by Gardner Fox
The big man was willing to oblige them. He took two steps forward, plucking at his woolen sleeves, rolling them up to bare his forearms. “You talk a bit yourself, Carrick. Come on, if it’s fight you want. Go past me if you can.”
Carrick walked slowly, eyes alert. He had fought men often enough before, though never with this new body of his. Wary of his reactions, of his untested strength, he knew a deep need to satisfy his curiosity. Than Lear had grown up in the same school he had himself, in taverns on one wartime planet or another, wenching, dicing, settling scores with fists in back alleyways. The bald man knew the rules, which said there were no rules between two men with strong wills and hard bodies.
Then Than Lear leaped. He came through the air like an uncoiling panther, big hands spread to seize and clutch. Carrick crouched, pivoted. One hand stabbed out, caught at a wrist. His body turned.
Moving downslope, the bald man had been aided in his lunge by gravity. Now it acted against him. He felt his wrist caught, knew the hard nudge of a shoulder under his ribs, felt the ramp fall away from under his feet. He went flying through the air to thump heavily on the lower section of the ramp and roll off it onto the ground.
Almost instantly he was back on his feet. But he was too late.
Carrick was racing through the port, reaching for the lever controls. Mai Valoris was more than halfway up the ramp, running on flying feet, seeming to skim the bright metal. Than Lear bellowed.
The smugglers stood frozen, mute and dumb.
Than Lear roared, “Carrick, damn your eyes! You tricked me. You didn’t fight fair! I’ll flay you for this. I swear I’ll cut your heart out and—”
He leaped for the ramp but the solar engines were functioning now. The metal ramp lifted, shaking him off, and retracted back into inside the saucer. Than Lear fell into the desert sands and lifted a small red cloud around him. He sneezed. To one side of him the smugglers came awake with the realization of what was happening. One of them drew a thin rod and fired a stream of isotopical radiation at the ship. The deadly brightness hit the silvery hull and splashed in a shower of sparks.
“Get the captain!” shouted the smaller of the smugglers.
The hairy Capellan whirled and ran. Behind him he could hear the whisper of sand under compressair vents and the muted hum of antigravity plates filling with energy. The ship that had been his home for the past half dozen months was lifting off-planet and he was not on it. With an empty, sinking feeling, he realized suddenly that he would have to share the underground tunnels with the criminal exiles of Dakkan planet.
Than Lear was standing, head thrown back, staring upward. A wild madness was in his veins. His great hands rose upward and his fingers curved as if he would grasp the rising starship and by sheer strength, draw it down to the red sands on which he stood. His lips mouthed curses until they foamed.
He stood until the ship was at a rim of space, staring wide-eyed, knowing that some day another ship would come, that when it did he would board it and go out among the stars and find Carrick and kill him, slowly and with relish, with his bare hands. The knowledge eased the torment of defeat in the big bald man, but it added the intolerable itch of impatience.
“I’ll wait. I’ll wait. The time will pass, eventually.” For the first time in many minutes he lowered his head. His neck muscles ached. Than Lear put his hand to them and rubbed slowly.
Mai Valoris leaned against a bulkhead wall and sobbed for breath. Takeoff had been so sudden that her muscles had been caught unprepared. The gravity plates insured a smooth lift, but there was always pressure. She felt as if the blood had been drawn to her feet and only now was beginning once again to circulate throughout her body. The metal wall where her shoulder rested felt strong and sturdy. She enjoyed its pressure and remained against it while her eyes followed Carrick as he moved about the control room.
After a while she asked, “Where away?”
He did not look up from the star charts he was running through the viewer. “Hilnoris, in the Capellan system.” He turned his head and stared at her with his grey eyes; something feral, wolflike, flared deep inside them. “They tried me for murder on Hilnoris. They sentenced me to Dakkan planet there.”
“They’ll be waiting to send you back—or to a different planet,” she said slowly.
“They think I’m dead. They’ve written me off.”
“When they see you, they’ll know the truth.”
“They won’t see me,” he told her.
She pushed free of the bulkhead at that and moved across the companionway toward him. There were frosted glass panels between the companionway and the half dozen cabins the starship boasted. In one of them she caught a reflection of herself in tight black blouse and clingpants. A ribbon of her braids had loosened; she put fingers to it and began to rework the yellow hair as she came to stand beside Carrick.
Her shadow from the overhead lights fell across the viewing panel. Carrick said, “I had to take off so fast, I didn’t get a fix on our direction. Astronavigation was never my strong point. Dakkan’s somewhere in the Spican group, I know, but—”
Mai butted his shoulder with a rounded hip. “Move over. You’re all thumbs. I can work the dials a lot better than you.”
Under her hands the sectors firmed, came into focus. The starship was a bright dot on the bead-glass screen moving slowly sunward. She reached for a corrective lever and let the mock-up position itself against the larger sector of space that appeared automatically on the wall-screen above their heads.
Carrick read off the tangentials and gauges. He punched a tape, then fed it into the computer.
The ship was gathering speed, moving faster across the screen as the solar engines pumped energy through the gravity plates. There was no sensation of acceleration, there was no sensation at all. The starship was a Vendim-Reynal, a new one, maybe two, three years old. Vendim-Reynal made good ships. They furnished Empire with its cruisers and heavy battlewagons.
In three days the ship would be within hailing distance of Hilnoris. Until then it would be moving through the shifting grey mists of hyperspace like a disembodied spirit. It was alone in a universe that existed only as a form of negated energy.
Carrick leaned back in the contour bench and stretched. “Now to take inventory,” he grinned. “We’ll need money, clothes, stuff like that if we’re to make a splash on Hilnoris.”
After an hour he found a strongbox filled with golden karel—each karel was worth ten Earth dollars at star rate exchange—more than enough to see them through an extended stay even on a luxury planet. There were clothes, too, Rigel silks and Arcturan cottons, cloaks of cloth-of-gold and wool, sandals of the finest leathers obtainable.
“Did they smuggle garments, too?” he wondered.
Mai was holding up a jersey blouse of stretching brocade. “They have to be able to come and go in any society. It’s easy to see you never smuggled goods into a star port. They must be ready to bribe or fight, to mix with portside riff-raff or the elite of planetary society.”
“Society?”
She hooted at him. “Where’ve you been all your life? Don’t you know there are things forbidden to the planets? Panthalos, for one. Cetian women, for another.” She dimpled a sly smile. “Ever seen a Cetian woman, Carrick? No, I suppose not. You’ve always been on military duty, haven’t you? Spaceport wenches, bargirls, an occasional discontented housewife. Mmmm?”
He laughed and slapped her flank, making her yelp. “All right, you know so much, pick me out some things to wear. I’m a middle-aged trader from the Inland worlds, come to Hilnoris to see the sights. You’re my wife.”
She mocked a curtsey, but she entered into the spirit of the adventure, selecting drab clingpants and loose, plain shirts for him, wildly glamorous garments for herself. When he protested, she told him that no Inland trader in his right mind would wear anything but sober garments except on a vacation to one of the water worlds. His wife, on the other hand, would be inclined to forget her bou
rgeois background and let go with both barrels.
“It’s Earth Main Street all over again out here,” she said thoughtfully, pausing in the cabin doorway with her arms filled with clothes. “People are the same wherever you find them. Main Street was only the symbolism for a certain type of human being.”
“Am I to be loud? Brash?”
Her eyes were gleeful. “Just be yourself. Pompous, righteous, down to earth and—”
She fled when he came for her, racing down the corridor on dainty feet. Carrick stood and grinned, fists on his hips. He was glad she had come aboard with him. She knew the star worlds, he did not. Living in a basket two years and after that spending three years in Hannes Stryker’s laboratories on Leonidar did little to improve the social amenities. Carrick decided he was woefully ignorant of the things that mattered.
He supposed Than Lear would have it in for Mai Valoris; well, he might not know much about the way the star worlds wagged, but he could fight for her and would. The thought made him feel better, suddenly, so that he hummed to himself as he dressed in a yellow wool blouse and clingpants of dark brown with golden splashes woven into the material. A sash across his lean middle held a moneysack and a holster for a small stun-gun.
He considered the stun-gun a moment. Planets like Hilnoris had severe laws about small arms. They let a man carry a stun-gun because sometimes late at night there was violence on the big city streets. Even the Law Patrols, good as they were, couldn’t cover every square inch of the sprawling starport cities. Carrick chuckled. His hand was used to the solid weight of an implositron; he wondered if he might convert the stunner into the more lethal weapon.
He wandered into the forward control room and began examining star charts with an idea of boning up on his rudimentary astronavigation. He was a fighting man, no pilot or navigator, yet in his years of service he had learned a little about flying a spaceship. The Fleet gave free courses between campaigns, and Carrick had never been a man to sit on his thinking apparatus. Half a dozen hours over the charts and their supplementary texts, and a good deal of it would come back to him. He wished he had been a more conscientious scholar.
Mai wandered in wearing a gold bolero over a bare midriff, with golden brocade clingpants. With her thick yellow hair piled in an upsweep, her eyelids tinted blue and her fingernails frosted with gold, she seemed a walking statue. She posed in the doorway, one hip languidly outthrust, smiling seductively as he whistled.
“This is a trader’s wife?” he asked at last.
She giggled. “I’ve seen some of them in getups gaudier than this. Besides, can you help it if you married a gorgeous hunk of female?”
“I’m all for it, if it won’t give us away.”
Hips swaying, she came toward him. “You married late in life, after you made your pile. You shopped around for something to show off, understand?” Her eyes were impish. “You got yourself the best looking woman on the Inland planets. I used to be an entertainer. Singer, hoofer, like that. You understand?”
She put a hand to the brown hair closecropped over his temple. “We’ll have to grey that hair a little, just enough to make you look distinctive.” She frowned. “You know anything besides warfare that you can talk about in a plotel lobby?”
“I sell weapons to plantation owners who have to keep private little armies against wild animals and the criminal gangs that roam the wilder parts of the outer planets,” he explained.
She nodded. “Sounds all right. Mmm, you’re awfully tanned. Would a weapons trader be that healthy?”
“He would if his wife made him take in one of the water worlds before vaning down on Hilnoris. You’re not exactly pale yourself, you know.”
“Gold does go well with my coloring, doesn’t it?”
This time when he would have clouted her hip she dodged aside and seated herself in the co-pilot’s chair. “Fun’s fun, Carrick, but this is a pretty grim business you’re setting out to do.”
“I’m innocent. I mean to prove it.”
“All right. Maybe we can show the world I didn’t kill Eran Telliver, too—while we’re at it. But first things first. What’s your plan of action?”
“I’m not sure. The trial tape, I guess. It’ll have names, addresses, everything I need.”
“Then you go paying calls on people.”
“Maybe.”
“With a gun? To get them to talk?”
He shrugged and turned back to his navigation charts to study them. He would be star-hopping a lot, if things went smoothly. Even if they didn’t, he might have to leave a world in a hurry and he wanted to know where he was headed before he got there. The ship was quiet; only the hum of the gravity plates made any sound. He concentrated. After a while he could hear Mai singing softly to herself. She sounded quite contented.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE STARSHIP eased into norm-space just outside the Capellan system. To go further sunward might bring a blast of deadly implosi-radiation from a Patrol ship. Carrick clung to the controls until a code signal activated his talkidisc as a signal voice called on him to identify himself.
“Weapons trader Alpheus Neumann, planet Clonimell, star-sun Altair,” Carrick replied. His fingers stabbed the button that would flash a duplicate of his star-pass on the viewing screen on the patrol boat. Mai had labored over that pass—there were hundreds of blank passes, officially stamped and sealed and needing only to be filled out, in a storeroom locker—enjoying herself by inventing names.
“Alpheus Neumann and wife, Carolla. Permission to land on Hilnoris granted.”
They went past the patroller at a sober speed. Carrick never tired of a system-fall, as his ship drove between the planets circling a star-sun. Almost holding his breath he would watch world after world swim up into magnification in the viewer, studying the shape of its continents and oceans, wondering what sort of people and animals inhabited it. There were odd sorts of both kinds out here among the stars.
Idly he wondered if they had ever heard of Ylth’yl.
Mai was in her cabin, packing. “Just like a wife,” she called to him suddenly. “Doing all the work. Here, give me a hand with these things.”
Carrick touched the automation stud and went to help her. The ship would circle Hilnoris until confirmation came from Patrol headquarters on one of its space stations; then a tug would accompany them down to a landing. There was nothing for him to do but wait.
Mai Valoris looked flushed and untidy. A few strands of heavy yellow hair had fallen across her eyes and she had ripped a seam of her blue blouse so that the tanned skin of a shoulder was showing. She shot him a glance as he came through the door, her eyes bright with anger.
“Everything’s gone wrong,” she snapped. “I broke a fingernail. I tore my blouse. I lost the only comb I could find on this damned ship and—”
Something in him reacted to her mood. She looked not so much like a former model as she did a harassed housewife on a vacation. He realized suddenly that he was a little fearful of Mai Valoris, the model; he did not fear Carolla Neumann, the trader’s wife; she was more familiar to him; he’d never had to do with glamor girls.
He crossed the little cabin, took her chin in a hand and gently turning her head, kissed her pouting red lips. She gasped with surprise.
“There, that’s for doing all the work while I’ve been planet-shopping at the viewer. I just wanted to tell you that you look lovelier to me right now than you ever have before.”
“You must adore sloppy women,” she exclaimed, but she was pleased. “Do you really mean it or are those just words?”
He lifted two heavy carryalls. “Mean it. Now stop fishing for compliments and waggle your tail. There’s the tughorn now. It’ll latch onto our controls and bring us down safe from gales and storms and such. They’ll have the latest weather reports, we don’t.”
He was talking to give her an opportunity of standing before the little wall mirror, adjusting her blouse, mending it with an adhesi-ray, tucking the fallen strand
s of hair into a neater coiffure. With a wry grin, Carrick admitted that he felt like a husband at the moment.
“I had an older brother used to be a space-tug captain back on Earth. Long time ago, that was. He’s probably head of the outfit, now.” She was almost done. “He used to damn all spaceship captains who wouldn’t acknowledge signals. I’d better go answer a few myself.”
He put the carryalls at the port vents, then moved on into the control room. Seated at the automatics, ready to assume manual handling if anything went wrong, he watched the planet swim larger in the screen. Clouds, first. Then a curving sweep of horizon and mists out of which emerged blue water and brown land dotted with green forests. Lakes on which sunlight shimmered as if they were made of glass. Earth was like this. Home. Nostalgia brushed his mind and he sat remembering the past until a buzzer woke him to the present.
“Starboard power, sir. You’re veering.”
Obediently, Carrick made compensations on the panel, felt the ship turn slightly as she lowered. His thoughts fled back to Earth. Funny how many Earth-type planets there were, scattered among the stars. The Probability Laws explained their recurrence, again and again, but he was never much on astral geology. Good thing for humans there were so many planets, population explosions being what they were.
Maybe somewhere out in space, on another Earth-type planet, Ylth’yl waited. Carrick told himself that when he’d proved his innocence—or maybe even if he couldn’t do that—he would go looking for Ylth’yl some day soon. I have no choice in the matter. Stryker must have built in this hostility, this urge to seek out and destroy, along with the rest of my manufactured nerves and tissues. There was an eagerness in him to meet up with Ylth’yl. Maybe the mongoose felt this way about the cobra.
The starship bumped and settled.
Mai was working the port controls. The metal circle retracted and the ramp slid out. Carrick bent for the carryalls. Like any wife, Mai had a smaller bag and tucked in under one arm, half a dozen geegaws.