No sentries were visible. An Aleriona had nothing to fear from his underlings. The wall dilated to admit those who neared, and closed behind them.
There was no decompression chamber. The occupiers must find it easier to adapt themselves, perhaps with the help of drugs, to the heavy wet atmosphere of this planet. A hall sloped upward, vaguely seen in the dull red light from a paraboloidal ceiling. The floor was carpeted with living, downy turf, the walls with phosphorescent vines and flowers that swayed, slowly keeping time to the music, and drenched the air with their odors. The humans drew closer together, as if for comfort. Ghost silent, ghost shadowy, they went with their guards to the council chamber.
It soared in a vault whose top was hidden by dusk, but where artificial stars glittered wintry keen. The interior was a vague, moving labyrinth of trellises, bushes, and bowers. Light came only from a fountain at the center, whose crimson-glowing waters leaped five meters out of a bowl carved like an open mouth, cascaded down again, and filled every corner of the jungle with their clear splash and gurgle. Walking around it, Heim thought he heard wings rustle in the murk overhead.
The conqueror lords stood balanced on tails and clawed feet, waiting. There were half a dozen all told. None wore any special insignia of rank, but the light flickered lovingly over metal-mesh garments, lustrous hair, and silver-sparked white fur. The angelic faces were in repose, the emerald eyes altogether steady.
To them the officer genuflected and the soldiers dipped their rifles. A few words were sung.
The guards stepped back into darkness and the humans stood alone.
One Aleriona master arched his back and hissed. Almost instantly, his startlement passed.
He trod forward so that his countenance came into plain view. Laughter belled from him, low and warm.
“Thus, Captain Gunnar Heim,” he crooned in English. “Strangeness, how we must ever meet. Remember you not Cynbe ru Taren?”
VII
So shattered was Heim’s universe that he was only dimly aware of what happened. Through the red gloom, trillings went among the Aleriona. One bristled and cried an order to the guards.
Cynbe countermanded it with an imperious gesture. Above the racket of his pulse, Heim heard the admiral murmur: “You would they destroy on this now, but such must not become. Truth, there can be no release; truth alike, you are war’s honored prisoners.” And there were more songs, and at last the humans were marched back to their quarters. But Heim remained.
Cynbe dismissed his fellow chieftains and all but four guards. By then the sweat was drying on the man’s skin, his heartbeat was slowed, the first total despair thrust down beneath an iron watchfulness. He folded his arms and waited.
The Aleriona lord prowled to the fountain, which silhouetted him as if against liquid flames.
For a while he played with a blossoming vine. The sole noises were music, water, and unseen circling wings. It was long before he intoned, softly and not looking at the man:
“Hither fared I to have in charge the hunt for you the hunter. Glad was my hope that we might meet in space and love each the other with guns. Why came you to this dull soil?”
“Do you expect me to tell you?” Heim rasped.
“We are kinfolk, you and I. Sorrow, that I must word-break and keep you captive. Although your presence betokens this was never meant for a real parley.”
“It was, however. I just happened to come along. You’ve no right to hold the New Europeans, at least.”
“Let us not lawsplit. We two rear above such. Release I the others, home take they word to your warship. Then may she well strike. And we have only my cruiser Jubalcho to meet her.
While she knows not what has happened to you her soul, Fox II abides. Thus gain I time to recall my deep-scattered strength.”
The breath hissed between Heim’s teeth. Cynbe swung about. His eyes probed like fire weapons. “What bethink you?”
“Nothing!” Heim barked frantically.
It raced within him: He believes I took Fox down. Well, that’s natural. Not knowing about our meteorite gimmick, he’d assume that only a very small or a very fast craft could sneak past his guard. And why should I come in a tender? Fox on the surface could do tremendous damage, missile this base and strike at his flagship from a toadhole position. I don’t know what good it is having him misinformed, but—play by ear, boy, play by ear. You haven’t got anything left except your rusty old wits.
Cynbe studied him a while. “Not long dare I wait to act,” he mused. “And far are my ships.”
Heim forced a jeering note: “The practical limit of a maser beam is about twenty million kilometers. After that, if nothing else, the position error for a ship gets too big. And there’s no way to lock onto an accelerating vessel till she’s so close that you might as well use an ordinary ’caster. Her coordinates change too fast, with too many unpredictables such as meteorite dodging.
So how many units have you got on known orbits within twenty million kilometers?”
“Insult me not,” Cynbe replied quietly. He stalked to the wall, brushed aside a curtain of flowers and punched the keys of an infotrieve. It chattered and extruded a print-out. He brooded over the symbols. “Inisant the cruiser and Savaidh the lancer can we reach. All ignorant must the others wheel their way, until one by one they return on slow schedule and find only battle’s ashes.”
“What are the factors for those two?” Heim inquired. Mostly he was holding at bay the blood-colored stillness. It jarred him—not too much to jam the numbers into his memory—when Cynbe read off in English the orbital elements and present positions.
“Hence have I sent my race-brothers to summon them,” the Aleriona went on. “At highest acceleration positive and negative, Savaidh takes orbit around Europe Neuve in eighteen hours, Inisant in twenty-three. I think not the Fox-folk will dread for you thus soon. With three warcraft aloft, this entire planet do we scan. Let your ship make the least of little moves, and destruction shall thunder upon her unstoppable. Although truth, when ready for smiting we shall send detector craft all places and seek her lair.”
His tone had not been one of threat. It grew still milder: “This do I tell you in my thin hoping you yield her. Gallant was that ship, unfitting her death where the stars cannot see.”
Heim pinched his lips together and shook his head.
“What may I offer you for surrender,” Cynbe asked in sadness, “unless maychance you will take my love?”
“What the devil!” Heim exclaimed.
“We are so much alone, you and I,” Cynbe sang. For the first time scorn touched his voice, as he jerked his tail in the direction of the warriors who stood, blank-faced and uncomprehending, half hidden in the twilight. “Think you I am kin to that?”
He glided closer. The illumination played over shining locks and disconcertingly fair countenance. His great eyes lingered on the man. “Old is Alerion,” he chanted, “old, old. Long-lived are the red dwarf stars, and late appears life in so feeble a radiance. Once we had come to being, our species, on a planet of seas vanished, rivers shrunk to trickles in desert, a world niggard of air, water, metal, life—uncountable ages lingered we in savagehood. Ah, slow was the machine with coming to us. What you did in centuries, we did in tens upon thousands of years; and when it was done, a million years a-fled, one society alone endured, swallowed every other, and the machine’s might gave it upon us a grip not to be broken. Starward fared the Wanderers, vast-minded the Intellects, yet were but ripples over the .still deep of a civilization eternity-rooted. Earth lives for goals, Alerion for changelessness. Understand you that, Gunnar Heim?