The Horse Barbarians

3

Muffled clanking sounded in the airlock as the transfer-station mechanics fastened the flexible tubeway to the spacer’s hull. The intercom buzzed as someone plugged into the hull jack outside.

“Transfer Station 70 Ophiuchi to Pugnacious. You are sealed to tubeway, which is now pressurized to ship standard. You may open your outer port.”

“Stand by for opening,” Jason said, and turned the key in the override switch that permitted the outer port to be open at the same time as the inner one.

“Good to be back on dry land,” one of the ferry crewmen said as they came into the lock, and the others laughed uproariously, as though he had said something exceedingly funny. All of them, that is, except the pilot, who scowled at the opening port, his broken arm sticking out stiffly before him in its cast. None of them mentioned the arm or looked in his direction, but he knew why they were laughing.

Jason did not feel sorry for the pilot. Meta always gave fair warning to the men who made passes at her. Perhaps, in the romantically dim light of the bridge, he had not believed her. So she had broken his arm. Tough. Jason kept his face impassive as the man passed by him and out into the tubeway. This was constructed of transparent plastic, an undulating umbilical cord that connected the spacer to the transfer station, the massive, light-sprinkled bulk that loomed above them. Two other tubeways were visible, like theirs, connecting ships to this way station in space, balanced in a null-g orbit between the suns that made up the two star system. The smaller companion, 70 Ophiuchi B, was just rising behind the station, a tiny disk over a billion miles distant.

“We’ve got a parcel here for the Pugnacious,” a clerk said, floating out of the mouth 0f the tubeway. “A transhipment waiting your arrival.” He extended a receipt book. ‘Want to sign for it?”

Jason scrawled his name, then moved aside as two freight handlers maneuvered the bulky case down the tube and through the lock. He was trying to work a pinch bar under the metal sealing straps when Meta came up.

“What is that?” she asked, twisting the bar from his hands with an easy motion and jamming it deep under the strap. She heaved once and there was the sharp twang of fractured metal.

“You’ll make some man a fine husband,” Jason told her, dusting off his fingers. “I bet you can’t do the other two that easily.” She bent to the task. ‘This is a tool, something that we are going to need very much if we are going into the planet-busting business. I wish I had had one when I first came to Pyrrus, it might have saved a good number of lives.”

Meta threw back the cover and looked at the wheeled ovoid form. “What is it a bomb?” she asked.

“Not on your life. This is something much more important.” He tilted up the crate so that the object rolled out onto the floor.

It was an almost featureless, shiny metal egg that stood a good meter

high with its small end up. Six rubber-tired wheels, three to a side, held it clear of the floor, and the top was crowned by a transparent-lidded control panel. Jason reached down and flipped up the lid, then punched a button marked on and the panel lights glowed.

“What are you?” he said.

“This is a library,” a hollow, metallic voice answered.

“Of what possible use is that?” Meta said, turning to leave.

“I’ll tell you,” Jason said, putting out his hand to stop her, ready to move back quickly if she tried any arm-busting tricks. “This device is our intelligence, in the military sense, not the IQ. Have you forgotten what we had to go through to find out anything at all about your planet’s history? We needed facts to work from and we had none at all. Well, we have some now.” He patted the library’s sleek side.

“What could this little toy possibly know that could help us?”

“This little toy, as you so quaintly put it, costs over 982 thousand credits, plus shipping charges.”

She was shocked. “Why you could outfit an army for that much. Weapons, ammunition…”

“I thought that would impress you. And will you please get it through your exceedingly lovely blond head that armies aren’t the solution to every problem. We are going to bang up against a new culture soon, on a new planet, and we want to open a mine in the right place. Your army will tell us nothing about mineralogy or anthropology or ecology or exobiology—”

“You are making those words up.”

“Don’t you just wish I were! I don’t think you quite realize how much of a library is stuffed into this creature’s metal carcass. Library,” he said, pointing to it dramatically, “tell us about yourself.”

“This is a model 427-1587, Mark IX, improved, with photodigital laser-based recorder memory and integrated circuit technology—”

“Stop!” Jason ordered. “Library, you will have to do better than that. Can’t you describe yourself in simple newsfax language?”

“Well, hello there,” the library chortled. “I’ll bet you never saw a Mark IX before, the ultimate in library luxury—”

“We’ve hit the sales talk button, but at least we can understand it.”

“And the very newest example of what the guys who built this machine like to call ‘integrated circuit technology.’ Well, friends, you don’t need a galactic degree to understand that the Mark IX is something new in the universe. That ‘integrated so-and-so’ double-talk just means that this is a thinking machine that can’t be beat. But everyone needs something to think about as well as to think with, and just like the memory in your head, the Mark IX has a memory all its own. A memory that

contains the entire library at the University of Haribay, holding more books than you could count in a lifetime. These books have been broken down into words and the words have been broken down into bits, and the bits have been recorded on little chips of silicon inside the Mark IX’s brain. That memory part of the brain is no bigger than a man’s clenched fist a small man’s fist because there are over 545 million bits to every ten square millimeters. You don’t even have to know what a bit is to know that that is impressive. All of history, science and philosophy are in this brain. Linguistics, too. If you want to know the word for ‘cheese’ in the basic galactic languages, in the order of the number of speakers, it is this…”

As the high-speed roar of syllables poured out Jason turned to Meta and found she was gone.

“It can do other things besides translate ‘cheese,” he said, pressing the off button. “Just wait and see.”

The Pyrrans were happy enough to vegetate, to doze and yawn, like tigers with full stomachs, during the trip to Felicity. Only Jason felt the urge to use the time efficiently. He searched all the cross-references in the library for information about the planet and the solar system it belonged to, and was drawn from his studies only by Meta’s passionate, yet implacable, grasp. She felt that there were far more interesting ways to pass the long hours, and Jason, once he had been severed from his labors, enthusiastically agreed with her.

One ship-day before they were scheduled to drop from jump-space into the Felicity system. Jason called a general meeting in the dining room.

“This is where we are going,” he said, tapping a large diagram hung on the wall. There was absolute silence and ioo percent attention, for a military-style briefing was meat and drink to the Pyrrans.

“The planet is called ‘Felicity,’ the fifth planet of a nameless class-F star. This is a white star with about twice the luminosity of Pyrrus’s own Ga sun and it puts out a lot more ultraviolet. You can look forward to getting nice suntans. The planet has nine-tenths of its surface covered by water, with a few chains of volcanic islands and only one land mass big enough to be called a continent. This one. As you can see, it looks like a flattened-out dagger, point downward, divided roughly in the middle by the guard. The line here, represented by the guard, is an immense geological fault that cuts across the continent from one side to the other, an unbroken cliff that is three to ten kilometers high across the entire land mass. This cliff and the range of mountains behind it have had a drastic effect on the continental weather. The planet is far hotter than most other habitable ones, the temperature at the equator is dose to the boiling point of water, and only this continent’s location right up near the northern pole makes life bearable. Moist, warm air sweeps north and hits the escarpment and the mountains, where it condenses as rain on the southern slopes. A number of large rivers run south from the mountains and signs of agriculture and settlements were seen here, but were of no interest to the John Company men. The magnetometers and gravitometers didn’t twitch a needle. But up here” — he tapped the northern half of the continent, the “handle” of the dagger — “up here the detectors went wild. The mountain building that pushed the northern half up so high, causing this continent-splitting range in the middle, stirred up the heavy metal deposits. Here is where the mines will have to be, in the middle of the most desolate piece of landscape I have ever heard about. There is little or no water, the mountain range stops most of it, and what does get past the mountains usually falls as snow on this giant plateau. It is frigid, high, dry, and deadly, and it never changes. Felicity has almost no axial tilt to speak of, so the seasonal changes are so slight they can scarcely be noticed. The weather in any spot remains the same all of the time. To finish off this highly attractive picture of the ideal settlement site, there are men who live up here who are as deadly, or deadlier, than any life forms you ever faced on Pyrrus. Our job will be to sit right down in the middle of them, build a settlement and open a mine. Do I hear any suggestions as to how this can be done?”

“I know,” Clon said, standing slowly. He was a hulking, burly man with a thick and protruding brow ridge. The weight of this bony ledge must have been balanced by even thicker bone in the skull behind, leaving room for only the most minuscule of brain cavities. His reflexes were excellent, undoubtedly short-circuited in his spinal column like some contemporary dinosaur, but any thoughts that had to penetrate his ossified cranium emerged only with the most immense difliculty. He was the last person Jason expected to answer.

“I know,” Clon repeated. “We kill them all. Then they don’t bothei us.”

“Thanks for the suggestion,” Jason said calmly. “Your chair’s righi behind you, that’s it. Your suggestion is a sound Pyrran one, Pyrran also in the fact that you want to apply it to a second planet even thougb it failed on the first one. Attractive as it may look, we shall not indulgc in genocide. We shall use our intelligence to solve this problem, fbi our teeth. We are trying to open this world up, not close it forever What I propose is an open camp, the opposite of the armed laager th John Company men built. If we are careful, and watch the surrounding countryside carefully, we should not be taken by surprise. My hope is that we will be able to contact the locals and find out what they have against miners or off-worlders, and then try to change their minds. If anyone has a better suggestion fot a plan of action, let me know now. Otherwise, we land as close to the original site as we can and wait for contact. Our eyes are open, we know what happened to the first expedition, so we will be very careful that it doesn’t happen to us.”

Finding the original mine site was very easy. A year’s slow growth of the sparse vegetation had not been enough to obscure the burned scar on the landscape. The abandoned heavy equipment showed clearly on the magnetometer, and the Pugnacious sank to the ground close by. From above, the rolling steppe had appeared to be empty of life, and it looked even more so once they were down. Jason stood in the open airlock and shivered as the first blast of dry, frigid air hit him, the grass rustling to its passing, while grains of sand hissed against the metal of the hull. He had planned to be first out, but Rhes happened to knock against him as Kerk came up so that the gray-haired Pyrran slipped by and leaped to the ground.

“A lightweight planet,” he said as he turned slowly, his eyes never still. “Can’t be over x G. Like floating, after Pyrrus.”.

“It’s closer to i. 5G,” Jason said, following him out just as warily. “But anything is better than 2G.”

The first landing party, ten men in all, emerged from the ship and carefully surveyed the area. They stayed close enough to be able to call to one another, yet not so close that they blocked each other’s vision or field of fire. Their guns stayed in their power holsters and they walked slowly, apparently indifferent to the frigid wind and blown sand that reddened Jason’s skin and made his eyes water. In their own, strictly Pyrran way, they were enjoying themselves after the forced relaxation of the voyage.

“Something moving 200 meters to the southeast,” Meta’s voice spoke in their earphones. She was one of the observers at the viewports in the ship above.

They spun and crouched, ready for anything. The undulating plain still appeared to be empty, but there was a sudden hissing as an arrow arced toward Kerk’s chest. His gun sprang into his hand and he shot it from the air as calmly and efficiently as he would have dispatched an attacking stingwing. Another arrow flashed toward them and Rhes stepped aside so that it missed him. They all waited, alert, to see what would happen next.

An attack, Jason thought, or is it just a diversion? It can’t be possible so soon after our arrival, that any kind of concerted attack could be launched. Yet, why not?

His gun jumped into his hand and he started to wheel about just as hard pain slammed into his head. He had no awareness of falling, just a sudden and complete blackness.