A short inertialess flight took Fox so far outsystem that the probability of being detected was quite literally infinitesimal. Heim left the automatics in charge and decreed a celebration.
The mess seethed with men. Only twenty-five privateers remained, and a dozen New Europeans, in a room that had once held a hundred; but they filled it, shouting, singing, clashing their glasses, until the bulkheads trembled. In one corner, benign and imperturbable, Uthg-a-K’thaq snaked bottle after bottle of champagne from the cooler he had rigged, sent the corks loose with a pistol crack, and poured for all. Suitably padded, gunner Matsuo Hayashi and a lean young colonist set out to discover whether karate or Apache technique worked best. Dice rattled across the deck, IOU’s for loot against promises of suitably glowing introductions to girls on the planet, come victory. A trio of college-bred Ashanti stamped out a war dance while their audience made tom-toms of pots and pans. Endre Vadász leaped onto the table, his slim body poised while his fingers flew across the guitar strings. More and more of the French began to sing with him:
At first Heim was laughing too loudly at Jean Irribarne’s last joke to hear. Then the music grew, and it took him. He remembered a certain night in Bonne Chance. Suddenly he was there again. Roofs peaked around the garden, black under the stars, but the yellow light from their windows joined the light of Diane rising full. A small wind rustled the shrubs, to mingle scents of rose and lily with unnamed pungencies from native blooms. Her hand was trusting in his. Gravel scrunched beneath their feet as they walked toward the summerhouse. And somewhere someone was playing a tape, the song drifted down the warm air, earthy and loving.
His eyes stung. He shook his head harshly.
Irribarne gave him a close look. The New European was medium tall, which put him well below Heim, spare of build, dark-haired, long-headed, and clean-featured. He still wore the garments in which he had been captured, green tunic and trousers, soft boots, beret tucked in scaly leather belt, the .uniform of a planetary constabulary turned maquisard. Lieutenant’s bars gleamed on his shoulders.
“Pourquoi cette tristesse-soudaine?” he asked.
“Eh?” Heim blinked. Between the racket in here, the rustiness of his French, and the fact that New Europe was well on the way to evolving its own dialect, he didn’t understand.
“You show at once the trouble,” Irribarne said. Enough English speakers visited his planet, in the lost days, that town dwellers usually had some command of their language.
“Oh … nothing. A memory. I spent several grand leaves on New Europe, when I was a Navy man. But that was—Judas, last time was twenty-one years ago.”
“And so you think of aliens that slither through streets made empty of men. How they move softly, like hunting panthers!” Irribarne scowled into his glass, lifted it, and drained it in a convulsive gesture. “Or perhaps you remember a girl, and wonder if she is dead or else hiding in the forests. Hein?”
“Let’s get refills,” said Heim brusquely.
Irribarne laid a hand on his arm. “Un moment, s’il vous plait. The population of the whole planet is only five hundred thousand. The city people, that you would meet, they are much less. Perhaps I know.”
“Madelon Dubois?”
“From Bonne Chance in origin? Her father a doctor? But yes! She married my own brother Pierre. They live, what last I heard.”
Darkness passed before Heim’s eyes. He leaned against the bulkhead, snapped after air, struggled back to self-control but could not slow his heart. “Gud she lov,” he breathed. It was as close to a prayer as he had come since childhood.
Irribarne considered him through shrewd, squinted brown eyes. “Ah, this matters to you. Come, shall we not speak alone?”
“All right. Thanks.” Heim led the way. Irribarne was hard put to keep up. Behind them, arms around each other’s shoulders, the men were roaring forth:
while Vadász’s chords belled through all.
Heim’s cabin seemed the more quiet after he shut the door. Irribarne sat down and glanced curiously about the neat, compact room, Shakespeare, Bjørnson, and Kipling in book editions with worn bindings, micro reels of less literary stature, a model of a warship, pictures of a woman and a girl. “Votre famille?” he asked.
“Yes. My wife’s dead, though. Daughter’s with her grandfather on Earth.” Heim offered one of his few remaining cigars and began to stuff a pipe for himself. His fingers were not absolutely steady and he did not look at the other man. “How is your own family?”
“Well, thank you. Of course, that was a pair of weeks ago, when my force was captured.” Irribarne got his cigar going and leaned back with a luxurious sigh. Heim stayed on his feet.
“How’d that happen, anyway? We’ve had no real chance to talk.”
“Bad luck, I hope. It is a uranium mine on the Cote Notre Dame. Not much uranium on Europe Neuve, you know, she is less dense than Earth. So to blow it up would be a good frappement—strike at Alerion. We took a sport submarine we found in Port Augustin, where the mountains come down to the Golfe des Dragons, and started. We knew the one thing those damned dryworlders do not have is submarine-detection equipment. But the mine was better guarded than we expected. When we surfaced to go ashore at night, a shell hit. Chemical explosive only, or I would not sit here. Their troopers waited and got, you say, the drop. There was talk about shooting us for an example, or what is worse to squeeze information from us. But the new high commander heard and forbid, I think he has come to have charge of hunting you, my friend, so this also we must thank you for. We were going to Alerion. They spoke about prisoner exchange.”
“I see.”
“But you make stalls. It is news of Madelon you wish, no?”
“Hell, I hate to get personal—Okay. We were in love, when I had a long sick leave on New Europe. Very innocent affair, I assure you. So damned innocent, in fact, that I shied away a bit and—Anyhow, next time I came back she’d moved.”
“Indeed so. To Chateau St. Jacques. I thought always Pierre got her … on the rebound? Now and then she has laughed about the big Norvegien when she was a girl. Such laughter, half happy, half sad, one always makes of young memories.” Irribarne’s gaze grew stiff. “Pierre is a good husband. They have four children.”
Heim flushed. “Don’t misunderstand me,” he said around his pipe. “I couldn’t have married better than I did either. It was just—she was in trouble, and I hoped I could help. Old friendship, nothing else.”
He didn’t believe he was lying. A few thoughts had crossed his mind, but they were not unduly painful to bury. That Madelon had lived gladly, that she still lived, was enough.
“You have that from us all,” Irribarne said heartily. “Now tell me more before we return to the festival. I hear you are a private raider commissioned by France. But why has the Navy been so slow? When do they come?”
God help me, Heim thought. I wanted to spare them till tomorrow.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Nom d’un chien!” Irribarne sat bolt upright. “What is it that you say?”
Slowly, Heim dragged the tale from himself: how it came about that the Deepspace Fleet lay chained and muzzled while Parliament wrangled, and quite possibly nothing except Fox’s buccaneering preventing a resumption of those talks which to Alerion were only a more effective kind of war.
“Mais … mais … mais … vous—cette astronef—” Irribarne checked his stutter, caught breath, and said carefully, “This ship has ranged in the Auroran System. Have you, yourself, taken no proof we live?”
“I tried,” Heim said. Back and forth he paced, smoke fuming, heels banging, big useless hands clasped behind his back till the nails stood white. “The prisoners who went home with my prizes, they could have been interrogated. Not easily; Aleriona don’t respond like humans; but somebody could’ve ripped the truth from them! I guess nobody did. “I also made a pass by New Europe. Not hard to do, if you’re quick. Most of their defense satellites still aren’t equipped, and we detected no warships too dose to outrun. So I got photographs, nice clear ones, showing plainly that only Coeur d’Yvonne was destroyed, that there never had been a firestorm across Garance. Sent them back to Earth. I suppose they convinced some people, but evidently not the right ones. Don’t forget, by now a lot of political careers are bound up with the peace issue. And even a man who might confess he was wrong and resign, if it involved just himself, will hesitate to drag his party down with him.
“Oh, I’m sure sentiment has moved in our favor. It’d already begun to do so when I left. Not long after, at Staurn for munitions, I met some late-comers from Earth. They told me the will to fight was becoming quite respectable. But that was four months ago!”
He shifted his pipe, stopped his feet, and went on more evenly: “I can guess what the next line of argument has been for the appeasement faction. ‘Yes, yes,’ they say, ‘maybe the New Europeans still are alive. So isn’t the most important thing to rescue them? We won’t do that by war. Alerion can wipe them out any time she chooses. We have to trade their planet for their lives.’ That’s probably being said in Parliament tonight.”
Irribarne’s chin sank on his breast. “Un demi million d’hommes,” he mumbled. Abruptly: “But they will die all the same. Can one not see that? We have only a few more weeks.”
“What?” Heim bellowed. His heart jolted him. “Is the enemy fixing to burn you out?”
That could be done quite easily, he knew in horror. A thousand or so megatons exploded at satellite height on a clear day will set a good part of a continent afire. Madelon!
“No, no,” the colonist said. “They need for themselves the resources of the planet, in fortifying the system. A continental firestorm or a radioactive poisoning, that would make large trouble for them too. But the vitamin C.”
Piece by piece, the story came out. Never doubting Earth would hurry to their aid, the seaboard folk of Pays d’Espoir fled inland, to the mountains and forests of the Haute Garance. That nearly unmapped wilderness was as rich in game and edible vegetation as North America before the white man. With a high technology and no population pressure, the people were wealthy; hardly a one did not own hunting, fishing, and camping gear, as well as a flyer capable of going anywhere. Given a little camouflage and caution, fifty thousand scattered lodges and summer cottages were much too many for the Aleriona to find. On the rare occasions when they did find one, the inhabitants could resort to tent or cave or lean-to.
Portable chargers, equally able to use sunlight, wind, or running water, were also standard outdoor equipment, which kept up power cells. Ordinary miniature transceivers maintained a communications net. It did the enemy scant good to monitor. He had come with people that knew French, “but his own ossified culture had not allowed for provincial dialect, Louchébème, or Basque. The boldest men organized raids on him, the rest stayed hidden.
With little axial tilt, New Europe enjoys a mild and rainy winter in the temperate zone, even at fairly high altitudes. It seemed that the humans could hold out indefinitely.
But they were not, after all, on Earth. Life had arisen and evolved separately here, through two or three billion years. Similar conditions led to similar chemistry. Most of what a man needed he could get from native organisms. But similarity is not identity. Some things were lacking on New Europe, notably vitamin C. The escapers had packed along a supply of pills. Now the store was very low. Alerion held the farmlands where Terrestrial plants grew, the towns where the biochemical factories stood.
Scurvy is a slow killer, working its way through gums, muscles, digestion, blood, bones. Most often the victim dies of something else which he no longer has the strength to resist. But one way or another, he dies.
“And they know it,” Irribarne grated. “Those devils, they know our human weakness. They need only wait.” He lifted one fist. “Has Earth forgotten?”
“No,” Heim said. “It’d be bound to occur to somebody. But Earth’s so confused … ”
“Let us go there,” Irribarne said. “I myself, all my men, we are witnesses. Can we not shame them till they move?”
“I don’t know,” Heim said in wretchedness. “We can try, of course. But—maybe I’m being paranoid—but I can still imagine the arguments. ‘Nothing except negotiation can save you. Alerion will not negotiate unless we make prompt concessions.’
“I know damn well that once inside the Solar System, Fox won’t be allowed to leave again. The law, you see; only units under the Peace Authority can have nuclear weapons, or even weapon launchers, there. And we do. Our possession is legal now, on a technicality, but it won’t be when we enter Federation space.”
“Can you not dismantle your armament?”
“That’d take weeks. It’s been integrated with the ship. And—what difference? I tell you, your appearance on Earth might cost us the war. And that would set Alerion up to prepare the next aggression.” Heim thought of Madelon. “Or so I believe. Could be wrong, I suppose.”
“No, you are right,” Irribarne said dully.
“It might be the only way out. Surrender.”
“There must be another! I will not be so fanatic that women and children surely die. But a risk of death, against the chance to keep our homes, yes, that is something we all accepted when we went into the maquis.”
Heim sat down, knocked out his pipe, and turned it over and over in his hands while he stared at the model of his first command. Inexplicably his emotions began to shift. He felt less heavy, there was a stirring in him, he groped through blackness toward some vague, strengthening glimmer.
“Look,” he said, “let’s try to reason this through. Fox is keeping the war alive by refusing to quit. As long as we’re out here fighting, the people at home who think like us can argue that Alerion is being whittled down at no cost to the taxpayer. And, ja, they can beat the propaganda drums, make big fat heroes of us, stir the old tribal emotions. They haven’t the political pull to make the Authority order the Navy to move; but they have enough to keep us from being recalled. I deduce this from the simple facts that the Navy has not moved and we have not been recalled.
“Obviously that’s an unstable situation. It’s only kept going this long, I’m sure, because France tied Parliament in legal knots as to whether or not there really was a war on. The deadlock will be resolved one way or another pretty soon. We want to tilt the balance our way.
“Okay, one approach is for you people to let it be known you are alive—let it be known beyond any possible doubt—and also make it plain you are not going to surrender. You’ll die before you give in. The way to do that is … let me think, let me think … yes. We’ve got Meroeth. With some repairs, she can make the passage; or else we can make another capture. We stay here, though, ourselves. What we send is—not a handful of men—a hundred women aad children.” Heim’s palm cracked against his knee. “There’s an emotional appeal for you!”
Irribarne’s eyes widened until they were rimmed with white. “Comment? You are crazy? You cannot land on Europe Neuve.”
“The space defenses aren’t ready yet.”
“But … no, they do have some detector satellites, and warcraft in orbit, and—”
“Oh, it’s chancy,” Heim agreed. He had no real sense of that. Every doubt was smothered in upsurging excitement “We’ll leave Fox in space, with most of your men aboard. If we fail, she can snatch another prize and send your men back in that. But I think I have a way to get Meroeth down, and up again, and stay in touch meanwhile. We’ll need some computer work to make sure, but I think it might pan out. If not, well, you can show me how to be a guerrilla.”
“Ah.” Irribarne drew deeply on his cigar. “May I ask if this idea would seem so attractive, did it not offer a way to see Madelon?”
Heim gaped at him.
“Pardon,” Irribarne blurted. “That was not badly meant. Old friendship, as you said. I like a loyal man.” He extended his hand.
Heim took it and rose. “Come on,” he said rather wildly. “We can’t do anything till tomorrow. Let’s get back to the party.”