I
–
Every planet in the story is cold–even Terra, though Flandry came home
on a warm evening of northern summer. There the chill was in the spirit.
He felt a breath of it as he neared. Somehow, talk between him and his
son had drifted to matters Imperial. They had avoided all such during
their holiday.
Terra itself had not likely reminded them. The globe hung beautiful in
starry darkness, revealed by a view-screen in the cabin where they sat.
It was almost full, because they were accelerating with the sun behind
them and were not yet close enough to start on an approach curve. At
this remove it shone white-swirled blue, unutterably pure, near dewdrop
Luna. Nothing was visible of the scars that man had made upon it.
And the saloon was good to be in, bulkheads nacreous gray, benches
padded in maroon velvyl, table of authentic teak whereon stood Scotch
whisky and everything needed for the use thereof, warm and flawlessly
recycled air through which gamboled a dance tune and drifted an odor of
lilacs. The Hooligan, private speedster of Captain Sir Dominic Flandry,
was faster, better armed, and generally more versatile than any vessel
of her class had a moral right to be; but her living quarters reflected
her owner’s philosophy that, if one is born into an era of decadence,
one may as well enjoy it while it lasts.
He leaned back, inhaled deeply of his cigarette, took more smokiness in
a sip from his glass, and regarded Dominic Hazeltine with some concern.
If the frontier was truly that close to exploding–and the boy must go
there again … “Are you sure?” he asked. “What proved facts have you
got–proved by yourself, not somebody else? Why wouldn’t I have heard
more?”
His companion returned a steady look. “I don’t want to make you feel
old,” he said; and the knowledge passed through Flandry that a
lieutenant commander of Naval Intelligence, twenty-seven standard years
of age, wasn’t really a boy, nor was his father any longer the boy who
had begotten him. Then Hazeltine smiled and took the curse off: “Well, I
might want to, just so I can hope that at your age I’ll have acquired,
let alone kept, your capacity for the three basic things in life.”
“Three?” Flandry raised his brows. “Feasting, fighting, and–Wait; of
course I haven’t been along when you were in a fight. But I’ve no doubt
you perform as well as ever in that department too. Still, you told me
for the last three years you’ve stayed in the Solar System, taking life
easy. If the whole word about Dennitza hasn’t reached the Emperor–and
apparently it’s barely starting to–why should it have come to a
pampered pet of his?”
“Hm. I’m not really. He pampers with a heavy hand. So I avoid the court
as much as politeness allows. This indefinite furlough I’m on–nobody
but him would dare call me back to duty, unless I grow bored and request
assignment–that’s the only important privilege I’ve taken. Aside from
the outrageous amount of talent, capability, and charm with which I was
born; and I do my best to share those chromosomes.”
Flandry had spoken lightly in half a hope of getting a similar response.
They had bantered throughout their month-long jaunt, whether on a
breakneck hike in the Great Rift of Mars or gambling in a miners’ dive
in Low Venusberg, running the rings of Saturn or dining in elegance
beneath its loveliness on Iapetus with two ladies expert and expensive.
Must they already return to realities? They’d been more friends than
father and son. The difference in age hardly showed. They bore
well-muscled height in common, supple movement, gray eyes, baritone
voice. Flandry’s face stood out in a perhaps overly handsome combination
of straight nose, high cheekbones, cleft chin–the result of a biosculp
job many years past, which he had never bothered to change again–and
trim mustache. His sleek seal-brown hair was frosted at the temples;
when Hazeltine accused him of bringing this about by artifice, he had
grinned and not denied it. Though both wore civilian garb, Flandry’s
iridescent puff-sleeved blouse, scarlet cummerbund, flared blue
trousers, and curly-toed beefleather slippers opposed the other’s plain