“Terran vessel, and she is a Terran vessel, to Saniau. Listen with both
ears. Dominic Flandry speaks. That’s right, the very same Dominic
Flandry who. I’m going home. The datholch Ydwyr, Vach Urdiolch, nephew
to the most exalted Roidhun and so forth, is my guest. If you don’t
believe me, check the native town and try to find him. When he recovers
from a slight indisposition, I can give you a visual. Shoot me down and
he goes too.” Pause.
“If you speak truth, Dominic Flandry, do you imagine the datholch would
trade honor for years?”
“No. I do imagine you’ll save him if you possibly can.”
“Correct. You will be overhauled, grappled, and boarded. If the datholch
has been harmed, woe betide you.”
“First you have to do the overhauling. Second you have to convince me
that any woe you can think of betides me worse than what does already. I
suggest you check with the qanryf before you get reckless. Meanwhile,”
and in Anglic, “cheerio.” Flandry cut the circuit.
At his velocity, he had crossed the Hellkettle Mountains. The northlands
stretched vast and drear beneath, gleaming ice, glittering snow, blots
that were blizzards. He cast about with his instruments for a really
huge storm. There was sure to be one somewhere, this time of year …
yes!
A wall of murk towered from earth to high heaven. Before he had pierced
it, Flandry felt the thrust and heard the scream of hurricane-force
winds. When he was inside, blackness and chaos had him.
A corvette would not go into such a tempest. Nothing except a
weathership had any business in one; others could flit above or around
readily enough. But a small spaceboat with a first-class pilot–a pilot
who had begun his career in aircraft and aerial combat–could live in
the fury. And detectors, straining from outside, would lose her.
Flandry lost himself in the battle to keep alive.
Half an hour later, he broke free and shot into space.
Talwin rolled enormous in his screens. Halfway down from either pole
coruscated winter’s whiteness; the cloud-marbled blue of seas between
icecaps looked black by contrast. Flandry waved. “Goodbye,” he said
anew. “Good luck.”
Meters shouted to his eyes of patrol ships waiting for him. You didn’t
normally risk hyperdrive this near a planet or a sun. Matter density was
too great, as was the chance of gravitation desynchronizing your quantum
jumps. The immediate scene was scarcely normal. Flandry’s hands danced.
Switchover to secondary state in so strong a field made the hull ring.
Screens changed to the faster-than-light optical compensation mode.
Talwin was gone and Siekh dwindling among the stars. The air droned. The
deck shivered.
After minutes, a beep drew Flandry’s attention to a tell-tale. “Well,”
he said, “one skipper’s decided to be brave and copy us. He got away
with it, too, and locked onto our ‘wake.’ His wouldn’t register that
steady a bearing otherwise. We’re faster, but I’m afraid we won’t shake
him before he’s served as a guide to others who can outpace us.”
Djana stirred. She had sat mute–lost, he thought when he could spare
her a thought–while they ran the polar storm. Her face turned to him
beneath its heavy coif of hair. “Have you any hope?” she asked
tonelessly.
He punched for navigational data. “A stem chase is a long chase,” he
said, “and I’ve heard about a pulsar not many parsecs off. It may help
us shed our importunate colleagues.”
She made no response, simply looked back out at space. Either she didn’t
know how dangerous a pulsar was, or she didn’t care.
XIX
—
Once a blue giant sun had burned, 50,000 times more luminous than
yet-unborn Sol. It lasted for a bare few million years; then the
hydrogen fuel necessary to stay on the main sequence was gone. The star
collapsed. In the unimaginable violence of a supernova, momentarily
blazing to equal an entire galaxy, it went out.
Such energies did not soon bleed away. For ages the blown-off upper
layers formed a nebula of lacy loveliness around the core, which shone
less white-hot than X-ray hot. Eventually the gases dissipated, a part
of them to make new suns and planets. The globe that remained continued