The Star Fox (20 page)

She laid down her book as the tall man entered. Color mounted in her face. ‘Gunnar,’ she said very low. ‘You shouldn’t be up.’

‘Our medic wants me on my back till we leave,’ he said, ‘but the hell with him. At least, I had to come see you before you go. How’re you feeling?’

‘All right. Still weak, of course, but Dr. Silva says I’m making a good recovery.’

‘I know. I asked him. Enzyme therapy is a wonder, eh?’ Heim searched for a phrase. Nothing sufficed. ‘I’m glad.’

‘Sit down, you idiot!’

He pulled the lounger close to her bed and lowered himself. Even in a flyer, the trip had left him lightheaded. Several days yet must pass before his vigor was restored. The gun at his hip caught on the adjuster console. He pulled it free with a muttered oath.

Amusement touched her lips. ‘You needn’t have brought that. Nobody’s going to kidnap you.’

‘Well, hopefully not. Call it insurance.’

Her smile faded. ‘Are you that angry?’

‘No. Two good men died, the rest of us went through a nasty time. I’m sorry it happened, but you can’t take an episode in a war to heart.’

Her look reminded him of a trapped small animal. ‘You could press charges of murder.’

‘Good Lord!’ he exclaimed. ‘What kind of swine do you take me for? We went out together on a field trip. Our engine failed, we made a crash landing where one man was killed, and hiked after help. If your people will stick by that story, mine will.’

A thin hand stole toward him. He took it and did not let go. Her hazel eyes caught him in turn. Silence grew.

When he could hold out no more, and still lacked meaningful words, he said, ‘You’re hauling mass at dawn, right?’

‘Yes. The scientists – those who thought this was a genuine trip – they want to stay. But Captain Gutierrez overruled them. We’ve lost our purpose.’ Quickly: ‘How long will you remain?’

‘About another Earth week, till the new missile units are fitted. To be sure, we’ll lose time getting out of the planetary system. The Lodge has to escort us, and won’t let us arm our warheads till we’re beyond defensive limits. But still, I figure we’ll be on the move inside of ten days.’

Again muteness, while they looked at each other, and away, and back. ‘What do you plan on doing at home?’ he tried.

‘Wait for you,’ she said. ‘Pray for you.’

‘But – no, look, your, uh, your political work—’

‘That’s no longer relevant. I haven’t changed my mind – or have I? It’s hard to tell.’ Her free hand rubbed her forehead confusedly. The motion stirred her hair, awakening light in the chestnut tresses. ‘I don’t think I was wrong in principle,’ she said after a bit. ‘Maybe I was in practice. But it doesn’t matter any more. You see, you’ve changed the universe. Earth is committed.’

‘Nonsense!’ His face smoldered. ‘One ship?’

‘With you her captain, Gunnar.’

‘Thanks, but … but you flatter me and—Wait, Joss, you do have a job. Sentiment at home might swing too far in the other direction. The last thing any sane person wants is a jehad. You keep telling ’em the enemy is not too evil to live. Remind ’em there’ll be peace negotiations eventually, and the more reasonable we are then, the more likely the peace is to last. Okay?’

He saw that she braced herself. ‘You’re right, and I’ll do my poor best,’ she said. ‘But talking politics is only an evasion.’

‘What do you mean?’ he stalled.

Her mouth quirked afresh. ‘Why, Gunnar, I do believe you’re scared.’

‘No, no, nothing of the sort. You need rest. I’d better go.’

‘Sit,’ she commanded. Her fingers closed about his palm. The touch was light, but it would have been easier to break free of a ship grapple.

Red and white chased each other across her countenance. ‘I have to explain,’ she said with astounding steadiness. ‘About what happened earlier.’

His skin prickled.

‘Yes, I hoped to persuade you not to fight,’ she said. ‘But I learned more was involved. Infinitely more.’

‘Uh, uh – the past, sure—’

‘When you come back,’ she asked, ‘what are
you
going to do?’

‘Live quietly.’

‘Ha! I’d like to make book on that. For a while, though, you will be home on Earth.’ Her tone dropped. ‘Oh, God, you must.’ She raised her head. ‘I’ll be there too.’

He must summon so much will to speak that none was left for holding his eyes off the deck. ‘Joss,’ he said, word by word, ‘you remember too many things. So do I. There was that chance once, which we did better to pass up. Then we met again, both free, both lonesome, and I admit I also thought the chance might have come again. Only it hadn’t. Time switched the dice on us.’

‘No, that isn’t true. Sure, at first I believed otherwise. Our casual meetings after I returned from Ourania, and the political barrier between us – damn all politics! I thought you were simply attractive, and half that must be because of a friendship we’d never revive. I dreamed a little on the way here, but they seemed like just ordinary woman-type daydreams. How could you hurt me?’ She paused. ‘It turned out you could.’

‘I’m trying not to,’ he said desperately. ‘You’re too good for soothing with lies.’

She let his hand go. Her own fell open upon the blanket. ‘So you don’t care.’

‘I do, I do. But can’t you see, I didn’t break with Connie the way you did with Edgar. When she, well, helped me about you, we pulled still closer together. Then she died. It cut me off at the roots. I guess without thinking about it I’ve looked
ever since for a root that strong. I’m a coward, afraid to settle for anything less, because afterwards someone else might happen by who—It wouldn’t be fair to you.’

She rallied. ‘You’ve outgrown believing in permanent infatuation, haven’t you? We understand what really matters between two people. If you’re trying to warn me you might be restless—I wouldn’t be jealous at your wandering a little. As long as you always came back.’

‘I don’t want to wander. Physically isn’t important. I wouldn’t want to mentally. That one time was bad enough. And when I heard about New Europe, I remembered a girl there. I was young and stupid, skittish about being tied down, which is especially bad for a Navy man. So I left when my leave was up without committing myself. Next time I arrived, she’d moved; I dithered whether to track her down, finally didn’t, and soon after got posted too far away to visit that planet. Now—’

‘I see. You want to make sure about her.’

‘I have to.’

‘But that was twenty years or more ago, wasn’t it?’

He nodded. ‘I’ve got to find out what happened to her, see her safe if she’s still alive. Beyond that, yes, I’m doubtless being foolish.’

She smiled then. ‘Go ahead. I’m not too worried.’

He rose. ‘I must leave now. Neither of us is in any shape for emotional scenes.’

‘Yes. I’ll wait, darling.’

‘Better not. Not seriously, anyhow. Hell alone knows what’ll happen to me. I might not return at all.’

‘Gunnar!’ she cried, as if he had struck her. ‘Never say that!’

He jollied her as best he could, and kissed her farewell, and departed. While his pilot flitted him the short way back to the yacht, he looked out. A flock of Staurni hunters was taking off. Sunlight flared across their weapons. The turmoil in him changed toward eagerness – to be away, to sail his ship again – as he watched those dragon shapes mount into the sky.

S
TRICTLY
speaking, the Phoenix is a constellation in the skies of the Solar System, about half-way between ecliptic plane and south celestial pole. It is a mistake to apply the name to that region of space, some hundred and fifty light-years in the same direction from Earth, where the suns of Alerion and New Europe are found. But because a human colony makes a number of neighboring systems interesting – as places to visit, mine, trade, explore, fight, be
related
to – a name is required for such a vaguely defined territory. Once bestowed, however carelessly, it remains.

And perhaps this one was not altogether a misnomer. The Phoenix of myth is reborn in fire. Nuclear energies bore Lamontagne the long way to Aurore. When he saw that that sun had a world where men could settle, he raised the tricolor like a flame in its heavens. Hope burned high in the folk who moved to New Europe, labored, begot, and bequeathed. Then the war-craft of Alerion came, with hellfire aboard.

A ship raised from the planet. Forces pulsed in her gravitrons, meshed with the intervowen fields of the cosmos, drove her out at ever-mounting speed. As Aurore fell behind, space grew less distorted by the star’s mass. She would soon reach a point where the metric approximated a straight line so nearly that it was safe to draw the forces entirely around her, cut off that induction effect known as inertia, and outpace light.

A million kilometers away,
Fox II
observed her: saw by visible light and infrared, felt with a ghostly quickly-brushing whisker of radar, heard faint ripples of her drive in space, snuffed the neutrinos from her engines, and came to carnivore alertness.

‘Damn!’ said Gunnar Heim. ‘We should have spotted that beast hours ago. They must have installed extra screening.’

First Officer David Penoyer studied the data-analysis tapes.
‘Seems to be a moderate-sized transport ship. Same class as the
Ellehoi
we took last month, I’d guess. If so, we’ve got more legs than she does.’

Heim gave a restless shove with one foot. His huge body made a free-fall curve through the air to a viewport. Stars crowded it beyond counting; the Milky Way rivered in silver around an endless clear black; nebulae and remote galaxies glimmered across more distance than man will ever comprehend. He had no time for awe; he stared outward with eyes gone wintry blue as a giant sun and said: ‘She’ll be outside the Mach limit long before we can come anywhere near matching velocities. I know it’s theoretically possible for a ship to lay alongside another going FTL, but it’s never been done and I’m not about to try. If nothing else, there’d be too much interstellar gas turbulence.’

‘Well, but – Captain, we don’t have to make a prize of her. I mean, if we simply accelerate, we’ll catch her inside the limit. Then she’s either got to turn on the Machs and probably get ripped apart, or face our barrage.’

Heim’s blocky features bent into a grimace. ‘And she might take the chance rather than surrender. I’d hate to spoil our record. Four months of commerce raiding, eighteen Aleriona ships captured, and we haven’t had to kill anybody yet.’ He ran a hand through his roan hair. ‘If only—Wait!’ He swung about and pushed the intercom controls. ‘Captain to chief engineer. Listen, you can make a gravitron do everything but wash dishes. Could we safely make a very short FTL run from here?’

Penoyer shaped a soundless whistle.

‘The matter is one ow ‘recise adjustment, skiwwer,’ rumbled Uthg-a-K’thaq’s voice. ‘We succeeded in it when we lewt the Solar Sys-tem. Wut now, awter cruising so long without an owerhaul—’

‘I know.’ Heim’s faded blue tunic wrinkled with his shrug. They didn’t have uniforms on
Fox
. ‘All right, I suppose we do simply have to destroy them. War isn’t a game of tiddlywinks,’ he added, largely to himself.

‘A moment, ‘lease.’ The intercom brought clicking noises. C.E. must be using his Naqsan equivalent of a slide rule, Heim thought. ‘Yes-s-s. I hawe recalculated the sawety margin. It suwwices.’

‘Whoops!’ Heim’s yell rang between the bulkheads. ‘Hear
that, Dave?’ He pounded Penoyer on the back.

The blond man catapulted across the bridge, choked, and sputtered, ‘Yes, sir, very good.’

‘Not just that we won’t have to blot out lives,’ Heim exulted. ‘But the money. All that lovely, lovely prize money.’

And a prize crew to take her back to Earth
, the business part of him recalled.
We’re damn near down to a skeleton complement. A few more captures and we’ll have to call a halt
.

Fiercely:
So we don’t sell the last one, but send word by it. Whoever wants to sign on again can meet us at Staurn, where we’ll be refilling our magazines. With the kind of bank account I must have now, I can refit for a dozen more cruises. We won’t stop till we’re blown out of space – or the Federation gets off its duff and makes some honest war
.

He gave himself entirely to the work of preparation. When battle stations were piped, a cheer shivered the length of the ship. Those were good boys, he thought with renewed warmth. They’d drawn reluctant lots to choose who must bring the seized Aleriona vessels home, and even so fights had broken out over the privilege of daily risking death in the Auroran System. Of course, the ones who stayed got a proportionately larger share of booty. But they had signed on his privateer for much more than that.

‘Engines to full output!’ If the enemy were on the
qui vive
, they would immediately observe on their instruments that another vessel orbited here. Radar alone was useless at such distances, for what was registered might as well be a meteorite: until it awoke.

‘Internal field to standard!’ Earth weight came back.

Turning vectors: roll three points, pitch four and half points, yaw twelve points!’ Stars wheeled across the ports.

‘Acceleration maximum!’ There was no sense of pressure in the compensating gee-field that webbed through the hull. But the engines growled.

‘Stand by for Mach drive! On the mark, five, four, three, two, one, zero!’

Starlight wavered, as if seen through a sheet of running water, and steadied again. In that brief passage, the fantastic acceleration of inertialessness did not build up a speed so great that aberration or Doppler effect counted. But the remote disc of Aurore shrank yet farther.

‘Cut Mach drive!’ An electronic signal had sent the command before Heim’s automatic words were well begun.

Computers chattered beneath Penoyer’s hands.
Fox
had returned to normal well ahead of the Aleriona ship. The latter was still traveling at more than the privateer’s kinetic velocity, but it would now be no trick to match vectors inside the Mach limit.

‘Number Four Turret, give her one across the bows!’ The missile streaked forth. Atomic fire dazzled momentarily among the constellations.