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

be smoked. “Tey may eben succeed. Primitibes habe often obercome more adbanced and better armed hosts. Read te history of Eart sometime.”

“But they’ll take us along.”

“Oh. Oh-oh! Tat is different.” The Martian riffled through his papers. “Let me see, I tink Equations 549 trough 627 indicate⁠—yes, here we are. It is possible to project te same type of dribing beam as we use in te faster-tan-light engine so as to impart a desired belocity bector to external objects. Toward or away from you. Or⁠—look here, differentiation of tis equation shows it would be equally simple to break intranuclear bonds by trowing only a certain type of particle into te pseudo-condition. Te atom would ten feed on its own energy.”

Ray looked at him in awe. “You,” he whispered, “have just invented the tractor beam, the pressor beam, the disintegrator, and the all-purpose, all-fuel atomic motor.”

“I habe? Is tere money in tem?”

Ray went to work.

The three expeditions from Sol had left a good deal of assorted supplies and equipment behind for the use of later arrivals. Most of this had been stored in a local temple, and sacrifices were made yearly to the digital computer. It took an involved theological argument to obtain the stuff⁠—the point that Ormun had to be rescued was conceded to be a good one, but it wasn’t till the high priestess suddenly disappeared that the material was forthcoming.

The Ballantyne-Urushkidan circuits were simple things, once you knew how to make them. With the help of a few tolerably skilled smiths, Ray hammered out enough of the new-type atomic generators to lift the fleet off Varann and across to Sol. He built the drive-circuits carefully, designing them to burn out after landing again on Varann. The prospect of the amazon planet’s people flitting whither they pleased in the Galaxy was not one any sane man could cheerfully contemplate.

The spaceships were mere hulks of varnished and greased hardwood, equipped with airlocks and slapped together by the carpenters of Mayta in a few weeks. The crossing would be made so rapidly that heating and air plants wouldn’t be needed. Once the haywired star drives were installed, a pilot sketchily trained for each vessel, and every hull crammed with a couple of hundred yelling warriors, the fleet was ready to go.

They poured in, ten times as many as the thirty ships could hold, riding and hiking from the farthest of the continent’s little kingdoms to be in on the most glorious piracy of their dreams. Only Dyann cared much about Ormun, who was after all merely her personal joss, and only Ray gave a good damn about the menace of Jupiter. The rest came to fight and steal and see new countries. They were especially eager to kidnap husbands⁠—the polyandrous system of Varann worked undue hardships on many women, and Dyann shrewdly gave preference to the unmarried in choosing her followers.

As to the practicability of the whole insane idea⁠—Ray didn’t dare think about it.

Three hectic months after his arrival at Centauri, the barbarian fleet left for Sol.

Jupiter swam enormously in the forward ports, diademed with the bitter glory of open space, growing and growing as the ship rushed closer. Ray pushed his way through the restless crowd of armed women that jammed the boat. “Dyann,” he pleaded, “couldn’t I at least call up Earth and find out what’s happened?”

“Vy, I suppose so,” she said, not taking her eyes off the swelling giant before them. “But be qvick, please.”

The human fiddled with the telescreen. Three months ago the notion of calling over nearly half a billion miles with that undersized thing would have been merely ridiculous. But that was another byproduct of Urushkidan’s theory. You used an electron wave with unlimited velocity as a carrier beam for your radio photons. It induced a similar effect in the other transmitter. No distance diminution. No time lag. Anyway, not within the limits of anything so small as the Solar System. Ray got the standard wavelength of the U.N. public relations office, the only one which he could call freely without going through a lot of red tape.

A blurred face looked out at him. He hadn’t refined his circuits to the point of eliminating distortion, and the U.N. official resembled something seen through ten feet of rippled water⁠—at least, his image did. But the voice was clear enough. “Who is this, please?”

“Ray Ballantyne, returning from Alpha Centauri on the first faster-than-light spaceship. Calling from the vicinity of Jupiter.”

“This is no time for joking. Who the devil are you and what do you want? Please report.”

“I want to give the U.N. Patrol the secret of faster-than-light travel. Stand by to record.”

“Hey!” screamed Urushkidan. “I neber said I’d gibe⁠—”

Dyann put her foot on his head and pushed him against the floor.

“Oh, well,” he said. “Trough te incredible generosity of myself, ten, te secret is made freely abailable⁠—”

“Ready to record?” asked Ray tightly.

“I said your humor is in very bad taste,” said the official, and switched off with an ugly scowl.

Ray blinked weakly at the set for a while. Then he tuned in on Earth broadcasts until he caught a news program. Jupiter had declared war a month ago, defeated the U.N. navy in a running battle off Mars, seized bases on Luna, and was threatening atomic bombardment of Earth unless terms were met. “Oh, gosh,” said Ray.

“Such an inbasion could only be launched on a shoestring,” said Urushkidan. “Te U.N. still has bases closer to home, it can cut Jobian supply lines⁠—”

“And meanwhile poor old Earth is reduced to radioactive rubbish,” said Ray gloomily. “And those gruntbrains in charge won’t believe I’ve got the decisive weapon to save them.”

“Would you beliebe such a claim?”

“No, but this is different, damn it.”

“Ganymede dead ahead,” shouted Dyann. “Stand by for action! Get ready to make a landing.”

VII

The flagship-spaceboat slanted into the moon’s atmosphere with a whoop and a holler, blazed across the ragged surface, and lowered outside the great dome of Ganymede