THE NIGHT FACE originally published as Let the Spacemen Beware.t' Copyright (c), 1963 by Ace Books, Inc. INTRODUCTION Copyright (c), 1978 by Poul Anderson WORD Copyright (c), 1978 by Sandra Miesel All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher. All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. An ACE Book Second Ace Edition: February 1978 Cover art by Michael Whelan Printed in U.S.A. INTRODUCTION At first this was a novelette called "A Twelvemonth and a Day." I revised and expanded it for book publication, whereupon the then editor stuck it with the ridiculous title Let the Spacemen Beware.t My thanks to Jim Baen, now in charge, for recognizing that readers have more intelligence than they were once given credit for having. In return, I admit that he's probably right in considering the original name too cumbersome; hence the new one. Otherwise the tale is unchanged. It can stand alone, without reference to anything else. However, you' may be interested to know that it does fit into the same "future history" as the Polesotechnic League and the Terran Empire. Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn, Christopher Holm, Dominic Flandry, and quite a few more characters lived in its past. Now the Empire has fallen, the Long Night descended upon that tiny fraction of the galaxy which man once explored and colonized. Like Romano-Britons after the last legion had withdrawn, people out in the former marches of civilization do not even know what is happening at its former heart. They have the THE NIGHT FACE physical capability of going there and finding out, but are too busy surviving. They are also, all unawares, generating whole new societies of their own. I do not, myself, believe that history will necessarily repeat itself to this extent. Nor do I deny that it might. Nobody knows. Equally uncertain, at the present state of our knowledge, is the validity of some assumptions about human genetics and psychobiology which I made for narrative purposes. Here is just a story which I hope you will enjoy. --Poul Anderson vi THE NIGHT FACE TmQuetzal did not leave orbit and swing toward the planet until she got an allclear from the boat which had gone ahead to make arrangements. Even then her approach was cautious, as was fitting in a region as little known as this. Miguel Tolteca expected he would have a couple of hours free to watch the scenery unfold. He was not exactly a sybarite, but he liked to do things in style. First he dialed PP, IV^C¥ on his stateroom door, lest some friendly soul barge in to pass the time of day. Then he put Castellani's Symphony No. 2 in D Minor with Subsonics on the tapester, mixed himself a rum and conchoru, converted the bunk to a lounger, and sat back with his free hand on the controls of the exterior scanner. Its THE NIGHT FACE screen grew black and full of wintry unwinking stars. He searched in a clockwise direction until Gwydion swam into view, a tiny disc upon darkness, the clearest blue he had ever seen. The door chimed. "Oa," called Tolteca through the corn-unit, irritated, "can you not read?" "My mistake," said the voice of Raven. "I thought you were the chief of the expedition." Tolteca swore, folded the lounger into a chair, and stepped across the little room. A slight, momentary change in weight informed him that the Quetzal had put on a spurt of extra acceleration. Doubtless to dodge some meteorite swarm, the engineer part of him thought. They'd be more common here than around Nuevamerica, this being a newer system .... Otherwise the pseudogee field held firm. The spaceship was a precision instrument. He opened the door. "Very well, Commandant." He pronounced the hereditary tide with a curtness that approached insult. "What is so urgent?" Raven stood still for an instant, observing him. Tolteca was a young man, middling tall, with wide, stiffly held shoulders. His face was thin and sharp, under brown hair drawn back into the short queue customary on his planet, and the eyes were levelly aimed. However much the United Republics of Nuevamerica made of their shiny new democracy, it meant something to stem from one of their old professional families. He wore the uniform of the Argo Astrographical Company, but that was only a simple, pleasing version of his people's everyday garb: THE NIGHT FACE blue tunic, gray culottes, white stockings, and no insignia. Raven came in and closed the door. "By chance," he said, his tone mild again, "one of my men overheard some of yours dicing to settle who should debark first after you and the ship's captain." "Well, that sounds harmless enough," said Tolteca sarcastically. "Do you expect us to observe any official pecking order?" "No. What-um-puzzled me was, nobody mentioned my own detachment." Tolteca raised his brows. "You wanted your men to sit in on the dice game?" "According to what my soldier reported to me, there seems to be no doctrine for planetfall and afterward." "Well," said Tolteca, "as a simple courtesy to out hosts, Captain Utiel and I--and you, if you wish--will go out first to greet them. There's to be quite a welcoming committee, we're told. But beyond that, good ylem, Commandant, what difference does it make who comes down the gangway in what order?" Raven fell motionless again. It was the common habit of Lochlanna aristocrats. They didn't stiffen at critical instants. They rarely showed any physical rigidity; but their muscles seemed to go loose and their eyes glazed over with calculation. Tolteca sometimes thought that that alone made them so alien that the Namerican Revolution had always been inevitable. THE NIGHT FACE Finally--thirty seconds later, but it seemed longer--Raven said, "I can see how this misunderstanding occurred, Sir Engineer. Your people have developed several unique institutions in the fifty years since gaining independence, and have forgotten some of our customs. Certainly the concept of exploration, even treaty-making, as a strictly private, commercial enterprise, is not Lochlanna. We have been making unconscious assumptions about each other. The fact that our two groups have kept so much apart on this voyage has helped maintain those errors. I offer apology." It was not relevant, but Tolteca was driven to snap, "Why should you apologize to me? I'm doubtless also to blame." Raven smiled. "But I am a Commandant of the Oakenshaw Ethnos ." As if that bland purr had attracted him, a cat stuck his head out of the Lochlanna's flowing surcoat sleeve. Zio was a Siamese tom, big, powerful, and possessed of a temper like mercury fulminate. His eyes were cold blue in the brown mask. "Mneow-rr," he said remindingly. Raven scratched him under the chin. Zio tilted back his head and raced his motor. Tolteca gulped down an angry retort. Let the fellow have his superiority complex. He struck a cigarette and smoked in short hard puffs. "Never mind that," he said. "What's the immediate problem?" "You must correct the wrong impression among your men. My troop goes out first." 4 THE NIGHT FACE "What? If you think--" "In combat order. The spacemen will stand by to lift ship if anything goes awry. When I signal, you and Captain Utiel may emerge and make your speeches. But not before." For a space Tolteca could find no words. He could only stare. Raven waited, impassive. He had the Lochlanna build, the result of many generations on a planet with one-fourth again the standard surface gravity. Though tall for one of his own race, he was barely of average Namerican height. Thick-boned and thick-muscled, he moved like his cat, a gait which had always appeared slippery and sneaking to Tolte-ca's folk. His head was typically long, with the expected disharmony of broad face, high cheekbones, hook nose, sallow skin which looked youthful because genetic drift had eliminated the beard. His hair, close cropped, was a cap of midnight, and his brows met above the narrow green eyes. His clothes were not precisely gaud.v, but the republican simplicity of Neuvamerica found them barbaric--high-collared blouse, baggy blue trousers tucked into soft half boots, surcoat embroidered with twined snakes and flowers, a silver dragon brooch. Even aboard ship, Raven wore dagger and pistol. "By all creation," whispered Tolteca at last. "Do you think we're on one of your stinking campaigns of conquest?" "Routine precautions," said Raven. "But, the first expedition here was welcomed like--like-Our own advance boat, the pilot, he was feted till he could hardly stagger back aboard!" THE NIGHT FACE Raven shrugged, earning an indignant look from Zio. "They've had almost one standard year to think over what the first expedition told them. We're a long way from home in space, and even longer in time. It's been twelve hundred years since the breakup of the Commonwealth isolated them. The whole Empire rose and fell while they were alone on that one planet. Genetic and cultural evolution have done strange work in shorter periods." Tolteca dragged on his cigarette and said roughly, "Judging by the data, those people think more like Namericans than you do." "Indeed?" "They have no armed forces. No police, even, in the usual sense; public service monitors is the best translation of their word. No---well, one thing we have to find out is the extent to which they do have a government. The first expedition had too much else to learn, to establish that clearly. But beyond doubt, they haven't got much." "Is this good?" "By my standards, yes. Read our Constitution." "I have done so. A noble document for your planet." Raven paused, scowling. "If this Gwydion were remotely like any other lost colony I've ever heard of, there would be small reason for worry. Common sense alone, the knowledge that overwhelming power exists to avenge any treachery toward us, would stay them. But don't you see, wen there is no evidence of internecine strife, even of crime--and yet they are obviously not simple chil THE NIGHT FACE dren of nature--I can't guess what their common sense is like." "I can," clipped Tolteca, "and if your bully boys swagger down the gangway first, aiming guns at people with flowers in their hands, I know what that common sense will think of us." Raven's smile was oddly charming on that gash of a mouth. "Credit me with some tact. We will make a ceremony of it." "Looking ridiculous at best--they don't wear uniforms on Gwydion--and transparent at worst- for they're no fools. Your suggestion is declined." "But I assure you--" "No, I said. Your men will debark individually, and unarmed." Raven sighed. "As long as we are exchanging reading lists, Sir Engineer, may I recommend the articles of the expedition to you?" "What are you hinting at now?" "The Quetzal," said Raven patiently, "is bound for Gwydion to investigate certain possibilities and, if they look hopeful, to open negotiations with the folk. Admittedly you are in charge of that. But for obvious reasons of safety, Captain Utiel has the last word while we are in space. What you seem to have forgoUen is that once we have made planetfall, a similar power becomes mine." "Oa! If you think you can sabotage--" "Not at all. Like Captain Utiel, I must answer for my actions at home, if you should make any complaint. However, no Lochlanna officer would as 7 THE NIGHT FACE sume my responsibility if he were not given corresponding authority." Tolteca nodded, feeling sick. He remembered now. It hadn't hitherto seemed important. The Company's operations took men and valuable ships ever deeper into this galactic sector, places where humans had seldom or never been even at the height of the empire. The hazards were unpredictable, and an armed guard on every vessel was in itself a good idea. But then a few old women in culottes, on the Policy Board, decided that plain Namericans weren't good enough. The guard had to be soldiers born and bred. In these days of spreading peace, more and more Lochlanna units found themselves at loose ends and hired out to foreigners. They kept pretty much aloof, on ship and in camp, and so far it hadn't worked out badly. But the Quetzal . . . "If nothing else," said Raven, "I have my own men to think of, and their families at home." 'ZBut not the future of interstellar relations?" "If those can be jeopardized so easily, they don't seem worth caring about. My orders stand. Please instruct your men accordingly." Raven bowed. The cat slid from his nesting place, dug claws in the coat, and sprang up on the man's shoulder. Tolteca could have sworn that the animal sneered. The door closed behind them. Tolteca stood immobile for a while. The music reached a crescendo, reminding him that he had wanted to enjoy approach. He glanced back at the screen. The ship's curving path had brought the sun THE NIGHT FACE Ynis into scanner view. Its .radiance stopped down by the compensator circuits, it spread corona and great wings of zodiacal light like nacre across the stars. The prominences must also be spectacular, for it was an F8 with a mass of about two Sols and a corresponding luminosity of almost fourteen. But at its distance, 3.7 Astronomical Units, only the disc of the photosphere could be seen, covering a bare ten minutes of arc. All in all, a most .ordinary main sequence star. Tolteca twisted dials until he found Gwydion again. The planet had gained apparent size, though he still saw it as little more than a chipped turquoise coin. The cloud bands and aurora should soon become visible. No continents, however. While the first expedition had reported Gwydion to be terres-troid in astonishing detail, it was about ten percent smaller and denser than Old Earth--to be expected of a younger world, formed when there were more heavy atoms in the universe--and thus possessed less total land area. What there was was divided into islands and archipelagos. Broad shallow oceans made the climate mild from pole to pole. Here came its moon, 1600 kilometers in diameter, 96,300 kilometers in orbital radius, swinging from behind the disc like a tiny hurried firefly. Tolteca considered the backdrop of the scene with a sense of eeriness. This close, the Nebula's immense cloud of dust and gas showed only as a region where stars were fewer and paler than elsewhere. Even nearby Rho Ophiuchi was blurred. Sol, of 9 THE NIGHT FACE course, was hidden from telescopes as well as from