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  “We trust you, Jesse,” Falaire said low. Lirion stared at him like a cat.

  “Could you trust me on Proserpina?” Nicol challenged.

  He had never raised the question before. It shook them a little. “What mean you?” Falaire demanded.

  “It can’t not have occurred to you,” he said. “Distance or no, it takes a very small wattage to call from there to Earth; and the cybercosm is always monitoring, on every band. I’d have five years to find a transmitter, or make one, and use it clandestinely.”

  “Jesse, nay! Why would you?”

  “To reinstate myself in my civilization, if I found I can’t stand yours. Or for revenge.”

  She shivered. “Revenge—”

  His grin twisted upward. “Therefore, whichever way I go, from your viewpoint I’m preferably dead.”

  She half reached toward him. “That you would think that of—” her glance went across Lirion, who stood masked with silence—“of me.” The hand dropped.

  “Perhaps not of you, dear,” Nicol said. To her companion, briskly: “Lirion, you’re right, we’re due for a serious talk.” He reached under his tunic and drew out the pistol he had kept. “Please go below and bring Venator to our conference.”

  Breath hissed between teeth. “Don’t leap,” Nicol warned. “I’m a fairly good shot, and I can jump and dodge better than you. Or you, Falaire.” It hurt more than he had expected to say that last.

  The Lunarians eased their bodies, as a snake uncoils. “I can guess what you have done,” Lirion said without tone.

  “Yes.” Falaire’s voice warmed. She actually smiled the least bit. “You are clever, Jesse, and bold.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Lirion, go.”

  The other man nodded and left.

  Falaire softened further. He knew well what steel was beneath. “Are you death-angry with us?” she asked.

  Nicol shook his head. “No. It’s been like … an ancient war. Honorable enemies, insofar as honor was ever possible in war.”

  “A magnificent foeman, you. I had not imagined.”

  Did he hear lust, did she mean it, did she know whether she did?

  “We have not harmed your Federation,” she continued. “Should it desire more antimatter, there the plant is on Mercury. Another transport is easily built. Nor have we harmed you. Have we, truly? Whether on Earth or on Proserpina, you shall be rich, you shall have the means to live however you will.”

  “I’d like to make sure of that.”

  “Jesse, if you call Earth, if you dash from our lips this cup we have so sorely won—Ai—” The sound keened almost inaudibly. She did not weep, she did not plead. They poised mute, gazing at one another, until Lirion returned.

  He carried Venator, already activated, and set the case down on the table before he took his place again by Falaire. “Say forth, Pilot Nicol,” he snapped.

  Eyestalks swung about, from person to person. “Would you please fill me in?” the download requested.

  Falaire’s look suggested she would like to fill him with concentrated sulfuric acid.

  “The situation is obvious,” Nicol said. “We’ve carried out the hijacking. We’ll soon finish reorbiting the carrier.”

  “I see. Evidently you never got safe access to communications. Surprising.” The synthetic tones quickened. “But now you’re in charge. Good man, oh, excellent. I can promise you won’t be penalized. On the contrary.”

  “What will you do?” Falaire asked.

  “Lock you two away, contact Earth, and wait for the Authority,” Venator answered. “What else?”

  Falaire and Lirion considered Nicol, who stood motionless behind his weapon. “In truth?” she murmured after a while.

  “I’m sorry,” Nicol said to Venator. “No.”

  Jubilation flashed over Falaire. She curbed it and stayed watchful. “Ah-h-h,” Lirion sighed.

  “You realize I can’t trust you,” Nicol told them. “After everything you’ve done and everything that’s at stake. And from time to time I’ll have to sleep.”

  “Your danger from us depends on what your aim is,” Falaire said.

  “Not quite. Also, I’m putting an added price on my services, Venator.”

  “Why?” asked the download and the woman together. Eyestalks turned to meet eyes. His brief laughter barked, hers trilled.

  “I don’t want him … tortured, mutilated, dissected, scrapped—or kept forever from his Oneness,” Nicol said. “No, I couldn’t live with that.”

  Lirion finger-shrugged. “Eyach, we can readily cede you him, if what you further desire is what we need not die to prevent.”

  “It isn’t. I do want to go to Proserpina with you, and, and live among you, your people—”

  Falaire’s cry of joy quivered for an instant.

  “But you can’t be sure of that, can you?” Nicol went on, largely to Lirion. “I might change my mind, on this voyage or in the years to come. And so I in my turn can’t be sure of you.”

  “Unless you have an ally,” Venator put in.

  Nicol nodded. “Correct. You.”

  “Leagued with a criminal, a traitor?”

  “Set those judgments aside. Think.”

  “Oh, I can do both. I see your strategy. If we stay together, standing watch and watch, it’s not too likely we can be taken by surprise. In the end, when Proserpina has the antimatter secure beyond regaining, you’ll arrange for my return to Earth.”

  “Yes. We need each other.”

  “A strong glue,” Venator said wryly. “I have nothing to gain by refusing you. So to save myself, for whatever that may be worth, I, an officer of the Federation, shall be always at the side of a robber.”

  Even then, Falaire’s grin flickered. “Always?”

  In the depths of defeat, Venator kept his own humor. “Don’t mind me,” he said. “I’m only a consciousness in a box, indifferent to biology. At the appropriate moments I can turn my optics elsewhere.” He directed them toward Nicol. “The experience will admittedly be interesting. You’re a complex devil. I think I’ll enjoy your company. I hope mine doesn’t become tedious to you.”

  “You need not forever be on guard,” Lirion promised, perhaps honestly. “If you have not summoned Earth by the time we reach Proserpina, belike you never will.”

  “I’ll keep trying to persuade him, you know,” Venator said.

  “Don’t bother,” Nicol told the download.

  “What reason will we have to attack you?” Lirion argued.

  “Yes, I daresay trust will come, however slowly,” Nicol said.

  “Maychance not too slowly,” Falaire hinted.

  “We’ll see. For now, let’s call this a truce.” Nicol put the pistol in his belt, though he kept a hand near it.

  Venator addressed him: “But I don’t understand. I genuinely don’t. Are you demented? Instead of a triumphant homecoming—justice done on this precious pair and their confederates, who deceived and used and all but broke you—or we could let them go, if you insist—you choose to give them their plunder and risk assassination, following them to exile. Do you know what it’s like where you’re bound? You’ll be more foreign than any man ever was at the uttermost ends of Earth; and it’s always night.”

  Nicol bit his lip. “I can’t explain in so many words. Maybe as we get acquainted it’ll become clear to you.”

  “Will you help me see?” Falaire asked most quietly. “For I too am bewildered, Jesse.”

  Lirion looked expectant. Given an idea of the spacefarer’s motive, he would know better what to await and thus be less inclined to plan some treachery. But Nicol spoke wholly to the woman.

  “Yours is a new world, in a heroic age. Its bards are singing. I can hope to be one of them.”

  “You, a total outsider?” protested Venator.

  Yes, Nicol thought, he knew full well how alone he would be; yet out of the pain he might win a meaning for his life. “Homer sang of a bygone age,” he said. “Shakespeare treated of Cleo
patra and Macbeth. Fitzgerald drew on Omar Khayyám. Kipling told about India. I—I don’t even necessarily need human things. The inhuman may be what’s mine, stars, comets, hugeness, a universe that doesn’t know or care but simply and gloriously is—but humans are there—I realize it’s crazy, and I can’t explain.”

  Venator spoke in sudden gentleness. “However, I think now I understand.”

  About the Author

  Poul Anderson (1926–2001) grew up bilingual in a Danish American family. After discovering science fiction fandom and earning a physics degree at the University of Minnesota, he found writing science fiction more satisfactory. Admired for his “hard” science fiction, mysteries, historical novels, and “fantasy with rivets,” he also excelled in humor. He was the guest of honor at the 1959 World Science Fiction Convention and at many similar events, including the 1998 Contact Japan 3 and the 1999 Strannik Conference in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Besides winning the Hugo and Nebula Awards, he has received the Gandalf, Seiun, and Strannik, or “Wanderer,” Awards. A founder of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, he became a Grand Master, and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

  In 1952 he met Karen Kruse; they married in Berkeley, California, where their daughter, Astrid, was born, and they later lived in Orinda, California. Astrid and her husband, science fiction author Greg Bear, now live with their family outside Seattle.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1995 by Trigonier Trust

  Cover design by Mauricio Díaz

  978-1-5040-2447-1

  This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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