“Nevertheless, the industrial society blew itself apart in a nuclear war. Knowledge wasn’t lost, nor even most of the material equipment, but organization was. Everywhere the Staurni reverted to these baronial Nests. Between the productivity of its automated machines and the return of big game to hunt, each such community is damn near independent. Nobody’s interested in any more elaborate social structures. Their present life suits them fine.”
“What about the Lodge?” Jocelyn asked.
“Oh, yes. There has to be some central group to arbitrate between Nests, defend the planet as a whole, and deal with outworlders. The Lodge grew up as a—I suppose quasi-religious organization, though I don’t know a thing about the symbolism. Its leaders are old males. The more active jobs are done by what you might call novices or acolytes, younger sons and such, who sign on for the adventure and the concubines and the prospect of eventually becoming full initiates. It works pretty well.”
“It wouldn’t with humans,” Bragdon said.
“Yeh,” Koumanoudes answered, “but these people aren’t human.”
“That’s about everything I know,” Heim said. “Nothing you haven’t found in books and journals, I’m sure.”
He looked outside again. The prairie was sliding swiftly beneath; he could hear the whistle and feel the vibration of their passage. A herd of grazing beasts darkened the land and was gone.
Eastward the last mountain-tops vanished. No one spoke for a considerable period. Heim was in fact startled to note how much time had gone by while they all sat contemplating the view or their own thoughts, before Bragdon ended the silence.
“One item I have not seen explained,” he said. “Apparently each Nest maintains a nuclear arsenal and military production equipment. What for?”
“To fight,” Koumanoudes said. “They get an argument the Lodge can’t settle, like over territory, and hoo! They rip up the landscape. We’ll probably see a few craters.”
“But… no. That sort of insanity smashed their civilization.”
“The last phase of their civilization, you mean,” Heim said. “The present one isn’t vulnerable. A Nest is mostly underground, and even the topside buildings are nearly blast-proof.
Radiation affects a Staurni a lot less than a human, he gets so much of it in the normal course of life; and they have medicines for an overdose here, same as us. And there are no incendiary effects, not in a hydrogen atmosphere. In fact, before atomic energy, the only way to smelt metals was to use a volcanic outlet—which there are plenty of on a big planet with a hot core.”
“So they have no restrictions,” Jocelyn murmured. “Not even on selling the things offworld, for others to kill with.”
“We’ve been over that ground too mucking often,” Koumanoudes growled.
“Free-fall, Greg,” Heim warned. The woman’s face was so unhappy.
Koumanoudes shifted in his seat, glared out, and grew suddenly rigid.
“Hey!” he barked.
“What’s the matter?” Bragdon asked.
“Where do you think you’re headed?”
“Why, to the Aerie of Trebogir.”
The Greek half rose. His forefinger stabbed at the bow viewports. Above the horizon, ghostly in its detachment, floated a white cone. The plain beneath rolled down toward a thread which wound blinding silver through a valley where cloud shadows ran.
“What the hell!” he exploded. “That’s the River Morh. Got to be. Only I know the map.
Trebogir doesn’t live anywhere in sight of a snowpeak. It must belong to Kimreth upland. We’re a good five hundred kilometers north of where we should be!”
Sweat sprang forth on Bragdon’s forehead. “I did set a roundabout course, to get a better look at the countryside,” he admitted.
“And never told us?” Koumanoudes yanked at his harness. “I should’ve noticed where the sun is. Get away from that pilot board. I’m taking over.”
Heim’s eyes swung to Jocelyn. Her fists were clamped together and she breathed in deep uneven gulps.
Bragdon darted his hand into the carrying case by his seat. It lifted, and Heim stared down the barrel of a laser pistol.
“Sit back!” Bragdon ordered. “I’ll shoot the first one who unstraps himself.”
IV
When he cycled through the airlock, out of the flyer’s interior gee-field, Staurn yanked at Heim so violently that he staggered. He tightened his leg muscles and drew himself erect.
However well balanced, the load of gear on him was monstrous.
Jocelyn had gone ahead, to cover the prisoners as they emerged. She looked grotesquely different in her airsuit, and the dark faceplate was a mask over her features. He moved toward her.
“Stop!” In spite of the helmet pickups being adjusted to compensate for changed sound-transmission parameters, her voice was eerily different. He halted under the menace of her gun. It was a .45 automatic, throwing soft-nosed slugs at low velocity to rip open a man’s protection.
He drew a long breath, and another. His own air was a calculated percentage composition at three atmospheres, both to balance outside pressure and to furnish extra oxygen for the straining cells. It made his words roar in the helmet: “Joss, what is this farce?”
“You’ll never know how sorry I am,” she said unevenly. “If you’d listened to me, back on the ship—”
“Your whole idea, then, was to wreck my plan,” he flung at her.
“Yes. It had to be done. Can’t you see, it had to! There’s no chance of negotiating with Alerion when… when you’re waging war. Their delegates told Earth so officially, before they left.”
“And you believed them? Don’t you know any more history than that?”
She didn’t seem to hear. Words cataracted from her; through all the distortion, he could read how she appealed to him.
“Peace Control Intelligence guessed you’d come here for your weapons. They couldn’t send an armed ship. The Staurni wouldn’t have allowed it. In fact, France could block any official action. But unofficially—We threw this expedition together and took off after you. I learned about it because PCI found out I was an, an, an old friend of yours and interrogated me. I asked to come along. I thought, I hoped I could persuade you.”
“By any means convenient,” he bit off. “There’s a name for that.”
“I failed,” she said desolately. “Vie decided this trip was his chance to act. We don’t mean to hurt you. We’ll take you back to Earth. Nothing more. You won’t even be charged with anything.”
“I could charge kidnapping,” he said.
“If you want to,” she mumbled.
Hopelessness gutted him. “What’s the use? You’d get yourself a judge who’d put you on probation.”
Vadász appeared, then Koumanoudes, then Uthg-a-K’thaq. The Greek cursed in a steady stream.
Without a captain, without a chief engineer, Fox will have to go home, beaten before one blow is struck, Heim thought.
He looked around. They had landed on the west bank of the Morh. It ran wide and luminous through a sandy, boulder-strewn dale walled by low bluffs. The mountains of Kimreth reared opposite the sun, still many kilometers distant, not quite real in the blue-gray haze of intervening air, but a titan’s rampart, dominated by the volcanic cone he had seen from afar. Underfoot the ground was covered by that springy mosslike red-yellow growth which was this world’s equivalent of grass. Overhead the sky arched plum-dark, clouds scudding on a wind that boomed in his audio receptors. A flock of airborne devilfish shapes drifted into sight and out again.
How far have we come? What’s going to happen?