Frederik Pohl - O Pioneer!

The hall ended in a doorway with a glowing orange sign over it. The sign was in the curlicues of the Delt language, but Giyt knew what it was: That door went to the outside world.

He paused for the fraction of a second to consider. Did he want to go out into the freezing polar night again. Did he have a choice?

Put that way, it was a simple decision. When he grasped the handle it was cold to the touch. When he pushed the heavy door open the blast that came in was colder still. He hesitated, thinking about just what it was going to be like to be out, dressed as he was dressed, in that fierce Arctic gale; but he knew the others were not far behind him. Outside, at least, the dark might hide him.

He stepped through, hugging himself against the freezing blast, and let the door close behind him.

That was the first disappointment.

Outside in the open, it wasn’t really that dark. Overhead the colors of the aurora washed across the sky, rust-red and pale blue; they weren’t bright, but they were widespread, in places obscuring the icy bright stars. The aurora gave light enough to see by, surely. If Hagbarth and the others followed him out, the one that held the carbine could pick him out in a moment, and then—

Then it would be very bad for Evesham Giyt.

He floundered to where the winds had scoured away most of the snow and began to run, his lightweight shoes crunching against the gritty crust left from some earlier snowfall, his feet already feeling as though they were beginning to freeze. He expected at any moment to hear shouts from behind him, and then, no doubt, the pippity-pop of the minicarbine. Or did you ever hear the shot that got you? Weren’t the bullets moving faster than sound? So perhaps he would hear nothing at all, but he would feel something, all right. What he would feel would be the punch-punch-punch of a dozen rounds from the minicarbine stitching themselves across his back . . . and that would be the last thing he ever felt, in the moment when life would come to an end for Evesham Giyt.

The second disappointment was that there was nowhere to hide.

Giyt thought wildly of clawing out a foxhole in the snow, maybe covering himself with the stuff. He didn’t think about that for long. Even assuming it was possible, assuming he could do that kind of work with the bare hands that were already stiffening up, he knew what would happen then. Either Hagbarth and the others would find him anyway, or he would simply freeze to death.

Then he stopped short as reality hit him.

What he was doing was making it easy for Hagbarth and the others.

They weren’t likely to shoot him. Why would they bother, when shooting him meant they would have to explain away the bullet holes? While if they simply left him alone he would die of the cold. He could hear what Hagbarth’s semi-pious explanations would be: “I guess the poor son of a bitch must have done something stupid that caused the accident, you know? And then he ran away, probably trying to hide, maybe in shock or something, and then he must’ve got outside somehow. It’s really too bad, and I’m going to hate having to tell his wife, but, Jesus, look at the damage the bastard caused!”

So hiding out here was no good. To have any chance at all of surviving, Giyt needed to get back to the warmth inside.

He looked around wildly, each breath a separate hurtful thrust of pain in his nostrils. Instinctively he had been running back toward the rocket port, so the building that was just ahead of him had to be where Mrs. Threewhiteboots and her mate were overseeing the instruments at the plenum.

There had been an outside door there too, he remembered.

There was, and just by the door, parked, was a Centaurian hovercar. He tried the door of the car, but it was locked, and his fingers were getting numb.

Perhaps the Centaurians could help? If he could get the door to the plenum open from outside . . .

As it turned out, he couldn’t. There was no external handle on the door, and not even anything for him to grip and try to pull it open.

But when he had hammered on it long enough, freezing, despairing, it opened a crack and a long Centaurian snout poked inquiringly out to peer at him.

It was hard enough for Giyt to try to explain what had happened, his limbs numb, his teeth chattering. It must have been even harder for the Centaurians to comprehend him through the vagaries of the translation program. But Mrs. Threewhiteboots was quick to figure out what he was trying to say. “Damn right,” she said. “Something require being done. Never liked that stinky Large Male Hagbarth—no offense other Earth humans, all right? So okay, we hide you someplace. Warm you up. Come.”

As it turned out, not all the tiny doors along the corridors were for Petty-Primes; Mrs. Threewhiteboots held one open while her husband scuttled ahead, clucking and mewing to the chorus of tinier clucks and mews that came from inside. A door that was built large enough to allow passage for a Centaurian was not meant for humans, but Giyt somehow managed to bend his stiffening body low enough to squirm through.

At least it was warm inside the Centaurian lounge. It was dimly lit, and it also smelled quite horrible, likely because of the half-dozen pups that were squirming around one of those elevated Centaurian sleeping pads. “New litter,” the female said proudly, cuffing them out of the way. “Exceptionally handsome lot, don’t you agree? Now you come closer here, I hug you to defrostedness.”

Her fur was soft, her body blessedly warm. The pups didn’t like the idea of this alien monster preempting their mother’s embrace, but the male spoke sharply to them and they curled up sullenly against Giyt’s back. When he tried to talk Mrs. Threewhiteboots shushed him peremptorily. “You get blood running again, then have conversation. Not yet.” But then, as he felt life returning, he felt also a nearly overpowering urge to drift off to sleep. He resisted it; his story could not wait. Haltingly he told Mrs. Threewhiteboots what he wanted to do.

“You bet, sure,” she said. “Show proof of total iniquitousness of other large males six-species gathering, good idea. So we take you to rocket, all right, let damn ugly Large Male Hagbarth try to stop us.”

“But he has a gun,” Giyt remembered to say between bouts of yawning.

That produced a considerable silence. Then Mrs. Threewhiteboots murmured something to her mate, who turned and pushed his way out of the door. “Hate damn guns,” she said morosely. “That make things tough, right? But we do best we can. Mr. Threewhiteboots go check things out. Now you sleep a little, understand me?”

It was an invitation hard to refuse. Against his better judgment Giyt let his eyes close. Perhaps Mr. Threewhiteboots would come back with help. Or perhaps he would raise the alarm, and the several dozen other persons in the polar complex, human or otherwise, would turn away from the broadcast of the opening ceremonies long enough to overpower Hagbarth’s few and convoy him to the rocket, and then to the Hexagon to show his chiplets to the council meeting…

But perhaps Hagbarth would not want to be overpowered.

And he and his bullies did have that gun.

The gun made all the difference.

Of course, Giyt reasoned, it would make no sense for Hagbarth to start a shooting war here and now. Everything was against it. Hagbarth wasn’t ready for anything like that. Especially right now, with the six-species council in session, and capable of summoning quick reinforcements from the parent planets. Most of all, Hagbarth’s illicit armory had vanished with the explosion of the Kalkaboo bombs; that was another reason why this would not be a good time to start his putsch. Shooting anybody would certainly not be a sensible thing to do.