The Star Fox

“A poor site for a nudist colony,” Vadasz said. “If the hydrogen, helium, and nitrogen don’t choke you, or the methane and ammonia poison you, the UV will crisp you like a steak.”

“Birr. When it’s so beautiful, too.” Jocelyn pressed her nose against the port by her seat and stared downward.

They were high now, with Orling dropping behind at supersonic speed. The island reared Gibraltar-like from an indigo sea, beaches obsidian black, land turned a thousand subtle shades of red by its forest. There was a final glimpse of a radar, skeletal at the spaceport, then that scar was lost to view and one saw only a great peace brooding under westward cliffs of cumulus. On the edge of vision, kilometers away, a flock of Staurni winged in a V on an unknown errand.

As if to escape some thought, Jocelyn pointed at them and said, “Pardon me if I’m dumb, but how can they fly? I mean, aren’t hydrogen breathers supposed to have less active metabolisms than oxygen breathers? And is the air pressure enough to support them against nearly twice Terrestrial gravity?”

“They have bird-type bones,” Koumanoudes explained.

“As for the energy consideration,” Heim added, “it’s true hydrogen gives less energy per mole than oxygen, reacting with carbon compounds. But there are an awful lot of hydrogen molecules in a lungful, here. Besides, the enzyme systems are efficient. And—well, look. Staurnian plants photo-synthesize water and methane to get free hydrogen and carbohydrates. Animals reverse the process. Only with that flood of ultraviolet on them, the plants build compounds more energy-rich than anything on Earth.”

“I see, I suppose.” She relapsed into her brown study.

The island fell below the wide horizon. They flew over wine darkness, streaked with foam, until the mainland hove into sight. There mountains climbed and climbed, red with wilderness at the foot, gray and ruggedly shadowed above, snowpeaked at the top. Sunlight glinted off a distant metallic speck. Heim tuned his and Jocelyn’s viewport to full magnification. The speck became a flyer, of gaunt unhuman design, patrolling above a cluster of fused-stone towers that clung to a precipice a kilometer over the surf. “The Perch of Rademir,” he said. “Better jog a little farther south, Vie. I’m told he’s somewhat peeved at us, and he just might get an impulse to attack.”

Bragdon adjusted the autopilot. “Why?”

“He wanted to sell us warheads, when Charlie Wong and I arrived to make arrangements,” Koumanoudes said. “But the Roost of Kragan offered us a better price.”

Bragdon shook his head. “I really don’t understand this culture,” he said. “Anarchy and atomic power. They can’t go together.”

“What?” Vadász tautened in his seat. “There is quite a literature on Staurn,” he said very slowly. “Have you not even read it?”

“Oh, sure, sure,” Bragdon answered in haste. “But it’s a jumble. Nothing scientific. My own field work was mainly on Isis.”

“We aren’t the best-prepared expedition that ever went out,” Jocelyn added. “Quite hurriedly organized, in fact. But with all the trouble in this sector, the Research Authority decided it was urgent to get some solid information on the space-traveling societies hereabouts.”

“The Staurni aren’t that, exactly,” Heim said. “They have the capability, but use it only for planetary defense purposes. They’ll trade with visitors, but aren’t interested in looking for business themselves.”

“They must once—Say.” Bragdon turned in his seat to face the others. “We’ve time to kill. Why don’t you give us your version of the situation here? Even when I’ve read it before, it’s helpful to have the material put in different words.”

Vadász narrowed his eyes and remained silent. Heim was chiefly conscious of Jocelyn’s glove resting on his. He thought that somehow she was pleading with him. To keep away from the thing that divided them? He leaned back, easing the weight of his air equipment onto the rest bracket, and said:

“I’m no expert. But as I understand it, the Staurni are a rare thing, a strictly carnivorous intelligent race. Normally carnivores specialize in fighting ability rather than brains, you know. I once talked with a buck who’d visited here and poked around a little. He said he’d noticed fossil outcrops that suggested this continent was invaded long ago by a bigger, related species. Maybe the ancestral Staurni had to develop intelligence to fight back. I dunno. However it happened, you’ve got a race with high-powered killer instincts and not gregarious. The basic social unit is, uh, a sort of family. A big family, with a system of companionate marriage so complicated that no human has ever figured it out, plus retainers with their own females and cubs; but still, a patriarchal household dominated by one big, tough male.” The flyer rocked in a gust. Heim peered out. At their present speed, they were already crossing the spine of the mountains. In the west he saw foothills, tumbling off to the red and tawny plain of the Uneasy Lands.