Secret of the Stars (11 page)
Read Secret of the Stars Online
Authors: Andre Norton
“Waiting for what?”
“For those who set the beacon. It was all down there on the tape. We knew of the Ffallian, we’d seen their ships. The patrol had tried to blast them, only they can’t touch them. But the Ffallian are only the messengers—guides—the helping hands we slapped away. For learning that, I was cashiered and sent to Hel in a labor battalion. Hogan got me out because he had need for a pilot. I think he was planning to run an old tramp bucket in here for trading. But he knows about the Ffallian, too, and he doesn’t believe in the quarantine.”
“What about the scout in the ship you found?”
“He was lucky, he went out there. Quite a few scouts have over the years.”
“Perhaps they were captured.”
“No!” Rysdyke’s answer was emphatic. “Those tapes . . . they were t
he real thing. There’s no reason to fear the Ffallian. Why, they’ve tried over and over to make contact with us peacefully. And one of our scouts came back and he was shot by command of his own officer.”
“Why?”
“Because he had been out there, because he could prove it was all true. He was reported on the records as having been killed by the Others. But you can’t shut up a whole post personnel and there was talk. Yes, Marson had been with the Ffallian, and the Others . . . those who roam the stars we have never explored. And he came back.”
“Why?”
“He brought a concrete offer from them.”
“Why don’t the services want anything to do with these aliens?”
“Because they are afraid, the vips are anyway. Those Others have what we do not—immortality.” Rysdyke stared at the vision plate as if he saw there something other than the harsh disc of Fenris. “Mortals and immortals. The mortals fear and hate the Others for the futures we do not have. We made contact years ago and the vips were frightened, frustrated, felt like children trying to be men. They lashed out, killed, withdrew our forces. But the war has been on our side only.”
“Very true. Except that the Others are not immortal.”
Hogan emerged from the stairwell. Wearing the tunic of a ship’s officer, he had become a man who might pass unnoticed in the trade section of N’Yok itself.
“No, they are not immortal. That is one thing we
have
learned, and the truth has been concealed by those of our kind who must build monsters to hold their own power. The aliens only have a longer life span.”
“But why?”
Hogan dropped into the third seat. “Oh, it’s all of a piece. We made our first contact fifty years ago. Some men had the facts—Morre, Ksanga, Thom (the Great Thom’s grandfather), Marson . . .”
“Morre?” repeated Joktar. Morre was long-dead, his star empire built upon his personal charm and brilliance had collapsed speedily.
“Just so Morre was a fanatic, a dangerous one. He was outraged by what he learned at the first contact. The superiority upon which his whole nature was secured was threatened. To him, the aliens were a horrible threat, not only to mankind at large, but to him personally, which was worse. So he took steps. Reports were faked, distorted. We were told stories, such as Thom was spaced and murdered by the Others. There were atrocity tales spread among the services, if not the public. Morre had the power to do it. Over a period of a very few years, he produced the monsters he believed in. And even after his death, the faked evidence stood. In his way, Morre was a genius, but we have to suffer for his sins.”
“So we fought them,” Rysdyke’s voice was tired and bleak.
“Yes, in a one-sided way. The Ffallian understood. They withdrew for their own safety—which for at least one reason is more precious than we knew until recently. But they never gave up their hope for a meeting between our species and the aliens they represent. They set up beacons, subtly tuned to attract only men with whom they could establish contact. So men did disappear . . . traders, scouts. Only the Ffallian are not
our
problem. We have plans to make for Loki!”
“To meet Cullan . . .”
Hogan sat quietly, there was a peculiar quality to his silence. He was making up his mind, Joktar believed, being hurried into a decision he would have liked to consider more leisurely.
“On the surface Cullan . . .”
“On the surface?” It was Joktar who applied the prod.
“We have Sa and Minta on board. Their proposition is to see Cullan with them. He will stay at the Seven Stars in Nornes. I’ll be with them and so will Samms. And we’ll all be under surveillance every moment of the time. So we’ll keep one line free. You,” he turned to Joktar, “are going to have some more trouble with that shoulder of yours. Let’s have a look at it now.”
Joktar unsealed his tunic and stripped it off. His undershirt followed. As far as he himself could judge, the new pink skin looked healthy enough. He would bear a scar but the burn was well on the way to healing and it was only tender now to direct pressure. Hogan inspected the wound frowningly.
“Looks too good,” he commented. “But we can touch it up some. And see that you run a temperature. When we set down on Loki, you’re to be sent to the clinic.”
“Why?”
“Because I want one of us in position to move without being tailed. And secondly, I want to be sure of keeping you.”
Joktar pulled up his shirt. “I’m not likely to try to ship out without papers or credits.”
“Ship out, no;
be
shipped out, maybe.” Hogan was, he saw, entirely serious.
“You mean the patrol would pick me up as an emigrant escapee?”
“Listen,” Hogan stood before him, hands on hips, scowling a little, “if what I think is true, you have more than the patrol to fear now, boy.”
Rysdyke’s eyes were narrowed, he nodded in agreement.
“But what have I got to do with your quarrel with the companies on Fenris?”
“Fenris! Fenris is the first, but perhaps the least of our objectives. We’re snarled up in half a dozen webs, all being spun by some busy spiders working for opposite ends and with the stickiest means they can manufacture out of their devious minds. If we come through the next week or so and take away even one one-hundredth of the stakes on the table, there’ll be action to rock more than one system. Freedom for Fenris . . . great nebulae! We’re fighting for freedom for a whole species—our own!”
10
Hogan stood looking down at his own hands, broad hands, pale-skinned through lack of exposure, but strong and tough. His fingers moved. Almost, Joktar decided, as if he were gathering up a hand of kas-cards and spreading out those narrow strips to assess their potential value.
“When do we planet?” he asked.
Rysdyke patted the edge of the panel. “With this little beauty . . . a week, space time. She’s built for speed and I’ll push her.”
“A week . . .” Hogan repeated, but his tone suggested that he desired to cut that in half.
“Our passengers happy?”
“They hadn’t come out of break-off sleep when I looked in on them,” Hogan answered absently. “Sa is the one to watch. Minta’s a bull-headed man but Sa’s subtle. He gave in at once when we jumped the compound. His retreat is no sure victory for us.”
“What about Samms?”
Hogan grinned. “Samms is busy spinning plans, probably damn good ones. Give that boy another five years and a free hand on Fenris, and perhaps even Sa would have second thoughts about backing him.”
“Samms wants Fenris.”
“Samms is apt to want a lot of things. Whether he’ll be moderately successful in getting them is another matter.”
Joktar made his first contribution. “He’s dangerous.”
“You rate him that?” Hogan favored him with full attention. “Now that’s interesting. But there’s one thing about Samms, his appetite is bigger than his capacity. He may not be far from discovering that himself the hard way. Now, my wounded hero,” Hogan’s hand closed upon Joktar’s fit shoulder, “you are coming with me to begin languishing in your cabin with a serious relapse. And I warn you, this isn’t going to be just an act, it will be a very uncomfortable fact!”
There Hogan was correct. Aided by supplies from the ship’s dispensary and a proficiency in their use, which led Joktar to believe that this was not the first time such a program had been in force, the outlaw leader produced results which were lamentable as far as his victim was concerned. By the time they set down on Loki, Joktar was almost oblivious of everything save his own discomfort. Shortly after Rysdyke had brought them in for a perfect three-fin landing, Hogan stood over his bunk to deliver a series of last-minute instructions in a voice which pierced all sick self-preoccupation.
“We’re taking off now and you’re being sent straight to the clinic. They have orders to put you in isolation. Roll with the beam; you’ll hear from us later.”
So Joktar’s first sight of Nornes was necessarily limited as he was bundled out of the ship into an air scooter, and flown across the maze of islands linked together to form the semi-stable base for the major city of Loki. The buildings were all low, not more than four or five stories high, and the sea beat eternally about the scraps of rock they occupied, making a ceaseless murmur which Joktar found lulling once he was established in a room near the top of one of those structures.
He sat up in bed as the door in the opposite wall became a shimmer of force and then snapped out of existence. The medic who entered was the same who had seen him safely installed in that bed only a short time earlier, but this time he moved with a hint of urgency and the face he turned to his patient was sober.
“What’s Hogan’s game?” The demand held a hint of hostility.
“Game?” repeated Joktar, the fever artificially induced on board ship still slowed his thinking.
“I agreed to take you in,” the medic continued. “I didn’t agree to stick my neck out for the big brass to take a swing at.”
Joktar’s incomprehension must have been mirrored on his face, for the medic paused and then laughed, harshly and without humor. “This is a typical Hogan play. Apparently, he didn’t brief you either. But it begins to look, fella, as if you’re playing bait and the trap’s about to be sprung before Hogan expects it—the wrong way.”
“I don’t understand . . .”
The medic produced a capsule. Dropping it into Joktar’s hand he ordered: “Bite that and wake up a little. You’ll need a clear head.”
Joktar bit. The sharp sting of the enclosed drop of liquid spread through his mouth and, in some odd fashion, up into his head, clearing away the haze which had hung a curtain between him and the world.
“You have visitors. The wrong kind, if I’m any judge.”
What had gone wrong? The Terran was alerted now with that old uneasy feeling which had preceded terror in the streets. Had controls slipped from Hogan’s grasp?
“What visitors?”
There was a sharp buzz. The medic pressed Joktar back into the enfolding embrace of the foam plast-bed. Obediently, the Terran relaxed, allowed his head to roll to one side in what he hoped was a realistic pose of weakness, watching the door warily through slits beneath drooping eyelids.
Again the shimmer of a force fading. Another medic stood there. And behind him a spaceman, slight, deeply browned, wearing a gray tunic with a constellation badge. The gleam of stars on his shoulders drew Joktar’s notice. A sub-sector commander at least!
From those stars, Joktar’s eyes arose to the brown face, to the other’s eyes. His shoulder hurt as muscles tensed. He had faced enmity of his own kind before, the dull hatred of the streets, the wild malice of a smoke-drinker on a binge, the stupid but dangerous brutality of a bully. But what he read now was so chilling that his hand moved under the covers in a frantic, subconscious search for a weapon he no longer possessed. The medic standing beside the bed had gripped the Terran’s other wrist and that hold tightened in a quick squeeze which could be a warning. He was not facing direct and open anger, but an emotion beyond that; it was cold, lasting, and completely deadly. The spaceman was regarding him as if he were not really human.
“He’s the one,” the identification was delivered in a monotone. As the officer raised his hand, two more uniformed figures began to move in.
The medic by the bed spoke over his shoulder. “I protest this intrusion. This man is suspected of fungoid fever.”
The advance on the bed halted. Fungoid fever was not only highly contagious, it was one of the most terrifying specters of the spaceways.
“This is an isolation ward, preserved by force fields—” the medic continued, and his colleague broke in:
“I have already warned Commander Lennox, sir. He has a Class A warrant.”
The medic dropped Joktar’s wrist and turned to face the officer squarely.
“I don’t care,” he paced his words slowly and with emphasis, “if you have the whole patrol below to back you up, Commander. A patient suspected of fungoid is not going to be released from isolation until we are sure, and I have the backing of the Council on that. Shaw,” he spoke to the other medic, “take these men down to Unit C and see that each one of them has the full course of preventive shots . . . they’ve been inside the door. Now get out of here!”
Somehow, the force of his authority sent them away and the door shimmered into place. Joktar sat up. The medic rubbed his hand down his face, he was smiling a little.
“That will give them something to think about,” he commented with satisfaction. “Preventive shots will busy them for about four hours and they don’t dare refuse them. This is only a temporary respite, you know. If you don’t produce fungoid patches in ten hours, Lennox can lift you right out of here. We’ll have to make some other move before that time limit. Lennox’s no fool, he’ll have every inch of this building staked out expecting an escape try. Why is he gunning for you?”
“I honestly don’t know. As far as I can remember, I never saw him before.”
But he wears a gray coat,
Joktar’s thoughts drummed,
and that gray tunic is trouble for me.
Why? If he only knew why!
“Hogan! I wish that man would do a little straight talking once in a while. This leaving people in the dark makes for complications.”
“Can you get in touch with him?”
“My dear Gentlehomo,” the medic’s irritation was rooted in very apparent exasperation, “I have been trying to reach Hogan for over an hour. He isn’t to be found at any of the three contacts he gave me.”
“Picked up?” Joktar asked. Having swept up Hogan, the authorities might now be gathering in all his followers in a general sweep. Though it was difficult to fit Commander Lennox into a routine police roundup.
“No. We would have been warned of that. Meanwhile, we have to think you out of here, and into hiding somewhere else. And with the guards outside that is going to be a star-class problem.”
Joktar, his head clear now, was perfectly willing to tackle what seemed to him not unlike setting up a bolt hole from the SunSpot. But time would pressure them and he had no map of the district in his mind. The islands were connected by bridges and these bridges would be discouragingly easy to close.
“Air transport?” he asked and the medic shook his head.
“The scooters are all powered by beam broadcast. They need only snap that off and every machine would be grounded on the nearest landing surface. And that would be one of their first moves.”
“Hogan’s supposed to be at the Seven Seas. Where is that in relation to this clinic?”
The medic produced a small hand-video cast, centered its beam on the nearest wall. Instantly a small, clear map snapped into view, each detail vivid.
“We’re here. The Seven Stars is the plush hostelry for vips, second island to the left and up, that one which is roughly triangular. The building covers almost the whole island, except for a garden strip to the west, makes it easier to guard. It’s a full city within itself; they’ve got shops, cafes, theaters, everything. Most of the visiting vips never leave it until they are ready to return to the spacefield. A series of conferences can be booked for meetings.”
“Who could get in without any questions?”
“The staff are all recorded on ident tapes. It would require an operation and too long a time to let you impersonate any one of them. Most of the guests are taped, too.”
Joktar was startled. “With their consent?”
“Oh, most of them agree when it is presented to them as a protective measure. Loki is a central meeting place, not only for this system, but for the planets of Beta Lupi and Alpha Lupi as well. There are some big deals put over under the roof of the Seven Stars and a good many of the visitors are sensitive about personal safety.”
Joktar began to feel at home; the situation was quite like that of the streets.
“So, staff impersonation is out and guests are taped. Wouldn’t anyone at all get in without a recorded checking?”
“Patrol and our friends, the scouts.”
“Patrol is out.”
“Yes, with their inner ident we couldn’t possibly plant one of those in you. And the first patrolman you met would have you under control when you didn’t respond. On the other hand, the scouts aren’t so equipped. The only trouble is there are fewer of them and those few are now out for you.”
Joktar got out of bed. He stood before the map, studying, impressing details upon his memory. “Got any skin dye,” he held up his too-pale hands.
“That could be the least of your worries. I can’t produce a uniform.”
“No. I’ll have to handle that. What time is it? And how long until dark?”
“Dark? They’ll keep the big light on the islands tonight. You won’t have much dark for a cover. What are you going to do?”
Joktar shook his head. “Just give me a plan of this building and some skin stain, that’s all I want. What you don’t know, you can’t spill later under any talk-shot.”
“Entirely correct.” The medic became all business. “Your force field is sealed to open only to me or my assistant. I’ll be back with what you need as soon as I can. Your ‘dark’ is due in about an hour.”
Joktar paced back and forth across the small room. Whatever drug the medic had given him had finished the fever Hogan had earlier induced, and he was fast regaining his strength. Now he was trying to think his way off the island to the Seven Stars. To wear a scout uniform as his means of entrance there was to court trouble, but that was the simplest and quickest answer to his problem. And if the scouts were few, there would be just that many less to threaten his masquerade.
He throttled his impatience until the medic returned and then went to work with swift efficiency. Liquid applied to his face, neck and hands, gave him a brown skin that could not be distinguished from the heavy tan of the spacemen. And the medic had brought, in addition, a drab set of breeches, seal tunic, and soft boots.