Rise of the Terran Empire Page 9

  The surface came in view. Mountains glimmered blue-white, either sheathed in ice or purely glacial. Here water was a solid mineral. The liquid that took its place was ammonia. Air was hydrogen and helium, with traces of ammonia vapor, methane, and more complex organic compounds. Certain materials had gone on to become alive.

  A sea heaved gray beneath rosy clouds. It was small for a body with twelve and a third times the mass of Earth, two and four-fifths times the diameter. Ammonia is less plentiful than water. The interiors of the enormous continents were arid; there the black vegetation grew sparsely, glittering dust scudded across the horizon's vast circle, and never a trace of habitation showed.

  A volcano blew flame and smoke on high. It did not erupt like one on Earth; it was melting itself, streams raging forth and congealing into mirror-bright veins and sheets. The very structure of Babur was unearthly, a metallic core overlaid with ice and rocky strata, water in the depths compressed into a hot solid ever ready to expand explosively when that pressure happened to ease. Here there were true Atlantises, lands that sank beneath the waves in a year or less; new countries were upheaved as fast. Falkayn glimpsed such a place, hardly touched as yet by life, raw ranges and plains still ashudder with quakes.

  On their downward slant, the ships passed above a second desert and then a fertile seaboard. A forest was squat trees on which long black streamers of leaves were fluttering. Aerial creatures breasted a gale on stubby wings. A leviathan beast wallowed blue in a gray lake beneath a lash of ammonia rain. Wilderness yielded to farms, darkling fields laid out in hexagons, houses built of gleaming ice and anchored with cables against storms. By magnification, Falkayn spied workers and their draft annuals. He could barely tell the species apart. Would a Baburite see as little distinction between a man and a horse?

  A city appeared on the shore. Because it could not grow tall, it spread wide, kilometers of domes, cubes, pyramids in murky colors. In what seemed to be a new section, buildings were aerodynamically designed to withstand winds stronger than would ever blow across Earth. Wheeled and tracked vehicles passed among them, aircraft above—but remarkably little traffic for a community this size.

  The city went below the curve of the world. "Make for that field," directed the guide. Falkayn saw a stretch of pavement, studded with great circular coamings that were mostly covered by hinged metal discs. A few stood open, revealing hollow cylinders beneath, sunk deep into the ground. It had been explained to him that for safety's sake, spacecraft which landed here were housed in such silos. The guide told him which to take, and Muddlehead eased its hull down.

  "Here we are," Falkayn said unnecessarily. The words came dull and loud, now that his view was only of fluoro-lit blankness. "Let's get our suits on pronto. Our hosts might not like to be kept waiting . . . . Muddlehead, hold all systems ready for action. Don't let anybody or anything in except one of us. In case of arguments about that, refer the arguer to us."

  "We might want a countersign," came Adzel's voice.

  "Good thinking," Falkayn said. "Hm . . . does everybody know this?" He whistled a few bars. "Somehow I doubt the Baburites have ever heard 'One-Ball Riley.'" Beneath his cheerfulness, he thought, What does it matter? We're totally at their mercy. And then: Not necessarily, by God!

  At the main personnel lock, he, Adzel, and Chee donned their spacesuits. They took time for a complete checkout. The walk ahead of them was short, but the least failure would be lethal. "Fare you well, Muddlehead," said Adzel before he closed his faceplate.

  "Provided you don't sit here inventing new distortions of poker," Chee added.

  "Would backgammon variations interest you?" asked the computer.

  "Come on, let's move along, for Job's sake," Falkayn said.

  Having completed their preparations, they took each a ready-packed personal kit and cycled through the lock. A platform elevator in a recess in the silo wall, with an up-and-down lever control, bore them to the top. Adzel was forced to use it alone, and at that most of him hung over the edge. Nevertheless, the fact that it could carry him was suggestive. It was meant solely for passengers; elsewhere on the field Falkayn had seen support cradles for ships that were to be loaded or unloaded, and cargo handling equipment. So the Baburites had visitors bigger than themselves often enough to justify a machine like this, did they?

  As he emerged, Falkayn paid attention also to the controls of the hatch cover. A wheel steered a small motor which ran the hydraulic system moving the heavy piece of metal up or down.

  Heavy . . . Unrelieved by his vessel's interior gee field, weight smote him. Without optical amplification, his eyes saw the world as twilit. Mogul glared low above buildings on his left, near the end of Babur's short day. Clouds hung amber in purple heaven; beneath them blew a ruddy wrack. With three and a third Terrestrial atmospheres of pressure behind it, the wind made motion through it feel like wading a river. Its sound was shrill, as was every noise borne by this air.

  Several Baburites met him. They carried energy weapons. Pointing the way to go, they led the newcomers trudging across the expanse. A complex occupied an entire side of it. When close, able to make out details through the dusk, Falkayn recognized the structure. No workshop or warehouse of ice such as shimmered elsewhere, this was a man-made environmental unit, a block fashioned of alloys and plastics chosen for durability, thick-walled, triple-insulated. Light from some of the reinforced windows glowed yellow. Inside, he knew, the air was warm and recycled. As part of that cycle, the hydrogen that seeped through was catalytically treated to make water. The helium that entered took the place of a corresponding amount of nitrogen. A fifth of the gas was oxygen. A grav generator kept weight at Terrestrial standard.

  "Our home away from home," he muttered.

  Chee's astonishment sounded in his radio earphones: "This large a facility? How many do they house at a time? And why?"

  A member of the escort thrummed into a communicator beside an airlock. Evidently it summoned assistance from within, for after a couple of minutes the outer valve swung back. The three from Sol entered the chamber in response to gestures. There was barely room for them. Pumps roared, sucking out Babur's air. Gas from the Interior gushed through a nozzle. The inner valve opened.

  Beyond was an entryroom, empty save for a spacesuit locker. Two beings waited. They were lightly clad, but they carried sidearms. One was a Merseian, a biped whose face was roughly manlike but whose green-skinned body, leaning stance, and ponderous tail were not. The other was a human male.

  Falkayn stepped out, almost losing his balance as the pull on him dropped. He unlatched his faceplate. "Hello," he heard. "Welcome to the monastery."

  "Thanks," he mumbled.

  "A word of warning first," the man said. "Don't try making trouble, no matter how husky your Wodenite friend is. The Baburites have armed watchers everywhere. Cooperate with me, and I'll help you settle in. You'll be here for quite a spell."

  "Why?"

  "You can't expect they'll let you go till the war is over, can you? Or don't you know? The main fleet of Babur is off to grab Mirkheim. And scoutboats have reported human ships on their way there."

  VI

  The man, large, heavy-featured, thick-mustached, introduced himself as Sheldon Wyler. "Sure, I'm working for the Baburites," he said almost coolly. "What's the Commonwealth or the League to me? And no, don't bother asking for details, because you won't get them."

  He did, though, name his sullenly mute companion, Blyndwyr of the Vach Ruethen. "A fair number of Merseians are enlisted in the navy," he volunteered. "Mostly they belong to the aristocratic party at home and have no love for the League, considering how it shunted their kind aside and dealt instead with the Gethfennu group. You know, not many League people seem to understand what a cosmos of enemies it's made for itself over the years."

  After the newcomers had unsuited, he squeezed past Adzel to a phone set in the wall. When he had punched, the screen lit with the likeness of a Baburite. "They're here," he reported in A
nglic, and went on to describe the three from Muddlin' Through. "We're about to show them their quarters."

  "Have you examined their effects for weapons?" asked the vocalizer voice.

  "Why, no. What good—Well, all right. Hold on." To the prisoners: "You heard. We've got to check your gear."

  "Proceed," Adzel said dully. "We are not so foolish as to use firearms inside an environmental unit; so we have brought none."

  Wyler laughed. "Blyndwyr and I are good enough shots to blast you without putting a hole anywhere else." He went quickly through the luggage. The Merseian kept hand on gun butt. Chee's whiskers quivered with rage, her fur stood on end, her eyes had gone ice-green. A sickness gripped Falkayn by the throat.

  Having verified the bags contained nothing more dangerous than compact tool kits, Wyler blanked the phone and led the way down a corridor. A room opening on it held four bunks and a window rapidly filling with night. "Bath and cleanup yonder," he pointed. "You can cook for yourselves; the kitchen's well stocked. Blyndwyr and me, we don't live here just now, but you'll be seeing a good deal of us, I'll bet. Behave yourselves and you won't be hurt. That includes telling us whatever we want to know."

  Adzel brought his forelimbs through the door and the room grew crowded. "Uh, I guess you'd better sleep in the hall, fellow," Wyler said. "Tell you what, we'll go straight on to the mess, where there's space for all of us, and talk."

  Falkayn gripped his spirit as if it were a wrestler trying to throw him. As he walked, his neck ached from its own stiffness. Lead him on, he thought. Collect information, no matter how unlikely it is you'll ever bring it to anybody who can use it. "What's this building for?" he got out in what he attempted to make a level tone.

  "Engineering teams used to need it," Wyler said. "Later it housed officers of oxygen-breathing auxiliary forces while they got their indoctrination."

  "You speak too freely," Blyndwyr reproved him.

  Wyler bit his lip. "Well, I didn't sign on to be a goddamn interrogator—" He relaxed a little. "What the muck, my answer was pretty obvious, wasn't it? And they aren't going anywhere with it, either . . . . Here we are."

  The messroom was broad and echoing. Furniture had been stacked against the walls and the air smelled musty, as if no one had adjusted the recyclers for some time. Adzel went motionless, like a statue of an elemental demon. Chee poised at his feet, her tail whipping her flanks and the floor. Falkayn and Wyler drew out a couple of chairs and sat. Blyndwyr stood well aside, ever watchful.

  "Suppose you start by telling me exactly who sent you and why," Wyler said. "You've been goddamn vague so far."

  Our assignment itself was vague, Falkayn thought. Van Rijn trusted we'd be able to improvise as we went, as we learned. Instead, we've been captured as casually as fish in a net. And as hopelessly? Aloud, he dared be defiant: "We might both be more interested in what you're doing. How can you claim it's not treason to your species?"

  Wyler scowled. "Are you going to spout a sermon at me, Captain? I don't have to take that." He considered. "But okay, okay, I will explain. What's so evil about the Baburites? Without a navy, they'd never stand a chance. The Commonwealth would grab Mirkheim and the whole goddamn industrial revolution that Mirkheim means, with crumbs for anybody else. Or the League would. The Baburites think differently. To them, this is no question of profit or loss on a balance tape. No, it's an opportunity for the race. With it, they can buy their way into the front rank—buy ships, mount expeditions, plant colonies, not to speak of all they might do at home—immediately!"

  "But Mirkheim was not foreseeable," Falkayn argued. "Before that, why was Babur arming? Why did it plan to fight . . . and whom?"

  "The Commonwealth has a navy, doesn't it? And the League companies keep warships too. They've seen use. We never know what we may come up against tomorrow. You of all people should remember the Shenna. Babur has a right of self-defense."

  "You talk like a convert."

  "You do not talk like a businessman, Captain Falkayn," Wyler said in anger. "I think you're stalling me. And I'm not going to stand for that, you hear? Maybe you imagine being famous will protect you. Well, forget that. You're a long ways off into a territory that doesn't care a good goddamn about your reputation. They don't feel obliged here to send you back undamaged, or send you back at all. If we have to, we'll pump you full of babble juice. And if that doesn't seem to be working so well, we'll go on from there."

  He stopped, swallowed, smoothed countenance and tone: "But hey, let's not quarrel. I'm sure you're a reasonable osco. And you say one of your aims is to see what you can dicker out for your employer. Well, I might be able to help you there, if you help me first. Let's brew some coffee and talk sense."

  Chee Lan rattled a string of syllables. "What?" Wyler asked.

  She spat out words like bullets: "I was making remarks about those refrigerated centipedes of yours that you wouldn't want to translate for them."

  Falkayn sat very quiet. His blood made a cataract noise in his ears. Chee had used the Haijakatan language, which they three knew and surely no one else within many light-years. "If we don't escape, we'll die here sooner or later. And even what little we've learned is important to bring home. I think we can take these two, and get Davy back to the ship in disguise."

  "Her comments are, however, quite apposite," the Wodenite put in. "I myself might go so far as to say—" He switched to Haijakatan. "If you can begin on the greenskin, Chee, I can handle the man."

  "True and triple true." The Cynthian did not pace, she bounded, back and forth like a cat at play but with her tail bottled to twice its normal size.

  Wyler's hand slipped down toward his gun. Blyndwyr drew a hissing breath and backed off, gripping his own blaster in its holster. Falkayn held himself altogether still, believing he saw what his comrades intended but not quite sure, ready only to trust them.

  Start by distracting attention. "You can't blame my friends for getting excited," he said. "They're not Commonwealth citizens. Neither am I. And we haven't come on behalf of the League, just of a single company. Nevertheless we're to be interned indefinitely and quizzed under threats, possibly under drugs or torture. The best thing you can do, Wyler, is make the higher-ups of Babur listen to us. They should put away this blind hostility of theirs to the League. Its independent members want it to be in charge of Mirkheim. That'd guarantee everybody access to the supermetals."

  "Would it?" Wyler snorted. "The League's split in pieces. And the Baburites know that."

  "How? When we're as ignorant about them as we are, how did they get so close an impression of us? Who told them? And what makes them ready to stake their whole future on the word of those persons?"

  "I don't know everything," Wyler admitted. "Goddamn, this planet's got eight times the surface of Earth, most of it land surface. Why shouldn't the Imperial Band feel confident?" He thrust out his jaw. "And that will be the last question you get to ask, Falkayn. I'm starting now."

  Chee's restlessness had brought her near the Merseian. His alertness had focused itself back on the seated humans. Abruptly she made a final leap, sidewise but straight at him. Landing halfway up his belly, she gripped fast to his garment with her toes while both arms wrapped around his gun hand. He yelled and tried to draw regardless. She was too strong; she clung. He hammered at her with his free fist. Her teeth raked blood from it.

  Adzel had taken a single stride. It brought him in reach of Wyler, whom he plucked from the chair, lowered, and bowled backward across the floor. His tail slapped down over the man's midriff to hold him pinioned. Meanwhile Adzel kept moving. He got to Blyndwyr, picked him up by the neck, shook him carefully, and set him down in a stunned condition. Chee hauled the blaster loose and scampered aside. Wyler was struggling to get at his gun. Falkayn arrived and took the weapon from its holster.

  Adzel released Wyler and stepped back with his comrades. Wyler lurched to his feet; Blyndwyr sat gasping. "Are you crazy?" the human chattered. "What is this nonsense, you can't—can'
t—"

  "Maybe we can." Glee surged through Falkayn. He knew he should have been more cautious, vetoed the attack, stayed meek lest he get himself killed. But if none of us three is an Earthling, Coya is; and on the whole, Earth has been good to us too. Besides, ours is Old Nick's single ship in these parts. He sent us mainly to gather information, that he might not have to grope totally blind. And his welfare is also the welfare of thousands of his workers, millions among the planetary peoples who trade with him . . . . To Satan with that. What counts is breaking free! The fire in his flesh roared too loudly for him to hear any fright.

  At the same time, the logical part of him was starkly conscious. "Stay where you are, both of you," he told Wyler and Blyndwyr. "Adzel, Chee, your idea is that I can go out dressed as him, right?"

  "Of course." The Cynthian settled down on her haunches and began to groom herself. "One human must look like another to a Baburite."