It always surprised Birrel, the warmth and eagerness he felt when he returned to Vega Four. It was not the world itself, though it was a nice planet and he liked its people. But there were lots of nice planets and Birrel had never felt that he belonged to any particular one of them. He had never stayed at one long enough to form any attachment, for his father also had served the Lyran fleet and, from childhood, his memories were only of a succession of bases on many worlds.
But now, watching the purplish bulk of the fourth planet spin toward them through the blue-white glare of Vega, even his nagging worry about what trouble Ferdias had in store for them only a little tempered his anticipation. It still seemed a little strange to him that he should feel this glad to be getting back to a woman.
Birrel had married only three years before, and the fact that he had done so in itself still rather amazed him. For he had always had a deep bias against wives and families. His father had died in a totally unnecessary and meaningless space disaster, and the memory of his mother's sad loneliness had given him that bias. Women were fine, but not a woman. His thinking had become fixed on that point and he was pretty sure he would never have asked Lyllin to marry him, despite the way he felt about her. But Lyllin was Vegan and her people had their own customs. It was she who had quietly suggested they marry and he had fallen all over himself agreeing. He was still glad of it, and still surprised.
He watched as the purplish globe expanded into a great, misty blue mountain-and-desert world, the capital of a Sector which was, in everything but name, an empire of stars. And when the Fifth, all traffic cleared away before it, broke atmosphere and came growling and thundering down across the black mountain-chains toward Vega City, he thought that Lyllin would have heard and would be down there now in the hillside villa, looking up at the giants as they came in.
They swept over the city toward the Fifth's home base, over against the foothills of the opposite black range. In smoothly scheduled detachments the ships made their landings, and the Starsong was in the first detachment.
When Birrel, a little later, walked down into the hot, stinging blue glare, Brescnik had already come over from his own ship. The Vice-Commander was a blocky, brusque and highly competent man. He was also hot-tempered and his comb of colorless hair seemed always to bristle up when he was angry.
"What the devil is all this about, Jay? Pulling the whole Fifth in as though it were a scout-detachment! What's Ferdias up to?"
"I haven't an idea," Birrel said. "But I hope to find out."
"Politics," said Brescnik disgustedly. "That's what it always is. You'll see."
A flitter, with an orderly for pilot, took Birrel away from the base toward the big city in the distance, and on the way Birrel thought of what Brescnik had said. Brescnik's attitude was typical of most officers and men of the squadrons, including himself. It was also typical of a great many other people, and that was why the legislature was wary of opposing a popular governor like Ferdias. It had been called "the starship psychology," this general, underlying feeling that one-man leadership was best in big affairs. The theory was that in the two-hundred-year spread-out from Earth, the feeling of a ship commander, who was responsible for the safety of all on board, had carried over into the matter of government. And that feeling had been reinforced by the historical example of the United Worlds, whose headless council had soon lost control over the wider sphere.
Birrel looked down at the city. This was Old Town, a place of graceful, white roofs and cupolas and golden-yellow trees and grass, and rambling, quaint (and dirty, he had to admit it) narrow streets. The native Vegans, Lyllin's people, had built it and it showed how far they had come from their fierce tribalistic-war state of centuries before. They might have got further on their own as time went on, but then the universe had crashed in upon them, the great wave that had started long ago from Earth and that was still rolling, not Earthmen only now, but all sorts of people from many worlds and of many bloodstrains, all part of the space explosion. It was these newcomers who had built New Town, whose gleaming miles of metalloy and glass dwarfed the older quarter.
They had also built the enormous, massive structure he was going toward, the governmental buildings that flashed and glittered in the blue-white sunshine. A new building was being added to the nexus, Birrel noted. The place was always getting bigger, just as the Sector was always growing out into new star-fields, wherever it could do so. That thought brought the worry back into his mind, the uneasy apprehension that the rivalry between Sectors was getting dangerous, and his face lengthened.
He was landed on the roof of one of the buildings, and a lift took him down to a middle floor. He went through the corridors until, finally, efficient secretaries shunted him smoothly and quickly into a room few people ever entered.
It always seemed to Birrel a very tiny room to be the center of government of so many stars. For this, not the halls of the legislators, was the real center and everyone knew it.
"Stop saluting, Jay," said Ferdias. "You know you're at ease when you step in here."
Ferdias came around the desk. He limped, from the crash of a Class Nine trainer long ago. That crash had had fateful results. It had washed Ferdias out of the service, shattering his ambitions. He had had to turn all his terrific energy and drive into other channels, and he had chosen political ones. Everything other men thought necessary, a wife, a home, friends and fun, Ferdias had ignored, driving toward his goal. Birrel thought that he himself had done pretty well, to be leading a squadron at thirty-seven, but Ferdias was only six years older than that.
He was a small man. But, somehow, you never remembered that fact, nor his limp. You saw only his face and the searching, light-colored eyes, and, when you saw them, you began to understand why, at the age of forty-three, he was one of the five great Governors.
He held out his hand, smiling. Birrel sometimes felt that he was one of the few real friends Ferdias had, though why he should be he did not know. Anyway, he was not sure of it, you were never absolutely sure of anything with Ferdias.
"Now let's have it, Jay," he said.
Birrel let him have it, the full story of the trap in the cluster. And Ferdias' face got just a trifle tighter.
He said, finally, "You took foolhardy chances going in there alone. But since you got out all right, I'm glad you did it. For I'm sure now of what I only suspected before. In his eagerness to find out how much I know, Solleremos has told me what I wanted to know."
Birrel, frankly puzzled, said, "I just don't get it. 'What is Ferdias planning to do about Earth?' What in the world would you plan about it? Don't answer, if I'm out of line asking."
Ferdias did not answer, not at once. He limped back to his chair and sat down, and then looked up keenly as he spoke.
"Jay, you're more than half Earth-blood, aren't you?"
Birrel nodded. "Three-quarters, to be exact. My father was straight Earth. My mother's parents were Earth and Capellan."
And again, as so many times, he felt a passing sadness when he mentioned her. His father had died in that pile-up so long ago that he could hardly remember him, but he wished that his mother could have lived to see him commanding the Fifth. Somehow, even when you got what you most wanted, it never came out quite the way you expected.
Ferdias' voice cut into his thoughts. "Tell me, how do you feel about Earth?"
Birrel stared. "What do you mean—feel about it?"
"Just that."
Birrel shrugged. "Why, I've never been there. You know that—I was born in a transport off Arcturus and I've never been farther back in than Procyon."
Ferdias persisted. "I know all that, yes. But what do you think about Earth?"
Birrel frowned, then made a gesture. "Just what everybody thinks, I suppose. It was an important place, once. Starflight began there—even we ourselves began there, in a way, those of us who have Earth blood. But that's all long ago. It hasn't rated for much since its United Worlds council tried to hold all the galaxy in one government and failed. No wonder they failed—it's hard enough to hold a Sector together, let alone the whole galaxy."
"Suppose one of the Sectors decided to go back there and take over Earth," said Ferdias.
Birrel felt a shock of astonishment. "Why, no Sector would touch the UW's little federal district for—" He stopped, looking at Ferdias, and then he said, "Or would they?"
"Solleremos would like to," said Ferdias.
Birrel was so astounded that, for a moment, he just looked. "You mean, he wants to take Earth into Orion Sector?"
"He wants to very much indeed," said the other. "Listen, Jay. Solleremos' pressure on our borders recently has only been cover-up. Earth is his real objective."
"But why in the world? It's a big name in history, but after all it's only one unimportant little star-system now."
"Is it so unimportant?" Ferdias' eyes, hot and flaring now, fascinated Birrel. "Materially, maybe it is—a worn-out, third-rate planet. But psychologically, it's a very important world indeed. Think of the Earth-blood mingled in all the galaxy races now. All those people have, perhaps without altogether realizing it, about the same feeling toward Earth you have. They know it no longer directs things, they know the UW council and fleet are just a shadowy sham—but still it's Earth, it's the ancient center of things, the old heart-world. Suppose one of the other governors gets Earth into his Sector, and speaks from there hereafter?"
Birrel saw it now—and he also realized, not for the first time, that when it came to galactic intrigue he was a babe in arms. It would indeed give any of the rival governors a colossal psychological advantage, to make the old center of things his seat of government. Commands that came from Earth would have a psychological potency that would be hard to withstand.
He liked the shape of it less and less, as he thought about it. He looked at Ferdias, and said,
"I take it that you're not going to let Solleremos get away with this?"
"No, Jay. I don't want Earth. But I'm not going to let Orion Sector grab it, either."
Ferdias went on, in his quick, incisive way. "Solleremos knows very well that I'll try to stop him. That's why he had Tauncer, his right-hand man, set that little trap in the cluster for you. They're quite aware that I trust you and they hoped I'd have told you just how I plan to block them."
But he hadn't, Birrel could not help thinking. Ferdias had not told him a whisper of all this until now, when it was necessary. He had let him go into the cluster without knowing the real situation, and that had been wise because what he did not know he could not tell. But, in a way, it was an epitome of their years of relationship. He trusted Ferdias, all the way. But Ferdias, knowing that, still always held his own reservations, his own secrets.
It made Birrel feel a sudden resentment. But his irritation faded when he reflected that he did exactly the same thing with the officers and men of the Fifth. He didn't tell them everything he had in mind, he couldn't, but he expected their loyalty nevertheless and he got it, just as Ferdias got his.
Ferdias was saying, "There's a big celebration coming up on Earth soon. The two-hundredth anniversary of the first space-flight from Earth. It means a lot to them, and the UW council invited me to send an official delegation to represent Lyra Sector."
"So?"
"So I'm sending you."
Birrel stared. "Me—to Earth? But what can I do if—"
Ferdias interrupted. "The Fifth Squadron will go with you, Jay. To take part in the commemoration, the flyover."
Now Birrel began to understand. "Then if Solleremos tries anything, the Fifth will be there waiting for him?"
"Exactly." Ferdias spoke the word like a wolf-snap. "I know Solleremos' intentions. I know about when he plans his grab for Earth. Earth can't stop him, not with the small UW forces. But if the Fifth Lyra happens to be on Earth right then, it won't be so easy for him."
Birrel felt a little stunned. Fighting the hidden, border wars of the rival governors was one thing. That went on under cover, and, if a ship didn't come back from the marches of little-known space, it was officially listed as lost by accident. But a full-fledged struggle between Sectors, if it erupted back there at Earth, was quite another thing. It could rock the civilized galaxy . . . .
Ferdias was going on matter-of-factly. "You'll take off five days from now. You'll take full supply auxiliaries and transports."
Birrel looked up sharply. Transports meant the families of all personnel would accompany the squadron, and that was a thing they never did unless the Fifth was making a rotational transfer to a completely different base.
Ferdias smiled. "It's got to look peaceful, Jay, a friendly, peaceful gesture to the commemoration. That's why the transports go."
Birrel nodded, understanding now. If anyone claimed that the Fifth was going to Earth for military reasons, the fact that they were hampered with transports and dependents would argue eloquently the other way. It was a fine cover-up, shrewd planning. Yet the fact remained that they would be hampered, and he did not quite like the idea of Lyllin going into possible trouble.
He asked Ferdias, "When we get to Earth—besides taking part in that celebration, what? What, definitely, are my orders?"
Ferdias said, "Go and look up your ancestral home."
"My—what?"
"Ancestral home. Place where the Birrels came from, on Earth. I had it searched out, and it's still standing. It's in Orville, a place near the city New York. It's the most natural thing in the world that you should go and visit it while you're there."
Birrel began to get it. "I'm to contact somebody there, for orders?"
Ferdias nodded. "Karsh."
Instantly, hearing that name, Birrel revised his conception of the scale and importance of this thing. He had only met Karsh a very few times, but he knew how important the gray, colorless little man was to Ferdias in the secret struggle between the Sectors. Like Tauncer, he was a stormy petrel whose presence usually meant big trouble.
"Karsh is on Earth?"
"Yes, Jay. He's been there for months. He bought this old house I speak of and he'll be waiting there for you. His estimate of the situation will govern your orders."
"But if Orion—"
"Don't worry," Ferdias interrupted. "You'll get warning if Solleremos moves on Earth. But Jay—one more thing."
"Yes?"
"The Fifth goes to Earth for an official courtesy visit. You're not to tell more than that to anyone. Anyone."
He repeated the word without any emphasis at all, but when Ferdias repeated something, that was emphasis enough.
Birrel, as the flitter took him back across the city, hardly saw the brilliant capital flashing by beneath. He did not like this mission at all.
He wondered whether Ferdias had thought that the whole thing might be just another clever feint by Orion, and that, with the Fifth at faraway Earth, the strongest sword and shield of Lyra would be gone.