Poul Anderson - The Long Way Home

Peggy, Jim, Bob— No, not her, too. Not again!

There was a small jarring shock, and the engine drone died. Saris Hronna stuck his whiskered snout through the door. “We iss landed,” he announced. “Come out.”

The ship lay cradled in a brightly-lit cave; behind her was a huge concrete door which must lead to the mountain slope. It would be a high, wild land, there were probably snowfields and glaciers left here on the roof of the world - cold, windy, empty, a place where men could hide for years.

“Have you any defenses?” asked Langley as Valti led the way past the hull.

“No. Why should we? They would only add more metal to be detected from above. As it is, every possible thing here is made of plastic or stone. I am a peaceful man, captain. I rely more on my cerebral cortex than my guns. In five decades, this lair has been unsuspected.”

They entered a hall off which several doors opened. Langley saw what must be a radio room, presumably for emergency use only. Valti’s men wandered off toward their own quarters; they spoke little, the Society people seemed to frown on idle chatter between themselves, but they seemed quite relaxed. Why not? They were safe now. The fight was over.

Marin jerked, and her eyes widened. “What’s the matter?” asked Langley. His voice sounded hoarse and cracked.

“I... I don’t know.” She was trying not to cry. “I feel so strange.” Her eyes were unfocused, he saw, and she moved like a sleepwalker.

“Valti! What’s wrong with her?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know, captain. Probably just reaction; it’s been a trying time for a person not used to conflict and suspense. Let’s put her to bed and I’ll get the ship’s doctor to take a look at her.”

That officer admitted to puzzlement. “Psychology is out of my field,” he explained. “Society personnel rarely have trouble with their minds, so we have no good psychiatrists among us. I gave her a sedative. If she isn’t better tomorrow, we can get a specialist.” He smiled sourly. “Too much knowledge. Too damn much knowledge. One head can’t hold it all. I can set a broken bone or cure a germ-caused disease, but when the mind goes out of kilter all I can do is mutter a few half-forgotten technical terms.”

Langley’s victory crumbled in his hands.

“Come, captain,” said Valti, taking his arm, “let’s go make up Saris Hronna’s vitamin pills, and after that you could probably use some sleep yourself. In twenty-four hours you’ll be out of the Solar System. Think of that.”

They were working in the laboratory when Saris stiffened. “She goess by,” he said. “She iss walking been around and her mind feelss wery strange.”

Langley ran out into the corridor. Marin stood looking at him with clearing eyes. “Where am I?” she said weakly.

“Come on,” he answered. “Back to bed with you.”

“I feel better,” she told him. “There was a pressing in my brain, everything went dark, and now I am standing here —but I feel like myself again.”

The drugged glass stood untouched by her bunk. “Get that down,” said Langley. She obeyed, smiled at him, and went to sleep. He resisted a desire to kiss her.

Returning, he found Saris putting a flask of pills into a pouch hung about his neck. Valti had gone to do his paperwork, they were alone among the machines.

“I feeled her mind clearing ewen ass I... listened,” said Saris. “Hass your race often such failingss?”

“Now and then,” said Langley. “Gears slip. I’m afraid we aren’t as carefully designed as your people.”

“You could be so. We kill the weaklingss young.”

“It’s been done by my race, now and then, but the custom never lasted long. Something in our nature seems to forbid it.”

“And yet you can desstroy a world for your own ambitions. I shall newer undersstand you.”

“I doubt we’ll ever understand ourselves.” Langley rubbed his neck, thinking. “Could it be that because we’re non-telepaths, each of us isolated from all the others, every individual develops in his own way? Your people have their emotional empathy; the Thrymans, I’ve read, share thoughts directly. In cases like that, the individual is, in a way, under the control of the whole race. But in man, each of us is always alone, we have to find our own separate ways and we grow apart.”

“It may be. I am astonished at what I hawe learned of your diwersity. I sometimess t’ink your folk iss the despair and the hope of the uniwerse.”

Langley yawned. He ached with weariness, now that the stimulant had worn off. “To hell with it. I’m for some sack time.”

He was wakened hours later by the crash of an explosion. As he sat up, he heard blasters going off.

Another blowup shivered through walls and into Langley’s bones. Somebody screamed, somebody else cursed, and there were running feet in the corridors. As he tumbled into his clothes and snatched his energy gun out, he wanted to vomit. Somehow they had failed, somehow the rebellion of pawns was broken and the game went on.

He flattened himself against the archaic manual door of the room given him and opened it a crack. There was a stink of burned flesh outside. Two gray-clad corpses sprawled in the passage, but the fight had swept past. Langley stepped out.

There was noise up ahead of him, toward the assembly chamber. He ran in that direction with some blind idea of opening up on the attackers from behind. A bitter wind was clearing smoke away and he gasped for breath. A remote part of him realized that the entry port had been blown open and the thin mountain air was rushing in.

Now—the doorway! He burst through, squeezing the trigger of his blaster. There was no recoil, but the beam hissed wide of the back he wanted. He didn’t know how to aim a modern gun, how to outwit a modern mind, how to do anything. Understanding of the technique came just as someone spun around on a heel and kicked expertly with the other foot. Langley’s blaster was torn loose, clattered to the floor, and he stared into a dozen waiting muzzles.

Valti’s crew was gathered around Saris Hronna. Their hands were lifted sullenly, they had been overpowered in the assault and were giving up. The Holatan crouched on all fours, his eyes a yellow blaze.

Brannoch dhu Crombar let out a shout of Homeric laughter. “So there you are!” he cried. “Greetings, Captain Langley!” He towered over the tight-packed fifty of his men. The scarred face was alight with boisterous good humor. “Come join the fun.”

“Saris—” groaned the American.

“Please.” Brannoch elbowed a way over to him. “Credit me with some brains. I had purely mechanical weapons made for half my party, several days ago—percussion caps of mercury fulminate setting off a chemical explosion—thunderish hard to shoot straight with ’em, but at close quarters we can fill you with lead and he’s powerless to stop it.”

“I see.” Langley felt surrender in himself, the buckling of all hope. “But how did you find us?”

Marin entered. She stood in the doorway looking at them with her face congealed to a mask, the face of a slave.

Brannoch jerked a thumb at her. “The girl, of course,” he said. “She told us.”

Her inhuman composure ripped. “No!” she stammered. “I never—”

“Not consciously, my dear,” said Brannoch. “But while you were under your final surgery, a posthypnotic command was planted by a conditioning machine. Very powerful, such an order -. impossible to break it. If Saris was found, you were to notify me of the circumstances at the first opportunity. Which, I see, you did.”

She watched him with a mute horror. Langley heard a thundering in his head.