do with us?”
“I can’t say,” he replied with no measurable sympathy, “except that I
don’t imagine they care to have us take home our story.”
A story of an intelligence ring on Irumclaw, headed by that Rax–whose
planet of origin is doubtless in the Roidhunate, not the Empire–and
probably staffed by members of the local syndicates. Not to mention the
fact that apparently there is a Merseian base in the wilderness, this
close to our borders. A crawling went along his spine. Then too, when
word gets back to their headquarters, somebody may well want a personal
interview with me.
The destroyer grappled the spaceboat alongside and started off. Flandry
tried to engage his guard in conversation, but the latter had orders to
refrain. The one who brought dinner did agree to convey a request for
him. Flandry was surprised when it was granted: that he might observe
approach and landing. Though why not? To repeat, they won’t return me to
blab what I’ve seen.
Obviously the destination coordinates that Rax had given Djana meant the
boat would be on a course bringing her within detection range of a
picket ship; and any such wouldn’t go far from the base. Flandry got his
summons in two or three hours. He left Djana knotted around her
wretchedness–serves her right, the stupid slut!–and preceded his armed
guide forward.
The layout resembled that of a human vessel. Details varied, to allow
for variations in size, shape, language, and culture. Yet it was the
same enclosing metal narrowness, the same drone and vibration, the same
warm oily-smelling gusts from ventilator grilles, the same duties to
perform.
But the crew were big, green-skinned, hairless, spined and tailed. Their
outfits were black, of foreign cut and drape, belts holding war knives.
They practiced rituals and deferences–a gesture, a word, a stepping
aside–with the smoothness of centuried tradition. The glimpses of
something personal, a picture or souvenir, showed a taste more austere
and abstract than was likely in a human spacehand. The body odors that
filled this crowded air were sharper and, somehow, drier than man’s. The
dark eyes that followed him had no whites.
Broch–approximately, Second Mate–Tryntaf the Tall greeted him in the
chartroom. “You are entitled to the courtesies, Lieutenant. True, you
are under arrest for violation of ensovereigned space; but our realms
are not at war.”
“I thank the broch,” Flandry said in his best Eriau, complete with
salute of gratitude. He refrained from adding that, among other
provisions, the Covenant of Alfzar enjoined both powers from claiming
territory in the buffer zone. Surely here, as on Starkad and elsewhere,
a “mutual assistance pact” had been negotiated with an amenable, or
cowed, community of autochthons.
He was more interested in what he saw. Belike he looked on his
deathplace.
The viewport displayed the usual stars, so many as to be chaos to the
untrained perception. Flandry had learned the tricks–strain out the
less bright through your lashes; find your everywhere-visible markers,
like the Magellanic Clouds; estimate by its magnitude the distance of
the nearest giant, Betelgeuse. He soon found that he didn’t need them
for a guess at where he was. Early in the game he’d gotten Djana to
recite those coordinates for him and stored them in his memory; and the
sun disc he saw was of a type uncommon enough, compared to the red dwarf
majority, that only one or two would exist in any given neighborhood.
The star was, in fact, akin to Mimir–somewhat less massive and radiant,
but of the same furious whiteness, with the same boiling spots and
leaping prominences. It must be a great deal older, though, for it had
no surrounding nebulosity. At its distance, it showed about a third
again the angular diameter of Sol seen from Terra.
“F5,” Tryntaf said, “mass 1.34, luminosity 3.06, radius 1.25.” The
standard to which he referred was, in reality, his home sun, Koiych; but
Flandiy recalculated the values in Solar terms with drilled-in ease. “We
call it Siekh. The planet we are bound for we call Talwin.”
“Ah.” The man nodded. “And what more heroes of your Civil Wars have you
honored?”
Tryntaf threw him a sharp glance. Damn, I forgot again, he thought.