The officers of the _Rurik_ sat at a long rough table, under trees
whose rustling was not quite like that of any trees on Earth. They
looked toward Holbrook and Grushenko, and they listened.
"So we got the jet aloft," finished Holbrook. "We, uh, took a long
route home--didn't see any, uh, pursuit--" He swore at himself and sat
down. "That's all, I guess."
Captain Svenstrup stroked his red beard and said heavily: "Well, ladies
and gentlemen. The problem is whether we hide out for a while in hopes
of some lucky chance, or evacuate this system at once."
"You forget that we might fight!"
Ekaterina Ivanovna Saburov said it in a voice that rang. The blood
leaped up in her wide, high-boned face; under her battered cap, Tau
Ceti tinged the short wheaten hair with copper.
"Fight?" Svenstrup skinned his teeth. "A hundred humans, one spaceship,
against a whole planet?"
The young woman rose to her feet. Even through the baggy green tunic
and breeches of her uniform--she had clung to it after the mutiny, Red
Star and all--she was big and supple. Holbrook's heart stumbled, rose
again, and hurried through a dark emptiness. She clapped a hand to her
pistol and said: "But they do not belong on this planet. They must be
strangers too, as far from home as we. Shall we run just because their
technology is a little ahead of ours? My nation never felt that was an
excuse to surrender her own soil!"
"No," mumbled Domingo Ximénez. "Instead you went on to plunder the soil
of everyone else."
"Quiet, there!" roared Svenstrup.
His eyes flickered back and forth, down the table and across the camp.
Just inside the forest, a log cabin stood half erected; but the Finnish
couple who had been making it now crouched with the rest of the crew,
among guns and silence. The captain tamped tobacco into his pipe and
growled: "We are all here together, Reds and Whites alike. We cannot
even return to Earth without filling the ship's reaction-mass tanks,
and we need a week or more just to refine enough water. Meanwhile,
non-humans are operating a mine and have killed one of us without any
provocation we can imagine. They could fly over and drop one nuclear
bomb, and that would be the end of man on Novaya. I'm astonished that
they haven't so far."
"Or haven't even been aware of us," murmured Ekaterina. "Our boats were
coming and going for a pair of months or three. Did they not notice our
jet trails above the mountains? Comrades, it does not make sense!"
Ximénez said very low: "How much sense would a mind which is not human
make to us?"
He crossed himself.
The gesture jarred Holbrook. Had the government of the United World
S.S.R. been _that_ careless? Crypto-libertarians had gotten aboard the
_Rurik_, yes, but a crypto-believer in God?
Grushenko saw the movement too. His mouth lifted sardonically. "I
would expect you to substitute word magic for thought," he declared.
To Svenstrup: "Captain, somehow, we have alarmed the aliens--possibly
we happen to resemble another species with which they are at war--but
their reasoning processes must be fundamentally akin to ours, simply
because the laws of nature are the same throughout the universe.
Including those laws of behavior first seen by Karl Marx."
"Pseudo-laws for a pseudo-religion!" Holbrook was surprised at himself,
the way he got it out.
Ekaterina lifted one dark brow and said, "You do not advance our cause
by name calling, Lieutenant Golbrok." Dryly: "Especially when the
epithets are not even original."
He retreated into hot-faced wretchedness. _But I love you_, he wanted
to call out. _If you are Russian and I am American, if you are Red and
I am White, is that a wall between us through all space and time? Can
we never be simply human, my tall darling?_
"That will do," said Svenstrup. "Let's consider practicalities. Dr.
Sugimoto, will you give us the reasons you gave me an hour ago, for
assuming that the aliens come from Zolotoy?"
Holbrook started. Zolotoy--the next planet out, gold-colored in the
evening sky--the enemy belonged to this same system? Then there was
indeed no hope but another plunge into night.
The astronomer rose and said in singsong Russian: "It is unlikely
that anyone would mine the planets of another star on so extensive a
scale. It does not appear economically feasible, even if one had a
spaceship which could travel nearly at light-velocity. Now long-range
spectroscopy has shown Zolotoy to have a thin but essentially
terrestroid atmosphere. The aliens were not wearing air suits, merely
some kind of respirator--I think probably it reduces the oxygen content
of their inhalations--but at any rate, they must use that gas, which
is only found free on Zolotoy and Novaya in this system. The high thin
bipedal shape also suggests life evolved for a lower gravity than
here. If they actually heard our scouts, such sensitive ears probably
developed in more tenuous air." He sat down again and drummed on the
table top with jittery fingers.
"I suppose we should have sent boats to all the other planets before
landing on this one," said Svenstrup heavily. "But there was too much
impatience, the crew had been locked up too long."
"The old captain would not have tolerated such indiscipline," said
Ekaterina.
"I won't tolerate much more from you, either." Svenstrup got his pipe
going. "Here is my plan, We must have more information. I am going to
put the _Rurik_ into an orbit skewed to the ecliptic plane, as safe
a hiding place as any. A few volunteers will stay hidden on Novaya,
refining reaction-mass water and maintaining radio contact with the
ship; everyone else will wait up there. One boat will go to Zolotoy and
learn what it can. Its crew will not know the _Rurik's_ orbit; they'll
report back here. Then we can decide what to do."
He finished grayly: "If the boat returns at all, of course."
Grushenko stood up. Something like triumph blazed in him. "As a
politico-military specialist, I have been selected and trained
for linguistic ability," he said. "Furthermore, I have had combat
experience in suppressing the Brazilian capitalist uprising. I
volunteer myself for the boat."
"Good," said Svenstrup. "We need about two more."
Ekaterina Ivanovna Saburov smiled and said in her low, oddly gentle
voice, "If a Ukrainian like Comrade Grushenko goes, a Great Russian
must also be represented." Her humor faded and she went on earnestly,
overriding the captain, "My sex has nothing to do with it. I am a
gunnery officer of the World Soviet Space Fleet. I spent two years on
Mars, helping to establish a naval outpost. I feel myself qualified."
Somehow, Holbrook was standing up. He stuttered incoherently for a
moment. Their eyes speared him, a big square-faced young man with
rumpled brown hair, brown eyes nearsighted behind contact lenses, his
body drab in coveralls and boots. He got out finally: "Let Bunin take
my post. I, I, I can find out something about their machinery--"
"Or die with the others," said Svenstrup. "We need you here."
Ekaterina spoke quietly. "Let him come, captain. Shall not an American
also have the right to dare?"