Poul Anderson - A Stone in Heaven

“Never mind, never mind. Let’s go.”

Astraddle on the cylinder, held by a reinforced safety web, the control box under his hands, Chives at his back, Flandry cast a final glance at Hooligan. In the course of making ready, he had wandered from her; she looked minute and lost amidst the stars. He thought of calling a farewell to Banner. But no, she couldn’t break radio silence to reply, it would be cruel to her. Luck ride with you, you good lass, he wished, and activated the drive.

Acceleration tugged him backward, but it was mild and he could relax into his harness. A look aft assured him that the warheads were trailing in orderly wise at the ends of their separate lines. From a clasp at his waist he took a sextant. That, a telescope, and a calculator were his instruments, unless you counted the seat of his pants. He got busy.

His intention was to round the moon and make for Port Asmundsen. This would require that he fall free during the last part of the trip; grav tubes radiated when at work. It must needs be a rather exact trajectory, for at the end he’d have seconds before the defenses knew him and lashed out. Well, he’d correct it once the base hove in view, and he’d done a fair amount of eyeball-directed space maneuvering in his time. The “broomstick” you rode when playing comet polo was not totally unlike this steed …

Having taken his sights, run off his computations, and adjusted his vectors, he restowed the apparatus. Chives coughed. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said. “Would you like a spot of tea?”

“Eh?”

“I brought a thermos of nice, hot tea along, sir, and recommend it. In the vernacular phrase, it bucks you up.”

“W-well … thanks.” Flandry took the proffered flask, connected its tube to the feeder valve on his helmet, put his lips to the nipple inside, and sucked. The flavor was strong and tarry.

“Lapsang Soochong, sir,” Chives explained. “I know that isn’t your favorite, but feared a more delicate type would be insufficiently appreciated under these circumstances.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Flandry said. “You generally are. When you aren’t, I have to submit anyway.”

He hesitated. “Chives, old fellow,” he got awkwardly forth, “I’m sorry, truly sorry about dragging you into this.”

“Sir, my task is to be of assistance to you.”

“Yes, but—You could have returned aboard after we got our lashup completed. I thought of it. But with the uncertainties—you might conceivably make the difference.”

“I shall endeavor to give satisfaction, sir.”

“All right, for God’s dubious sake, don’t make me bawl! How about a duet to pass the time? ‘Laurie From Centauri’, that’s a fine, interminable ballad.”

“I fear I do not know it, sir.”

Flandry laughed. “You lie, chum. You’ve heard it at a hundred drunken parties, and you’ve got a memory like a neutron star’s gravity well. You simply lack human filthiness.”

“As you wish, sir,” Chives sniffed. “Since you insist.”

The hours went by.

Flandry spent much of them remembering. It was true what he’d told Banner, by and large he’d had a good life. His spirit had taken many terrible wounds, but had scarred them over and carried on. More hurtful, perhaps, had been its erosion, piece by piece, as he wrought evil, unleashed destruction, caused unmerited, bewildering pain, in the service of—of what? A civilization gone iniquitous in its senility, foredoomed not by divine justice but by the laws of a universe in which he could find no meaning. A Corps that was, as yet, less corrupt, but ruthless as a machine. A career that was, well, interesting, but for whose gold he had paid the Nibelung’s price.

Still he declined to pity himself. He had met wild adventures, deep serenities, mystery, beauty, luxury, sport, mirth, admiration, comradeship, on world after world after world in an endlessly fascinating cosmos. He had drunk noble wines, bedded exquisite women, overcome enemies who were worth the trouble, conversed with beings who possessed wisdom—yes, except for hearth and home, he had enjoyed practically everything a man can. And … he had saved more lives than he ruined; he had helped win untold billions of man-years of peace; new, perhaps more hopeful civilizations would come to birth in the future, and he had been among those who guarded their womb.

Indeed, he thought, I am grossly overprivileged. Which is how it should be.

Port Asmundsen appeared on the limb of Elaveli. At this remove, the telescope picked out hardly more than a blur and a glitter, but Flandry got his sight and did his figuring. He made finicky adjustments on the controls. “Hang on to your bowels, Chives,” he warned. “Here comes the big boost.”

It was not the full acceleration of which the missile was capable. That would have killed the riders while it tore them out of their harness. But a force hauled them back for minutes, crushed ribs and flesh together, choked off all but a whistle of breath, blinded the eyes and darkened the awareness. After it ended, despite the gravanol in him, Flandry floated for a while conscious only of pain.

When he could look behind him, he saw the Shalmuan unrevived. The green head wobbled loosely in its helmet. Nothing save a dribble of blood-bubbles from nostrils showed Chives was not dead; the noise of his emergency pump, sucking away the fluid before he should choke, drowned shallow breathing.

With shaky hands, which often fumbled, Flandry took a new sight and ran a fresh computation. No further changes of trajectory seemed called for, praise fortune. To be sure, if later he found he’d been wrong about that, a burst of power at close range would give him away. But he allowed himself to hope otherwise.

There’d be little to do but hope, for the next hour or so. His velocity was high, and Elaveli would add several kilometers per second to it, which helped his chances of escaping notice. Yet he couldn’t arrive too fast, for last-moment adjustments would certainly be needed and his reaction time was merely human.

“Chives,” he mumbled, “wake up. Please.”

Though would that be any mercy?

The death-horse plunged onward. Port Asmundsen took form in the telescope. Flandry’s mind filled out the image from his recollection of pictures he had studied at Wainwright Station—none recent. A cluster of buildings occupied a flat valley floor surrounded by mountains. Most was underground, of course. Ships crowded a sizeable spacefield. Installations were visible on several peaks, and he felt pretty sure what their nature was.

No doubt the base had a negafield generator. If his missile was identified in time, it would suddenly be confronted by a shield of force it could not penetrate, except with radiation that would do negligible damage. If it did not detonate, it would fall prey to an energy beam or a countermissile, fired from beyond the screened area. Flandry was betting that it would not be noticed soon enough.

It and its tow were just a cluster of cold bodies, smaller than the smallest spacecraft, in swift motion. A radar might register a blip, an optical pickup a flick, but the computers should dismiss these as glitches. He had hypothesized that the defenses were served chiefly by computers. Cairncross’ men, especially his experienced officers, must be spread thin; he couldn’t raise a substantial body of reservists until he was ready to strike, without revealing his hand. Port Asmundsen held mostly workers. (Flandry had no compunctions about them; they knew what they were working for.) Of naval personnel there, few if any could have more than a theoretical knowledge of war.

Moreover, not even a commander with battle ribbons would likely have imagined this kind of attack. Missiles were launched from warcraft, and none which didn’t serve the ducal cause were known to be anywhere near. The raid on Dukeston would have brought a general alert. But the assumption was natural that Hooligan was bound straight home to tattle. Cairncross would have ordered a search by such vessels as had the appropriate capabilities—which meant that those vessels were not on sentry-go around Elaveli.