropped by initiates were truthful . . . and it had been seen this morning, descending from the sky.

  A chill went along her nerves. She was not especially pious; none of the Whitleys were. But this was Mystery. They had always said it, they sang it in the rituals and they told it to children on rainy nights when the fires leaped high on the barracks hearths—

  Some day the Men will come to claim us.

  If this was the Men.

  Barbara’s hand strayed to the horn slung at her waist. She could call the others. Claudia, the Old Udall, had sent out the whole army to look for the shining thing, and there must be others within earshot.

  The stillness of that big metal beast was unnerving. It could well be a vessel of the Monsters. The Monsters were half folk-tale, it was said they lived on the stars like the Men and had dealings with the Men, sometimes friendly and sometimes otherwise.

  A stray lock of rusty-red hair blew from under Barbara’s morion and tickled her nose. She sneezed. It seemed to crystallize decision.

  Surely there were Monsters in that tiling! The Men would arrive much more portentously, landing first at the Ship of Father and then at the various towns. And there would be haloes and other prodigies about them, and creatures of shining steel in attendance.

  Barbara was rather frightened at the idea of Monsters—she felt her heart thump beneath the iron breastshields—but they were less awesome than Men. If she merely went back to town and reported, she knew exactly how Claudia Udall would take charge—the army would move according to tactics which were, well, simply rotten, like the time when it had been led directly into a greendale ambush. And a mere corporal would be just nobody.

  She checked her equipment with rapid, professional care: iron helmet, reinforced leather cuirass and kilt, boots, ax, knife, lasso. She cocked her spring-wound repeating crossbow and tucked it in the crook of her left arm. Her right hand picked up the reins, and she clucked to the orsper.

  It trotted downhill at the swift rocking pace of its breed, the feathered head, beaked and crested, erect. The wind blew in her face, murmuring of the sea and the Ship whence it came. The object grew nearer—still not a sound from it, not a stirring. Barbara grew quite convinced that there were Monsters aboard. Men would have been out long ago. It was a less terrifying prospect. Monsters had unknown powers, but they were still mortal, limited creatures, but Men . . .

  Barbara had never thought a great deal about the Men. Now the songs and rituals came back to her. “The Men are the males of the human race. We were coming to join them, but the Ship went astray because of our sins. The Men are taller and stronger than we, infinitely wiser and more virtuous, and they have hair on their chins and no breasts . . .”

  She came up into the long shadow of the—boat? “Hoy, there!” she cried. No answer. A flock of gray rangers went overhead, calling to each other, incredibly unconcerned.

  Barbara rode several times around the thing. There was a circular door in the hull, out of her reach and smoothly closed, and there were blank ports. Not a face in any of them. Really, it was getting ridiculous! Fear vanished in a gust of temper.

  The startled screech of the orsper jerked her back to reality. There was someone running from the west.

  She spurred her mount forward. The person was approaching the boat . . . must have been looking around when she arrived . . . Person? No!

  It was strangely dressed in some kind of tunic, the legs sheathed in cloth, a small pack-sack on the shoulders. But the form of it was grotesque, inhuman. Broad shoulders—not unpleasing, that, but the hips were of an ugly narrowness. There was yellow hair cropped short, and a lean face with too much nose and chin, altogether too much bone and too little flesh.

  Barbara knew what all the 500 families looked like, and this wasn’t any of them. She remembered from the old stories that Monsters had many shapes, but some of them looked like deformed humans.

  “Hoy-aaa!” she yelled. “What are you doing here?”

  The Monster drew a small tube from a holster and pointed it at her. Dashing close, Barbara saw that its crimson tunic was open at the neck, the chest was flat and hairy and there was thick hair on the arms—

  Then she hardly had time to think. The Monster might or might not be peaceful, and she couldn’t just shoot it down. But she knew better than to take unnecessary risks.

  Her knees guided the leaping bird and her hands whirled up the lariat.

  The Monster stood there gaping.

  She heard words in a distorted, alien accent: “Holy Cosmos, what’s going on here?” No human had so deep a voice!

  Then the lasso snaked out, fell, and drew taut.

  Corporal Maiden Barbara Whitley galloped in triumph toward Freetoon, dragging the Monster behind her.

  II

  DEFINITIONS AND REFERENCES

  “DELTA CAPITIS LUPI: Double. [Coordinates given, indicating its distance from Nerthus as about 200 light-years; Nerthus is a Service base planet, ca. 300 parsecs from Sol.] Primary of type AO, mass 4 Sol, luminosity 81 Sol. Companion Sol-type, average distance from primary 98 Astronomical Units. Unexplored due to trepidation vortex in neighborhood . . .”

  —Pilot’s Manual, Argus 293 Region (with much expansion of abbreviations)

  “TREPIDATION VORTEX: Traveling region of warped space, primary effect being that of violently shifting gravitational fields. Responsible for some planetary perturbations. Spaceships on hyperdrive encountering a vortex are thrown far off course and usually destroyed . . .”

  —General Encyclopedic Dictionary

  “. . . Davis Bertram. Born in Sigma Hominis Volantis system, where father had grown wealthy. (Odd how anachronisms like private ostentation redevelop on the frontier, isn’t it?) Basic schooling on Earth; astronautical training on Thunderhouse (the most notoriously slack academy in die known Galaxy—must assemble data and file a complaint when I get the time). Having bought his own robotic cruiser, he came to Nerthus to start a career in stellagraphic survey by going to Delta Wolf’s Head—alone! As far as I could gather, his preparations here consisted mostly of bottle hoisting, skirt chasing, and a little amateur landscape painting.

  “I could not legally refuse him clearance, since he had the training and a sufficient goodwill quotient to protect any natives he might encounter. I checked the physiological data, ho
ping for an excuse, but somatically he is first-rate; I presume he makes himself exercise regularly to attract women, but die law does not make this any of my business. He is, in fact (or was), quite a large, good-looking young man of the vanishing Nordic type; his brain is excellent, if he only cared to use it; how can I extrapolate disaster on the basis of mere cocksureness and flippancy?

  “I warned him of the vortex, and that die Service did not plan to visit Delta until it was safely gone from the region, in about 30 years. He replied that it was probably safe as of now. I told him that if he did not come back, we could not hazard lives in a rescue party. He could not conceive that he might not return. What he wanted, of course, was the glory. If Delta turns out to have intelligent autochthones or be an uninhabited, colonizable planet, he will go down in history with Carsten.

  “In the end, then, he left, and his At Venture is now somewhere near the vortex. If he avoids that, and avoids hostile natives, wild beasts, poison, disease—the million traps a new planet lays for us—he will come back and have all the adoring females he can use. So much for Man’s Starward Yearning. Or am I merely envious in this winter of my own lifetime?”

  —Diary of Yamagata Tetsuo, Chief of Co-ordination Service, Argus 293 Region, Stellamont, Nerthus

  III

  Minos was full, drenching Freetoon with cold amber light, and the air had grown chilly. Barbara Whitley walked through silent streets, between darkened buildings, to the cavalry barracks. It formed one side of a square around a courtyard, the stables and arsenal completing the ring. Her boots thudded on the cobbles as she led her orsper to its stall.

  A stone lamp on a shelf showed the snoring grooms—all Nicholsons, a stupid family used only for menial work—stirring uneasily on the straw as she tramped in. She nudged one of the stocky, tangle-haired women awake with her toe. “Food,” she demanded. “And beer. And take care of die bird.”

  Afterward, she undressed and washed herself in the courtyard trough. She regarded her face complacently in the water. The Minoslight distorted colors, ruddy hair and long green eyes became something else, but the freckled snub nose and the wide mouth and the small square chin were more pleasing than . . . oh, than that Dyckman build. Dyckmans were just sloppy.

  The dying hearthfire within the barrack showed long-limbed forms sprawled on straw ticks. She stowed her weapons and armor, trying to be quiet. But Whitleys were light sleepers, and her cousin Valeria woke up.

  “Oh, it’s you. Two left feet as always,” snarled Valeria, “and each one bigger than the other. Where did you park your fat rump all day?”

  Barbara looked at the face which mirrored her own. They were the only Whitleys in Freetoon, their mothers and four aunts having perished in the Greendale ambush 15 years ago, and they should have been as close as relatives normally were. But it was a trigger-tempered breed, and when a new wing leader corporal was required, the sacred dice had chosen Barbara. Valeria could not forgive that.

  “I took my two left feet and my fat rump—if you must describe yourself that way—into the valley and captured a Monster in a star ship,” said Barbara sweetly. “Goodnight.” She lay down on her pallet arid closed her eyes, leaving her twin to speculate . . .

  Bee had not even risen when there was a clank of metal in the doorway and Ginny Latvala shouted: “Up, Corporal Maiden Barbara Whitley! You’re wanted at the Big House.”

  “Do you have to wake everyone else on that account?” snapped Valeria, but not very loud. The entire company had been roused, and Captain Kim was a martinet, like all Trevors.

  Barbara got to her feet, feeling her heart knock. Yesterday seemed unreal, like a wild dream. Ginny leaned on her spear, waiting. “The Old Udall is pretty mad at you, dear,” she confided. “We may have all sorts of trouble coming because you roped that Monster.” The Latvalas were slim blonde girls, handy with a javelin and so made hereditary bodyguards in most towns.

  “I was never ordered not to lasso a Monster,” said Barbara huffily.

  She let the barracks buzz around her while she dressed for the occasion: a short white skirt, an embroidered green cloak, sandals, and dagger. The air was still cold and the fields below the town white with mist when she came out. A pale rosy light lifted above the eastern Ridge, and Minos was waning. The moon Theseus was a red sickle caught in the sunrise.

  There were not many people up. A patrol tramped past, all of them husky Macklins, and the farmhands yawned out of their barracks on the way to a day’s hoeing. The street climbed steeply upward from the cavalry house, and Barbara took it with a mountaineer’s long slow stride. They went by the weavery, she glimpsed looms and spinning wheels within the door, but it didn’t register on her mind—low-caste work. The smithy, a most respected shop, lay beyond, also empty; the Holloways still slept in their adjoining home.

  Passing a window of the maternity hospital, Barbara heard a small wail. Must be Sarah Cohen’s kid, born a few days ago. The sound broke through her worry with an odd little tug at her soul. In another year or so, she would be an initiate, and make the journey to the Ship. And when she came back, no longer called Maiden, there would be another redhaired Whitley beneath her heart. Babies were a nuisance, she’d have to stay within the town till hers was weaned and—and—it was hard to wait.

  The stockade bulked above her, great sharp stakes lashed together and six Latvalas on guard at the gate. Inside, there was a broad cobbled yard with several buildings: barracks, stables, sheds, the Father chapel. All were in the normal Freetoon style, long log houses with peaked sod roofs. The hall, in the middle, was much the same, but immensely bigger, its beam-ends carved into birds of prey.

  Henrietta Udall stood at its door. She was the oldest of Claudia’s three daughters: big and blocky, with sagging breasts and harsh black hair, small pale eyes under tufted brows, a lump for a nose and a gash for a mouth. The finery of embroidered skirt and feather cloak was wasted on her, Barbara thought. None of the Udalls could ever be handsome. But they could lead!

  “Halt! Your hair is a mess,” said Henrietta. “Do those braids over.”

  Barbara bit her lip and began uncoiling the bronze mane. It was hacked off just below her shoulders. Spiteful blowhard, she thought. I’m barren if I do and barren if I don’t. Come the day, dear Henrietta, you won’t find me on your side.

  The death of an Udall was always the signal for turmoil. Theoretically, the power went to her oldest daughter. In practice, the sisters were likely to fight it out between themselves; a defeated survivor fled into the wilderness with her followers and tried to start a new settlement. Daydreams of heading into unknown country for a fresh start drove the sulkiness from Barbara. If, say, she rose high in the favor of Gertrude or Anne . . .

  “All right,” said Henrietta as Bee rose. She led the way inside.

  The main room of the Big House was long and gloomy. Sconced torches guttered above the Old Udall’s seat. Servants scurried around, serving breakfast to her and to the middle-aged high-caste women on the bench below the throne.

  “Well!” said Claudia. “It took you long enough.”

  Barbara had learned the hard way never to blame an Udall for anything. “I’m sorry, ma’m,” she muttered, saluting.

  The Old Udall leaned back and let her chambermaid comb the stiff gray hair. Elinor Dyckman had gotten that job; an Udall usually took a Dyckman for a lover.

  Elinor was in her middle twenties; her baby was dead and she hadn’t asked for another. Dyckmans had scant mother instinct. She was medium tall, with a soft curving body and soft bluish-black hair. Her small heart-shaped face smiled sweetly on the chief, and she combed with long slow strokes.

  “You’ll have to be punished for that,” said Claudia. “Suggestions, Elinor, dear?” She laughed.

  Elinor blinked incredible lashes over melting dark eyes and said: “Not too severe, ma’m. I’m sure Babs means well. A little KP—”

  Barbara’s hand fell to her dagger. “I’m in the army, you milk-livered trull!” she explode
d. “Dishwashing, by Father—!”

  “Watch your language,” said counsellor Marian Burke.

  Elinor smiled and went on combing. “It was only a joke, ma’m,” she murmured. “Hadn’t we better get down to business?”

  The Old Udall gazed at Barbara. Trying to stare me down, are you? thought the girl savagely. She would not look away.

  “Enough,” said Claudia at length. “Yes, Elinor, you’re right as usual, we can’t stop to quarrel now.”

  She leaned ponderously forward. “I’ve heard reports from the scouts who met you,” she went on.

  Barbara remained silent, not trusting her tongue. Captain Janet Lundgard had emerged from the woods with some troopers and taken charge: set a guard on the ship, slung the unconscious Monster on a spare orsper, and ridden to town with the rest of them for escort. She had reported directly to the Big House—but what had she told? The Lundgards were not as predictable as most families; that was one reason they were hereditary army officers.

  “Apparently you attacked the Monster unprovoked,” said Claudia coldly. “Father knows what revenge it may take.”

  “It had drawn a weapon on me, ma’m,” answered Barbara. “If I hadn’t lassoed it, maybe it would have destroyed all Freetoon. As it is, we have the thing a prisoner now, don’t we?”

  “It may have friends,” whispered Elinor, her eyes very large. A shiver went through the hall.

  “Then we have a hostage,” snapped Barbara.

  The Old Udall nodded. “Yes . . . there is that. I’ve had relays of guards sent to its ship. None of them report any sign of life. It, the Monster, must have been alone.”

  “How many other ships have landed, all over Atlantis?” wondered Henrietta.

  “That’s what we have to find out,” said Claudia. “I’m sending a party to the Ship of Father to ask the Doctors about this. We’ll also have to send scouts to the nearest other towns, find out if they’ve been visited too.”