“Him,” pounced Flandry. “They’re all male, then?”
“Yes, sir, seems that way. The groun’ fightin’ lasted long enough for our biologists to dissect an’ analyze a few o’ their dead. Accorclin’ to the report, they’re placental mammals. It’s clear they’re from a more or less terrestroid planet, probably with a somewhat stronger gravity. The eye structure suggests their sun is bright, type A5 or thereabouts. That means they should feel pretty much at home in our badlands.” Catherine Kittredge shrugged sadly. “Figure that’s why they picked us to start on.”
“They might have been conquering for some time,” said Flandry. “A hot star like an A5 is no use to humans; and I imagine the F-type like yours is about as cool as they care for. They may well have built up a little coterminous kingdom, a number of B, A, and F suns out in your quadrant, where we don’t even have a complete astronomical mapping — let alone having explored much … Hm. Didn’t you get a chance to interrogate any live prisoners?”
“Yes. ’Twasn’t much use. Durin’ the fightin’, one of our regiments did encircle a unit o’ theirs an’ knock it out with stun beams. When two o’ them woke up an’ saw they were captured, they died.”
“Preconditioning,” nodded Flandry. “Go on.”
“The rest didn’t speak any Anglic, ’cept one who’d picked up a little bit. They questioned him.” The girl winced. “I don’t figure ’twas very nice. The report says toward the end his heart kept stoppin’ an’ they’d revive it, but at last he died for good … Anyway, it seems a fair bet he was tellin’ the truth. An’ he didn’t know where his home star was. He could understan’ our coordinate system, an’ translate it into the one they used. But that was zeroed arbitrarily on S Doradus , an’ he didn’t have any idea about the coordinates of Ardazir.”
“Memory blank.” Flandry scrowled. “Probably given to all the enlisted ranks. Such officers as must retain full information are conditioned to die on capture. What a merry monarch they’ve got.” He twisted his mustache between nervous fingers. “You know, though, this suggests their home is vulnerable. Maybe we should concentrate on discovering where it is.”
The girl dropped her eyes. She lost a little color. “Do you think we can, my lord?” she whispered. “Or are we just goin’ to die too?”
“If the mission involves procedures illegal or immoral, I should have no trouble.” Flandry grinned at her. “You can do whatever honorable work is necessary. Between us, why, God help Ardazir. Incidentally, I don’t rate a title.”
“But they called you Sir Dominic.”
“A knighthood is not a patent of nobility. I’m afraid my relationship to the peerage involves a bar sinister. You see, one day my father wandered into this sinister bar, and—” Flandry rambled on, skirting the risque, until he heard her laugh. Then he laughed back and said: “Good girl! What do they call you at home? Kit, I’ll swear. Very well, we’re off to the wars, you the Kit and I the caboodle. Now let’s scream for Chives to lay out caviar and cheeses. Afterward I’ll show you to your stateroom.” Her face turned hot, and he added, “Its door locks on the inside.”
“Thank you,” she said, so low he could scarcely hear it. Smoky lashes fluttered on her cheeks. “When I was told to come — with you — I mean, I didn’t know—”
“My dear girl,” said Flandry, “credit me with enough experience to identify a bolstered needle gun among more attractive curves beneath that coverall.”
VIII
There was always something unreal about a long trip through space. Here, for a time, you were alone in the universe. No radio could outpace you and be received, even if unimaginable distance would not soon have drowned it in silence. No other signal existed, except another spaceship, and how would it find you unless your feeble drive-pulsations were by the merest chance detected? A whole fleet might travel many parsecs before some naval base sensed its wake with instruments; your one mote of a craft could hurtle to the ends of creation and never be heard. There was nothing to be seen, no landscape, no weather, simply the enormous endless pageantry of changing constellations, now and then a cold nebular gleam between flashing suns, the curdled silver of the Milky Way and the clotted stars near Sagittarius. Yet you in your shell were warm, dry, breathing sweet recycled air; on a luxury vessel like the Hooligan, you might listen to recorded Lysarcian bells, sip Namorian maoth and taste Terran grapes.
Flandry worked himself even less mercifully than he did Chives and Kit. It was the hard, dull grind which must underlie all their hopes: study, rehearsal, analysis of data, planning and discarding and planning again, until brains could do no more and thinking creaked to a halt. But then recreation became pure necessity — and they were two humans with one unobtrusive servant, cruising among the stars.
Flandry discovered that Kit could give him a workout, when they played handball down in the hold. And her stubborn chess game defeated his swashbuckling tactics most of the time. She had a puckish humor when she wasn’t remembering her planet. Flandry would not soon forget her thumbnail impression of Vice Admiral Fenross: “A mind like a mousetrap, only he ought to let some o’ those poor little mice go.” She could play the lorr, her fingers dancing over its twelve primary strings with that touch which brings out the full ringing resonance of the secondaries; she seemed to know all the ballads from the old brave days when men were first hewing their homes out of Vixen’s wilderness, and they were good to hear.
Flandry grew slowly aware that she was the opposite of bad-looking. She just hadn’t been sculped into the monotonously aristocratic appearance of Terra’s high-born ladies. The face, half boyish, was her own, the body full and supple where it counted. He swore dismally to himself and went on a more rigorous calisthenic program.
Slowly the stars formed new patterns. There came a time when Aldebaran stood like red flame, the brightest object in all heaven. And then the needle-point of Vixen’s sun, the star named Cerulia, glistened keen and blue ahead. And Flandry turned from the viewscreen and said quietly: “Two more days to go. I think we’ll have captain’s dinner tonight.”
“Very good, sir,” said Chives. “I took it upon myself to bring along some live Maine lobster. And I trust the Liebfraumilch ’51 will be satisfactory?”
“That’s the advantage of having a Shalmuan for your batman,” remarked Flandry to Kit. “Their race has more sensitive palates than ours. They can’t go wrong on vintages.”
She smiled, but her eyes were troubled.
Flandry retired to his own cabin and an argument. He wanted to wear a peach-colored tunic with his white slacks; Chives insisted that the dark blue, with a gold sash, was more suitable. Chives won, naturally. The man wandered into the saloon, which was already laid out for a feast, and poured himself an aperitif. Music sighed from the recorder, nothing great but sweet to hear.
A footfall came lightly behind him. He turned and nearly dropped his glass. Kit was entering in a sheer black dinner gown; one veil the color of fire flickered from her waistsline. A filigree tiara crowned shining hair, and a bracelet of Old Martian silver coiled massive on her wrist.
“Great hopping electrons,” gasped Flandry. “Don’t do such things without warning! Where did the paintbrush come from to lay on the glamor that thick?”
Kit chuckled and pirouetted. “Chives,” she said. “Who else? He’s a darlin’. He brought the jew’lry along, an’ he’s been makin’ the dress at odd moments this whole trip.”
Flandry shook his head and clicked his tongue. “If Chives would accept manumission, he could set himself up in business, equipping lady spies to seduce poor officers like me. He’d own the galaxy in ten years.”