The Road Not Taken
by Harry Turtledove
Captain Togram was using the chamberpot when the Indomitable broke out of hyperdrive. As happened all too often, nausea surged through the Roxolan officer. He raised the pot and was abruptly sick into it.
When the spasm was done, he set the thundermug down and wiped his streaming eyes with the soft, gray-brown fur of his forearm. “The gods curse it!” he burst out. “Why don’t the shipmasters warn us when they do that?” Several of his troopers echoed him more pungently.
At that moment, a runner appeared in the doorway. “We’re back in normal space,” the youth squeaked, before dashing on to the next chamber. Jeers and oaths followed him: “No shit!” “Thanks for the news!” “Tell the steerers`they might not have got the word!”
Togram sighed and scratched his muzzle in annoyance at his own irritability. As an officer, he was supposed to set an example for his soldiers. He was junior enough to take such responsibilities seriously, but had had enough service to realize he should never expect too much from anyone more than a couple of notches above him. High ranks went to those with ancient blood or fresh money.
Sighing again, he stowed the chamberpot in its niche. The metal cover he slid over it did little to relieve the stench. After sixteen days in space, the Indomitable reeked of ordure, stale food, and staler bodies. It was no better in any other ship of the Roxolan fleet, or any other. Travel between the stars was simply like that. Stinks and darkness were part of the price the soldiers paid to make the kingdom grow.
Togram picked up a lantern and shook it to rouse the glowmites inside. They flashed silver in alarm. Some races, the captain knew, lit their ships with torches or candles, but glowmites used less air, even if they could only shine intermittently.
Ever the careful soldier, Togram checked his weapons while the light lasted. He always kept all four of his pistols loaded and ready to use; when landing operations began, one pair would go on his belt, the other in his boottops. He was more worried about his sword. The perpetually moist air aboard ship was not good for the blade. Sure enough, he found a spot of rust to scour away.
As he polished the rapier, he wondered what the new system would be like. He prayed for it to have a habitable planet. The air in the Indomitable might be too foul to breathe by the time the ship could get back to the nearest Roxolan-held planet. That was one of the risks starfarers took. It was not a major one—small yellow suns usually shepherded a life-bearing world or two—but it was there.
He wished he hadn’t let himself think about it; like an aching fang, the worry, once there, would not go away. He got up from his pile of bedding to see how the steerers were doing.
As usual with them, both Ransisc and his apprentice Olgren were complaining about the poor quality of the glass through which they trained their spyglasses. “You ought to stop whining,” Togram said, squinting: in from the doorway. “At least you have light to see by.” After seeing so long by glowmite lantern, he had to wait for his eyes to adjust to the harsh raw sunlight flooding the observation chamber before he could go in.
Olgren’s ears went back in annoyance. Ransisc was older and calmer. He set his hand on his apprentice’s arm. “If you rise to all of Togram’s jibes, you’ll have time for nothing else—he’s been a troublemaker since he came out of the egg. Isn’t that right, Togram?”
“Whatever you say.” Togram liked the white-muzzled senior steerer. Unlike most of his breed, Ransisc did not act as though he believed his important job made him something special in the gods’ scheme of things.
Olgren stiffened suddenly; the tip of his stumpy tail twitched. “This one’s a world!” he exclaimed.
“Let’s see,” Ransisc said. Olgren moved away from his spyglass. The two steerers had been examining bright stars one by one, looking for those that would show discs and prove themselves actually to be planets.
“It’s a world,” Ransisc said at length, “but not one for us—those yellow, banded planets always have poisonous air, and too much of it.” Seeing Olgren’s dejection, he added, “It’s not a total loss—if we look along a line from that planet to its sun, we should find others fairly soon.”
“Try that one,” Togram said, pointing toward a ruddy star that looked brighter than most of the others he could see.
Olgren muttered something haughty about knowing his business better than any amateur, but Ransisc said sharply, “The captain has seen more worlds from space than you, sirrah. Suppose you do as he asks.” Ears drooping dejectedly, Olgren obeyed.
Then his pique vanished. “A planet with green patches!” he shouted.
Ransisc had been aiming his spyglass at a different part of the sky, but that brought him hurrying over. He shoved his apprentice aside, fiddled with the spyglass’ focus, peered long at the magnified image. Olgren was hopping from one foot to the other, his muddy brown fur puffed out with impatience to hear the verdict.
“Maybe,” said the senior steerer, and Olgren’s face lit, but it fell again as Ransisc continued, “I don’t see anything that looks like open water. If we find nothing better, I say we try it, but let’s search a while longer.”
“You’ve just made a luof very happy,” Togram said. Ransisc chuckled. The Roxolani brought the little creatures along to test new planets’ air. If a luof could breathe it in the airlock of a flyer, it would also be safe for the animal’s masters.
The steerers growled in irritation as several stars in a row stubbornly stayed mere points of light. Then Ransisc stiffened at his spyglass. “Here it is,” he said softly. “This is what we want. Come here, Olgren.”
“Oh, my, yes,” the apprentice said a moment later.
“Go report it to Warmaster Slevon, and ask him if his devices have picked up any hyperdrive vibrations except for the fleet’s.” As Olgren hurried away, Ransisc beckoned Togram over. “See for yourself.”
The captain of foot bent over the eyepiece. Against the black of space, the world in the spyglass field looked achingly like Roxolan: deep ocean blue, covered with swirls of white cloud. A good-sized moon hung nearby. Both were in approximately half-phase, being nearer their star than was the Indomitable.
“Did you spy any land?” Togram asked.
“Look near the top of the image, below the icecap,” Ransisc said. “Those browns and greens aren’t colors water usually takes. If we want any world in this system, you’re looking at it now.”
They took turns examining the distant planet and trying to sketch its features until Olgren came back. “Well?” Togram said, though he saw the apprenice’s ears were high and cheerful.
“Not a hyperdrive emanation but ours in the whole system!” Olgren grinned. Ransisc and Togram both pounded him on the back, as if he were the cause of the good news and not just its bearer.
The captain’s smile was even wider than Olgren’s. This was going to be an easy one, which, as a professional soldier, he thoroughly approved of. If no one hereabouts could build a hyperdrive, either the system had no intelligent life at all or its inhabitants were still primitives, ignorant of gunpowder, fliers, and other aspects of warfare as it was practiced among the stars.
He rubbed his hands. He could hardly wait for landfall.
Buck Herzog was bored. After four months in space, with five and a half more staring him in the face, it was hardly surprising. Earth was a bright star behind the Ares III, with Luna a dimmer companion; Mars glowed ahead.
“It’s your exercise period, Buck,” Art Snyder called. Of the five-person crew, he was probably the most officious.