“Well, milady, we’re just a few days from Rhylston. Once there, we can subspace a message back to Earth and get the machinery started to recognize the sandcats as a new sentient race.”
“Yes,” she said softly, “That’s what I came after. That was what my father meant by his cryptic ‘find utterly beyond belief.’ This is the first living, nonhumanoid intelligent race found in over a hundred years.”
“He’ll be famous. And, in a way, he discovered two intelligent alien races. The Rulers were around long before the sandcats. They must have been real bastards, the Rulers.”
“Why do you say that?” Steorra asked, puzzled.
“What sort of race lifts another from bestiality simply to have more intelligent slaves? That’s what the Rulers did. The laugh was on them, though. The sandcats were more adaptable to the changing climate. Their slaves outlived them.”
“I think the laugh is on us,” complained Heuser. “We’re out a hell of a lot of money and skin, went through both mental and physical torture and what have we got to show for it?”
“Heuser, old friend, we helped Steorra insure her father’s discovery was properly recognized. We are the ones helping the sandcats to a place of equality after centuries of being slaves.”
“You can’t spend gratitude.”
“No, but it can’t be bought, either.”
Nightwind basked in the warmth of Steorra’s smile, knowing it was going to be an interesting journey back to Earth to formally file the sandcats’ claim before the Council.
He quietly drifted off to sleep thinking pleasant thoughts.
The aircar’s engines died. Nightwind was awake in in instant. He looked at Heuser, still at the controls, and snapped, “What’s the matter? Something wrong?”
“Not yet, Rod. I was checking the outside barometric pressure and noticed it was dropping fast. That means a big blow coming up. I decided to find a protected place to weather it out.”
Nightwind saw Steorra was sleeping the sleep of the exhausted. He pulled himself out of his seat and asked quietly, “Is the wind very bad outside right now?”
“Relatively speaking, no. Only chopping up dust at fifty kilometers an hour or so. But it’s rising fast.”
“Let’s go outside for a minute. Would you put my filter on, please? And adjust my goggles?” His left arm was too firmly splinted for any movement.
“Why not? But what’s outside you want to show me?”
“Out first.” Nightwind cast a significant look in Steorra’s direction.
Heuser fastened the filter on his own desert suit, cycled open the door and dropped onto the sand. Nightwind quickly followed. He felt the faint bite of sand against his legs, even through the thick plastic skin of the desert suit. He motioned with his head in the direction of the aircar’s cargo compartment.
“Something wrong? You find some sabotage?” Heuser’s voice was faint in the wind, muffled by the filter.
“When I recovered the computer interface, I had to go through the cargo compartment. I think you’ll be interested in what I found there.”
He opened the small hatch.
For a long moment, Heuser was speechless. Then, his hand shaking slightly, he reached out. Scooping up a handful of gleaming gems, he let them sift through his fingers like sand.
“Where did they come from, Rod? We sure as hell didn’t put them here. And there’s a fortune in gem-stones so exotic I don’t know what half of them even are! A fortune did I say? There’re a dozen fortunes!”
“Slayton must have created a pile of these to amuse himself. I guess he figured he would go back to civilization with them. It must have been before the scepter began to control him — before it infected him with the poison of total power. But I’m not complaining.”
“I’m not either. It makes this entire venture worthwhile — well worth it!”
Nightwind smiled and got a mouthful of sand, in spite of his filter. He motioned to go back into the compartment of the aircar. The planet had furnished danger and a fortune in exotic jewels. It even held the promise of further relations with an intelligent race of nonhumanoids.
But the sand … that he could do without.
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Copyright © 1978 by Robert E. Vardeman
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Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-5208-8
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5208-3
Sandcats of Rhyl Page 18