Dinner was served in the roof turret, which had a view like being outdoors. By night Vanessa took on beauty. Both moons were aloft, small and swift, turning the land to a fantasy of dim silver and moving shadows. The lake gleamed, the native towers looked like giant blossoms. Overhead the sky was splendid with stars, Beta Centauri the king jewel, its blue radiance matching the moons'.
And glowpanels caressed Jutta's sun-browned cheeks with their own light; and Beethoven's Seventh lilted softly from a speaker; and bubbles danced in the champagne glasses. Dinner had made its stately progression from hors d'oeuvres and consomme through fish, roast, and salad, to petits fours and now cheeses. Falkayn had kept the magnum flash busy. Not that either party was drunk—Jutta, alas, had so far kept her wits patriotically about her—but they both felt more than cheerful.
"Tell me other things," she urged. "You have had such a wonderful existence, David. Like the hero of an ancient saga—but this is now, which makes it twice as good."
"Let me think," he said, giving her a refill. "Maybe the time I cracked up on a rogue planet?"
"A what?"
"Free planet, sunless. More of them floating around in space than there are stars. The smaller the body, you see, the likelier it was to form when the galaxy coalesced. Normally you find them in groups . . . to be honest, you don't normally find them, because space is big and they are little and dark. But by sheer chance, on the way from Tau Ceti to 70 Ophiuchi, I—"
The adventure had, in fact, happened to somebody else. So had most of the stories Falkayn had been relating. But he saw no reason to spoil a good yarn with pedantry.
Besides, she continued to sip, in an absentminded and unsuspecting way, while he talked.
"—and finally I replenished my air by boiling and processing frozen gases. And was I glad to leave!"
"I should think so." She shivered. "Space is bleak. Lovely but bleak. I like planets better." She gazed outward. "The night here is different from home. I don't know which I like best, Neuheim or Vanessa. After dark, I mean," she added, with a slightly wobbling laugh. "None of the Kraokan worlds are pleasant by day."
"None whatsoever? You must have seen quite a variety, with three of them for neighbors."
"Five," she corrected. Her hand went to her mouth. "Lieber Gott! I didn't mean to tell."
He chuckled, though inwardly he thrummed with a new excitement. Judas! Five planets—six, counting Neuheim—in the thermal zone where water was liquid . . . around one star! "It doesn't make any practical difference," he said, "when you've evidently found some way to make your whole system invisible. I'd like to know more about you, that's all, and I can't unless you tell me something about your home." He reached across the table and patted her hand. "That's what gave you your dreams, your hopes—your charm, if I may say so. Neuheim must be a paradise."
"No, it is a hard world for humans," she answered earnestly. "In my own lifetime, we have had to move entire villages toward the poles as the planet swung closer to the sun. Even the Kraoka have their troubles for similar reasons." She pulled free of his touch. "But I am talking of what I shouldn't."
"Very well, let's keep to harmless things," he said. "You mentioned that the nights were different at home. In what way?"
"Oh . . . different constellations, of course. Not greatly, but enough to notice. And then, because of the auroras, we never see the stars so clearly as here, from any location. I must not say more. You are far too observing, Davy. Tell me, instead, about your Hermes." She smiled irresistibly. "I would like to know where your own dreams come from."
Nothing loath, Falkayn spoke of mountains, virgin wilderness, plains darkened by horned herds, surf-bathing at Thunderstrands—"What does that mean, Davy?"
"Why, bathing in the surf. You know, the waves caused by tidal action." He decided to disarm her suspicions with a joke. "Now, my poor innocent, you've given yourself away again. You imply Neuheim doesn't have tides."
"No harm in that," she said. "True, we have not any moon. The oceans are like huge, still lakes."
"Doesn't the sun—" He checked himself.
"Not so far away as it is, a tiny point of fire, I can't get used to the disc here." Abruptly Jutta set down her glass. "Listen," she said, "you are either very young and sweet or you are clever as Satan."
"Why not both?"
"I cannot take the chance." She rose. "Best I leave now. I made a mistake to come."
"What?" He scrambled to his own feet. "But the evening's hardly begun. I thought we'd go back to the living room and relax with some more music." The Liebestod, for instance.
"No." Distress and determination chased each other across her face. "I enjoy myself too much. I forget to guard my tongue. Take to the League this word from us. Before they can marshal against us, we will have the Kraokan stars, and more. But if the League will be reasonable, ja, perhaps we can discuss trade treaties." Her eyes dropped. She flushed. "I would like if you could return."
God damn all politics! Falkayn groaned. He got nowhere trying to change her mind, and finally had to see her to the door. There he kissed her hand . . . and before he could build on that beginning, she had whispered good night, and was outside.
He poured himself a stiff whisky, lit his pipe, and flung himself into a lounger. None were an adequate substitute.
Rats! he brooded. Giant mutant rats! She'll have me hustled off the planet right away, tomorrow dawn, before I can use any information I might have gathered.
Well, at least there'll be girls at Sector HQ. And maybe, eventually, I'll find myself back here.
As a journeyman assistant, and Jutta will be at the social apex of an interstellar empire. She wouldn't snub me on that account, but what chance would we ever have to get together?
He puffed hard and scowled at a repro of a Hokusai portrait, an old man, which hung opposite him. The old man smiled back till Falkayn wanted to punch him in the nose.
The long-range significance of the Neuheimer scheme was far nastier than several gigacredits' loss to the merchant princes, Falkayn saw. Suppose it did succeed. Suppose the mighty Polesotechnic League was defied and defeated, and the Kraokan Empire was established. Well, the Kraoka by themselves might or might not be content to stop at that point and settle down to peaceful relationships with everybody else. In any event, they were no direct threat to the human race; they didn't want the same kind of real estate.
But the Neuheimer humans—Already they spoke of themselves as crusaders. Consider the past history of Homo self-styled Sapiens and imagine what so spectacular a success would do to a bunch of ideologically motivated militarists! Oh, the process would be slow; they'd have to increase their numbers, and enlarge their industrial base, and get control of every man-useful planet in this neighborhood. But eventually, for power, and glory, and upset of the hated merchants, and advancement of a Way of Life—war.
The time to squelch them was now. A good healthy licking would discredit the Landholders; peace, mercantilism, and cooperation with others (or, at least, simple cutthroat economic competition) would become fashionable on Neuheim; and, incidentally, a journeyman who played a significant part in that outcome would expect early certification as a Master Merchant.
Whereas a mere bearer of bad tidings—
"All right," Falkayn muttered. "Step One in the squelching process: Find their damned planetary system!"
They couldn't hope to keep its location secret forever. Just long enough to secure a grip on this region; and given the destructive power of a space fleet, that needn't be very long. While it remained hidden, though, the source of their strength was quite efficiently protected. Hence their entire effort could go into purely offensive operations, which gave them a military capability far out of proportion to their actual force.
Nonetheless, if the League should decide to fight, the League would win. No question about that. In the course of the war, the secret was bound to be discovered, one way or another. And then—nuclear bombardment from space—No!
The Landholders were gambling that the League, rather than start an expensive battle for a prize that would certainly be ruined in the course of the fighting, would vote to cut its losses and come to terms. Antoran being hidden, the bet looked fairly good. But no matter how favorable the odds, only fanatics played with entire living worlds for stakes. Poor Jutta! What foul company she was mixed up in. How he'd like to introduce her to some decent people.
Okay, then, where was the silly star?
Someplace not far off. Jutta had betrayed nothing by admitting that the constellations at home were almost like the constellations here. The ancient Kraoka could not have traveled any enormous ways, as interstellar distances go. Also, the home base must be in this territory so that its fleet could exploit the advantage of interior communications.
And Antoran must be large and bright, no later in the main sequence than, say, G0. Yet . . . every possible sun was already eliminated by information the League had long possessed.
Unless—wait a minute—could it be hidden by a thick nebulosity?
No. There'd still be radio indications. And Jutta had spoken of seeing stars from her home.
Aurora. Hm. She'd mentioned the necessity for certain villagers to migrate toward the poles, as her planet got too near its primary. Which meant their original settlements were a good bit further toward the equator. Even so, auroras had been conspicuous: everywhere you went, she'd said. This, again, suggested a highly energetic sun.
Funny, about the eccentric orbit. More than one planet in the system, too, with the same problem. Unheard of. You'd almost think that—
Falkayn sat bolt upright. His pipe dropped from his jaws to his lap. "Holy . . . hyper . . . Judas," he gasped.
Thereafter he thought most furiously. He did not come back to himself until the coals from his pipe set fire to his trousers.
* * *