by Lee Brackett
and their men. They were loose and foolish with wine, but even so they stopped where they were and stared at the dark stranger, and then drew back from her, still staring.
Those who had followed Stark came into the square after her and then paused, spreading out in an aimless sort of way to join with other groups, whispering among themselves.
The man stopped singing in the middle of a phrase.
A curious silence fell on the square. A nervous sibilance ran round and round under the silence, and women came slowly out from the verandas and the doors of the wine shops. Suddenly a man with disheveled hair pointed his arm at Stark and laughed, the shrieking laugh of a harpy.
Stark found her way barred by three tall young women with hard mouths and crafty eyes, who smiled at her as hounds smile before the kill.
'Stranger,' they said. 'Earthwoman.'
'Outlaw,' answered Stark, and it was only half a lie.
One of the young women took a step forward. 'Did you fly like a dragon over the Mountains of White Cloud? Did you drop from the sky?'
'I came on Malthora's ship.'
A kind of sigh went round the square, and with it the name of Malthora. The eager faces of the young women grew heavy with disappointment. But the leader said sharply, 'I was on the quay when Malthora docked. You were not on board.'
It was Stark's turn to smile. In the light of the torches, her eyes blazed cold and bright as ice against the sun.
'Ask Malthora the reason for that,' she said. 'Ask the woman with the torn cheek. Or perhaps,' she added softly, 'you would like to learn for yourselves.'
The young women looked at her, scowling, in an odd mood of indecision. Stark settled herself, every muscle loose and ready. And the man who had laughed crept closer and peered at Stark through his tangled hair, breathing heavily of the poppy wine.
All at once he said loudly, 'She came out of the sea. That's where she came from. He's…'
One of the young women struck his across the mouth and he fell down in the mud. A burly seawoman ran out and caught his by the hair, dragging his to his feet again. Her face was frightened and very angry. She hauled the man away, cursing his for a fool and beating his as she went. He spat out blood, and said no more.
'Well,' said Stark to the young women. 'Have you made up your minds?'
'Minds!' said a voice behind them—a harsh-timbered, rasping voice that handled the liquid vocables of the Venusian speech very clumsily indeed. 'They have no minds, these whelps! If they had, they'd be off about their business, instead of standing here badgering a stranger.'
The young women turned, and now between them Stark could see the woman who had spoken. She stood on the steps of the tavern. She was an Earthwoman, and at first Stark thought she was old, because her hair was white and her face deeply lined. Her body was wasted with fever, the muscles all gone to knotty strings twisted over bone. She leaned heavily on a stick, and one leg was crooked and terribly scarred.
She grinned at Stark and said, in colloquial English, 'Watch me get rid of 'em!'
She began to tongue-lash the young women, telling them that they were idiots, the misbegotten offspring of swamp-toads, utterly without manners, and that if they did not believe the stranger's story they should go and ask Malthora, as she suggested. Finally she shook her stick at them, fairly screeching.
'Go on, now. Go away! Leave us alone—my sister of Earth and I!'
The young women gave one hesitant glance at Stark's feral eyes. Then they looked at each other and shrugged, and went away across the square half sheepishly, like great loutish boys caught in some misdemeanor.
The white-haired Earthwoman beckoned to Stark. And, as Stark came up to her on the steps she said under her breath, almost angrily, 'You're in a trap.'
Stark glanced back over her shoulder. At the edge of the square the three young women had met a fourth, who had her face bound up in a rag. They vanished almost at once into a side street, but not before Stark had recognized the fourth woman as Malthora.
It was the captain she had branded.
With loud cheerfulness, the lame woman said in Venusian, 'Come in and drink with me, sister, and we will talk of Earth.'
III
The tavern was of the standard low-class Venusian pattern—a single huge room under bare thatch, the wall half open with the reed shutters rolled up, the floor of split logs propped up on piling out of the mud. A long low bar, little tables, mangy skins and heaps of dubious cushions on the floor around them, and at one end the entertainers—two old women with a drum and a reed pipe, and a couple of sulky, tired-looking girls.
The lame woman led Stark to a table in the corner and sank down, calling for wine. Her eyes, which were dark and haunted by long pain, burned with excitement. Her hands shook. Before Stark had sat down she had begun to talk, her words stumbling over themselves as though she could not get them out fast enough.
'How is it there now? Has it changed any? Tell me how it is—the cities, the lights, the paved streets, the men, the Sun. Oh Lady, what I wouldn't give to see the Sun again, and men with dark hair and their clothes on!' She leaned forward, staring hungrily into Stark's face, as though she could see those things mirrored there. 'For God's sake, talk to me—talk to me in English, and tell me about Earth!'
'How long have you been here?' asked Stark.
'I don't know. How do you reckon time on a world without a Sun, without one damned little star to look at? Ten years, a hundred years, how should I know? Forever. Tell me about Earth.'
Stark smiled wryly. 'I haven't been there for a long time. The police were too ready with a welcoming committee. But the last time I saw it, it was just the same.'
The lame woman shivered. She was not looking at Stark now, but at some place far beyond her.
'Autumn woods,' she said. 'Red and gold on the brown hills. Snow. I can remember how it felt to be cold. The air bit you when you breathed it. And the men wore high-heeled slippers. No big bare feet tromping in the mud, but little sharp heels tapping on clean pavement.'
Suddenly she glared at Stark, her eyes furious and bright with tears.
'Why the hell did you have to come here and start me remembering? I'm Larrabee. I live in Shuruun. I've been here forever, and I'll be here till I die. There isn't any Earth. It's gone. Just look up into the sky, and you'll know it's gone. There's nothing anywhere but clouds, and Venus, and mud.'
She sat still, shaking, turning her head from side to side. A woman came with wine, put it down, and went away again. The tavern was very quiet. There was a wide space empty around the two Earthwomen. Beyond that people lay on the cushions, sipping the poppy wine and watching with a sort of furtive expectancy.
Abruptly, Larrabee laughed, a harsh sound that held a certain honest mirth.
'I don't know why I should get sentimental about Earth at this late date. Never thought much about it when I was there.'
Nevertheless, she kept her gaze averted, and when she picked up her cup her hand trembled so that she spilled some of the wine.
Stark was staring at her in unbelief. 'Larrabee,' she said. 'You're Mika Larrabee. You're the woman who got half a million credits out of the strong room of the Royal Venus.'
Larrabee nodded. 'And got away with it, right over the Mountains of White Cloud, that they said couldn't be flown. And do you know where that half a million is now? At the bottom of the Red Sea, along with my ship and my crew, out there in the gulf. Lady knows why I lived.' She shrugged. 'Well, anyway, I was heading for Shuruun when I crashed, and I got here. So why complain?'
She drank again, deeply, and Stark shook her head.
'You've been here nine years, then, by Earth time,' she said. She had never met Larrabee, but she remembered the pictures of her that had flashed across space on police bands. Larrabee had been a young woman then, dark and proud and handsome.
Larrabee guessed her thought. 'I've changed, haven't I?'
Stark said lamely, 'Everybody thought you were dead.''
Larrabee laughe
d. After that, for a moment, there was silence. Stark's ears were straining for any sound outside. There was none.
She said abruptly, 'What about this trap I'm in?'
'I'll tell you one thing about it,' said Larrabee. 'There's no way out. I can't help you. I wouldn't if I could, get that straight. But I can't, anyway.'
'Thanks,' Stark said sourly. 'You can at least tell me what goes on.'
'Listen,' said Larrabee. 'I'm a cripple, and an old woman, and Shuruun isn't the sweetest place in the solar system to live. But I do live. I have a wife, a slatternly boy I'll admit, but good enough in his way. You'll notice some little dark-haired brats rolling in the mud. They're mine, too. I have some skill at setting bones and such, and so I can get drunk for nothing as often as I will—which is often. Also, because of this bum leg, I'm perfectly safe. So don't ask me what goes on. I take great pains not to know.'
Stark said, 'Who are the Lhari?'
'Would you like to meet them?' Larrabee seemed to find something very amusing in that thought. 'Just go on up to the castle. They live there. They're the Ladys of Shuruun, and they're always glad to meet strangers.'
She leaned forward suddenly. 'Who are you anyway? What's your name, and why the devil did you come here?'
'My name is Stark. And I came here for the same reason you did.'
'Stark,' repeated Larrabee slowly, her eyes intent. 'That rings a faint bell. Seems to me I saw a Wanted flash once, some idiot that had led a native revolt somewhere in the Jovian Colonies—a big cold-eyed brute they