Poul Anderson: Ensign Flandry

Night on Starkad—

Tallest in the central spine of Kursoviki Island was Mount Narpa, peaking at almost twelve kilometers. So far above sea level, atmospheric pressure was near Terran standard; a man could safely breathe and men had erected Highport. It was a raw sprawl of spacefield and a few score prefabs, housing no more than five thousand; but it was growing. Through the walls of his office, Commander Max Abrams, Imperial Naval Intelligence Corps, heard metal clang and construction machines rumble.

His cigar had gone out again. He mouthed the stub until he finished reading the report on his desk, then leaned back and touched a lighter to it. Smoke puffed up toward a blue cloud which already hung under the ceiling of the bleak little room. The whole place stank. He didn’t notice.

“Damn!” he said. And deliberately, for he was a religious man in his fashion, “God damn!”

Seeking calmness, he looked at the picture of his wife and children. But they were home, on Dayan, in the Vega region of the Empire, more parsecs distant than he liked to think. And remote in time as well. He hadn’t been with them for over a year. Little Miriam was changing so he’d never recognize her, Marta wrote, and David become a lanky hobbledehoy and Yael seeing such a lot of Abba Perlmutter, though of course he was a nice boy … There was only the picture, separated from him by a clutter of papers and a barricade of desk machines. He didn’t dare animate it.

Nor feel sorry for yourself, you clotbrain.

The chair creaked beneath his shifted weight. He was a stocky man, hair grizzled, face big and hooknosed. His uniform was rumpled, tunic collar open, twin planets of his rank tarnished on the wide shoulders, blaster at belt. He hauled his mind back to work.

Wasn’t just that a flitter was missing, nor even that the pilot was probably dead. Vehicles got shot down and men got killed more and more often. Too bad about this kid, who was he, yes, Ensign Dominic Flandry. Glad I never met him. Glad I don’t have to write his parents. But the area where he vanished, that was troubling. His assignment had been a routine reconnaissance over the Zletovar Sea, not a thousand kilometers hence. If the Merseians were getting that aggressive …

Were they responsible, though? Nobody knew, which was why the report had been bucked on to the Terran mission’s Chief of Intelligence. A burst of static had been picked up at Highport from that general direction. A search flight had revealed nothing except the usual Tigery merchant ships and fishing boats. Well, engines did conk out occasionally; matériel was in such short supply that the ground crews couldn’t detect every sign of mechanical overwork. (When in hell’s flaming name was GHQ going to get off its numb butt and realize this was no “assistance operation to a friendly people” but a war?) And given a brilliant sun like Saxo, currently at a peak of its energy cycle, no tricks of modulation could invariably get a message through from high altitudes. On the other hand, a scout flitter was supposed to be fail safe and contain several backup systems.

And the Merseians were expanding their effort. We don’t do a mucking thing but expand ours in response. How about making them respond to us for a change? The territory they commanded grew steadily bigger. It was still distant from Kursoviki by a quarter of the planet’s circumference. But might it be reaching a tentacle this way?

Let’s ask. Can’t lose much.

Abrams thumbed a button on his vidiphone. An operator looked out of the screen. “Get me the greenskin cinc,” Abrams ordered.

“Yes, sir. If possible.”

“Better be possible. What’re you paid for? Tell his cohorts all gleaming in purple and gold to tell him I’m about to make my next move.”

“What, sir?” The operator was new here.

“You heard me, son. Snarch!”

Time must pass while the word seeped through channels. Abrams opened a drawer, got out his magnetic chessboard, and pondered. He hadn’t actually been ready to play. However, Runei the Wanderer was too fascinated by their match to refuse an offer if he had a spare moment lying around; and damn if any Merseian son of a mother was going to win at a Terran game.

Hm … promising development here, with the white bishop … no, wait, then the queen might come under attack … tempting to sic a computer onto the problem … betcha the opposition did … maybe not … ah, so.

“Commandant Runei, sir.”

An image jumped to view. Abrams could spot individual differences between nonhumans as easily as with his own species. That was part of his business. An untrained eye saw merely the alienness. Not that the Merseians were so odd, compared to some. Runei was a true mammal from a terrestroid planet. He showed reptile ancestry a little more than Homo Sapiens does, in hairless pale-green skin, faintly scaled, and short triangular spines running from the top of his head, down his back to the end of a long heavy tail. That tail counterbalanced a forward-leaning posture, and he sat on the tripod which it made with his legs. But otherwise he rather resembled a tall, broad man. Except for complex bony convolutions in place of external ears, and brow ridges over-hanging the jet eyes, his head and face might almost have been Terran. He wore the form-fitting black and silver uniform of his service. Behind him could be seen on the wall a bell-mouthed gun, a ship model, a curious statuette: souvenirs of far stars.

“Greeting, Commander.” He spoke fluent Anglic, with a musical accent. “You work late.”

“And you’ve dragged yourself off the rack early,” Abrams grunted. “Must be about sunrise where you are.”

Runei’s glance flickered toward a chrono. “Yes, I believe so. But we pay scant attention here.”

“You can ignore the sun easier’n us, all right, squatted down in the ooze. But your native friends still live by this cheap two-thirds day they got. Don’t you keep office hours for them?”

Abrams’ mind ranged across the planet, to the enemy base. Starkad was a big world, whose gravity and atmosphere gnawed land masses away between tectonic epochs. Thus, a world of shallow ocean, made turbulent by wind and the moons; a world of many islands large and small, but no real continents. The Merseians had established themselves in the region they called the Kimraig Sea. They had spread their dromes widely across the surface, their bubblehouses over the bottom. And their aircraft ruled those skies. Not often did a recon flight, robot or piloted, come back to Highport with word of what was going on. Nor did instruments peering from spaceships as they came and went show much.

One of these years, Abrams thought, somebody will break the tacit agreement and put up a few spy satellites. Why not us?—’Course, then the other side’ll bring space warships, instead of just transports, and go potshooting. And then the first side will bring bigger warships.

“I am glad you called,” Runei said. “I have thanked Admiral Enriques for the conversion unit, but pleasure is to express obligation to a friend.”

“Huh?”

“You did not know? One of our main desalinators broke down. Your commandant was good enough to furnish us with a replacement part we lacked.”

“Oh, yeh. That.” Abrams rolled his cigar between his teeth.

The matter was ridiculous, he thought. Terrans and Merseians were at war on Starkad. They killed each other’s people. But nonetheless, Runei had sent a message of congratulations when Birthday rolled around. (Twice ridiculous! Even if a spaceship in hyperdrive has no theoretical limit to her pseudovelocity, the concept of simultaneity remains meaningless over interstellar distances.) And Enriques had now saved Runei from depleting his beer supplies.