The Long Night df-10 Read online

  Dagny was in the detector shack. Viewscreens might be malfunctioning, along with a lot else, but such instruments as the radionic, spectroscopic, magnetic and sonic were not integrated with ship circuitry. They had kept their accuracy, and she was expert—not educated, but rule-of-thumb expert—in their use.

  “Well; there,” she said, looking around the console at which she sat. “What’d you see?”

  Tom repeated in more detail what he had told Yasmin. Since Dagny spoke no Pelevah and only a little pidgin Anglic, while Yasmin had no Eylan, these two of his wives communicated with difficulty. Maybe that was why they got along so well. “And how ‘bout you?” he finished.

  “I caught a flash of radiocast. Seemed like two stations communicating from either end of a continental-size area.”

  “Still, somebody is able to chat a bit,” Torn said. “Hopeful.” He lounged against the doorframe. “Anyone spot us, d’ you think?”

  Dagny grinned. “What do you think?”

  His lips responded. A positive answer would have had them in action at once, he to the bridge, she to the main fire control turret. They couldn’t be sure they had not been noticed—by optical system, quickly brushing radar or maser, gadget responsive to the neutrino emission of their prciton converter, several other possible ways—but it was unlikely.

  “Any further indications?” Tom asked. “Atomic powerplants?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know what the readings mean that I get, particle flux, magnetic variations and the rest. This is such a confoundedly queer sun and planet. I’ve never seen anything like them. Have you?”

  “No.”

  They regarded each other for a moment that grew very quiet. Dagny, Od’s-daughter in the House of Brenning, was a big woman, a few years his senior. Her shoulder-length yellow mane was fading a bit, and her hazel eyes were burdened with those contact lenses that were the best help anyone on Kraken knew how to give. But her frame was still strong and erect, her hands still clever and murderously quick. It had been natural for an impoverished noble family to make alliance with an energetic young immigrant who had a goodly following and a spaceship. But in time, voyages together, childbirths and child-rearings, the marriage of convenience had become one of affection.

  “Well… s’pose we better go on down,” Tom said. “Sooner we get patched, sooner we can start back. And we’d better not be gone from home too long.”

  Dagny nodded. Yasmin saw the grimness that touched them and said, “What is wrong, my… my husband?”

  Tom hadn’t the heart to explain how turbulent matters were on Kraken also. She’d learn that soon enough, if they lived. He said merely, “There’s some kind o’ civilization goin’ yet around here. But it may exist only as traces o’ veneer. The signs are hard to figure. This is a rogue planet, you see.”

  “Rogue?” Yasmin was bemused. “But that is a loose planet—sunless—isn’t it?”

  “You mean a bandit planet. A rogue’s one that don’t fit in with its usual type, got a skrewball orbit or composition or whatever. Like this’n.”

  “Oh. Yes, I know.”

  “What?” He caught her shoulder, not noticing how she winced at so hard a grip. “You’ve heard o’ this system before?”

  “No… please… no, my people never came to this side of the Nebula either, with what few ships we had. But I studied some astro-physics and planetography at Anusliirvan University.”

  “Huh?” He let her go and gaped. “Science? Real, Imperial-era science, not engineerin’ tricks?” She nodded breathlessly. “But I thought—you said—you’d studied classics.”

  “Is not scientific knowledge one of the classic arts? We had a very complete collection of tapes in the Royal Library.” Forlornness came upon her. “Gone, now, into smoke.”

  “Never mind. Can you explain how come this globe is as it is?”

  “Well, I… well, no. I don’t believe I could. I would need more information. Mass, and chemical data, and—And even then, I would probably not be able. I am not one of the ancient experts.”

  “Hardly anybody is,” Tom sighed. “All right. Let’s get us a snack, and then to our stations for planetfall.”

  * * *

  Descent was tricky. Sensor-computer-autopilot linkups could no longer be trusted. Tom had to bring Firedrake in on manual controls. His few instruments were of limited use, when he couldn’t get precise data by which to recalibrate them for local conditions. With no view-screens working properly, he had no magnification, infra-red and ultra-violet presentations, any of the conventional aids. He depended on an emergency periscope, on Dagny’s radar readings called via intercom and on the trained reflexes of a lifetime.

  Yasmin sat beside him. There was nothing she could do elsewhere, and he wanted to be able to assist her in her inexperience if they must bail out. The spacesuit and gravity impellers surrounded her with an awkward bulk that made the visage in the helmet look like a child’s. Neither one of them had closed a faceplate. Her voice came small through the gathering throb of power: “Is it so difficult, to land? I mean, I used to watch ships do it, and even if we are partly crippled—we could travel between the stars. What can an aircar do that we can’t?”

  “Hyperdrive’s not the same thing as kinetic velocity, and most particular not the same as aerodynamic speed,” Tom grunted. “To start with, I know the theory o’ sublight physics.”

  “Yon do?” She was frankly astounded.

  “Enough of it, anyhow. I can read and write, too.” His hands played over the board. Vibration grew in the deck, the bulkheads, his bones. A thin shrilling was heard, the first cloven atmosphere. “A spaceship’s a sort o’ big and clumsy object, once out o’ her native habitat;” he said absently. “Got quite a moment of inertia, f’r instance. Means a sudden, hard wind can turn her top over tip and she don’t right easy. When you got a lot o’ sensitive machinery to do the work, that’s no problem. But we don’t.” He buried his face in the periscope hood. Cloudiness swirled beneath. “Also,” he said, “we got no screens and nobody at the guns. So we’d better be choosy about where we sit down. And… we don’t have any way to scan an area in detail. Now do be quiet and let me steer.”

  Already in the upper air, he encountered severe turbulence. That was unexpected, on a planet which received less than 0.9 Terran insolation, with a lower proportion of UV to bait. It wasn’t that the atmosphere was peculiar. The spectroscope readout had said the mixture was ordinary oxy-nitro-CO2, on the thin and dry side—sea-level pressure around 600 mm.—but quite breathable. Nor was the phenomenon due to excessive rotation; the period was twenty-five and a half hours. Of course, the inner moon, while small, was close in and must have considerable tidal effect—Hoy!

  The outercom buzzed. Someone was calling. “Take that, Yasmin,” Tom snapped. The ship wallowed. He felt it even through the cushioning internal gee-field, and the altitude meters were wavering crazily. Wind screamed louder. The clouds roiled near, coppery-headed blue-shadowed billows on the starboard horizon, deep purple below him. He had hoped that night and overcast would veil his arrival, but evidently a radar had fingered him. Or—“The knob marked A, you idiot! Turn it widdershins. I can’t let go now!”

  Yasmin caught her lower lip between her teeth and obeyed. The screen flickered to life. “Up the volume,” Tom commanded. “Maybe Dagny can’t watch, but she’d better hear. You on, Dagny?” .

  “Aye.” Her tone was crisp from the intercom speaker. “I doubt if I’ll understand many words, though. Hadn’t you better start aloft and I leave the radar and take over fire control?”

  “No, stand where you are. See what you can detect. We’re not after a tussle, are we?” Tom glanced at the screen for the instant he dared. It was sidewise to him, putting him outside the pickup arc, but he could get a profile of the three-dimensional image.

  The man who gazed out was so young that his beard was brownish fuzz. Braids hung from beneath a goggled fiber
crash helmet. But his features were hard; his background appeared to be an aircraft cockpit; and his green tunic had the look of a uniform.

  “Who are you?” he challenged. Seeing himself confronted by a girl, he let his jaw drop. “Who are you?”

  “Might ask the same o’ you,” Tom answered for her. “We’re from offplanet.”

  “Why did you not declare yourselves?” The Anglic was thickly accented but comprehensible, roughened with tension.

  “We didn’t know anybody was near. I reckon you had to try several bands before hittin’ the one we were tuned to. Isn’t a standard signal frequency any more.” Tom spoke with careful casualness, while the ship bucked and groaned around him and lightning zigzagged in the clouds he approached. “Don’t worry about us. We mean no harm.”

  “You trespass in the sky of Karol Weyer.”

  “Son, we never heard o’ him. We don’t even know what you call this planet.”

  The, pilot gulped. “N-Nike,” he said automatically.

  “The planet Nike. Karol Weyer is our Engineer, here in Hanno. Who are you?”

  Dagny’s voice said in Eylan, “I’ve spotted him on the scope, Tom. Coming in fast at eleven o’clock low.”

  “Let me see your face,” the pilot demanded harshly. “Hide not by this woman.”

  “Can’t stop to be polite,” Tom said. “S’pose you let us land, and we’ll talk to your Engineer. Or shall we take our business elsewhere?”

  Yasmin’s gauntlet closed convulsively on Tom’s sleeve. “The look on him grows terrible,” she whispered. “Gods damn,” Tom said, “we’re friends!”

  “What?” the pilot shouted.

  “Friends, I tell you! We need help. Maybe you—”

  “The screen went blank,” Yasmin cried.

  Tom risked yawing Firedrake till he could see in the direction Dagny had bespoken. The craft was in view. It was a one—or two-man job, a delta wing whose contrail betrayed the energy source as chemical rather than atomic or electric. However, instruments reported it as applying that power to a gravity drive. At this distance he couldn’t make out if the boat had guns, but hardly doubted that. Fora moment it glinted silvery against the darkling clouds, banked and vanished.

  “Prob’ly hollerin’ for orders,” Tom said. “And maybe reinforcements. Chil’ren, I think we’d better hustle back spaceward and try our luck in some place more sociable than Hanno.”

  “Is there any?” Dagny wondered.

  “Remains to be seen. Let’s hope its not our remains that’ll be seen.” Tom concentrated on the controls. Lame and weakened, the ship could not simply reverse. She had too much downward momentum and was too deep in Nike’s gravity well. He must shift vectors slowly and nurse her up again.

  After minutes, Dagny called through the racket and shudderings: “Several of them—at least five—climbing faster than us, from all sides.”

  “I was afraid o’ that,” Tom said. “Yasmin, see if you can eavesdrop on the chit-chat between ’em.”

  “Should we not stay tuned for their call?” the Sassanian asked timidly.

  “I doubt they aim to call. If ever anybody acted so scared and angry as to be past reason—No, hold ’er.”

  The screen had suddenly reawakened. This time the man who stared forth was middle-aged, leonine, bearded to the waist. His coat was trimmed with fur and, beneath the storm in his voice, pride rang. “I am the Engineer,” he said. “You will land and be slaves.”

  “Huh?” Tom said. “Look, we was goin’ away—”

  “You declared yourselves friends!”

  “Yes. We’d like to do business with you. But—”

  “Land at once. Slave yourselves to me. Or my craft open fire. They have tommics.”

  “Nukes, you mean?” Tom growled. Yasmin stifled a shriek. Karol Weyer observed and looked grimly pleased. Tom cursed, without words.

  The Nikean shook his head. Tom got a glimpse of that, and wasn’t sure whether the gesture meant yes, no or maybe in this land. But the answer was plain: “Weapons that unleash the might which lurks in matter.”

  And our force-screen generator is on sick leave, Tom thought. He may be lyin’. But I doubt it, because they do still use grays here. We can’t outrun a rocket, let alone an energy beam. Nor could Dagny, by herself, shoot down the lot in time to forestall ’em.

  “You win,” he said. “Here we come.”

  “Leave your transceiver on,”, Weyer instructed. “When you are below the clouds, the fish will tell you where to go.”

  “Fish?” Tom choked. But the screen had emptied, save for the crackling and formlessnesses of static. “D-d-dialect?” Yasmin suggested.

  “Uh, yeh. Must mean somethin’ like squadron leader. Good girl.” Tom spared her a grin. The tears were starting forth.

  “Slaves?” she wailed. “Oh, no, no.”

  “Course not, if I can help it,” he said, sotto voce lest the hostiles be listening. “Rather die.”

  He did not speak exact truth. Having been a slave once, he didn’t prefer death—assuming his owner was not unreasonable, and that some hope existed of getting his freedom back. But becoming property was apt to be worse for a woman than a man: much worse, when she was a daughter of Sassania’s barons or Kraken’s sea kings. As their husband, he was honor bound to save theni if he could.

  “We’ll make a break,” he said. “Lot o’ wild country underneath. One reason I picked this area. But first we have to get down.”

  “What’s gone by me?” Dagny called.

  Tom explained in Eylan while he fought the ship. “But that doesn’t make sense!” she said. “When they know nothing about us—”

  “Well, they took a bad clobberin’, ten years back. Can’t expect ’em to act terribly sensible about strangers. And s’posin’ this is a misunderstandin’… we have to stay alive while we straighten it out. Stand by for a rough jaunt.”

  * * *

  The aircraft snarled into sight, but warily, keeping their distance in swoops and circles that drew fantastic trails of exhaust. For a moment Tom wondered if that didn’t prove the locals were familiar with space-war techniques. Those buzzeroos seemed careful to stay beyond reach of a tractor or pressor beam, that could have seized them… But no. They were exposed to his guns and missiles, which had far greater range, and didn’t know that these were unmanned.

  Nevertheless, they were at least shrewd on this planet. From what Tom had let slip, and the battered condition of the vessel, Weyer had clearly guessed that the newcomers were weak. They could doubtless wipe out one or two aircraft before being hit, but could they handle half a dozen? That Weyer had taken the risk and scrambled this much of what must be a very small air fleet suggested implacable enmity. (Why? He couldn’t be so stupid as to assume that everyone from offplanet was a foe. Could he?) What was worse, his assessment of the military situation was quite correct. In her present state, Firedrake could not take on so many opponents and survive.

  She entered the clouds.

  For a while Tom was blind. Thunder and darkness encompassed him. Metal toned. The instrument dials glowed like goblin eyes. Their needles spun; the ship lurched; Tom stabbed and pulled and twisted controls, sweat drenched his coverall and reeked in his nostrils.

  Then he was through, into windy but, uncluttered air. Fifteen kilometers beneath him lay that part of the north temperate zone he had so unfortunately chosen. The view was of a valley, cut into a checkerboard pattern that suggested large agricultural estates. A river wound through, shining silver in what first dawn-light reddened the eastern horizon. A few villages clustered along it, and traffic moved, barge trains and waterships. A swampy delta spread at the eastern end of a great bay.

  That bay was as yet in the hour before sunrise, but glimmered with reflections. It had a narrow mouth, opening on a sea to the west. Lights twinkled on either side of the gate, and clustered quite thickly on the southern bayshore. Tom’s glance went to the north. There he saw little trace of habitation. Instead, hills hump
ed steeply toward a mountain which smoked. Forests covered them, but radar showed how rugged they were.

  The outercom flashed with the image of the pilot who had first hailed him. Now that conditions were easier, Tom could have swiveled it around himself to let the scanner cover his own features. Yasmin could have done so for him at any time. But he refrained. Anonymity wasn’t an ace in the hole—at most, a deuce or a trey—but he needed every card he had.

  “You will bear east-northeast,” the “fish” instructed. “About a hundred kilos upriver lies a cave. Descend there.”

  “Kilos?” Tom stalled. He had no intention of leaving the refuges below him for the open flatlands. “Distances. Thousand-meters.”

  “But a cave? I mean, look, I want to be a good fellow and so forth, but how’m I goin’ to spot a cave from the air?”

  “Spot?” It was the Nikean’s turn to be puzzled. However, he was no fool. “Oh, so, you mean espy. A cave is a stronghouse. You will know it by turrets, projectors, setdown fields.”

  “Your Engineer’s castle?”

  “Think you we’re so whetless we’d let you near the Great Cave? You might have a tommic boom aboard. No. Karol Weyer dwells by the bay gate. You go to the stronghouse guarding the Nereid River valley. Now change course, I said, or we fire.”

  Torn had used the talk-time to shed a good bit of altitude. “We can’t,” he said. “Not that fast. Have to get low first, before we dare shift.”

  “You go no lower, friend! Those are our folk down there.”

  “Be reasonable,” Torn said. “A spaceship’s worth your havin’, I’m sure, even a damaged one like ours. Why blang us for somethin’ we can’t help?”