The Man Without a Planet

THE MAN WITHOUT A PLANET LIN CARTER

ACE BOOKS, INC.

1120 Avenue of the Americas New York, N.Y. 10036

THE MAN -WITHOUT A PLANET

Copyright ©, 1966, by Ace Books, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Cover art by Peter Michael.

This book is dedicated to

Dave Van Arnam, in memory of Toad Hall days, S.L.I.T.N. and A.T.S.I.S., Haslam’s, Spectrum, and sundry other matters.

ONE

RAUL LINTON WENT INTO THE WAR a boy, young, untried, full of patriotism, ambition and ideals, thrilled by bugles and banners and the heart-stirring sight of great ships lifting against the dark their blazing torches. He came out in ’68 a man, seasoned and tempered by twelve endless years of war, and miraculously unscarred.

Unscarred, that is, only in a sense. Somehow his strapping six foot four inches of lean-muscled body has escaped maiming in the bloodiest, most savage war ever fought between the stars. But his mind, or soul or character—call it what you will—was seared deeply and forever. Like most other men in the Naval vanguard, exposed to the assault and ravishment of planets, he came to pray for death. Anything to put an end to the madness and ferocity of what historians would neatly label the Third Imperial War—and to that consummation he labored valiantly and single-mindedly. But instead of being fried with his ship, caught in a barrage of planet-mounted lasers, or blasted to incandescent gas by a computer-guided mobile bomb, he went on from year to year unscathed, and earned a reputation for cool- mindedness and courage that embarrassed him.

Instead of the clean, swift death and long, quiet, dreamless sleep he hungered for, he won medals and promotions. He went from Flight Lieutenant to Wing-Commander in three years. He would have ended as Fleet Admiral, piloting a desk at Naval Headquarters on Trelion V, except that he refused to play the game as others did. Something about him, something in his cold, hard eyes and scornful, mocking laugh, gave him the reputation of a maverick and made them distrust him even while they praised (and rewarded) what they miscalled his “bravery.”

Most boys grow up slowly, sheltered in home surroundings, then in a richly-traditioned university, then in the patterned life of career and marriage. Raul Linton grew up on the bridge of scoutship, forward of the assault line, when they “scorched” Darogir. Thirteen nitrogen bombs light quite a bonfire—bright enough and hot enough to do more than just boil off a planet’s oceans and turn the crust into one huge black scab of radioactive slag. They can also bum through the crysalis of conventions, traditions, courtesy, religion, prejudice and second-hand ideas boys are taught to accept as civilization.

Several hundred thousand men and women and children died on Darogir in a trifle over eight minutes. And all because the fleet had orders to rendezvous near the Center- worlds in two days, and had no time to lay siege to a recalcitrant planet—nor even, it seems, to give it a chance to surrender.

Orders are orders.

And rebels have no right to exist, anyway.

So Raul Linton, there on the bridge, watching an entire planet in flames, decided if this was civilization—it was not for him.

But he was no traitor. He went on fighting, but all he hoped for was a swift, clean end—a death “with honor” as Naval men say. Instead he won honors, but no death. What career-men dream of—swift promotions to flag rank—came his way without being sought. He was well on his way to what they call “a brilliant career”—and then they took another look at this long, lean, cold-eyed Herculian— and didn’t like what they saw.

Raul had a way of smiling silently at the absurd. And he found the Navy absurd, with its trimmings of bannerets, titles, ranks, courtesies, traditions, all like the sugary frosting on a cake, laid over the raw and ugly realities of coldblooded “expedient” mass-murder.

And he found the war absurd—tragically so. All the Mica Stars wanted was self-rule. They were hardly the blood-lusting fiends, dripping with gore and slavering for conquest, that Imperial propagandists made them out to be. Of course, they were unwise not to be humans … although the Vruu Kophe didn’t have much to say in the matter, when they evolved from intelligence-prone arachnidae. But “spiders” they were, in a sense, and lots of humans find spiders repulsive. Squirmy things to be stepped on—or “scorched” with a barrage of nitrogen bombs. What matter if the “spiders” have a culture sixteen thousand years old. Schools of incredibly beautiful bardic verse. Musical compositions as complex as to make a Bach fugue look like a nursery rhyme. Tapestries so subtle as to employ thirty-two distinct colors, visible to Vruu Kophe sight, that is, not to “human” eyes.

So Raul found the war absurd.

Perhaps he even found the Imperium absurd.

He didn’t say.

But he offended people—the wrong people. So, instead of ending out the war behind a desk on Trelion V, with four platinum crowns on his shoulder-strap and perhaps a Knighthood or even a Baronetcy to his name, he stayed on the front, still fighting. They didn’t know this was what he really wanted; perhaps they wouldn’t have let him stay on fighting if they had.

And when the Mica Stars were finally crashed and the Third Imperial War came to its eventual, heroic, triumphal end in the fifth year of the Empery of His Magnificence, Arban Fourth, otherwise known as Year 407 of the Imperium, or 3468 a.d., if you go by the old-style dating, Raul Linton found himself at loose ends—and somehow still alive.

He resigned his commission at Petraphar, although they promised him a Fleet-Commandership if he would serve on during the Occupation of the Mica Cluster. But he, who had endured the unendurable and had earned a chest-full of ribands and decorations, including the Order of Arion Imperator (second class), and the Gold Star of Valiance twice, had no stomach for what he knew would be happening during an occupation. He had had a taste of it during the temporary occupation of Nordonn III during his third campaign—and had earned a court martial when he broke up a gang of happy, drunken noncoms, busily engaged in burning Vruu Kophe women alive with flame pistols while “regulating” a native border village.

So, at 31, he found himself drifting, having politely—for him—declined the honor of reenlistment at next-higher-rank. Perhaps the powers-that-be were relieved, after all. They didn’t press him too hard, and were glad to give him a Naval homecoming pass good for six months on any official ship.

But he wasn’t quite ready for home yet.

He drifted.

From Petraphar he bought passage to Narlion IV—bought passage, please note, having torn up his six months’ travel pass at the de-enlistment station. His friends thought he was mad not to take advantage of free Naval transport, but he was done with the Space Navy forever. And besides, he had twelve years’ untouched pay banked and secure, in good platinum Imperials.

Narlion IV was a pleasure-world. Endless, continent-long beaches of snowy sand, fringed with pseudo-palms like broken emeralds, laced with glistening foam and washed with clear green waters on which you could boat or aquaski or just laze about on a floater in the warmly golden sunshine, bathing and baking out twelve years’ accumulation of bone-deep exhaustion.

Not to mention the casinos and the thousand games of “chance” so-called, that beckoned to the fat-pursed tourist … and women. The Narlionid women are small and sleek with almond eyes and flesh like ripe gold fruit. Beachwear in these days of highly advanced Galactic culture dwindled to a miniscule garment of strictly utilitarian purpose: a pouch to hold locker and hotel keys, generally strapped to the left wrist. Hence, everywhere Raul looked along the white beaches he was confronted with nude breasts and thighs and bottoms. The Narlionid are a friendly, hospitable race, and their women would have been happy to offer the ultimate in hospitality to a raw-boned, red-headed Herculipn of his manly inches—but Raul Linton felt uncomfortable with women and rarely enjoyed their company.