The Star Fox

“I deny that I am doing so,” Twyman said glacially. “You’re a fanatic, Mister Heim, that’s all. Even if it were true what you say … how do you propose to rescue anyone from a planet occupied and space-guarded? But it isn’t true. I’ve spoken to survivors whom the Aleriona brought here. You must have seen them yourself on 3V. They witnessed the bombardment.”

“Hm. You recall where they were from?”

“The Coeur d’Yvonne area. Everything else was wiped clean.”

“So the Aleriona say,” Heim retorted. “And doubtless the survivors believe it too. Any who didn’t would’ve been weeded out during interrogation. I say that Coeur d’Yvonne was the only place hit by a nuke. I say further that we can fight if we must, and win. A space war only; I’m not talking the nonsense about ‘attacking impregnable Alerion’ which your tame commentators keep putting into the mouths of us ‘extremists,’ and Earth is every bit as impregnable. I say further that if we move fast, with our full strength, we probably won’t have to fight. Alerion will crawfish. She isn’t strong enough to take us on … yet. I say further and finally that if we let down those people out there who’re trusting us, we’ll deserve everything that Alerion will eventually do to us.” He tamped his smoldering pipe. “That’s my word, Senator.”

Twyman said, trembling: “Then my word, Heim, is that we’ve outgrown your kind of sabertooth militarism and I’m not going to let us be dragged back to that level. If you’re blaze enough to quote what I’ve told you here in confidence, I’ll destroy you. You’ll be in the Welfare district, or correction, within a year.”

“Oh, no,” Heim said. “I keep my oaths. The public facts can speak for themselves. I need only point them out.”

“Go ahead, if you want to waste your money and reputation. You’ll be as big a laughingstock as the rest of the warhawk crowd.”

Taken aback, Heim grimaced. In the past weeks, after the news of New Europe, he had seen what mass media did to those who spoke as he was now speaking. Those who were influential, that is, and therefore worth tearing down. Ordinary unpolitical people didn’t matter. The pundits simply announced that World Opinion Demanded Peace. Having listened to a good many men, from engineers and physicists to spacehands and mechanics, voice their personal feelings, Heim doubted if world opinion was being correctly reported. But he couldn’t see any way to prove that.

Conduct a poll, maybe? No. At best, the result would frighten some professors, who would be quick to assert that it was based on faulty statistics, and a number of their students, who would organize parades to denounce Heim the Monster.

Propaganda? Politicking? A Paul Revere Society? … Heim shook his head, blindly, and slumped.

Twyman’s face softened. “I’m sorry about this, Gunnar,” he said. “I’m still your friend, you know. Regardless of where your next campaign donation goes. Call on me any time.” He hesitated, decided merely to add “Good-by,” and switched off.

Heim reached into his desk for a bottle he kept there. As he took it forth, his gaze crossed the model of Star Fox which his crew had given him when he retired. It was cast in steel, retrieved from that Aleriona battlewagon into which the lancer put an atomic torpedo at Achernar.

I wonder if the Aleriona make trophies of our wrecks.

Hm. Odd. I never thought about it before. We know so little of them. Heim put his feet on the desk and tilted the bottle to his lips. Why don’t I corner one of their delegation and ask?

And then he choked on his drink and spluttered; his feet thumped to the floor, and he never noticed. The thought had been too startling. Why not?

III

The ceiling glowed with the simulated light of a red dwarf sun, which lay like blood on leaves and vines and slowly writhing flowers. A bank of Terrestrial room instruments—phone, 3V, computer, vocascribe, infotrieve, service cubicle, environmental control board—stood in one corner of the jungle with a harsh incongruity. The silence was as deep as the purple shadows. Unmoving, Cynbe waited.

The decompression chamber finished its cycle and Gunnar Heim stepped out. Thin dry atmosphere raked his throat. Even so, the fragrances overwhelmed him. He could not tell which of them—sweet, acrid, pungent, musky—came from which of the plants growing from wall to wall, reaching to the ceiling and arching down again in a rush of steel-blue leaves, exploding in banks of tawny, crimson, black, and violet blossoms. The reduced gravity seemed to give a lightness to his head as well as his frame. Feathery turf felt like rubber underfoot The place was tropically warm; he sensed the infrared baking his skin.

He stopped and peered about. Gradually his eyes adjusted to the ember illumination. They were slower to see details of shapes so foreign to Earth.