The Star Fox

And those were not men or men’s devices bustling over its concrete. The airships bringing cargo had been designed by no Terrestrial engineer. The factories they served were windowless prolate domes, eerily graceful for all that they were hastily assembled prefabs. Conveyors, trucks, lifts were man-made, but the controls had been rebuilt for hands of another shape and minds trained to another concept of number. Barracks surrounded the field, hundreds of buildings reaching over the bills; from above, they looked like open-petaled bronze flowers. Missiles stood tall among them, waiting to pounce. Auxiliary spacecraft clustered in the open. One was an armed pursuer, whose snout reached as high as the cathedral cross.

“It must belong to a capital ship in planetary orbit,” Heim decided. “And if that’s die only such, the other warships must be out on patrol. Which is maybe worth knowing.”

“I do not see how you can use the information,” Navarre said. “A single spacecraft of the line gives total air superiority when there is nothing against it but flyers. And our flyers are not even military.”

“Still, it’s always helpful to see what you’re up against. Uh, you’re sure their whole power is concentrated here?”

“Yes, quite sure. This area has most of our industrial facilities. There are garrisons elsewhere, at certain mines and plants, as well as at observation posts. But our scouts have reported those are negligible in themselves.”

“So … I’d guess, then, knowing how much crowding Aleriona will tolerate—let me think—I’d estimate their number at around fifty thousand. Surely the military doesn’t amount to more than a fifth of that. They don’t need more defense. Upper-type workers—what we’d call managers, engineers, and so forth—are capable of fighting but aren’t trained for it. The lower-type majority have had combativeness bred out. So we’ve really only got ten thousand Aleriona to worry about. How many men could you field?”

“Easily a hundred thousand—who would be destroyed the moment they ventured out of the forests.”

“I know. A rifle isn’t much use when you face heavy ground and air weapons.” Heim grimaced.

The flyer touched concrete at the designated point and halted. Its escort remained hovering. Navarre stood up. “Sortons,” he said curtly, and led the way out the door. Twenty Aleriona of the warrior class—lean, broad of chest, hair tight-braided under the conical helmets, faces handsome rather than beautiful, and expressionless—waited in file. The long sunrays turned their scaly garments almost incandescent. They did not draw the crooked swords at their belts or point their guns at the newcomers; they might have been statues. Their officer stepped forward, making the droop-tailed bow with fingertips lightly touching that signified respect. He was taller than his followers, though still below average human height.

“Well are you come,” he sang in fairly good French. “Wish you rest or refreshment?”

“No, thank you,” Navarre said, slowly so that the alien could follow his dialect. Against the fluid motion that confronted him, his stiffness looked merely lumpy. “We are prepared to commence discussions at once.”

“Yet first ought you be shown your quarters. Nigh to the high masters of the Garden of War is prepared a place as best we might.” The officer trilled an order. Several low-class workers appeared. They did not conform to Earth’s picture of Aleriona—their black-clad bodies were too heavy, features too coarse, hair too short, fur too dull, and there was nothing about them of that inborn unconscious arrogance which marked the leader breeds. Yet they were not servile, nor were they stupid. A million years of history, its only real change the glacial movement toward an ever more unified society, had fitted then- very genes for this part. If the officer was a panther and his soldiers watchdogs, these were mettlesome horses.

In his role as aide, Vadász showed them the party’s baggage. They fetched it out, the officer whistled a note, the troopers fell in around the humans and started off across the field. There was no marching; but the bodies rippled together like parts of one organism. Aurore struck the contact lenses which protected them from its light and turned their eyes to rubies.