Short Fiction - Poul Anderson (books to read for self improvement .TXT) 📗

Carse glimpsed him, turned, the blaster half swung about⁠ ⁠… and the murderous fighting machine which was Dougald Anson had reached him. Carse saw the sword shrieking against his face; it was the last thing he ever saw.⁠ ⁠…

Anse lurched back against the control panel. “Turn it off!” yelled Janazik. “Throw that big switch there!”

Mechanically, the human obeyed, and there was silence again, a deep ringing silence in which they floated free. It felt like an endless falling.

Falling, falling⁠—Anse looked numbly down at his bloody sword. Falling, falling, falling⁠—but that couldn’t be right, he thought dully. He had already fallen. He had killed Ellen’s brother.

“And I love her,” he whispered.

Janazik drifted over, slowly in the silent room. His eyes were a deep gold, searching now. If Ellen won’t have him, he and I will go out together, out to the stars and the great new frontier. But if she will, I’ll have to go alone, I’ll always be alone⁠—

Unless she would come too. She’s a good kid.⁠ ⁠… I’d like to have her along. Maybe take a mate of my own too.⁠ ⁠… But that can never be, now. She won’t come near her brother’s slayer.

“You might not have had to kill him,” said Janazik. “Maybe you could have disarmed him.”

“Not before he got one of us⁠—probably you,” said Anse tonelessly. “Anyway, he needed killing. He shot Alonzo.”

He added, after a moment: “A man has to stand by his comrades.”

Janazik nodded, very slowly. “Give me your sword,” he said.

“Eh?” Anse looked at him. The blue eyes were unseeing, blind with pain, but he handed over the red weapon. Janazik slipped his own glaive into the human’s fingers.

Then he laid a hand on Anse’s shoulder and smiled at him, and then looked away.

We Khazaki don’t know love. There is comradeship, deeper than any Earthling knows. When it happens between male and female, they are mates. When it is between male and male, they are blood-brothers. And a man must stand by his comrades.

Ellen came in, pulling her way along the walls by the handholds, and Anse looked at her without saying a word, just looking.

“What happened?” she said. “What is the⁠—Oh!”

Carse’s body floated in midair, turning over and over in air currents like a drowned man in the sea.

“Carse⁠—Carse⁠—”

Ellen pushed from the wall, over to the dead man. She looked at his still face, and stroked his blood-matted hair, and smiled through a mist of tears.

“You were always good to me, Carse,” she whispered. “You were⁠ ⁠… goodnight, brother. Goodnight.”

Then turning to Anse and Janazik, with something cold and terrible in her voice: “Who killed him?”

Anse looked at her, dumbly.

“I did,” said Janazik.

He held forth the dripping sword. “He stowed away⁠—was going to take over the ship. Alonzo threw him off balance by turning the rockets back on. He killed Alonzo. Then I killed him. He needed it. He was a traitor and a murderer, Ellen.”

“He was my brother,” she whispered. And suddenly she was sobbing in Anse’s arms, great racking sobs that seemed to tear her slender body apart.

But she’d get over it.

Anse looked at Janazik over her shoulder, and while he ruffled her shining hair his eyes locked with the Khazaki’s. This is the end. Once we land, we can never see each other, not ever again. And we were comrades in the old days.⁠ ⁠…

Farewell, my brother.

When the star ship landed outside Krakenau’s surrendered citadel, it was still raining a little. Janazik looked out at the wet gray world and shivered. Then, wordlessly, he stepped from the airlock and walked slowly down the hill toward the sea. He did not look back, and Anse did not look after him.

Tiger by the Tail I

Captain Flandry opened his eyes and saw a metal ceiling. Simultaneously, he grew aware of the thrum and quiver which meant he was aboard a spaceship running on ultra-drive.

He sat up with a violence that sent the dregs of alcohol swirling through his head. He’d gone to sleep in a room somewhere in the stews of Catawrayannis, with no prospect or intention of leaving the city for an indefinite time⁠—let alone the planet! Now⁠—

The chilling realization came that he was not aboard a human ship. Humanoid, yes, from the size and design of things, but no vessel ever built within the borders of the Empire, and no foreign make that he knew of.

Even from looking at this one small cabin, he could tell. There were bunks, into one of which he had fitted pretty well, but the sheets and blankets weren’t of plastic weave. They seemed⁠—he looked more closely⁠—the sheets seemed to be of some vegetable fiber, the blankets of long bluish-gray hair. There were a couple of chairs and a table in the middle of the room, wooden, and they must have seen better days for they were elaborately hand-carved, and in an intricate interwoven design new to Flandry⁠—and planetary art-forms were a hobby of his. The way and manner in which the metal plating had been laid was another indication, and⁠—

He sat down again, buried his whirling head in his hands, and tried to think. There was a thumping in his head and a vile taste in his mouth which liquor didn’t ordinarily leave⁠—at least not the stuff he’d been drinking⁠—and now that he remembered, he’d gotten sleepy much earlier than one would have expected when the girl was so good-looking⁠—

Drugged⁠—oh, no! Tell me I’m not as stupid as a stereofilm hero! Anything but that!

But who’d have thought it, who’d have looked for it? Certainly the people and beings on whom he’d been trying to get a lead would never try anything like that. Besides, none of them had been around, he was sure of it. He’d simply been out building part of the elaborate structure of demimonde acquaintances and information which would eventually, by exceedingly indirect routes, lead him to those he was seeking. He’d simply been out having a good time⁠—quite a good time, in fact⁠—and⁠—

And now someone from outside