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

Heaven, you snake-legged bagpipe, I’m the captain here and you’ll do as I say.”

“Up your rectifier.” Urushkidan was emptying his ash tray in search of tobacco shreds.

The airlock clanged behind Dyann. “I’ll be damned,” murmured Ray. “She really is going out after them.”

“It is a good idea,” said Urushkidan, a trifle more amiably. “Tey habe sensed te radiations of our ship and are probably coming to crack it open.”

“Oh, well, if that’s all⁠—Huh?” Ray sprang to the nearest port and looked out.

“Gannydragons,” he groaned. “I thought they’d been exterminated.”

“Tose two don’t seem to know it,” said Urushkidan uneasily. “All right, I’ll calculate your function for you.”

There were two of the monsters moving toward the boat. They looked like thirty feet of long-legged alligator, but the claws and beaks had ripped metal in earlier days of colonization. Dyann lifted her rifle and fired.

A dragon screamed, thin and faint in the wispy atmosphere, and turned his head and snapped. Dyann laughed and bounded closer. Another shot and another.⁠ ⁠…

Something hit her and the gun flew from her hand. The dragon’s tail smote again and Dyann soared skyward. As she hit the ground the two monsters leaped for her.

“Ha, Ormun!” she yelled, shaking her ringing head till the ruddy hair flew within the helmet. She crouched low and then sprang.

Up⁠—over the fanged head⁠—striking down with her sword as she went by. The monster whirled after her, greenish blood streaming from the cut and freezing.

Dyann backed against a looming rock, spread her feet and lifted the sword. The first dragon struck at her, mouth agape. Dyann hewed out again, the sword a leaping blaze of steel, the blow smashing home and exploding its force back into her own muscles. The dragon’s head sprang from the neck. She rolled under the lashing claws and tail to get free. The headless body struck the other dragon which promptly began to fight it.

Dyann circled warily about the struggle, breathing hard. The live dragon trampled its opponent underfoot, looked around, and charged her. The ground shuddered under its galloping mass. Dyann turned and fled.

The dragon roared hollowly as she went up the long slope of the nearest hill. She saw a high crag and scrambled to its top, the dragon rampaging below her.

“Nyaaah!” She thumbed her faceplate. “Come and get me.”

The monster’s dim brain finally decided that the ship was bigger and easier prey. Turning, it lumbered down the hillside. Dyann launched herself into the air and landed astride its neck.

The dragon hooted and snapped after her. She climbed higher, grabbed its horn with one gauntleted hand, and hung on for her life. The steed began to run.

Hoo, bang, away over the hills with the moonscape blurring in speed. Wind shrieked thinly about Dyann’s helmet. She bounced off her seat and came down again, a landslide rumbled behind her. The dragon zoomed up the ridge, leaped from a bluff, and started across the cratered plain beyond. Dyann dragged at the horn, turning its head, fighting the monster into a circular stampede. “Ha, Ormun!” she yelled. “Ha, Kathantuma!”

In an hour or so the dragon stopped and stood gasping. Dyann slid stiffly to the ground, whirled her sword over her head, and decapitated the monster. Then she skipped home, laughing.

“Dyann!” cried Ray as she came through the airlock. “Dyann, we thought you were dead⁠—”

“Oh, it vas fun,” she grinned. “Fix me a sandvich.” She sat down, got up rather quickly, and opened her arms to Ray. He retreated nervously toward the lab. Urushkidan snickered and slammed the door in his face.

V

The eighty-six hour day of Ganymede drew to a close. Jupiter was at the half now, a banded amber giant in a sky of thronging wintry stars. Ray wiped his grimy hands and sighed.

“Done,” he said, looking fondly at the haywired mess filling half the lab and reaching back toward the engines. “We’ve done it⁠—we’ve conquered the stars.”

“My little Earthlin’ is so clever,” simpered Dyann.

“I am horribly afraid,” said Urushkidan, “tat tis minor achievement of mine will eclipse my true accomplishments in te popular mind. Oh, well.” He shrugged. “I can always use te money.”

“Umm, yeah, I never thought of that,” said Ray. “I’m safe enough from Vanbrugh now⁠—you don’t arrest the man who’s given Earth the Galaxy⁠—but by gosh, there’s a fortune in this little gadget too.”

“For me, of course, when I have patented it,” said Urushkidan.

“What?” yelped Ray. “You⁠—”

“Certainly. I inbented it, didn’t I? I shall patent it too. Tell me, should I charge an exorbitant royalty or would tere be more money in mass sales at small price?”

“Look here,” snarled Ray, “I happen to know how this thing is put together too.”

“Do you?” grinned Urushkidan nastily.

“Uh⁠—” Ray looked at the jungle of apparatus and gulped. He had only a few fragmentary drawings. By Einstein, he had no idea how the damned thing worked.

“But we helped you,” he protested feebly.

“When you pay your mules and cows, I may consider gibing you a small percentage,” said Urushkidan loftily.

“You’ve already got more money than you know what to do with, you bloated capitalist. I happen to know you invested your Nobel Prize in mortgages and then foreclosed.”

“And why not? When te royalties on tis engine start coming in, and I get my second Nobel Prise, maybe ten I can afford an occasional cigar. You Earthlings neber reward genius. All tese years I’be had to smoke tat foul pipe⁠—And tat reminds me, we habe to test tis machine. Where is te nearest tobaco store?”

Ray sighed and gave up. Martians had replaced Scotchmen in the lexicon of thrift, but Urushkidan set some kind of new record.

He sat down in the pilot chair and started the atomic generator on high level conversion. “I hope it works,” he muttered nervously. His fingers moved over the improvised control panel for the star drive. “Hang on, folks, here goes nothing.”

“Nothin,” said Dyann after a long silence, “is correct.”

“Oh, lord! What’s the matter now?” Ray went back to the new engine. Its circuits were