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

“A Venusian shot my partner. You’ll find his face and his clothes in Lundgard’s things. I’d know that face in the middle of the sun.”

She hung for a long while, not moving. Bo couldn’t see her. His eyes were nailed to the asteroid, keeping the ship’s nose pointed at it.

“Is that true, Einar?” she asked finally.

“No,” he said. “Of course not. I do have Venusian clothes and a mask, but⁠—”

“Then why are you keeping me covered too?”

Lundgard didn’t answer at once. The only noise was the murmur of machinery and the dense breathing of three pairs of lungs. Then his laugh jarred forth.

“All right,” he said. “I hadn’t meant it to come yet, or to come this way, but all right.”

“Why did you kill Johnny?” Tears stung Bo’s eyes. “He never hurt you.”

“It was necessary.” Lundgard’s mouth twitched. “But you see, we knew you were going to Achilles to pick up Valeria and her data. We needed to get a man aboard your ship, to take over when her orbit brought her close to our asteroid base. You’ve forced my hand⁠—I wasn’t going to capture you for days yet. I sabotaged the Drake’s fuel tanks to get myself stranded there, and shot your friend to get his berth. I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Horror rode Valeria’s voice.

“I’m a Humanist. I’ve never made a secret of that. What our secret is, is that some of us aren’t content just to talk revolution. We want to give this rotten, over-mechanized society the shove that will bring on its end. We’ve built up a small force, not much as yet, not enough to accomplish anything lasting. But if we had a solar power beam it would make a big difference. It could be adapted to direct military uses, as well as supplying energy to our machines. A lens effect, a concentration of solar radiation strong enough to burn. Well, it seems worth trying.”

“And what do you intend for us?”

“You’ll have to be kept prisoners for a while, of course,” said Lundgard. “It won’t be onerous. We aren’t beasts.”

“No,” said Bo. “Just murderers.”

“Save the dramatics,” snapped Lundgard. “I have the gun. Get away from those controls.”

Bo shook his head. There was a wild hammering in his breast, but his voice surprised him with steadiness: “No. I’ve got the upper hand. I can kill you if you move. Yell if he tries anything, Valeria.”

Lundgard’s eyes challenged her. “Do you want to die?” he asked.

Her head lifted. “No,” she said, “but I’m not afraid to. Go ahead if you must, Bo. It’s all right.”

Bo felt cold. He knew he wouldn’t. He was bluffing. In the final showdown he could not crash her. He had seen too many withered space drained mummies in his time. But maybe Lundgard didn’t realize that.

“Give up,” he said. “You can’t gain a damn thing. I’m not going to see a billion people burned alive just to save our necks. Make a bargain for your life.”

“No,” said Lundgard with a curious gentleness. “I have my own brand of honor. I’m not going to surrender to you. You can’t sit there forever.”

Impasse. The ship floated through eternal silence while they waited.

“All right,” said Bo. “I’ll fight you for the power beam.”

“How’s that?”

“I can throw this ship into orbit around the asteroid. We can go down there and settle the thing between us. The winner can jump up here again with the help of a jet of tanked air. The lump hasn’t got much gravity.”

Lundgard hesitated. “And how do I know you’ll keep your end of the bargain?” he asked. “You could let me go through the airlock, then close it and blast off.”

Bo had had some such thought, but he might have known it wouldn’t work. “What do you suggest?” he countered, never taking his eyes off the planetoid. “Remember, I don’t trust you either.”

Lundgard laughed suddenly, a hard yelping bark. “I know! Valeria, go aft and remove all the control-rod links and spares. Bring them back here. I’ll go out first, taking half of them with me, and Bo can follow with the other half. He’ll have to.”

“I⁠—no! I won’t,” she whispered. “I can’t let you⁠—”

“Go ahead and do it,” said Bo. He felt a sudden vast weariness. “It’s the only way we can break this deadlock.”

She wept as she went toward the engine room.

Lundgard’s thought was good. Without linked control-rods, the converter couldn’t operate five minutes, it would flare up and melt itself and kill everyone aboard in a flood of radiation. Whoever won the duel could quickly reinstall the necessary parts.

There was a waiting silence. At last Lundgard said, almost abstractedly: “Holmgang. Do you know what that means, Bo?”

“No.”

“You ought to. It was a custom of our ancestors back in the early Middle Ages⁠—the Viking time. Two men would go off to a little island, a holm, to settle their differences; one would come back. I never thought it could happen out here.” He chuckled bleakly. “Valkyries in spacesuits?”

The girl came back with the links tied in two bundles. Lundgard counted them and nodded. “All right.” He seemed strangely calm, an easy assurance lay over him like armor. Bo’s fear was cold in his belly, and Valeria wept still with a helpless horror.

The pilot used a safe two minutes of low blast to edge up to the asteroid. “I’ll go into the airlock and put on my spacesuit,” said Lundgard. “Then I’ll jump down and you can put the ship in orbit. Don’t try anything while I’m changing, because I’ll keep this needler handy.”

“It won’t work against a spacesuit,” said Bo.

Lundgard laughed. “I know,” he said. He kissed his hand to Valeria and backed into the lock chamber. The outer valve closed behind him.

“Bo!” Valeria grabbed the pilot by the shoulders, and he looked around into her face. “You can’t go out there, I won’t let you, I⁠—”

“If I don’t,” he said tonelessly, “we’ll orbit around here till we starve.”

“But you could be killed!”

“I hope not. For your