“Mind your manners, boy,” Krieg said, “or I’ll cut out your liver for Mira and her kinder.”
“Anya,” Duncan said. “I’ll conn her for a time. You get some sleep. Damon, collect the monkeys in the Monkey House.” The tiny cyborgs tended to become confused when Glory was in low orbit, unable to decide which was up, which down. “And Dietr, as soon as we make orbit, start the mapping cameras. Colonists are always in need of new maps.” Ordinarily this would have been the task for either Jean Marq or Han Soo. But Dietr was capable and it would keep him occupied while
Glory
was at Voerster.
Overhead, the planet turned. Now under a swirling patchwork of cloud, the single continent showed green in the heartland, gray-brown in the high plains. The ice caps were enormous, reaching from the poles to latitude 49 degrees. Duncan was reminded of Thalassa. But his home-world was a planet of rock and lichen and sea. On Voerster there were grass and growing things. Thalassa was winter, Duncan thought. Voerster was early spring or late autumn.
Glory’s
sailing directions, available through the computer drogue, informed Duncan that though Voerster was eleven-twelfths ocean, the land received little rain.
He could see a great cyclonic storm building in the empty ocean of the water hemisphere. By the time it reached the continent of Voerster, it would soar into the stratosphere in great upwellings along the Shieldwall of the Planetia, or it would blow itself out on the vast, level Grassersee.
The southern ice cap was reflecting the light of Luyten 726. But
Glory
informed Duncan that the surface temperature there was 210 degrees Kelvin--62 degrees below zero Centigrade. Survivable, but only just.
Snow was falling on the eastern edge of the stratospheric Planetia where the Blue Glacier joined the Northern Ice. Not an easy world to live on, Duncan thought. But beautiful. Duncan Kr had been shipfast for two dozen months of uptime. The sight of Voerster made him restless and anxious to feel ground beneath his feet again.
In the hold the brain of Han Soo, still and empty at last, said nothing.
The old refractor was a fine instrument. It had been centuries out-of-date on Earth when it had been built as a rich man’s plaything. And it had been loaded on
Milagro
because the then-selected astronomer had held a fixation about the durability and usefulness of refractors in planetary work. Now, Osbertus thought with wry amusement, it was state-of-the-art on Voerster. For broad field observation it had no equal on Voerster. Osbertus had focussed it so that Eliana could see the dust of tiny diamonds that was the stuff of the Galactic lens’ edge. In the field as well shone Smuts, smallest of the Six Giants. And--like a fragile butterfly, small, yet the brightest object in the field-- the Goldenwing
Gloria Coelis
.
Eliana drew in a startled breath. She had heard tales of the Goldenwings all her life, had seen numberless artists’ renderings, but this was something very different from all that. No living artist had ever seen a Goldenwing until
Nepenthe
had materialized without warning in orbit around Voerster. So unexpectedly had the vessel arrived, and so swiftly did it depart that no artist had had the opportunity to study it through the telescope atop the Sternberg. On Voerster there was no means of capturing and preserving an image in color. Photography was an art limited to the observatory’s glass-and-silver-nitrate, black-and-white technology. Astronomer-Select Kloster had found it impossible to produce more than a half dozen badly blurred images as he tried desperately to adjust the telescope to the low orbit
Nepenthe
had assumed to put Clavius downworid.
The telescope’s rather clumsy mounting made observing anything in such an orbit difficult. The Astronomer-Select was of the private opinion that close-orbit observing techniques had never been developed by his predecessors because Voerster lacked a proper satellite. Osbertus had studied the Oral Histories of the First Landers. They had remarkable things to say about the “Moon” circling the homeworld. It was a heavenly body laden with an enormous baggage of legend: the home of the Hunt Goddess, the origin of female menses, the subject of an infinite number of verses, songs, and apothegms worthy of Black Clavius:
“Now Cynthia, nam’d fair regent of the night--” “Fear may force a man to cast before the Moon--” “By the tight of the silvery Moon--” “Moon over Miami--” “That gentle Moon, the lesser light, the Lover’s leap, the Swain’s delight--”
Clearly, without such a satellite, both love and astronomy languished. Even the dour Board of Censors acknowledged the
nuda veritas
that space travel began in the year Anno Domini 1969 with a flight from Earth to the Moon. Without a moon the first leap into space would never have happened and half mankind’s lovers would have died celibate.
Now nearing Voerster, the approaching Goldenwing displayed itself as an object so intricate and brilliant that it resembled an example of the jeweler’s art displayed on black velvet.
Eliana Ehrengraf had not come to Sternberg with her escort of two female Trekkerpolizei and a dour Wache captain just to peer through the telescope. She arrived at the observatory in an aristocratic fury--a mood that had darkened as her suspicions grew. She was at Sternberg for a purpose, and the purpose was not sightseeing.
But the object in the field of the telescope commanded her attention. For a few moments she appeared to have forgotten the uniformed trio standing uncomfortably with Buele on the floor of the observatory dome below the observing scaffold.
The distant Goldenwing was the most beautiful object she had ever seen. It was more than a thing. That it was made by people like herself made it even more remarkable. There in the sky was a visible symbol of the accomplishments of her species, one willing to challenge the grandeur of heaven.
The vision tempered her anger and made her wish that Broni were here to share the wonder of it.
“Isn’t it fine, Cousin?” She heard the voice of Osbertus Kloster in her ear. He had climbed the scaffolding to the eyepiece and was puffing with the effort. As it was with Broni, though to a lesser degree, strong emotions in Eliana Ehrengraf affected those nearby. Customarily she maintained a reserved stillness about her for propriety’s sake, but the sight of
Glory
in the telescope affected her disciplined emotional control.
“More than fine, Osbertus,” she murmured.
“They’ve passed Wallenberg and are inbound through the Gap.” Osbertus was tempted to boast to his beautiful cousin, the Voertrekkerschatz, that this time he had established contact with the syndics aboard, and that this time the Goldenwing carried cargo for Voerster. It would not be, he thought, like the humiliating experience of nineteen years ago with
Nepenthe
. “They estimate arriving in six days. Six, mynheera. Think of it.”
Reluctantly, Eliana moved away from the eyepiece. “But I didn’t come here to stargaze, Cousin. I came to ask your help.”
Osbertus Kloster, distressed both by Eliana’s tightly reined demeanor and by the police escort that appeared to provoke it, was the last man on Voerster wishing to become involved in a family quarrel--most particularly when the family was that of The Voerster and Voertrekker-Praesident. Cousin Ian was not a man to be trifled with. But for Eliana Ehrengraf, Osbertus Kloster would do anything.
Eliana moved away from the telescope eyepiece. “We must speak about Clavius,” she said in a low voice. “Privately. Without my husband’s snoops.”
“Well, let us see if they have any imagination,” Osbertus said. “Maybe heaven can immobilize them.” He leaned over the railing of the observing scaffold. “Buele-- Bring the police ladies and the Wachekapitan up here. I am sure they would enjoy seeing the Goldenwing.”
“Yes, Brother.” The boy’s reedy voice seemed to rise from the darkness below.
“Brother?” Eliana regarded the old man quizzically.
“Yes, well--” Osbertus flushed and said, “Some time ago he asked me to explain why Black Clavius so resembled our kaffirs on Voerster when he came from the stars. I told him that all men are brothers. He asked me if that included Voertrekkers, and I said yes, that it did. Then he asked:’Mynheeren, as well?’ What could I say? I replied yes, that it included black and white, mynheeren, and
lumpen
. From that time on he has called me ’Brother.’ He has a very literal mind, mynheera. Does it offend you?”
“Of course not, Osbertus. You believe what you told him, don’t you?”
“I hope I do, mynheera.”
‘Then there is nothing to resent.”
It was the answer Osbertus expected from Eliana Ehrengraf. The Ehrengraf humanitarianism was part of Voerster’s history. It had got them into trouble during the Kaffir Rebellion, as a surfeit of humanitarianism and courage often did.
As the police people and Buele carefully climbed the badly illuminated ladder to the observing platform, Eliana returned to the telescope and touched the polished brass of the eyepiece tube with her fingertips. It was an almost religious gesture. She lowered her face and looked again. Osbertus could see the golden light from the
Glory
shining out of the tube and into Eliana’s eye.
“It has moved,” she said.
“Indeed it has,” Osbertus said. “According to the wireless messages we have been receiving,
Glory
is still moving at nearly two tenths of a percent of the speed of light.”
“How fast is that?”
“If we had a dirigible that could fly so fast, it could circumnavigate Voerster in three minutes, mynheera.”
“Surely that’s ridiculous, Mynheer Osbertus,” the Wache captain said, breathing heavily. Dietegen Kreiske was a man with a pedestrian mind--what the Voertrekker-Praesident called “a bean counter.” Perfect for his present task, Osbertus Kloster thought: To spy on Eliana Ehrengraf and remain unmoved by her elegance and beauty.
“Look and wonder,” Osbertus said loftily. “Then tell me what is ridiculous and what is possible, Kapitan Kreiske.”
The two policewomen were typical
lumpen
females, not of the Wache, thick-bodied and plain of feature with straw-blonde hair and the blue porcelain eyes of the true Voertrekker underclass. Buele followed them up the ladder and joined the group on the scaffold.
Osbertus said, “It is crowded up here. We will go down, mynheera. Buele, see to it that the ladies and the captain get a fine view.”
The police contingent’s attention focussed on the telescope. None objected to the retreat of Eliana and the Astronomer-Select. Osbertus had a puckish impulse to remove the ladder and leave them stranded ten meters above the observatory floor, but he denied himself.
Eliana followed Osbertus to an open balcony overlooking the steep, regular slopes of the Sternberg. The night was so clear and the stars so bright that the patterns of the Nachtebrise in the Sea of Grass were visible. From the paddock behind Osbertus’ living quarters and in front of the barracoon where the domestic kaffirs lived, they could hear the squabbling of the ferden--the Voersterian cognate for meat animals. The beasts had to be kept segregated by sex since they were always in estrus and a pregnancy meant the certain and untimely loss of a breeder.
Eliana listened and said, “We live in a strange, unfinished world, Cousin Osbertus. Are there necrogenes on Earth, I wonder?”
“There were none when the First Landers departed. At least none that I know of. There were egg-layers and placenta! mammals, of course, and all sorts of other untidy ways of propagating, but none quite so brutal as the way of Voerster.”
Eliana said, “The beasts of Voerster die so that their young can live. I live and my children have died.”
Osbertus impulsively took her hand. “Do not blame yourself, Cousin. And there is Broni,” he said.
“For how long?” Eliana said desperately. “Tell me how long.”
Far out in the Sea of Grass a hunting cheet roared at the stars. On nights this bright with starlight, hunting was poor on the open savannah. Overhead the constellations performed their slow, majestic dance: The Ploughman followed the Maiden and the Serpent followed the Hanged Man. There was an eotemporal grandeur to the nocturnal rotation of the heavens, Eliana thought. What were they like, those people aboard that glorious winged thing approaching her world?
Had they mortal needs and sympathies? Were they like Black Clavius? Or were they beings of power, secretive and evolved beyond humanity?
Eliana. looked back into the observatory. Her dogged escorts were still on the viewing scaffold with Buele. She shivered with resurgent anger. “Ever since he arrested Clavius, I have had those three or others like them with me night and day. What is he thinking of?”
“Perhaps he is asking the question: ’What are
you
thinking of?’“ Osbertus said.
“I intend to take Broni out of Voertrekkerhoem.”
“She is very ill, mynheera,” Osbertus said fearfully. He suspected what would come next, or if not next, then soon.
“Do you know Einsamberg? The house in the Grimsel mountains I had from my godfather of Ehrengraf-Rand Kraal?”
“No, Cousin. I did not know you still owned property.” It was customary on Voerster for an heiress to deed all her property to her husband When she married. Only lands that were part of a First Lander’s Portion were exempt from the Man Laws. A domicile protected by a First Arriver’s deed was sacroscanct. It could not even be entered by the Trekkerpolizei. The kraal at Einsamberg must have been so protected.
Osbertus began to get an uneasy feeling in the pit of his ample belly. “I heard a rumor that Black Clavius is often seen in Cousin Ian’s company,” he said.
“He has been at Voertrekkerhoem for a month,” Eliana said. “I have not been allowed to see him. But Tiegen Roark tells me that Clavius has seen Broni and that his visit cheered her. She was very depressed when Oberst Transkei took the Starman away. They had him confined south of the Isthmus, you know.”
Osbertus shivered and glanced back into the darkened observatory. The police visitors were laboriously clambering down the ladder.