Short Fiction by Poul Anderson (free ebook novel .txt) 📕

all, perhaps, the transcendent clarity of mind and inspired leadership of Ballantyne⁠—these molded our century and all centuries to come, and yet we will never understand them, they are too far beyond us and their essential selves must be forever a mystery.—⁠Vallabbhai Rasmussen, History of the Twenty-Third Century, v. 1 I

The tender loomed above the crowd of passengers and leave-takers, a great shining bullet caught in floodlights against the dark, and Ray Ballantyne quickened his steps. By Heaven, he’d made it! The flight from San Francisco to Quito, the nail-biting dawdle as he waited for the airbus, then the flight out to Ecuador Spaceport, the last walk through the vast echoing hollowness of the terminal, out onto the field⁠—and there it was, there the little darling lay, waiting to carry him from Earth up to the Jovian Queen and safety.

He kissed his fingers at the tender and shoved rudely through the swarm of people and Martians. He’d already missed the first trip up to the liner, and the thought of waiting for the third was beyond endurance.

“Hey, chum.”

As the heavy hand fell on his arm, Ballantyne whirled, his heart slamming against his teeth and his spine dropping out. The thickset man compared his thin sharp features with the photograph in the other paw, nodded, and said, “All right, Ballantyne, come along.”

“Se llama Garcia!” gibbered the engineer. “No hablo Inglés.”

“I said come along,” said the detective wearily. “I thought you’d try to leave Earth. This way.”

Ballantyne’s free hand reached up and crammed the fellow’s hat down over his eyes. Wrenching loose, he turned and ran for the gangway, upsetting a corpulent Latin woman en route and pursued by a volley of imprecations. He shoved aside the passenger before him and ran into the solid wall of an impassive Jovian ship’s officer.

The Jovian, a tall muscular blond in a dazzling crispness of white uniform, looked at him with the thinly veiled contempt of a proper Confed for the lesser breeds of humanity. “Ticket and passport, please,” he said stonily.

Ballantyne shoved them at him, glancing shakily back to the detective who had become entangled with the indignant woman and was being slapped with a handbag and volubly cursed. With maddening deliberation the Jovian scanned the engineer’s papers, compared them with a list in his hand, and waved him on.

The detective caromed against the same immovable barrier. “Let me by!” he gasped.

“Your ticket and passport, please,” said the Jovian.

“That man is under arrest. Let me by.”

“Your ticket and passport, please.”

“I tell you I’m an officer of the law and I have a warrant for that man. Let me by.”

“Proper authorization may be obtained at the main office,” said the Jovian coldly.

The detective tried to rush, encountered a bit of expert judo, and tumbled back into the crowd. Every able-bodied Jovian was a well-trained military reservist.

“Proper authorization may be obtained at the main office,” repeated the immovable barrier. To the next man, “Your ticket and passport, please.”

Ray Ballantyne dashed the sweat off his brow and permitted himself a nasty chuckle. By the time the hapless detective had gone through all that red tape, the tender would be well on its way.

Before one of his country’s secret police the Jovian would have quailed and said nothing. But this was Earth, and the Confeds loved to bait Terrestrials, and there was no better way than by demanding the endless papers which their file-clerk mentalities had devised.

The engineer went on into the tender, found a seat, and strapped himself in. He was clear. Before Heaven, he was away!

Even the long Vanbrugh arm did not reach to Jupiter. Ballantyne’s alleged crimes weren’t enough for the Earth government to ask his extradition. He could stay on Ganymede till the whole business had blown over, and then⁠—well⁠—

He sighed, relaxing⁠—a medium-sized young man, slender and wiry, with close-cropped yellow hair and features a little too sharp to be handsome. His thin deft fingers rearranged his overly colorful tie and straightened his sports jacket. Always wanted to see the Jovian System, anyway, he rationalized.

The tender’s airlock sighed shut and a stewardess went down the aisle handing out anti-acceleration pills. She had the full-bodied, pure-blooded good looks of the ideal Jovian together with their faintly repellent air of hard, purposeful efficiency. The rockets began to throb, warming up, and a siren hooted.

Ballantyne turned to the man beside him, obsessed with the idiotic desire for conversation found in all recent escapees from the law or the dentist. “Going home, I see,” he remarked.

The man was a tall specimen in the gray Jovian army uniform, with colonel’s planets on his shoulders and a chestful of ribbons and medals⁠—about forty, closely shaven head, iron jaw, ramrod spine. He fixed the Earthling with a chill pale eye and said, “And you, I see, are leaving home. Two scintillating deductions.”

“Ummm⁠—uh⁠—well.” Ballantyne looked away, his ears ablaze. The Jovian clutched his heavy portfolio tighter to his side.

The tender shook itself, howled, and jumped into the sky. Ballantyne leaned back in the cushioned seat, staring out the port at the fire-starred unfolding of space. The Jovian colonel sat rigid as before, not deigning to yield to the pressure.

They came up to the Jovian Queen, where the great liner held her orbit about Earth, and Ballantyne glimpsed her long metal shape, blinding in the raw sunlight, as the tender swung in for contact. When the airlocks joined there was a steady one-gravity as the spaceship rotated on her axis. Whatever you could say against the Jovians⁠—and that was quite a bit⁠—they did maintain the best transport in the Solar System. Earth’s heavy passenger and freight haulers were in tight financial straits competing with the state-subsidized lines of Jupiter.

An expressionless uniformed steward took charge of the passengers as they entered the ship, herding them to their respective destinations. Ballantyne lugged his valise toward third-class section. He’d have to share his cabin with two others⁠—how had the mighty fallen! Thinking over the decline and