“It must belong to a capital ship in planetary orbit,” Heim decided. “And if that’s the only such, the other warships must be out on patrol.”

  “I do not see how you can use the information,” Navarre said. “A single spacecraft of the line gives total air superiority when there is nothing against it but flyers. And our flyers are not even military.”

  “Still, it’s helpful to see what you’re up against. You’re sure their whole power is concentrated here?”

  “Yes, quite sure. This area has most of our industrial facilities. There are garrisons elsewhere, at certain mines and plants, as well as at observation posts. But our scouts have reported those are negligible in themselves.”

  “So…I’d guess, then, knowing how much crowding Aleriona will tolerate—let me think—I’d estimate their number at around 50,000. Surely the military doesn’t amount to more than a fifth of that. They don’t need more defense. Upper-type workers—what we’d call managers, engineers, and so forth—are capable of fighting but aren’t trained for it. The lower-type majority have had combativeness bred out. So we’ve really only got 10,000 Aleriona to worry about. How many men could you field?”

  “Easily a hundred thousand—who would be destroyed the moment they ventured out of the forests.”

  “I know. A rifle isn’t much use when you face heavy ground and air weapons.” Heim grimaced.

  The flyer touched concrete at the designated point and halted. Its escort remained hovering. Navarre stood up. “Sortons,” he said curtly, and led the way out the door.

  Twenty Aleriona of the warrior class waited in file. Their lean, forward-slanting, long-tailed forms were less graceful than those of the master breed; their fur lacked the silvery sparkle, the fair hair did not flow loose but was braided under the conical helmets, the almost-human faces were handsome rather than possessing the disturbing muliebrile beauty of an overlord. The long sunrays turned their scaly garments almost incandescent.

  They did not draw the crooked swords at their belts nor point guns at the newcomers; they might have been statues. Their officer stepped forward, making the intricate gesture that signified respect. He was taller than his followers, though still below average human height.

  “Well are you come,” he sang in fairly good French. “Wish you rest or refreshment?”

  “No, thank you,” Navarre said, slowly so the alien could follow his dialect. Against the fluid motion that confronted him, his stiffness looked merely lumpy. “We are prepared to commence discussions at once.”

  “Yet first ought you be shown your quarters. Nigh to the high masters of the Garden of War is prepared a place as best we might.” The officer trilled an order. Several low-class workers appeared. They did not conform at all to Earth’s picture of Aleriona—their black-clad bodies were too heavy, features too coarse, hair too short, fur too dull, and there was nothing about them of that inborn unconscious arrogance which marked the leader types. Yet they were not servile, nor were they stupid. A million years of history, its only real change the glacial movement toward an ever more unified society, had fitted their very genes for this part. If the officer was a panther and his soldiers watchdogs, these were mettlesome horses.

  In his role as aide, Vadasz showed them the party’s baggage. They fetched it out, the officer whistled a note, the troopers fell in around the humans and started off across the field. There was no marching; but the bodies rippled together like parts of one organism. Aurore struck the contact lenses which protected them from its light and turned their eyes to rubies.

  Heim’s own eyes shifted back and forth as he walked. Not many other soldiers were in evidence. Some must be off duty, performing one of those enigmatic rites that were communion, conversation, sport, and prayer to an Aleriona below the fifth level of mastery. Others would be at the missile sites or on air patrol. Workers and supervisors swarmed about, unloading cargo, fetching metal from a smelter or circuit parts from a factory to another place where it would enter some orbital weapon. Their machines whirred, clanked, rumbled. Nonetheless, to a man the silence was terrifying. No shouts, no talk, no jokes or curses were heard: only an occasional melodic command, a thin weaving of taped orchestral music, the pad-pad of a thousand soft feet.

  Vadasz showed his teeth in a grin of sorts. “Ils considerent la vie tres serieusement,” he murmured to Navarre. “Je parierais qu’ils ne font jamais de plaisanteries douteuses.”

  Did the enemy officer cast him a look of—incomprehension? “Taisez vous,” Navarre said.

  But Vadasz was probably right, Heim reflected. Humor springs from a certain inward distortion. To that great oneness which was the Aleriona soul, it seemed impossible: literally unthinkable.

  Except…yes, the delegates to Earth, most especially Admiral Cynbe, had shown flashes of a bleak wit. But they belonged to the ultimate master class. It suggested a difference from the rest of their species which—He dismissed speculation and went back to observing as much detail as he could.

  The walk ended at a building some hundred meters from the edge of the field. Its exterior was no different from the other multiple curved structures surrounding it. Inside, though, the rooms had clearly been stripped, the walls were raw plastic and floors stained where the soil of flowerbeds had been removed. Furniture, a bath cubicle, Terrestrial-type lights, plundered from houses, were arranged with a geometric precision which the Aleriona doubtless believed was pleasing to men. “Hither shall food and drink be brought you,” the officer sang. “Have you wish to go elsewhere, those guards that stand outside will accompany.”

  “I see no communicator,” Navarre said.

  “None there is. With the wilderness dwellers make you no secret discourse. Within camp, your guards bear messages. Now must we open your holders-of-things and make search upon your persons.”

  Navarre reddened. “What? Monsieur, that violates every rule of parley.”

  “Here the rule is of the Great Society. Wish you not thus, yourselves you may backtake to the mountains.” It was hard to tell whether or not that lilting voice held insult, but Heim didn’t think so. The officer was stating a fact.

  “Very well,” Navarre spat. “We submit under protest, and this shall be held to your account when Earth has defeated you.”

  The Aleriona didn’t bother to reply. Yet the frisking was oddly like a series of caresses.

  No contraband was found, there not being any. Most of the colonists were surprised when the officer told them, “Wish you thus, go we this now to seek the Intellect Masters.” Heim, recalling past encounters, was not. The Aleriona overlords had always been more flexible than their human counterparts. With so rigid a civilization at their beck, they could afford it.

  “Ah…just who are they?” Navarre temporized.

  “The imbiac of planetary and space defense are they, with below them the prime engineering operator. And then have they repositories of information and advice,” the officer replied. “Is not for you a similarity?”

  “I speak for the constabulary government of New Europe,” Navarre said. “These gentlemen are my own experts, advisors, and assistants. But whatever I agree to must be ratified by my superiors.”

  Again the girlish face, incongruous on that animal body, showed a brief loosening that might betoken perplexity. “Come you?” the song wavered.

  “Why not?” Navarre said. “Please gather your papers, Messieurs.” His heels clacked on the way out.

  Heim and Vadasz got to the door simultaneously. The minstrel bowed. “After you, my dear Alphonse,” he said. The other man hesitated, unwilling: But no, you had to maintain morale. He bowed back: “After you, my dear Gaston.” They kept it up for several seconds.

  “Make you some ritual?” the officer asked.

  “A most ancient one.” Vadasz sauntered off side by side with him.

  “Never knew I such grew in your race,” the officer admitted.

  “Well, now, let me tell you—” Vadasz started an energetic argument. He’s doing his job right well, Heim conceded grudgingly.

  Not wanting to keep the Magyar in his consciousness, he looked straight ahead at the building they were approaching. In contrast to the rest, it lifted in a single high curve, topped with a symbol resembling an Old Chinese ideogram. The walls were not blank bronze, but scored with microgrooves that turned them shiftingly, bewilderingly iridescent. He saw now that this was the source of the music, on a scale unimagined by men, that breathed across the port.

  No sentries were visible. An Aleriona had nothing to fear from his underlings. The wall dilated to admit those who neared, and closed behind them.

  There was no decompression chamber. The occupiers must find it easier to adapt themselves, perhaps with the help of drugs, to the heavy wet atmosphere of this planet. A hall sloped upward, dimly seen in the dull red light from a paraboloidal ceiling. The floor was carpeted with living, downy turf, the walls with phosphorescent vines and flowers that swayed, slowly keeping time to the music, and drenched the air with their odors. The humans drew closer together, as if for comfort. Ghost silent, ghost shadowy, they went with their guards to the council chamber.

  It soared in a vault whose top was hidden by dusk, but where artificial stars glittered wintry keen. The interior was a vague, moving labyrinth of trellises, bushes, and bowers. Light came, only from a fountain at the center, whose crimson-glowing waters leaped five meters out of a bowl carved like an open mouth, cascaded down again and filled every corner of the jungle with their clear splash and gurgle. Walking around it, Heim thought he heard wings rustle in the murk overhead.

  The conqueror lords stood balanced on tails and clawed feet, waiting. There were half a dozen all told. None wore any special insignia of rank, but the light flickered lovingly over metal-mesh garments, lustrous hair and silver-sparked white fur. The angelic faces were in repose, the emerald eyes altogether steady.

  To them the officer genuflected and the soldiers dipped their rifles. A few words were sung. The guards stepped back into darkness and the humans stood alone.

  One Aleriona master arched his back and hissed. Almost instantly, his startlement passed. He trod forward so that his countenance came into plain view. Laughter belled from him, low and warm.

  “Thus, Captain Gunnar Heim,” he crooned in English. “Strangeness, how we must ever meet. Remember you not Cynbe ru Taren?”

  -6-

  So shattered was Heim’s universe that he was only dimly aware of what happened. Through the red gloom, trillings went among the Aleriona. One bristled and cried an order to the guards. Cynbe countermanded it with an imperious gesture. Above the racket of his pulse, Heim heard the admiral murmur: “You would they destroy on this now, but such must not become. Truth, there can be no release; truth alike, you are war’s honored prisoners.” And there were more songs, and at last the humans were marched back to their quarters. But Heim remained.

  Cynbe dismissed his fellow chieftains and all but four guards. By then the sweat was drying on the man’s skin, his heartbeat slowed, the first total despair thrust down beneath an iron watchfulness. He folded his arms and waited.

  The Aleriona lord prowled to the fountain, which silhouetted him as if against liquid flames. For a while he played with a blossoming vine. The sole noises were music, water, and unseen circling wings. It was long before he intoned, softly and not looking at the man:

  “Hither fared I to have in charge the hunt for you the hunter. Glad was my hope that we might meet in space and love each the other with guns. Why came you to this dull soil?”

  “Do you expect me to tell you?”

  Heim rasped.

  “We are kinfolk, you and I. Sorrow, that I must wordbreak and keep you captive. Although your presence betokens this was never meant for a real parley.”

  “It was, however. I just happened to come along. You’ve no right to hold the New Europeans, at least.”

  “Let us not lawsplit. We two rear above such. Release I the others, home take they word to your warship. Then may she well strike. And we have only my cruiser Jubalcho to meet her. While she knows not what has happened to you her soul, Fox II abides. Thus gain I time to recall my deep-scattered strength.”

  The breath hissed between Heim’s teeth. Cynbe swung about. His eyes probed like fire weapons. “What bethink you?”

  “Nothing!” Heim barked frantically.

  It raced within him: He believes I took Fox down. Well, that’s natural. Not knowing about our meteorite gimmick, he’d assume that only a very small or a very fast craft could sneak past his guard. And why should I come in a tender? Fox on the surface could do terrific damage, missile this base and strike at his flagship from a toadhole position.

  I don’t know what good it is having him misinformed but—play by ear, boy, play by ear. You haven’t got anything left except your rusty old wits.

  Cynbe studied him a while. “Not long dare I wait to act,” he mused. “And far are my ships.”

  Heim forced a jeering note: “The practical limit of a maser beam is about twenty million kilometers. After that, if nothing else, the position error for a ship gets too big. And there’s no way to lock onto an accelerating vessel till she’s so close that you might as well use an ordinary ’caster. Her coordinates change too fast, with too many unpredictables like meteorite dodging. So how many units have you got on known orbits within twenty million kilometers?”

  “Insult me not,” Cynbe asked quietly. He stalked to the wall, brushed aside a curtain of flowers and punched the keys of an infotrieve. It chattered and extruded a printout. He brooded over the symbols. “Inisant the cruiser and Savaidh the lancer can we reach. All ignorant must the others wheel their way, until one by one they return on slow schedule and find only battle’s ashes.”

  “What are the factors for those two?” Heim inquired. Mostly he was holding at bay the blood-colored stillness. It jarred him—not too much to jam the numbers into his memory—when Cynbe read off in English the orbital elements and present positions.

  “Hence have I sent my race-brothers to summon them,” the Aleriona went on. At highest acceleration positive and negative, Savaidh takes orbit around Europe Neuve in eighteen hours, Inisant in twenty-three. I think not the Foxfolk will dread for you thus soon. With three warcraft aloft, this entire planet do we scan. Let your ship make the least of little moves, and destruction shall thunder upon her unstoppable. Although truth, when ready for smiting we shall send detector craft all places and seek her lair.”

  His tone had not been one of threat. It grew still milder: “This do I tell you in my thin hoping you yield her. Gallant was that ship, unfitting her death where the stars cannot see.”

  Heim pinched his lips together and shook his head.

  “What may I offer you for surrender,” Cynbe asked in sadness, “unless may-chance you will take my love?”

  “What the devil!” Heim exclaimed.

  “We are so much alone, you and I,” Cynbe sang. For the first time scorn touched his voice, as he jerked his tail in the direction of the warriors who stood, blank-faced and uncomprehending, half hidden in the twilight. “Think you I am kin to that?”

  He glided closer. The illumination played over shining locks and disconcertingly fair countenance. His great eyes lingered on the man. “Old is Alerion,” he chanted, “old, old. Long-lived are the red dwarf stars, and late appears life in so feeble a radiance. Once we had come to being, our species, on a planet of seas vanished, rivers shrunk to trickles in desert, a world niggard of air, water, metal, life—uncountable ages lingered we in savagehood. Ah, slow was the machine with coming to us. What you did in centuries, we did in tens upon thousands of years; and when it was done, a million years a-fled, one society alone endured, swallowed every other, and the machine’s might gave it upon us a grip not to be broken. Starward fared the Wanderers, vast-minded the Intellects, yet were but ripples over the still deep of a civilization eternity-rooted. Earth lives for goals, Alerion for changelessness. Understand you that, Gunnar Heim? Feel you how ultimate the winter you are?”

  “I—you mean—” Cynbe’s fingers stroked like a breath across the human’s wrist. He felt the hair stir beneath them, and groped for a handhold in a world suddenly tilting. “Well, uh, it’s been theorized. That is, some people believe you’re just reacting because we threaten your stability. But it doesn’t make sense. We could reach an accommodation, if all you want is to be let alone. You’re trying to hound us out of space.”

  “Thus must we. Sense, reason, logic, are what save instruments of most ancient instinct? If races less powerful than we change, that makes nothing more than pullulation among insects. But you, you come in ten or twenty thousand years, one flick of time, come from the caves, bear weapons to shake planets as is borne a stone war-ax, you beswarm these stars and your dreams reach at the whole cosmos. That can we not endure! Instinct feels doom in this becoming one mere little enclave, given over helpless to the wild mercy of those who bestride the galaxy. Would you, could you trust a race grown strong that feeds on living brains? No more is Alerion able to trust a race without bounds to its hope. Back to your own planets must you be cast, maychance back to your caves or your dust.”

  Heim shook the soft touch loose, clenched his fists and growled: “You admit this, and still talk about being friends?”

  Cynbe confronted him squarely, but sang with less than steadiness: “Until now said I ‘we’ for all Alerion. Sure is that not truth. For when first plain was your menace, plain too was that those bred stiff-minded, each for a one element of the Great Society, must go down before you who are not bound and fear not newness. Mine was the master type created that it might think and act as humans and so overmatch them.” His hands smote together. “Lonely, lonely!”