Poul Anderson: Agent of the Terran Empire

But—

Flandry’s eyes swept the scene. Someone, somehow, had suddenly realized that a band of skilled space fighters was stealing under excellent cover toward the dome. There was no way Flandry knew of to be certain of that, without instruments he had not seen planted around. Except—

Yes. He saw the tall gaunt figure mounting a cliff. Briefly it was etched against the bloody sun, then it slipped from view.

Aycharaych had been here after all.

No men could be spared from combat, even if they could break away. Flandry bounded off himself.

He topped the ringwall in three leaps. A black jumble of rocks fell away before him. He could not see any flitting shape, but in this weird shadowy land eyes were almost useless at a distance. He knew, though, which way Aycharaych was headed. There was only one escape from the nebula now, and the Chereionite had gotten what information he required from human minds.

Flandry began to travel. Leap — not high, or you will take forever to come down again — long, low bounds, with the dark metallic world streaming away beneath you and the firecoal sun slipping toward night again: silence, death, and aloneness. If you die here, your body will be crushed beneath falling continents, your atoms will be locked for eternity in the core of a planet.

A ray flared against his helmet. He dropped to the ground, before he had even thought. He lay in a small crater, blanketed with shadow, and stared into the featureless black wall of a giant meteor facing away from the sun. Somewhere on its slope—

Aycharaych’s Anglic words came gentle, “You can move faster than I. You could reach your vessel before me and warn your subordinate. I can only get in by a ruse, of course. He will hear me speak on the radio in a disguised voice of things known only to him and yourself, and will not see me until I have been admitted. And that will be too late for him. But first I must complete your life, Captain Flandry.”

The man crouched deeper into murk. He felt the near-absolute cold of the rock creep through armor and touch his skin. “You’ve tried often enough before,” he said.

Aycharaych’s chuckle was purest music. “Yes, I really thought I had said farewell to you, that night at the Crystal Moon. It seemed probable you would be sent to Jupiter — I have studied Admiral Fenross with care — and Horx had been instructed to kill the next Terran agent. My appearance at the feast was largely sentimental. You have been an ornament of my reality, and I could not deny myself a final conversation.”

“My friend,” grated Flandry, “you’re about as sentimental as a block of solid helium. You wanted us to know about your presence. You foresaw it would alarm us enough to focus our attention on Syrax, where you hinted you would go next — what part of our attention that superb red-herring operation had not fastened on Ymir. You had our Intelligence men swarming around Jupiter and out in the Cluster, going frantic in search of your handiwork: leaving you free to manipulate Ardazir.”

“My egotism will miss you,” said Aycharaych coolly. “You alone, in this degraded age, can fully appreciate my efforts, or censure them intelligently when I fail. This time, the unanticipated thing was that you would survive on Jupiter. Your subsequent assignment to Vixen has, naturally, proven catastrophic for us. I hope now to remedy that disaster, but—” The philosopher awoke. Flandry could all but see Aycharaych’s ruddy eyes filmed over with a vision of some infinitude humans had never grasped. “It is not certain. The totality of existence will always elude us: and in that mystery lies the very meaning. How I pity immortal God!”

Flandry jumped out of the crater.

Aycharaych’s weapon spat. Flame splashed off the man’s armor. Reflex — a mistake, for now Flandry knew where Aycharaych was, the Chereionite could not get away — comforting to realize, in this querning of worlds, that an enemy who saw twenty years ahead, and had controlled whole races like a hidden fate, could also make mistakes.

Flandry sprang up onto the meteor. He crashed against Aycharaych.

The blaster fired point-blank. Flandry’s hand chopped down. Aycharaych’s wrist did not snap across, the armor protected it. But the gun went spinning down into darkness. Flandry snatched for his own weapon. Aycharaych read the intention and closed in, wrestling. They staggered about on the meteor in each other’s arms. The sinking sun poured its baleful light across them: and Aycharaych could see better by it than Flandry. In minutes, when night fell, the man would be altogether blind and the Chereionite could take victory.

Aycharaych thrust a leg behind the man’s and pushed. Flandry toppled. His opponent retreated. But Flandry fell slowly enough that he managed to seize the other’s waist. They rolled down the slope together. Aycharaych’s breath whistled in the radio, a hawk sound. Even in the clumsy spacesuit, he seemed like water, nearly impossible to keep a grip on.

They struck bottom. Flandry got his legs around the Chereionite’s. He wriggled himself onto the back and groped after flailing limbs. A forearm around the alien helmet — he couldn’t strangle, but he could immobilize and — his hands clamped on a wrist. He jerked hard.

A trill went through his radio. The struggle ceased. He lay atop his prisoner, gasping for air. The sun sank, and blackness closed about them.

“I fear you broke my elbow joint there,” said Aycharaych. “I must concede.”

“I’m sorry,” said Flandry, and he was nothing but honest. “I didn’t mean to.”

“In the end,” sighed Aycharaych, and Flandry had never heard so deep a soul-weariness, “I am beaten not by a superior brain or a higher justice, but by the brute fact that you are from a larger planet than I and thus have stronger muscles. It will not be easy to fit this into a harmonious reality.”

Flandry unholstered his blaster and began to weld their sleeves together. Broken arm or not, he was taking no chances.

Bad enough to have that great watching mind next to his for the time needed to reach the flitter.

Aycharaych’s tone grew light again, almost amused: “I would like to refresh myself with your pleasure. So, since you will read the fact anyway in our papers, I shall tell you now that the overlords of Urdahu will arrive here for conference in five Terran days.”

Flandry grew rigid. Glory blazed within him. A single shell-burst, and Ardazir was headless!

Gradually the stiffness and the splendor departed. He finished securing his captive. They helped each other up. “Come along,” said the human. “I’ve work to do.”

Cerulia did not lie anywhere near the route between Syrax and Sol. But Flandry went home that way. He didn’t quite know why. Certainly it was not with any large willingness.

He landed at Vixen’s main spaceport. “I imagine I’ll be back in a few hours, Chives,” he said. “Keep the pizza flying.” He went lithely down the gangway, passed quarantine in a whirl of gold and scarlet, and caught an airtaxi to Garth.

The town lay peaceful in its midsummer. Now, at apastron, with Vixen’s atmosphere to filter its radiation, the sun might almost have been Sol: smaller, brighter, but gentle in a blue sky where tall white clouds walked. Fields reached green to the Shaw; a river gleamed; the snowpeaks of the Ridge hovered dreamlike at world’s edge.

Flandry looked up the address he wanted in a public telebooth. He didn’t call ahead, but walked through bustling streets to the little house. Its peaked roof was gold above vine-covered walls.

Kit met him at the door. She stood unmoving a long time. Finally she breathed: “I’d begun to fear you were dead.”

“Came close, a time or two,” said Flandry awkwardly.