Short Fiction, Poul Anderson [simple e reader .TXT] 📗

of the Solar System and went on to conquer their home territories and civilize them. That meant he had to subjugate stars closer to home, to protect his lines of communication. This led to further trouble elsewhere. Oh, yes, a lot of it was greed, but the planets which were conquered for their wealth would have been sucked in anyway by sheer economics. The second Argolid carried on, and now his son, Manuel II, is finishing the job. We’ve very nearly attained what we must have⁠—an empire large enough to be socioeconomically self-sufficient and defend itself against all comers, of which there are many, without being too large for control. You should visit the inner Empire sometime, Donovan, and see how many social evils it’s been possible to wipe out because of security and central power. But we need this sector to protect our Sagittarian flank, so we’re taking it. Fifty years from now you’ll be glad we did.”

Donovan looked sourly up at him. “Why are you feeding me that?” he asked. “I’ve heard it before.”

“We’re going to survey a dangerous region, and you’re our guide. The captain and I think there’s more than a new radiation in the Black Nebula. I’d like to think we could trust you.”

“Think so if you wish.”

“We could use a hypnoprobe on you, you know. We’d squeeze your skull dry of everything it contained. But we’d rather spare you that indignity.”

“And you might need me when you get there, and I’d still be only half conscious. Quit playing the great altruist, Takahashi.”

The exec shook his head. “There’s something wrong inside you, Donovan,” he murmured. “You aren’t the man who licked us at Luga.”

“Luga!” Donovan’s eyes flashed. “Were you there?”

“Sure. Destroyer North Africa, just come back from the Zarune front⁠—Cigarette?”

They fell to yarning and passed a pleasant hour. Donovan could not suppress a vague regret when Takahashi left. They aren’t such bad fellows, those Impies. They were brave and honorable enemies, and they’ve been lenient conquerors as such things go. But when we hit the Black Nebula⁠—

He shuddered. “Wocha, get that whiskey out of my trunk.”

“You not going to get drunk again, boss?” The Donarrian’s voice rumbled disappointment.

“I am. And I’m going to try to stay drunk the whole damn voyage. You just don’t know what we’re heading for, Wocha.”

Stranger, go back.

Spaceman, go home. Turn back, adventurer.

It is death. Return, human.

The darkness whispered. Voices ran down the length of the ship, blending with the unending murmur of the drive, urging, commanding, whispering so low that it seemed to be within men’s skulls.

Basil Donovan lay in darkness. His mouth tasted foul, and there was a throb in his temples and a wretchedness in his throat. He lay and listened to the voice which had wakened him.

Go home, wanderer. You will die, your ship will plunge through the hollow dark till the stars grow cold. Turn home, human.

“Boss. I hear them, boss. I’m scared.”

“How long have we been under weigh? When did we leave Ansa?”

“A week ago, boss, maybe more. You been drunk. Wake up, boss, turn on the light. They’re whispering in the dark, and I’m scared.”

“We must be getting close.”

Return. Go home. First comes madness and then comes death and then comes the spinning outward forever. Turn back, spaceman.

Bodiless whisper out of the thick thrumming dark, sourceless all-pervading susurration, and it mocked, there was the cruel cynical scorn of the outer vastness running up and down the laughing voice. It murmured, it jeered, it ran along nerves with little icy feet and flowed through the brain, it called and gibed and hungered. It warned them to go back, and it knew they wouldn’t and railed its mockery at them for it. Demon whisper, there in the huge cold loneliness, sneering and grinning and waiting.

Donovan sat up and groped for the light switch. “We’re close enough,” he said tonelessly. “We’re in their range now.”

Footsteps racketed in the corridor outside. A sharp rap on his door. “Come in. Come in and enjoy yourself.”

III

Donovan hadn’t found the switch before the door was open and light spilled in from the hallway fluorotubes. Cold white light, a shaft of it picking out Wocha’s monstrous form and throwing grotesque shadows on the walls. Commander Jansky was there, in full uniform, and Ensign Jeanne Scoresby, her aide. The younger girl’s face was white, her eyes enormous, but Jansky wore grimness like an armor.

“All right, Donovan,” she said. “You’ve had your binge, and now the trouble is starting. You didn’t say they were voices.”

“They could be anything,” he answered, climbing out of the bunk and steadying himself with one hand. His head swam a little. The corners of the room were thick with shadow.

Back, spaceman. Turn home, human.

“Delusions?” The man laughed unpleasantly. His face was pale and gaunt, unshaven in the bleak radiance. “When you start going crazy, I imagine you always hear voices.”

There was contempt in the gray eyes that raked him. “Donovan, I put a technician to work on it when the noises began a few hours ago. He recorded them. They’re very faint, and they seem to originate just outside the ear of anyone who hears them, but they’re real enough. Radiations don’t speak in human Anglic with an accent such as I never heard before. Not unless they’re carrier waves for a message. Donovan, who or what is inside the Black Nebula?”

The Ansan’s laugh jarred out again. “Who or what is inside this ship?” he challenged. “Our great human science has no way of making the air vibrate by itself. Maybe there are ghosts, standing invisible just beside us and whispering in our ears.”

“We could detect nothing, no radiations, no energy-fields, nothing but the sounds themselves. I refuse to believe that matter can be set in motion without some kind of physical force being applied.” Jansky clapped a hand to her sidearm. “You know what is waiting for us. You know how they do it.”

“Go ahead. Hypnoprobe me. Lay me out helpless for