The Star Fox (6 page)

‘Because machines are competent enough cooks but will never be chefs,’ Vadász said. ‘I promised your daughter a goulash, not one of those lyophilized glue-stews but a genuine handmade
Gulyás
and sneeze-with-joy in the spices.’

‘Oh. Fine. Only I’d better get me—’

‘Nothing. A Hungarian never sets the table with less than twice as much. You may, if you wish, contribute some red wine. So, once more, welcome home, and it is good to see you in this humor.’

‘With reason.’ Heim rubbed his great hands and smiled like a happy tiger. ‘Yes, indeedy.’

‘What have you done, Daddy?’ Lisa asked.

‘’Fraid I can’t tell you,
jente min
. Not for a while.’ He saw the first symptoms of mutiny, chucked her under the chin, and said, ‘It’s for your own protection.’

She stamped her foot. ‘I’m not a child, you know!’

‘Come, now; come, now,’ interrupted Vadász. ‘Let us not spoil the mood. Lisa, will you set a third place? We are eating in the high style, Gunnar, in your sunroom.’

‘Sure,’ she sighed. ‘If I can have the general intercom on, vid and audio both. Can I, please, Daddy?’

Heim chuckled, stepped out to the central control panel, and unlocked the switch that made it possible to activate any pickup in the apartment from any other room. Vadász’s voice drifted after him:

‘
Now the rich man died and he didn’t fare so welliung
.

Glory, hallelujah, hi-ro-de-rung!

He couldn’t go to Heaven so he had to go to Helliung
.

Glory, hallelujah
—’ and on to the end.

When Heim came back, he remarked in an undertone, because she’d be watching and listening, ‘Lisa doesn’t want to miss a second of you, eh?’

The finely molded face turned doleful. ‘Gunnar, I didn’t mean—’

‘Oh, for crying in the beer!’ Heim slapped Vadász on the back. ‘You can’t imagine how much I’d rather have her in orbit around you than some of that adolescent trash. Everything seems to be turning sunward for me.’

The Magyar brightened. ‘I trust,’ he said, ‘this means you have found a particularly foul way to goosh our friends of Alerion.’

‘Shh!’ Heim jerked a thumb at the intercom screen. ‘Let’s see, what wine should I dial for your main course?’

‘Hey, ha, this is quite a list. Are you running a hotel?’

‘No, to be honest, my wife tried to educate me in wines but never got far. I like the stuff but haven’t much of a palate. So except when there’s company, I stay with beer and whisky.’

Lisa appeared in the screen. She laughed and sang.

‘
Now the Devil said, “This is no hoteliung.

Glory, hallelujah, hi-ro-de-rung!

This is just a plain and ordinary helliung.”

Glory, hallelujah, hi-ro-de-rung!
’

Vadász put thumb to nose and waggled his fingers. She stuck out her tongue. They both grinned, neither so broadly as Heim.

And supper was a meal with more cheer, more sense of being home, than any he could remember since Connie died. Afterward he could not recall what was said – banter, mostly – it had not been real talk but a kind of embracement.

Lisa put the dishes in the service cubicle and retired demurely to bed; she even kissed her father. Heim and Vadász went downramp to the study. He closed the door, took Scotch from a cabinet, ice and soda from a coldbox, poured, and raised his own glass.

Vadász’s clinked against it. ‘And a voice valedictory …’ the minstrel toasted.‘Who is for Victory?

‘Who is for Liberty? Who goes home?’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Heim, and did, deeply. ‘Where’s it from?’

‘One G. K. Chesterton, a couple of centuries ago. You have not heard of him? Ah, well, they no longer care for such unsophisticated things on Earth. Only in the colonies are men so naive as to think victories are possible.’

‘Maybe we can make ’em change their minds here, too.’ Heim sat down and reached for a pipe.

‘Well,’ Vadász said, in a cool tone but with a kind of shiver through his slim form, ‘now we come to business. What has happened, these last several days while I fretted about idle?’

‘I’ll begin from the beginning,’ Heim said. He felt no compunction about revealing what Twyman had admitted, since this listener could be trusted. His acquaintance with Vadász, though brief, had been somewhat intense.

The Magyar wasn’t surprised anyway. ‘I knew they had no intention to get New Europe back when none would hear me.’

‘I found a buck who would,’ Heim said, and went on with his account. As he finished, Vadász’s jaw fell with a nearly audible clank.

‘A privateer, Gunnar? Are you serious?’

‘Absodamnlutely. So’s Coquelin, and several more we talked with.’ Heim’s mirth had dissolved. He drew hard on his pipe, streamed the smoke out through dilated nostrils, and said:

‘Here’s the situation. One commerce raider in the Phoenix can make trouble out of all proportion to its capabilities. Besides disrupting schedules and plans, it ties up any number of warships, which either have to go hunt for it or else run convoy. As a result, the Aleriona force confronting ours in the Marches will be reduced below parity. So if then Earth gets tough, both in space and at the negotiations table – we shouldn’t have to get very tough, you see, nothing so drastic that the peacemongers can scream too loud – one big naval push, while that raider is out there gobbling Aleriona ships – we can make them disgorge New Europe. Also give
us
some concessions for a change.’

‘It may be. It may be.’ Vadász remained sober. ‘But how can you get a fighting craft?’

‘Buy one and refit it. As for weapons, I’m going to dispatch a couple of trusty men soon, in a company speedster, to Staurn – you know the place?’

‘I know of it. Ah-ha!’ Vadász snapped his fingers. His eyes began to glitter.

‘Yep. That’s where our ship will finish refitting. Then off for the Auroran System.’

‘But … will you not make yourself a pirate in the view of the law?’

‘That’s something which Coquelin is still working on. He says he thinks there may be a way to make everything legal and, at the same time, ram a spike right up the exhaust of Twyman and his giveaway gang. But it’s a complicated problem. If the ship does have to fly the Jolly Roger, then Coquelin feels reasonably sure France has the right to try the crew, convict them, and pardon them. Of course, the boys might then have to stay in French territory, or leave Earth altogether for a colony – but they’ll be millionaires, and New Europe would certainly give them a glorious reception.’

Heim blew a smoke ring. ‘I haven’t time to worry about that,’ he continued. ‘I’ll simply have to bull ahead and take my chances on getting arrested. Because you’ll understand how Coquelin and his allies in the French government – or in any government, because not every nation on Earth has gone hollowbelly – well, under the Constitution, no country can make warlike preparations. If we did get help from some official, that’d end every possibility of legalizing the operation. We’d better not even recruit our men from a single country, or from France at all.

‘So it depends on me. I’ve got to find the ship, buy her, outfit her, supply her, sign on a crew, and get her off into space – all inside of two months, because that’s when the formal talks between Parliament and the Aleriona delegation are scheduled to begin.’ He made a rueful face. I’m going to forget what sleep’s like.’

‘The crew—’ Vadász frowned. ‘A pretty problem, that. How many?’

‘About a hundred, I’d say. Far more than needful, but the only way we can finance this venture is to take prizes, which means we’ll need prize crews. Also … there may be casualties.’

‘I see. Wanted, a hundred skilled, reliable spacemen, Navy experience preferred, for the wildest gamble since Argilus went courting of Witch Helena. Where do you find them? … Hm, hm, I may know a place or two to look.’

‘I do myself. We can’t recruit openly for a raider, you real
ize. If our true purpose isn’t kept secret to the last millisecond, we’ll be in the calaboose so fast that Einstein’s ghost will return to haunt us. But I think, in the course of what look like ordinary psych tests, I think we can probe attitudes and find out who can be trusted with the truth. Those are the ones we’ll hire.’

‘First catch your rabbit,’ Vadász said. ‘I mean find a psychologist who can be trusted!’

‘Uh-huh. I’ll get Wingate, my father-in-law, to co-opt one. He’s a shrewd old rascal with tentacles everywhere, and if you think you and I are staticked about Alerion, you should listen to him for a while.’ Heim squinted at the model of
Star Fox
, shining across the room. ‘I don’t believe ordinary crewmen will be too hard to find. When the Navy appropriation was cut, three years ago, a good many fellows found themselves thumb-twiddling on planet duty and resigned in disgust. We can locate those who came to Earth. But we may have trouble about a captain and a chief engineer. People with such qualifications don’t drift free.’

‘Captain? What do you mean, Gunnar? You’ll be captain.’

‘No.’ Heim’s head wove heavily back and forth. A good deal of his bounce left him. ‘I’m afraid not. I want to – God, how I want to! – but, well, I’ve got to be sensible. Spaceships aren’t cheap. Neither are supplies, and especially not weapons. My estimates tell me I’ll have to liquidate all my available assets and probably hock everything else, to get that warship. Without me to tend the store, under those conditions, Heimdal might well fail. Lord knows there are enough competitors who’ll do everything they can to make it fail. And Heimdal, well, that’s something Connie and I built – her father staked us, but she worked the office end herself while I bossed the shop, those first few tough years. Heimdal’s the only thing I’ve got to leave my daughter.’

‘I see.’ Vadász spoke with compassion. ‘Also, she has no mother. You should not risk she lose her father too.’

Heim nodded.

‘You will forgive me, though, if I go?’ Vadász said.

‘Oh,
ja, ja
, Endre, I’d be a swine to hold you back. You’ll even have officer rank: chief steward, which means mainly that you oversee the cooking. And you’ll bring me back some songs, won’t you?’

Vadász could not speak. He looked at his friend, chained to
possessions and power, and there ran through his head.

Now the moral of the story is riches are no joke-iung.

Glory, hallelujah, hi-ro-de-rung!

We’ll all go to Heaven, for we all are stony
broke-iung.

Glory, hallelujah, hi-ro-de-rung!

But the rhythm got into his blood, and he realized what Heim had done and what it meant, leaped to his feet, and capered around the study shouting his victorious music aloud till the walls echoed.

‘
Hi-ro-de-rung! Hi-ro-de-rung!

Skinna-ma-rinky doodle doo, skinna-ma-rinky
doodle doo,

Glory, hallelujah, hi-ro-de-rung!
’

F
ROM
WORLDWEEK:

31 October

Gunnar Heim, principal owner of the American firm Heimdal Motors, has purchased the starship
Pass of Balmaha
from British Minerals, Ltd. The transaction astonished shipping circles by its speed. Heim made a cash offer that was too good to turn down, but insisted on immediate occupancy.

He has announced that he plans to send an expedition in search of new worlds to colonize. ‘We seem to have lost out in the Phoenix,’ he told 3V interviewer John Phillips. ‘Frankly, I am shocked and disgusted that no action has been taken in response to Alerion’s attack on New Europe. But I can’t do much about it except try to find us some new place – which I hope we’ll have the nerve to defend.’

As large and powerful as a naval cruiser, Glasgow-built
Pass of Balmaha
was originally intended to prospect for ores. But no deposits were found sufficiently rich to pay the cost of interstellar shipment when the Solar System still has workable mines. The ship has therefore been in Earth orbit for the past
four years. Sir Henry Sherwin, chairman of the board of British Minerals, told Phillips, We’re overjoyed to get rid of that white elephant, but I must confess I feel a bit guilty about it.’

7
November

U.S. Senator Harold Twyman (Libn., Calif.), high-ranking member of the Federal pre-formal negotiations team conferring with the delegation from Alerion, issued a statement Thursday denying rumors of a planned sellout of New Europe.

‘Certainly we are already talking business with them,’ he said. ‘And that, by the way, is a slow and difficult process. The Aleriona are alien to us, biologically and culturally. In the past we have had far too little contact with them, and far too much of what we did have was hostile. You don’t get understanding out of a battle. Some of the finest xenologists on Earth are working day and night, trying to acquire a knowledge in depth that we should have gotten three decades ago.

‘But we do know that the Aleriona share some things with mankind. They too are rational beings. They too wish to live. Their ancient civilization, which achieved a million years of stability, can teach us a great deal. And no doubt we can teach them something. Neither can do this, however, until we break the vicious circle of distrust, competition, fight, and retaliation.

‘That’s why the Deepspace Fleet has been ordered not to fire except in self-defense. That’s why we aren’t crowding the government of Alerion – if it
is
anything like what we understand by a government – to get out of the Auroran System. That’s why we are taking our time with the honorable delegation: who, remember, came to us on Alerion’s own initiative.

‘Under the Constitution, only Parliament as a whole is empowered to negotiate with non-human states. Certainly the Executive Committee will observe this law. But you can’t expect a body as large, diverse, and busy as Parliament to do the spadework in a case so intricate. Its duly appointed representatives were given that duty. We hope in a few more weeks to have a complete draft treaty ready for submission. At that time we shall be prepared to meet every conceivable objection to it. Meanwhile, however, it would be too great a handicap for us to operate in a glare of publicity.