The Antarctic sky was clear, except for a speck that vanished even as Stone’s eyes followed it upward.
SHADOW ON THE STARS
Algis Budrys
At the barren heart of midnight, at the precise stroke of twelve, the Farlan Empire—Henlo’s empire—would be dying.
Henlo looked forward to death with distaste. But being a realist, he accepted personal extinction as he accepted the death of his entire, tremendous creation. And there was no longer anything he could do to stop the Earthman.
At midnight, the implacable statistics of his birth would shunt him aside, forever stripped of his leadership. Worse, the Earthmen would have a free hand while he lived along uselessly, somewhere, with his books and courtesy guards. And the guards would be fiercely single-minded young men with no ears for anything he might say, dedicated to nothing but the continuance of his life at the new ruler’s whim.
He doubted very much that the fierce young men could save the empire that had once been his pride and his glory. He was senile. No one would talk to him, or listen to him, though everyone would be most respectful. How ironic that he could still be respected and accorded every courtesy despite his statistical senility.
It did not matter that only he was equipped, and that by luck, to recognize the deadly, never-ceasing danger and take steps to prevent it. No matter how brilliant his successor—no doubt long-since picked and impatiently waiting—he could not understand about the Earthmen. And Henlo could not tell him. They would never even see each other, and any memoranda Henlo left behind would be discarded without being read. What purpose could there be in listening to a replaced Empire Builder, or reading his words? He was senile and the verdict could not be reversed.
He watched the shadows sweep along the avenues of Farla City, and reflected with bitterness on the laws and customs of Farla. They determined inexorably that a man, on reaching the age of one hundred, became automatically senile. Well, the rule had doubtless served its purposes in the past.
Farla turned, and the years followed. There were customs which were honored in the breach, and his personal list of these was longer than most. But not even he could prevent Farla from revolving only two hundred and seven times before it went once around the sun. He was trapped by the unalterable fact of his birthdate.
Laws. Customs. Only once in his life had he met a man who understood their basis completely.
Henlo looked out in complete frustration at the city that was no longer his. And even more vividly than before the years began to unroll backwards in his mind’s eye vision, coalescing into patterns of long ago. It seemed only yesterday somehow…
I
Captain D’ Henlo of the Farlan Starfleet sat in the cabin of his first fleet command, trying desperately to sleep. Around him, echoing through the companionways and vibrating from the plates, were the thousand and one sounds of fitting-out.
Hurried footsteps bounded through the companionways, and auxiliary motors throughout the ship rumbled with overload or howled at sudden slack as supplies were hoisted aboard and dispersed into bunkers and loading chutes. At intervals, the open circuit of the ship’s Intervoice rattled the cabin speaker’s grille with tinny messages.
A small part of Henlo’s mind monitored this babble, precisely as a musician’s ear studies the notes of a tuning orchestra. But only a small part—and only the sudden emergence of a false note brought the constant noise to the full attention of his thoughts. Ship’s noises had long since ceased to interfere with Henlo’s natural ability to snatch a few moments of sleep from the rigors of his routine.
It was the thought of death and defeat—of the destruction of his fleet, and of the inevitable end of the Farlan Union—which now kept him in a state of constant, chill apprehension, and denied him all repose.
The Vilkai controlled the Galaxy. They had driven the Earthmen back to the Rim before that pale, furless race had even fairly begun the burgeoning rush of expansion which seemed its sure, remorseless destiny. They had scoured the universe clean of opposition, controlled its commerce, and levied their supplies from the shadowy remnants of a dozen lesser empires which were now mere puppet districts in the greater domain. Only Farla stood in their way, and that only for as long as it suited their predatory plans.
Theoretically, they were not all-powerful. They were over-extended, and they were barbarians. The overextended barbarian invariably tends to go home and return at a later date, when he has seen to the conception of a new generation of barbarians and filled out his lean ribs. He is, moreover, given to quarrelling and dissension within his own ranks, and the pursuit of loot in preference to the more exacting demands of strategy.
The primary objective of a barbarian is not the conquest of territory for its own sake, or the prosecution of some political dogma. It is individual power and individual glory. That is his weakness, and a well-led, well-disciplined professional military force can cut him to ribbons, no matter what the size of his horde.
Unfortunately Farla, unlike Earth, which had simply been unprepared, was not well-led, or well-organized.
Captain D’ Henlo’s short, almost vestigial tail lashed nervously. He had no desire to see his career cruelly interrupted by the sawing of a Vilk trophy-knife. Possibly, had he been a few years farther along in the ranks, he might have attempted to engineer some pressure at the capital. It was barely possible that he might gain something there, knowing as he did that the admirals of war are rarely the same men as the admirals of peace.
But the possibility was only an improbability. He knew his own worth and talents, and his contacts at the capital were rightly suspicious of his political ability. There were certain things beyond the pale of custom, and promotion over the heads of half the Fleet priority list was one of them. It might very well have caused a general mutiny.
Not in the ranks, perhaps, for the ranks no longer cared who led them. But the officers would be furious, and the officers could smash the government immediately. Governments being covetous of governing, it followed as a logical premise that D’ Henlo, genius or not, was doomed to be just another ship commander involved in the last, gasping flicker of life in the race of Farlans.
He bared his teeth in a snarl at the inevitable, but he recognized that inevitable for what it was.
Grimly, he tried to bore himself to sleep by recounting the various incompetencies of his staff-level superiors, the ministers of state, and the ruler himself. He reasoned, with absolute assurance, that this amusement could easily still be incomplete at the time when his fur would be flapping from some Vilk rooftree.
The Intervoice put a sudden, loud quietus on his hopes of sleep.
“With the Captain’s pardon, a Fleet Messenger requests permission to call and deliver.”
“Granted,” Henlo said, and, scratching his thigh with annoyance, unlatched his door.
II
The messenger handed him the usual sealed letter, saluted, and withdrew to the companionway. The message was brief—a few lines directing Henlo to report immediately to the Port Director’s office for transportation.
Henlo looked at it with narrowed, speculative eyes. Tapping its folded length against his hip, he paced softly back and forth.
It meant something important, certainly. The bare word ‘transportation,’ without further amplification, conveyed as much. But what, precisely, did it mean? A secret conference of some kind, apparently—too secret to be entrusted to a Fleet Messenger.