"I can provide you with Step One ... without which there will be no more steps anyway. On Step Two, I can give you the exact location of the treasure room that holds the Singing Suns, the approaches thereto, and what I know or can guess of the obstacles you'll face." Eron smiled, glancing at Chane. "Once you're down you're on your own. And in the matter of thievery, I bow to the master."
Chane showed the hard edges of his teeth. And Dilullo said, "Let's hear it."
Eron said, "You'll go to Chlann in a Rith scout, using my charts. You will message that you're coming in with a shipment of ara root."
"Ara root? What's that?"
Eron nodded toward the snoring Paragaran, who still sprawled with his head on the table.
"They grow it on Paragara. About the only place it will grow. It's some kind of stimulant; I don't know exactly what. Anyway, the Qajars love it. They buy it, but not directly. They never do anything directly. The Paragarans bring it here and we take it to Chlann."
Dilullo remembered what Gwaath had said and nodded. "So we go in a Rith scout, with a message about ara root. What then?"
"The Qajars will demand identification before they permit you to land. Visual identification."
"And the minute they see our faces we're dead," said Chane. "Nothing could make us look like Rith. How do we get around that?"
Eron smiled, the small delighted smile of a man charmed by his own cleverness. Again he nodded, indicating Gwaath.
"He does it. He makes the visual identification, and he tells them that he's come on from Rith to inform them that there's been a disaster in the ara root fields and there won't be any more of the stuff available for a couple of years ... except maybe a very small supply for very special customers at, naturally, a very special price. It's the price he wants to discuss with them. The Qajars will be worried enough to let you come in."
"If," Dilullo added, "they haven't got sensor equipment that will scan the whole interior of the ship. If they see us that'll blow it, as Chane said."
Eron shrugged. "I can't guarantee that they don't have such equipment, I don't know. But they've never full-scanned a Rith ship. They're used to us. So I don't see why they'd bother this time."
"Sounds like a fair gamble," said Chane.
Dilullo grunted. "I like a little shorter odds, myself. However ..."
Chane said, "Let's hear about the treasure room."
Eron told him, partly with the aid of the tridim pictures, partly from memory, partly from shrewd guesswork. When he was through Dilullo looked at Chane and said, "Well?" and Chane nodded slowly. His mouth smiled and there was a kind of light in his eyes. Wolf-light, Dilullo thought, and fought down a cold cramping of the guts.
"What about the deal?" asked Eron.
"We'll have to talk it over," said Dilullo.
"All right," said Eron. "But don't take too long. I might change my mind."
"One thing," said Dilullo. "None of my party except me knows that Chane was once a Starwolf. I don't want the others told that."
Eron shrugged. "That's no problem as far as I'm concerned."
Chane said, "Thanks for the solicitude, John."
Dilullo looked at him bleakly. "I'm concerned about the others, not you. If any of them found out the truth they'd refuse to work with you, certainly, and might very possibly kill you. Which would break up the whole job." He nodded toward the snoring Paragaran. "Pick up my friend and bring him along."
"He's got to stop this," said Chane, as he slung the sleeping Gwaath across his shoulders. "It's getting to be a habit."
The other Mercs were in a big barrack-like room two floors up in another wing of the palace. The single door was guarded by several of the little red men with lasers. A few of the Mercs were sleeping but the others were aware and anxious.
Dilullo told them. Their faces fell, a million credits' worth, and Bollard shook his head emphatically.
"It's too risky, John. Two, three men in a little scout—what chance would you have against all those Qajar weapons?"
"Maybe more chance than you think," said Dilullo. "From what I heard, the Qajars have been immune so long that maybe the last thing they'd expect is three men making a sudden raid on their treasure houses."
"Who would the third man be?" demanded Bollard.
"Chane," said Dilullo.
Bollard got belligerent. "Why Chane, instead of me?"
"Because," said Dilullo, "it was Chane who thought up this whole idea of going after the Singing Suns. If I run into a first-class disaster, I'd sort of like him to share it with me."
"I don't blame you," said Bollard, looking without love at Chane. "All the same, I think you're doing something harebrained."
Chane thought that Dilullo's reason for taking him sounded good enough, but it was not the whole reason, even though there was doubtless much truth in it. The real reason was that this was a Starwolf job and Dilullo needed a Starwolf to do it.
"Look," Dilullo was saying to Bollard, "has it occurred to you that we may not have any choice? Eron is being nice right now because he figures to use us as cat's-paws to take the Suns. If we refuse, I can't very well see Eron waving us a sweet goodbye and wishing us a pleasant trip home."
"You may be right," muttered Bollard. "But if you pull it off and bring the Suns back, can you see Eron allowing us to leave with the Suns to get the reward from Achernar to split with him? If he's got the Suns, why should he split at all?"
"Let's not think of that just now," said Dilullo. "We've got trouble enough right ahead without worrying about what comes after it."
VIII
The little cluster was a graveyard of stars.
Dead suns, ashen hulks black and cold forever. Almost-dead suns, with little tongues and wreaths of fire on their stony, dark surfaces. Dying suns, red and ominous, most of their planets wrapped in everlasting ice. Such worlds had no interest for Starwolves.
But they had been wrong, Chane thought. The Qajar treasure houses, as he had seen in the tridim pictures, had been enough to make a Starwolf go mad. He thought that if the Qajars had been cunning enough to conceal all that for so long, they would be no mean antagonists.
Dilullo sat in the pilot seat of the fast little scout. Gwaath had claimed loudly that he could handle the ship, but when they gave him the chance his piloting had been hopelessly sloppy.
And Chane had said to Dilullo, "I told you the Paragarans aren't much good in space."
He used English but Gwaath caught the critical tone and snarled, "Use galacto! What did you say about me?"
"I said how lucky we are to have a Paragaran with us to fight, if we get into trouble."
Gwaath glared at Chane with his small red eyes. "You're lying. You can't fool me. You may think I'm stupid—"
"What," Chane interrupted blandly, "would give you that idea?"
Gwaath began to roar, and Dilullo raised his voice to tell them both to shut up.
The little scout went on, and they slept, and took turns at the controls, and ate, and swore at the monotony.
And finally they dropped out of overdrive.
A sun far gone into the dusky redness of age glared at them like a huge bloodshot eye. Around it swung a dark planet that seemed nothing but a barren ball of rock. Chlann. The Qajars. The Singing Suns.
Chane quivered a little, like a hunting animal that sees its prey.
"If what Eron told us about these people is true, we'll be challenged very quickly when we go in to make worldfall," said Dilullo.
He was in the pilot chair. He had set up the audiovisual communic so that its view comprised only a limited area of the interior of the scout. Gwaath was seated in front of the little screen of the communic.
"Are you sure you've got it?" Dilullo asked him.
The Paragaran said emphatically that he was good and damned sure. Dilullo hoped he was. They had drilled him in his speech until he ought to be able to repeat it in his sleep.
"Remember," he said, "you're not to move from that seat.
> The Qajars must not see either Chane or me."
Chane was giving a final check to the laser controls. The heavy lasers were mounted in the prow of the scout, in deep ports.
"If we can get down into that open circle in one piece," said Chane, "these will open a quick way into the treasure room."
"Tell me again," said Dilullo, "what's going to keep the Qajars from clobbering us the minute we set down. It sounded good when you said it, and I need comforting."
"Two things," said Chane confidently. "One, our lasers trained on their beautiful buildings—they'd rather lose one treasure than lose all. Two, they'll be warned that our power unit is set to blow if the ship is hk. If they destroy us, they destroy their own buildings."
Starwolf reasoning, thought Dilullo; Starwolf cheek. He hoped Chane was as good as he thought he was.
"Even so," said Chane, "it'll be touch and go, getting in and getting out with the Suns."
"Keep remembering that," said Dilullo. "And don't get tempted to linger for any more of that dazzling stuff we saw, or you might just linger forever."
They were low over the dark, forbidding planet when a voice spoke sharply from the communic.
Dilullo nodded to Gwaath. Gwaath switched on the visual circuits of the communic. In the small screen appeared the pale face of a Qajar, an elderly man with unnaturally smooth skin and the calm icy eyes of his kind peering from under the cowl of his white robe.
Gwaath spoke in galacto, giving the whole carefully-coached story about blight in the ara root and how Eron of Rith had told him he should deal directly with the Qajars and lent him a Rith scout to do it in. He talked about shortage and price and future deliveries, and Chane thought that he was the clumsiest liar he had ever heard in his life. But when he thought about it, the Paragaran wasn't so bad after all. There was a certain disarming, not to say stupid candor about him that made it difficult to doubt him.
The Qajar in the screen seemed to consider for a moment. Then he said, "This matter is without precedent. Put your ship into stationary orbit, while we consider."
Gwaath said he would do that. He asked, "Can I shut off the visual till you call? It consumes power."
The man in the screen nodded contemptuously. He said, "My name is Vlanalan. You will receive our decision very soon. Until then, any attempt to land will result in instant destruction."
Gwaath switched off the visual. Then he turned around and looked at Dilullo with a did-I-do-good? expression.
"That was fine, Gwaath," whispered Dilullo. "Just sit there and wait.... I'll put the scout into orbit."
He did that, and they waited. And thought about the next move, the descent toward the starport, the sudden diversion and landing in the open circle among the treasure houses, the thing done so swiftly and unexpectedly as to catch the Qajars quite by surprise. They hoped.
They waited for permission to land. And waited. And as the minutes went by a strange feeling, an uneasiness, came over Chane.
He could not define it. It was not a sixth sense. But Starwolves had their five senses honed to a keenness far beyond normal. And this was the same kind of feeling he had had on Allubane, in the dark jungle before the Nanes jumped him. Something was not quite right.
"I think ..."he began to whisper.
Dilullo held up a hand sharply to silence him. The auditory channel of the communic was still open, and Dilullo was signaling that they must not be heard.
More minutes went by, and the little ship went on around the dark planet, and the bloody eye of the dying sun looked down at them.
Like a bolt of lightning, pain ripped through Chane's nervous system. His nerves were afire, electric with agony. He tried to dart to the controls, where Dilullo had suddenly crumpled in the chair with his shaking hands over his face.
He could not make it. He was Morgan Chane, the Earthman who had grown up a Starwolf; he had strength and stamina and speed beyond any man of Earth, beyond any non-Varnan in the galaxy. He was very strong and nothing could stop him.
But now he was a baby, weak, shuddering in agony. He fell on his face and lay with his mouth against the cold deck, his tortured body rippling in long slow rhythms of pain.
He rolled around in a vain attempt to get up, and then sobbed as the agony increased. He saw Gwaath, his red eyes wild, rise and stagger and stumble and then crash into a corner. After that Gwaath got to his knees and swayed back and forth uttering hoarse animal sounds.
Dilullo did not even try to get out of the pilot chair. Dilullo seemed to shrink and shrivel, as though a fiery breath of absolute pain was burning him up.
Chane tried to force himself to act. He was bathed in hot agony, but he had felt agony before. What he had to do was get to his feet, get to the controls, and send the scout out of orbit away from Chlann before they all died or went completely mad, which was going to happen very quickly now, in minutes, perhaps seconds.
Summoning all his fierce Starwolf resolution, he got to his feet. And fell down on his face again.
"Fools," said a cold, remote voice. "Did you think we would let your ship approach without searching it by sensor rays? Especially after we had been warned that Earthmen were trying to take the Suns?"
It was the voice of Vlanalan, speaking from the communic. It lashed them with icy, scornful tones.
"You could have been killed at once, of course. But that is not our way. You must suffer until you realize the blackness of your crime in attempting to steal things of beauty from the Qajars. A ship will come. You will be boarded and brought in to us for further examination. In the meantime, your punishment begins."
As though a switch had been turned, the pain that shredded Chane's nerves was stepped up. Dilullo just sagged farther in the chair. Gwaath started to roar insanely and throw himself against the wall. He did that twice and then fell and lay struggling feebly.
Chane whimpered. He was tough, he had taken pain before, but nothing like this. He lay with his face against the deck and he was not a Starwolf any more; he was a hurt puppy.
"Do you like it?" asked the voice of Vlanalan. "Like it, strangers. For there is more, much more."
A terrible hatred grew in Chane. He had been hurt in conflict and borne no grudge, for getting hurt in conflict was natural and if you did not want to risk it you avoided conflict entirely. But this relentlessly applied, scientifically calculated torture, the cool taunting voice, made him feel a hatred he had never felt for an enemy before.
Chane nursed his hatred. It fought back the pain. He hated Vlanalan and all the Qajars. He would pay them back for this. And that meant that he must survive....
Survival first, and then revenge.
Survival ...
They must get away from here before the Qajar ship came.
He fought to clear his mind of the daze of agony. He could never make it to the controls; he knew that. The force that brought the pain to his nervous system had stunned all his motor centers. And there was no hope in Dilullo, who sagged in the pilot chair and seemed not to breathe.
Was he dead? Oh God, did I bring him here to die?
What, then?
Gwaath rolled on the deck, howling. The feeble twitching had become a wild flailing. His hands and feet struck the deck plates.
Chane looked at him through pain-misted eyes.
The force that tormented them was attuned to human bodies, human nerves. Gwaath was humanoid but not human, bred of a different stock. He was suffering but he could still move, still howl.
Chane waited until Gwaath's head was near him, beating on the deck like a hollow gourd. He had to wait so that his croaking whisper, which was all the voice he had, might be heard.
"Gwaath. Gwaath ...!"
Gwaath continued to roll and flail his hands about.
"The controls, Gwaath. Throw us ... out of orbit. Escape ..."
He kept saying controls escape Gwaath, or trying to say them, but the words did not seem to have any shape to them and Gwaath seemed to be beyond hearing in any case. The
n it seemed to him that Gwaath's rollings and flounderings and howlings were moving him closer to the control board, and he watched, thinking how strange everything looked when you saw it through your own blood and tears, forced red and watery to burst the eyeballs. The distorted shape of Gwaath moved in the redness....
Howled suddenly.
Flung itself sprawling upon the control board.
The voice of Vlanalan said something shrill.
The ship roared out of stationary orbit. And the agony was doubled, tripled.
The unseen net was reaching now to kill them before they could get away.
IX
Chane was surprised to wake up. He had been sure, when that last blast of unspeakable pain had knocked him into darkness, that he was dying.
He still lay on the deck. The fiery anguish had left him, but all his nerves crawled and twitched and rippled with the memory of what had been inflicted on them. For the moment he was incapable of movement; his motor centers appeared to have burnt out. He wondered if it was permanent.
He lay there and thought of the Qajars. How clever they were, with their sensor rays and their probes of pain. How ruthless they were, those calm-faced lovers of beauty, delighting in tormenting those who might threaten their treasures, drawing a man's soul out of his body as slowly as possible and enjoying his suffering. He could imagine what would have happened to the three of them if the Qajars had got them on their world.
Gwaath bent over Chane, bringing his furry face down close and looking inquiringly at him with red-shot eyes.
Chane made a great effort of will and spoke. One word.
"Dilullo?"
"Not dead," said the Paragaran. "But not awake, and nothing wakes him."
"Help me up," said Chane.
Gwaath did so. He did it three times before Chane finally got his legs under him and stayed up, with only a little help. The big Paragaran still looked a bit groggy but otherwise was nearly normal. His humanoid body had endured that last blast of agony pretty well. But Chane himself knew that he had been very near to death when the scout sped out of orbit and out of range of the force.
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