Onward the ship fell, slower and lower until the ocean seemed to rise and lick at her. Vadász probed the sky with his instruments, awkwardly—he had gotten hasty training—and intently. His lips were half parted, as if to give the word “Fire!” to Irribarne in the single manned gun turret.
But he found only night, unhurried winds, and strange constellations.
It would not have been possible to travel this far, undetected, across a civilization. But New Europe has 72 percent of Earth’s surface area; it is an entire world. Coeur d’Yvonne had been almost the only outpost on another continent than Pays d’Espoir, and that city was annihilated.
The Aleriona occupied Garance, where the mines and machines were: a mere fringe of immensity. Otherwise they must rely on scattered detector stations, roving flyers, and the still incomplete satellite system. His arrival being unknown to them, the odds favored Heim.
Nonetheless… careful, careful.
When the archipelago was behind him and his ship almost plowing water, he turned the engines on again. Like a flying whale, Meroeth swung about and lumbered westward. An island passed near. He made out surf on a beach overshadowed by trees, and imagined he could hear its wash and the soughing leaves, could even smell the warm odors of a semitropical forest. The sight was dim, only half real—indeed an island of dream. Men’s dreams, he thought angrily. No one else’s.
Crossing the Golfe des Dragons, he felt naked in so much openness and increased speed.
Northwestward now the ship ran. Diane hove into view, nearly full. The moon was smaller than Luna seen from Earth—twenty-two minutes angular diameter—and less bright, but still a blue-marked tawny cornucopia that scattered metal shards across the sea.
Then the mainland rose, hills and woods and distant snow-peaks. Heim reached for altitude.
“Better get on the radio, Jean,” he said. “We don’t want them to run and hide when they see us, not to mention attack. What’s the name of that place again where we’re headed?”
“Lac aux Nuages,” Irribarne said.
Heim studied a map. “Yes, I see it here. Big upland lake. Isn’t it too conspicuous to make a safe headquarters?”
“There is ample concealment, precisely because it is large and misty and has so many islands,” Irribarne answered. “Besides, if there is a raid one can always retreat into the wilderness around about.” The intercom bore the sound of his footsteps leaving the gun turret for the radio room, and presently a harsh clatter of Basque.
The land beneath grew ever more rugged. Rivers ran from the snows, leaped down cliffs, foamed into steep valleys, and were lost to sight among the groves. A bird flock rose in alarm when the ship passed over; there must be a million pairs of wings, blotting out half the sky.
Vadász whistled in awe. “Isten irgalmazzon! I wondered how long the people could stay hidden, even alive, in the bush. But three times their number could do it”
“Yeh,” Heim grunted. “Except for one thing.”
The lake appeared, a wide wan sheet among darkling trees, remotely encircled by mountains whose glaciers gleamed beneath the moon. Irribarne relayed instructions. Heim found the indicated spot, just off the north shore, and lowered ship. The concealing waters closed over him.
He heard girders groan a little, felt an indescribable soft resistance go through the frame to himself, eased off power, and let the hull settle in ooze. When he cut the interior gee-field, he discovered the deck was canted.
His heart thuttered, but he could only find flat words: “Let’s get ashore.” Even in seven tenths of Terrestrial gravity, it was a somewhat comical effort to reach the emergency escape lock without falling. When the four men were crowded inside, clothes bundled on their necks, he dogged the inner door and cranked open the outer one. Water poured icily through. He kicked to the surface and swam as fast as possible toward land. Moonlight glimmered on the guns of the men who stood there waiting for him.
IV
The tent was big. The trees that surrounded it were taller yet. At the top of red-brown trunks, they fountained in branches whose leaves overarched and hid the pavilion under cool sun-flecked shadows. Their foliage was that greenish gold hue the native “grasses” shared, to give the Garance country its name. Wind rustled them. Through the open flap, Heim could look down archways of forest to the lake. It glittered unrestfully, outward past the edge of vision. Here and there lay a wooded island, otherwise the only land seen in that direction was the white-crowned sierra. Blue with distance, the peaks jagged into a deep blue sky.
Aurore was not long up. The eastern mountains were still in shadow, the western ones still faintly flushed. They would remain so for a while; New Europe takes more than seventy-five hours to complete a rotation. The sun did not look much different from Earth’s: about the same apparent size, a little less bright, its color more orange than yellow. Heim had found Vadász in the dews at dawn, watching the light play in the mists that streamed over the lake, altogether speechless.
That time was ended. So too was the hour when Colonel .Robert de Vigny, once constabulary commandant, now beret-crowned king of the maquis, returned to headquarters. (He had not been directing a raid, but finding some technicians and arranging for their transportation to the Ravignac lodge, where a major hydroelectric generator needed repairs. Of such unglamorous detail work is survival made.) Ended even was the first gladness of reunion, with Irribarne who had been lost, with Vadász after a year and Heim after a generation. “Eon, passons aux affaires sirieuses,” he said, and sat down behind his desk.
Vadász found a chair, slumped low, and stared at his boots. Heim kept his feet, met the green gaze, but found no words. “You tell him, Jean,” he mumbled at length. “My French is shot to hell.”
De Vigny stiffened himself, like a man expecting a blow. He was grizzled and not tall, but his back was rifle straight and the face might have belonged to a Trajan. “Continuez,” he said without tone. The Basque snapped to attention. “Repos,” de Vigny invited, but Irribarne seemed unable to stand at ease while the news jerked out of him.
At the end, the colonel remained expressionless. One hand drummed a little on the desktop.
“So,” he said most quietly, in French. “Earth has abandoned us.”
“Not all Earth!” Vadász exclaimed.
“No, true, you are here.” The mask dissolved; one could see muscles tighten along jaws and mouth, calipers deepen on either side of the gray toothbrush mustache, a pulse at the base of the throat. “And, I gather, at considerable risk. What is your plan, Captain Heim?” Now the privateer found words more easily. He stayed with English, though, which de Vigny could follow. “As I explained to Lieutenant Irribarne, Earth needs to be convinced of two things. First, that you people survive; second, that you won’t go along with any appeasement that costs you your homes.
Well, the men of yours who’re now in space, on my ship, might be a clinching proof of the first point. But men have always bragged about how hard they’ll fight, so any such claims they may make could be discounted.”
“And rightly so,” de Vigny remarked. “One has often in history heard nations declare they will fight to the last man, but none have ever done it. And there has never been any question of fighting to the last woman and child. If Earth does not soon come to help, I shall most certainly try to save us by making whatever bargain I can with Alerion.”