The Star Fox (14 page)

The boathouse seemed cavernous. The space auxiliary intended to rest here had been replaced by three atmospheric flyers built for work on subjovian planets; and one of them was out on a preliminary mapping flight. The humans wriggled through the lock of another bulky fuselage and strapped in, with Bragdon at the controls. He phonespoke to his dispatcher. The boathouse was evacuated, Staurn’s air was valved in, the outer doors were opened. With a whirr of power, the vehicle departed.

It set down again immediately, to let in Vadász, Koumanoudes, and Uthg-a-K’thaq. The Naqsan looked still more ungainly in his own airsuit than he did nude, but it confined most of his odor. Bragdon made a last check of his instruments and lifted skyward.

‘I’m excited as a boy,’ he said. ‘This’ll be the first real look I’ve had at the planet.’

‘Well, you should be able to play tourist,’ Koumanoudes said. ‘No bad weather’s predicted. ‘Course, we wouldn’t be aloft anyway in a Staurnian storm. Fee-rocious.’

‘Indeed? I thought wind velocities were low in a high-density atmosphere.’

‘Staurn’s isn’t that dense. About three times Earth pressure at sea level, with gravity accounting for a good deal of it. Also, you’ve got water vapor, which rises to breed thunderstorms. And so damn much solar energy.’

‘What?’ Jocelyn cast a surprised glance aft, not too near the morning sun. At half again the distance of Sol from Earth, the disc had slightly less angular diameter; and, while it was nearly
twice as brilliant, throwing a raw blue-tinged light across the world, its total illumination was likewise a little inferior to home. ‘No, that can’t be. Staurn gets only – what is it? – 20 per cent more irradiation than Earth.’

‘You forget how much of that is ultraviolet,’ Heim reminded her, ‘with no free oxygen to make an ozone barrier.’

‘A poor site for a nudist colony,’ Vadász said. ‘If the hydrogen, helium, and nitrogen don’t choke you, or the methane and ammonia poison you, the UV will crisp you like a steak.’

‘Brrr. When it’s so beautiful, too.’ Jocelyn pressed her nose against the port by her seat and stared downward.

They were high now, with Orling dropping behind at supersonic speed. The island reared Gibraltar-like from an indigo sea, beaches obsidian black, land turned a thousand subtle shades of red by its forest. There was a final glimpse of a radar, skeletal at the spaceport, then that scar was lost to view and one saw only a great peace brooding under westward cliffs of cumulus. On the edge of vision, kilometers away, a flock of Staurni winged in a V on an unknown errand.

As if to escape some thought, Jocelyn pointed at them and said, ‘Pardon me if I’m dumb, but how can they fly? I mean, aren’t hydrogen breathers supposed to have less active metabolisms than oxygen breathers? And is the air pressure enough to support them against nearly twice Terrestrial gravity?’

‘They have bird-type bones,’ Koumanoudes explained.

‘As for the energy consideration,’ Heim added, ‘it’s true hydrogen gives less energy per mole than oxygen, reacting with carbon compounds. But there are an awful lot of hydrogen molecules in a lungful, here. Besides, the enzyme systems are efficient. And – well, look. Staurnian plants photosynthesize water and methane to get free hydrogen and carbohydrates. Animals reverse the process. Only with that flood of ultraviolet on them, the plants build compounds more energy-rich than anything on Earth.’

‘I see, I suppose.’ She relapsed into her brown study.

The island fell below the wide horizon. They flew over wine darkness, streaked with foam, until the mainland hove into sight. There mountains climbed and climbed, red with wilderness at the foot, gray and ruggedly shadowed above, snow-peaked at the top. Sunlight glinted off a distant metallic speck. Heim tuned his and Jocelyn’s viewport to full magnification.
The speck became a flyer, of gaunt unhuman design, patrolling above a cluster of fused-stone towers that clung to a precipice a kilometer over the surf. ‘The Perch of Rademir,’ he said. ‘Better jog a little farther south, Vic. I’m told he’s somewhat peeved at us, and he just might get an impulse to attack.’

Bragdon adjusted the autopilot. ‘Why?’

‘He wanted to sell us warheads, when Charlie Wong and I arrived to make arrangements,’ Koumanoudes said. ‘But the Roost of Kragan offered us a better price.’

Bragdon shook his head. ‘I really don’t understand this culture,’ he said. ‘Anarchy and atomic power. They can’t go together.’

‘What?’ Vadász tautened in his seat. ‘There is quite a literature on Staurn,’ he said very slowly. ‘Have you not even read it?’

‘Oh, sure, sure,’ Bragdon answered in haste. ‘But it’s a jumble. Nothing scientific. My own field work was mainly on Isis.’

‘We aren’t the best-prepared expedition that ever went out,’ Jocelyn added. ‘Quite hurriedly organized, in fact. But with all the trouble in this sector, the Research Authority decided it was urgent to get some solid information on the space-traveling societies hereabouts.’

‘The Staurni aren’t that, exactly,’ Heim said. ‘They have the capability, but use it only for planetary defense purposes. They’ll trade with visitors, but aren’t interested in looking for business themselves.’

‘They must once—Say.’ Bragdon turned in his seat; to face the others. ‘We’ve time to kill. Why don’t you give us your version of the situation here? Even when I’ve read it before, it’s helpful to have the material put in different words.’

Vadász narrowed his eyes and remained silent. Heim was chiefly conscious of Jocelyn’s glove resting on his. He thought that somehow she was pleading with him. To keep away from the thing that divided them? He leaned back, easing the weight of his air equipment on to the rest bracket, and said:

‘I’m no expert. But as I understand it, the Staurni are a rare thing, a strictly carnivorous intelligent race. Normally carnivores specialize in fighting ability rather than brains, you know. I once talked with a buck who’d visited here and poked around a little. He said he’d noticed fossil outcrops that suggested this continent was invaded long ago by a bigger, related species. Maybe the ancestral Staurni had to develop intelligence
to fight back. I dunno. However it happened, you’ve got a race with high-powered killer instincts and not gregarious. The basic social unit is, uh, a sort of family. A big family, with a system of companionate marriage so complicated that no human has ever figured it out, plus retainers with their own females and cubs; but still, a patriarchal household dominated by one big, tough male.’

The flyer rocked in a gust. Heim peered out. At their present speed, they were already crossing the spine of the mountains. In the west he saw foothills, tumbling off to the red and tawny plain of the Uneasy Lands.

‘I shouldn’t think that would make for advance beyond savagery,’ Bragdon remarked.

‘They managed it on Staurn, for a while. I don’t know how. But then, does anybody know for sure what the evolutionary laws of human civilization are? Maybe being winged, more mobile than us, helped the Staurni. In time they got a planet-wide industrial culture, split into confederations. They invented the scientific method and rode the exponential curve of discovery on up to nuclear engines and gravitronics.’

‘I think,’ Uthg-a-K’thaq grunted, ‘those nations were wuilt on conquest and slawery. Unnatural, and hence unstawle.’

Heim gave the trendriled face a surprised glance, shrugged, and went on: ‘Could be. Now there is one stabilizing factor. A Staurni male is fiercer than a man during his reproductive years, but when he reaches middle age he undergoes a bigger endocrine change than we do. Without getting weak otherwise, he loses both sex drive and belligerence, and prefers to live quietly at home. I suppose under primitive conditions that was a survival mechanism, to give the females and cubs some protection around the Nest while the young males were out hunting. In civilization it’s been a slightly mellowing influence. The oldsters are respected and listened to, somewhat, because of their experience.

‘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 ársenal 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 blastproof. 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 un-straps himself.’

W
HEN
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.’