The Stars, Like Dust

The Autarch of Lingane pondered the matter, but his cool, well-trained features scarcely creased under the impact of thought.

"And you waited forty-eight hours to tell me," he said.

Rizzett said boldly, "There was no reason to tell you earlier. If we bombarded you with all matters, life would be a burden to you. We tell you now because we still make nothing of it. It is queer, and in our position we can afford nothing queer."

"Repeat this business. Let me hear it again."

The Autarch threw a leg upon the flaring window sill and looked outward thoughtfully. The window itself represented perhaps the greatest single oddity of Linganian architecture. It was moderate in size and set at the end of a five-foot recess that narrowed gently toward it. It was extremely clear, immensely thick, and precisely curved; not so much a window as a lens, funneling the light inward from all directions, so that, looking outward, one eyed a miniature panorama.

From any window in the Autarch's Manor a sweep of vision embracing half the horizon from zenith to nadir could be seen. At the edges there was increasing minuteness and distortion, but that itself lent a certain flavor to what one saw: the tiny flattened motions of the city; the creeping, curved orbits of the crescent-shaped stratospherics climbing from the airport. One grew so used to it that unhinging the window to allow the flat tameness of reality to enter would seem unnatural. When the position of the sun made the lenslike windows a focus for impossible heat and light, they were blanked out automatically, rather than opened, rendered opaque by a shift in the polarization characteristics of the glass.

And certainly the theory that a planet's architecture is the reflection of a planet's place in the Galaxy would seem to be borne out by the case of Lingane and its windows.

Like the windows, Lingane was small yet commanded a panoramic view. It was a "planet state" in a Galaxy, which, at the time, had passed beyond that stage of economic and political development. Where most political units were con. glomerations of stellar systems, Lingane remained what it had been for centuries-a single inhabited world. This did not prevent it from being wealthy. In fact, it was almost inconceivable that Lingane could be anything else.

It is difficult to tell in advance when a world is so located that many Jump routes may use it as a pivotal intermediate point; or even must use it in the interests of optimal economy. A great deal depends on the pattern of development of that region of space. There is the question of the distribution of the naturally habitable planets; the order in which they are colonized and developed; the types of economy they possess.

Lingane discovered its own values early, which was the great turning point of its history. Next to the actual possession of a strategic position, the capacity to appreciate and exploit that position is most important. Lingane had proceeded to occupy small planetoids with neither resources nor capacity for supporting an independent population, choosing them only because they would help maintain Lingane's trade monopoly. They built servicing stations on those rocks. All that ships would need, from hyperatomic replacements to new book reels, could be found there. The stations grew to huge trading posts. From all the Nebular Kingdoms fur, minerals, grain, beef, timber poured in; from the Inner Kingdoms, machinery, appliances, medicinals; finished products of all sorts formed a similar flood.

So that, like its windows, Lingane's minuteness looked out on all the Galaxy. It was a planet alone, but it did well.

The Autarch said, without turning from the window, "Start with the mail ship, Rizzett. Where did it meet this cruiser in the first place?"

"Less than one hundred thousand miles off Lingane. The exact coordinates don't matter. They've been watched ever since. The point is that, even then, the Tyrannian cruiser was in an orbit about the planet."

"As though it had no intention of landing, but, rather, was waiting for something?"

"Yes."

"No way of telling how long they'd been waiting?"

"Impossible, I'm afraid. They were sighted by no one else. We checked thoroughly."

"Very well," said the Autarch. "We'll abandon that for the moment. They stopped the mail ship, which is, of course, interference with the mails and a violation of our Articles of Association with Tyrann."

"I doubt that they were Tyranni. Their unsure actions are more those of outlaws, of prisoners in flight."

"You mean the men on the Tyrannian cruiser? It may be what they want us to believe, of course. ' At any rate, their only overt action was to ask that a message be delivered directly to me."

"Directly to the Autarch, that is right."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing else."

"They at no time entered the mail ship?"

"All communications were by visiplate. The mail capsule was shot across two miles of empty space and caught by the ship's net."

"Was it vision communication or sound only?"

"Full vision. That's the point. The speaker was described by several as being a young man of 'aristocratic bearing,' whatever that means."

The Autarch's fist clenched slowly. "Really? And no photo-impression was taken of the face? That was a mistake."

"Unfortunately there was no reason for the mail captain to have anticipated the importance of doing so, If any importance exists! Does all this mean anything to you, sir?"

The Autarch did not answer the question. "And this is the message?"

"Exactly. A tremendous message of one word that we were supposed to bring directly to you; a thing we did not do, of course. It might have been a fission capsule, for instance. Men have been killed that way before."

"Yes, and Autarchs too," said the Autarch. "Just the word 'Gillbret.' One word, 'Gillbret.' "

The Autarch maintained his indifferent calm, but a certain lack of certainty was gathering, and he did not like to experience a lack of certainty. He liked nothing which made him aware of limitations. An Autarch should have no limitations, and on Lingane he had none that natural law did not impose.

There had not always been an Autarch. In its earlier days Lingane had been ruled by dynasties of merchant princes. The families who had first established the subplanetary service stations were the aristocrats of the state. They were not rich in land, hence could not compete in social position with the Ranchers and Grangers of the neighboring worlds. But they were rich in negotiable currency and so could buy and sell those same Ranchers and Grangers; and, by way of high finance, they sometimes did.

And Lingane suffered the usual fate of a planet ruled (or misruled) under such circumstances. The balance of power oscillated from one family to another. The various groups alternated in exile. Intrigues and palace revolutions were chronic, so that if the Directorship of Rhodia was the Sector's prime example of stability and orderly development, Lingane was the example of restlessness and disorder. "As fickle as Lingane," people said.

The outcome was inevitable, if one judges by hindsight. As the neighboring planet states consolidated into group states and became powerful, civil struggles on Lingane became increasingly expensive and dangerous to the planet. The general population was quite willing, finally, to barter anything for general calm. So they exchanged a plutocracy for an autocracy, and lost little liberty in the exchange. The power of several was concentrated in one, but that one, frequently enough, was deliberately friendly to the populace he sought to use as a make-weight against the never-reconciled merchants.

Under the Autarchy, Lingane increased its wealth and strength. Even the Tyranni, attacking thirty years earlier at the height of their power, had been fought to a standstill. They had not been defeated, but they had been stopped. The shock, even of that, had been permanent. Not a planet had been conquered by the Tyranni since the year they had attacked Lingane.

Other planets of the Nebular Kingdoms were outright vassals of the Tyranni. Lingane, however, was an Associated State, theoretically the equal "ally" of Tyrann, with its rights guarded by the Articles of Association.

The Autarch was not fooled by the situation. The chauvinistic of the planet might allow themselves the luxury of considering themselves free, but the Autarch knew that the Tyrannian danger had been held at arm's length this past generation. Only that far. No farther.

And now it might be moving in quickly for the final, long-delayed bear hug. Certainly, he had given it the opportunity it was waiting for. The organization he had built up, ineffectual though it was, was sufficient grounds for punitive action of any type the Tyranni might care to undertake. Legally, Lingane would be in the wrong.

Was the cruiser the first reaching out for the final bear hug?

The Autarch said, "Has a guard been placed on that ship?"

"I said they were watched. Two of our freighters"-he smiled one-sidedly, "keep in massometer range."

"Well, what do you make of it?"

"I don't know. The only Gillbret I know whose name by itself would mean anything is Gillbret oth Hinriad of Rhodia. Have you had dealings with him?"

The Autarch said, "I saw him on my last visit to Rhodia."

"You told him nothing, of course."

"Of course."

Rizzett's eyes narrowed. "I thought there might have been a certain lack of caution on your part; that the Tyranni had been the recipients of an equal lack of caution on the part of this Gillbret-the Hinriads are notable weaklings these days-and that this now was a device to trap you into final self-betrayal."

"I doubt it. It comes at a queer time, this business. I have been away from Lingane for a year or more. I arrived last week and I shall leave in a matter of days again. A message such as this reaches me just when I am in a position to be reached."

"You don't think it is a coincidence?"

"I don't believe in coincidence. And there is one way in which all this would not be coincidence. I will therefore visit that ship. Alone."

"Impossible, sir." Rizzett was startled. He had a small, uneven scar just above his right temple and it suddenly showed red.

"You forbid me?" asked the Autarch dryly.

And he was Autarch, after all, since Rizzett's face fell, and he said, "As you please, sir."

Aboard the Remorseless, the wait was proving increasingly unpleasant. For two days they hadn't budged from their orbit.

Gillbret watched the controls with relentless concentration. His voice had an edge to it. "Wouldn't you say they were moving?"

Biron looked up briefly. He was shaving, and handling the Tyranni erosive spray with finicky care.

"No," he said, "they're not moving. Why should they? They're watching us, and they'll keep on watching us."

He concentrated upon the difficult area of the upper lip, and frowned impatiently as he felt the slightly sour taste of the spray upon his tongue. A Tyrannian could handle the spray with a grace that was almost poetic. It was undoubtedly the quickest and closest non-permanent shaving method in existence, in the hands of an expert. In essence, it was an extremely fine air-blown abrasive that scoured off the hairs without harming the skin. Certainly the skin felt like nothing more than the gentle pressure of what might have been an air stream.

However, Biron felt queasy about it. There was the well-known legend, or story, or fact (whatever it was), about the incidence of face cancer being higher among the Tyranni than among other cultural groups, and some attributed this to the Tyranni shave spray. Biron wondered for the first time if it might not be better to have his face completely depilated. It was done in some parts of the Galaxy, as a matter of course. He rejected the thought. Depilation was permanent. The fashion might always shift to mustaches or cheek curls.

Biron was surveying his face in the mirror, wondering how he would look in sideburns down to the angle of the jaw, when Artemisia said from the doorway, "I thought you were going to sleep."

"I did," he said. "Then I woke up." He looked up at her and smiled.

She patted his cheek, then stroked it gently with her fingers. "It's smooth. You look about eighteen."

He carried her hand to his lips. "Don't let that fool you," he said.,

She said, "They're still watching?"

"Still watching. Isn't it annoying, these dull interludes that give you time to sit and worry?"

"I don't find this interlude dull."

"You're talking about other aspects of it now, Arta."

She said, "Why don't we cross them up and land on Lingane?"

"We've thought of it. I don't think we're ready for that kind of risk. We can afford to wait till the water supply gets a bit lower."

Gillbret said loudly, "I tell you they are moving."

Biron crossed over to the control panel and considered the massometer readings. He looked at Gillbret and said, "You may be right."

He pecked away at the calculator for a moment or two and stared at its dials.

"No, the two ships haven't moved relative to us, Gillbret. What's changed the massometer is that a third ship has joined them. As near as I can tell, it's five thousand miles off, about 46 degrees? and 192 degrees f from the ship-planet line, if I've got the clockwise and counterclockwise conventions straight. If ' I haven't, the figures are, respectively, 314 and 168 degrees."

He paused to take another reading. "I think they're approaching. It's a small ship. Do you think you can get in touch with them, Gillbret?"

"I can try," said Gillbret.

"All right. No vision. Let's leave it at sound, till we get some notion of what's coming."

It was amazing to watch Gillbret at the controls of the etheric radio. He was obviously the possessor of a native talent. Contacting an isolated point in space with a tight radio beam remains, after all, a task in which the ship's control-panel information can participate only slightly. He had a notion of the distance of the ship which might be off by a hundred miles plus or minus. He had two angles, either or both of which might easily be wrong by five or six degrees in any direction.

This left a volume of about ten million cubic miles within which the ship might be. The rest was left to the human operator, and a radio beam which was a probing finger not half a mile in cross section at the widest point of its receivable range. It was said that a skilled operator could tell by the feel of the controls how closely the beam missed the target. Scientifically, that theory was nonsense, of course, but it often seemed that no other explanation was possible.

In less than ten minutes the activity gauge of the radio was jumping and the Remorseless was both sending and receiving.

In another ten minutes Biron was able to lean back and say, "They're going to send a man aboard."

"Ought we to let them?" asked Artemisia.

"Why not? One man? We're armed."

"But if we let their ship get too close?"

"We're a Tyrannian cruiser, Arta. We've got three to five times their power, even if they were the best warship Lingane had. They're not allowed too much by their precious Articles of Association, and we've got five high-caliber blasters."

Artemisia said, "Do you know how to use the Tyrannian blasters? I didn't know you did."

Biron hated to turn the admiration off, but he said, "Unfortunately, I don't. At least, not yet. But then, the Linganian ship won't know that, you see."

Half an hour later the visiplate showed a visible ship. It was a stubby little craft, fitted with two sets of four fins, as though it were frequently called upon to double for stratospheric flight.

At its first appearance in the telescope, Gillbret shouted in delight. "That's the Autarch's yacht," he cried, and his face wrinkled into a grin. "It's his private yacht. I'm sure of it. I told you that the bare mention of my name was the surest way to get his attention."

There was the period of deceleration and adjustment of velocity on the part of the Linganian ship, until it hung motionless in the plate.

A thin voice came from the receiver. "Ready for boarding?"

"Ready!" clipped Biron. "One person only."

"One person," came the response.

It was like a snake uncoiling. The metal-mesh rope looped outward from the Linganian ship, shooting at them harpoon-fashion. It's thickness expanded in the visiplate, and the magnestized cylinder that ended it approached and grew in size. As it grew closer, it edged toward the rim of the cone of vision, then veered off completely.

The sound of its contact was hollow and reverberant. The magnetized weight was anchored, and the line was a spider thread that did not sag in a normal weighted curve but retained whatever kinks and loops it had possessed at the moment of contact, these moving slowly forward as units under the influence of inertia.

Easily and carefully, the Linganian ship edged away and the line straightened. It hung there then, taut and fine, thinning into space until it was an almost invisible thing, glancing with incredible daintiness in the light of Lingane's sun.

Biron threw in the telescopic attachment, which bloated the ship monstrously in the field of vision, so that one could see the origin of the half-mile length of connecting line and the little figure that was beginning to swing hand over hand along it.

It was not the usual form of boarding. Ordinarily, two ships would maneuver to near-contact, so that extensible air locks could meet and merge under intense magnetic fields. A tunnel through space would connect the ships, and a man could travel from one to the other with no further protection than he needed to wear aboard ship. Naturally, this form of boarding required mutual trust.

By space line, one was dependent upon his space suit. The approaching Linganian was bloated in his, a fat thing of air-extended metal mesh, the joints of which required no small muscular effort to work. Even at the distance at which he was, Biron could see his arms flex with a snap as the joint gave and came to rest in a new groove.

And the mutual velocities of the two ships had to be carefully adjusted. An inadvertent acceleration on the part of either would tear the line loose and send the traveler tumbling through space under the easy grip of the faraway sun and of the initial impulse of the snapping line-with nothing, neither friction nor obstruction, to stop him this side of eternity.

The approaching Linganian moved on confidently and quickly. When he came closer it was easy to see that it was not a simple hand-over-hand procedure. Each time the forward hand flexed, pulling him on, he would let go and float onward some dozen feet before his other hand had reached forward for a new hold.

It was a brachiation through space. The spaceman was a gleaming metal gibbon.

Artemisia said, "What if he misses?"

"He looks too expert to do that," said Biron, "but if he does, he'd still shine in the sun. We'd pick him up again."

The Linganian was close now. He had passed out of the field of the visiplate. In another five seconds there was the clatter of feet on the ship's hull.

Biron yanked the lever that lit the signals which outlined the ship's air lock. A moment later, in answer to an imperative series of raps, the outer door was opened. There was a thump just beyond a blank section of the pilot-room's wall. The outer door closed, the section of wall slid away, and a man stepped through.

His suit frosted over instantly, blanking the thick glass of his helmet and turning him into a mound of white. Cold radiated from him. Biron elevated the heaters and the gush of air that entered was warm and dry. For a moment the frost on the suit held its own, then began to thin and dissolve into a dew.

The Linganian's blunt metal fingers were fumbling at the clasps of the helmet as though he were impatient with his snowy blindness. It lifted off as a unit, the thick, soft insulation inside rumpling his hair as it passed.

Gillbret said, "Your Excellency!" In glad triumph, he said, "Biron, it is the Autarch himself."

But Biron, in a voice that struggled vainly against stupefaction, could only say, "Jonti!"