Lord of a Thousand Sun: Space Stories of Poul Anderson (Illustrated). Poul Anderson

off her seat and came down again, a landslide rumbled behind her. The dragon zoomed up the ridge, leaped from a bluff, and started across the cratered plain beyond. Dyann dragged at the horn, turning its head, fighting the monster into a circular stampede. "Ha, Ormun!" she yelled. "Ha, Kathantuma!"

      In an hour or so the dragon stopped and stood gasping. Dyann slid stiffly to the ground, whirled her sword over her head, and decapitated the monster. Then she skipped home, laughing.

      "Dyann!" cried Ray as she came through the airlock. "Dyann, we thought you were dead—"

      "Oh, it vas fun," she grinned. "Fix me a sandvich." She sat down, got up rather quickly, and opened her arms to Ray. He retreated nervously toward the lab. Urushkidan snickered and slammed the door in his face.

      V

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      The eighty-six hour day of Ganymede drew to a close. Jupiter was at the half now, a banded amber giant in a sky of thronging wintry stars. Ray wiped his grimy hands and sighed.

      "Done," he said, looking fondly at the haywired mess filling half the lab and reaching back toward the engines. "We've done it—we've conquered the stars."

      "My little Earthlin is so clever," simpered Dyann.

      "I am horribly afraid," said Urushkidan, "tat tis minor achievement of mine will eclipse my true accomplishments in te popular mind. Oh, well." He shrugged. "I can always use te money."

      "Umm, yeah, I never thought of that," said Ray. "I'm safe enough from Vanbrugh now—you don't arrest the man who's given Earth the Galaxy—but by gosh, there's a fortune in this little gadget too."

      "For me, of course, when I have patented it," said Urushkidan.

      "What?" yelped Ray. "You—"

      "Certainly. I inbented it, didn't I? I shall patent it too. Tell me, should I charge an exorbitant royalty or would tere be more money in mass sales at small price?"

      "Look here," snarled Ray, "I happen to know how this thing is put together too."

      "Do you?" grinned Urushkidan nastily.

      "Uh—" Ray looked at the jungle of apparatus and gulped. He had only a few fragmentary drawings. By Einstein, he had no idea how the damned thing worked.

      "But we helped you," he protested feebly.

      "When you pay your mules and cows, I may consider gibing you a small percentage," said Urushkidan loftily.

      "You've already got more money than you know what to do with, you bloated capitalist. I happen to know you invested your Nobel Prize in mortgages and then foreclosed."

      "And why not? When te royalties on tis engine start coming in, and I get my second Nobel Prise, maybe ten I can afford an occasional cigar. You Earthlings neber reward genius. All tese years I'be had to smoke tat foul pipe—And tat reminds me, we habe to test tis machine. Where is te nearest tobaco store?"

      Ray sighed and gave up. Martians had replaced Scotchmen in the lexicon of thrift, but Urushkidan set some kind of new record.

      He sat down in the pilot chair and started the atomic generator on high level conversion. "I hope it works," he muttered nervously. His fingers moved over the improvised control panel for the star drive. "Hang on, folks, here goes nothing."

      "Nothin," said Dyann after a long silence, "is correct."

      "Oh, lord! What's the matter now?" Ray went back to the new engine. Its circuits were alive, tubes glowed and indicators blinked, but the boat sat stolidly where it was.

      "I told you not to use tose approximations," said Urushkidan.

      Ray fiddled with the main-drive settings. "It's like any other gadget," he complained. "You sweat yourself dry designing it from theory, and then you have to tinker till it works."

      He began changing the positions of resistors and condensers, cutting sections out of the circuit to work on them. Urushkidan shredded a piece of paper, wetted it, and tried to smoke it.

      "Ray!" Dyann's voice came sharp and urgent from the forward cabin. "I saw a rocket flare."

      "Oh, no!" He sprang back to her and peered into the night sky. A long trail of flame arced across it. And another, and another—

      "The Jovians," he groaned. "They've found us."

      "They may not see us," said Dyann hopefully.

      "They have metal detectors. We're done for."

      "Vell, ve can only die vunce. Kiss me, sveetheart." Dyann folded Ray in one arm while the other reached for her sword.

      The patrol rockets went over the horizon, braking, and swam back. Blast-flames spattered off the valley floor and frozen-gas vapors boiled furiously up toward mighty Jupiter.

      The boat telescreen blinked its indicator light. Numbly, Ray tuned it in. The lean hard face of Colonel Roshevsky-Feldkamp sprang into its frame.

      "Ah, there you are," said the Jovian.

      "If we surrender," said Ray, "will you give us safe conduct back to Earth?"

      "Certainly not. But you may be allowed to live."

      Urushkidan spoke from the lab. "Ballantyne, I tink te trouble lies in tis square-wave generator. If we doubled te boltage—"

      * * * * *

      The first patrol ship sizzled to a landing. Roshevsky-Feldkamp leaned forward till his face seemed to project from the screen and Ray had a wild desire to punch its nose. "So you've been working on our project." He said, "Well, so much the more labor spared us."

      Dyann cut loose with a short-range blaster she had located somewhere on the lab ship.

      "Urushkidan will die before he surrenders to you," said Ray belligerently.

      "I will do noting of te sort," said the Martian. Experimentally, he cut the square-wave generator back into the circuit and turned a dial.

      The boat lifted off the ground.

      "Hey, there," roared the colonel. "You can't do that!"

      The Jovian soldiers who had been pouring from the grounded ship looked stupidly upward.

      "Shell them!" snapped the colonel.

      Ray slammed the main star drive switch clear over.

      There was no feeling of acceleration. They were suddenly floating weightless and Jupiter whizzed past the forward port.

      "Stop!" howled the Jovian.

      The engine throbbed and sang, energy pulsing in great waves through its shuddering substance. The stars crawled eerily across the ports. "Aberration," gasped Ray. "We're approaching the speed of light."

      Space swam and blazed with a million million suns. They bunched near the forward port, thinning out toward the rear, as the ship added its fantastic velocity vector to their light-rays. A distorted pale-green globe grew rapidly before the vessel.

      "Vat planet is that up ahead?" pointed Dyann.

      "I think—" muttered Ray. He looked out the rearward port. "I think it was Neptune."

      "Triumph!" chortled Urushkidan, rubbing his tentacles together. "My teory is confirmed. Not tat it needs confirmation, but now even an Eartman can see tat I am always right. And oh, how tey'll habe to pay!"

      The colors of the stars shifted toward blue in front and red behind. Doppler effect, thought Ray wildly. He was probably seeing by radio waves and gamma rays now. How fast were they going, anyway? He should have thought to install some kind of speed gauge. Several times the velocity of light at least.

      "Ha,