Poul Anderson - The Star Fox

No doubt he’d only been so keyed up about Madelon because of… he wasn’t sure what. A silly scramble after his lost youth, probably. She was middle-aged now, placidly married, according to her brother-in-law she had put on weight. He wanted to see her again, of course, and chuckle affectionately over old follies. But all he need do was instruct Meroeth’s pilot to make sure the Irribarnes were among the evacuees.

Insuwwicient, as C.E. would burble, he thought. Common sense has very limited uses. This goes beyond. Too many unforeseen things could happen. I want to be in the nucleus, personally.

A new sound filled the hull, the keening of sundered air, deepening toward a hollow boom, as Meroeth dropped below sonic speed. Heim looked out the forward viewport. The ocean reached vast beneath, phosphor-tinged waves from horizon to horizon. A shadow loomed in the distance, which Vadász told him from the radar must be an island. So, the Iles des Rêves already, at the end of the Notre Dame peninsula. He wanted to get the archipelago between him and whatever guardian instruments were at the uranium mine farther north, before he switched the gravitrons back on. It would take some doing. This hulk wasn’t meant for aerodynamic maneuvers. He applied the least bit of lift to get her nose up.

Immensely preferable would have been to land in the Océan des Orages and come eastward over Pays d’Espoir, crossing unpopulated Terre Sauvage to reach the central mountains of the continent. But while meteorites are plentiful, his had had too many requirements to meet. It must be large, yet not too large to nudge into the right orbit in a reasonable time; the point at which Fox grappled and towed must be fairly near the planet but not dangerously near; the path after release must look natural; it must terminate in one of those seas at night. You couldn’t scout the Auroran System forever, but must settle for the first halfway acceptable chunk of rock that happened along. Meanwhile Meroeth could be reconverted: lights, temperature, air systems adjusted for human comfort, Mach units repaired, the interior stripped of plants and less understandable Aleriona symbols, the controls ripped out and a new set put in of the kind to which Terrestrials were accustomed. The bridge had a plundered look.

Onward the ship fell, slower and lower until the ocean seemed to rise and lick at her. Vadász probed the sky with his instruments, awkwardly—he had gotten hasty training—and intently. His lips were half parted, as if to give the word “Fire!” to Irribarne in the single manned gun turret.

But he found only night, unhurried winds, and strange constellations.

It would not have been possible to travel this far, undetected, across a civilization. But New Europe has 72 percent of Earth’s surface area; it is an entire world. Coeur d’Yvonne had been almost the only outpost on another continent than Pays d’Espoir, and that city was annihilated.

The Aleriona occupied Garance, where the mines and machines were: a mere fringe of immensity. Otherwise they must rely on scattered detector stations, roving flyers, and the still incomplete satellite system. His arrival being unknown to them, the odds favored Heim.

Nonetheless… careful, careful.

When the archipelago was behind him and his ship almost plowing water, he turned the engines on again. Like a flying whale, Meroeth swung about and lumbered westward. An island passed near. He made out surf on a beach overshadowed by trees, and imagined he could hear its wash and the soughing leaves, could even smell the warm odors of a semitropical forest. The sight was dim, only half real—indeed an island of dream. Men’s dreams, he thought angrily. No one else’s.

Crossing the Golfe des Dragons, he felt naked in so much openness and increased speed.

Northwestward now the ship ran. Diane hove into view, nearly full. The moon was smaller than Luna seen from Earth—twenty-two minutes angular diameter—and less bright, but still a blue-marked tawny cornucopia that scattered metal shards across the sea.

Then the mainland rose, hills and woods and distant snow-peaks. Heim reached for altitude.

“Better get on the radio, Jean,” he said. “We don’t want them to run and hide when they see us, not to mention attack. What’s the name of that place again where we’re headed?”

“Lac aux Nuages,” Irribarne said.

Heim studied a map. “Yes, I see it here. Big upland lake. Isn’t it too conspicuous to make a safe headquarters?”

“There is ample concealment, precisely because it is large and misty and has so many islands,” Irribarne answered. “Besides, if there is a raid one can always retreat into the wilderness around about.” The intercom bore the sound of his footsteps leaving the gun turret for the radio room, and presently a harsh clatter of Basque.

The land beneath grew ever more rugged. Rivers ran from the snows, leaped down cliffs, foamed into steep valleys, and were lost to sight among the groves. A bird flock rose in alarm when the ship passed over; there must be a million pairs of wings, blotting out half the sky.

Vadász whistled in awe. “ Isten irgalmazzon! I wondered how long the people could stay hidden, even alive, in the bush. But three times their number could do it”

“Yeh,” Heim grunted. “Except for one thing.”

The lake appeared, a wide wan sheet among darkling trees, remotely encircled by mountains whose glaciers gleamed beneath the moon. Irribarne relayed instructions. Heim found the indicated spot, just off the north shore, and lowered ship. The concealing waters closed over him.

He heard girders groan a little, felt an indescribable soft resistance go through the frame to himself, eased off power, and let the hull settle in ooze. When he cut the interior gee-field, he discovered the deck was canted.

His heart thuttered, but he could only find flat words: “Let’s get ashore.” Even in seven tenths of Terrestrial gravity, it was a somewhat comical effort to reach the emergency escape lock without falling. When the four men were crowded inside, clothes bundled on their necks, he dogged the inner door and cranked open the outer one. Water poured icily through. He kicked to the surface and swam as fast as possible toward land. Moonlight glimmered on the guns of the men who stood there waiting for him.

The tent was big. The trees that surrounded it were taller yet. At the top of red-brown trunks, they fountained in branches whose leaves overarched and hid the pavilion under cool sun-flecked shadows. Their foliage was that greenish gold hue the native “grasses” shared, to give the Garance country its name. Wind rustled them. Through the open flap, Heim could look down archways of forest to the lake. It glittered unrestfully, outward past the edge of vision. Here and there lay a wooded island, otherwise the only land seen in that direction was the white-crowned sierra. Blue with distance, the peaks jagged into a deep blue sky.

Aurore was not long up. The eastern mountains were still in shadow, the western ones still faintly flushed. They would remain so for a while; New Europe takes more than seventy-five hours to complete a rotation. The sun did not look much different from Earth’s: about the same apparent size, a little less bright, its color more orange than yellow. Heim had found Vadász in the dews at dawn, watching the light play in the mists that streamed over the lake, altogether speechless.

That time was ended. So too was the hour when Colonel .Robert de Vigny, once constabulary commandant, now beret-crowned king of the maquis, returned to headquarters. (He had not been directing a raid, but finding some technicians and arranging for their transportation to the Ravignac lodge, where a major hydroelectric generator needed repairs. Of such unglamorous detail work is survival made.) Ended even was the first gladness of reunion, with Irribarne who had been lost, with Vadász after a year and Heim after a generation. “ Eon, passons aux affaires sirieuses,” he said, and sat down behind his desk.