Uncharted Stars (6 page)

Since most of the crowd were male, and looked like rather hard cases, I did not feel too conspicuous. And it was the best cover I saw. However, I still had to break away when we reached the rocket slot and cross to my own ship. It was during those last few paces I would be clearly seen.

I edged around the fringes of the waiting crowd, putting as many of those between me and the dark as I could, trying to be alert to any attention I might attract But as far as I could see, I might once more be enveloped in Eet's vision-defying blur.

I wanted to run, or to scuttle along under some protective shell like a pictick crab. But both of those safety devices were denied me. Now I dared not even look around as though I feared any pursuit, for wariness alone could betray me.

Ahead I saw the luggage conveyer crawling purposefully on a course which had been more of a straight line than my own. My bag had not shifted from the top, which meant, I trusted, that Ryzk had not moved. It reached the foot of the ramp well before me and stood waiting for the lifting of its burden to release it.

“Watcher—to the right—Patrol—”

Eet came alive with that warning. I did not glance in the direction he indicated.

“Is he moving in?”

“No. He took a video shot of the carrier. He has no orders to prevent take-off—just make sure you do go.”

“So they can know the bait is ready and they need only set their trap. Very neat,” I commented. But there was no drawing back now, and I did not fear the Patrol at this moment half as much as the Guild. After all, I had some importance to the Patrol—bait has until the moment for sacrificing it comes. Once we were off planet I had the feeling it was not going to be so easy for them to use me as they so arrogantly planned. I still had what they did not suspect I carried—the zero stone.

So I gave no sign that I knew I was under observation as I hauled Ryzk off the luggage carrier, guided him up the ramp, snapped that in, and sealed ship. I stowed my prize, such as he was, in one of the two lower-level cabins, strapped him down, taking his pilot's plate with me, and climbed with Eet to the control cabin.

There I fed Ryzk's plate into the viewer to satisfy the field law and prepared for take-off, Eet guiding me in the setting of the automatics. But I had no trip tape to feed in, which meant that once in space Ryzk would have to play his part or we would find another port only by the slim margin of chance.

IV

Since we lacked a trip tape, we could not go into hyper until Ryzk found us jump co-ordinates. So our initial thrust off world merely set us voyaging within the system itself, an added danger. While a ship in hyper cannot be traced, one system-traveling can readily be picked up. Thus, when I recovered from grav shock, I unstrapped myself and sought out my pilot, Eet making better time, as usual, down the inner stair of the ship.

Our transport, the
Wendwind
, was not as small as a scout, though not as large as a Free Trader of the D class. She might once have been the private yacht of some Veep. If so, all luxury fittings had long since been torn out, though there were painted-over scars to suggest that my guess was correct. Later she had been on system runs as a general carrier. And her final fate had been confiscation by the Patrol for smuggling, after which she had been bought by the Salarik dealer as a speculation.

She had four cabins besides the regular crew quarters. But three of these had been knocked together for a storage hold. And one feature within attracted me, a persona-pressure sealed strongbox, something a dealer in gems could put to use.

At one time the
Wendwind
must have mounted strictly illegal G-lasers, judging by the sealed ports and markings on decks and walls. But now she had no such protection.

Ryzk had been left in the last remaining passenger cabin. As I came in he was struggling against the grav straps, looking about him wildly.

“What—where—”

“You are in space, on a ship as pilot.” I gave it to him without long explanation. “We are still in system, ready to go into hyper as soon as you can set course—”

He blinked rapidly, and oddly enough, the slack lines of his face appeared to firm, so that under the blurring of planetside indulgence you could see something of the man he had been. He stretched out his hand and laid it palm flat against the wall, as if he needed the reassurance of touch to help him believe that what I said was true.

“What ship?” His voice had lost the slur, just as his face had changed.

“Mine.”

“And who are you?” His eyes narrowed as he stared up at me.

“Murdoc Jern. I am a gem buyer.”

Eet made one of his sudden leaps from deck to the end of the bunk, where he squatted on his haunches, his handpaws resting on what would have been his knees had he possessed a humanoid body.

Ryzk looked from me to Eet and then back again. “All right, all right! I'll wake up sooner or later.”

“Not”—I picked up the thought Eet aimed at Ryzk—“until you set us a course—”

The pilot started, then rubbed his hands across his forehead as if he could so rub away what he had heard, not through his ears, but in his mind.

“A course to where?” he asked, as one humoring some image born out of fash-smoke or veever drink.

“To quadrant 7-10-500.” At least I had had plenty of time to lay plans such as these during the past weeks when I feared we would never be space-borne. The sooner we began to earn our way the better. And I had Vondar's experience to suggest a good beginning.

“I haven't set a course in—in—” His voice trailed off. Once more he put his hand to the ship's wall. “This is—this is a ship! I'm not dreaming it!”

“It is a ship. Can you get us into hyper now?” I allowed some of my impatience to show.

He pulled himself out of his bunk, moving unsteadily at first. But perhaps the feel of a ship about him was a tonic, for by the time he reached the core ladder to the control cabin he had picked up speed, and he swung up that with ease. Nor did he wait to be shown the pilot's seat, but crossed to sit there, giving quick, practiced looks to the control board.

“Quadrant 7-10-500—” It was not a question but a repetition, as if it were a key to unlock old knowledge. “Fathfar sector—”

Perhaps I had done far better than I had hoped when I had picked up a planeted Free Trader. A pilot for one of the usual lines would not have known the fringes of the travel lanes which must be my hunting trails now.

Ryzk was pushing buttons, first a little slowly, then picking up speed and sureness, until a series of equations flashed on the small map screen to his left. He studied those, made a correction or two with more buttons, and then spoke the usual warning—“Hyper.”

Having seen that he did seem to know what he was doing, I had already retired to the second swing chair in the cabin, Eet curled up tightly against me, ready for that sickening twist which would signal our snap into the hyper space of galactic travel. Though I had been through it before, it had been mostly on passenger flights, where there had been an issue of soothe gas into the cabin to ease one through the wrench.

The ship was silent with a silence that was oppressive as we passed into a dimension which was not ours. Ryzk pushed a little away from the board, flexing his fingers. He looked to me and those firmer underlines of his face were even more in evidence.

“You—I remember you—in the Diving Lokworm.” Then his brows drew together in a frown. “You—your face is different.”

I had almost forgotten the scar; it must be gone now.

“You on the run?” Ryzk shot at me.

Perhaps he was entitled to more of the truth, since he shared a ship which might prove a target were we unlucky.

“Perhaps—”

But I had no intention of spouting about the past, the secret in my gem belt, and the real reason why we might go questing off into unexplored space, seeking out uncharted stars. However, “perhaps” was certainly not an explanation which would serve me either. I would have to elaborate on it.

“I am bucking the Guild.” That gave him the worst, and straight. At least he could not jump ship until we planeted again.

He stared at me. “Like trying to jump the whole nebula, eh? Optimistic, aren't you?” But if he found my admission daunting, it did not appear in any expression or hesitation in his reply. “So we get to the Fathfar sector, and when we set down—on which world by the way?—we may get a warm welcome, crisped right through by lasers!”

“We set down on Lorgal. Do you know it?”

“Lorgal? You picked that heap of sand, rock, and roasting sun for a hide-out? Why? I can give you a nice listing of more attractive places—” It was plain he did know our port. Almost I could suspect he was a plant, except that I had voiced to no one at all my selection for my first essay as a buyer. Lorgal was as grim as his few terse words had said—with hellish windstorms and a few other assorted planetside disasters into the bargain. But its natives could be persuaded to part with zorans. And I knew a place where a selection of zorans, graded as I was competent to do, could give us half a year's supply of credits for cruising expenses.

“I am not hunting a hide-hole. I am after zorans. As I told you, I buy gems.”

He shrugged as if he did not believe me but was willing to go along with my story, since it did not matter to him one way or another. But I triggered out the log tape and pushed its recorder to him, setting before him the accompanying pad for his thumbprint to seal the bargain.

Ryzk examined the tape. “A year's contract? And what if I don't sign, if I reserve the right to leave ship at the first port of call? After all, I don't remember any agreement between us before I woke up in this spinner of yours.”

“And how long would it take you to find another ship off Lorgal?”

“And how do you know I'll set you down there in the first place? Lorgal is about the worst choice in the Fathfar sector. I can punch out any course I please—”

“Can you?” inquired Eet.

For the second time Ryzk registered startlement. He stared now at the mutant and his gaze was anything but pleasant.

“Telepath!” He spat that out like a curse.

“And more—” I hastened to agree. “Eet has a way of getting things we want done, done.”

“You say that you have the Guild after you and you want me to sign on for a year. Your first pick of a landing is a hellhole. And now this—this—”

“Partner of mine,” I supplied when he seemed at a loss for the proper term.

“This partner suggests he can make me do as he wishes.”

“You had better believe it.”

“What do I get out of it? Ship's wages—?”

This was a fair enough protest. I was willing to concede more.

“Take Trade share—”

He stiffened. I saw his hand twitch, his fingers balled into a fist which might have been aimed at me had he not some control over his temper. But I read then his dislike for my knowledge of that fragment of his past. That I had used a Free Trader's term, offering him a Trader deal, was not to his liking at all. But he nodded.

Then he pressed his thumb on the sign pad and recited his license number and name into the recorder, formally accepting duty as pilot for one planet year, to be computed on the scale of the planet from which we had just lifted, which was a matter of four hundred days.

There was little or nothing to do while the ship was in hyper, a matter of concern on the early exploring and trading ships. For idle men caused trouble. It was usually customary for members of a ship's crew to develop hobbies or crafts to keep their minds alert, their hands busy. But if Ryzk had had such in the past, he did not produce them now.

He did, however, make systematic use of the exercise cabin, as I did also, keeping muscles needed planetside from growing flabby in the reduced gravity of space flight. And as time passed he thinned and fined down until he was a far more presentable man than the one we had steered out of the Off-port drinking den.

My own preoccupation was with the mass of records I had managed, with the reluctant assistance of the Patrol, to regain from several storage points used by Vondar Ustle. With some I was familiar, but other tapes, especially those in code, were harder. Vondar had been a rover as well as a gem merchant. He could have made a fortune had he settled down as a designer and retailer on any inner-system planet. But his nature had been attuned to wandering and he had had the restlessness of a First-in Scout.

His designing was an art beyond me, and of his knowledge of stones I had perhaps a tenth—if I was not grossly overestimating what I had been able to assimilate during the years of our master-apprentice relationship. But the tapes, which I could claim under the law as a legally appointed apprentice, were my inheritance and all I had to build a future upon. All that was reasonably certain, that is. For the quest for the source of the zero stone was a gamble on which we could not embark without a backing of credits.

I watched the viewer as I ran the tapes through, concentrating on that which I had not already absorbed in actual tutelage under Vondar. And my own state of ignorance at times depressed me dismally, leaving me to wonder if Eet had somehow moved me into this action as one moves a star against a comet in that most widely spread galactic game of chance, named for its pieces—Stars and Comets.

But I was also sure that if he had, I would never be really sure of that fact, and it was far better for my peace of mind not to delve into such speculation. To keep at my task was the prime need now and I was setting up, with many revisions, deletions, and additions, a possible itinerary for us to follow.

Lorgal had been my first choice, because of the simplicity of its primitive type of exchange barter. In my first solo deal I needed that simplicity. Though I had cut as close as I could in outfitting the
Wendwind
, I had had to spend some of our very meager store of credits on trade goods. These now occupied less than a third of the improvised storeroom. But the major part of the wares had been selected for dealing on Lorgal.