Door to Anywhere

  Volume Five

  The Collected Short Works of

  Poul Anderson

  Edited by Rick Katze

  © 2013 by the Trigonier Trust

  “An Appreciation of Poul Anderson” © 2012 by Jerry Pournelle

  © 1957, 1983 by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson

  “In Hoka Signo Vinces”

  Dust jacket illustration © 2012 by Bob Eggleton

  Dust jacket design © 2012 by Alice N. S. Lewis

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by

  any electronic, magical or mechanical means, including

  information storage and retrieval, without permission

  in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer,

  who may quote brief passages in a review.

  First Hardcover Edition, February 2013

  ISBN: 978-1-886778-97-9 (hardcover)

  ISBN: 978-1-61037-331-9 (epub), October 2021

  ISBN: 978-1-61037-012-7 (mobi), October 2021

  NESFA Press is an imprint of, and NESFA® is a registered trademark of,

  the New England Science Fiction Association, Inc.

  NESFA Press

  Post Office Box 809

  Framingham, MA 01701

  www.nesfapress.org

  info@nesfapress.org

  Contents

  Editors’ Introduction

  An Appreciation of Poul Anderson by Jerry Pournelle

  Door to Anywhere

  Deathwomb

  The Nest

  Fairy Gold

  The Master Key

  Recruiting Nation

  Gibraltar Falls

  Operation Incubus

  White King’s War

  In Hoka Signo Vinces

  The Life of Your Time

  The Star Plunderer

  Un-Man

  Wings of Victory

  The Fatal Fulfillment

  For the Duration

  Sargasso of Lost Starships

  The Last of the Deliverers

  Birthright

  Strangers

  The Year of the Ransom

  Acknowledgments

  Sources

  Door to Anywhere

  Editors’ Introduction

  This is the fifth volume of a seven-volume series of collections of Poul Anderson’s short works. The series contains about half of the approximately 4 million words of short fiction that Anderson wrote during his career.

  The main purpose of these books is to collect and keep in print many stories originally published in magazines and in paperbacks with short shelf-lives so a wider audience may find them.

  Some stories are elements of series. Some are stand-alone pieces. Except for the first volume, which contained the three “Wing Alak” stories, these volumes are not intended to compile complete series or offer a chronological collection of his works. This series is intended to preserve the original magazine versions of the included stories, though a few stories are from later publications revised by Poul.

  In this volume, as in the others, you will find a mix of time travel, fantasy. humor, technology, near future, and the far future.

  Manse Everard, David Falkyn, and Nicholas van Rijn, and Dominic Flandry appear in this volume.

  Poul Anderson inserted himself into “Recruiting Nation”, whose lead character is Winston Sanders, one of Poul’s pseudonyms.

  Take up this book and enjoy works by a master craftsman.

  NESFA Editors

  October 2021

  An Appreciation of Poul Anderson

  by Jerry Pournelle

  I met Poul Anderson at the 1961 World Science Fiction Convention in Seattle. I had been reading his stories since I first encountered him in Astounding Science Fiction in high school. I was still reading Astounding (it was Analog by then). I had never taken any interest in fandom, but I wanted to meet Poul Anderson. I had never been tempted to go to SF conventions—indeed my idea of an SF Worldcon was formed from reading about them in Mad Magazine and other unsympathetic sources—and I neither knew nor cared about SF fandom; but for some reason I thought Poul Anderson and I would hit it off. I was at that time a Boeing engineer involved in space system proposals, and I thought I might have some things I could tell Anderson if I could wangle a meeting. Mostly I had been greatly influenced by his stories, and I wanted to meet the author.

  Meeting him was no problem at all. A friendlier author never lived. We met in the hotel lobby and in five minutes had planned an evening party that turned out to last all night, and by the next day we had formed a friendship that has never ended, not even when I was given the honor of being MC at Poul’s memorial in 2001. Over time we went to both amateur and professional conferences, collaborated with others in devising the Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative AKA Star Wars, bashed each other with wooden swords in Society for Creative Anachronism events and got into an argument with Edward Teller at the Open Space and Peace conference at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. I forget what Poul and Teller disagreed on, but Poul more than held his own in the entirely civil discussion that followed.

  I was on the Boeing team assigned to think about possible new projects and products—after all, Boeing designers had invented the Flying Fortress—and our first task was to try to understand what space warfare might be like. We arranged for Boeing to pay Poul for a paper on his conception of the future of space war. It turned out that our concept of space war was wrong in most details, but so was everyone else’s.

  As to the argument with Teller at the Open Space and Peace Conference: In those days most space observations were recorded on film and the physical film capsule was de-orbited and the parachuting capsule was caught by an airplane. Poul thought that would change soon, and this would affect Teller’s scheme for Open Space. He was correct. The technology was already changing—but none of us (except possibly Teller) knew just how dramatically the technology of observation from space and returning that information to earth had advanced. It was an interesting conversation in the Hoover Library. Poul was always civil and polite, and he always at least held his own in that discussion as he did in every discussion I ever heard him in.

  That’s hardly surprising, Poul Anderson was the very definition of the polymath. He read everything. If there was a subject he didn’t know about, I never found it. He was very deferential to authorities, but he often knew at least as much about how their subject connected to the universe as the expert did. Sometimes more.

  He could also sail a boat, and when it came time for me to get Ariadne, my 20-foot midget ocean racing sloop, from Seattle to Los Angeles, I enlisted Poul’s aid as crew. It says a great deal about his temperament that he didn’t throw me overboard when we were weather-bound in Neah Bay in a port that was then a Bureau of Indian Affairs Reservation where Federal Regulations prohibited the sale of alcohol—including beer. The result was an even firmer friendship, and a memorable folksong about the Straits of Juan de Fuca. Some of that trip made it into my second novel, Red Dragon, and here and there into a number of Poul’s stories.

  A few years later Poul was struck with some kind of writer’s block and asked if we could go sailing again. We sailed Ariadne out of Los Angeles harbor to the Santa Barbara Channel Islands, down to Catalina, and home again. It was a glorious trip. About the time we got back to Catalina Island we realized that we had an infinite amount of beer—that is, there was enough aboard that we couldn’t possibly drink it all (at least not and expect to get back to Los Angeles alive). We had learned that much from the previous trip.

  While on Catalina we got our first look at what later became a phenomenon: Lava Lamps. When we got back on board for the night Poul was inspired to construct a song about the things we called “blob makers” because we didn’t know their common name. I wish I had written down the song that came out of that experience.

  Many things drove Poul to poesy and song composition. Once, at a not very well managed Westercon in San Diego, our “banquet” consisted of some unidentifiable meat and a small round object that proved to be a boiled potato. I lifted mine and dropped it to the plate. Twice. At which point Poul looked up and said, “I have written about these for years, but this is the first time I have actually heard a dull, sickening, thud.” Before the week was out Poul had written “Bouncing Potatoes”, which is a filk song classic. If you don’t know what filk songs are, Google will be glad to enlighten you. Poul wrote a lot of them. There was a period when hardly a month went by without a new one appearing in the mail.

  By mail I mean mail. I don’t believe I ever got an e-mail from Poul. Like me he was a bit hard of hearing—one reason we got on well, I suspect, is that we both talked loud enough that each could easily hear and understand the other—and he didn’t like talking on the telephone. He wrote letters. I was an early convert to writing with computers, but my attempts to drag Poul into the computer age ran afoul of the fact that he was a good typist who saw no need for these new-fangled machines. After all, he turned out more and better work with his big standard typewriter than just about anyone could manage with a computer.

  There was a time when Poul, Gordy Dickson, and I were a fixture at science fiction convention parties; We’d go off somewhere so as not to disturb the party, because while it was a matter of discussion as to whether Poul or I had the worse voice (Gordy actually sang well), I don’t think anyone who ever heard us doubted that between us we ha
d the two worst voices in science fiction. One might wonder why anyone would listen to us, but in fact there’s no real doubt. It wasn’t the singing, it was the words. Poul composed hundreds of songs, all intriguing. Here’s one of them. It contains truth as well as humor. Much of Poul’s work does.

  Black bodies give off radiation

  And ought to continuously.

  Black bodies give off radiation

  But do it by Planck’s theory.

  Chorus:

  Bring back, bring back,

  Oh, bring back that old continuity!

  Bring back, bring back,

  Oh, bring back Clerk Maxwell to me.

  Though now we have Schrödinger functions,

  Dividing up h by 2π

  That damned differential equation

  Still has no solution for ψ.

  (Chorus)

  Well, Heisenberg came to the rescue,

  Intending to make all secure.

  What is the result of his efforts?

  We are absolutely unsure.

  (Chorus)

  Dirac spoke of energy levels,

  Both minus and plus. Oh, how droll!

  And now, just because of his teaching,

  We don’t know our mass from a hole.

  (Chorus)

  This book is an appreciation of the man and his work.

  And what work it was. He built characters. He turned simple ideas into stories. He constructed worlds in less time than it takes to spade up a garden. He built worlds and civilizations, often quite effortlessly, or at least it appeared that way. Sometimes he had an idea for a story that needed a very weird world. He could dash that off, apparently effortlessly, done so well that it might later serve as the basis for new stories and novels.

  He built characters, and he connected the future to the present. He understood the need for humanity to expand into the universe, and said so, in both fiction and non-fiction. He could see the consequences of not going to space, and told of the chilling consequences. He also told of the potential glory for conquering both the solar system and the galaxy. Bob Gleason, then editor in chief at Tor, worked at nominating Poul for a Nobel Prize in Literature. Bob understood that given the politics of the world this was highly unlikely, but that didn’t stop him. “Simple justice,” he once said. It would have been.

  Jerry Pournelle

  Studio City, 2012

  Door To Anywhere

  -1-

  After a week in space, Camacho admitted—to himself alone—that there was much to be said for the progressivist viewpoint.

  It wasn’t just the crampedness, the unprivacy, the endless irritations of low-weight life, noises and stinks and a subliminal vibration that finally wove itself into his dreams. It wasn’t even the chance of dying, if the sun should flare too fast and too furiously, or if any one of a hundred systems within the ship failed or if his middle-aged body fooled the medical examiners by reacting fatally to conditions so unnatural. These things counted. But worse was the time he was spilling between planets.

  And he could have made the trip in half an hour, on foot!

  Time, he thought, was the only real wealth a man had, and it should only have to be spent on what was beyond price. Like a family—he was astonished at how very much he missed Alice and the kids. Like swimming, and mountain climbing, and gardening, and eating good food and being with good friends. Like work, if you enjoyed your work and believed you were accomplishing something important. What kind of mess would he return to? Without him, the African scholarship bill would likely die in committee, and meanwhile the Scandinavian bloc would likely push through their abominable amendment to the whaling law, and—and he’d need a year merely to patch his fences at home, with an election coming up.

  At that, he thought wryly, he was fortunate. Most people who went to Mars had to go in underpowered hulks that orbited more than half the distance. But he claimed an urgent, investigative mission, and so he rated the newest in nuclear-engined Space Corps vessels. Acceleration all the way; not much, but enough to get him there in a month at the present planetary configuration, and never mind the cost to the taxpayer.

  The three crewmen were polite and rather distant. Weninger made some effort to befriend him. Looking out the main port, to blackness crowded with stars, the lieutenant said, “Luffly, eh? I don’t think Earth has a sight to compare.”

  “Frankly, I’d say the night sky in the High Sierra is as beautiful,” Camacho replied. “And there you’ve also got a landscape.”

  “Well, Senator, you haff yourself to blame,” Weninger said with ponderous Teutonic joviality. “You fight so hard to keep them from building a jumpgate on Earth. Maybe you change your mind now, eh?”

  “I think not,” Camacho said. “Especially after what happened at Lacus Solis.”

  Weninger didn’t notice the pain in the words. “For me, good,” he said. “They make that gate, and I am out of a job. But I do sometimes think, when I get my tax bill, maybe I should be. Spaceships don’t come so cheap, haw!”

  Camacho shrugged. Thereafter Weninger stayed formal.

  Captain Potasz was even a bit hostile. Once at dinner, if you could use that word for gulping reconstituted rations off a lap tray, he said, “It is not my business to ask you why you are bound for Mars, Senator. My assignment is simply to get you there and bring you home again when you are finished. But I must confess I am puzzled at the reason for this junket.”

  “I head the Committee on Space and Astronautics of the World Council,” Camacho reminded him. “We have to investigate the disaster, so our colleagues can know if any new legislation is required.”

  “But there are competent scientists at Lacus Solis. No, more than competent. Brilliant. They can inform you, once they themselves have solved the problem. Or, if you feel a man must come from Earth, why not another scientist?”

  “Instead of a wretched politician, you mean?” Camacho attempted a smile. “Well. I did take a degree in engineering, though admittedly that was long ago. But you see, I don’t doubt their brilliance at the research station. They certainly don’t need more technical brains. However, to be quite honest, the accident makes me doubt a little their competence. Which is not all the same thing as brilliance.”

  “So you think you can find their answer for them?”

  “Lord, no. But I do want to learn the situation for myself, at first hand. What the present trouble has done is make me take a much overdue, ah, junket. Expert testimony is okay in its place, but it is abstract and it is biased. Scientists are human too.”

  Potasz regarded his passenger for a while before saying, “The man who…vanished…Ian Birkie— I heard he was a relative of yours.”

  All right, Camacho thought, let’s get it over with. “My brother-in-law,” he said, measuring out the words. “My wife and I were fond of him. I won’t ask you to believe there’s nothing personal in this trip. Politicians are also human. But I’m sure his teammates care about him. So will you believe I’m traveling not in my own, but in the public interest?”

  “Of course.” Potasz couldn’t well say otherwise. Camacho wondered if he meant it. The captain seemed to be a strong progressivist, entirely willing to find other work after an Earthside jumpgate was built. And Ramon Camacho, senior senator from California, second-in-chief of American delegates to the World Council, was usually labeled a reactionary.

  The third crewman held still more aloof. He was Chinese, so perhaps his grandfather had bequeathed him a grudge from the war. Camacho—a stocky, grizzled man with a face that looked heavy when it wasn’t in motion—thus stayed mostly with the books on which he had spent considerable of his mass allowance. He had his thoughts, too, but they were worse company.

  Staring out at the dim mysterious blurs of the far galaxies: Ian, where yonder are you? What became of you?

  He hadn’t accepted the boy just for Alice’s sake. Ian Birkie had come to be like a younger brother of his own. Often and often they’d drunk beer together, and laughed and talked till the windows of the Camacho house grew pale with morning. Then, rather than go to bed, they were likely as not to organize a picnic for the whole family, a quick flit out of San Francisco to some place like Point Lobos or Kings Canyon or a bit further to Baja California for the surf and sun and loneliness. You couldn’t get a better companion on a mountaineering expedition, either, except that Ian was too reckless—never on the rope, no, but when he was only risking his own neck he’d do things—climb, leap—to make the rest of the party blanch and shout back to them in the sheer delight of being alive.