"It might," said Bollard. "Or it might not. But the point is that getting in and out of that warehouse, past all their security arrangements, is going to be just about impossible."
"Just about," said Dilullo. "Not absolutely. Anybody want to volunteer?"
In derisive words or by gloomy shakes of the head, they let him know what the answer was.
"Then the old Merc law applies," said Dilullo. "Nobody wants to volunteer for a mean job, the job goes to the last man who broke the rules."
A beautiful smile came onto the moonlike face of Bollard. "But of course," he said. "Of course. Morgan Chane."
IX
Chane lay on his back and looked up at the nebula sky, and let his hand trail in the water as the skimmer glided silently through the channels.
"Are you going to sleep?" asked Laneeah.
"No."
"You drank an awful lot."
"I'm all right now," he assured her.
He was all right, but he was still very much on guard. Yorolin had not done anything except drink some more and get highly expansive and genial, but that one glimpse the Pyam had given him into Yorolin's mind had been enough.
They had wandered along the pleasure-places and Yorolin had wanted Chane to see something he called the feeding of the Golden Ones. Chane gathered that these were some kind of sea-creatures and that feeding them was a regular event. He didn't think much of feeding fish as fun, and he had managed to separate Laneeah from the others and entice her into a skimmer ride through the islands. Yorolin had made no objection at all and Chane had found that fact suspicious.
"How long are you going to be on Vhol, Chane?"
"It's hard to say."
"But," said Laneeah, "if all you're doing here is trying to sell weapons, it won't take long, will it?"
"I'll tell you what," said Chane. "We've got another purpose in coming to Vhol. Maybe I'd better not tell you."
She leaned with quick interest, her clear-cut face outlined against the glowing nebula.
"What's this other thing you're doing here?" she asked. "You can tell me."
"All right," he said. "I'll tell you. We've come here for this ... to grab beautiful women wherever we can find them."
And he grabbed her and pulled her down.
Laneeah screeched. "You're breaking my back!" He loosened his grip a little, laughing, and she pulled away. "Are all
Earthmen as strong as you?"
"No," said Chane. "You might say that I'm special."
"Special?" she said scornfully, and slapped his face. "You're like all Earthmen. Repulsive. Horribly repulsive."
"You'll get used to that," he said, not letting go of her.
The skimmer glided past the outermost islands and the open sea was like a wrinkled sheet of silver under the glowing sky. From the lights back on the pleasure island there drifted a scrap of lilting music.
There came a distant phat! sound from the shore and a moment later there was a muffled splash somewhere near the skimmer. It was repeated, and suddenly Laneeah jumped up in terror.
"They've started to feed the Golden Ones!" she cried out. "So we'll miss it," said Chane.
"You don't understand ... we've drifted out onto the feeding grounds! Look ...!"
Chane heard the phat! sound again and then saw that a big dark mass had been catapulted out from the pleasure island. The mass hit the sea not far from their skimmer, and as it floated he saw that it looked like some kind of dark, stringy fodder.
"If one did hit us, it wouldn't hurt us ..."he began, but Laneeah interrupted him by screaming.
The sea was boiling furiously right next to the skimmer. The light craft rocked and tilted, and then there was a roaring, swashing sound of disturbed waters.
A colossal yellow head broke surface. It was all of ten feet across, domed and wet-glistening. It opened an enormous maw and snapped up the mass of stringy food. Then it chewed noisily, at the same time looking toward them with eyes that were huge and round and utterly stupid.
Now Chane saw that other heads were breaking surface eagerly in the whole area. Gigantic golden bodies with oddly arm-like flippers, bodies that would have made a whale look like a sprat, thrashed and broached as the creatures eagerly made for the masses of food-fiber that continued to arrive from shore.
Laneeah was still screaming. Now Chane saw that the creature nearest them, having devoured its food, was moving straight toward the skimmer. It was only too obvious that the great brainless brute took the skimmer to be an unusually large ration and was eager to devour it.
Chane picked up the emergency paddle from the bottom of the skimmer and struck with all his strength the top of the wet, domed head.
"Start the motor and steer out of here," he shouted to Laneeah, without turning.
He raised the paddle to deal another blow. But the Golden One, instead of charging, opened its huge mouth and delivered a thunderous bawl.
Chane broke into laughter. It was obvious that nothing had ever hit the leviathan painfully in its whole life, and it was bawling like a smacked baby.
He turned his head, still laughing, and told Laneeah, "Damn it, stop screaming and start up."
She could not have heard him over that Brobdingnagian bellow, but the sight of Chane laughing seemed to shock her out of her hysteria. She started the little motor and the skimmer glided away.
The light craft rocked, tilted and floundered on the waves that the Golden Ones were making. Twice again one of the creatures mistook them for something edible and bore down on them and each time Chane swung the paddle. It seemed that he had guessed right and that no one or nothing had ever dared to touch these colossi, for although they could not really have felt much pain, the shock and surprise seemed to confuse them.
They reached the pleasure island and Yorolin and the others came running to them, and Laneeah, still tearful, pointed accusingly at Chane.
"He laughed!"
Yorolin exclaimed, "You could have been killed! However did you drift out there?"
Chane preferred not to go into that. He said to Laneeah, "I'm sorry. It was just that the thing's stupid surprise was so funny."
Yorolin shook his head. "You're not like any Earthman I ever met. There's something wild about you."
Chane did not want Yorolin thinking along that line, and he said, "Some more drinks seem called for."
They had some more, and a few more than that, and by the time they dropped Chane at the spaceport, they were a noisy party and Laneeah had almost, if not quite, forgiven him.
Rutledge met Chane before he reached the ship. "How nice of you to show up," he said. "I've been hanging around for hours waiting for you, though of course I haven't minded."
"What's happened?" asked Chane.
Rutledge told him as they walked along Star Street, still ablaze with lights and raucous with rowdy sounds. Rutledge dropped off at a drinking-place to alleviate his boredom and Chane went on along to the inn.
He found Dilullo sitting alone in the common room with a half-filled glass of brandy in front of him.
He said, "Your Starwolf friends are still after you, Chane."
Chane listened, and then nodded. "I'm not surprised. Ssander had two brothers in that squadron. They won't go back to Varna until they've seen my dead body."
Dilullo looked at him thoughtfully. "It doesn't seem to worry you much."
Chane smiled. "Varnans don't worry. If you meet your enemy you try to kill him and hope you succeed, but worrying before then does no good."
"Fine," said Dilullo. "Well, I worry. I worry about meeting up with Varnans. I worry about these Vhollans and what they'll do next. They're definitely suspicious of us."
Chane nodded, and told him about Yorolin and the Pyam. He added with a shrug, "If the mission fails, it fails. Come to that, I like the Vhollans a lot better than the Kharalis."
Dilullo eyed him. "So do I. A lot better. But there's more to it than that."
"What?"
"There's two things. W
hen a Merc takes on a job, he keeps faith. The other thing is that these likable Vhollans are carrying a war of conquest to Kharal."
"So they're going to conquer Kharal... is that such a terrible thing?" asked Chane, smiling.
"Maybe not to a Starwolf. But an Earthman sees things differently," said Dilullo. He drank his brandy and continued slowly. "I'll tell you something. You Varnans look on raids and conquest as fun. Other starworlds—lots of them—see conquest as a good and right thing. But there's one world that doesn't like conquest at all, it's so peaceable. And that's Earth."
He set his glass down. "You know why that is, Chane? It's because Earth was a world of war and conquest for thousands of years. Our people have forgotten more about fighting than any of you will ever learn. We were soaked in conquest right up to our ears for a long, long time and that's why we don't have much use for it any more."
Chane was silent. Dilullo said, "Ah, what's the use of talking to you about it. You're young and you've been raised wrong. I'm not young, and I wish to heaven I was back at Brindisi."
"That's a place on Earth?" asked Chane.
Dilullo nodded moodily. "It's on the sea, and in the morning you can see the sun coming up out of the mists of the Adriatic. It's beautiful and it's home. The only trouble is, you can starve to death there."
Chane said, after a moment, "I remember the name of the place my parents came from, on Earth. It was Wales."
"I've been there," said Dilullo. "Dark mountains, dark valleys. People who sing like angels and are golden-hearted friends till you get them mad, and then they're wildcats. Maybe you got something from there as well as Varna."
After a few moments, Chane said, "Well, so far it's a standoff. We haven't found out anything; they haven't found out anything. So what happens next?"
"Tomorrow," said Dilullo, "I will put on a very large and convincing show of trying to sell these people some weapons."
"And what about me?"
"You?" said Dilullo. "You, my friend, are going to figure out how to do the impossible, and do it quickly, cleanly, and without being seen, let alone caught."
"Mmm," said Chane, "that should keep me busy for an hour or two, what do I do after that?"
"Sit and polish your ego." He shoved the brandy bottle over. "Settle down. I've got some talking to do. About the impossible."
When he was finished, Chane looked at him almost with awe. "That might even'take me three hours to figure out. You have a lot of faith in me, Dilullo."
Dilullo showed him the edges of his teeth. "That is the only reason you're alive," he said. "And you'll be as sorry as the rest of us if you let me down."
X
Next night, Chane lay in the grass well outside the military port and studied its lights. In one hand he held a six-foot roll of thin, neutral-colored cloth. Hisotherhand held tightly to a collar that was around the neck of a snokk.
The snokk was both furious and frightened. The animals looked something like a furry wallaby, or small kangaroo. But they had a doglike disposition and ran happily in packs in some parts of the town. This one was not happy, for attached to the collar was a leather hood that completely muffled its head. It kept trying to dig its hind feet into the ground and bound away, but Chane held it.
"Soon," he whispered soothingly. "Very soon."
The snokk responded with a series of growling barks that were effectively muffled by the hood.
Chane had done his homework well. Now he looked at the conical tower that rose from the central building. That was where the ring-projector was, and he had by day seen the searchlights around it, though now they were dark.
He began to crawl forward, dragging the reluctant snokk along .Chane went with every muscle tense. At any moment he would cross the edge of the ringlike aura of force projected to enclose the whole military port. When he crossed that, things would happen very quickly.
He went on, going slowly but making sure4hat he was set to move fast at any moment. The snokk gave him more and more trouble but he relentlessly dragged it on with him. He could see the lights and the loom of the big starships on the port, warcraft with grim, closed weapon-ports in their sides. He made out the low structure that was the warehouse.
It happened about the moment that Chane expected it to happen. A sharp alarm rang across the port, and the searchlights flashed into life. Their beams swung swiftly in his direction.
Those lights, triggered and aimed by computers linked to the ring-apparatus, could move fast. But his Varna-born reactions gave Chane a slight edge. He acted, when the alarm first sounded, with all the speed he had.
His right hand ripped the hood and collar off the head of the snokk. With the same forward motion he threw himself flat on the ground and pulled the square of neutral-colored cloth over himself and lay still.
The snokk, freed, went off across the port with great hopping leaps, sounding an outraged series of howling barks. Two searchlights instantly locked onto the animal, while the other beams wove an intricate mathematical pattern to cover the whole edge of the port.
Chane lay quite still, trying to look like a bump in the ground.
He heard a fast skimmer come out onto the port and stop some distance from him. He heard the furious barks of the snokk receding.
Someone in the skimmer swore disgustedly, and someone else laughed. Then it went away again, back the way it had come.
The searchlights, after a little more probing, went out.
Chane continued to lie still under his cloth. Three minutes later the searchlights suddenly came on again and swept the whole area once more. Then they went out again.
Chane came out from under the cloth then. He was grinning as he rolled it up.
"A Starwolf child could get in there," he had told Dilullo when he had finished his reconnaissance. But that had just been a little bragging, and anyway, he had only come this first step: the rest of the job would not be child's work at all.
He worked his way patiently toward the warehouse, keeping to the shadows as much as possible, using his camouflage cloth whenever he stopped to listen. The warehouse, a low flat-roofed metal building, did not seem to be guarded, but if there was anything important in it, there were sure to be cunning devices to expose an intruder.
It was almost an hour before Chane stood in the dark interior of the warehouse. He had entered by the roof, first using small sensors to select an area of the roof free of alarms, then using a hooded ato-flash to cut a neat circle. If he replaced the cutout and fused it into place when he left, it might be a long time before it was noticed.
He took out his pocket-lamp and flashed its thin beam. The first thing he saw was that the crates from the cargO'Ship had been unpacked.
Three objects stood upon a long trestle-table beside the crates. Chane stared at them. He walked around the table to inspect them from all sides. Then he stared at them again, shaking his head.
He had handled a lot of exotic loot in his time. He thought he could identify, or at least take a guess at, almost everything in the way of artifacts and the stuff whereof they were made.
These three objects mocked him.
They were all made of the same substance, a metal that vaguely resembled pale, hard gold, but was like nothing he had ever seen before. In form they were all different. One was a shining, fluted ribbon reared like a snake three feet high. One was a congery of nine small spheres, held rigidly together by short, slender rods.
The third was a truncated cone, wide and thick at the base, with no openings and no decoration. They were beautiful enough to be ornaments, but somehow instinctively he knew they weren't. He could not guess at the purpose of any of them.
Still shaking his head, but reminding himself strongly that he didn't have all night, Chane took from a belt-pouch a minicamera and a small but highly sophisticated instrument Dilullo had given him; a portable analyzer that poked and probed with fingering rays among the molecules of a substance and came up with a pretty accurate chart of its essential components
. Because of its extreme miniaturization it had a limited usefulness, but within those limitations it was useful indeed. Chane applied its sensor units to the base of the spiraled golden ribbon and clicked it on, and then began snapping quick record shots with the little camera.
The truncated cone occluded a portion of the nine-sphere congery. He reached out and moved it ... the metal was satin-smooth and chilly and surprisingly light. He leaned past it to aim the camera's tiny flash-pod at the golden spheres. And suddenly he went rigid.
There was a whisper of sound in the dark warehouse.
He swung on his heel, his hand going to the stunner inside his jacket, his little beam probing every corner. There were these enigmatic golden objects, and some piles of regulation ship-stores cases.
Nothing more. And no one.
The sound whispered a little louder. It was like someone, or something, trying to speak in a breathy murmur. Now Chane identified its source. It was coming from the cone.
He stepped back from the thing. It lay in the beam of his light, shining and still. But the breathy whisper from it grew in volume.
Now a light came up from the cone, as though emanating from the solid metal. It was not ordinary light; it was a twisting tendril of soft glowing flame. It twisted higher, endlessly pouring out of the cone, until there was a great wreath of it several feet above his head.
Then, without warning, the wreath of light exploded into a myriad of tiny stars.
The whispering voice swelled'louder. The little stars above floated down in showers. They were not mere sparks or points of light: each one was different, each like a real star made inconceivably tiny.
They swirled and floated around Chane, yet he could not feel their touch. Red giants and white dwarfs, smoky orange suns and the evil-glowing quasars, and their perfection was so absolute that for a moment Chane lost perspective. They seemed to him real stars, and he was a giant standing in a cascade of swirling suns.
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