Uncharted Stars (14 page)

I raised my glass but did not sip the brew it contained.

“Where and when is the raid?”

“Co-ordinates for the where—he thought of them while talking. No when.”

“No concrete proof then for the Patrol,” I said sourly, and spilled most of my glass's contents on the floor.

“No,” Eet agreed with me. “But we do have the coordinates and a warning to the intended victims—”

“Too risky. They might already have been raided and then what? We are caught suspiciously near a Jack raid.”

“They are Zacathans,” Eet reminded me. “The truth cannot be hid from them, not with one telepath contacting another.”

“But you do not know when—it might be now!”

“I do not believe so. They have failed with Tacktile. They must now hunt another buyer, or they may feel they can eventually persuade him. You took a gamble on Sororis. Perhaps this is another for you, with a bigger reward at the end. Get Zacathan backing and your listing will be forgotten.”

I got up and went out on the noisy street, the port my goal. In spite of my intentions it would seem that Eet could mold my future, for reason and logic were on his side. Listed, I no longer had a trade. But suppose I did manage to warn some Zacathan expedition of a Jack raid. Not only would it mean that I would gain some very powerful patrons, but the Zacathans dealt only in antiquities and the very great treasure the stranger had used to tempt Tacktile might well be zero stones!

“Just so.” There was a smug satisfaction in Eet's thought. “And now I would advise a speedy rise from this far from hospitable planet.”

I jogged back to the ship, wondering how Ryzk would accept this latest development. To go up against a Jack raid was no one's idea of an easy life. More often it was quick death. Only, with Zacathans involved, the odds were the least small fraction inclined to our side.

IX

Below us the ball of the planet was a sphere of Sirenean amber, not the honey-amber or the butter-amber of Terra, but ocher very lightly tinged with green. The green areas grew, assumed the markings of seas. There were no very large land masses but rather sprays of islands and archipelagoes, with only two providing possible landing sites.

Ryzk was excited. He had protested the co-ordinates we had brought back from the Purple Star, saying they were in a sector completely off any known map. Now I think all his Free Trader instinct awoke when he realized that we had homed in on an uncharted world.

We orbited with caution, but there was no trace of any city, no sign that this was anything but an empty world. However, we decided at last that the same tactics used at Sororis would be best here—that Eet and I should leave the ship in orbit and make an exploratory trip in the converted LB. And since it seemed logical that the two largest land masses were the most probable sites for any archaeological dig, I made a choice of the northern.

Dawn was the time we descended. Ryzk, having experimented with the LB, had added some refinements to his original adaptations, making it possible to switch from automatics to hand controls. He had run through the drill patiently with me until he thought I could master the craft. Though I did not have the training of a spacer pilot, I had used flitters since I was a child and the techniques of the LB were not too far from that skill.

Eet, once more in his own form, curled up on the second hammock, allowing me to navigate unhindered as we went in. As the landscape became more distinct on the view-plate I saw that its ocher color was due to trees, or rather giant, lacy growths, waving fronds with delicate trunks hardly thicker than my two fists together. They were perhaps twenty or thirty feet tall and swayed and tossed as if they were constantly swept by wind. In color they shaded from a bright rust-brown to a pale green-yellow with brighter tints of reddish tan between. And they seemed to grow uniformly across the ground, with no sign of any clearing where the LB might set down. I had no desire to crash into the growth, which might be far tougher than it looked, and I went on hand controls to cruise above it, searching vainly for some break. So untouched was that willowy expanse that I had about decided my choice of island had been wrong and that we must head south to investigate the other.

Now the fronds gave way from taller to shorter. Then there was a stretch of red sand in which the sunlight awoke points of sharp glitter. This was washed by the green waves of the sea, and such green I had only seen in the flawless surface of a fine Terran emerald.

At this point the beach was wide and in the middle of it was my first signpost, a broad blot of glassified sand blasted by deter rockets, a ship's landing place. I guided the LB past that a little along the fringe of the growth, bringing it down under the overhang of vegetation with a care of which I was rightfully proud. Unless that mark had been left by a scout, I should be able to find traces of the archaeological camp not too far away, or so I hoped.

The atmosphere was breathable without a helmet. But I took with me something Ryzk had put together. We might not be allowed lasers or stunners, but the former Free Trader had patiently created a weapon of his own, a spring gun which shot needle darts. And those darts were tipped with my contribution, made from zorans too flawed to use, cut with a jeweler's tool, and deadly.

I have used a laser and a stunner, but this, at close range, was to my mind an even deadlier weapon, and only the thought that I might have to front a Jack crew prepared me to carry it. Those in space learned long ago that the first instinct of our species, to attack that which is strange as being also dangerous, could not be allowed to influence us. And in consequence, mind blocks were set on the first explorers. Such precautions continued until those who were explorers and colonizers became inhibited against instant hostility. But there were times when we still needed arms, mainly against our own species.

The stunner with its temporary effect on the opponent was the approved weapon. The laser was strictly a war choice and outlawed for most travelers. But as a former Patrol suspect, I could not have my permit to carry either renewed for a year. I was a “pardoned” man, pardoned for an offense I never committed—something they conveniently forgot. And I had no wish to demand a permit and give them some form of control over me again.

Now that I dropped out of the LB, Eet riding on my shoulder, I was very glad Ryzk had found such an arm. Not that this seemed a hostile world. The sun was bright and warm but not burning hot. And the breeze which kept the fronds ever in play was gentle, carrying with it a scent which would have made a Salarik swoon in delight. From ground level I could see that the trunks of those fronds had smaller branches and those bent under the weight of brilliant scarlet flowers rimmed with gold and bronze. Insects buzzed thickly about these.

The soil was a mixture of red sand and a darker brown earth where the beach gave way to forested land. But I kept to the edge between sand and wood, angling along until I was opposite that patch of glass formed by the heat of the rockets at some ship's fin-down.

There I discovered what had not been visible from above, covered by the trees and vegetation—a path back into the interior of the forest. I am no scout, but elementary caution suggested that I not walk that road openly. However, I soon found that forcing a passage along parallel to the route was difficult. The clusters of flowers beat against my head and shoulders, loosing an overpowering scent, which, pleasant as it was, became a cloying, choking fog when close to the nose. That and a shower of floury, rust-yellow pollen which made the skin itch where it settled finally forced me into the path.

Though fronds had been cut down to open that way, yet the press of the thick growth had spread out overhead to again roof in the channel, providing a dusky, cooling shade. On some of the trees the clusters of flowers were gone and pods hung there, pulling the trunks well out of line with their weight.

The path ran straight, and in the ground underfoot were the marks of robo-carriers. But if the camp had been so well established, why had I not been able to sight it from the air as the LB had passed overhead? Certainly they must have cut down enough fronds to make a clearing for their bubble tents.

Suddenly the trail dipped, leaving rising banks on either side. They had not had to cut a path here, for the earth had been scraped away by their carriers to show a pavement, while the fronds growing on the bank spread to cover the cut completely.

I knelt to examine the pavement, sure that it had been set of a purpose a long time ago, that it was no fortuitous rock shelf. Thus the banks on either hand might well be walls long covered by earth.

The passage continued to deepen and narrow, growing darker and more chill as I went. I slowed my advance to a creep, trying to listen, though the constant sighing of the wind through the fronds might cover any sound.

“Eet?” Finally, out of a need for more than my own five senses, I appealed to my companion.

“Nothing—” His head was raised, swaying slowly from side to side. “This is an old place, very old. There have been men here—” Then he stopped short and I could feel his small body tense against mine.

“What is it?”

“Death smell—there is death ahead.”

I had my weapon ready. “Danger for us?”

“No, not now. But death here—”

The cut had now led underground, the earth lips closing the slit above, and what lay ahead was totally dark. I had a belt beamer, but to use it might bring on us the very attention which would be danger.

“Is there anyone here?” I demanded of Eet as I halted, unwilling to enter that pocket of utter black.

“Gone,” Eet told me. “But not long ago. And—no—there is a trace of life, very faint. I think someone still lives—a little—”

Eet's answer was obscure, and I did not know whether we dared go on.

“No danger to us,” he flashed. “I read pain—no thoughts of anger or of waiting our coming—”

I dared then to trigger the beamer, which flashed on stone walls. The blocks had been so set together that only the faintest of lines marked their joining, with no trace of mortar at all, only a sheen on their surface, as if their natural roughness had been either polished away or given a slick coating. They were a dull red in hue, a shade unpleasantly reminiscent of blood.

As we advanced the space widened, the walls almost abruptly expanding on either side to give one the feeling of being on the verge of some vast underground chamber. But my beamer had picked up something else, a tangle of wrecked gear which had been thrown about, burned by lasers. It was as if a battle had been fought in this space.

And there were bodies—

The too-sweet scent of the flowers was gone, lost in the stomach-twisting stench of seared flesh and blood—until I wanted to reel out of that hole into the clean open.

Then I heard it, not so much a moan as a kind of hissing plaint, with that in it which I could not refuse to answer. I detoured around the worst of the shambles to a place near the wall where something had crawled, leaving a ghastly trail of splotches on the floor that glistened evilly in the beam ray.

It was a Zacathan and he had not been burned down in a surprise attack as had the others I had caught glimpses of amid the chaos of the camp. No, this was such treatment as only the most sadistic and barbaric tribe of some backward planet might have dealt a battle slave.

That he still lived was indicative of the strong bodies of his species. That he would continue to live I greatly doubted. But I would do all I could for him.

I summoned up determination enough to search through the welter of the camp until I found their medical supplies. Even these had been smashed about. In fact, the whole mess suggested either a wild hunt for something hidden or else destruction for the mere sake of wanton pillage.

One who roves space must learn a little of first aid and what I knew I applied now to the wounded Zacathan, though I had no idea of how one treated alien ills. But I did my best and left him what small comfort I could before I went to look about the chamber. To take him back to the LB I needed some form of transportation and the camp trail had the marks of robo-carriers. I had not seen any such machines among the wreckage, which might mean they were somewhere in the dark.

I found one at last, its nose smashed against the wall at the far end of that space as if it had been allowed to run on its own until the stone barrier halted it. But beside it was something else, a dark opening where stones had been taken out of the wall, piled carefully to one side.

Curiosity was strong and I pushed in through that slit and flashed the beamer. There was no mistaking the purpose of the crypt. It had been a tomb. Against the wall facing me was a projecting stone outline, still walled up. Instead of being set horizontally as might be expected of a tomb, it was vertical, so that what lay buried there must stand erect.

There were shelves, but all of them were now bare. And I could imagine that what had stood there once had been taken to the camp and was now Jack loot. I had been too late. Perhaps he who had dealt with Tacktile had not known that the raid was already a fact, or had chosen to suppress that knowledge.

I returned to the carrier. In spite of the force with which it had rammed the wall it was still operative, and I put it in low gear, so that it crawled, with a squeal of protesting metal, back to the Zacathan. Since he was both taller and heavier than I, it was an effort to load his inert body on the top of the machine. But fortunately he did not regain consciousness and I thought one of the balms Eet had suggested I employ had acted as an anesthetic.

There was no use searching the wreckage. It was very plain that the raiders had found what they came for. But the wanton smashing was something I did not understand—unless Jacks were a different breed of thief from the calmly efficient Guild.

“Can you run the carrier?” I asked Eet. It obeyed a simple set of buttons, usable, I believed, by his hand-paws. And if he could run it I would be free to act as guard. Though I thought the Jacks had taken off, there was no sense in not being on the alert.