Kane made a smooth takeoff. In minutes we were beyond the atmosphere,
Earth was a great glowing shield of cloudy blue behind us, and the
stars were bitter bright against darkness. We sent a coded call
signal and got a directional beam from the ship. Before long we were
approaching it.
I studied the lean black cruiser. She seemed to be of about the same
design as the old Solarian interplanetary ships, modified somewhat to
accommodate the star drive. Apparently, she was one of those built
at Main Base. Her bow guns were dark shadows against the clotted
cold silver of the Milky Way. I thought of the death and the ruin
which could flame from them, I thought of the hell she and her kind
bore--atomic bombs, radiodust bombs, chemical bombs, disease bombs,
gravity snatchers, needle beams, disintegrative shells, darkness and
doom and the new barbarism--and felt a stiffening within me. Fostering
this murderousness was a frightful risk. The main defense against it
was Intelligence, and that depended on agents like myself. Perhaps
_only_ myself.
The crew was rather small, no battles being anticipated. But they were
well disciplined, uniformed and trained, a new Solarian army built up
from the fragments of the old. The captain was a stiff gray German who
had been a leader in the earlier revolt and since fled to space, but
most of the officers, such as Kane, were young and violent in their
eagerness.
We orbited around the planet for another day or so till all the boats
had returned. There was tension in the ship--if the Imperial navy
should happen to spot us, we were done. Off duty, we would sit around
talking, smoking, playing games with little concentration.
Kane spent most of his free hours with Barbara. They had much to talk
about. I swallowed a certain irrational jealousy and wandered around
cautiously pumping as many men as I could.
We got under way at last. By this time I had learned that Main Base was
a planet, but no more. Only the highest leadership of the Legion knew
its location, and they were pledged to swallow the poison they always
carried if there seemed to be any danger of capture.
For several days by the clocks we ran outward, roughly toward Draco.
Our velocity was not revealed, and the slow shift in the outside view
didn't help much. I guess that we had come perhaps ten parsecs, but
that was only a guess.
"_Approaching Main Base. Stand by._"
* * * * *
When the call rang hollowly down the ship's passageways, I could feel
the weariness and tautness easing, I could see homecoming in the faces
around me. I stole a glance at Barbara. Her eyes were wide and her lips
parted, she looked ahead as if to stare through the metal walls. She
had never been here either, here where all her dreams came home.
So we landed, we slipped down out of the dark and the cold and the
void, and I heard the rattle and groan of metal easing into place.
When the ship's interior grav-field was turned off, I felt a sudden
heaviness; this world had almost a quarter again the pull of Earth. But
people got used to that quickly enough. It was the landscape which was
hard to bear.
They had told us that even though Boreas had a breathable atmosphere
and a temperature not always fatally low, it was a bleak place. But to
one who had never been far from the lovely lands of Earth, its impact
was like a blow in the face. Barbara shuddered close to me as we came
out of the airlock, and I put an arm about her waist, knowing the
sudden feeling of loneliness which rose in her.
* * * * *
Save for the spaceport and other installations, Main Base was
underground. There was no city to relieve the grimness of the scene.
We were in a narrow valley between sheer, ragged cliffs that soared
crazily into a murky sky. The sun was low, a smouldering disc of dull
red like curdling blood; its sullen light glimmered on the undying snow
and ice and seemed only to make the land darker. Stars glittered here
and there in the dusky heavens, hard and bright and cruel, almost, as
in space.
Dark sky, dark land, dark world, with the sheer terrible mountains
climbing gauntly for the upper gloom, crags and glaciers like fangs
against the dizzy cliffs, with the great shadows marching across the
bloody snow toward us, with a crazed wind muttering and whining and
chewing at our flesh. It was cold. The cold was like a knife. Pain
stung with every breath and eyes watered with tears that froze on
suddenly numb cheeks. A great shudder ripped through us and we ran
toward the entrance to the city. The snow crunched dry and old under
our boots, the cold ate up through the soles, and the wind whistled its
scorn.
Even when an elevator had taken us a mile down into the warmth and
light of the base, we could not forget. It was a city for a million
men and other beings and more than a few women and children, a city
of long streets and small neat apartments, hydroponic farms and food
synthesizers, schools, shops and amusement places, factories, military
barracks and arsenals, even an occasional little flower garden. Its
people could live here almost indefinitely, working and waiting for
their day of rising.
There was little formality in the civilian areas. Everyone who had come
this far was trusted. A man came up to us new arrivals from Earth,
asked about conditions there, and then said he would show us to our
quarters. Later we would be told to whom we should report for duty.
"Let's go, then, Con," said Barbara, and slipped a cool little hand
into mine. I could not refrain from casting a smug backward glance at
the somewhat chapfallen Kane.
V
We slipped quickly into the routine of the place. It was a
taut-nerved, hard-working daily round. I could feel the savage
expectancy building up like a physical force, but intelligent life is
adaptable and we got used to it. There was work to do.
Hawkins was second in command of the psychological service, testing
and screening and treating personnel, working on training and
indoctrination, and with a voice in the general staff where problems
of unit coordination and psychological warfare were concerned.
Barbara worked under him, secretary and records keeper and general
trouble-shooter. Those were high posts, but both were allowed to retain
the nominally civilian status which they preferred.
Their influence and my own test scores got me appointed assistant
supervisor of the shipyards. That suited me very well--I was reasonably
free from direct orders and discipline, with authority to come and go
pretty much as I pleased. They kept me busy; sometimes I worked the
clock around, and I did my best to further production of the weapons
which might destroy my planet. For whatever I did would make little
difference at this late date.
A good deal of my time also went to drill with the armed forces of
which, like every able-bodied younger man, I was a reserve member.
They put me in an engineer unit and I soon had command of it. I did
my best here too, whipping my grim young charges into a sapper group
comparable to the Empire's, for I had to be above all suspicion, even
of incompetence.
We worked at our learning. We went topside and shivered and manned
our guns, set our mines and threw up our bridges, in the racking cold
of Boreas. Over ancient snow and ice we trotted, lost in the jumbled
wilderness of cruel peaks and railing wind, peeling the skin from our
fingers when we touched metal, camped under scornful stars and a lash
of drifting ice-dust--but we learned!
My own, more private education went on apace. I found where we were.
It was a forgotten red dwarf star out near the shadowy border of the
Empire, listed in the catalogues as having one Class III planet of no
interest or value. That was a good choice; no spaceship would ever
happen into this system by accident or exploration. The anarchs had
built their hopes on the one lonely planet, and had named it Boreas
after the god of the north wind in one of their mythologies. My company
called it less complimentary things.
The base, including the attached city, was under military command
which ultimately led up to the general staff of the Legion. This
was a council of officers from half a score of rebellious planets,
though Earthlings predominated and, of course, Simon Levinsohn held
the supreme authority. I met him a few times, a gaunt, lonely man,
enormously able, ridden by his cause as by a nightmare, but not
unkindly on a personal level. With just that indomitable heart,
the Maccabees had faced Rome's iron legions--Valgolia was greatly
interested in the ancient history of a conquered province, knowing how
often it held the key to current problems.
There was also a liaison officer from Luron sitting at staff meetings.
Luron!
* * * * *
When I first saw him, this Colonel Wergil, I stood stiff and cold and
felt the bristling along my spine. He looked as humanoid as most of
the races at the base. Hairless, faintly scaled greenish-yellow skin,
six fingers to a hand, and flat chinless face don't make that breed
hideous to me; I have reckoned Ganolons and Mergri among my friends.
But Luron--the old and deadly rival, the lesser empire watching its
chance to pounce on us, hating us for the check we are on the ambitions
of their militarists, Luron.
I have no race prejudices and am willing to take the word of our
comparative psychologists that there is no more inherent evil in the
Luronians than in any other stock, that the peculiar cold viciousness
of their civilization is a matter of unfortunate cultural rather than
biological evolution and could be changed in time. But none of this
alters the fact that at present they are what they are, brilliant,
greedy, heartless, and a menace to the peace of the Galaxy. I have been
too long engaged in the struggle between my nation and theirs to think
otherwise.
Other states had sent some clandestine help to the Legion, weapons and
money and vague promises. Luron, I soon found, had said it would attack
us in full strength if the uprising showed a good chance of success,
and meanwhile, they gave assistance, credits and materiel and the still
more important machine tools, and Wergil's military advice was useful.
I know now, as I suspected even then, that Levinsohn and his associates
were not fooled as to Luron's ultimate intentions. Indeed, they
planned to make common cause with what remained of Valgolia, as well
as certain other traditional foes of their present ally, as soon as
they had gained their objectives of independence, and stop any threat
of aggression from Luron. It was shrewdly planned, but such a shaky
coalition, still bleeding with the hurts and hatreds of a struggle just
ended, would be weaker than the Empire, and Luron almost certainly
would have sowed further dissension in it and waited for its decay
before striking.
The Earthlings have a proverb to the effect that he who sups with the
Devil must use a long spoon. But they seemed to have forgotten it now.
The attack, I learned, was scheduled for about four months from
the time the agents were recalled. The rebels were counting on the
Valgolian power being spread too thinly over the Empire to stand off
their massed assault on a few key points. Then, with the home planet
a radioactive ruin, with revolt in a score of planetary systems and
the ensuing chaos and communications breakdown, and with the Luronians
invading, the Imperial fleet and military would have to make terms with
the anarchs.
* * * * *
It would work. I knew with a dark chill that it would work. Unless
somehow I could get a warning out. That had to be done for more than
the protection of Epsilon Eridani, which, even in a surprise attack
could defend itself better than these conspirators realized. But all
bloodshed should be spared, if possible--and the rebellion did not yet
deserve to succeed, for the unity achieved thus far had been the unity
of a snake pit against a temporary enemy.
Did it all rest on me? God of space, had the whole burden of history
suddenly fallen on _my_ shoulders?
I didn't dare think about it. I forced the consequences of failure out
of my forebrain, back down into the unconscious, the breeding ground of
nightmares, and lived from one day to the next. I worked, and waited,
learned what I could and watched for my chance.
But it was not all grimness and concentration. It couldn't be;
intelligent life just isn't built that way. We had our social
activities, small gatherings or big parties, we relaxed and played.
At first I found that gratifying, for it gave me a chance to pump the
others. Then I found it maddening, because it kept me from snooping
and laying plans. Finally it began to hurt--I was coming to know the
anarchs.
They lived and laughed and loved even as humans do. They were basically
as decent and reasonable as any similar group of Valgolians. Many were
as tormented as I by the thought of the slaughter they readied. There
were embittered ones, who had lost all they held dear, and I realized
that, while civilization has its price, you can't be objective about it
when you are the one who must pay. There were others who had been well
off and had chucked all their hopes to join a desperate cause in which
they happened to believe. There were children--and what had they done
to deserve having their parents gambling away life?
In spite of their appearance, to which I was now accustomed, they were
_human_. When I had laughed and talked and sung and drunk beer and
danced and arranged entertainments with them, they were my friends.
Moodily, I began to see that I would be one of the price-payers.
I saw most of Hawkins and Barbara, and after them--because of
her--Kane. The old psychologist and I got along famously. He would drop
into my room for a smoke and a cup of coffee and a drawled conversation
whenever he had the chance. His slow gentle voice, his trenchancy,
the way the little crinkles appeared around his eyes when he smiled,
reminded me of my father. I often wish those two could have met. They
would have enjoyed each other.
Then Barbara would stop by on her way from work, or, better yet, she
would ask me over to her apartment for a home-cooked dinner. Yes, she
could cook too. We would sometimes take long walks down the corridors
of the city, we even went up once in a while to the surface for a
breath of cold air and loneliness, and it was the most natural thing in
the world for us to go hand in hand.
There was no sunlight underground. But when the fluorotube glow shone
on her hair, I thought of sunlight on Earth, the high keen light of the
Colorado plateaus, the morning light stealing through the trees of Hood
Island.
_Ydis, Ydis, I said, once your violet eyes were like the skies over
Kalariho, over Kealvigh, our home, pasture land of winds. But it has
been so long. It has been ten years since you died--_
I fought. May all the gods bear witness that I fought myself. And I
thought I was winning.