Fire Time Page 5

  IV

  Seen from space, all planets are beautiful; but those where humans can breathe have for them a special poignancy. As his flagship maneuvered toward parking orbit, Yuri Dejerine watched Ishtar through the least haze of tears.

  Its globe was radiant blue swirled with white and marked with darker hues of continents. The unlikenesses to Earth gave it the kind of glamour that a foreign woman may bear. There were no polar caps and fewer clouds, despite a somewhat larger ocean cover. The browns of soil had no greens blent in, but shades tawny and ruddy. No great scarred Luna swung widely around, only two close-in midget moons; he glimpsed one, flickering as it tumbled, like a firefly against starful blackness.

  And the light was eldritch. Most came from Ishtar’s own Bel, slightly less intense than Sol on Earth but the familiar yellow-white. Anu, however, was now so close that it evoked roses and blood in the clouds and tinged the seas purple.

  Stopped down to preserve his eyesight, a vision of both suns stood in the viewscreen before him. They appeared nearly the same size, a trick played by their distances. Bel was haloed in a glory of corona. Anu had no clear disc. At the middle was a furnace red where seethed monstrous spots; this dimmed and thinned outward until at last it writhed in a hazy intricacy of flame, tendrils which made Dejerine think of the Kraken.

  He turned his look away. As if for companionship, he tried to find sister planets, and believed he could pick out two. And, yes, that really brilliant star, ruby-colored, that must be Ea, six thousand times as remote from here as Bel and outward bound. It wasn’t a reminder of mortality like Anu; as a dwarf, Ea would have a tremendously long though quiet life.

  Nevertheless it touched Dejerine with a sense of its loneliness, and his, and everybody’s, ineluctable. And the splendor of Ishtar held an oncoming agony. His thought went on to Eleanor, how fair she had been and how miserable, on the day she told him that after two years she could try no longer and wanted a divorce. I was trying too, he told her again. I really was.

  He shook himself. No notions for the commander of a flotilla, these. A voice out of a speaker rescued him from silence: ‘Orbit assumed, sir. All satisfactory.’

  ‘Very good,’ he replied automatically. ‘Men not on regular watch may go off duty.’

  ‘Shall I have a call put through to ground, sir?’ asked his exec.

  ‘Not yet. It’s night in that hemisphere – as far as the proper sun is concerned, anyway. They’ve adapted to an eighteen-and-a-half-hour day there and must be mostly asleep at present, whether or not Anu is aloft. We’d be discourteous to rouse their leaders. Let us wait – um-m-m–’ Dejerine balanced Ishtarian rotation against Earthspin Navy clocks. ‘Say till 0700. That’ll give us a few hours to relax, too. If any messages are received before, switch them to me in my cabin. Otherwise beam Primavera at 0700.’

  ‘Aye, sir. Have you further orders?’

  ‘No, I’ll simply rest. I advise you do the same, Heinrichs. We’ve a busy time ahead.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. Good night.’ The thick accent cut off. Dejerine had required talk to be in English, practice for a community where that was well nigh the exclusive language. (No, native speech also. Don Conway had used a number of words which he explained, on inquiry, were of nonhuman origin.) The captain suspected a lot of Spanish, Chinese, or what-have-you went on in his absence.

  He himself had no linguistic problem. His upbringing had made him fluent in several major tongues, and his wife had been from the United States.

  He brushed aside the returning memory. He had loved her, and he still wished her well, but after three years it would be ridiculous to pine. There were plenty of other women – had been since his middle teens. He wondered if any on Ishtar would prove available.

  Again he considered the planet. Orbit had brought the cruiser into view of its civilized parts. The opposite half held a single continent and countless islands, where no significant number of Ishtarians lived and about which humans had to date learned little. They had more enigmas where they were than they could handle, in spite of indigenous help.

  Anu light lay sinister across a slice which ought to have been dark. By that dull glow he picked out the continents he had read about. Conway had tried to teach him how to utter their names.

  Australia-sized Haelen decked the south pole, extending an arm past the Antarctic Circle. Thence a series of archipelagos, visible from here only as changes in the pattern of clouds and currents, led north to Beronnen, roughly India-shaped, dry land from a bit south of the southern tropic to a bit south of the equator. Beyond were more islands, many volcanic – could he identify murkiness in some of the clouds? – until his eye reached Valennen, not far north of the equator. Like a Siberia stood on end, it stretched nearly to the north pole. The curve of the planet hid its further three quarters from Dejerine, that unknown territory whose life had not been born on Ishtar.

  He searched for the rest of his command, parked in advance of him, but failed to see any vessel. No surprise; they were widely spaced for safety and radio relay. Their names made a litany in his head: Sierra Nevada, where he was; ranger Moshe Peretz, first vessel he had skippered; scout mother Isabella, who bore in her womb ten wasps; workship Imhotep, which the fighting craft were here to serve and protect. Yes, he thought, he’d come a long way, spectacularly fast, in two senses. That he had been dispatched here, remote from action, was in truth an honor, a mark of trust.

  Nevertheless, since his duties were off him for a while, the control bridge felt like a cell. He rose and left it, in search of what home existed in his cabin. His shoes clacked loudly on empty decks. During the voyage he had had the field generators set for 1.18 g. His men and he must arrive at Ishtar with bodies adapted to its heavier pull. Tired, he felt the fourteen kilos added to his weight as if it were lead hung at shoulders and ankles.

  Well, he’d be okay after a nap.

  But when he had exchanged high-collared blue tunic and white trousers for pajamas, his hermit’s bed held no attraction. He decided to allow himself a small cognac, and lit a cigarette. For a few minutes he prowled about looking at personal things.

  His father’s picture … Why didn’t he keep his mother’s? Their marriage had broken when he was six, their sole child, and she had reared him. She had been conscientious about it, too, as much as a growingly important administrative job in the Peace Control Authority permitted. Their life hadn’t lacked excitement, either – frequent moves to different European cities, vacation trips to the rest of Earth and to Luna, parties where eminent guests discussed matters big in the news. … Yet somehow, maybe because they rarely saw each other, maybe because he was always cheerful, ambitious for little more than the enjoyment of life, Pierre Dejerine came through to the son in a way that Marina Borisovna never could … though surely a part of her in that boy had seen him through the Naval Academy even if it was a part of his father that had sparked him to apply. …

  The captain shook his head and grinned at the contents. If he must be stuffy-serious, why not put the mood to use and read over what he had on Ishtar? If nothing else, the boredom of this latest repetition might make him sleepy.

  He took the best of the books, relaxed in the lounger, sipped brandy and smoked, and began leafing through.

  –Babylonian nomenclature. Other Terrestrial mythologies were spent on planetary systems nearer home. But by chance, the Anubelean was among the first visited, so soon after Mach’s Principle led to the cracking of the light-speed barrier that Diego Primavera’s voyage was an epic of daring.

  His main goal was the globular cluster NGC 6656 (M 22) in Sagittarius. At three kiloparsecs’ remove, this is comparatively close, and additionally of special interest to astrophysicists for being small and dense: thus a good place to begin research on groups of its kind. Spaceborne instruments had picked out an isolated stellar system much nearer, which happens in this epoch to be on a direct line between Sol and the cluster heart. That background had camouflaged it from Earthside astronomers, and c
onfused the results of observation from orbit. Accordingly, Primavera’s ship was scheduled to visit it enroute.

  What he found there was vastly more exciting than what he was bound, for – from a biological and psychological, hence human viewpoint. Bear in mind how new in galactic space man was. He had not hitherto come upon worlds at once so like his home and so remarkably unlike.

  Primavera led a second expedition for the specific purpose of exploring those planets. His report caused a sensation. A scholarly dilettante, Winston P. Sanders, proposed the Babylonian names as being appropriate on numerous counts, and the suggestion was soon adopted. …

  However, by that time travelers who had gone elsewhere were bringing a flood of exotic tales. … Anubelean studies languished until a global association of scientific and humanistic institutions had been founded and funded. … Not only the fascination of Ishtar and Tammuz spoke for establishing a permanent base on the former. A wish did, to help the living natives through the next of those crises which had dogged their entire history, indeed their evolution. …

  Rhetoric. Dejerine wanted dullness. He skipped to a chapter self-proclaimed as dryly factual.

  Per se, the system is nothing extraordinary. Companion stars often have widely differing masses, therefore developmental histories, and eccentric orbits are more a rule than an exception.

  The three members of Anubelea seem to be approximately as old as Sol. Hence Bel, the G2 star, can expect four or five billion years of steady shining in the future. Ea, the red dwarf, will endure far longer than that. But Anu, the most massive, has inevitably aged faster.

  It is not enormously bigger than Bel, 1.3 times, which is to say the mass is 1.22 Sol. In its heyday it did not shine too fiercely for at least one of its planets to spawn protein-in-water life and oxygen-releasing photosynthesis. But perhaps – we continue pathetically ignorant – the greater irradiation hastened evolution. Whatever the causes, we do know that about a billion years ago, Tammuz (Anu III) had brought forth intelligent beings who had in turn brought forth a technological civilization.

  By then, their sun had burned sufficient hydrogen that it could no longer stay on the main sequence. It had begun to swell, to become a red giant. At present its total luminosity equals 280 Sols; and this is slowly, inexorably rising.

  To understand the situation on Ishtar, let us imagine its sun, Bel, as stationary, Anu and Ea revolving around it. Needless to say, in actuality the three stars move around a common center of mass. But given their changing configurations, only mathematics can well describe this. (See Appendix A.) A Bel-centered diagram is valid geometrically, to a first approximation, though false dynamically.

  In this picture, Anu moves around Bel in a huge ellipse. At its maximum distance, it is some 224 astronomical units off, scarcely more than the chief star in the skies of Ishtar. At closest approach, it comes within 40 astronomical units of Bel, i.e. between about 39 and 41 of Ishtar, depending on the planetary position. The orbital period is 1,041 Terrestrial years. That is, each millennium the red giant sweeps near. …

  The path of Ea is still more majestic and eccentric. It is always too remote to have a measurable direct effect, although it looms large in every known Ishtarian mythology. And it is interesting in its own right for the single planet it possesses, a superjovian. …

  In the present epoch – which for all practical purposes covers millions of past and future years – Anu at periastron to Bel adds approximately 20 per cent to the irradiation which Ishtar normally receives. This corresponds to a rise in black body temperature of 11° C.

  Theoretical calculations must be used carefully. A planet, especially if it has atmosphere and hydrosphere, is not a black body. For example, heat will cause the formation of clouds from evaporated water, which will reflect back more radiation than formerly; but meanwhile greenhouse effect will operate the more strongly as more water vapor enters the air. And then there are the differing, though always large, thermal inertias of various regions. …

  Since periastron passage is necessarily rapid, the time during which Anu is important to Ishtar is arbitrarily estimated at a century. As it approaches, at first there is small result except its increasing apparent size and brightness. Time is needed to heat an entire planet. Storms, droughts, and similar disasters do not become major until about the period when Anu is closest. Thereafter, while the red giant recedes, they grow progressively worse – just as the hottest time of an ordinary year comes after the summer solstice and may last beyond the autumnal equinox.

  All in all, it is thus for about one century out of ten that nature on Ishtar is in turmoil. …

  Having no large moon, the planet precesses slowly. Through this past geological era, the inclinations of orbits and spin axes have made Ishtar’s northern hemisphere bear the brunt. If periastron occurs at midwinter, Anu will be ca. 26° from the north celestial pole; if at midsummer, ca. 28°. This means that these colatitudes get the maximum exposure. Their temperatures rise well above the ‘theoretical’, with everything that implies. At their antipodes, a third of the globe never sees Anu during this time, not until it is swiftly moving away. Although the passing star is probably responsible for the lack of ice caps at either pole, the antarctic continent remains bleak. We could wish for a more reasonable energy distribution; but the universe has never shown much interest in being reasonable. …

  The book fell on Dejerine’s lap. He woke merely to enter his bed.

  V

  Its Tassu garrison would not yield Tarhanna to siege before they had plucked the leaves of their manes and shaved the turf of their pelts to eat – and then not until they had burned what strength that last starvation ration gave them. Belike many would still try to lift ax or pike when the legionaries broke down undefended gates. Knowing this, a regiment of the Zera Victrix moved north with engines trundling among them for the demolition of walls: ballistas, trebuchets, testudo-roofed ram.

  Larreka wouldn’t have ordered that, Arnanak thought in glee. He’s too wise. But Larreka had gone South-Over-Sea. His vice commandant, Wolua, was less patient, less able to foresee possible countermoves. Arnanak had hoped his enemies would seek to regain the town quickly, and laid plans for this. When he was sure, his couriers went out; drums cast word across canyons; and where they would not be seen by outland forelopers, smoke signals puffed by day and beacon fires flashed by night.

  Wolua was no fool. It was merely that two or three hundred years in service seemed to have made his thinking run in deep channels, not become free-ranging like Larreka’s. As he led his force up the road, he kept a web of scouts far-flung on either side of the Esali. The Tassui had nothing to match that corps – chosen and trained for fleetness, schooled to read maps and use compasses, equipped with telescopes, portable heliographs, bottles of tiny bluesmoke bugs which were not found in Valennen, even magical voice-casters from Humanworld in the hands of a few key officers. The scouts did not simply prevent an adversary from surprising their main body; they found and killed hostile counterparts, to keep foes in the dark about their own side.

  Or thus it had been until lately. Arnanak had a new response.

  Small, swiftly scuttering, his dauri were not likely to be seen; if seen, they would likely be taken for animals; if a legionary who saw one chanced to know a little Tassu folklore, the most he would likely think was: ‘Holy Sun, those stories may be true! Maybe there are spooks in the Stark-lands, that get down here sometimes … yes, doesn’t the legend say they come in numbers as harbingers of the thousand-yearly destruction–?’

  Arnanak’s grasp of their whistling, trilling speech was not firm. Nor could they move as fast as the legionary out-runners. But they told him what he needed to learn. He knew the size and composition of the force from Port Rua, he knew day by day where it was, and on this basis he could direct his plan of battle.

  He stood waiting to call the charge. Beside him was Kusarat, the Overling of Sekrusu. News of the capture of Tarhanna had decided that powerful but hitherto un
sure chief, and he had lately arrived at the head of three hundred armed oathgivers. They were very welcome, as much for their example as their strength. Arnanak was willing to show their leader every sign of honor, pretend that he and he were equals. The Overling of Ulu understood it would take years to bind all households to him in such wise that they agreed he had in truth become the master of South Valennen.

  ‘What then did you do?’ Kusarat asked.

  ‘I brought half my males down out of the hills as if we were blundering blind in search of fight or plunder,’ Arnanak told him. ‘As I’d awaited, the legionaries struck cross-country with the idea of their larger force surprising and slaughtering us. We, ready for them, retreated in better order than they saw, drawing them upland. Meanwhile the second half of us, scattered hidden, have gathered here.’

  ‘How could they stay hidden from yon foul-be-their-name scouts? Many of those must have gone ahead.’

  ‘Aye. But the dauri aided our folk to know where most scouts were and whither bound. Hence they could shift about as needed.’

  ‘Dauri–’ Kusarat grimaced and made a sign.

  ‘Word reached me a short while ago,’ Arnanak went on to hearten him. ‘The enemy left a few soldiers to watch his war engines on the road. They had no idea that through the dauri I had means to tell the warriors in Tarhanna of this. Our males have sallied thence and slain that guard. They are pulling the engines back to town.’

  Kusarat forgot his unease. He smote sword on shield and roared for joy.

  ‘Softly, if you will, my friend,’ Arnanak said. ‘They have no need to know in the Zera that we are not a desperate rabble brought to bay.’

  From the clump of cane lia that screened them, he peered down into a dry gorge. There tramped the enemy troops, two thousand strong. Barren, the defile was more easily used, in spite of strewn boulders, than the ground above, where claw grew. The Valenneners whom they pursued had taken this way themselves. Wolua kept detachments out across the canyon sides and along the rim: plain common sense. But in these cramped quarters, his scouts were of scant use. He had no way of telling what gathered against him forward and behind. Skirmishing on the slopes, fighting a dogged rearguard action along the bottom, the Tassui blocked him off from any frontward signs and kept him too busy to think about those parts he had already passed.