A luxury aircar carried us across the base to the Space Command Tower. We found the admiral in a huge corner office that looked across a great field of silver-bright skip-ships. A big man with a bulldog chin, his bright red hair cut short, he was in shirt sleeves, his uniform jacket flung over the back of a chair behind a huge bare desk.
He stood up when the orderly brought me in. My heart thumping, I saluted.
“So you are Starman Kiff McCall?” He returned the salute, studied me with keen gray eyes, nodded abruptly. “You look fit for the job. Let’s sit.”
Breathing a little easier, but anxious to know what job, I followed him to chairs at a wide window that looked out west across the starport to snowcapped mountain summits.
“Have you done duty off the Earth?”
“No sir.”
I waited, sweating.
“No matter.” He shrugged again. “What do you know about Devil’s Star?”
“Very little, sir. I doubt that much is known by anybody. All contact was outlawed two centuries ago.”
“You’ll soon know more.” My mouth must have gaped; he laughed at me. “If you’re ready to go there?”
“I—” I had to catch my breath. “I’m ready.”
“Think before you jump.” He bent toward me, hard eyes narrowed to study me again. “This will be a highly confidential mission, with no official support or public reward. Your career and even your life may be in danger.”
“I’ve sworn an oath.” Feeling like a schoolboy, I put my hand on my heart. “My life is pledged to the Republic and the President.”
He smiled at the quiver in my voice.
“I trust you.” He spoke very gravely. “What I say is for your ears only. Here is the situation. The sanctions against contact with the planet Lucifer have been broken. As you may know, enemies of the Republic were once exiled there. Their descendants appear to have created an outlaw society. The mere rumor of a free society is a hazard to the state. The President has ordered the planet reclaimed as Terran territory. He is sending me there as the first governor.”
Muscles tightened in his jaw.
“It’s been a black hole. The convict transports didn’t all return. We never knew why, but those who got back called it hell. Before any landing is attempted, we’re sending an undercover agent to look the situation over and report what resistance we should expect. That’s your errand.”
I never returned to my library cubicle. Instead I spent a few hectic months in a class for interstellar intelligence officers, a disappointment to me. I’d hoped for training to face the hazards of the star frontiers, but Cleon I had annihilated the alien foes he found there. These future agents were destined for duty here closer to home.
“Worlds gone soft!” a black-mustached instructor shouted at us. “Rotten to the heart! Maybe loyal Terrans once, but turncoats now, corrupted by all that damned Free Space gibble-gabble. Your future duty is to hunt such traitors down and stop their venomous slander against the Starhawke Presidents.”
Admiral Gilliyar’s mission had not been revealed, yet my part in it gave me a thrill of secret pride. His staff invented a cover story for me. Based on my mother’s claims to presidential kinship, it named me the leader of an exposed Free Space plot to overthrow the President. In flight to escape arrest, I was to become a hunted fugitive, my whereabouts unknown.
On my last day at school, I was hustled out of class and escorted to an empty hangar at the skyport. There, equipped with an oxygen mask and a radio, I was nailed into a rough wooden box stenciled electronic sundries. The radio kept me informed while it was tilted, jarred and jolted, finally loaded into the cargo hold of
That was the ship of a suspected smuggler that had been captured, but released with a warning when the captain paid his excise taxes. And no doubt a bribe; I had learned that even the great Terran Republic is not without corruption.
Our first skip was a stomach-churning lurch. The radio went silent. Elated to be off the Earth and on my way, I got out of the box and hammered on a bulkhead. A startled spacehand let me out of the hold and took me to Bart Greenlaw, master and owner of the ship. A fit youthful man in a bright yellow skip suit, he interrupted my cover story.
“So you are Kiff McCall?” His keen eyes scanned me. “I trade with Free Spacers. The price on your head has them wondering about you and your conspiracy. They’d neverheard of you.”
“We try to keep our secrets,” I told him. “I left friends behind, friends I can’t betray.”
“I understand.” He studied me again, and finally smiled as if he believed me. “I know how my own Free Spacer friends feel about the Republic. Or the Terran Empire, they call it. Power corrupts, they say, until it finally rots itself. The Starhawkes hold too much power. They’ve held it too long.”
His gaze sharpened to study my reaction.
“They say Cleon III is sitting on a bomb, armed and ready to blow.”
I nodded, trying not to show too much emotion. Any connection between the Free Space activists and Devil’s Star was something I must report, but my own mission could have ended then and there if he had guessed the truth.
“One question, if I may ask.” His eyes narrowed. “If you’re an actual freedom fighter, why are you heading for a prison you’ll never escape?”
“We lost a battle.” I groped for anything he might accept. “I had to run while I could, but the war isn’t over. I want the whole picture. I’m fascinated with the little I know about Devil’s Star. I want to do a history of it. Smuggled out to civilization, it might make a difference.”
“Civilization?” His face set hard for an instant, but then he gave me a quizzical smile. “You ought to find us interesting.”
Seeming satisfied, he found a berth for me, and treated me like another member of his little crew. They all were busy, calculating skip congruencies and maneuvering for relaunch positions and relative velocities, but he let me sit with them at meals, where I could listen for anything Admiral Gilliyar might want to know.
In my berth that night, I dreamed the admiral had won his little war. I was with him on his triumphant return to Earth. A military band was blaring when we came off his flagship, and a goose-stepping squad from the Presidential Guard escorted us to the White Palace. Cleon III received us in the Diamond Room to praise the admiral for his heroic victory and make him the sole proprietor of the conquered planet.
As the dream went on, the beaming admiral presented me to Cleon EL Without my daring undercover work, he said, his expedition would have ended in disaster. The President thanked me for my heroic service to the Republic, and pinned a glittering Starhawke Medal of Honor on my chest.
I felt let down when I woke to find that moment of glory gone, yet my elation lingered. After all, I was safely on my way to Lucifer. Greenlaw seemed to trust me. Something like the dream might still come true.
Our flight took a week. The skips themselves are instant; outside our space-time bubble there is no space to cross or time to pass, but any long voyage requires a series of jumps from one point of congruence to another. On the major space lanes these are marked and charted, but contact points are hard to find and markers can drift. Some points are periodic. Some can vanish altogether. Skip navigation takes high skills and a rare grasp of the total cosmos.
I came to admire Greenlaw for his easy-seeming expertise as an extraspatial pilot, and to enjoy his company. A native of Devil’s Star, he loved his planet and liked to talk about its history and geography.
“There’s one big continent,” he said. “Split in half by a high ridge that runs north and south down the middle of it. That’s where we live, between two harsh frontiers, east and west of us. Monsoon rains keep the east half buried under jungle and forest. Dry downslope winds keep the west half hotter than any place on Earth. Both halves are deadly in a dozen ways, yet rich with resources we’ve learned to use.”
I asked about the government.
“We have none.” He grinned at my astonishment. “No laws. No money. No taxes. No cops or prisons. We
