_The entire System was after Ballantyne.
Earth wanted him. The Jovian war-fleet jetted
on his trail. But mainly Ballantyne feared his
big-bosomed, sword-swinging space-mate--Dyann
the Amazon from man-starved Alpha C3._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories March 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The hero is the child of his times, in that his milieu furnishes
him with motives and means, and yet the hero seizes the time and
shapes it as he will. And he remains an enigma to his contemporaries
and to the future._
Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the strange story of the
three whose discoveries and achievements determined the whole course
of history. The driving idealism and bold military genius of Dyann
Korlas; the mighty wisdom, profound and benign, of Urushkidan; above
all, perhaps, the transcendent clarity of mind and inspired
leadership of Ballantyne--these molded our century and all centuries
to come, and yet we will never understand them, they are too far
beyond us and their essential selves must be forever a mystery
--Vallabbhai Rasmussen, History
of the Twenty-third Century, v. 1
* * * * *
I
The tender loomed above the crowd of passengers and leave-takers, a
great shining bullet caught in floodlights against the dark, and Ray
Ballantyne quickened his steps. By Heaven, he'd made it! The flight
from San Francisco to Quito, the nail-biting dawdle as he waited for
the airbus, then the flight out to Ecuador Spaceport, the last walk
through the vast echoing hollowness of the terminal, out onto the
field--and there it was, there the little darling lay, waiting to carry
him from Earth up to the _Jovian Queen_ and safety.
He kissed his fingers at the tender and shoved rudely through the swarm
of people and Martians. He'd already missed the first trip up to the
liner, and the thought of waiting for the third was beyond endurance.
"Hey, chum."
As the heavy hand fell on his arm, Ballantyne whirled, his heart
slamming against his teeth and his spine dropping out. The thick-set
man compared his thin sharp features with the photograph in the other
paw, nodded, and said, "All right, Ballantyne, come along."
"_Se llama Garcia!_" gibbered the engineer. "_No hablo Inglés._"
"I said come along," said the detective wearily. "I thought you'd try
to leave Earth. This way."
Ballantyne's free hand reached up and crammed the fellow's hat down
over his eyes. Wrenching loose, he turned and ran for the gangway,
upsetting a corpulent Latin woman en route and pursued by a volley of
imprecations. He shoved aside the passenger before him and ran into the
solid wall of an impassive Jovian ship's officer.
The Jovian, a tall muscular blond in a dazzling crispness of white
uniform, looked at him with the thinly veiled contempt of a proper
Confed for the lesser breeds of humanity. "Ticket and passport,
please," he said stonily.
Ballantyne shoved them at him, glancing shakily back to the detective
who had become entangled with the indignant woman and was being slapped
with a handbag and volubly cursed. With maddening deliberation the
Jovian scanned the engineer's papers, compared them with a list in his
hand, and waved him on.
The detective caromed against the same immovable barrier. "Let me by!"
he gasped.
"Your ticket and passport, please," said the Jovian.
"That man is under arrest. Let me by."
"Your ticket and passport, please."
"I tell you I'm an officer of the law and I have a warrant for that
man. Let me by."
"Proper authorization may be obtained at the main office," said the
Jovian coldly.
The detective tried to rush, encountered a bit of expert judo,
and tumbled back into the crowd. Every able-bodied Jovian was a
well-trained military reservist.
"Proper authorization may be obtained at the main office," repeated the
immovable barrier. To the next man, "Your ticket and passport, please."
Ray Ballantyne dashed the sweat off his brow and permitted himself a
nasty chuckle. By the time the hapless detective had gone through all
that red tape, the tender would be well on its way.
Before one of his country's secret police the Jovian would have quailed
and said nothing. But this was Earth, and the Confeds loved to bait
Terrestrials, and there was no better way than by demanding the endless
papers which their file-clerk mentalities had devised.
The engineer went on into the tender, found a seat, and strapped
himself in. He was clear. Before Heaven, he was away!
Even the long Vanbrugh arm did not reach to Jupiter. Ballantyne's
alleged crimes weren't enough for the Earth government to ask his
extradition. He could stay on Ganymede till the whole business had
blown over, and then--well--
He sighed, relaxing--a medium-sized young man, slender and wiry,
with close-cropped yellow hair and features a little too sharp to be
handsome. His thin deft fingers rearranged his overly colorful tie and
straightened his sports jacket. Always wanted to see the Jovian System,
anyway, he rationalized.
The tender's airlock sighed shut and a stewardess went down the
aisle handing out anti-acceleration pills. She had the full-bodied,
pure-blooded good looks of the ideal Jovian together with their faintly
repellent air of hard, purposeful efficiency. The rockets began to
throb, warming up, and a siren hooted.
Ballantyne turned to the man beside him, obsessed with the idiotic
desire for conversation found in all recent escapees from the law or
the dentist. "Going home, I see," he remarked.
The man was a tall specimen in the gray Jovian army uniform, with
colonel's planets on his shoulders and a chestful of ribbons and
medals--about forty, closely shaven head, iron jaw, ramrod spine. He
fixed the Earthling with a chill pale eye and said, "And you, I see,
are leaving home. Two scintillating deductions."
"Ummm--uh--well." Ballantyne looked away, his ears ablaze. The Jovian
clutched his heavy portfolio tighter to his side.
The tender shook itself, howled, and jumped into the sky. Ballantyne
leaned back in the cushioned seat, staring out the port at the
fire-starred unfolding of space. The Jovian colonel sat rigid as
before, not deigning to yield to the pressure.
They came up to the _Jovian Queen_, where the great liner held her
orbit about Earth, and Ballantyne glimpsed her long metal shape,
blinding in the raw sunlight, as the tender swung in for contact. When
the airlocks joined there was a steady one-gravity as the spaceship
rotated on her axis. Whatever you could say against the Jovians--and
that was quite a bit--they did maintain the best transport in the Solar
System. Earth's heavy passenger and freight haulers were in tight
financial straits competing with the state-subsidized lines of Jupiter.
An expressionless uniformed steward took charge of the passengers as
they entered the ship, herding them to their respective destinations.
Ballantyne lugged his valise toward third-class section. He'd have to
share his cabin with two others--how had the mighty fallen! Thinking
over the decline and fall of the Ballantyne pocketbook, he sighed, and
the suitcase seemed to drag at him. He'd hit Ganymede pretty broke,
unless....
He opened his assigned door.
"Put--me--down!"
Ballantyne dropped his suitcase and his jaw. Within the narrow cabin a
Martian was struggling in the clutch of a six-foot armored woman.
"Put--me--down!" he spluttered. He coiled his limbs snakelike
around the woman's brawny arms, and a Martian's four thick, rubbery
walking-tentacles have formidable strength. She didn't seem to notice.
She laughed and shook him a bit.
"I--beg your pardon--" gasped Ballantyne, backing away.
"You are forgiven," said the woman. Her voice was a husky contralto,
burdened with a rippling, slurring accent he couldn't place. She shot
out one Martian-encumbered arm, grabbed him by the coat, and hauled him
inside. "You be the yudge, my friend. Is it not yustice that I have the
lower berth?"
"It is noting of te sort!" screamed the Martian, fixing Ballantyne with
round, bulging, and indignant yellow eyes. "My position, my eminence,
clearly entitle me to ebery consideration, and ten tis hulking
monster--"
The Earthling let his gaze travel up and down the woman's
smooth-muscled form and said in an awed whisper, "I think you'd better
accept the lady's generous offer. But--uh--I seem to have the wrong
cabin--"
"Are you Ray Ballantyne of Earth?" asked the woman.
He pleaded guilty.
"Then you belon vith us. I have looked at the passenyer lists. You may
have the cot."
"Th-thanks," shivered Ballantyne, sitting down on it.
The Martian seemed to give the fight up as a bad job and allowed
himself to be placed on the upper bunk. "To tink of it," he squeaked.
"Tat I, te great Urushkidan of Ummunashektaru, should be man-handled by
a sabage who does not know a logaritm from an exponent!"
Urushkidan. Ballantyne knew the name of the Martian mathematician, the
latter-day Gauss or Einstein, and stared as if this were the first
Martian he had seen in his life. Urushkidan looked like any other of
his race, at least to the inexperienced eye. A great gray-skinned
cupola of a body balanced four feet high on the walking-tentacles, with
the two slim, three-fingered arm-tentacles writhing from either side
of a wide lipless mouth set beneath that torse. Big unwinking eyes
behind horn-rimmed spectacles, flat nose, elephantine ears--"Not _the_
Urushkidan?" he gasped.
"Tere is only _one_ Urushkidan," said the Martian.
* * * * *
The amazon sat down on her own bunk and laughed, a Homeric shout of
laughter ringing between the metal walls and shivering the furniture.
"Velcome, little Earthman," she cried. "You are cute, I think I vill
like you. I am Dyann Korlas of Kathantuma." She grabbed his hand in a
bone-cracking grip.
"One of the Centaurians," said Ballantyne feebly.
"Yes, so you call us." She opened her trunk and began unpacking.
Ballantyne watched her with appreciation and some curiosity. He'd only
seen the Alpha Centaurian visitors on television before now.
She looked human enough externally, aside from a somewhat different
convolution of the ears. Internally there were plenty of peculiarities,
among them a skeletal and tissue structure considerably harder and
denser than that of Homo Solis. Alpha Centauri III--or Varann, as its
more advanced nation had decided to call it after learning from the
terrestrial explorers that it was a planet--was Earth-like enough in a
cool and bracing way, but it had half again the surface gravity.
Sexual differentiation also varied a bit from the Solar norm. The
Centaurian men were somewhat smaller and weaker than the women. They
stayed at home and did the housework while their wives conducted the
business. In the warlike culture of Kathantuma and its neighbor states
that meant going out, cutting the other army into hamburger, and
stealing everything which wasn't bolted down.
This--Dyann Korlas--was something to write home about as far as looks
went. Her size and the broadsword at her waist were intimidating, but
her build was magnificent in a statuesque, tiger-lithe way. She looked
young, her skin smooth, and faintly golden, a heavy mass of shining
bronze hair coiled about the haughtily lifted head. Her face was close
to the ideal of an ancient Hellenic sculptor, clean straight lines,
firm jaw, brilliant gray eyes under heavy brows. She wore a light
cuirass over her tunic, sandals, a bat-winged helmet on her head.
"It--ah--it's strange they'd put you in the same cabin with me," said
Ballantyne hesitantly.
"Oh, you are safe enough," she grinned.
He flushed, reflecting that the ladies from Centauri were in little
danger from any Solar man. Very likely it was the other way around.
Then he recalled that their native titles translated into things
like warrior, district-ruler, chief, and so on. With their arrogant
indifference to mere exploration and ethnology, the Jovians had
probably assumed that Dyann Korlas was male. Well, he wasn't going to
enlighten them.
He looked up to Urushkidan, who was morosely stuffing a big-bowled
pipe. "Ah, I know of your work, of course," he said hesitantly. "I
am--was--a nuclear engineer, so maybe I even have some appreciation of
what it's about."
The Martian preened. "Doubtless you have grasped it bery well," he said
generously. "As well as any Eartman could, which is, of course, saying
bery little."
"But, if I may ask, sir, what are you doing here?"
"Oh, I have an inbitation from te Jobian Academy of Science to lecture.
Tey are commendably interested and seem to realise my fundamental
importance. I will be glad to get off Eart. Te air pressure, te
gravity, pfui!"
"But a man, uh, Martian of your distinction--traveling third class--"
"Oh, they sent me a first-class ticket, of course. But I turned
it in, bought a tird class, and banked te difference." He scowled
darkly at Dyann Korlas. "Tough if I must be treated so--Well." He
shrugged. A Martian shrugging is quite a sight. "It is of no matter.
We of Uttu--Mars as you insist on calling it--are so incomparably far
advanced in te philosophic virtues of serenity, generosity, and modesty
tat I can accept wit equanimity."
"Oh," said Ballantyne. To the Centaurian, "And may I ask why you are
going to Jupiter--ah--Miss Korlas?"
"You may call me Dyann," she said sweetly, "and I vill call you
Ray, so? I vish only to see Yupiter, though I doubt it vill be as
glamorous as Earth." Her eyes glowed. "You live in a fable. The flyin
and travelin machines, auto--automatic kitchens, television, clocks an
vatches, exotic dress. Aah, it vas vorth ten years travelin yust to see
them."
* * * * *
Ballantyne reflected on what he knew of Alpha Centauri. Even the
fantastically fast new exploratory ships took ten years to cross the
interstellar gulf to its wild planets, and there had only been three
expeditions so far. The third had brought back a group of curious
natives who were to report to their queen what the strangers' homeland
was like.
He imagined that the spacemen had had quite a time, with that score of
turbulent barbarians crammed into a narrow hull though of course they'd
passed almost the whole voyage in suspended animation. The visitors
had spent about a year now on Earth and Luna, staring, asking endless
questions, wondering what their hosts did with themselves now that the
U. N. had brought the nations together and ended war. There hadn't
been much trouble. Occasionally one of them would get mad and break
somebody's jaw, and then there'd been the one who was invited to speak
at a women's club.... He chuckled to himself.
"Are these Yovians humans like you?" asked Dyann.
"Uh-huh," he nodded. "The moons were colonized from Earth about a
hundred and twenty-five years ago. They declared their independence
about sixty years past, and nobody thought it was worth the trouble to
fight about it. Though maybe we should have."
"Vy that?"
"Oh well, the colonists were misfits originally, remnants of the
old Eurasian militarisms. They did do heroic work in settling and
developing the Jovian System, but they live under a dictatorship
and make no bones about despising Earth and considering themselves
the destined rulers of all the planets. Last year they grabbed the
Saturnian colonies on the thinnest of pretexts, and Earth was too
chicken-livered to do more than give them a reproachful look. Not that
the U. N. has much of a navy these days, compared to theirs."
Dyann shrugged and went on unpacking. She hung an extra sword on the
wall, unshipped her armor and put it up, and slipped into a loose
fur-trimmed robe. Urushkidan slithered to the floor and opened his
own trunk, pulling out a score of fat books which he placed on the
shelf over his bunk and expropriated the little table for his papers,
pencils, and humidor.
"You know--ah--Dr. Urushkidan--" said Ballantyne uneasily, "I wish you
weren't going to Jupiter."
"And why not?" asked the Martian belligerently.
"Well, doesn't your reformulation of general relativity indicate a way
to build a ship which can go faster than light?"
"Among oter tings, yes." Urushkidan blew a malodorous cloud of smoke.
"Well, I don't think the Jovians are interested in science for its own
sake. I think they want to get you and your knowledge so they can build
such ships themselves which would be the last thing they need to take
over the Solar System."
"A Martian," said Urushkidan condescendingly, "is not concerned wit te
squabblings of te lower animals. Noting personal, of course."
Dyann pulled an idol from her trunk and put it on her shelf. It was a
small wooden image, gaudily painted and fiercely tusked, each of its
six arms holding some weapon. One, Ballantyne noticed, was a carved
Terrestrial tommy-gun. "Qviet, please," she said, raising one arm. "I
am about to pray to Ormun the Terrible."
"Barbarian," guffawed Urushkidan.
Dyann took a pillow and stuffed it in his mouth. "Qviet, please, I
said." She smiled gently and prostrated herself before the god.
After a while she got up. Urushkidan was still speechless with rage.
She turned to Ballantyne and asked, "Do the ships here carry live
animals? I vould like to make a small sacrifice too."