Voyage Across the Stars (16 page)

“They are
not
human, Captain Levine!” the Senior Patriarch said sharply. “And you will
not
be given another warning about your language. We aren’t hard to get along with, here on Windward; but if you persist in blasphemy, you’ll find we have rules and ways to enforce them.” Bledsoe nodded toward one of the visible barbettes. Its twin powerguns had tracked the ship all the way to landing. Now the squat tubes were trained on the engine room, ready to gut their target at the first sign of trouble. Presumably the defenses were crewed by “flawless, sleepless, living machines” also.

Levine had lapsed into shocked silence. The tanker spoke to fill the embarrassing gap. “I suppose,” he said mildly, “that you have, ah, normal recreation facilities for the crew while our purchase is being programmed?” Slade almost said “programming itself,” but he caught himself short of another possible blunder.

“Normal and abnormal,” said the local man. His expression relapsed into a knowing smile. “We can put some activities off-limits to your personnel if you like. All the establishments are, so to speak, managed by Treks. If you don’t care, though, the sky’s the limit—liquor, drugs; boys, women, or combinations; honest games—anything. We on Windward believe men have a right and a duty to take pleasure, though of course we support your right as commander—” He glanced from Slade to Levine and back again. Their relationship had not been made clear to Bledsoe. “—to control your crew for the good of the vessel.”

Slade nodded. “Wide open should be just fine,” he said. “So long as you don’t have sorm trees.”

“Pardon?”

“Don’t worry about it,” tanker said. “Let’s get a team to emptying our hold, and let’s get our Trek started on learning the hardware.” He grinned. “The other hardware.”

“Here’s the high-speed vector shift,” said Riddle, the Midwatch navigator who was handling the training.

The Trek followed the human’s pointing finger to the cylinder switch with click detents for band jumps. The gray-furred humanoid had been trying to follow the training simulation by using the rocker switch by which the three units were brought into synchrony. Amazingly, the Trek had been successful within safety parameters if not those of comfort. That was, after all, as much as one dared to hope from the regular navigation crew.

The exercise continued smoothly. The Trek used both three-fingered hands to make adjustments now that he no longer had to keep one glued to the rocker switch. Its motions had less of the manic intensity of a one-armed pianist, as a result.

“She’s absolutely incredible,” muttered Riddle.

Slade glanced sharply at the navigator, then back to the autochthone. “Any time you’re in front of a local,” the tanker said mildly, “you call Treks ‘it.’ I think the best thing that’d happen otherwise is we lift off short another navigator.”

Though it was natural, the Lord knew, to think of the Treks as human, as people. Their thigh and upper arm bones were noticeably longer than those of the lower limbs. Their facial features were understated in the manner of primitive carvings in low relief. The fur was less obtrusive than it would have seemed, because it was so fine and clinging that even at arm’s length it seemed more like clothing than it did some facet of alienness.

The Treks had no secondary sexual characteristics, however. Riddle might find the creature’s lithe quickness to be feminine. Slade, however, was reminded of a gunman he had known, and whose sex was not an issue once you had seen him kill.

The conning room was designed around a three-sided pillar. The primary controls were arranged on the sides of the pillar. Behind each navigation console, the bulkhead was covered with banks of status read-outs whose information was echoed to the main screen when the central computer saw a need to do so. The Trek shot frequent glances over its shoulder.

Slade began to open a ration packet. It was sealed in a tough polymer with a metalized inner surface. The autochthone turned in soundless delight. It extended a hand palm-upward toward the tanker. The palm was not fur-covered. The Trek’s skin was a smooth, rich sable.

“Food?” Slade asked. He broke off half the ration bar and offered it. The Trek reached past the offered portion and took the half still in its wrapper. It opened the polymer carefully and waggled it so that the inner surface reflected the ranks of gauges to the rear.

“You want a mirror?” Slade said in surprise. The autochthone nodded enthusiastically. “Via, we can do better than this. I’ll see to it.” Slade looked at Riddle and added. “Do you really have to watch all that stuff too?” He waved at the mass of dials and data windows.

The navigator shrugged. “Well, they’re there, they’ve got some purpose. And the way things work on this trash-bucket, the more you know, the better. But Lord! She’s so—” Riddle ran his hand over the Trek’s shoulder and biceps. “Good isn’t the word. And without being able to
speak.”

Slade pointed at the Trek’s throat with one blunt forefinger. The tanker was careful not to touch the smooth fur. “When the light catches it the right way,” he said, “you can see there’s a scar there. I suspect it could speak about as well as it does everything else, except for that.”

Riddle leaped from his chair in an outburst of rage. “The bastards did
that?”
he shouted. The Trek nodded without apparent emotion. It resumed the activities of the training program. Riddle had not needed the confirmation anyway. “Those, those—animals!” he went on. His hand touched the Trek’s shoulder again.
“She’s
not an animal,
they
are.”

Slade lifted the navigator’s hand and dropped it back at the man’s side. The tanker was tall enough to look down on Riddle’s bald spot when they were both standing.
“I’m
telling you to watch your tongue, friend,” Slade said. “If you can’t learn to, you’ll spend the rest of this landfall tied down and sedated.”

When he felt the smaller man relax somewhat, Slade continued. “Now, how much longer are you on duty here?”

“Ninety-three minutes,” the navigator said sullenly. He did sit down again.

“Fine,” said Slade. “As soon as you’re off, I want you to get over to one of the knock shops on the Strip and have your ashes hauled. Girls are a bit pricey, but don’t worry about that, the first one’s on me.” His eyes narrowed slightly as he watched the balding man. “Or a guy, Via, take your choice. But you’ve got an order, mister, and don’t think I’m kidding.”

The tanker slapped his thigh as he walked out of the conning room. His hard palm cracked where the pistol holster would have been had he bothered to wear one.

Behind Slade, the navigator glowered at the autochthone’s dancing arms.

“—what can the matter be?” Don Slade caroled as he walked across the port apron. A cab would have brought him directly to the main hatch, but the tanker felt good tonight, felt like walking. Area floods made the port and the vessels in it shimmer in amber light. “Seven old maids, locked in the lavat’ry.”

“Slade, where’ve you been?” demanded a voice. Figures detached themselves from the hatch. Captain Levine had been speaking. “They’ve cheated us, there’s something wrong with the Trek.”

“They were there from Sunday to Saturd’y,” Slade continued. That was playfulness, however, not real disregard of the problem. Windward had stim cones, real Cajumel blendings, and some of the whores had carried professionalism almost to a level of enthusiasm.

The big man put his arms around his pair of greeters, Levine and Riddle. The latter’s bald spot gleamed like polished copper. “Let’s go see what the problem is,” the tanker said.

“The problem is the curst thing’s dying before we even shift atmosphere,” said Captain Levine as the trio stumbled up the ramp. Slade kept hold of his two companions’ waistbands as if they were coolies and he a rickshaw. “I suppose we ought to be glad it didn’t happen in the middle of a Transit sequence, but dear heaven! the cost, a whole
thruster,
and all wasted!”

“Lot of people got wasted when we got the thrusters, too,” Slade noted equably. “But we wanted them pretty bad. Want not, waste not, d’ye suppose, Captain?”

The Trek lay on the shelf of the vessel’s medicomp. The creature might as well have been laid on the broiler in the galley for all the use the primitive piece of hardware would do. The medicomp could not be reprogrammed to handle non-human life forms. Since GAC 59 lacked even the most basic parameters such as the Trek’s normal heart rate and body temperature, a more flexible medicomp would not have helped anyway.

The Trek lay supine. Its body was so flaccid that the soles of its feet touched the shelf. The ankle joints obviously did not lock. The creature’s eyes were covered with yellowish scum which matted the fur around the orbits as well. Fluid of some other description, possibly the Trek equivalent of blood, was leaking out of its nostrils and simple ears. The creature’s breathing was rapid and louder than the stand-by hum of the equipment. It did not take experience as extensive as the tanker’s to recognize imminent death.

Slade stepped to the communications unit on the wall beside the medicomp. He tapped a three-digit code into the key pad to access the ship-to ship radio; ten digits more to enter Windward’s commo net through the port transponder; and finally the six digits of the Port Warden. At no time did Slade pause to check the number or to fumble with the key pad. His eyes narrowed over chill anger as he waited for the connections to go through. There was no sign of the evening’s entertainment when he snapped at the men across from him. “Why in
Hell
didn’t you get help from the locals before now? Do you
like
to watch things die?”

Riddle grimaced and looked away. He had not, come to think, spoken since Slade’s return.

Captain Levine said bluntly, “I wasn’t about to bring them in till I found you. I can deal with these people if I’ve got somebody like you standing behind me. But not by myself, not when they’re sure to deny liability.”

“Warden’s Office, Third Son Tuburg speaking,” said the commo unit.

“This is freighter Golf-Alpha-Charlie Five Niner,” Slade replied. “Berthed on Pad Four. The Trek we purchased yesterday is in dying condition. Seems disease or poison. We need medical help right away or we’re going to lose hi—ah, it.”

“Roger,” said the speaker. Slade was not sure whether it was a good sign or a bad one that the Windward watch officer broke the connection at once.

“All right, what happened?” the tanker asked. He might as well improve his time by getting the background while they waited. The Trek breathed with the harshness of a file on stone.

“Riddle buzzed me about three hours ago,” said Captain Levine. He gestured with his thumb. “He said the thing’s performance had deteriorated and now it wasn’t moving at all.”

Slade looked at the navigator. “Why were you still on duty then, Riddle?” he asked without expression.

The balding man looked away. “Hutchins didn’t show up for his watch,” he said.

“Didn’t you say Hutchins paid you to stand a double?” the Captain interjected.

“No matter,” said Slade. No matter that he was going to deal with at just this moment. “What happened then?”

Levine risked a puzzled glance at his navigator. “Well,” he went on, “when I got to the conning room it was about like you see it here. Not quite so much, well, leaking, but sick. Limp as a coil of rope. So we brought him down here—” he nodded vaguely at the medicomp— “and called you. You weren’t wearing your belt unit.”

Slade wavered between anger and laughing, then laughed. “My belt unit’s lying on my bunk, along with a lot of other garbage I didn’t want to fool with tonight. And as for what I was wearing, Captain—for most of the night, I wasn’t wearing a curst thing. And neither were the ladies I was with.”

“Well, ah,” Levine said. “We needed to get hold of you, you see.”

“What did it eat, Riddle?” Slade said sharply.

“I gave her some water!” the navigator replied angrily. “Nothing to eat since
you
fed her.”

“Then maybe we’re all right,” the tanker said as if he did not understand the attack. “If it wasn’t fed anything but carbohydrates, then maybe it was just some bug it picked up. We’re not responsible for that, not till we lift off, at any rate.” He smiled wryly. What was the warranty on humanoids purchased by pirates? Especially under the seller’s guns.

Help arrived in a growl of fans on the pad. Levine trotted down the corridor. “This way!” he shouted ahead. Moments later, the Captain was back. Two clashing pairs of boots and the bare-soled whispering of a Trek followed him.

One of the Windward humans was young and dishevelled. Slade did not recognize the symbol on the man’s white cap. The tanker suspected that the fellow was not, by local law, a doctor. He and the Trek who carried the chromed medical case pushed past Slade and Riddle to the dying autochthone.

The other human was Senior Patriarch Bledsoe himself. In earlier dealings, the Windward official had covered the steel edges of his personality with a layer of bonhommie. That had not hidden the truth or even camouflaged it; but it showed the same willingness to deal rationally as did Slade’s own careful control.

The bonhommie was gone now. “You were warned about certain rules, Captain Levine,” said the Senior Patriarch harshly. Bledsoe must have pulled his uniform on in a rush, but his appearance was as sharp as it had been during the cargo negotiations. “I donassume you have violated those rules—” not really a lie, so transparent were the words— “but if you have, you and your vessel will be expelled at once from Windward.”

“But I don’t understand, ah, Port Warden,” Levine blurted.

Slade understood. So did Navigator Riddle. The balding man was pressing his palms fiercely against one another while his eyes focused on their trembling.

The medic muttered something cryptic to the autochthone which had accompanied him. That Trek made a quick gesture with its hands—sign language. It bore the laryngeal scar also, even though the speech that would otherwise be possible would clearly help in its duties. Job requirements are not always rational requirements, and a creature which speaks may too easily be thought of as human.