Doomstar

by Edmond Hamilton

  Kettrick went down the steep stairs carefully because his legs were shaky. "Hadn't we better get on with the trading, Flay?"

  "There's no hurry. The bar is not done yet, and we can trade when the weather's bad. Today is a good day for hunting."

  "All right," said Kettrick. "Fine. We'll ask Boker to go with us." He looked down at himself and scratched his stubbled jaw. "I've got to get clean clothes, and a shave. You can wait that long?"

  "I'll wait for you." Flay laughed and shook his head. "Why does a man wish to go with a naked face like a woman's? Let your beard grow, Johnny. It was given you to keep you warm."

  "Other worlds," said Kettrick, "are not so cold as this one." He held out his hand. "I'm grateful to you, Flay."

  "But Johnny, we are friends! Go on, make yourself pretty, only be quick about it. I'll be after you as soon as my hounds are out of the kennel."

  Kettrick smiled and nodded, closing his coverall tight against the outside cold. He tweaked the broad girl's braid and kissed her, and promised her a present from the ship, and she laughed, and Flay began to bawl out orders for the hunt to get under way.

  There were already saddled animals waiting, and the boy was bringing up more. Kettrick took one of them and rode leisurely out of the city, with Chai padding beside him in the trampled snow.

  When they were in the hills he kicked the beast into a lumbering run, pulling it down only when they came in sight of the ship. The huge red sun slid up the eastern sky, staining the snow with a bloody light, turning the clouds to sullen fire. The mounts of Flay's sons were tethered to the tripod gear, standing patiently with their backs to the wind. Kettrick tied his beast beside them and went up the ladder to the hatch. He met Boker just inside, with two of Flay's big red sons behind him.

  "Saw you coming, Johnny." Boker threw his arms around Kettrick and pounded him, laughing. "We did it, didn't we? Sent the I–C packing off like puppies on a false trail. Flay was tremendous. I wish you could have seen him…"

  "I did," said Kettrick. "I was on the other side of the wall." And he brayed with laughter, looking at Flay's sons. "Your father is a great man, listen to him and learn." The sons beamed happily. Kettrick spoke again to Boker. "He wants us to hunt with him today. I have to hurry and wash up. He's on his way."

  "Go ahead, then," Boker said, and pushed Kettrick ahead down the companionway. Kettrick felt one brief sharp pressure of his fingers and that was all the warning he had.

  Boker hit the nearest son.

  He hit him hard and clean and with such concentrated purpose that Kettrick heard the jawbone crack. The second son, reacting with the swiftness of a man whose life depends on his reflexes, hit Kettrick, but Kettrick was already moving and the blow glanced like a piledriver off his hip instead of disemboweling him. Kettrick dug his own knee into the man's groin and battered him as hard as he could around the head. He seemed to be battering a rock. The man grunted and appeared to withdraw into himself like a turtle, and with the hand that was not busy fending off Kettrick he reached for the pistol in his belt. The first son had sunk to one knee. He was shaking his head dazedly, but he was by no means out. He too was pawing for his gun.

  Kettrick caught a mighty smash in the face that drove him back against the wall. His ears sang and his nose gushed blood. It had become suddenly very dark. Through the darkness he saw the red-haired man, apparently quite slowly and leisurely, draw the clumsy pistol from his belt.

  Kettrick lurched forward and caught the man's wrist with both hands. The wrist was like an iron bar. It flung him to and fro and another iron bar was pounding him over the head. He was blind mad now and he hung on. There was great confusion beside him in the companionway, a roaring and a lumbering of shapes. It quieted abruptly and one of the shapes, very large and gray, flung itself toward Kettrick. There was a growl and a grunt and the iron arm went limp and fell away. Kettrick and Boker stood panting, staring at each other out of bloody faces, while Chai stood over two unconscious sons and licked her fingers reflectively.

  Kettrick pointed to the hatch. "Out," he said.

  Chai leaned over and picked up one man by his collar. From inside the ship came an outcry of voices and then the crashing roar of a gun going off in an enclosed space.

  Boker said, "The bridgeroom."

  They ran down the companionway and up the ladder into the bridge. Glevan was standing over the third son, who lay on his face on the floor. Hurth also lay on the floor. The pistol lay between them. The heavy steel pin in Glevan's hand was covered with blood.

  "He was trying to smash the controls," Glevan said. "I think I killed him." He dropped the pin and kneeled beside Hurth, touching him gently. "Hurth tried to stop him. Hurth?"

  There was no answer. Boker bent over the red-haired man. "He's dead, all right. Help me get him out. ."

  He broke off as Kettrick pointed through the bridge window. Flay's hunt was coming from the hills, and coming fast. Much too fast.

  "They must have seen my tracks in the snow," Kettrick said, "and wondered why I started running as soon as I was out of sight."

  Boker said, "We've got to have fifteen minutes to ship that link bar. See that we have it, Johnny." He pulled Glevan to his feet. "Come on."

  Glevan shook his head and stumbled out after Boker. Hurth still had not moved.

  Kettrick opened the arms locker and took two of the bell-mouthed rifles. He stuffed his shirt with extra clips of the gas shells and went down the ladder.

  At the foot of it he met Chai. "Men come, John-nee."

  "I know." The companionway was clear. Chai had tumbled the two red sons out into the snow. He sent her up after the third one and walked onto the hatch opening, oddly calm now, quite cold. All the heat had run out of him at the sight of the two men lying on the floor of the bridge. His hands were perfectly steady as he loaded the rifles without haste and leaned one against the wall beside him. All the time he could see Flay and a dozen riders coming at a pounding run across the field.

  He fired, laying the shells carefully across the front of their advance.

  The dark puffs of vapor blossomed, obscuring the riders. Some of them reappeared, carried onward by their forward momentum. They did not go far before the mounts stumbled and went down and the riders fell out of the saddle.

  Chai appeared behind him, carrying the dead Firgal over her shoulder. She pitched him out through the hatchway. A heavy slug rang off the metal beside her. Rifles began to bang as the vapor blew away and revealed seven or eight men who had escaped the first volley. Flay was among them. Kettrick pulled Chai back and spun the manual control wheel beside the hatch. The thick steel door slid almost shut. A rattling sound came from the other side of it like hail on a tin roof. Kettrick fired through the slit.

  The men, who had bunched together again to rush the hatchway, broke apart and when the gas-cloud cleared only Flay and three others were still able to sit on their mounts.

  There was a bullhorn beside the hatch, useful on occasion for directing too large and eager crowds at a trading. Kettrick took it down and spoke into it.

  "Throw down your rifles. You have five minutes to get your people out of blast range. Flay, come and get your sons."

  He repeated the message three times, his voice thrown huge and metallic against the bitter morning. Below him he saw one of the red-haired men get up and steady himself against the ladder, and then help the second one, who lurched up holding his broken jaw. The third lay awkwardly where he had fallen, his legs and arms all askew. By the end of the second message the riders had begun to drop their rifles. By the beginning of the third, Flay was coming.

  Kettrick held the bell-mouthed rifle pointed down, his own body sheltered behind the door. Out on the field the three remaining men worked hard to get the fallen out of range. The two red-haired men below were now bent in an unmistakable attitude over the body of their brother.

  Flay came up beneath the hatch. He looked first at his sons and then at Kettrick.

  "You lied to me, J
ohnny."

  "And you to me, Flay."

  "I spared you, and my son is dead."

  "Hurth is dead also."

  Flay's broad dark face glistened as though with sweat, although the frost of his breathing whitened his beard.

  "Why, Johnny?"

  "What did Seri promise you, Flay? That your old red sun would live his time out undisturbed?" He saw that this was true and he shook his head, remembering the little people of Gurra and the words he had said to Nillaine. "Others love their worlds, Flay. Others wish to live." The two brothers were lifting the body of the third to lie across his saddle. Kettrick nodded toward them. "So much the Doomstar has done for you. Now get them out of here."

  Flay looked at him a moment longer and then he turned and lifted his gaze to the red sun. His shoulders bent and the straightness left his spine. He moved to help his sons and in a minute or two they rode away, leading the dead man's beast. None of them spoke again, nor looked again at Kettrick.

  Grellah sprang suddenly to life with a hum and whit of systems cutting in. Kettrick pushed the automatic control to close. The hatch clicked shut and sealed itself for space. The ladder retracted into its slot with a hollow grinding sound. Kettrick motioned to Chai and they walked back along the companionway, past the safety door that closed and sealed in its turn behind them, forming one of Grellah's two airlocks. The warning hooter began. Kettrick climbed the ladder to the bridge.

  Boker was already at the controls. Hurth had been lifted onto one of the seats and Glevan was holding him. Kettrick sent Chai to help, noticing that Hurth was at least still breathing and able to groan. His skin was a hideous drowned color, but the blood on his shirt was bright enough. Kettrick sat down in Hurth's accustomed place beside Boker. Through the window they could see Flay's people getting the last of their comrades to safety. Kettrick watched them until the erupting flame and smoke of ignition blotted them from view. Then he said, "This is another place I can never come back to." Grellah rose up slowly past the huge red sun.

  15

  Hurth lived. That was one good, fine, happy thing. The slug had plowed along his heart ribs, knocking him unconscious and losing him a considerable amount of blood, but he lived.

  Otherwise, there was nothing to cheer about.

  "I did not get one minute alone with Sekma," Boker said furiously. "None of us did. Those three red apes, or their brothers, were with us every breath we drew. They wanted to be sure, I guess…in case there was any collusion, they wanted to know about it. And I didn't dare take a chance. None of us was armed, and they were set on a hair trigger, waiting to pounce on the first wrong move."

  "Also," said Kettrick, "there was me."

  "I love you, Johnny," Boker said, "like a brother. But if I'd thought I could do it and get away with it…"

  "Sure," said Kettrick. "I know. So now what? Sekma's on his way to Gurra, so we can forget him."

  "Johnny, there was something not quite right. When he inspected the ship, he saw the stuff from Gurra, and of course I had to say I'd got it on Pellin. Flay's sons didn't know the difference but you know damn well Sekma did, and yet he never batted an eye. He's a smart man, a very smart man, as nobody should know better than we. Maybe he got the message. Maybe he's really on Seri's track himself, and just using their story about you as a cover."

  "I clung to some such hope myself," said Kettrick. "I hope it's true. However, just in case it isn't, we'd better think what we're going to do when we hit Kirnanoc." And he added grimly, "There's one good thing about Kirnanoc. I don't have any friends there."

  "Nobody does," said Boker. "And for that reason, you'd better stay in the ship, out of sight, while we're there. I'll do the footwork."

  They discussed it over and over while they were in jump.

  "Unless we find that Sekma is on the job," said Boker, "We'll have to tell the I–C what we know, there's no doubt about that. Only I'm wondering when."

  "What do you mean, when?" asked Hurth, who was in a constant chafe lest his wound not heal quick enough to let him be in on everything that happened.

  "If we go to them first thing," said Boker, "right after land, we might never take off again. They might want to hold us for questioning, or until somebody higher up comes and tells them what to do. They might want to throw Johnny in the pokey and the rest of us along with him."

  Hurth nodded. "I never thought of that."

  "I have," said Kettrick. "The Doomstar is more important than what happens to us, but on the other hand…Hell, they might not even believe us. They might think it was all just a big grandstand play to take the heat off us. And by the time they could get hold of Sekma and check with him, it would be too late."

  "My suggestion," said Boker, "is to wait until we're ready to jump, meanwhile finding out all we can about Seri…Then send the I–C a message and run like hell."

  "Unless," said Kettrick, "Starbird is still on her pad when we get there. If she is, we'd better yell for help, loud and clear."

  Glevan, who had little time for talk between nursing Hurth and nursing the jump unit, was of the opinion that they would never catch up with Seri and neither would the I–C, and that the Doomstar would presently be shining for the whole Cluster to see and bow to.

  He was also of the opinion that Sekma had gone to Gurra just as he said he would. Kettrick was afraid to think otherwise himself. Yet when they came out of jump and entered their landing pattern at Kirnanoc, he found that he was hoping, wildly hoping, that they would find Sekma waiting for them when they hit the dirt.

  The starport of Achera, Kirnanoc's principal city, was as busy as Kettrick remembered it. Achera was the center from which all flowed, blessing and curse alike, to the remainder of the planet. There were some small fields scattered abroad for emergency medical or military use, but they were not open to traders. They were among the human tribes of Kirnanoc, and on this world the human was not the dominant animal. They had nothing to trade, and they supplied neither useful hides nor edible meat. Humans from other planets found them depressing in the extreme.

  Kirnanoc, because it was situated at a kind of crossroads in the Cluster, had worked up quite an enviable position as an exchange and clearing house where traders often came to barter with other traders, as an easier means of obtaining goods from very distant or difficult worlds than by going after them personally. Kettrick had often done business here in the Market, selling cargoes ftom the special touch places like Gurra and Thwayn for a better price than he could get at Tananaru.

  Port Authority guided them in to a pad in the northwest quadrant of the field. There were several score of ships ranged in orderly rows as far as the eye, at this level, could see. It was impossible to tell whether or not Starbird was among them.

  "I'll go sign in, and check the board," Boker said. "Back in half an hour."

  He went out into the tawny glare of the afternoon. Kettrick watched him walk out to the transport strip and catch one of the trams. He rode away in it toward the Administration Center and was lost to sight among the looming ships.

  Grellah's fans were going, sucking in the outside air. The smell of heat and water and the faint indescribable sweetness like a wicked spice that was the true ancient breath of Achera began slowly to replace the stale metallic-tasting stuff inside the ship. Overcome with restlessness, Kettrick went below to work with Glevan and Hurth on the jump unit Chai, who had been forbidden to go outside, sat forlornly peering out the open hatch.

  For all his fatalistic pessimism, Glevan had an obsession now about getting that unit ready. He had hardly waited for Grellah to sit down before he was grubbing at her vitals. Hurth, still sore and wobbly, was handing him tools and making insulting answers to Glevan's running commentary concerning the woes that were about to befall the Cluster.

  "And soon. Very soon." Glevan's hands worked swiftly, his monkey face screwed up and his eyes intent on the mass of relay terminals he was checking. "If Grellah should turn into a space hawk as quick-flying as thought, she still
would be too slow to catch the Doomstar."

  "Then why work so hard?" demanded Hurth.

  "Because I am a man, and a man is made of folly." His hands flickered among the colored wires, the many-colored posts, checking, tightening. One loose contact could mean disaster. "Man is also made of vanity. Between foolishness and vanity I fashion my own downfall. I like to think that I, with the skill of my hands and brain, can make this old ship do what she cannot do." He glanced abruptly at Kettrick. "Do you know, Johnny, there is a little less than one unit of Universal Arbitrary Time left before the meeting of the League of Cluster Worlds?"

  "I do," said Kettrick. "I do."

  And Hurth said gloomily, "Why is it that there's always some crazy idiot that has to make trouble?"

  "The great cry of the human race," said Kettrick. "Nobody ever answered it yet."

  They worked. The half hour passed, and few minutes more, and then Chai barked down the ladder well.

  "John-nee!"

  They jumped up, thinking it was Boker. But she said, "Men come. No Boker. Strange men."

  They raced up the ladder to the companionway. Through the hatch Kettrick could see a small carrier bouncing toward them over the scorched concrete of the pad. There were several men in it, or rather several Achernans. He could make out the yellow tunics of spaceport guards.

  "What do they want?" said Hurth. "And where's Boker?"

  "I don't know," said Kettrick. "But my guess would be that we've stepped into a hornet's nest."

  They stood for a moment, a little stunned by the suddenness of it, watching the carrier speed toward them.

  "I never did like Kirnanoc," said Glevan softly. "There's a smell of evil about it." He struck Kettrick across the chest, pushing him away. "Get out of sight, Johnny, you and Chai. They've got no way of knowing you're aboard."

  Kettrick hesitated.