Poul Anderson: A Circus of Hells

She was too late. The slugthrower had appeared. She stared down its muzzle, “If you do not cooperate tonight,” Rax told her, “you are dead. Therefore, why not give yourself a chance to win a million credits? They can buy you liberation from what you are.”

The next stage of the adventure came a month afterward. That was when the mortal danger began.

The sun that men had once named Mimir burned with four times the brightness of Sol; but at a distance of five astronomical units it showed tiny, a bluish-white firespot too intense for the unshielded eye. Covering its disc with a finger, you became able to see the haze around it—gas, dust, meteoroids, a nebula miniature in extent but thick as any to be found anywhere in the known universe—and the spearpoints of light created by reflection within that nebula. Elsewhere, darkness swarmed with remoter stars and the Milky Way foamed around heaven.

Somewhat more than four million kilometers from the scoutboat, Regin spread over two and a half times the sky diameter of Luna seen from Terra. The day side of the giant planet cast sunlight blindingly off clouds in its intensely compressed atmosphere. The night side had an ashen-hued glow of its own, partly from aurora, partly from luminosity rebounding off a score of moons.

They included Wayland. Though no bigger than Luna, the satellite dominated the forward viewscreen: for the boat was heading straight down out of orbit. The vision of stark peaks, glacier fields, barren plains, craters old and eroded or new and raw, was hardly softened by a thin blanket of air.

Flandry sent his hands dancing over the pilot board. Technically Comet class, his vessel was antiquated and minimally equipped. Without a proper conning computer, he must make his approach manually. It didn’t bother him. Having gotten the needful data during free fall around the globe, he had only to keep observant of his instruments and direct the grav drive accordingly. For him it was a dance with the boat for partner, to the lilt of cosmic forces; and indeed he whistled a waltz tune through his teeth.

Nonetheless he was taut. The faint vibrations of power, rustle and chemical-sharp odor of ventilation, pull of the interior weightmaking field, stood uncommonly strong in his awareness. He heard the blood beat in his ears.

Harnessed beside him, Djana exclaimed: “You’re not aiming for the centrum. You’re way off.”

He spared her a look. Even now he enjoyed the sight. “Of course,” he said.

“What? Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Something mighty damn strange is going on there. I’m not about to bull in. Far better we weasel in.” He laughed. “Though I’d rather continue tomcatting.”

Her features hardened. “If you try to pull any—”

“Ah-ah. No bitching.” Flandry gave his attention back to the board and screens. His voice went on, abstractedly: “I’m surprised at you. I am for a fact. A hooker so tough albeit delectable, not taking for granted we’d reconnoiter first. I’m going to land us in that crater—see it? Ought to be firm ground, though we’ll give it a beam test before we cut the engine. With luck, any of those flying weirdies we saw that happens to pass overhead should register us as another piece of meteorite. Not that I expect any will chance by. This may be a miniworld, but it wears a lot of real estate. I’ll leave you inboard and take a verree cautious lookabout. If all goes well, we’ll do some encores, working our way closer. And don’t think I don’t wish a particularly sticky hell be constructed for whatever coprolite brain it was that succeeded in packing the impeller cases with oxygen bottles.”

He had not made that discovery until he was nearing Regin and had broken out the planetside gear Ammon had assembled to his order. You didn’t need personal flying units on routine surveillance. The last thing you were supposed to do was land anywhere. They weren’t even included in your emergency equipment. If you ran into trouble, they couldn’t help you.

I should have checked the whole lot when we loaded it aboard on Planet Eight , he thought. I’m guilty of taking something for granted. How Max Abrams would ream me out!…Well, I guess Intelligence agents learn their trade through sad experience like everybody else.

After a string of remarks that made Djana herself blush, he had seriously considered aborting the Wayland mission. But no. Too many hazards were involved in a second try, starting with the difficulty of convincing his fellows that breakdowns had delayed him twice in a row. And what harm could an utterly lifeless ball of rock do him?

Strangely, the enigmatic things he had seen from orbit increased his determination to go down. Or perhaps that wasn’t so strange. He was starved for action. Besides, at his age he dared not admit to any girl that he could be scared.

His whetted senses perceived that she shivered. It was for the first time in their voyage. But then, she was a creature of cities and machinery, not of the Big Deep.

And it was a mystery toward which they descended: where a complex of robots ought to have been at work, or at least passively waiting out the centuries, an inexplicable crisscross of lines drawn over a hundred square kilometers in front of the old buildings, and a traffic of objects like nothing ever seen before except in bad dreams. Daunting, yes. On a legitimate errand, Flandry would have gone back for reinforcements. But that was impractical under present circumstances.

Briefly, he felt a touch of pity for Djana. He knew she was as gentle, loving, and compassionate as a cryogenic drill. But she was beautiful (small, fine-boned, exquisite features, great blue eyes, honey-gold hair), which he considered a moral virtue. Apart from insisting that he prepare meals—and he was undoubtedly far the superior cook—she had accepted the cramped austerity of the boat with wry good humor. During their three weeks of travel she had given him freely of her talents, which commanded top price at home. While her formal education in other fields was scanty, between bouts she had proved an entertaining talkmate. Half enemy she might be, but Flandry had allowed himself the imprudent luxury of falling slightly in love with her, and felt he was a little in her debt. No other scouting sweep had been as pleasant!

Now she faced the spacefarer’s truth, that the one thing we know for certain about this universe is that it is implacable. He wanted to reach across and console her.

But the vessel was entering atmosphere. A howl began to penetrate the hull, which bucked.

“Come on, Jake,” Flandry said. “Be a good girl.”

“Why do you always call the boat Jake?” the companion asked, obviously trying to get her mind off the crags lancing toward her.

“ Giacobini-Zinner is ridiculous,” he answered, “and the code letters can’t be fitted into anything bawdy.” I refrain from inquiring what you were called as a child , he thought. I prefer not to believe in, say, an Errriintrude Bugglethwaite who invested in a, ah, house name and a total-body biosculp job… “Quiet, please. This is tricky work. Thin air means high-velocity winds.”

The engine growled. Interior counter-acceleration force did not altogether compensate for lurching; the deck seemed to stagger. Flandry’s hands flew, his feet shoved pedals, occasionally he spoke an order to the idiot-grade central computer that the boat did possess. But he’d done this sort of thing before, often under more difficult conditions. He’d make planetfall without real trouble—

The flyers came.

He had scarcely a minute’s warning of them. Djana screamed as they whipped from a veil of driving gray cloud. They were metal, bright in the light of Mimir and of Regin’s horizon-scraping dayside crescent. Wide, ribbed wings upbore sticklike torsos, grotesque empennage, beaks and claws. They were much smaller than the spacecraft, but they numbered a score or worse.