Unless she followed exactly behind the meteorite, using its mass for a bumper and heat shield, its flaming tail for a cloak.

  No autopilot was ever built for that task. Gunnar Heim must do it. If he veered from his narrow slot of partial vacuum, he would die too quickly to know he was dead. For gauge he had only the incandescence outside, instrument readings, and whatever intuition was bestowed by experience. For guide he had a computation of where he ought to be, at what velocity, at every given moment, unreeling on tape before his eyes. He merged himself with the ship, his hands made a blur on the console, he did not notice the waves of heat, the buffetings and bellowings of turbulence, save as a thunderstorm deep in his body.

  His cosmos shrank to a fire-streak, his reason for being to the need of holding this clumsy mass nose-on to the descent pattern. He became a robot, executing orders written for it by whirling electrons.

  No: he was more. The feedback of data through senses, judgment, will, made the whole operation possible. But none of that took place on a conscious level. There wasn’t time!

  That was as well. Live flesh could not have met those demands for more than a few seconds. The meteorite, slowed only a little by the air wall through which it plunged, outraced the spaceship and hit the sea—still with such force that water had no chance to splash but actually shattered. Meroeth was as yet several kilometers aloft, her own speed reduced to something that metal could tolerate. The pattern tape said CUT and Heim slammed down a switch. The engine roar whirred into silence.

  He checked his instruments. “All’s well,” he said. His voice sounded strange in his ears, only slowly did he come back to himself, as if he had run away from his soul and it must now catch up. “We’re under the Bonne Chance horizon, headed southwest on just about the trajectory we were trying for.”

  “Whoo-oo-oo,” said Vadasz in a weak tone. His hair was plastered lank to the thin high-cheeked face, his garments drenched.

  “Bridge to engine room,” Heim said. “Report.”

  “All in order, sir,” came the voice of Diego Gonzales. “Shall I turn on the coolers?”

  “Well, do you like this furnace?” grumbled Jean Irribarne. Heat radiated from every bulkhead.

  “Go on,” Heim decided. “If anyone’s close enough to detect the anomaly, we’ve had it anyway.” He kept eyes on the console before him, but jerked a thumb at Vadasz. “Radar registering?”

  “No,” said the Hungarian. “We appear to be quite private.”

  Those were the only men aboard. No more were needed for a successful landing; and in case of failure, Heim did not want to lose lives essential to Fox. Gonzales was a good third engineer; Vadasz had been a fairly competent steward, and as a minstrel had a lot to do with keeping morale high. Still, the ship could manage without them. One colonist sufficed to guide Meroeth, and Irribarne had pulled rank to win that dangerous honor. The rest must bring their story to Earth, should the present scheme miscarry. As for Heim himself—First Officer David Penoyer had protested and been overruled. Penoyer could serve quite well as captain. He had never understood, though, why Heim insisted on going down.

  Madelon—

  No, no, ridiculous. Maybe it’s true that you never really fall out of love with anyone; but new loves do come, and while his wife lived he had rarely thought about New Europe. For that matter, his reunion with Jocelyn Lawrie had driven most else out of his mind. For a while.

  No doubt he’d only been so keyed up about Madelon because of…he wasn’t sure what. A silly scramble after his lost youth, probably. She was middle-aged now, placidly married, according to her brother-in-law she had put on weight. He wanted to see her again, of course, but he need only instruct Meroeth’s pilot to make sure she was among the evacuees.

  No. That won’t do. Too many unforeseen things could happen. I’ve got to be in the nucleus, personally.

  A new sound filled the hull, the keening of sundered air, deepening toward a hollow boom, as the ship dropped below sonic speed. Heim looked out the forward viewport. The ocean reached vast beneath, phosphor-tinged waves and a shadow at the horizon that must be one of the Iles des Reves. He applied the least bit of thrust to keep in a stable glide.

  This was not the ideal approach to Haute Garance. But while meteorites are plentiful, his had had too many requirements to meet. It must be large, yet not too large to nudge into the right orbit in a reasonable time; the point at which Fox grappled and towed must be fairly near the planet but not dangerously near; the path after release must look natural; it must terminate in an uninhabited region, at night. You couldn’t scout the Auroran System forever, only until a halfway acceptable chunk of rock was found. Meanwhile Meroeth could be reconverted: lights, temperature, air systems adjusted for human comfort, the interior stripped of plants and less understandable Aleriona symbols, the controls ripped out and a Terrestrial version installed. The bridge had a plundered look. Heim thought, briefly and irrationally, how this—far more than any attack—would have struck his old antagonist Cynbe with horror and wrath.

  Onward the ship fell, slower and lower until the sea appeared to rise and lick at her. Vadasz probed the sky with his instruments, awkwardly—he had gotten hasty training—and intently. His lips were half parted, as if to cry, “Fire!” to Irribarne in the single manned gun turret. But he found only night, unhurried winds and strange constellations.

  It would not have been possible to travel thus far, undetected, across a civilization. But New Europe has 72 percent of Earth’s surface area; it is an entire world. Coeur d’Yvonne had been almost the only outpost on any other continent than Pays d’Espoir, and that city was annihilated. The Aleriona occupied Garance, where the mines and machines were: a mere fringe on hugeness. Otherwise they must rely on scattered detector stations, roving flyers, and the still incomplete satellite system. His arrival being unknown to them, the odds favored Heim.

  Nonetheless…careful, careful.

  He started the engines again. At low power, Meroeth lumbered across the Golfe des Dragons. Diane hove into view, nearly full. The moon was smaller than Luna seen from Earth—22 minutes angular diameter—and less bright, but still a blue-marked tawny cornucopia that scattered metal shards across the water.

  Then the mainland rose, hills and woods climbing swiftly toward snowpeaks. Irribarne left his gun and got on the radio in a harsh clatter of Basque. It wouldn’t do to have the French shoot when they saw the great Aleriona craft. Or, more likely, run and hide. The wilderness concealed an entire headquarters base.

  The land beneath grew ever more rugged. Rivers ran from the snows, leaped down cliffs, foamed into steep valleys and were lost to sight among the groves. A bird flock rose in alarm when the ship passed over, there must be a million pairs of wings, blotting out half the sky. Vadasz whistled in awe. “Isten irgalmazzon! I wondered how long the people could stay hidden, even alive, in the bush. But three times their number could do it.”

  “Yeh,” Heim grunted. “Except for one thing.”

  Lac aux Nuages appeared, a wide wan sheet among darkling trees, remotely encircled by mountains whose glaciers gleamed beneath the moon. Irribarne relayed instructions. Heim found the indicated spot, just off the north shore, and lowered ship. The concealing waters closed over him. He heard girders groan a little, felt an indescribable soft resistance go through the frame to himself, eased off power and let the hull settle in ooze. When he cut the interior gee-field, he discovered the deck was canted.

  His heart thuttered, but he could only find flat words: “Let’s get ashore.” Even in seven-tenths of Terrestrial gravity, it was a somewhat comical effort to reach the emergency escape lock without falling. When the four men were crowded inside, clothes bundled on their necks, he dogged the inner door and cranked open the outer one. Water poured icily through. He kicked to the surface and swam as fast as possible toward land. Moonlight glimmered on the guns of the men who stood there waiting for him.

  -3-

  The tent was big. The trees that surrounded it were taller yet. At the top of red-brown trunks, they fountained in branches whose leaves overarched and hid the pavilion under cool sun-flecked shadows. Their foliage was that greenish gold hue the native “grasses” shared, to give the Garance country its name. Wind rustled them. Through the open flap, Heim could look down archways of forest to the lake. It glittered unrestfully, outward past the edge of vision. Except for some wooded islands, the only land seen in that direction was the white-crowned sierra. Blue with distance, the peaks jagged into a deep blue sky.

  Aurore was not long up. The eastern mountains were still in a dusk, the western ones still faintly flushed. They would remain so for a while; New Europe takes more than 75 hours to complete a rotation. The sun did not look much different from Earth’s, about the same apparent size, a little less brilliant, its color more orange than yellow. Heim had found Vadasz in the dews at dawn, watching the light play in the mists that streamed over the lake, altogether speechless.

  That time was ended. Colonel Robert de Vigny, once constabulary commandant, now beret-crowned king of the maquis, bridged his fingers, leaned stiffly across his desk, and said, “So. You have made the situation clear, and we seem to have threshed out a plan of action. Let me review what was decided.”

  Heim could just follow the swift, crisp French: “Your privateer has found a way to lie undetected in this vicinity, and you can summon her by that most admirable means you have invented. We have the big transport Meroeth. We will put some two hundred women and children aboard her, with supplies, to bring Earth a direct appeal that Earth may find hard to resist. They can flit in by ones and twos during the next few days, while my men run an underwater loading tube to an airlock.

  “Meanwhile, we in the forest must live. So I will establish radio contact with the Aleriona and ask for a parley. They will doubtless agree, especially since their new chief of naval operations seems to be a rather decent fellow. I daresay they will receive our representatives already tomorrow.

  “We shall try to reach an agreement that will leave us free. Cessation of guerrilla raids in exchange for vitamins—yes, they should think that is to their advantage, for they will count on dealing with us after the space fortifications are complete. You, Captain Heim, with your professional eye, and Monsieur Vadasz, with your poet’s grasp of nonhuman psychology, will be with our delegation in the guise of ordinary colonists. Perhaps you can gather some useful intelligence.

  “Whatever the result, our representatives will return here.

  “Then you summon Fox. She makes a covering raid while Meroeth gets aloft, and convoys her to the necessary distance from Aurore where her Mach engines can start her off faster than light.

  “After that, if we are provided with the capsules, you continue your warfare in space. If we are not, and if Fox cannot help us steal them by providing air cover, I will call the enemy again and offer him an end to your privateering on condition he supply us. This he is virtually sure to accept. So…at large cost or small, we will have gained time, during which we hope Earth will come to help. Have I stated matters correctly?”

  Heim nodded and got out his pipe. De Vigny’s nostrils dilated. “Tobacco?” the New European breathed. “One had almost forgotten.”

  Heim chuckled and threw the pouch onto the desk. De Vigny picked up a bell and rang it. An aide-de-camp materialized in the tent entrance, saluting. “Find me a pipe,” de Vigny said. “And, if the captain does not object, you may find one for yourself too.”

  “At once, my colonel!” The aide dematerialized.

  “Well.” De Vigny unbent a trifle. “Thanks are a poor thing, Monsieur. What can New Europe do for you?”

  Heim grew conscious of Vadasz’s half-jocose, half-sympathetic regard, blushed, and said roughly, “I have an old friend on this planet, who’s now Jean Irribarne’s sister-in-law. See to it that she and her family are among the evacuees.”

  “Pierre will not go when other men stay,” the Basque said gently.

  “But they shall most certainly come here if you wish,” de Vigny said. He rang for another aide. “Lieutenant Irribarne, why do you not go with Major Legrand to my own flyer? It has a set which can call to anywhere in the Haute Garance. If you will tell the operator where they are, your kin—” When that was done, he said to Heim and Vadasz, “I shall be most busy today, it is plain. But let us relax until after lunch. We have many stories to trade.”

  And so they did.

  When at last de Vigny must dismiss them, Heim and Vadasz were somewhat at loose ends. There was little to see. Though quite a few men were camped around the lake, the shelters were scattered and hidden, the activity unobtrusive. Now and then a flyer came by, as often as not weaving between tree trunks under the concealing foliage. Small radars sat in camouflage, watching for the unlikely appearance of an Aleriona vessel. The engineers could not install their tube to the ship before night, unless one of the frequent fogs rose to cover their work. Men sat about yarning, gambling, doing minor chores. All were eager to talk with the Earthlings, but the Earthlings soon wearied of repeating themselves. Toward noon, a degree of physical tiredness set in as well. They had been up for a good eighteen hours.

  Vadasz yawned. “Let us go back to our tent,” he suggested. “This planet has such an inconvenient rotation. You must sleep away a third of the daylight and be awake two-thirds of the night. But at the tent I have a flask of brandy, and—”

  They were not far from it then, were crossing a meadow where flame-colored blossoms nodded in the golden grass. Jean Irribarne stepped from under the trees. “Ah,” he hailed, “vous voila. I have looked for you.”

  “What about?” Heim asked.

  The lieutenant beamed. “Your friends are here.” He turned and called, “ ‘Allo-o-o!”

  They came out into the open, six of them. The blood left Heim’s heart and flooded back. He stood in a sunlit darkness that whirled.

  She approached him timidly. Camp clothes, faded and shapeless, had today been exchanged for a dress brought along to the woods and somehow preserved. It fluttered light and white around her long-legged slenderness. Aurore had bleached the primly braided brown hair until it was paler than her skin; but still it shone, and one lock blew free above the heart-shaped face.

  “Madelon,” he croaked.

  “Gunnar.” The handsome plumpish woman took both his hands. “C’est si bon te voir encore. Bienvenu.”

  “A nej—” The breath rasped into him. He pulled back his shoulders. “I was surprised,” he said limpingly. “Your daughter looks so much like you.”

  “Pardon?” The woman struggled with long-unused English.

  Her husband, an older and heavier version of Jean, interpreted while he shook Heim’s hand. Madelon laughed. “Oui, oui, tout le monde le dit. Quand j’etais jeune, peut-être. Danielle, je voudrais que tu fasses la connaissance de mon vieil ami Gunnar Heim.”

  “Je suis tres honorée, Monsieur.” She could scarcely be heard above the wind as it tossed the leaves and made light and shadow dance behind her. The fingers were small and cool in Heim’s, quickly withdrawn.

  In some vague fashion he met teen-age Jacques, Cecile, and Yves. Madelon talked a lot, without much but friendly banalities coming through the translations of the Irribarne brothers. All the while Danielle stood quiet. But at parting, with promises of a real get-together after sleep, she smiled at him.

  Heim and Vadasz watched them leave, before going on themselves. When the forest had closed upon her, the minstrel whistled. “Is that indeed the image of your one-time sweetheart, yonder girl?” he asked.

  “More or less,” Heim said, hardly aware that he talked to anyone else. “There must be differences, I suppose. Memory plays tricks.”

  “Still, one can see what you meant by—Forgive me Gunnar, but may I advise that you be careful? There are so many years to stumble across.”

  “Good Lord!” Heim exploded angrily. “What do you take me for? I was startled, nothing else.”

  “Well, if you are certain…You see, I would not wish to—”

  “Shut up. Let’s find that brandy.” Heim led the way with tremendous strides.

  -4-

  Day crept toward evening. But life kept its own pace, which can be a fast one in time of war. At sunset Heim found himself on a ness jutting into the lake, alone with Danielle.

  He was not sure how. There had been the reunion and a meal as festive as could be managed, in the lean-to erected near the Irribarne flyer. Champagne, which he had taken care to stow aboard Meroeth, flowed freely. Stiffness dissolved in it. Presently they sprawled on the grass, Vadasz’s guitar rang and most voices joined his. But Heim and Madelon kept somewhat apart, struggling to talk, and her oldest daughter sat quietly by.

  They could not speak much of what had once been. Heim did not regret that, and doubted Madelon did. Meeting again like this, they saw how widely their ways had parted; now only a look, a smile, a bit of laughter could cross the distance between. She was an utterly good person, he thought, but she was not Connie or even Jocelyn. And, for that matter, he was not Pierre.

  So they contented themselves with trading years. Hers had been mild until the Aleriona came. Pierre, the engineer, built dikes and power stations while she built their lives. Thus Heim found himself relating the most. It came natural to make the story colorful.

  His eyes kept drifting toward Danielle.

  Finally—this was where the real confusion began as to what had happened—the party showed signs of breaking up. He wasn’t sleepy himself, though the wine bubbled in his head, and his body demanded exercise. He said something about taking a stroll. Had he invited the girl along, or had she asked to come, or had Madelon, chuckling low in the way he remembered, sent them off together with a remark about his needing a guide? Everybody had spoken, but between his bad French and hammering pulse he wasn’t sure who had said what. He did recall that the mother had given them a little push toward the deeper forest, one hand to each.