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

here, I suppose, by inducing the crew to land and parley. Only they killed the crews and can’t handle the machines themselves.”

“If they captured ships,” said Helena slowly, “then they captured weapons too, and even they can squeeze a trigger.”

“Sure. But you didn’t see them shooting at us just now, did you? They used all the charges to hunt or duel. So if we can break through and escape⁠—”

“They could still follow us and wreck our engines,” said Takahashi.

“Not if we take a small ship, as we’d have to anyway, and mount guard over the vital spots. An Arzunian would have to be close at hand and using all his energies to misdirect atomic flows. He could be killed before any mischief was done. I doubt if they’d even try.

“Besides,” went on Donovan, his voice dry and toneless as a lecturing professor’s, “they can only do so much at a time. I don’t know where they get the power for some of their feats, such as leaving this planet’s gravitational well. It can’t be from their own metabolisms, it must be some unknown cosmic energy source. They don’t know how it works themselves, it’s an instinctive ability. But it takes a lot of nervous energy to direct that flow, and I found last time I was here that they have to rest quite a while after some strenuous deed. So if we can get them tired enough⁠—and the fight is likely to wear both sides down⁠—they won’t be able to chase us till we’re out of their range.”

Takahashi looked oddly at him. “You know a lot,” he murmured.

“Yeah, maybe I do.”

“Well, if the city is close as you say, we’d better march right away before our wounds stiffen, and before the natives get a chance to organize.”

“Rig up carrying devices for those too badly hurt to move,” said Helena. “The walking wounded can tote them, and the rest of us form a protective square.”

“Won’t that slow us and handicap us?” asked Donovan.

Her head lifted, the dark hair blowing about her proud features in the thin whimpering wind. “As long as it’s humanly possible we’re going to look after our men. What’s the Imperium for if it can’t protect its own?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I suppose so.”

Donovan slouched off to join the salvaging party that was stripping the fallen Arzunians of arms and armor for Terran use. He rolled over a corpse to unbuckle the helmet and looked at the blood-masked face of Korstuzan who had been his friend once, very long ago. He closed the staring eyes, and his own were blind with tears.

Wocha came to join him. The Donarrian didn’t seem to notice the gashes in his hide, but he was equipped with a shield now and had a couple of extra swords slung from his shoulders. “You got a good lady, boss,” he said. “She fights hard. She will bear you strong sons.”

“Uh-huh.”

Valduma could never bear my children. Different species can’t breed. And she is the outlaw darkness, the last despairing return to primeval chaos, she is the enemy of all which is honest and good. But she is very fair.

Slowly, the humans reformed their army, a tight ring about their wounded, and set off down the road. The dim sun wheeled horizonward.

VII

Drogobych lay before them.

The city stood on the open gray moor, and it had once been large. But its outer structures were long crumbled to ruin, heaps and shards of stone riven by ages of frost, fallen and coveted by the creeping dust. Here and there a squared monolith remained like the last snag in a rotted jaw, dark against the windy sky. It was quiet. Nothing stirred in all the sweeping immensity of hill and moor and ruin and loneliness.

Helena pointed from her seat on Wocha, and a lilt of hope was eager in the tired voice: “See⁠—a ship⁠—ahead there!”

They stared, and someone raised a ragged cheer. Over the black square-built houses of the inner city they could make out the metal nose of a freighter. Takahashi squinted. “It’s Denebian, I think,” he said. “Looks as if man isn’t the only race which has suffered from these scum.”

“All right, boys,” said Helena. “Let’s go in and get it.”

They went down a long empty avenue which ran spear-straight for the center. The porticoed houses gaped with wells of blackness at their passage, looming in cracked and crazily leaning massiveness on either side, throwing back the hollow slam of their boots. Donovan heard the uneasy mutter of voices to his rear: “Don’t like this place.⁠ ⁠… Haunted.⁠ ⁠… They could be waiting anywhere for us.⁠ ⁠…”

The wind blew a whirl of snow across their path.

Basil. Basil, my dear.

Donovan’s head jerked around, and he felt his throat tighten. Nothing. No movement, no sound, emptiness.

Basil, I am calling you. No one else can hear.

Why are you with these creatures, Basil? Why are you marching with the oppressors of your planet? We could free Ansa, Basil, given time to raise our armies. We could sweep the Terrans before us and hound them down the ways of night. And yet you march against us.

“Valduma,” he whispered.

Basil, you were very dear to me. You were something new and strong and of the future, come to our weary old world, and I think I loved you.

I could still love you, Basil. I could hold you forever, if you would let me.

“Valduma⁠—have done!”

A mocking ripple of laughter, sweet as rain in springtime, the gallantry of a race which was old and sick and doomed and could still know mirth. Donovan shook his head and stared rigidly before him. It was as if he had laid hands on that piece of his soul which had been lost, and she was trying to wrench it from him again. Only he wanted her to win.

Go home, Basil. Go home with this female of yours. Breed your cubs, fill the house with brats, and try to think your little round of days means something. Strut about under the blue