Part 1 (2/2)

Sometime near dawn he gave up trying to sleep, dressed, and began composing orders. Presently Jezef came in with cups of steaming amber liquid. They sipped in silence for a while, then Jezef asked ”You've heard about Grefen?”

Tulan felt something knot inside him. He shook his head, dreading what he knew was coming.

”He killed himself last night,” Jezef said.

Tulan remembered the agony in the old Minister of War's eyes when he'd voted for surrender. Grefen had been Admiral in his day; the prototype of integrity and a swift sledgehammer in a fight; and Tulan's first combat had been under him. A symbol of the Fleet, Tulan reflected; and his death, yes, that too was a symbol--what was there but shame in surrender, for a man or a fleet or a world?

His hand clenched, crumpling the paper it was resting on. He smoothed the paper and re-read the order he'd been writing. He visualized the proud ranks of his crewmen, reduced to ragged lines shuffling toward prison or execution.

It seemed impossible, against the laws of nature, that men should strive mightily and win, then be awarded the loser's prize. His anger began to return. ”I've a mind to defy the Government and only take skeleton crews,” he said. ”Leave the married men, at least.”

Jezef shrugged. ”They'd only be bundled into transports and sent after us.”

”Yes. d.a.m.n it, I won't be a party to it! All they did was carry out their orders, and superbly, at that!”

Jezef watched him with something like curiosity. ”You'd disobey the Council? You?”

Tulan felt himself flush. ”I've told you before, discipline's a necessity to me, not a religion!” Nevertheless, Jezef's question wasn't unfair; up to now it really hadn't occurred to him that he might disobey.

His inward struggle was brief. He grabbed the whole pad of orders and ripped them across. ”What's the Council, with Grefen gone, but three trembling old men? Get some guns manned, in case they get suspicious and try to interfere.”

Blood began to surge faster in his veins; he felt a vast relief. How could he have ever seen it differently? He jabbed at a b.u.t.ton. ”All s.h.i.+ps' Duty Officers; scramble communication circuits. This is the Admiral. Top Secret Orders....”

Shortly before noon the four-hundred-odd s.h.i.+ps lifted out of Sennech's frosty atmosphere, still ignoring the furious demands from the radio.

Fully armed, they couldn't be stopped.

Tulan's viewer gave a vivid picture of the receding fifth planet. The white mantle of ice and snow was a backdrop for blue artificial lakes and the dark green of forest-strips (hardy conifers from Teyr) alternated with the lighter shades of surface farms. The ice had been almost unbroken until men came, bringing more heat than Sennech had ever received from a far-off sun.

That had been before the First Solar War, when Teyr (the race of Aum had originated there) ruled. That awful struggle had bludgeoned the home planet back to savagery, and left Coar and Sennech little better off.

With recovery, Coar had taken over and prospered immensely. Teyr stayed wild except for small colonies planted there by the other two planets, and Sennech lagged for a while.

Within Tulan's lifetime his world had found itself ready to rise against the lax but profit-taking rule of Coar, and that rebellion had grown into the present situation.

Sennech's wounds were plainly visible in the viewscreen; great man-made craters spewing incandescent destruction blindly over farm, city, or virgin ice. The planet was in three-quarters phase from here, and Tulan could see the flecks of fire in the darkness beyond the twilight zone.

Near the edge of that darkness he made out the dimmer, diffused glow of Capitol City, where Anatu would be giving two small boys their supper.

He checked alt.i.tude, found they were free of the atmosphere, and ordered an acceleration that would take them halfway to the sun in fifty hours.

It was uncomfortable now, with Sennech's gravity added, but that would fall off fast.

Jezef hauled himself in and dropped to a pad. ”I wish I had your build,”

he said. ”Do you really think we can pull this off?”

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