He managed a tired grin at Bourtai. “After all,” he said, “if a frontier planet has beautiful girls, tradition requires that it have monsters as well.”
Her blush was like fire.
They returned to camp in silence. Flandry entered the yurt given him, washed and changed clothes, lay down on his bunk and stared at the ceiling. He reflected bitterly on all the Terran romancing he had ever heard, the High Frontier in general and the dashing adventures of the Intelligence Corps in particular. So what did it amount to? A few nasty moments with men or giant rats that wanted to kill you; stinking leather clothes, wet feet, chilblains and frostbite, unseasoned food, creaking wheels exchanged for squealing runners; temperance, chastity, early rising, weighty speech with tribal elders, not a book he could enjoy or a joke he could understand for light-years. He yawned, rolled over on his stomach, tried to sleep, gave up after a while, and began to wish Arghun’s reckless counsel would be accepted. Anything to break this dreariness!
It tapped on the door. He started to his feet, bumped his head on a curved ridgepole, swore, and said: “Come in.” The caution of years laid his hand on a blaster.
The short day was near an end, only a red streak above one edge of the world. His lamp picked out Bourtai. She entered, closed the door, and stood unspeaking.
“Why… hullo.” Flandry paused. “What brings you here?”
“I came to see if you were indeed well.” Her eyes did not meet his.
“Oh? Oh, yes. Yes, of course,” he said stupidly. “Kind of you. I mean, uh, shall I make some tea?”
“If you were bitten, it should be tended,” said the girl. “Gurchaku bites can be infectious.”
“No, thanks, I escaped any actual wounds.” Automatically, Flandry added with a smile: “I could wish otherwise, though. So fair a nurse—”
Again he saw the blood rise in her face. Suddenly he understood. He would have realized earlier, had these people not been more reticent than his own. A heavy pulse beat in his throat. “Sit down,” he invited.
She lowered herself to the floor. He joined her, sliding a practiced arm over her shoulder. She did not flinch. He let his hand glide lower, till the arm was around her waist. She leaned against him.
“Do you think we will see another springtime?” she asked. Her tone grew steady once more; it was a quite practical question.
“I have one right here with me,” he said. His lips brushed her dark hair.
“No one speaks thus in the ordu,” she breathed. Quickly: “We are both cut off from our kindred, you by distance and I by death. Let us not remain lonely.”
He forced himself to give fair warning: “I shall return to Terra the first chance I get.”
“I know,” she cried, “but until then—”
His lips found hers.
There was a thump on the door.
“Go away!” Flandry and Bourtai said it together, looked surprised into each other’s eyes, and laughed with pleasure. “My lord,” called a man’s voice, “Toghrul Gur-Khan sends me. A message has been picked up-a Terran spaceship!”
Flandry knocked Bourtai over in his haste to get outside. But even as he ran, he thought with frustration that this job had been hoodooed from the outset.
XIII
Among the thin winds over Ulan Baligh, hidden by sheer height, a warrior sat in the patient arms of a medusa. He breathed oxygen from a tank and rested numbed fingers on a small radio transceiver. After four hours he was relieved; perhaps no other breed of human could have endured so long a watch.
Finally he was rewarded. His earphones crackled with a faint, distorted voice, speaking no language he had ever heard. A return beam gabbled from the spaceport. The man up above gave place to another, who spoke a halting, accented Altaian, doubtless learned from the Betelgeuseans.
The scout of the Tebtengri dared not try any communication of his own. If detected (and the chances were that it would be) such a call would bring a nuclear missile streaking upward from Ulan Baligh. However, his transceiver could amplify and relay what came to it. Medusae elsewhere carried similar sets: a long chain, ending in the ordu of Toghrul Vavilov. Were that re-transmission intercepted by the enemy, no one would be alarmed. They would take it for some freak of reflection off the ionosphere.
The scout’s binoculars actually showed him the Terran spaceship as it descended. He whistled in awe at its sleek, armed swiftness. Still, he thought, it was only one vessel, paying a visit to Oleg the Damned, who had carefully disguised all his modern installations. Oleg would be like butter to his guests, they would see what he wished them to see and no more. Presently they would go home again, to report that Altai was a harmless half-barbaric outpost, safely forgettable.
The scout sighed, beat gloved hands together, and wished his relief would soon arrive.
And up near the Arctic Circle, Dominic Flandry turned from Toghrul’s receiver. A frosted window framed his head with the early northern night. “That’s it,” he said. “We’ll maintain our radio monitors, but I don’t expect to pick up anything else interesting, except the moment when the ship takes off again.”
“When will that be?” asked the Gur-Khan.
“In a couple of days, I imagine,” said Flandry. “We’ve got to be ready! All the tribesmen must be alerted, must move out on the plains according to the scheme Juchi and I drew up for you.”
Toghrul nodded. Arghun Tiliksky, who had also crowded into the kibitka, demanded: “What scheme is this? Why have I not been told?”
“You didn’t need to know,” Flandry answered. Blandly: “The warriors of Tebtengri can be moving at top speed, ready for battle, on five minutes’ notice, under any conditions whatsoever. Or so you were assuring me in a ten-minute speech one evening last week. Very well, move them, noyon.”
Arghun bristled. “And then—”
“You will lead the Mangu Tuman varyak division straight south for 500 kilometers,” said Toghrul. “There you will await radio orders. The other tribal forces will be stationed elsewhere; you will doubtless see a few, but strict radio silence is to be maintained between you. The less mobile vehicles will have to stay in this general region, with the women and children maneuvering them.”
“And the herds,” reminded Flandry. “Don’t forget, we can cover quite a large area with all the Tebtengri herds.”
“But this is lunacy!” yelped Arghun. “If Oleg knows we’re spread out in such a manner, and drives a wedge through—”
“He won’t know,” said Flandry. “Or if he does, he won’t know why: which is what counts. Now, git!”
For a moment Arghun’s eyes clashed with his. Then the noyon slapped gauntlets against one thigh, whirled, and departed. It was indeed only a few moments before the night grew loud with varyak motors and lowing battle horns.
When that had faded, Toghrul tugged his beard, looked across the radio, and said to Flandry: “Now can you tell me just what fetched that Terran spaceship here?”
“Why, to inquire more closely about the reported death of me, a Terran citizen, on Altai,” grinned Flandry. “At least, if he is not a moron, that is what the captain will tell Oleg. And he will let Oleg convince him it was all a deplorable accident, and he’ll take off again.”
Toghrul stared, then broke into buffalo laughter. Flandry chimed in. For a while the GurKhan of the Mangu Tuman and the field agent of the Imperial Terrestrial Naval Intelligence Corps danced around the kibitka singing about the flowers that bloom in the spring.