“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 The fingers were small and cool in Heim’s, quickly withdrawn.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.

  Song followed them awhile. (“Aupres de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon—”) but by the time they reached the lake-shore they heard simply a lap-lap of wavelets, rustle of leaves, flute of a bird. Aurore was going down behind the western peaks, which stood black against a cloud bank all fire and gold. The same long light made a molten bridge on the water, from the sun toward him and her. But eastward fog was rolling, slow as the sunset, a topaz wall that at the top broke into banners of dandelion yellow in a sky still clear with day. The breeze cooled his skin.

  He saw her clasp arms together. “Avez-vous froid, Mademoiselle?” he asked, much afraid they would have to go back. She smiled even before he took off his cloak, probably at what he was doing to her language. He threw it over her shoulders. When his hands brushed along her neck, he felt his sinews go taut and withdrew in a hurry.

  “Thank you.” She had a voice too light for English or Norwegian, which turned French into song. “But will you not be cold?”

  “No. I am fine.” (Damn! Did fin have the meaning he wanted?) “I am—” He scratched around for words. “Too old and hairy to feel the weather.”

  “You are not old, Monsieur Captain,” she said gravely.

  “Ha!” He crammed fists into pockets. “What age have you? Nineteen? I have a daughter that which she—I have a daughter a few years less.”

  “Well—” She laid a finger along her jaw. He thought wildly what a delicate line that bone made, over the small chin to a gentle mouth; and, yes, her nose tipped gaily upward, with some freckles dusted across the bridge. “I know you are my mother’s age. But you do not look it, and what you have done is more than any young man could.”

  “Thanks. Thanks. Nothing.”

  “Mother was so excited when she heard,” Danielle said. “I think Father got a little jealous. But now he likes you.”

  “Your father is a good man.” It was infuriating to be confined to this first-grade vocabulary.

  “May I ask you something, Monsieur?”

  “Ask me anybody.” The one rebellious lock of hair had gotten free again.

  “I have heard that we who go to Earth do so to appeal for help. Do you really think we will matter that much?”

  “Well, uh, well, we had a necessity to come here. That is to say, we have now made established communication from your people to mine in space. So we can also take people like you away.”

  A crease of puzzlement flitted between her brows. “But they have spoken of how difficult it was to get so big a ship down without being seen. Could you not better have taken a little one?”

  “You are very clever, Mademoiselle, but—” Before he could construct a cover-up, she touched his arm (how lightly!) and said:

  “You came as you did, risking your life, for Mother’s sake. Is that not so?”

  “Uh, uh, well, naturally I thought over her. We are old friends.”

  She smiled. “Old sweethearts, I have heard. Not all the knights are dead, Captain. I sat with you today, instead of joining in the music, because you were so beautiful to watch.”

  His heart sprang until he realized she had been using the second person plural. He hoped the sunset light covered the hue his face must have. “Mademoiselle,” he said, “your mother and I are friends. Only friends.”

  “Oh, but of course. I understand. Still, it was so good of you, everything you have done for us.” The evening star kindled above her head. “And now you will take us to Earth. I have dreamed about such a trip since I was a baby.”

  There was an obvious opening to say that she was more likely to make Earth sit up and beg than vice versa, but he could only hulk over her, trying to find a graceful way of putting it. She sighed and looked past him.

  “Your men too, they are knights,” she said. “They have not even your reason to fight for New Europe. Except perhaps Monsieur Vadasz?”

  “No, Endre has no one here,” Heim said. “He is a troubadour.”

  “He sings so wonderfully,” Danielle murmured. “I was listening all the time. He is a Hungarian?”

  “By birth. Now he has no home.” Endre, you’re a right buck, but this is getting to be too much about you. “I have—have—When you to arrive on Earth, you and your family use my home. I come when I can and take you in my ship.”

  She clapped her hands. “Oh, wonderful!” she caroled. “Your daughter and I, we shall become such good friends. And afterward, a voyage on a warship—What songs of victory we will sing, homeward bound!”

  “Well—um—We return to camp now? Soon is dark.” Under the circumstances, one had better be as elaborately gentlemanly as possible.

  Danielle drew the cloak tight around her. “Yes, if you wish.” He wasn’t sure whether that showed reluctance or not. But as she started walking immediately, he made no comment, and they spoke little en route.

  The party was indeed tapering off. Heim’s and Danielle’s return touched off a round of goodnights. When she gave him back his cloak, he dared squeeze her hand. Vadasz kissed it, with a flourish.

  On their way back through leafy blue twilight, the minstrel said, “Ah, you are the lucky one still.”

  “What do you mean?” Heim snapped.

  “Taking the fair maiden off that way. What else?”

  “For God’s sake!” Heim growled. “We just wanted to stretch our legs. I don’t have to rob cradles yet.”

  “Are you quite honest, Gunnar?—No, wait, please don’t tie me in a knot. At least, not in a granny knot. It is only that Mlle. Irribarne is attractive. Do you mind if I see her?”

  “What the blaze have I got to say about that?” Heim retorted out of his anger. “But listen, she’s the daughter of a friend of mine, and these colonial French have a medieval notion of what’s proper. Follow me?”

  “Indeed. No more need be said.” Vadasz whistled merrily the rest of the way. Once in his sleeping bag, he drowsed off at once. Heim had a good deal more trouble doing so.

  Perhaps for that reason, he woke late and found himself alone in the tent. Probably Diego was helping de Vigny’s sappers and Endre had wandered off—wherever. It was not practical for guerrillas to keep a regular mess, and the camp-stove, under a single dim light, showed that breakfast had been prepared. Heim fixed his own, coffee, wildfowl, and a defrosted chunk of the old and truly French bread which is not for tender gums. Afterward he washed, depilated the stubble on his face, shrugged into some clothes and went outside.

  No word for me, evidently. If any comes, it’ll keep. I feel restless. How about a swim? He grabbed a towel and started off.

  Diane was up. Such light as came through the leaves made the forest a shifting bewilderment of black and white, where his flashbeam bobbed lonely. The air had warmed and cleared. He heard summery noises, whistles, chirps, croaks, flutters, none of them quite like home. When he emerged on the shore, the lake was a somehow bright sable, each little wave tipped with moonfire. The snow-peaks stood hoar beneath a universe of stars. He remembered the time on Saturn when he had tried to pick out Achernar; tonight he could do so with surety, for it burned great in this sky. His triumph, just about when Danielle was being born—“Vous n’etes pas vieux, Monsieur le Capitaine.”

  He stripped, left the beam on to mark the spot, and waded out. The water was cold, but he needed less willpower than usual to take the plunge when it was waist deep. For a time he threshed about, warming himself, then struck out with long quiet strokes. Moonlight rippled in his wake. The fluid slid over his skin like a girl’s fingers.

  Things are looking up, he thought with a growing gladness. We really do have a good chance to rescue this planet. And if part of the price is that I stop raiding—why, I’ll be on Earth too.

  Did it sing within him, or had a bird called from the nest ahead?

  No. Birds don’t chord on twelve strings. Heim grinned and swam forward as softly as he was able. Endre’s adrenal glands would benefit from a clammy hand laid on him from behind and a shouted “Boo!”

  The song grew stronger.

  Röslein, Röslein, Röslein rot,

  Röslein auf der Heiden.

  As it ended, Heim saw Vadasz seated on a log, silhouetted against the sky. He was not alone.

  Her voice came clear through the night. “Oh, c’est beau. Je n’aurais jamais cru que les allemands pouvaient avoir une telle sensibilite.”

  Vadasz laughed. “Vous savez, Goethe vecut il y a long-temps. Mais pourqúoi rap-pepler de vieilles haines pendant une si belle nuit? Nous sommes ici pour admirer, parler, et chanter, n’est-ce pas?”

  Briefly, blindingly, Heim remembered himself with Jocelyn Lawrie, that time not long ago when they met again after years—and she told him that for her those had been years wasted—and her tone was like Danielle’s now—

  “Chantez encore, je vous en prie.”

  The strings rang very softly, made themselves a part of night and woods and water. Vadasz’s words twined among them. Danielle sighed and leaned a bit closer.

  Heim swam away.

  No, he told himself, and once more: No. Endre isn’t being a bastard. He asked me.

  The grip on his throat did not loosen. He ended his quietness and churned the water with steamboat violence. He’s young. I could have been her father. But I junked the chance.

  No. I’m being ridiculous. I had you, Connie, while you lived.

  Ved Gud—His brain went in rage to the tongue of his childhood. By God, if he does anything—! I’m not too old to break a man’s neck.

  What the hell business is it of mine? I’ve got Jocelyn!…

  He stormed ashore and abraded himself dry. Clothes on, he stumbled through the woods. There was a bottle in the tent, not quite empty.

  A man waited for him. He recognized one of de Vigny’s aides. “Well?”

  The officer sketched a salute. “I ’ave a message for you, Monsieur. The colonel ’as contact the enemy. They receive a delegation in Bonne Chance after day ’as break.”

  “Okay. Goodnight.”

  “But, Monsieur—”

  “I know. We have to confer. Well, I’ll come when I can. We’ve plenty of time. It’s going to be a long night.” Heim brushed past the aide and closed his tent flap.

  -5-

  Below, the Carsac Valley rolled broad and rich. Farmsteads could be seen, villages, an occasional factory surrounded by gardens—but nowhere man, the land was empty, livestock run wild, weeds reclaiming the fields. Among them flowed the river, metal-bright in the early sun.

  When he looked out the viewports of the flyer where he sat, Heim saw his escort, four Aleriona military vehicles. The intricate, gaily colored patterns painted on them did not soften their barracuda outlines. Guns held aim on the unarmed New European. We could change from delegates to prisoners in half a second, he thought, and reached for his pipe.

  “Pardon.” Lieutenant Colonel Charles Navarre, head of the eight-man negotiation team, tapped his shoulder. “Best lock that away, Monsieur. We have not had tobacco in the maquis for one long time.”

  “Damn! You’re right. Sorry.” Heim got up and stuck his smoking materials in a locker.

  “They are no fools, them.” Navarre regarded the big man carefully. “Soon we land. Is anything else wrong with you, Captain Alphonse Lafayette?”

  “No, I’m sure not,” Heim said in English. “But let’s go down the list. My uniform’s obviously thrown together, but that’s natural for a guerrilla. I don’t look like a typical colonist, but they probably won’t notice, and if they do it won’t surprise them.”

  “Comment?” asked another officer.

  “Didn’t you know?” Heim said. “Aleriona are bred into standardized types. From their viewpoint, humans are so wildly variable that a difference in size and coloring is trivial. Nor have they got enough familiarity with French to detect my accent, as long as I keep my mouth shut most of the time. Which’ll be easy enough, since I’m only coming along in the hope of picking up a little naval intelligence.”

  “Yes, yes,” Navarre said impatiently. “But be most careful about it.” He leaned toward Vadasz, who had a seat in the rear. “You too, Lieutenant Gaston Girard.”

  “On the contrary,” the minstrel said, “I have to burble and chatter and perhaps irritate them somewhat. There is no other way to probe the mood of nonhumans. But have no fear. This was all thought about. I am only a junior officer, not worth much caution on their part.” He smiled tentatively at Heim. “You can vouch for how good I am at being worthless, no, Gunnar?”

  Heim grunted. Pain and puzzlement flickered across the Magyar’s features. When first his friend turned cold to him, he had put it down to a passing bad mood. Now, as Heim’s distantness persisted, there was no chance—in this crowded, thrumming cabin—to ask what had gone wrong.

  The captain could almost read those thoughts. He gusted out a breath and returned to his own seat forward. I’m being stupid and petty and a son of a bitch in general, he knew. But I can’t forget Danielle, this sunrise with the fog drops like jewels in her hair, and the look she gave him when we said goodbye. Wasn’t I the one who’d earned it?

  He was quite glad when the flyer started down.

  Through magnification before it dropped under the horizon, he saw that Bonne Chance had grown some in twenty years. But it was still a small city, nestled on the land’s seaward shoulder: a city of soft-hued stucco walls and red tile roofs, of narrow ambling streets, suspension bridges across the Carsac, a market square where the cathedral fronted on outdoor stalls and outdoor cafes, docks crowded with watercraft, and everywhere trees, Earth’s green chestnut and poplar mingled with golden bellefleur and gracis. The bay danced and dazzled, the countryside rolled ablaze with wildflowers, enclosing the town exactly as they had done when he wandered hand in hand with Madelon.

  Only…the ways were choked with dead leaves; houses stared blank and blind; boats moldered in the harbor; machines rusted silent; the belfry rooks were dead or fled and a fauquette cruised the sky on lean wings, searching for prey. The last human thing that stirred was the aerospace port, twenty kilometers inland.

  And those were not men or men’s devices bustling over its concrete. The airships bringing cargo had been designed by no Terrestrial engineer. The factories they served were windowless prolate domes, eerily graceful for all that they were hastily assembled prefabs. Conveyors, trucks, lifts were manmade, but the controls had been rebuilt for hands of another shape and minds trained to another concept of number. Barracks surrounded the field, hundreds of buildings reaching over the hills; from above, they looked like open-petaled bronze flowers. Missiles stood tall among them, waiting to pounce. Auxiliary spacecraft clustered in the open. One was an armed pursuer, whose snout reached as high as the cathedral cross.