TULAN

By C. C. MacAPP

While facing the Council of Four his restraint had not slipped; but afterward, shaking with fury, the Admiral of the Fleets of Sennech slammed halfway down the long flight of stone steps before he realized someone was at his elbow. He slowed. "Forgive me, Jezef. They made me so mad I forgot you were waiting."

Jezef (adjutant through most of Tulan's career, and for some years brother-in-law as well) was shorter and less harshly carved than his superior. "So they wouldn't listen to you. Not even Grefen?"

"Even Grefen." That vote had stabbed deepest of all.

Jezef took it with the detachment that still irritated Tulan. "The end of a hundred years of dreams; and we go back under the yoke. Well, they've always been soft masters."

They reached the ground cars. Before getting into his own Tulan said coldly, "Since you're so philosophical about it, you'll be a good one to bear the sight of men saying good-bye to their families. We're to take full crews to Coar and surrender them with the ships. Requisition what help you need and get everybody aboard by noon tomorrow."

Jezef saluted with a hint of amused irony, and left.

Whipping through the dark icy streets, Tulan smiled sourly, thinking how Sennech's scientists had reversed themselves on the theory of hyperspace now that Coar had demonstrated its existence. Maybe the Council was right in mistrusting their current notions. As for himself, he saw only two things to consider: that with Coar swinging behind the sun, the accuracy of her new weapon had gone to pot; and that before she was clear again he could pound her into surrender.

His swift campaigns had already smashed her flabby fleets and driven the remnants from space, but the Council, faced with the destruction and casualties from just a few days of the weird surprise bombardment, was cowed.

He'd spent the previous night at home, but wasn't going back now, having decided to make his farewell by visiphone. It was the thing he dreaded most, or most immediately, so as soon as he reached the flagship he went to his quarters to get it over with.

Anatu's eyes—the same eyes as Jezef's—looked at him out of the screen, filling him with the familiar awkward worship. "You've heard?" he asked finally.

"Yes. You won't be home before you go?"

"No; I ..." He abandoned the lie he'd prepared. "I just didn't feel up to it."

She accepted that. "I'll wake the boys."

"No! It's—" Something happened to his throat.

She watched him for a moment. "You won't be back from Coar. You've got to speak to them."

He nodded. This wasn't going according to plan; he'd intended it to be brief and controlled. Damn it, he told himself, I'm Admiral of the Fleets; I've no right to feelings like this. He straightened, and knew he looked right when the two sleepy stares occupied the screen.

Their hair was stiff and stubborn like his own, so that they wore it cropped in the same military cut. It could have stood a brush right now. They were quiet, knowing enough of what was wrong to be frightened.

He spoke carefully. "I'm going to Coar to talk to them about stopping the war. I want you to look after things while I'm away. All right?"

"All right, Dad." The older one was putting on a brave front for the benefit of the younger and his mother, but the tears showed.

As Tulan cut the connection he saw that Anatu's eyes were moist too, and realized with surprise that he'd never before, in all the years, seen her cry. He watched the last faint images fade from the screen.

Sometime near dawn he gave up trying to sleep, dressed, and began composing orders. Presently Jezef came in with cups of steaming amber liquid. They sipped in silence for a while, then Jezef asked "You've heard about Grefen?"

Tulan felt something knot inside him. He shook his head, dreading what he knew was coming.

"He killed himself last night," Jezef said.

Tulan remembered the agony in the old Minister of War's eyes when he'd voted for surrender. Grefen had been Admiral in his day; the prototype of integrity and a swift sledgehammer in a fight; and Tulan's first combat had been under him. A symbol of the Fleet, Tulan reflected; and his death, yes, that too was a symbol—what was there but shame in surrender, for a man or a fleet or a world?

His hand clenched, crumpling the paper it was resting on. He smoothed the paper and re-read the order he'd been writing. He visualized the proud ranks of his crewmen, reduced to ragged lines shuffling toward prison or execution.

It seemed impossible, against the laws of nature, that men should strive mightily and win, then be awarded the loser's prize. His anger began to return. "I've a mind to defy the Government and only take skeleton crews," he said. "Leave the married men, at least."

Jezef shrugged. "They'd only be bundled into transports and sent after us."

"Yes. Damn it, I won't be a party to it! All they did was carry out their orders, and superbly, at that!"

Jezef watched him with something like curiosity. "You'd disobey the Council? You?"

Tulan felt himself flush. "I've told you before, discipline's a necessity to me, not a religion!" Nevertheless, Jezef's question wasn't unfair; up to now it really hadn't occurred to him that he might disobey.

His inward struggle was brief. He grabbed the whole pad of orders and ripped them across. "What's the Council, with Grefen gone, but three trembling old men? Get some guns manned, in case they get suspicious and try to interfere."

Blood began to surge faster in his veins; he felt a vast relief. How could he have ever seen it differently? He jabbed at a button. "All ships' Duty Officers; scramble communication circuits. This is the Admiral. Top Secret Orders...."

Shortly before noon the four-hundred-odd ships lifted out of Sennech's frosty atmosphere, still ignoring the furious demands from the radio. Fully armed, they couldn't be stopped.

Tulan's viewer gave a vivid picture of the receding fifth planet. The white mantle of ice and snow was a backdrop for blue artificial lakes and the dark green of forest-strips (hardy conifers from Teyr) alternated with the lighter shades of surface farms. The ice had been almost unbroken until men came, bringing more heat than Sennech had ever received from a far-off sun.

That had been before the First Solar War, when Teyr (the race of Aum had originated there) ruled. That awful struggle had bludgeoned the home planet back to savagery, and left Coar and Sennech little better off.

With recovery, Coar had taken over and prospered immensely. Teyr stayed wild except for small colonies planted there by the other two planets, and Sennech lagged for a while.

Within Tulan's lifetime his world had found itself ready to rise against the lax but profit-taking rule of Coar, and that rebellion had grown into the present situation.

Sennech's wounds were plainly visible in the viewscreen; great man-made craters spewing incandescent destruction blindly over farm, city, or virgin ice. The planet was in three-quarters phase from here, and Tulan could see the flecks of fire in the darkness beyond the twilight zone. Near the edge of that darkness he made out the dimmer, diffused glow of Capitol City, where Anatu would be giving two small boys their supper.

He checked altitude, found they were free of the atmosphere, and ordered an