The Altar at Asconel Read Online Free PDF

of a comet’s tail for some hypothetical Second Galactic Empire is going to remember Annanworld, and he’ll whistle up a few score jollyboys with armed starships and knock this pretty study down around your ears. Then he’ll pick over the survivors and choose out the girls for raping and some of the novices for general drudgery, and loot the wreckage for enough to last him out a lifetime of luxury. And if this doesn’t happen, it’s going to be because a few places like Asconel and Loudor and Delcadoré held to the old-fashioned ways, stood up for justice and order and the rule of law and did their best to keep the pirates and the slavers and the privateers from off your neck!”
    Father Erton gazed up at him unblinkingly. He said,“It’s taken you ten years, has it, to come around to this way of thinking?”
    “No. More like ten minutes. I suddenly started to wonder where our resurgent Galactic Empire is coming from if our Asconels are allowed to go down into barbarism.”
    “And this was sparked by talking to your brother?”
    “Yes.”
    “You should perhaps have questioned him more closely,” Father Erton said. His old neck was getting stiff with gazing up at Spartak far above; he let his eyes drop to the desk at which he sat. “According to what he told Brother Ulwyn when he was trying to threaten his way past the gate, he’s been serving with the Order of Argus, which was the rump of the old Imperial Tenth Fleet. They hired out to Mercator for its conquest of those two neighbor worlds it now rules; they sacked three cities on Poowadya in search of—ah—
provisions,
I believe they said; they exterminated the remains of the former Twenty-Seventh Imperial Fleet because the latter had the same aims and objectives as themselves and was making slightly better progress.…Rather a poor record, on the whole, for one who wants to save Asconel as a nucleus of a resurgent civilization!”
    “I doubt if Vix cares one way or the other, just so long as Asconel is decently governed and prospers by modern standards. I was giving you my reasons, not his.”
    “Then go,” Father Erton sighed. “But remember! If you commit yourself to violence, save the expense of coming back!”
    Vix was waiting at the gate, with the novice who had brought Spartak’s belongings, Brother Ulwyn hovering nervously in the background. There were three large bags piled on the path.
    He hailed Spartak accusingly as the younger man came in view, face dark as a storm cloud. “Hey! I warned you, I travel light! If you expect me to carry this lot for you—”
    Spartak shook his head. He had never been strong as a child, and doubtless Vix still thought of him as a weakling; now, though, was hardly the time to explain about the scientific dietary used on Annanworld, which enabled eachindividual to realize the maximum strength of his muscles by providing the optimum available energy from his food. He merely gathered the three big bags and slung them together over his shoulder.
    “Let’s go,” he muttered.
    Vix gave him a puzzled look. “Listen, if you have any doubts about what you’re letting yourself in for, stay put! I’d rather not be trammeled with a reluctant passenger—”
    “Don’t worry,” Spartak cut in wearily. “I’m having second thoughts about staying here these past ten years, not about leaving. Are we going, or not?”
    “Why—why, of course. At once!” And the astonished Vix swung around to claim his weapons from the perspiring Brother Ulwyn.

V
    T HEY WENT A considerable distance in silence, with no one else in sight except some children playing on a hill top. The group of villagers who had been in evidence earlier must have followed Vix up the hill out of mere curiosity.
    Spartak was engaged with his own bitter thoughts, and was anyway used to long hours of private study and contemplation, but it occurred to him when they were almost halfway to the village that it was unlike Vix to hold his tongue so long. He was