Star Born (24 page)

Moments later, wading out into the water-swirled sand, his boots kicked off, his toes feeling for the elusive shelled creatures no one could see, Raf felt happier, freer than he could ever remember having been before. It was going to be all right. He could see! He would find the ship! He laughed aloud at nothing and heard an answering chuckle and then a whoop of triumph from the scout stooping to claw one of their prey out of hiding.

It was after they had eaten that Dalgard asked another question, one which did not seem important to Raf. “You have a close friend among the crew of your ship?”

Raf hesitated. Now that he was obliged to consider the point, did he have any friends-let alone a close one-among the crew of the RS 10? Certainly he did not claim Wonstead who had shared his quarters-he honestly did not care if he never saw him again. The officers, the experts such as Lablet -quickly face and character of each swept through his mind and was as swiftly discarded. There was Soriki- He could not claim the corn-tech as any special friend, but at least during their period together among the aliens he had come to know him better.

Now, as if Dalgard had read his mind-and he probably had, thought Raf with a flash of the old resentment-he had another question.

“And what was he-is he like?”

Though the pilot could see little reason for this he answered as best he could, trying to build first a physical picture of the corn-tech and then doing a little guessing as to what lay under the other’s space-burned skin.

Dalgard lay on his back, gazing up into the blue-green sky. Yet Raf knew that he was intent on every word. A merman padded up, settled down cross-legged beside the scout, as if he too were enthralled by the pilot’s halting description of a man he might never see again. Then a second of the sea people came and a third, until Raf felt that some sort of a noiseless council was in progress. His words trailed away, and then Dalgard offered an explanation.

“It will take us many, many days to reach the place where your ship is. And before we are able to complete that journey your friends may be gone. So we shall try something else-with your aid.”

Raf fingered the little bundle of his possessions. Even his helmet with its corn phone was missing.

“No,” again Dalgard read his mind. “Your machines are of no use to you now. We shall try ,our way.”

“How?” Wild thoughts of a big signal fire- But how could that be sighted across a mountain range. Of some sort of an improvised corn unit.

“I said our way.” There was a smile on Dalgard’s face, visible to Raf’s slowly clearing vision. “We shall provide another kind of machine, and these”-he waved at the mermen = ‘will give us the power, or so we hope. Lie here,” he gestured to the sand beside him, “and think only of your friend in the ship, in his natural surroundings. Try to hold that picture constant in your mind, letting no other thought trouble it.”

“Do you mean-send a message to him mentally!” Raf’s reply was half protest.

“Did I not so reach you when we were in the city-even before I knew of you as an individual?” the scout reminded him. “And such messages are doubly possible when they are sent from friend to friend.”

“But we were close then.”

“That is why-“ again Dalgard indicated the mermen. “For them this is the natural means of communication. They will pick up your reaching thought, amplify it with their power, beam it north. Since your friend deals with matters of communication, let us hope that he will be sensitive to this method.”

Raf was only half convinced that it might work. But he remembered how Dalgard had established contact with him, before, as the scout had pointed out, they had met. It was that voiceless cry for aid which had pulled him into this adventure in the first place. It was only fitting that something of the same process give him help in return.

Obediently he stretched out on the sand and closed his dim eyes, trying to picture Soriki in the small cabin which held the com, slouched in his bucket seat, his deceptive posture that of a lax idler, as he had seen him so many times. Soriki-his broad face with its flat cheekbones, its wide cheerful mouth, its heavy-lidded eyes. And having fixed Soriki’s face, he tried to believe that he was now confronting the com-tech, speaking directly to him.

“Come-come and get me-south-seashore-Soriki come and get mel” The words formed a kind of chant, a chant aimed at that familiar face in its familiar surroundings. “South-come and get me-“ Raf struggled to think only of that, to allow nothing to break through that chant or disturb his picture of the scene he had called from memory.

How long that attempt at communication lasted the pilot could not tell, for somehow he slipped from the deep concentration into sleep, dreamless and untroubled, from which he awoke with the befogged feeling that something important had happened. But had he gotten through?

The ring of mermen was gone, and it was dawn, gray, chill with the forewarnings of rain in the air. He was reassured because he was certain that in spite of the gloom his sight was a fraction clearer than it had been the day before. But had they gotten through? As he arose, brushing the sand from him, he saw the scout splashing out of the sea, a fish impaled on his spear.

“Did we get through?” Raf blurted out.

“Since your friend can not reply with the mind touch, we do not know. But later we shall try again.” To Raf’s peering gaze Dalgard’s face had a drawn, gaunt look as if he had been at hard labor during the hours just past. He walked up the beach slowly, without the springing step Raf had come to associate with him. As he settled down to gut the fish with one of the bone knives, the scout repeated, “We can try again-I”

Half an hour later, as the rain swept in from the sea, Raf knew that they would not have to try. His head went up, his face eager. He had known that sound too long and too well ever to mistake it-the drone of a flitter motor cutting through the swish of the falling water. Some trick of the cliffs behind them must be magnifying and projecting the sound, for he could not sight the machine. But it was coming. He whirled to Dalgard, only to see that the other was on his feet and had taken up his spear.

“It is the flitted Soriki heard-they’re coming!” Raf hastened to assure him.

For the last time he saw Dalgard’s slow, warm smile, clearer than he had ever seen it before. Then the scout turned and trotted away, toward a fringing rock wall. Before he dropped out of sight behind that barrier he raised the spear in salute.

“Swift and fortunate voyaging!” He gave the farewell of Homeport.

Then Raf understood. The colonist meant just what he had said: he wanted no contact with the space ship. To Raf he had owed a debt and now that was paid. But the time was not yet when the men of Astra and the men of Terra should meet. A hundred years from now perhaps-or a thousand but not yet. And remembering what had summoned the flitter winging toward him, Raf drew a deep breath. What would the men of Astra accomplish in a hundred years? What could those of Terra do to match them in knowledge? It was a challenge, and he alone knew just how much of a challenge. Homeport must remain his own secret. He had been guided to this place, saved by the mermen alone. Dalgard and his people must not exist as far as the crew of the RS 10 were concerned.

For the last time he experienced the intimacy of the mind touch. “That is it-brother!” Then the sensation was gone as the black blot of the flitter buzzed out of the clouds.

From behind the rocks Dalgard watched the pilot enter the strange machine. For a single moment he had an impulse to shout, to run forward, to surrender to his desire to see the others, the ship which had brought them through space and would, they confidently believed, take them back to the Terra he knew only as a legend of the past. But he mastered that desire. He had been right. The road had already forked and there was no going back. He must carry this secret all the rest of his life-he must be strong-willed enough so that tiomeport would never know. Time-give them time to be what they could be. Then in a hundred years-or a thousand But not yet!