by Keith Laumer
I told In-Ruhic and the others about the wasp-waisted ship and the armored midgets that had taken the Lady Raire; but they’d never seen or heard of their kind. They wagged their heads and grunted in vicarious admiration when I described her to them.
“But these are matters best forgotten, Biridanju-” that was as close as In-Ruhic seemed to be able to get to my name. “I’ve heard of the world called Zeridajh; distant it is, and inhabited by men as rich as emperors. Doubtless these evil-doers you tell of have long since sold her there for ransom.”
By the time the world where Ancu-Uriru planned to drop me was visible in the view-screen on the bridge where I was pulling watches as a sort of assistant instrument reader, I was almost a full-fledged member of the crew. Just before we started our landing maneuvers, which were more complicated for an old tub like In-Ruhic’s command than they had been for Lord Desroy’s ultramodern yacht, In—Ruhic took me aside and asked me what my plans were.
“If there’s a Zeridajhi Embassy, I’ll go there and tell them about the Lady Raire. Or maybe I can send some kind of message through. If not . . . well, I’ll figure out something.”
He shook his head and looked sad and wise. “You nurture a hopeless passion for this high-born lady,” he started.
“Nothing like that,” I cut him off short. “She was in my care. I’m responsible.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “Biridanju, you’ve shown yourself a willing worker, and quick to learn. Stay on with me. I offer you a regular berth aboard this vessel.”
“Thanks, In-Ruhic. But I have another job to do.”
“Think well, Biridanju. For a foreigner, work is not easy to find; and to shore folk, who know not the cruel ways of space, your little decorations may prove unsightly, an added incubus.”
I put a hand up and felt the lumps and ridges along the side of my throat and jaw. “I know; it looks like hell. But I’m not asking for any beauty prizes. I’ll pay my way.”
“I suppose you must make your try. But after, Biridan-ju-remember: We’re based nearby, and call here at Inciro ever and anon. I’ll welcome you as shipmate whenever you’re ready.”
We landed a few hours later on a windswept ramp between a gray sea and a town growing on a hillside. Captain Ancu-Uriru was there ahead of us. He talked earnestly with In-Ruhic for a while, then invited me to his quarters aboard the yacht. There he sat me down and offered me a drink and a double-barreled cigar, rolled from two different weeds which, when combined, produced a smoke worse than any three nickle stogies.
“Biridanju, I tell you freely, you’ve made me a rich man,” he said. “I thought at first you were a shill who’d bring pirates down on me. Almost, I had you shot before you boarded.” He made a face that might have been a smile. “Your cat saved you. It passed reason that a man with your wounds, and an animal-lover, could be but a decoy for corsairs. I ordered In-Ruhic to watch you closely, and for long I slept but little, watching these beautiful screens for signs of mischief. Now I know I did you an injury.”
“You saved my life,” I said. “No apologies needed.”
He lifted a flat box from a drawer of the gorgeous inlaid desk. “I am a just man, Biridanju; or so I hope. I sold the special stores aboard this cutter for a sum greater than any year’s profits I’ve known since I first captained a trader. The proceeds are yours, your fair share.”
I lifted the lid and looked at an array of little colored sticks an eighth of an inch square and an inch long.
“There is enough there to keep you in comfort for many years,” he said. “If you squander it not on follies, such as star-messages or passenger fares-not that there’s enough to take you far.” He gave me a sharp look that meant In—Ruhic had told him my plans.
I thanked him and assured him I’d make it go as far as I could. It took me ten minutes to collect my personal belongings from the ship and buckle Eureka into the harness I’d made for him. Then Ancu-Uriru took me through the port formalities, which weren’t much for anyone with a bankroll, and found me an inn in the town. In-Ruhic joined us for a final drink in my room, and then they left, and I sat on the side of the plain little bunk in the plain little room in the yellow twilight and scratched Eureka behind the ears and felt the loneliness close in.
The town was named Inciro, like the planet. It was one of half a dozen ports that had been built ages past to handle the long-vanished trade in minerals and hides and timber from the interior of the one big continent. The population of about ten thousand people, many of whom had six fingers on each hand for some reason, were tall, dark-eyed, pale-skinned, gloomy—looking, with a sort of Black Irish family resemblance, like Eskimos or Hottentots. I spent a few days wandering around the town, sampling the food in different chophouses and seafood dives-they were all good-and drinking a tasty red beer called “izm.” The mixed dialect I’d learned from In-Ruhic and his men was good enough to carry on a basic conversation. I soon learned there was no Zeridajhi Embassy anywhere on the planet; the nearest thing to it was a consular agent representing the commercial interest of the half dozen worlds within five light-years of Inciro. I called on him. He was a fattish, hairy man in a stale-smelling office over a warehouse. He steepled his pudgy fingers and listened to what I had to say, then solemnly suggested I forget the whole thing. It seemed it was a big Galaxy, and the things that had maimed me and stolen Milady Raire could be anywhere in it-probably at the far side of it by now. No belligerent nonhuman had been seen in these parts for more centuries than I had years. He would have liked to have told me I’d imagined it all, but his eyes kept straying back to my scars.
Eureka went with me on my walks, attracting quite a bit of attention at first. The Incirinos had seen a few cats before, but none his size. He did more than keep me company; one evening a trio of roughnecks with too many bowls of izm inside them came over to get a closer look at my scars, and he came to his feet from where he’d been curled up under the table and made a sound like tearing canvas and showed a mouthful of teeth, and they backed away fast.
I found a little old man who hung around one of the bars who knew half a dozen useful dialects. For the price of enough drinks each evening to keep him in a talking mood, he gave me language lessons, plus the beginnings of an education on the state of this end of the Galaxy. He told me how the human race had developed a long time ago on a world near Galactic Center, had spread outward in all directions for what must have been a couple of hundred thousand years, settled every habitable planet they found and built a giant empire that collapsed peacefully after a while of its own weight. That had been over twenty thousand years earlier; and since then the many separate tribes of Man had gone their own ways.
“Now, take you,” he poked a skinny finger at me. “From a planet you call
‘Eart.’ Thought you were the only people in the Universe. But all you were was a passed-over colony, or maybe what was left of a party marooned by an accident; or a downed battleship. Or maybe you were a penal colony. Or perhaps a few people wandered out there, just wanting to be alone. A few thousand years pass, and-there you are!” He looked triumphant, as if he’d just delivered a rigorous proof of the trisection of the angle.
“But we’ve dug up bones,” I told him. “Ape-men, and missing links. They show practically the whole chain of evolution, from animals to men. And we’ve got gorillas and chimps and monkeys that look too much like us to just be coincidence.”
“Who said anything about coincidence?” he came back. “Life adapts to conditions. Similar conditions, similar life. You ever look at the legs and feet on a plink-lizard? Swear they were human, except they’re only so long. Look at flying creatures; birds, mammals, reptiles, goranos, or mikls; they all have wings, all flap ’em, all have hollow bones, use two legs for walking-”
“Even Eureka here is related to humanity,” I pressed on. “We have more similarities than we have differences. As embryos of a few weeks, you can’t tell us apart.”
He nodded and grinned. “Uh-huh. And where�
��d you say you got him? Not on Eart.”
It was like arguing religion. Talking about it just confirmed everyone in his original opinion. But the talking was good experience. By the time I’d been on Inciro for three months, Earth time, I was fluent in the lingua franca that the spacers used, and had a pretty good working vocabulary in a couple of other dialects. And I kept my Zeridajhi sharpened up with long imaginary conversations with the Lady Raire, in which I explained over and over again how we should have greeted the midgets.
I looked up a local surgeon who examined my wounds and clucked and after a lot of lab studies and allergy tests, put me under an anesthetic and rebuilt my shoulder with metal and plastic to replace what was missing. When the synthetic skin had stitched itself in with the surrounding hide, he operated again, to straighten out my ribs. He wanted to reupholster the side of my neck and jaw next, but the synthetic hide was the same pale color as the locals; it wouldn’t have improved my looks much. And by then, I was tired of the pain and boredom of plastic surgery. My arm worked all right now, and I could stand straight again instead of cradling my smashed side. And it was time to move on.
In-Ruhic’s ship called about then, and I asked his advice.
“I don’t want to sign on for just a local run,” I told him. “I want to work my way toward Zeridajh, and ask questions along the way. Sooner or later I’ll find a lead to the midgets.”
“This is a long quest you set yourself, Biridanju,” he said. “And a vain one.”
But he took me along to a local shipowner and got me a place as an apprentice power-section tender on a freighter bound inward toward a world called Topaz.
Eureka and I saw Topaz, and after that Greu and Poylon and Trie and Pandache’s World and the Three Moons. Along the way, I learned the ins and outs of an ion-pulse drive and a stressed-field generator; and I served my time in vac suits, working outside under the big black sky that wrapped all the way around and seemed to pull at me like a magnet that would suck me away into its deepest blackest depths, every hour I spent out on a hull. And I had my head pounded by a few forecastle strong-arm types, until an oak-tough old tube-man who’d almost been fleet champion once in his home-world’s navy showed me a few simple tricks to keep from winding up on the short end of every bout. His method was effective: he pounded me harder than the bully-boys until I got fast enough to bloody his nose one night, and graduated.
I learned to pull duty three on, three off, to drink the concoctions that space-faring men seemed to always be able to produce no matter how far they were from the last port, and to play seventy-one different games with hundred-and-four card decks whose history was lost in antiquity. And at every world I asked, and got the same answer: No such animals as the midgets had been seen in five thousand years and probably not then. On a world called Unriss, in a library that was a museum relic itself, I found a picture of a midget-or a reasonable facsimile. I couldn’t read the text, but the librarian could make out a little of the old language. It said the thing was called a H’eeaq, that it was a denizen of a world of the same name, and that it was extinct. Where H’eeaq was located, it neglected to say. My small bankroll, which would have kept me in modest circumstances on Inciro, didn’t last long. I spent it carefully, item by item outfitted my ship chest, including a few luxuries like a dreamer and a supply of tapes, a good power gun, and shore clothes. I studied astrogation and power section maintenance whenever I was able to get hold of a tape I hadn’t seen before. By the time two years had passed, I had been promoted to power chief, second class, meaning I was qualified to act as standby chief on vessels big enough to have a standby complement. That was a big step forward-like jumping from Chinese junks to tramp steamers. It meant I could ship on bigger, faster vessels, with longer range. I reached a world called Lhiza after a six months’ cruise on a converted battle cruiser, and spent three months on the beach there, spending my back pay on new training tapes and looking for a berth that would take me into the edge of the sector of the Galaxy known as the Bar. It wasn’t easy; few of the older, slower hulls that worked the Eastern Arm had business there. But the Bar was where Zeridajh was, still thousands of light-years away, but getting closer.
The vessel I finally shipped on was a passenger liner, operating under a contract with the government of a world called Ahax, hauling immigrant labor. I didn’t much like the idea; it was my first time nursemaiding a shipload of Flatlanders. But I was offered a slot as first powerman, and the tub was going a long way, and in the right direction. So I signed on. She was an old ship, like most of the hulls operating in the Arm, but she had been a luxury job in her day. I had a suite to myself, with room for Eureka, so for the first time aboard ship the old cat got to sleep across my feet, the way he did ashore. The power section was a massive, old-fashioned stressed-field installation; but after the first few weeks of shakedown and impressing my ideas on my crew I had the engines running smoothly. Everything settled down then to the quiet, slightly dull, sometimes pleasant, always monotonous routine that all long cruises are. My first shift chief, Ommu, was a big-muscled, square-faced fellow with the faint greenish cast to his skin that said he was from a high C1 world. He listened to my story of the midgets, and told me that once, many years before, he’d seen a similar ship, copper-colored. It had drifted into a cometary orbit around a world in the Guree system, in the Bar. She was a navigational hazard and he’d been one of the crew assigned to rendezvous with her and set vaporizing charges. Against standing orders, he and another sapper had crawled in through a hole in her side to take a look around. The ship had been long dead, and there wasn’t much left of the crew; but he had picked up a souvenir. He got it from his ship chest and laid it on the mess table in front of me. It looked like a stack of demitasse cups, dull silver, with a loop at the base and a short rod projecting from the open end.
“Yeah,” I said, and felt my scalp prickle, just looking at it. It wasn’t identical with the guns that had shot me up, back on Gar 28, but it was a close enough relative.
I had him tell me all about the ship, everything he could remember. There wasn’t much. We went up to the ship’s psychologist and after a lot of persuasion and a bottle of crude stuff from the power-section still, he agreed to run a recall on Ommu under hypnosis. I checked with the purser and located a xenologist among the passengers, and got him to sit in on the session.
In a light trance, Ornmu relived the approach to the ship, described it in detail as he came up on it from sun-side. We followed him inside, through the maze of compartments; we were with him as he stirred the remains of what must have been a H’eeaq and turned up the gun. The therapist ran him back through it three times, and he and the xenologist took turns firing questions at him. At the end of two hours, Ommu was soaking wet and I had the spooky feeling I’d been aboard that derelict with him.
The xenologist wanted to go back to his quarters and pore over his findings, but I talked him into giving us a spot analysis of what he’d gotten.
“The vessel itself appears a typical artifact of what we call the H’eeaq Group,” he said. “They are an echinoder-moid form, originating far out in Fringe Space, or, as some have theorized, representing an incursion from a neighboring stellar assemblage, presumably the Lesser Cloud. Their few fully documented contacts with Man, and with other advanced races of the Galaxy, reveal a cultural pattern of marked schizoid-accretional character-”
“Maybe you could make that a little plainer,” Ommu suggested.
“These are traits reflecting a basic disintegration of the societal mechanism,” he told us, and elaborated on that for a while. The simplified explanation was as bad as the regular one, as far as my vocabulary was concerned. I told him so.
“Look here,” he snapped. He was a peppery little man. “You’re asking me to extrapolate from very scanty data, to place my professional reputation in jeopardy-”
“Nothing like that, sir,” I soothed him. “I’d just like to have a little edge the next time I meet those types.”
<
br /> “Ummm. There’s their basic insecurity, of course. I’d judge their home-world has been cataclysmically destroyed, probably the bulk of their race along with it. What this might do to a species with a strong racial-survival drive is anyone’s guess. If I were you, I’d look for a complex phobia system: Fear of heights or enclosed spaces, assorted fetish symbologies. And of course, the bully syndrome. Convince them you’re stronger, and they’re your slaves. Weaker, and they destroy you.”
That was all I got from him. Ommu gave me the teacup gun. I disassembled it and examined its workings, but it didn’t tell me much. The routine closed in again then. I fine—tuned the generators, and put the crew on polishing until the section gleamed from one end to the other. I won some money playing tikal, lost it again at revo. And then one offshift I was shocked up out of a deep sleep to find myself lying on the floor, with Eureka yowling over me and every alarm bell on the ship screaming disaster.
By the time I reached the power section, the buffeting was so bad that I had to grab a rail to stay on my feet.
“I’ve tried to get through to Command for orders,” Om-mu yelled over the racket, “but no contact!”
I tried the interdeck screen, raised a young plotman with blood on his face who told me the whole forward end of the ship had been carried away by a collision, with what, he didn’t know. That was all he told me before the screen blanked in the middle of a word.
A new shock knocked both of us down. The deck heaved up under us and kept going, right on up and over.
“She’s tumbling,” I yelled to Ommu. “She’ll break up, fast, under this! Order the men to lifeboat stations!” A tubeman named Rusi showed up then, pale as chalk, hugging internal injuries. I gave him a hand and we crawled on floors, walls and ceilings, made it to our boat station. The bay door was blown wide and the boat was hanging in its davits with the stern torn out, and there were pieces of a dead man scattered around. I ordered the men up to the next station and started to help my walking wounded, but he was dead.