Starwolf (Omnibus)

by Edmond Hamilton

  He began to reel off figures and Dilullo noted them down. But Chane still scowled.

  "There are no people out there rich enough to buy ten of the Singing Suns," he muttered.

  "Look," said Dilullo. "We've stuck our heads into the lion's jaws to get this information... though I'll admit this character looks more like a turnip than a lion. Hadn't we better get out of here?"

  Chane nodded. "I think you're right."

  "How do we do it?"

  Chane shrugged. "We just walk out. The shorter will keep him sitting here until someone comes in and takes it off his head."

  They walked out. They went through the lobby, loftily ignoring the young Mruunian at the desk, and out of the big building. At the gatehouse, the yellow Fallorian guards gave them back their stunners.

  They went down the dark street twenty paces, and then a screeching, hell-roaring siren let go behind them in the villa grounds and Chane said, "Run!"

  Dilullo could not run with Chane's Starwolf speed but he stretched his legs and did his best. Chane reached an arm to help him along and Dilullo struck it angrily aside, and Chane laughed and said, "Your pride is going to get you killed one of these times, John."

  When they got into the crowded bazaar streets, Dilullo's hopes picked up. But then he looked back and saw a low car with the big yellow Fallorian guardsmen in it turn into the street.

  The motley mob was too dense for the car to get through. The Fallorians piled out of it and came after them, plowing massively through the throng.

  Dilullo, glancing back, did not watch where he was going and collided with a large furry body. The bunch of bear-dog men whom Chane had called Paragarans had just come out of a drinking place. They were now very drunk indeed and the one Dilullo had careered into went off his feet, and Dilullo with him.

  Chane reached down and yanked Dilullo erect. The bear-dog men milled around, staring at them in a fuddled way.

  "We've had it," said Dilullo.

  The Fallorians had overtaken them and were roughly pushing aside the bear-dog men to get at them.

  It proved to be the wrong thing to do. The bear-dog men were drunk enough to fight anyone who pushed them around. With barking howls they threw themselves at the yellow guards.

  The Paragarans were almost as big as the Fallorians and they were ferocious fighters. They went in with their jaws seeking for holds and their arms whirling like furry maces. Chane jumped in with them, using all his Starwolf strength against the Fallorians and not caring who saw him.

  The thing became a swirling brawl. Dilullo stood apart from it, with his stunner in his hand. There was no chance to use the weapon, the combatants were so closely mixed. Chane seemed to be enjoying himself hugely. He used his fists, his elbows, his feet, his knees, and the butting surface of his head, all with equal agility. It seemed to Dilullo that only a few moments went by before the thing suddenly quieted and the Fallorians were lying insensible or twisted up and groaning.

  The dog-like Paragarans slapped Chane on the back with immense, drunken joviality. Then one of them, looking owlishly wise, spoke to the others in a husky, barking voice. They all started away from there, weaving a bit and sort of leaning against the crowd. The crowd made way for them very rapidly.

  Chane, mopping his brow, grinned after them. "They think they had all better go back to Paragara," he said. "I know a little bit of their language."

  "I think they're right," said Dilullo sourly. "And maybe we'd just better emulate their example and get back to our own ship. I'd like to get the devil out of here—if we still can. Your friend Klloya-Klloy may have alerted the spaceport security officers."

  "That's the beauty of a world like Mruun," said Chane. "No security officers. No law. If you've got anything valuable you hire guards to look after it for you. It's up to you, completely."

  "A nice kind of world," said Dilullo. "For a Starwolf, that is. Wait a minute. ..."

  He had spotted one of the furry Paragarans, lying senseless in the street not far from the yellow guards. He raised his voice and yelled after the Paragarans who were receding into the darkness.

  "Come back here!" he yelled in galacto. "You've left one behind."

  "They don't hear you," said Chane. "Too drunk."

  "What will happen to this one?" asked Dilullo, frowning down at what ridiculously resembled a gigantic teddy bear dropped by a passing child, only the child would have to be ten feet high.

  "I expect the Fallorians will cut his throat if they catch him," said Chane, quite unconcerned.

  Dilullo rapped out an oath he rarely used. "No. We'll take him with us. Pick him up."

  Chane stared. "Are you out of your mind? Why should we bother with him?"

  Dilullo got a wintry edge to his voice. "Every now and then, Chane, I have to remind myself that you're not altogether human. Well, I am. And anyone who fights on my side, I don't leave behind to get killed. Not even a damned Starwolf."

  Chane laughed suddenly. "You've got me there, John. I remember back on Arkuu when that damned fanatic Helmer had us pinned on the mountainside, you came chasing back up to see if I was dead or living."

  He picked up the unconscious Paragaran and slid him across his shoulders. He winced as he did so.

  "He's big and heavy," Dilullo said. "Let me give you a hand."

  "It's not the weight, it's the stench of him," said Chane. "This critter smells like a one-man tavern."

  He started forward down the street, and on Mruun, where everybody minds his own business, nobody even looked at them. They reached the spaceport road and went along it under the light of the Spur stars.

  Dilullo kept looking back but there was no more pursuit as yet. He began to think that with luck they might make it.

  Chane, as he stumped along with his furry burden in the steamy dark, uttered a low laugh.

  "Fun and games," he said. "Isn't this better than sitting on your backside in Brindisi?"

  Dilullo made a sound indicative of disgust. Chane continued, "You know, John, I've often thought of Arkuu ... and that girl Vreya. I'd like to go back and see her one of these days."

  "Leave her alone," said Dilullo. "She's far too good for the likes of you."

  The spaceport lights came up and Dilullo kept his hand on the hilt of his stunner, but nothing at all happened.

  They went into the ship and Bollard greeted Dilullo with a sweet smile on his moon-fat face.

  "Did you have fun?" he asked. "While we were all sitting here with our thumbs up our noses?"

  "We had fun," said Dilullo. "There'll be more of the same and enough for all if we don't get off Mruun as fast as we can."

  Bollard shouted an order and the Mercs scattered to their posts. Then Chane came in behind Dilullo and dumped his unconscious burden on the deck. Bollard stared at it.

  "Who the hell is that?"

  "A Paragaran," said Chane. "We sort of got mixed up with him and John felt we couldn't leave him behind."

  The hooter sounded as the lock doors slammed shut. They got into the chairs and the little ship went skyward, fast. By the time acceleration eased off and they got out of the recoil chairs, they found that the Paragaran had apparently been revived by the shock of takeoff. He stood up, looking puzzledly around him and swaying gently with an unsteadiness that had nothing to do with takeoff. His gaze lit on Chane and his hairy face split in a pleased grin.

  "A damned good fight," he said in galacto in a roaring, husky bellow. He clamped Chane on the back with his great paw. "And you're a good fighter. You brought me out of there?"

  Chane shook his head. "Not a bit of it. I'd have left you lying there." He pointed to Dilullo. "But my friend John here is the loyal comrade type. He brought you to save your neck."

  The big Paragaran turned and stared at Dilullo with red-rimmed, glazed eyes, and then stepped unsteadily toward him.

  "I'm Gwaath," he bellowed. "And I'll tell you this: anybody does Gwaath a favor like that and he's got a friend for life!"

  His furry arm
went around Dilullo's neck in a crushing embrace. He looked into Dilullo's face with drunken, doggy affection, and uttered a mighty belch. Dilullo reeled.

  V

  The ship, in overdrive, went farther and farther into the vast wilderness of Argo Spur. It went over great drifts of dust-choked suns whose haggard witch-fires extended for many parsecs. It passed dark shoals where dead stars had long ago collided and filled space with wheeling debris. It skirted a huge tornado-like whirl of dead and living stars that spun ever faster in a mad maelstrom that had a core of neutron stars.

  The old Starwolf road, thought Chane, and he knew every star and swarm and dark nebula along the way. And far ahead, on the simulacrum in the bridge, the sun of Varna was a tawny eye watching him, and he looked at it and dreamed.

  Presently, over the creaking thrum of the faulty overdrive, Dilullo spoke from behind him.

  "I've got half a mind to give up the whole thing and go back to Earth."

  "Losing your nerve?" said Chane.

  "I've told you before, don't try to needle people. You're no good at it. I've got more nerve than you when the chips are down."

  Chane thought about that and then said seriously, "I believe you're right. I can do anything as long as it's fun doing it, but you've got some kind of repression and drive. ..."

  "Call it the Puritan conscience," said Dilullo. "And I don't need any amateur psychoanalysis, either. How much chance do we have of getting the six Suns that Eron of Rith has?"

  Chane shrugged. "I've never been to Rith but I've heard about it from Varnans who were there. Eron is a tough character. He'd have to be, to live on that planet.... It's nothing but storm all the time, they say."

  "Nice," said Dilullo. He was about to add something sour, but Gwaath came lumbering into the bridge.

  "Oh, for God's sake," muttered Dilullo in English.

  "He loves you," said Chane. "You saved his life, remember? That's why he keeps following you around all the time."

  Gwaath's large form seemed to crowd the whole bridge. He patted Dilullo on the shoulder in breezy camaraderie, almost knocking him to the deck.

  "How's it going?" the Paragaran asked, in English. "How's everything, old boy?"

  Dilullo stared at him. "So you've been picking up things?"

  Gwaath nodded, then switched to galacto to explain. "The men down in the crewroom have taught me a little of your language. Listen to this...." And in English he started off a stream of expressions that made Chane grin and brought from Dilullo a hasty demand to stop.

  "They would teach you things like that," said Dilullo.

  "Why, man, children know stronger language than that on Paragara," said Gwaath. "On Paragara—"

  Dilullo interrupted. "Look," he said desperately. "Are you sure you don't want us to set you down on some world here in the Spur? Some world where you could get a message to your ship? Then your friends could pick you up."

  "I told you before, they're no friends of mine anymore," Gwaath rumbled. "They deserted me there on Mruun, left me to be killed." He added, with an air of ultimate indictment, "They were drunk."!

  Chane did not laugh. The Paragarans might look like big fubsy bear-dogs, but their renown as fighters had gone all through the Spur and they were quick to take offense.

  "No," Gwaath was saying, "I'll stick with you till we hit some world where I can get to Paragara on my own. Where do you touch first?"

  "Rith," said Dilullo.

  "Hell of a place," said Gwaath. "If it isn't raining it's hailing or lightning and it usually does all three together."

  "You've been there?" asked Dilullo.

  "Two—three times," said Gwaath. "The people of Rith buy some herbs that are raised only on Paragara. When the herbs are dried and then burned, they do very strange things to the mind."

  "Who is Eron of Rith?" asked Dilullo.

  Gwaath stared. "The ruler. They don't go for all that stuff about democratic government on Rith. One planet, one boss. Eron is it."

  Dilullo looked inquiringly at Chane. Chane knew what he meant, and nodded.

  "I'll tell you what, Gwaath," said Dilullo. "We're going to Rith on a kind of risky mission. And I think you ought to know what it is before you go along with us."

  He told Gwaath about the Singing Suns. The Paragaran made a sound of admiration.

  "And the Starwolves got them? Just what I'd expect. Ah, those Varnans are bastards but there's no more bold and clever thieves in the universe. Even on Paragara we're just as glad the Starwolves let us alone."

  "From what Klloya-Klloy told us, Eron of Rith has six of the Suns," said Dilullo. "We want them all, and his six come first."

  "How are you going to get them?"

  "Take them," said Dilullo. "This Eton knew bloody well they were stolen property when he bought them. If we can return them to their rightful owners at Achernar, there's a huge reward waiting for us."

  Gwaath's small bright eyes began to gleam in his furry face. "It sounds like fun," he said. "The Rith are a tough lot. Not as tough as the Starwolves or the Paragarans, but tough enough. Even so, it might be done."

  "You know Rith, we don't," said Dilullo. "If you want to join in on this there's a share of the reward for you at the end." He added, "Of course, the Mercs have to vote you in first."

  The Paragaran did not take long to decide. He shrugged massive shoulders and grinned a grin that showed formidable teeth.

  "I might as well," he said. "My ship's gone without me. We were going to become fighters for a kinglet on a Spur world whose subjects are rebellious. Probably there's no more risk looking for the Suns."

  "All right," said Dilullo. "I was wondering what excuse for landing we'd make when we set down on Rith. But this takes care of it... we're setting down to put ashore a Paragaran crewman we picked up from a world where he was beached."

  "Fine," said Gwaath. "What's your plan for getting the Suns away from Eron, once we're on Rith?"

  "Yes, John, what is your plan?" asked Chane, straightfaced. "I've been waiting to hear it."

  Dilullo gave him a slightly nasty look. "You'll hear it when I'm ready to tell you. Come along with me, Gwaath. I want to ask some questions about the setup of Eron's city."

  Gwaath cleared his throat. "Well, you see, I was pretty drunk each time I visited the place and I might not remember things so clearly if I was cold sober. I mean—"

  Dilullo interrupted. "Two drinks, that's all." He added, surveying the massive figure, "I'll make them large ones, considering your size."

  When the ship finally came out of overdrive near Rith, Chane was piloting. The blue-shining sun of this system was a small one, and Rith itself was not a very large world. They could not see much of it because the surface was blanketed under heavy clouds.

  Janssen gave Dilullo the readings which gave the location of the radio beacon at Eron City starport.

  "At least, I think it's the location," said Janssen unhappily. "There's the devil and all of a thunderstorm covering that whole region, and most of what I got was in little bits and pieces."

  He went back into the radar room. Dilullo studied the readings. Then, instead of handing them to Chane, he spoke into the intercom.

  "Sekkinen, you come up to the bridge for pilot duty."

  Chane looked around at him. "I'm perfectly capable of taking her in."

  Dilullo nodded. "I know you are. But it's going to be tricky in that storm and I'd just as lief not have a Starwolf type of pilot who thinks hell, let's take a chance, and slams us right into the middle of the city."

  "John, you remember things too well. You ought to learn to take it as it comes."

  But he made no other complaint, and yielded the pilot chair to Sekkinen when he came.

  Sekkinen was a born complainer. He complained now about the fact that it was not his turn at duty, about the injustice of asking a man to home in on fragmentary radar readings, and about the fact that he hadn't been allowed to finish his dinner.

  He went on and on, but while he co
mplained his hands were moving swiftly and surely and the little ship went down into the cloud-masses and the storm.

  They were descending toward the night side of the planet, but the incessant sheets of lightning made it frequently brighter than day. The winds, as registered on the board, were terrific; they would have known that anyway from the buffeting. The flaring atmospherics broke and distorted the sensor rays of the ship's instruments so that it lurched about half blind. Sekkinen kept complaining and all the time his hands kept moving skillfully. Presently the lightning-flares showed a small starport rushing up toward them, and when they bumped down onto it Dilullo sighed with relief.

  "Listen to that," said Chane, when the power had been turned off.

  The ship was being smashed at by rain that fell in great solid chunks rather than as drops. The drumming roar of it was deafening.

  "We can't go out into that; it'd knock our heads off," said Dilullo. "We'll wait."

  They waited. The drumming downpour continued. It was well over an hour before it suddenly stopped.

  "All right," said Dilullo. "Just Bollard and Gwaath and me, for now. Crack the lock."

  They went out into chill, damp darkness. Dilullo saw the lights of what he took to be starport administration and started toward them. The other two followed, Gwaath's big feet splashing in the puddles.

  Suddenly they were washed by a fierce glare of spotlights from ahead of them. At the same moment a hard voice spoke to them in galacto from an amplifier.

  "There are four heavy lasers trained on your ship," it said metallically. "Every man aboard is to come out, without weapons, and walk in this direction."

  "What is this?" demanded Dilullo loudly. "We're an Earth prospecting craft, and we only set down here to land a stranded Paragaran. ..."

  "Just keep walking, my innocent Earthman," said the harsh voice. "Eron wants to see you. He knows exactly why you have come to Rith."

  VI

  It is not often, Dilullo thought, that you see a thoroughly happy man. It does your heart good to see one.

  Eron of Rith was a happy man. He strutted back and forth, a small man with a tough, faintly red face and bristling black hair, looking for all the world like a falcon turned human. He laughed and slapped his sides and laughed again, looking toward the table where Dilullo and Chane and Gwaath were sitting.