He appealed: “Do you see what that means? Final proof of what I’d decided had to be the case. The bandits and pirates were growing too bloody bold, too successful, to be the kind we’d routinely coped with. And of course we were getting a little military intelligence from the outback—and now this—”
“Somebody’s been uniting the barbarians at last. Probably he’s finished, and ready to put the crunch on us. To cast the Gathering out of Valennen altogether.”
“Except that’s a bare start for him. It has to be. In the past, the Rover drove desperate people south. They fell on civilization and helped tear it apart. This time around, it looked like civilization had a chance to pull through. Only somebody has organized the Valenneners to match us. He can’t have but one long-range purpose—to invade the south, kill, enslave, kick us out of our lands, and take over the ruins.
“That’s what I’ve traveled for. To tell the assembly we can’t withdraw ‘temporarily’ from Valennen, we’ve got to hold fast at every cost; to get reinforcements, a second legion at a minimum, up there. But first I want to ask what help you in Primavera can give. It may not be exactly your war. But you’re here to learn about Ishtar. If civilization falls, you’ll have a thin time carrying on,”
That was as long a speech as he had ever made, even addressing the Zera on a high occasion. He turned half wildly to his pipe and beer.
Sparling’s voice yanked him back: “Larreka, this hurts like a third-degree bum to say, but I’m not sure what help we can give you. You see, we’ve been stuck with a war of our own.”
FOUR
Seen from space, all planets are beautiful; but those where humans can breathe have for them a special poignancy. As his flagship maneuvered toward parking orbit, Yuri Dejerine watched Ishtar through the least haze of tears.
Its globe was radiant blue swirled with white and marked with darker hues of continents. The unlikenesses to Earth gave it the kind of glamour that a foreign woman may bear. There were no polar caps and fewer clouds, despite a somewhat larger ocean cover. The browns of soil had no greens blent in, but shades tawny and ruddy. No great scarred Luna swung widely around, only two close-in midget moons; he glimpsed one, flickering as it tumbled, like a firefly against starful blackness.
And the light was eldritch. Most came from Ishtar’s own Bel, slightly less intense than Sol on Earth but the familiar yellow-white. Anu, however, was now so close that it evoked roses and blood in the clouds and tinged the seas purple.
Stopped down to preserve his eyesight, a vision of both suns stood in the viewscreen before him. They appeared nearly the same size, a trick played by their distances. Bel was haloed in a glory of corona. Anu had no clear disc. At the middle was a furnace red where seethed monstrous spots; this dimmed and thinned outward until at last it writhed in a hazy intricacy of flame, tendrils which made Dejerine think of the Kraken.
He turned his look away. As if for companionship, he tried to find sister planets, and believed he could pick out two. And, yes, that really brilliant star, ruby-colored, that must be Ea, six thousand times as remote from here as Bel and outward bound. It wasn’t a reminder of mortality like Anu; as a dwarf, Ea would have a tremendously long though quiet life.
Nevertheless, it touched Dejerine with a sense of its loneliness, and his, and everybody’s, ineluctable. And the splendor of Ishtar held an oncoming agony. His thought went on to Eleanor, how fair she had been and how miserable, on the day she told him that after two years she could try no longer and wanted a divorce. I was trying, too, he told her again. I really was.
He shook himself. No notions for the commander of a flotilla, these. A voice out of a speaker rescued him from silence: “Orbit assumed, sir. All satisfactory.”
“Very good,” he replied automatically. “Men not on regular watch may go off duty.”
“Shall I have a call put through to ground, sir?” asked his exec.
“Not yet. It’s night in that hemisphere—as far as the proper sun is concerned, anyway. They’ve adapted to an eighteen-and-a-half-hour day there and must be mostly asleep at present, whether or not Anu is aloft. We’d be discourteous to rouse their leaders. Let us wait— um-m-m—” Dejerine balanced Ishtarian rotation against Earthspin Navy clocks. “Say till 0700. That’ll give us a few hours to relax, too. If any messages are received before, switch them to me in my cabin. Otherwise beam Primavera at 0700.”
“Aye, sir. Have you further orders?”
“No, I’ll simply rest. I advise you to do the same, Heinrichs. We’ve a busy time ahead.”
“Thank you, sir. Good night.” The thick accent cut off. Dejerine had required talk to be in English, practice for a community where that was well-nigh the exclusive language. (No, native speech also. Don Conway had used a number of words which he explained, on inquiry, were of nonhuman origin.) The captain suspected a lot of Spanish, Chinese, or what-have-you went on in his absence.
He himself had no linguistic problem. His upbringing had made him fluent in several major tongues, and his wife had been from the United States.
He brushed aside the returning memory. He had loved her, and he still wished her well, but after three years it would be ridiculous to pine. There were plenty of other women—had been since his middle teens. He wondered if any on Ishtar would prove available.
Again he considered the planet. Orbit had brought the cruiser into view of its civilized parts. The opposite half held a single continent and countless islands, where no significant number of Ishtarians lived and about which humans had to date learned little. They had more enigmas where they were than they could handle, in spite of indigenous help.
Anu light lay sinister across a slice which ought to have been dark. By that dull glow he picked out the continents he had read about. Conway had tried to teach him how to utter their names.
Australia-sized Haelen decked the south pole, extending an arm past the Antarctic Circle. Thence a series of archipelagos, visible from here only as changes in the pattern of clouds and currents, led north to Beronnen, roughly India-shaped, dry land from a bit south of the southern tropic to a bit south of the equator. Beyond were more islands, many volcanic—could he identify murkiness in some of the clouds?—until his eye reached Valennen, not far north of the equator. Like a Siberia stood on end, it stretched nearly to the north pole. The curve of the planet hid its further three quarters from Dejerine, that unknown territory whose life had not been born on Ishtar.
He searched for the rest of his command, parked in advance of him, but failed to see any vessel. No surprise; they were widely spaced for safety and radio relay. Their names made a litany in his head: Sierra Nevada, where he was; ranger Moshe Peretz, first vessel he had skippered; scout mother Isabella, who bore in her womb ten wasps; workshop Imhotep, which the fighting craft were here to serve and protect. Yes, he thought, he’d come a long way, spectacularly fast, in two senses. That he had been dispatched here, remote from action, was in truth an honor, a mark of trust.
Nevertheless, since his duties were off him for a while, the control bridge felt like a cell. He rose and left it, in search of what home existed in his cabin. His shoes clacked loudly on empty decks. During the voyage he had had the field generators set for 1.18 g. His men and he must arrive at Ishtar with bodies adapted to its heavier pull. Tired, he felt the fourteen kilos added to his weight as if it were lead hung at shoulders and ankles.